Listeners and fans have written in for quite a while now wondering what my opinions are about the Red Pill movement, which was largely inspired by Rollo Tomassi’s book, “The Rational Male.”

“The Rational Male” and the Red Pill movement tries to teach guys how to be ‘alpha.’

But there’s a big, fat problem with this ideology:

It’s filled with bitter resentment:

Towards “alphas.”

Towards women.

And worst of all?

Towards yourself.

In this episode, my friend and men’s coach, Steve Mayeda, and I reveal why The Rational Male is white knight syndrome masquerading as alpha, the problem with trying to be alpha (and why it shows immature masculinity at its worst), and why following the preachings of the Red Pill will leave you alone and miserable.

Listen now!

 Show highlights include:


  • The insidious “slave to your hatred” trap Red Pill guys fall into that ruins their chances of finding a high-quality woman (8:18)
  • Can’t find a good girl? You may be acting like a ‘compensatory narcissist,’ here’s how to fix it… (10:17)
  • Why adopting an alpha mindset will make women you’re interested in laugh behind your back (12:51)
  • The counterintuitive reason Red Pill guys are just white knights masquerading as alphas (and why falling for their lies will leave you alone and miserable) (20:39)
  • Do you feel like you have to sacrifice and compromise in your relationship? Here’s the weird reason it’s destined to fail… (31:29)
  • How to make almost anyone you talk to love you simply by listening as your true self (41:10)
  • Tony Robbins’s “APR” secret for making your girlfriend or wife so happy in your relationship that breaking up never even crosses her mind (46:42)

    Does your neediness, fear, or insecurity sabotage your success with women? Do you feel you may be unlovable? For more than 15 years, I’ve helped thousands of people find confidence, fulfillment, and loving relationships. And I can help you, too. I’m therapist and life coach David Tian, Ph.D. I invite you to check out my free Masterclasses on dating and relationships at https://www.davidtianphd.com/masterclass/ now.

For more about David Tian, go here: https://www.davidtianphd.com/about/

    Emotional Mastery is David Tian’s step-by-step system to transform, regulate, and control your emotions… so that you can master yourself, your interactions with others, and your relationships… and live a life worth living. Learn more here:
https://www.davidtianphd.com/emotionalmastery

This episode features guest Steve Mayeda, a father of four and a life coach specializing in men’s personal development. You can learn more about Steve and his work here: https://www.stevemayeda.com/

*****

Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast platform:

Apple Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/masuline-psychology/id1570318182

Google Podcast:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXN1bGluZXBzeWNob2xvZ3kubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4LAVM2zYO4xfGxVRATSQxN?si=URDTzPtwS–HK5boiYm33Q

Stitcher
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-podcast-factory/masuline-psychology

Soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com/user-980450970

Podbean
https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/bkcgh-1f9774/Masuline-Psychology-Podcast

Tune In
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Education-Podcasts/Masculine-Psychology-p1449411/

Audible/Amazon
https://www.audible.com/pd/Podcast/B08K57V4JS?qid=1624532264&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=H0Q9ABW3Q0CP2NKHAPA9

Note: Scroll Below for Transcription



Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast, where we answer key questions in relationships, attraction, success, and fulfillment. Now, here’s your host, world-renowned therapist and life coach, David Tian.

Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast. I’m David Tian, your host. And in this and the next episode, I’ve got an extra special treat. For quite a while now I’ve been getting questions and comments, asking about certain topics that are connected with what is generally called the red pill. And I had been sending people to an older podcast, a video podcast interview that I did with my friend Steve Mayeda, which was recorded a few years ago in 2020. And it was originally made for an old video podcast series that I had going called Man Up, and I thought why not put it here in this new masculine psychology podcast, so that it’s easier for you to find and easier for me to reference. These issues have come up a lot recently, especially as I tackle topics by request that are more connected to pop culture, like the Barbie review episode I just did. And in this episode on the red pill, I cover hypergamy sexual mating value, the white knight syndrome and compensatory narcissism or codependent narcissism. And we discussed this specifically in relationship to Rollo Tomassi, his book, The rational male, we get into what’s wrong with trying to be an alpha, and we get to explore in detail what the immature masculine is like. I do want to point out that when I filmed this three years ago, for this video podcast, I was laboring under this unconscious limiting belief, which has since become conscious that I have to speak really, really fast in order to hold the attention of people scrolling through YouTube and just to get a word in edgewise. Fortunately, over the 100 Plus episodes of this masculine psychology podcast, I’ve been actively reminding myself that I don’t need to do that, and that I can take my time and not rush. And in listening back to this video podcast on the red pill, that was what stood out to me the most, I kept thinking to myself, Why am I rushing so much? So please excuse that. And part of what comes along with rushing is mixing up turns of phrases, like repeatedly, I would say all things considered, when I think what I really was meaning was all else being equal. But I hope that does not detract from what we actually cover the content of what we’re covering. And another benefit of introducing this into the masculine psychology Podcast Series is a fresh chance to get your feedback. So after listening to this in the next episode, let me know what you think. Oh, and by the way, my guest here, Steve Mayeda is someone I’ve known for over 12 years now. And in addition to being one of the old school dating coaches, were starting out around the same time coaching in that world and then evolving, kind of in parallel into more life coaching, and for me a psychotherapy, and he’s just a really good guy, which is even more rare than being a good coach, in my opinion, a man of integrity, as far as I can tell. So enjoy this. It comes from a lot of experience and what he’s sharing. And without further ado, here we go.

Welcome to the Man Up show. I am David Tian, PhD, your host, and I’m happy to be joined by Steve Mayeda, my guest. Hey, Steve.

Steve Mayeda: Yeah. Yeah. What’s up man? How are you?

David Tian: Hey, doing great. Alright guys. So, this is the sequel to our original — I think it was a week or so ago, a couple weeks, red pill analysis. And the first show was more about sharing our personal background and experiences with the red pill. And this one is much more of a dissection of the arguments. And it will be kind of critical at first, but this is the more thinking part of the two-part sequence. And Steve Mayeda is joining us from the US. I’m in Taiwan right now. How you doing, Steve?

Steve Mayeda: Fabulous, man. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You know, if you guys are watching this via my feed or something like that, David’s an awesome dude. And I was so excited when he asked me — he asked me like a couple months ago about doing this research on the red pill and I like went crazy with it. And it’s something that I’ve really avoided because I generally disliked the people involved in it.

But in all of that, it was really refreshing to read a lot of it because, for lack of a better term — and man, hear me out, don’t shut this off right away because hopefully will go into it pretty deep, but it’s actually less thought out than I thought. Man, I think a lot of guys could waste a lot of time with it.

I get the whole reasoning behind it, and men are in pain, and our culture has a lot of problems. There’s problems with feminism, and women, and all this sort of stuff, but the red pill solution is just — there’s no experience in it. And I think we’ll get to it.

David Tian: Yeah, awesome. So, Steve is one of the guys in the world who has a lot of experience with the red pill or just working with these issues. So, it’s really important for me to do this with him on here. In Asia, it less seems like less of an issue. So, I was able to avoid it for a while. Though, I personally went down that rabbit hole right around the same time Rollo Tomassi’s book Rational Male was published. So, that’s interesting. And we’re going to be looking mostly at Rollo Tomassi.

I forgot. I got to do my spiel. Over the past 13 years, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find success in dating, relationships, and lifestyle, and life and love. So, that’s my background, and let’s just dive into what we’ll be covering. So, I want to first point out that I don’t know Rollo Tomassi personally. I’m not personally attacking him. This book that we’re breaking down, primarily this book, but we might just refer to other books in the — or resources in the red pill. It was published in 2013.

So, I don’t want to attack him personally because I don’t know who he is personally. But I will be mostly focused on the arguments in this particular book because it’s the one that I do get asked for my thoughts on. So, that’s where our focus will be. Alright, so I’ve got five or six main points. We’ll see how far we can get. And we’ll — I guess we can start with that first one we discussed just before we hit record.

And this is the issue about how in the book Rollo Tomassi’s Rational Male pillories or attacks white knights. And they go — there are different terms for this. like white knights, nice guys, AFCs, the beta male, all these different labels for roughly the same kind of category of guys.

And the surprising part for guys who are following red pill is that the arguments being made for the red pill are largely basically coming out of being bitter white knights. So, they think they’ve escaped it but they’re actually right in line with it.

Steve Mayeda: I just wanted to make a point because I remember back in the day in pick up. All these problems repeat themselves over and over again, but there was something called PUA Hates. And in PUA Hate, there was a lot of hate. It was basically everybody who pick up didn’t work for, got scammed, a huge population of guys, but they also generally… So, some people just got scammed and ripped off or really angry, but most of those guys had something else going on there.

There’s a social problem that wasn’t addressed, perhaps mental illness that wasn’t addressed, but there was something other than just getting scammed that made things impossible for them. And one of the things that they would always do is talk about how much this didn’t work and how much that it was their job and duty to control women, and you know, do all this sort of stuff like hate them, and be disgusted by them, and then compartmentalize the why of stats.

This became the red pill, although perhaps the red pill may have existed before then. But I remember talking to one of the guys, and I said, “Man, you’re the bitch of women. You are the slave to what you hate.” Like, all of this hate is more energy than what you put into what didn’t work, pick up. And you are playing to them more than you ever have before, because you’re now hating me, you’re hating everybody, you’re hating the system all because you wanted something and you couldn’t get it because you didn’t know how to, probably in combination with also you couldn’t get it because you had something else going on that perhaps might be a psychological thing.

There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in any of that, or a behavioral thing, or something that you were unaware with of why it didn’t work. Because what I know is that you can get success from women and it’s pretty easy. I mean, you’ll have to work it and stuff, but it’s pretty easy if you’re a normal functioning member of society.

But if you’re not, man, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. And so, we see the same kind of thing of the red pill, this hatred that is all born out of you being wanting women, wanting what you can’t have, and essentially being the white knight, not a leader. You are the one who followed. You are the one that listened. You were the one who believed in Santa Claus and refuses to not be mad at your parents who told you about Santa Claus.

And maybe you need to become a parent to realize why you tell your kids there’s a Santa Claus. It’s such an infantile or adolescent way of looking at your problems as well as dating, sex, and relationships.

David Tian: I like to pathologize it just a little bit just to get them to take it seriously. So, the term white knight, and what I’m using to refer to this issue, this problem, you could say, is — it sounds quite colloquial, but it’s a colloquial term for a clinical label we could just say it’s basically kind of narcissism but it is what I call compensatory narcissism.

I and other theorists call it compensatory narcissism, or we find this in the clinical psychology literature of covert narcissism or codependent narcissism. So, these are the emotional vampires who are not the aggressive extroverted version of the narcissist, who is more obvious, more obviously sociopathic. But it’s the victim who’s actually in that role with the vampire.

So, I’ve done a four-part video series exactly on this. And when I’m describing the victim and the codependent narcissist, I’m actually talking exactly about — I didn’t even know this. I’m describing Rollo Tomassi in this book, and those who follow this, right? So, I have no qualms in saying that, also, I want you to be taken seriously. So yeah, I mean…

Steve Mayeda: What are some of the characteristics of a covert narcissist?

David Tian: That’s great. If you Google narcissistic personality disorder and look at the laundry list of symptoms, they also exist in the covert narcissist. It’s just not obvious. So, I’ve done that in the four-part series about four hours. If you want to learn about it in more detail, hopefully, after this video you will, I’ll have a link to that series and you can go deeper into that series. So, that’s a four-part series just explaining the problem, right? That’s how long it takes to be very careful with it.

And then I have a four-part series to explain the solution which I call Practical Psychology for Extraordinary Living where I chart out the solution in again four videos. So, it’s another four hours or so. Let’s use Rollo Tomassi’s book and I’ll just draw out passages from there as evidence for — and hopefully, I’ll be able to explain this as we go along, and hopefully, it’ll be quite obvious by then to those who are on the border.

Again, I’m speaking to people who are not in the hot center of red pill because it’s kind of like a lost cause. It’s sort of like an alcoholic kind of bender at that point. Again, we’re speaking to people who are sort of on the borderline of, “Should I go deeper into this?” And let me just point out where this is actually coming from psychologically, the psychological roots of it.

So, on page 26, on Alpha is a Mindset, I’m working off of a PDF version of the book so the pagination might be different in whatever version you’re looking at, but on the e-book, page 26, Alpha is a Mindset, you can see that there’s a bitter resentment of the alpha. While at the same time, they’re advocating adopting alpha energy. And as an example of this guy, Corey Worthington… And on page 33, he says, “I’m not condoning it. In fact, I find it deplorable.”

So if you don’t know who Corey Worthington is, and again, we’re talking to people who probably have read [INAUDIBLE 00:13:58] attractive. So hopefully, you know what it is, because I don’t want to read out the whole thing about Corey Worthington. But Corey Worthington is kind of a bop. He’s a jerk. He’s actually quite self-centered, and he’s an obvious narcissist. So, he’s not a codependent or compensatory narcissist. He’s not compensating as a compensatory. Compensatory means you’re compensating with your narcissism because you’re in the downside, you’re on the losing end, right?

So, he’s on the winning end so he doesn’t give a fuck. He doesn’t give a fuck so bad that women are attracted to that not-give-a-fuck attitude. And the thing is, he’s not an upright citizen, or upstanding citizen. He doesn’t contribute to society, doesn’t give any values, not a leader of men.

And Tomassi is like, “How is this so? A real alpha should be a leader of man. He should be the Navy SEAL on the frontlines.” And all this — like you’re saying, in terms of Santa Claus doesn’t exist, “There should be a Santa Claus. Why the fuck isn’t there a Santa Claus?” That’s the kind of immature energy that flips around and becomes this attacking energy instead of, “Now I’m sad.” Now I’m angry. So, that’s the compensatory narcissist who now realizes he’s in the down. He’s losing. He’s lost.

So he’s got to now compensate with extra energy that of the perpetrator. I’m going to take the energy of the perpetrator and now become a perpetrator to make myself feel better because it’s too scary for me to confront the toxic shame that has led me into this position. Right?

So, they’re attacking alpha at the same time as championing or advocating that you have energy. So, I’m not condoning it. In fact, I find it deplorable. Why the raw irresponsible, irrepressible, obviously unself-aware alpha energy, of Alpha Buddha Corey Worthingtons of the world offend our sensibilities so well. They’re offended that this guy bags chicks, yet he doesn’t have a job, doesn’t give a fuck.

It’s sort of like a guy who hasn’t really explored the edges of PUA, because good PUA already knew that from the beginning. If you just wanted to bang a lot of chicks, you could just become a drug dealer. Like, we talked about this is the last episode, right? You do not have to have a good job. You don’t have to have money. You don’t have to be fun and not give a fuck. [INAUDIBLE 00:16:19] and really just not give a fuck.

Instead of saying, “Oh, let’s understand the psychological principles for that and why that would be attractive.” They’re instead saying, “Fuck this. We’re going to take this energy.” They’re coming at it with a very bitter anger.” And I’m going to adopt it, but they’re doing it as — and they’re hitting themselves why they do it, right? Like, I find this deplorable, but I’ll adopt it. I find this guy irresponsible, but I’ll take some of that energy to use on women. Fuck them.

Steve Mayeda: This is interesting. I don’t use the same terms in terms of narcissism and so on because I think there’s — I haven’t studied it, to be honest with you, but I do have enough experience with working with psychologically — people who have problems and stuff. And even with like — so, every drug addict would be considered a narcissist. But then, if they recover, it changes, get their certain traits, which can be really messed up. When we see this trade over and over again with guys who work with me or if it’s in the addiction realm or whatever, women realm, of when you are not something, you hate the fantasy because that’s what belittled you, that’s what hurt you, strong men.

But then your idea of what the fantasy is is based off of that thing that hurt you. You see this all the time in pick up, like what the alpha is. I trained with a guy Tim Kennedy every once in awhile. I don’t turn train with him often, but I was talking about him when we were on the mats. And whenever he’s there, it’s like there’s nobody more alpha than that guy. That’s just the best term to use. Like, nobody could beat him and like it’s just ridiculous man. It’s a joke.

And he’s very cool, you know. He has whatever political beliefs that he spouts out. If you don’t believe in them, he’s still training with you and all this sort of thing. But the thing is is that you — in that idea of it, I’m not him. I don’t want to be him. I have a very different life than him. I’ve always had a very different life than him. But if I wanted to be him and I was angry and resentful at being him, I would not actually be him.

I would be the fear and the pain that worked coming from my own hurt to try and be that. And if you put a side-by-side, if I got to the up, I got to that level of where I thought I fulfilled that fantasy, it would be very off from what that man is. And it’s really a very terrible thing, and we see that over and over again, and we see guys with pain. We see guys living their pain. We see guys running from their pain. I have a slogan in my coaching that says pain shows where the problem is but it doesn’t show you the solution.

So, pain will show you, “I’m angry that my wife, or my girlfriend, or whoever said this to me. But now I want to do the opposite of that pain.” That’s not the solution. The solution comes when you’re actually — you’ve dealt with that traumatic pain or — he used the word trauma because I think it gets overused, but from that pressure that the pain caused, when you can alleviate that, that’s literally the only time when you can find the solution of the actual actionable steps that will help you. And until then, you have to mimic, in my opinion, you have to mimic and fake actionable steps based off of someone you trust like yourself or some other mentor.

So, I think it’s interesting how it goes in there, you know, this obsession with the alpha. And none of these guys are it. And then there’s obsession with how it’s justified in evolutionary psychology, when that’s an argued point in evolutionary psychology, and any evolutionary psychologist who’s worth his salt probably would disagree with — say you really heard what — you know, with Rollo Tomassi on the surface it’s like, “Oh, well, women are hypergamous.” Which I can disagree with his argument on that.

They might agree. But if they heard his definition of it, they’d be like, “You’re fucking insane, man.” And anybody in the red pill, like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, you are an angry, pissed off dude, and you’re not going to get… And then the denial of anybody who’s had experience that goes against their belief.

David Tian: That’s a great point with the Tim Kennedy example too. They’re trying to be like this Corey Worthington guy who just doesn’t give a fuck, but they’re actually — it’s so obvious that they’re not actually alpha because they give too much of a fuck. And they’re doing it with this like gritting their teeth. Whereas this guy does it effortlessly because he actually doesn’t give a fuck, I’m assuming, based on the description. And if you pretend to be him because you care so much, and you’re going to do it, so you [INAUDIBLE 00:20:55].

He’s like, “Don’t give up your identity for a woman.” That’s exactly what they’re doing. These guys are trying to become an alpha energy despite their own conscience. And instead of working out their conscience and evolving that, they just say, “Okay, this is what I have to do to bang these girls because fuck evolution and fuck this world. But that’s — I want to have sex and I want to get my revenge, so this is what we have to do, okay.” But that’s just an example of how much fuck they give. They give too many fucks.

On page 71, he gets into love, and he explains, “Love is when she takes you for granted.” And they hope that women will appreciate — they say men hope that women will appreciate the sacrifices you make for them. What the fuck is that? The sacrifices you make for them? What kind of relationships are you getting into? So I guess these are the type of guys who are like, “Look, I’m going to do all kinds of things I don’t want to do just to keep this woman. I’m going to move halfway across the country.”

Because he’s got all this weird stuff on long-distance relationships. Why is it such a major part of this ebook? And I realize, “Oh, because these guys are white knights. They’re consistently sacrificing as ways of getting a woman to like him.” That’s their MO, and they haven’t changed that MO, they just become really bitter and now they’re attacking women because the women don’t give them the shit that they wanted because of the sacrifices.

So don’t ever have a relationship where you’re sacrificing. But sacrifices are actually different from compromises, and sacrifices are different from meeting each other’s needs. 

And a lot of this has to do with the fact that you picked the wrong mate. You have poor mate selection. Throughout, there’s this theme of men sacrificing and women not appreciating it. So, that’s actually classic white knight, and I hope it’s quite obvious.

Steve Mayeda: I’m going to find this quote, but look, let me just tell you, in terms of my relationship. And I’ll even say this, you know, because you know this David, that very few guys who were in the seduction field and remained in it are still able to have relationships. I I think we talked about this last time, but there’s like five guys I know who… So, there’s a lot of guys who are good coaches. And if you give them money, they’ll help you out.

But I know very few guys, and I haven’t really calculated it, but it’s probably five, less than 10, of guys who are very good coaches and walk the walk. And there’s very few guys that can have a relationship, and it’s really, really terrible and sad. Because so much of that is difficult. Like, I had a long-distance relationship for five years in pick up. The only difference is — and there’s big problems in that with me, but the only difference is, is that I had sex with like 150 women during that whole time other than her. There were all sorts of different relationship variations that we had.

The thing with me that was a problem was I needed an emotional blanket. And of course, it’s way more complex than just that, but that’s what I was in it for. But in all of that, you — so I have answered a lot of questions of guys on long-distance relationships, and it’s true. You get just this guy that doesn’t have faith in himself on a huge level that builds his life within a fantasy, and it’s just so crazy. And not to say that I was void of that, it was a big problem. But in my relationship now, this sacrifice is every goddamn day. Why? Because it’s important to me. Why? Because it is the most important thing to me, and it’s mine. It is mine.

There’s no more just me in it. It is us, and we work at this, and we have to. I do not hear that from any of the red pill guys about how they make their relationships work, let alone any of these motherfuckers show any of their wives. Not that my wife should be broadcasted to the world, but we’re accessible people, man. We’re extremely accessible people. You know about what’s going on with me. Who knows about… I would love to hear about real stories about Rollo Tomassi’s relationship or any other dudes. The only guy that kind of does is Hunter Drew, and he actually seems like a normal dude.

He’s one of the few red pill main pillars that seems sane, in my opinion. But there’s this quote that I have. Somebody shared this on, it’s a Twitter thing of Rollo Tomassi, and I just saw it. I thought it was so retarded. There’s so many levels to it. It says, “Gentlemen, it’s incumbent upon you to never be the facilitator of anyone’s sexual advertising on social media. If your girlfriend insists on you being her personal photographer, know that you — not only — that you only aid her in broadcasting her sexual availability to men she believes more alpha than you.”

When I posted that, you see how weak that is, how pussy that is. When I posted that, I have these haters going like, “He’s been married for 24…” or whatever the hell it is. Like, he’s more alpha than you’ll ever be, and you’re just jealous. And I’m like, “No, man. Here’s the thing: I’m a fucking photographer and my wife is a model, and I’ll totally take pictures of her. And if she fucks somebody else based on my pictures, like, what? I’m supposed to fear that or get mad at it? Like, no, man. That’s so ridiculous.

David Tian: Oh, yes. So, fear-based. That’s just so…

Steve Mayeda: I have to take away freedom?

David Tian: There’s so much insecurity. It’s just reeking of insecurity. And these guys want to have that alpha energy of this Corey Worthington guy, he doesn’t give a fuck. Corey Worthington doesn’t give a fuck. He’ll take a fucking photo and not give a fuck. Like, that’s one way to do it. But kind of on the sacrifice line, if it’s a lot of work for you to take that photo, then maybe — but if it’s no big deal, she likes to show off because she got a new dress or whatever. Yeah, I mean, why would I deny her that — I mean, how much fear and insecurity must there be for me to go, “I can’t do this.”

Steve Mayeda: The other thing too is that I’m writing a book now. I have all these weird life experiences, and part of that is infidelity on both ends. I was non-monogamous for 13 years in all the wrong ways and some right ways. And I get it. There’s benefits to it, absolute benefits to not being with one person. And now I am with one person. And in all that, just looking back at… So, I had a girlfriend for five years that I had all these affairs, some she didn’t know about, others we did together. There’s all sorts of weird shit, right?

But in that time, she could have done whatever she wanted. She slept with I think four people in five years other than me. And there were a couple times where the situation and so on made me go crazy. And here’s what happened, and this is what I really got from my book, and I even took notes way back when it was happening, and just weird journaling psycho stuff. But my brain went to, at that point, control. It went to — and there’s something where I couldn’t control about myself where it was like I got brought up that way, it’s cultural, or some people [INAUDIBLE 00:27:56] or whatever.

But we see it all the time with cheating. One of the biggest things that upset me, and she wasn’t cheating, was that I was being made ashamed or humiliated as a man. That if a woman were to have sex with someone else, I felt like I was being fooled, or made fun of, or less than. Now, when I had sex with other people and my girlfriend found out whether she was okay with it or not — and this is the weird thing about what people don’t get about open relationships, is you can communicate all you want. It takes a long time for people to become okay with them if they’ve not really experienced them. So, she felt the same way.

She felt, “Man, you’re screwing me. I’m just a fool. I can’t believe this.” And I’m like, “No, look. This chick borrowed my dick and we fucked. It was good but it was not that great, and it made me want you.” And you try to explain all this. But to her, it was like just so hard. And for me, it was the same. And this is what I see with these guys, this repetition. And I was sane enough. I mean, I was a pickup artist, man. I could’ve gone down the rabbit hole of just being like, “This is why I need to control and humiliate women in order for them to date me” or something.

I knew that was off and I was just fucked up, and hurt, and sad, and all of those other stuff, but that’s the example. Pain shows you the problem. It doesn’t show you the solution. I have to let that pain subside and then go to the real thing. Which for us, it was like, we just wanted to be together but we — neither of us were ready to commit. And so, we did all this stupid shit. Like, it like it was just once you stepped away from it, it was obvious.

It wasn’t that she was so good at lying, because she would lie to me about it — so, if it was a certain situation where we weren’t supposed to talk about it, because there are other ones, points in our relationship where we were talking about it, she would lie to me about it. Like, that deceptive bitch. Like, this is like she was bred to do it, she was made to do this, all that red pill stuff but she thought the same thing about me when I did it.

The thing is, is she was just withholding information because she didn’t want to fuck me up. And she knew it would fuck me up. It’s really amazing that this doesn’t get seen by people. It gets categorized that women must be psychologically, you know, predisposed to manipulate, and trick, and all this sort of stuff. But that’s one of the things, you know?

David Tian: Yeah, it’s crazy. So, pretty much everything that they say that is a biological imperative for women can equally apply to men, but I want to get to that further down. 

The point about the sacrificing… I just realized as you were mentioning that, I was in a long distance relationship with my wife for the first two years, two plus years, we were dating. I didn’t even realize it was long distance until I thought about it because I didn’t live in Singapore where she was, but I would fly in every six weeks for like one or two weeks, and then she would fly out sometimes to meet me where I’m at.

So, you know, we were only spending 30% of our time together during that period, which is normal if it’s just like dating, right? And I didn’t see it as a long-distance relationship because there was no sacrifice. There’s no sacrifice on her part or my part. It’s when I wanted to be there, I came. When she wanted to visit me, she did. So, there’s no sacrifice.

And then the other thing is, in a relationship, I wouldn’t even use the word compromise because what sacrifice and compromise imply is that it’s something you don’t want to do. But if you’re in a loving relationship you want to do it for her. And one of the refrains you hear from white knights who get dumped in a bad way, because they always get dumped in a bad way because they will attract emotional vampires because they’re the weak victim side of the emotional vampire pairing, of the parasitic vampire.

So, they’ll get burned, and they say over and over, like I did many years ago when I first came onto this material. Back when I was in a very low point in my life and suicidal, I would hear myself saying, “I gave her everything. I sacrificed so much for her.” That’s a refrain. That’s a sign that you’re in that compensatory narcissist energy. And it’s the same thing. I say it almost like jokingly now because it seems like so obviously — to my audience in my group, it seems like the people who write to me in our paid groups and so on, it seems just obviously weak. It was just reeking through the book. It was just this really weak energy where he’s still suffering from the pain and bitterness of discovering that women are like men.

So, there’s the whole idea of like, “Here’s another one…” Like, they have this really weird view of what makes a good woman. So, this is another related theme, like the good woman. And I was like, “What does that mean to him?” So, a good woman is basically a virgin. This is the really immature view. It’s sort of like — there are actually teenagers, psychologically, with big vocabularies.

As a teenager you think, “Okay. I want a woman who’s never had sex because I’ve never had sex, so that’d be nice because I’m intimidated by a woman with sexual experience. That would mean if she had a sexual experience, she was a slut, and I can’t deal with that.” So, the right thing, here’s some examples, page 73. The right thing is to marry a woman your age. The right thing is to marry a single mother.

Like, these are examples of what they call sacrifices. Like, you want to marry a woman who’s younger, but you want to do the right thing and marry a woman your age because that’s the right thing to do. No, this is what a codependent narcissist white knight would think is the right thing to do because he’s got sexual shame and he’s very judgmental sexually.

So, he’s judging these women for having lots of sexual partners. And this is like — that’s just an example of white knight and the bitter taste of the red pill starting on page 79. And the only reason it’s bitter — it’s only bitter to you when you’re still a child. You have this immature view, this idealized view of what women are supposed to be like, virgins who are there to love you, and they haven’t even worked in that sexual component of like… You can tell that they have really vanilla sex, if any good sex at all, because they have this morally judgmental view of sex.

And there’s so much sexual shame involved. So, that colors their view of what a woman should be like. A good woman should be a woman who basically is like a paragon of virtue, I suppose, like a nurse / priestess, a nun, a young nun is what he’s saying. And then they find out, “Wow, there are all these hot chicks in clubs who aren’t young nuns.” Like yeah, it’s important to come to that realization.

And so, when we get to hypergamy, so maybe this might be a good time to dive into that, because there’s a lot of covert narcissism here. Page 130, appreciating the sacrifice. Women have an inborn ability to switch off her emotions for you in favor of higher SMV. This is unethical, insincere, duplicitous. Consider the emotional investment a women needs to put into mothering a child who could be taken away or killed at a moment’s notice.

So, if you’re finding women who that support this hypothesis, that they have an inborn ability to switch off her emotions for you in favor of higher SMV, higher sexual market value, basically guys who are more alpha…

Steve Mayeda: Like Corey or whatever the guy’s name is. He’s got a massive sexual market value.

David Tian: Right. So, evolutionary psychologists are pointing this out, is just in terms of short-term mating strategies and long-term mating strategies. The cads and the dads. This is pretty basic evopsych. And by the way, evopsych wouldn’t agree with this characterization of alpha, because he’s defining it in a weak way, like a bitter way, like alpha is a mindset.

Steve Mayeda: Yeah, it defines it in a bizarre…

David Tian: Yeah, scientifically speaking, alpha is just the male that gets the most sexual mating opportunities, and that’s it. And then the mating opportunities, whatever that requires is what it requires, but that’s separate from the designation of alpha scientifically. But anyway, that’s a side point. So, women have an inborn ability to switch off their emotions for you in favor of a hotter guy. Let’s just use the word hotter as more colloquial understanding of it.

And so, this is clear covert narcissism and white knight again because it’s poor mate selection. Like attracts like, broken guys attract broken women, and it’s so easy if you were to just switch this because — and this is something that white knights will understand if you just think about it like the way I’m going to point it out now. There are plenty of men, not all men, not you, I’m not talking about you as a man, whoever is watching this, but men, you know, have an inborn ability to also switch off their emotions when there’s a hotter girl that walks by.

Like yeah, you know it, and you know that women, some bitter women as Steve has pointed out, there are women who have the red pill, like red pill women. And they’ve been red pilling much longer than men have in this sense, also say all men are… all men are like this, all men, you can’t trust men. All men they just want sex. It’s the same thing.

Steve Mayeda: It’s funny because you see the same thing with the MGTOW groups because women will just be like, “No, I don’t need men, ever. I’m just going to use them for sex when I need it, and I am independent.” And then they come around. It’s a phase. Or if it lasts long, then they get too many cads and sit around. That’s the problem.

David Tian: Yeah, there are some Women Go Their Own Way, yes, for sure. And the women red pill are just — you’ve probably met them. If you’re a red pill, you’ve definitely — if you’ve been out there interacting with people, so you’re one of the minority of red pills, you probably have met women who have these generalizations about men. And it doesn’t take many drinks for that to come out.

And what’s scary is not just that hypothesis, but then the further moral ethical judgment, that this is unethical, this is insincere, this is duplicitous. And this is, again, like a sign that you’re not cool. Like, you’re just a fake, you’re totally faking this alpha thing that you want to have because you’re attacking this. So, I get it. This is just a bad person. If somebody is like this, they just switch off their emotions. They have no empathy. This is just sociopathic, and there are people like that.

And then you know trying to base it in this historical argument of consider the emotional investment a woman needs to put into mothering a child who could be taken away at any moment. A hundred thousand years ago, anybody you loved could have been taken away at any moment. A million years ago, it was just as tenuous of a life. So, these just-so stories of Stephen Jay Gould with no scientific evidence are the sort of things that white knights are looking for to back up their wounded emotions.

Steve Mayeda: Well, let me talk about hypergamy first — let’s do sexual market value for a second. So, sexual market value makes more of a difference the less somebody sees of you, or the less you’re affluent in society, or the less that society allows time for people to naturally communicate, then sexual market value is huge is defined by how the red pill defines it.

Meaning, you have to be bigger, stronger, faster. You have to be cooler. You have to have more attention. You have to have more of what society says is good. But the more a society one is smaller or can integrate network on a very face-to-face level. So for instance, like Austin, Texas is a big place. If I want to broadcast myself over just the means of broadcasting to all of Austin, Texas, I need to look at TV, radio. I need to look at what’s popular to be seen as a natural person.

But if I go into, let’s say, a community where there’s a lot of people that do talk, like a tremendous amount of people that do talk, so there’s big martial arts gyms, there’s big rock climbing gyms here. And in that, then I’m more — my face-to-face time has much more value. Now, some of those people might go, “I’m going to talk to the taller guy.” Like, if The Rock were next to me, everybody’s going to talk to him. But there’s enough people, because he’s only one person, there’s enough people that will talk to me to satisfy me emotionally, mentally, sexually, all these different things.

And what I found is, and especially being in… I grew up in California and Hawaii, and I think people are just a little bit shorter there. I didn’t realize I was short, I’m 5’8″ or 5’7 3/4″. I’m on the shorter side. I didn’t realize I was short until people told me that. And when I moved to Texas, they would tell me that. So, this didn’t matter to me, didn’t make a difference, any of those different things. But the thing is, is that if I’m talking to people, that becomes less and less important.

Now, sure, people have different tastes and those types of things, but sexual market value is such a flawed thing. Here’s why it’s flawed. Everybody who’s big, and strong, and shit like that gets women. Or women’s sexual market value is at a certain peak. This is all because we don’t communicate in the society. This also means that everybody’s sexually frustrated in the society. This also means that everybody is emotionally frustrated in the society. This means that everybody is dying to just have their real selves be heard.

So, if you have a technique or a way to listen to somebody for real, they will listen to you and love you. This is amazing. And this is like the whole print. Like, everybody had a different way of doing this in pickup, but if somebody were to actually be taken seriously, because we’re dying for it, so much to the point where we just go to Instagram and go, “This is how we get popular” or all this stupid stuff, that when somebody sees you for you, it’s very special.

And if you took all the examples of how people have relationships and not just cherry picking the ones that you want, which is what they do with their stats and stuff, you would see that there are a lot of poor men who get women who carry their weight for them. I mean, this is a phenomenon that happens. It’s not the only thing that happens.

There are a lot of people, women, who could find better men very easily. There are a lot of women who know that they can but they don’t because they’re happy. I’m sure they’re frustrated in some ways, but they’re happy with who they have. And one more thing too, and this kind of transitions into the hypergamy thing, and I have a whole series on sexual market value and how fucking dumb and — and how you will never be happy if you have that mindset, there’s a bunch of YouTube videos on it.

But in terms of hypergamy, one of the best relationship pieces of advice I got was that, what women really need in a relationship is to feel special and to feel secure. And so, there’s all sorts of narratives to that, but to feel special is that they’re important, they’re only them, that you see them in a specific way. And if you don’t do that, then one of the things that will happen is that you will… She’ll be unsatisfied, right?

The other thing is is that she needs to feel that she can be taken care of, especially if there’s a family and especially if there’s kids. And every single guy I know in a marriage, and we have these men’s groups in Austin, we all meet up. And one of those things is, is that they all say, and this happens to me too, is their wife is like, “Man, why can’t you earn more money?” And if they are in a tremendous amount of, “Why can’t you be there more for me? Why can’t you do this and that?” There’s all this sort of stuff that you hear over and over again.

And when we all tell each other, it’s like, oh my god, it’s like they have a script, that as soon as they have kids, they just start saying it or whatever. And these are guys who are men, but you get guys who have zero experience, or who are bitter, or who wish they live a different life, who wished they weren’t whatever Rollo Tomassi’s real name is, but he’s got this fake name, or wished that they weren’t — all the guys that I knew know of the red pill.

And some of, I know personally, but they wished they could be something. There’s so much coming from that resentment where it’s like, we just sit there and we say like, man, Jesus Christ. And we’ll say things like man, they just want your money” or “God damn it, they just don’t shut up” or something like that. But we all love our lives, our relationships, or we’re trying to work towards that. In all of this, if your woman is unhappy, what are some of the things that she’s going to look for first?

And this is what you should really be asking yourself as a red pill guy? How did you let your wife get unhappy? I get it. You did everything. You showed up for work. But how did you learn what she is thinking to know why she’s unhappy? Because when she is unhappy, yes, she will go, “Man, he doesn’t provide and that hurts me” even though you think you’re providing. It’s a miscommunication here, you know. Or like, “Man, he let himself go with who he is. He’s not attractive to me anymore.”

Or another thing when couples are fighting, it’s like, “You’ve never been attracted to me. I don’t know how I’ve ever been attracted to you.” They take all this shit seriously, or even affairs. That shit pisses me off too. I mean, it’s up to your own moral code, but a lot of the times when an affair happens, it isn’t that somebody’s disgracing you or whatever, it’s that they were bored. It’s that they didn’t know what to do. It’s that they were frustrated. It’s all this stuff. And then if you don’t listen to them with that, then the woman having the affair is going to blame you and say, “Man, you made me do this.”

And then nobody’s communicating. We’re not figuring out the problem or getting anywhere near the solution for how men and women can be happy with this philosophy. We take the pain, the anger, the frustration. We just build justification on top of it. There’s no solution. I’ve listened to, at this point, hundreds and hundreds of hours of red pill podcasts. I do not hear a solution. I hear, “Be tough, be strong, be determined. 

These are red flags.” But never has anybody shared any good story. Never is Rollo Tomassi or [INAUDIBLE 00:46:23] Campbell saying how good — how they make their wife feel this.

David Tian: Yeah, we get to the how-to in this e-book at the end. It’s kill the beta and adopt the alpha energy. It’s sort of like their how-to for moving forward. Special and secure, it’s a great way of putting it. I adopt a three-part from Tony Robbins’ coaching, which I did, and it’s attention, presence, and reassurance so that they feel special and secure.

Steve Mayeda: Because you know the application of that is much harder than just…

David Tian: Absolutely. And the reason why these guys, it wouldn’t resonate with them, they can’t do it is because there’s too much fear. If you are held back by the fear that she’s going to hurt you and you’re so afraid of that that you can’t open up, you’re not going to be able to be present with her fully. Because in the back of your mind, you’re always going to be holding back. She’s going to miss that. And maybe at the beginning, you had nothing to lose. So, you’re just picking up a chick.

So, you just go all in there and then she likes that. But then over time, you had more and more to lose in your mind, and you were too afraid of the loss. So then, you hold back too much and now she doesn’t feel secure anymore because she feels that you’re holding back, that you can’t fully be there. Yeah, but that’s a great way to put it, the two S’s there. That’s nice.

Steve Mayeda: It’s also funny with relationships, because I tell my wife this, and she tells me this, too. Is I say, “Hey, if I am not the absolute best for you, you have to leave me.” And I’ll try and win you back. And if you’re not the best for me… And there’s leeway within that, but man, dude, I’ll tell you right now, man. I still talk to a lot of women. I see women all over. I still travel. I fucking work out and on it, there’s like fitness models, and I teach jiu jitsu classes.

There’s a lot of beautiful women around me who are great people, who are good people and beautiful. And they don’t come close to my wife, to me. So, there’s no doubt that in that situation, I’m with the best. And so — but if I don’t think that, then we need to work towards that.

David Tian: She’s the best for you. So, the sexual market value thing is like an objective devaluation it seems, that you just rate people, and it takes away the personal connection, and the personal compatibility, history, and all that.

Steve Mayeda: One thing. Brian Black, he’s another coach. He said he was going to do this in his 21 Convention speech, which is like really into the red pill now. And they asked him to talk. He told me he was going to do this [INAUDIBLE 00:49:13] I didn’t see the speech, but he told me before and he said, “I’m going to have everybody write down what my sexual market value is or what a good sexual market value is. And then afterwards, we’ll rate it, and everybody’s will be different.”

David Tian: Yeah. A better scientific way of putting it is, there’s actual research done on mating value, objective mating value. So, there are a few things that science has shown to be attractive across the board for men. So one is like, you know… So, it’s just obvious things. These are obvious things. So, physical attractiveness that are health markers, you know.

So for men, there are obvious ones; you have resources, you have intelligence to get more resources. You’re good with people, so you’re good at making alliances. These will all help you with survival and reproduction. So, these are more obvious. And that’s one component of being attractive. Like all things being considered, wouldn’t it be great if you were healthy and fit? Yeah, right? Same with the woman. Even if you were in love with her, if she gained a lot of weight, you can still love her. But all things being considered, wouldn’t it be better if she were fitter or healthier? Yeah, obviously. These are obvious, right.

Steve Mayeda: But that’s not what people just have sex with. People have sex with a lot across the board?

David Tian: Right. So, red pill, when they’re talking about sexual market value, they mean a lot more. They’re going over. They’re going far above what scientists would consider just to be mating value. And there’s this deep insecurity that pervades all of us. So basically, they take the scientific term and then they add in huge doses of insecurity and they spit out.

Steve Mayeda: The least scientific thing, man.

David Tian: Right. It’s sort of like on top of this veneer of science. So, on page 132, they’re afraid of female trade-offs. So, this is actually — I just wrote it as a scientist would write it, female trade-offs in choosing genetic benefits versus long-term investment benefits.

In the next page, Tomassi writes nature, make sure she never abandons either strategy. And this is the — females have the capacity to resist going slut, but this goes against their base biological impulses.

You know who’s afraid of the fact that females have to do trade-offs, just as men have trade-offs too, right? So, the slut versus the — easy sex versus the one that you want to spend more time with over years and years of your life. Guess who doesn’t like this fact that women have to do this trade off? White knights, closet white knights.

He calls them uncomfortable truths. The uncomfortable truth that women actually have to resist their natural impulses. So, what a lot of this shows is also they’re very unfamiliar with moral philosophy from the earliest time of philosophy.

So like, Plato and Aristotle already talked about the natural impulses and how the morality and the good life, eudaimonia, happiness, can only result from resisting, having some level of restraint, self-restraint on all of the pleasure and hedonism that you could have. And you find this even earlier in Asian philosophy.

So, these uncomfortable truths. I mean, if they had just paid more attention to the wisdom, collective wisdom of our elders, they would have been able to do a lot better.

Steve Mayeda: You know, you’re a very well-read guy and I don’t know any of that stuff, but I just know from talking to people, that this is not healthy. I think anybody who has good experience with women and is relaxed about it, it’s not like a tense thing, they get like how, “What the fuck is wrong with these people?”

I mean, I don’t understand how it’s so popular. But obviously, it is for a reason, and there’s a lot of people that are in pain out there that see it as the truth. But it’s disturbing.

David Tian: I just want to point out, too. It’s popular in… So, if you think it’s popular, whoever is watching this, you probably have a lot of friends who subscribe to this. But it’s not popular in Asia. I think there’s a big part of Asian culture that’s still quite steeped in tradition, and the traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism have already dealt with all of these truths about resisting the natural impulses for thousands of years.

So, this isn’t new. I just want to end off on hypergamy… My contribution to hypergamy and co-dependence. He makes a list of what hypergamy doesn’t care about. This is on my version, page 135. Hypergamy doesn’t care about boom.

So, a lot of these lists of things hypergamy doesn’t care about is actually a list of things codependent narcissists use to bargain and earn affection; their list of what white knights do, their sacrifices, to earn affection. So, in case you’re not clear on what a white knight actually is, this Rational Male is a great depiction and demonstration of what a white knight actually is.

This is what like an advanced white knight who’s been white knighting for decades would say. So, on page 135, he says, “Hypergamy doesn’t care how you rearrange your college majors and career choice in life to better accommodate her.” Oh my god. “Hypergamy doesn’t care how inspired or fulfilled you feel as a stay-at-home dad.”

Steve Mayeda: I mean, he did all that and feels ashamed about it.

David Tian: Right. Hypergamy doesn’t care that you moved across four states to accommodate your long-distance relationship. Hypergamy doesn’t care how supportive you’ve always been of her decisions or if you identify as a male feminist.

I’m going to throw one in there because it’s so funny. I’ve worked with so many nice guys over the years. And in Asia, they do the funniest things. They’re like cute because… Anyway, so it’s a little bit more of an immature type of relationship situation out here. So, hypergamy doesn’t care that you drove 40 minutes to give her chicken soup, but she wouldn’t open the door so you left it on the porch and rang the doorbell.

Like, hypergamy doesn’t care about your nice guy bullshit where you’re trying to earn her affection and love by doing shit and guilt tripping her into being good to you and giving you a blow job, right?

Hypergamy doesn’t care how you funded her going back to college to find a more rewarding career. Hypergamy doesn’t care how great a guy you are for adopting the children she had with other men. Hypergamy doesn’t care about your divine and forgiving nature in excusing her youthful indiscretion.

So, like, this is like saying, “I’m a good person. Why aren’t you? Why aren’t you good to me? I’m like damn good.” So, all of moral philosophy would say, if that’s your view and that’s why your motivation for being good, you’re not actually good. You’re just fake good.

Steve Mayeda: So, what do you think about hypergamy in general? Because like Jordan Peterson says women are hypergamous. And I think he’s kind of stupid when it comes to sex and relationships. People get really mad at me when I say that.

David Tian: That’s like getting dating advice from a powerlifter.

Steve Mayeda: Yeah.

David Tian: I think people mean different things by hypergamy. So, I didn’t know what they meant by it until I read this damn ebook. I thought it just meant women would trade up if given the opportunity.

Yeah, I think most people would just be looking for the most attractive — like they would — all things being considered, would they prefer a more attractive person? Yes. But there are things that men are looking to trade up too, especially the type of men who would be attracted to red pill, who are probably actually quite immature. So, they’d get this analogy.

It’s sort of like if you’re dating a girl for a few months and you have the option. So, you have to imagine that you have the option of dating an even hotter girl and you click with her. There’s chemistry, and it’s fresh, and new, and then this other girl is sort of stale, boring now.

Obviously, you don’t know how to have sex, so the sex is getting really boring as well. So, it’s really easy. It’s very tempting for you to trade up. And the moment that the girl that you’re not that into anymore fucks you over, you’re there, you’re like, “Okay, done with you. Moving on.”

And this is the whole spinning plates thing, by the way, which you haven’t gotten to yet.

Hey there. Hope you enjoyed part one of this episode. It’s just too good to limit to one show. Join us next week to hear the rest.

This is ThePodcastFactory.com