PicoBlog

I’ve been thinking about this more in the context of the sexual revolution distorting sexual market incentives and male/female instincts. This isn’t fully thought out, but I think it’s worthwhile enough to put out here for further discussion.

TL/DR: Under current sexual marketplace conditions, a woman’s loyalty is linked to her willingness to bear a man’s children, which is linked to him committing to and providing for them. Neither has much to much to do with a pre-marital dating relationship because of reliable contraception and abortion. Monkeybranching away from sterile pre-marital relationships is not predictive a woman’s loyalty in a child bearing situation, and, indeed, being monkeybranched on to may increase the man’s chances of loyalty because he’s higher level than the guy she left.

A commentor below said that starting a sexual dating relationship triggers the protector instinct in Delta men, but appears not to trigger reciprocal loyalty in women.

I think her reciprocal instincts don’t kick in until she commits to bearing his children, which usually corresponds with him committing to marriage. Basically the distinction between dating and marriage these days is whether the risks of pregnancy, child bearing, and child rearing are on the table for the woman, and the corresponding lifetime provision and protection for the man. “Playing house” can exist since birth control and abortion are readily available. Which has never happened before in human history, leaving us in truly uncharted territory for understanding the distortions that have arisen from the decoupling of sex and family formation.

In the past sex almost always led to babies, and having babies might kill you, so courtship always had to be taken very seriously by the women. You had to marry the best man who was interested in you, so that you maximized the loyalty, protection, and provisioning you would get through the decades of physical risk and toil that lay ahead. The men in turn could be expected to provide for the family with hard toil themselves and protect the family, possibly with their lives. (There is some distortion here in the lack of physical protection necessary in the current era as well). And since most women weren’t putting out, the protection/providing/sex/marrying were inextricably linked for most men.

Even the Alphas and high level Bravos didn’t have many loose women to choose from and were incentivized to settled down with the highest value women early-ish. There were protections for maintaining the family unit in the face of mistresses and whores, if the Alphas got antsy. And plain Jane had no false hope of snagging a man who was out of her league, because any plain Jane with half a brain wasn’t going to risk an unwed pregnancy and the high value man’s refusal to marry her/shipping her off to a nunnery. It was in plain Jane’s interest to settle down early with the best provider Delta who showed interest in her.

Now, if a woman is chasing an alpha, she can play at sex and wife-auditioning with him to see if she can get him to commit without any risk of bearing a child he will abandon. (As a side note, an Alpha who has sown his wild oats and is ready to settle down is perfectly capable of cooling his heels until engaged if he’s got a Tier 1 Barbie or Babe he’s interested in wifing up. Top tier women with morals don’t have to put out to compete. They compete better if they don’t. But they do have to accept that the men they’re competing for are going to have a very high body count. There was a woman commentor here lamenting the lack of chaste Alpha men a while back. She’s going to remain forever disappointed so long as birth control exists. These guys are the only winners of the sexual revolution, and for the most part, even the religious ones have an Augustinian “Lord make me chaste, but not yet” phase.)

If a woman is dating a lower value man, she can use sex and playing house to gain devotion and the good feels that come from it, testing what he will be able to provide in the event that he’s all she can get. Meanwhile she can keep feeling out whether a monkeybranch is possible, whether she can do better for real mating, without any risk of actually having to bear a child to the low value man while she figures out if he’s the best she can do.

So the Delta men are right to feel used, and even think that this is immoral, because they are basically auditioning while the woman continues window shopping to see if she can do better for actual family formation. But the women think it’s not immoral and a fair trade because he’s getting risk-free-sex without having to commit, so what’s he complaining about - she’s not asking him to provide lifetime protection and provisioning for her and kids, so why would he expect loyalty?

In this view, Delta men may want to avoid playing house with or giving their devotion to a woman until she agrees to not contracept or abort his children. “I won’t live together until we are sure that we’re starting a family. So if we’re going to live together, you have to stop using birth control and commit to no abortions.” The vast majority of women won’t commit to that until they’re engaged. So having that standard may help young Deltas determine whether a girlfriend is auditioning him as emotional and financial support while she’s still shopping (and aren’t you grateful that you got consequence-free sex while it lasted?) or whether she actually thinks he’s tops and wants to settle down with him.

It would be better and clearer if no one was having sex before marriage, but I don’t see the culture going back to that until the manufacturing processes for reliable birth control and abortion tools fails.

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