You can not control others with your behavior. Not even "Red Pill" behavior

Free yourself from feeling responsible for other people's choices and circumstances

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the dark corner of the internet known as “The Red Pill” was based on a dumpster-fire of a social medial platform called Reddit.

The original Red Pill forum on Reddit was quite edgy. It was started by some guys who had gotten out of the wrong end of a divorce or relationship, usually by their women behaving in terrible ways they never saw coming and honestly didn’t think their women were capable of doing to them. The concepts and the language these men communicated appealed to and attracted not only other men in similar positions, but also young, angry guys who couldn’t get laid.

The rhetoric was unkind. We said mean shit about women.

That was intentional.

Using an unkind tone weeds out retarded people. If you can say something true — in fact undeniably true — but say it in a way that makes people want to argue with you simply due to your tone and the words you’ve chosen, that’s the litmus test. Do they think for a second, then conclude “You know what? He’s right. He’s an asshole who’s trying to get a rise out of me on the internet, but technically, what he said is true”? Or do they foam at the mouth and rage and sputter on principle simply because of who you are and how you speak — because nobody who speaks the way you speak could ever know anything or be right about anything?

This atmosphere led to a lot of the Red Pill men being assholes to each other. Usually posturing for attention and position over who could be the biggest asshole with the most smart-mouthed quips. Sometimes there was some debating over philosophical differences and Red Pill ideas, though that was usually just a pretense for dick-waving and being an asshole.

But that was to be expected. When you crack the seal and let people use asshole language, that’s just what you get on the internet. That, and a lot of internet autism seeking out rules and checklists.

A lot of people tossed out a lot of ideas as though they were rules:

• “You can’t be ‘Red Pill’ if you’re married, cohabitate, or have a girlfriend”

• “You can’t be ‘Red Pill’ if you go on dates and buy women drinks and dinner - that’s simp behavior”

• “‘Red Pill’ is sexual strategy. It’s just about improving yourself and getting laid, not about changing the world”

A lot of people also tossed out the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE ideas as though they were rules:

• “Real men get married and continue their legacy. Marriage is ‘Red Pill’ on hard mode”

• “Succeeding professionally, having lots of money, and showing it off to women on dates is an ‘alpha’ ‘Red Pill’ strategy”

• “‘Red Pill’ is a community for positive masculinity and improving the situation of men in the world, and calling out women and holding them accountable”

We could list a lot more examples, but you get the idea.

When we devolve into silly men pretending there are rules, we devolve into about half the men deciding “The ‘Red Pill’ rules are whatever I was already doing, or did previously, or want to do” and the other half hoping to find a checklist of rules they can follow to fix their lives without having to think too hard or work too hard.

The idea of rules is dumb because we’re all internet strangers and none of us care about the real lives of one another that much. So nobody knows or cares what rules you’re sticking to or breaking. You’re either getting good outcomes in your personal life, or you’re not, and somebody calling something “Red Pill” is completely orthogonal to the specific circumstances you and only you know about your personal life. Only you know what works for you, and someone else telling you their idea is a “Red Pill” rule isn’t going to magically make it work in your specific circumstances.

Rules are also dumb because they’re cowardly. Calling something a rule gets you out of having to make decisions for yourself and take a risk. For example, if someone tells you that it’s not “Red Pill” to ever pay for a woman’s drink — that’s a rule — and you miss out on getting laid because a girl thought you had a bad time and didn’t want to go home with her when you made her split the tab, you can shrug and say that’s not your fault because you were following the Red Pill rules. But really, it was your fault. (You could have had sex for $20 worth of vodka drinks when the going rate for an escort is in the hundreds — that was a good deal! But someone told you that if it’s not $0, you don’t count as “Red Pill”, and the “Red Pill” sexual strategy is all about sticking to a system of rules and principles that result in men having less se… wait a second…)

The community eventually settled on a fairly neutral philosophy that went something like: “This is how things are in the world, at least based on our observations after we’ve all done stuff, tried stuff, and seen what happened. Do whatever you want with your life. Just do it accounting for this Red Pill knowledge you now have.”

The Red Pill community even made separate forms on Reddit for different walks of life. There was a separate “Married Red Pill” forum for married guys and guys in serious relationships. There was even a little-known forum for gay Red Pill men.

I was a moderator on the Married Red Pill forum back in the day, on account of being married. I don’t think I ever actually did anything moderator-ish, but I guess it was a status symbol or something.

The majority of the married Red Pill men were split into three camps:

1. “Don’t get married. I got married before I found The Red Pill. My marriage sucked and my wife was awful and The Red Pill helped me get my marriage to a livable, manageable place. Not perfect, but manageable. But if I could go back in time, I would definitely never get married.”

2. “Marriage is a bad deal for men. Do whatever you want with this info. The Red Pill tells you how things are, but if having kids in a married setting is critically important to your happiness and you can’t feel fulfilled in life without it, at least you’re going in with your eyes open.”

3. “Marriage is ‘Red Pill’ on hard mode! But if you vet the women you date thoroughly to make sure they have all of these good traits and none of these bad traits, and if you behave like an alpha male leader of your household and maintain your wife’s attraction while sprinkling in about X% of ‘beta traits’ to keep her comfortable, while smashing through all of her tests by acting in this perfect Red Pill way you learned on the internet, it’s totally possible to have a marriage that doesn’t end in divorce where your wife is respectful and has lots of sex with you! IT IS HARD MODE AND WE ARE AWESOME!”

I actually started out in that first camp but slowly shifted more toward the second because I wanted more kids, and the kind of woman who will have kids with you outside of a marital home isn’t usually the kind of woman you want to raise kids with.

I always found that third camp of men kind of funny. Also a little arrogant and annoying. Because at its core, that entire train of thought in Camp 3 is a really dumb covert contract.

Ultimately, we can only control ourselves, not others. I can punch you in the face, but I don’t know if you’re going to punch me back, try to reason with me, call the police, curl up in a ball and cry, run away screaming in terror — I have no control over what you do. The idea that if I carefully vet you to make sure you have the kind of traits I look for in a punching victim, then I look and act a certain Red Pill way, and then I punch you in a certain Red Pill way, you’re going to do whichever of those things I wanted instead of whichever of those things you wanted - Sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it?

The idea that we can somehow control what others do, through vetting and our own behavior, isn’t just some kind of megalomaniacal arrogance. It’s a covert contract. Essentially another type of autistic rule:

“If I follow the ‘Red Pill’ rules of vetting for traits A, B, and C, and behaving in ‘Red Pill’ ways X, Y, and Z, my woman will behave the way I want and I will have a forever relationship filled with love, sex, and respect.”

Where this Married Red Pill idea differs from the common covert contract is blame. Normally, when a Nice Guy (tm) acts nice thinking this will result in a great relationship with lots of sex and respect, then the woman in question treats him like crap, the Nice Guy (tm) blames the woman for breaking the contract she never agreed to or even knew about, and he eventually has an emotional outburst toward her.

The Married Red Pill Camp 3 guys had at least observed that arguing with a woman who doesn’t want to have sex with you can only make things worse, never better. So instead of having an emotional outburst toward their women, they engaged in a strange masochistic ritual among the male community where they would talk down about themselves as they “owned their shit”, then come up with a lot of theories about what they did wrong, and accept asshole abuse from other guys on the forum spitballing as the other men tried to tell them all the things they did wrong using asshole language.

The idea there was that if you did everything right, the “Red Pill” way, and things still didn’t work out for you, this was all your fault. Regardless of how correctly you actually thought you were doing things, you didn’t actually do things right. You vetted the woman poorly. You misread the situation. You did things wrong instead. You behaved in a non Red Pill way even though you thought you were behaving in a Red Pill way. Whatever you did or didn’t do, it’s your fault because if you’d done things right, it wouldn’t have gone badly.

Essentially, if you ever end up getting served with divorce papers, cheated on, or living with a wife who’s behaving badly, it’s because you failed to vet a better woman, and because you failed to behave in the perfect Red Pill alpha manly man leader way that the internet said you’re supposed to.

When a man takes the blame for things he can’t possibly hope to control, one can see how he might think his is life on “hard mode”.

Vetting a woman is one of those tasks that is misleading. Because you can absolutely improve your odds by knowing more about who you’re dealing with and making more informed decisions. But there is no such thing as a perfect or correct way to vet that is never wrong. Because women are people. People change. People hide things. People lie. People even lie to themselves because they want something to be true that’s not. And did I mention people change?

Most men who have ended up in our dark corner of the internet are familiar with the scenario below:

You have a great wife or girlfriend. She thinks you walk on water. She’s so happy to be with you. She considers herself lucky. She can’t believe you chose her. She’s always doing nice things for you. She’s always so grateful when you do nice things for her. She tells you she loves you all the time. She says she wants to spend the rest of her life with you. You are her hero.

Out of the blue, things stop being so good. She swears everything is fine, but she’s being colder and more distant. Your sex life becomes a lot less frequent and a lot less engaged and attentive on her part. She’s a lot less available. A lot less grateful.

During this strange down period that happened out of the blue, she ends things with you. She doesn’t tell you what changed or why. In fact, she insists nothing changed. She will tell you that she hasn’t been happy for months. Maybe even that she never really loved you, the relationship was wrong form the start, never really ticked off the boxes for what she wanted or was looking for.

Less than a week ago, you were her hero and she was so thankful to have you in her life. And today, she’s telling you she’s been unhappy for months and was never really that sure about your relationship from the start.

Sometimes, this is your fault. You lost your job and suddenly she started feeling trapped and unhappy. Or you got flabby. Or you started acting like a needy people-pleaser and like she was your only friend in the world.

But much of the time, this is not your fault at all. You didn’t change a thing or do anything wrong. She just got bored and complacent. Time and familiarity breed contempt and no matter how good you are and how good your relationship is, it starts to feel less good for her the longer it drags on. Some men might say this is still your fault. That it’s your job to lead, keep things exciting and less predictable, even inject a little drama once in awhile.

A lot of the time, she’s the one that changed, or at least her circumstances changed. She got a better job and she’s around different people now. She lost weight at the gym. She found a new friend group who parties more often or who doesn’t like you, or her old friend group started badmouthing you. Maybe some guy at her new job or who she ran into at a friend of a friend’s birthday part last weekend hit on her. And while she turned him down because she has a boyfriend, she keeps thinking about that incident while feeling trapped and unhappy. Maybe all of her friends are meeting guys and partying and whatever.

You don’t actually have to become worse, or change anything, or do anything wrong. She just has to have a changed circumstance in her life where she begins to perceive that she has an opportunity with a better guy and/or that makes it seem like you are not a great guy. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, or if anything actually changed or not. She just has to perceive, due to her new current circumstances, that things feel bad with you. And when things feel bad with you, suddenly, her brain rewrites history and she’s felt this way forever. She’s never been happy. Never loved you. (Last week, she wanted to have your babies.)

It doesn’t matter how well you vet someone. You can never stop a woman from being a woman. Vetting is an excellent tool for weeding out a mentally ill super-slut who’s acting like a mentally ill super-slut, rather than just jumping into marriage without vetting her. But vetting is ineffective at weeding out a perfectly normal woman who maybe some time in the future might do the perfectly normal and very common normal woman thing of randomly deciding she doesn’t want to be with you any more due to some changed circumstance that was completely beyond your control and probably even outside of your knowledge. (If she doesn’t do that thing, you might think it’s because you did “Red Pill” stuff correctly, but maybe you just got lucky.)

Another annoying thing about people is that people are not computers. So we can’t expect consistent, repeatable results where we provide the same inputs to humans and get the same outputs each time. Cultivating “Red Pill” traits and behaving in some kind of “Red Pill” way definitely gives you better odds than being a fat, out of shape, ungroomed, broke, timid, people-pleasing loser. But even hot fun guys get turned down, dumped, cheated on, etc. There is no silver-bullet way to be that always gets the girl.

But this is liberating.

Recognizing that there is not a trick to winning the game frees you. Accepting that you can not ever be completely sure about a woman, and accepting that there is no way of life you can lead that is ever completely sure to win — this sets you free.

If you did your best, given everything you knew at the time and everything you were capable of at the time, and things didn’t go your way, maybe it wasn’t your fault. Even if there was something different you could have done that may have worked (a lot of the time there isn’t), and even if you have room to improve (we all do), trying to carry a responsibility for everyone else’s changed circumstances and everyone else’s reactions on your own shoulders makes you no fun and hurts your chances. Wracking your brain trying to find ways to be better in the future and make this load you’re carrying more likely to go your way just makes you seem stressed and neurotic.

There are no tricks to life. Not muscles, not game, not picking up your entire life and traveling to another country where you don’t know the language or culture hoping to use your money to impress the “traditional” women you read live there.

Some choices may give you better odds than others, but when things go your way, there’s always some randomness and luck involved, and when things don’t go your way, the same. The randomness in the universe is what makes life fun, even if things don’t always work out for us every time.