Tuesday, December 4, 2012

How does he rank?

Most of you reading here have read at least a little of the socio-sexual hierarchy of men. For those who haven't, here are six different social archetypes that Vox Day identifies in his post The social sexual hierarchy:
 Alpha: The alpha is the tall, good-looking guy who is the center of both male and female attention. The classic star of the football team who is dating the prettiest cheerleader. The successful business executive with the beautiful, stylish, blonde, size zero wife. All the women are attracted to him, while all the men want to be him, or at least be his friend. At a social gathering like a party, he's usually the loud, charismatic guy telling self-flattering stories to a group of attractive women who are listening with interest. However, alphas are only interested in women to the extent that they exist for the alpha's gratification, physical and psychological, they are actually more concerned with their overall group status. 

Beta: Betas are the good-looking guys who aren't as uniformly attractive or socially dominant as the Alpha, but are nevertheless confident, attractive to women, and do well with them. At the party, they are the loud guy's friends who showed up with the alcohol and who are flirting with the tier one women and cheerfully pairing up with the tier two women. Betas tend to genuinely like women and view them in a somewhat optimistic manner, but they don't have a lot of illusions about them either. Betas tend to be happy, secure in themselves, and are up for anything their alpha wants to do. When they marry, it is not infrequently to a woman who was one of the alpha's former girlfriends. 

Delta: The normal guy. Deltas are the great majority of men. They can't attract the most attractive women, so they usually aim for the second-tier women with very limited success, and stubbornly resist paying attention to all of the third-tier women who are comfortably in their league. This is ironic, because deltas would almost always be happier with their closest female equivalents. When a delta does manage to land a second-tier woman, he is constantly afraid that she will lose interest in him and will, not infrequently, drive her into the very loss of interest he fears by his non-stop dancing of attendance upon her. In a social setting, the deltas are the men clustered together in groups, each of them making an occasional foray towards various small gaggles of women before beating a hasty retreat when direct eye contact and engaged responses are not forthcoming. Deltas tend to put the female sex on pedestals and have overly optimistic expectations of them; if a man rhapsodizes about his better half or is an inveterate White Knight, he is almost certainly a delta. Deltas like women, but find them mysterious, confusing, and are sometimes secretly a little afraid of them. 

Gamma: The introspective, the unusual, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Gammas are often intelligent, usually unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex. This mostly depends upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. Too introspective for their own good, gammas are the men who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time and supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly romantic rhyming doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are probably in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there... sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women, the current direction of which is directly tied to their present situation. However, they are sexual rejects, not social rejects. 

Omega: The truly unfortunate. Omegas are the social losers who were never in the game. Sometimes creepy, sometimes damaged, often clueless, and always undesirable. They're not at the party. It would never have crossed anyone's mind to invite them in the first place. Omegas are either totally indifferent to women or hate them with a borderline homicidal fury. 

Sigma: The outsider who doesn't play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow. The sigma is hated by alphas because sigmas are the only men who don't accept or at least acknowledge, however grudgingly, their social dominance. (NB: Alphas absolutely hate to be laughed at and a sigma can often enrage an alpha by doing nothing more than smiling at him.) Everyone else is vaguely confused by them. In a social situation, the sigma is the man who stops in briefly to say hello to a few friends accompanied by a Tier 1 girl that no one has ever seen before. Sigmas like women, but tend to be contemptuous of them. They are usually considered to be strange. Gammas often like to think they are sigmas, failing to understand that sigmas are not social rejects, they are at the top of the social hierarchy despite their refusal to play by its rules. 
 It's important for us wives to know and understand which archetype our husbands innately possess. It may be different than what we see and understand him to be. One way to analyze it is to think of him when he was in high school or college. Another way is to identify what he isn't. Alphas are very rare so it's easy to start there.

If you have ever gone through a stage in your marriage where you just aren't feeling thrilled, excited, or challenged by your husband, he's not a natural Alpha (or Sigma). If you are having a hard time submitting to your husband, he's not a natural Alpha. You could attempt to be defiant to a natural Alpha but it won't get you very far. He doesn't have within him the ability to care about your opposing opinion. You only frustrate yourself while he instinctively ignores you.

If your husband is like most men, he is a Delta or possibly a Beta.

RLB is a Delta. His frame, when I first met him, was that of an Alpha, but it wasn't something that came naturally to him. He had learned the nature of women and was in pursuit of a wife. The women he would date had a two week window with him before he said, "next." This posture of his was extremely tantalizing.

It wasn't until after we were married, nine months after having met, that he relaxed his frame. He started to allow me to dictate some of our decisions like where to live, where to go to college, and where to work. This combined with our first couple years of marriage made for a very rough start. I knew nothing of Biblical respect and submission and was therefore not tapping in (so to speak) to God's help in our marriage. Needless to say, I "lost that loving feeling," that I had enjoyed through our courtship and engagement and didn't know how to bridge from the in love stage (lust) of our relationship to the true love (Agape) stage.

I read plenty of marriage books and truly wanted to feel tantalized by my husband again. Nothing I was doing was working. In my heart I was still holding on to judgement and criticism of him. Throughout the years, though, this bored feeling would ebb and flow. When RLB would make an exciting and adventurous decision, the fun feelings would come back. I have mentioned before, I was in agreement with those decisions so it wasn't actual submission, we just happened to be on the same page.

The change in our marriage happened as a result of RLB adopting, once again, an Alpha frame. RLB explains in a comment  what was occurring on his end:

I wasn't such a genius that I was making the right decision on my own. I was very lonely when deployed and I missed my wife desperately. Stubbornly, I tried to keep doing what I had been doing before in our marriage. It stopped working. I couldn't make her happy. I have been reading VP since close to his starting the blog. I was praying and reading the Bible aggressively. The truth just started to reveal itself to me. I was tired of always returning to the same arguments we had had previously. It became obvious to me that I wasn't leading/loving my wife the way God commanded me to do. SD calls it cold detachment. I stopped giving into the tears, screaming, and general shit-tests. I focused arguments on singular issues and would shut down when she didn't follow my rules for interaction with me. I had to be ready to lose the marriage. The truth was we didn't have the proper alignment to our marriage and that needed to change. I was fed up with being unhappy in my marriage and would do what was necessary to fix it. Even if she left, I knew she would return but in proper alignment. I knew she would pray and go to God over something so scary as divorce. I loved her enough to let her go. It was the only way.
 I'm not completely convinced that this is required to turn a marriage around to what God has in mind for us. I believe God is big enough that if we wives make the commitment, the results will follow. I say this because RLB has not kept this frame consistently in the past three years. Most of the time RLB rejects all that he learned previously in how to deal with me, but there have been plenty of times, he's slipped back. That doesn't mean my behavior should change. Because, remember, I submit to him as unto the Lord, whether I'm feeling it or not. That, in turn, prompts RLB to regain his frame and then the excitement returns. It has become a beautiful cycle, free of judgement and belittling. However, it required me to understand what social archetype was innate within him and my adherence to God's command of submission.


5 comments:

  1. Debbi Pearl (or some name pronounced the same) has a book called Fit To Be His Helpmeet which is unabashedly pro-wifely submission. She's also a hardcore KJV-onlyist who makes some very stretched arguments from time to time, but for the most part, it's a breath of fresh air.

    Oddly enough, the only part of the book that the femichurchian ladies who showed the book to me (as an object of derision for a nice, hyper-intellectual orbiter to more thoroughly mock) did not deride was the part that divided men into three camps:
    1) Leader
    2) Visionary
    3) Steady Guy
    The leader as described is clearly Vox's Alpha. The steady guy covers his beta/delta/higher gamma. The visionary doesn't fully correspond, though there is some overlap with Sigma.

    Anyhow, Pearl makes a stretched argument that these types correspond to the members of the trinity. It seemed immediately obvious to me, though, that they correspond pretty closely to Christ's roles as King, Prophet, and Priest respectively. Almost as though manliness is a reflection of Christ, and each man is better at reflecting one aspect than the others.

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  2. The problem with any linear spectrum is that it can be too simple. I have tried to figure out where I fit on the spectrum as I have traits of several of the areas. I even earned a scorn post at Alpha Game on my indecision.

    I am clearly not a full alpha, but I can walk in that at times, which would seem to not be allowed by the spectrum above. I wonder if that is part of your issue with your own husband. We do not always fit in nice need bins.

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  3. The thing about personality tests and rankings such as these is they give wives an indicator and understanding of their husband's natural propensity. An understanding of why he reacts one way vs. another in especially difficult times.

    I know a few natural Alphas and have come to understand that there is no vacillation in their behavior. One friend's husband, in particular, that I've observed, maintains the same Alpha characteristics when ill, healthy, stressed, depressed, entertained, bored, angry, happy etc. The frame, negs, irrational confidence, charisma, everything is intact, no wavering. This reliable predictability makes life less complicated for his wife. She knows full well what's she's got and there's no changing it.

    RLB exhibits many of the Alpha characteristics most of the time. Even in high school, he was known for his leadership ability, exemplified by being voted captain of the football, wrestling, and baseball teams he was on. He was the valedictorian of his high school class as well. What was different about him than a natural Alpha or a Beta was his social life. He was not "one of the guys" that accompanied the Alpha. He was not dating the most attractive girls in school. He was kind and had many female friends. He used his intelligence and athleticism to take care of the bullies for his wimpier friends.

    His behavior while dating his first love clearly indicates Delta. She was not that attractive but intelligent and witty. And, as women's nature dictates, took advantage of his kindness and marriageability, trading him in to ride the carousel when she needed excitement.

    I'll write some other time about all the fun he put me through while dating him. In hindsight, I was clearly being vetted for marriage. He had been burned and accepted much of the red pill prior to meeting me.

    He's a leader and never shirks his responsibilities as the head of our family but he does need down time. He needs refuge and comfort. If that is not something I offer generously and nag free, he doesn't respond as a natural Alpha would (taking what he needs without the ability to feel offended it wasn't offered to him graciously). RLB has the tendency to second guess himself and over analyze his worth, "Am I doing all I need to be doing?" "Am I making the right decisions?" "Is she proud of me." While, of course, this doesn't "give me the tingles," I've come to respect him regardless, I dig deeper to submit to him, uplift, and encourage him. His introspection subsides, and he's back to negging me, slapping me on the ass, dominating me and doing all the things he knows pay off well for him in our sex life.

    My attempt here is to help wives understand their husbands natural archetype (most men being Deltas) and choose to be rational and mature about their marriages. There is plenty of discussion on all of the Game sites for men to learn the nature of women and how to respond accordingly. Godly women have a responsibility to be cognitive of our nature and choose to make conscientious decisions to rid ourselves of the negative aspects of it in order to restore and maintain harmony in our homes.

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  4. I think your post here SD gives an even better picture than just the spectrum. I have seen similar variety in my own approach to things. I was quite sigma as far as some things, doing whatever I felt like doing, throughout my growing up time. I did pick up/exhibit many beta traits when we were going through our own private hell as our adopted children (4) all turned from us as teens. I fell back into at least some of the "red pill" approach prior to naming it such as I realized the pleading and such wasn't working.

    I suppose I wrestle with it because I like order and would prefer to clearly be in one area, yet I cannot see that. Ultimately though, my wife and I are the ones that have to work this out, as you cover.

    Good thoughts in the post overall.

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