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 And it was originally made for an old video podcast series that I had going called Man Up, and I thought why not put it here in this new masculine psychology podcast, so that it's easier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.
The fear and insecurity of the spinning plates strategy of, “I can’t put all my chips in one woman because, oh my gosh, she could just totally kill me emotionally. So, I’ve got to spread my neediness around to multiple women. So, I’m going to be an emotional vampire to multiple women and protect my own feelings.”
That’s coming out of the fear and insecurity. So, is it true that, generally speaking, you’d want to get a girl who’s hotter? If all things are equal, the answer is obviously yes. Unless you have some fetish that makes it just one of the minorities in science. This is just straight up mating value.
But hypergamy doesn’t mean that for them. Hypergamy is about the fact that this is a biological imperative in women that they cannot resist. So, this is departing from all of the philosophy that I had mentioned earlier because all the philosophy, which was moral philosophy from the very beginning, for over 2,500 years, has already come to terms with this.
Like, they’re red in tooth and claw, this whole getting ahead in life. And where is the morality? Where’s goodness? When’s goodness? And the answer is, you need to resist. We human beings have a need for self-restraint, just as children do. They need to learn limits, and when you can say, “No, I’m not going to have that extra Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, even though I really want it,” and that’s you resisting a biological impulse, now you’ve graduated to a healthier adult from your child state.
But what they’re saying is with hypergamy, it seems what they’re saying, is that women are unable to resist that. He says they’re capable but it will eventually drag them under. So, it’s sort of like they’re saying all women on the analogy have an eating disorder. Like, they can’t resist the Ben and Jerry’s even though there’s a part of them says, “This isn’t good for me.” They just eat it.
And that’s not true, and it’s really — I can understand where it’s coming from because it’s coming out of the fear and insecurity of a closeted white knight.
Steve Mayeda: Yeah. You know, it’s funny because there’s this article that Robert Glover wrote about hypergamy that I’ve been trying to find and search for, but it’s so good because he talks about — this is such an odd… First off, he’s like, “Hey, look, if you’re looking at this, you have a problem.” Like, if you’re looking at the internet and trying to figure out women in this way, this is not going to help you. This will never help you.
Before all this, we were having a water balloon fight and it was like totally badass. It was fucking great. Anyway, Robert Glover wrote, and I forget what it is… And I’m not like a huge fan — I’m not like a ‘no more Mr. Nice Guy’ follower or anything like that. But basically, he wrote about like, “Man, this is so weird. If you’re looking at this, you have a problem.”
But even more so, we didn’t work in this way. It wasn’t about take, take, take. It wasn’t about weighing a scale. And nowhere in our evolution do I think that this exists, so much to the point… He pointed this out, which is interesting, because there’s all this argument about origin, and how tribal culture works.
And the thing is, we don’t really know. But there’s this… In our culture, we can see what the red pill calls hypergamy to some degree. We can find examples of it. In our culture, we can definitely see people… [INTERRUPTED]
The thing is, in tribal cultures, in American tribal cultures, which were very diverse — in California alone, there were 400 different tribes — when people say like, “Oh, well, the Native Americans thought this.” You’re getting kind of dumb.
But one of the things that was punishable by death was not like lying or whatever. One of the things that was consistent was that when you hoarded and didn’t share. And I forget how specifically he brings this up in his article, but when you don’t share and you take, that is one of the worst crimes that we see in humanity within a group.
And hypergamy, and the way red pill puts it out, is so that it’s so about this hoarding, scarcity mindset, that it’s a tragedy when we get into interpersonal relationships. And it’s not about who could get over on you or whatever. And if you are having interpersonal relationships where people are making it about a scale, and stairs, and steps…
And I get it that in corporate America, that’s the case, but if you are, then there’s a problem. Like, it needs more connection. It needs more empathy. It needs more exchange. It needs more of you sacrificing yourself, willing to be hurt, so that you could put your real self out there and not some fake facade.
Because when people you know and depend on, that care about you, whether they love you or their friends, when you put out a fake facade out of scarcity, what are you? You’re fake. You’re the guy trying to be Tim Kennedy. You’re the dude that is based off of your fears. You are your fear. You’ve empowered your fear, and you are not you.
And you being you, and being able to be heard, is all those things that Rollo Tomassi’s listing off about, you know, hypergamy doesn’t care about. Those are all the things that will make you a badass. And when you’re in love with somebody, you’re going to do stupid stuff, and you’re going to fail, and that’s how you’re going to learn.
And some of those things like, you don’t drive across four states to somebody that you don’t care about. But to somebody that you do care about, god damn right you do. You know, that’s one of the best things about man. And the reason why you know, god damn right you do, is because you’ve probably done it and failed and had it blow up in your face. You’ve probably done it and had it work, or things of lesser degree.
See, the thing is, is we’re all afraid to be psychopaths, sociopaths. We’re all afraid to be hurt and damaged people. But if you hold onto your pain, you become a psychopath. You become somebody who is a narcissist. You become all of those things, and that’s what we should be talking about.
Like, how do we have a good life out of all this? How do we fulfill our sexual urge and have a good life? It’s crazy.
David Tian: Yeah. Narcissism arises from the split between the original self and creation of a false self. That’s how the literature describes it. So basically, there’s this toxic shame. There’s a shame about who they are at their original level, their original self. And they don’t like that. That’s not working for them in the real world. They’re trying to get this from certain types of women, it’s not working, so they split off.
They say, “I have to be a different way. I have to be this, what psychologists call false self, in order to get this love.” And it’s very dangerous. The reason, there’s a difference between a false self, and persona, and parts. So, in IFS therapy, a therapy style that I’m learning a lot now is, look at the false self as a new protector part.
So, you can heal the false self and the persona… The Jungian way of approaching it is, this is a useful part of you that you have as a front-facing representative to the world. But when it becomes narcissistic is when you think that that Persona or that part is your real self, your true self.
And because of that confusion, you’re still underneath it, hiding all of this toxic shame of your original self. So, they’re trying to, “Here’s my false self. I’m this alpha dude. I’m alpha Buddha.” And underneath is this little wounded boy who just wants love. And you can see it all through the book. He just wants to be loved.
But he has a very entitled view of what love is. And so, this child would also, or probably a teenager, like a preteen, would also be very judgmental towards sex. Like, ooh, it’s dirty. It’s wrong. So, a good girl wouldn’t like sex that much, and women don’t actually like sex. That became another thesis in their book.
And so, this is white knight narcissism, and it is the splitting into a false self. So, at the end of the day, they can’t experience love because they’re just interacting as a false self to another female emotional vampire’s false self, and it’s just false selves interacting with each other.
I break this down in a lot more detail in that four video series. Part of this is, what do we do about this? So, in order to heal that split, you need to recover the inner child that the false self is hiding and heal and grow the inner child parts. There are going to be multiple inner child in you.
And I found that the most straightforward way to do that and most effective and quickest is psychotherapeutic processes. So, over the past more than four years now, that’s been the focus of my work, using psychotherapeutic processes to bring guys into this growth and healing.
And the reason it’s so hard for them to even see the value of that is because they’re still driven very much by their fear, because their needs aren’t being met, their needs for… They’re not able to meet their own needs for security, for love, for connection, for significance, and they’re trying to neurotically get women to meet those needs for them.
And it’s so hard because they’re trying to manipulate women into doing it. And they’re picking the wrong women. So, the wrong women over and over and over, and these women keep screwing them over in certain ways, and they formed these neurotic patterns of interacting with women.
And as soon as they engage those patterns through their false self, they’re turning off actual good women, like developed women, developed, and mature, and emotionally intelligent, and so forth. You can see this encapsulated really well in the iron rules. At the end of his book, he’s got the iron rules of Tomassi or whatever.
And most of these are so fear-driven. I think if I just read them out, it should be quite obvious, but I don’t know if we need to say anything more than that. But rule number one is, always control the frame.
Another point is, all the good advice in this book, is already said in good PUA advice over the past two decades. You’re not going to start teaching us about frame now, are you, Tomassi? Because we can do books on frame.
Anyway, so always control the frame, but that comes out of this deep insecurity. I used to teach frame for years, and I think it’s useful to know especially in a business context. But if you’re in a relationship, like going back to that sacrifice issue. I’ve traveled a lot to meet my wife.
When you’re in love, will you think it’s a sacrifice to hop on a plane to meet your lover? You’re so excited to go, and it’s exciting because it’s a trip for you too. And you get to see a new place, and you’re really excited. Would you say, “I fucking sacrificed to get on that.” No. If you’re in love and you’re doing this out of love, it doesn’t feel like it.
Now, there are times where I’m like, “Fuck, I’m getting on this plane.” But there’s a part of you that, if it’s really out of love, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. And it’s sort of the same here. Like, when you’re in love, you’re not counting this stuff. You’re not keeping score. On the frame, you’re going to sabotage your relationship.
Steve Mayeda: Boundaries and frames are really important, and they’re great, but they’re useful when you can’t trust yourself having that border be open. It’s like, “Man, I don’t want to date somebody that a red flag shows up.” I’m not that afraid of it right now. I just say no.
But when I am afraid of it, I need a boundary because I need to stop myself before I get carried away. And so, control is a weird thing. Part of the things, like the solutions that come out of pain are going to be control. They’re going to be power. They’re going to be all the things that the red pill literally says and somehow people think is good.
But the things that come out when you’re at peace with that pain, they come out of choice. And choice always has to be affected by all things in order for it to truly be choice, which is human value. What gives us our worth is the ability to choose and decide and not be bound to something.
And it’s funny, because things like the red pill make this rigid system that we must follow in order to have the human experience.
David Tian: Yeah. I just want to point out, again, because Steve and I are old-school PUA as well; way older school than what you’ll find on the internet right now. I’m just looking at some of these other iron rules. So, the next one is, “Never reveal the number of women you slept with.” So, you can see there’s so much fear around that.
This is just beginner level PUA. It probably [INAUDIBLE 01:10:10] run into stuff you don’t know how to handle. But what’s great is, he’ll do this iron rules, and then he’ll do this explanation for it. And the explanation is where you see all the fear and insecurity coming out.
Because if you’re just teaching a beginner PUA with the training wheels, “Here are some things you want to avoid because it’s going to get a little tricky.” But these are ironclad rules. You can see the fear, right?
Number three is, any woman who makes you wait for sex is never worth the wait. Again, like if you’re a beginner PUA, this is good starting advice. You want to not get stuck in the friend zone or whatever. But the fact, the way he describes it, it’s just pure insecurity. And the same with the next one.
Never live with a woman you aren’t married to. Again, actually, I think this is pretty good advice because it gets trickier once you do move in together. But he’s like, this is never until marriage. Okay, but the reasoning for it is, as he describes, is basically insecurity and fear, the fear of loss, the fear of getting hurt.
Number five, never allow the woman to be in control of the birth. Like, this weird — one of those weird excursus about birth control.
Steve Mayeda: I don’t get that argument. Anyway, if you’ve heard this, like they — by the way, I found that Dr. Glover thing and I posted in the chat. You can read it. I hear from both ends. I hear from really sane people that I really like what they have to say is that birth control destroyed western civilization, and it wrecked the family unit, and all this sort of stuff.
But it’s just so weird how he writes it because it’s written in a way that could be taken wrong [INAUDIBLE 01:11:59].
David Tian: It’s like those half-truths. Yeah, birth control has been very disruptive for evolutionary patterns and so on. But the reasoning the rationale for why this there’s this ironclad rule, it’s all fear.
The next one: Women are incapable of loving a man in a way that he expects to be loved. Women love opportunistically. Women cannot appreciate sacrifices that men make. This is in explanation rule 6. So again, just fear, covert white knights.
This is actually — their view of love is what I’ve been describing as need love. It’s the most basic love. And maybe it’s a second level up, the second type of love which is a transactional love. I’ll love you as long as you love me back. And neither of those are actually real love. They’re not mature love. They’re not developed, or evolved, or integrated love.
Love, like at the higher level, the type of love that’s required to have a successful relationship is one where you love just because that’s who you are and that’s what you’re feeling at that moment. It just comes out of you. So, you’re not looking for it to come back before you give it.
And I think when you become a parent, it’s a lot easier to see that. Like, a little baby, you’re not expecting anything from it. They could pee on you, shit on you. And you’re just full of love and just loving it. You’re not expecting it. It doesn’t have to come back to you in order for you to love this thing.
And hopefully, that’s an easy example for guys who are still single to understand. And you want to get eventually to that point, because if you’re at the point where you’re just like, “Wah, fulfill my needs. I’m a little baby.” Meet my needs for significance. Make me feel important. Make my sacrifices — appreciate it or else I’ll feel like shit.
That’s actually where you’re expecting others to meet your needs for you, and you’re incapable of meeting your own needs. So, a big part of getting them through that growth process is actually teaching them what their needs are and starting with universal human needs, and then showing them how they can meet their own needs and satisfy their own needs in themselves. I don’t think we do need to go through all these other…
Steve Mayeda: I want to kind of talk trash on all of them, but it’s just so weird because this guy didn’t come from experience. A lot of the guys didn’t come from experience. I mean, there’s so many of the dudes that talk about the red pill. How many of them have actually achieved it?
Because one of the things with me is that, I can control a woman. I get that. I can — you were talking about it — somebody wrote on my forum today. It said, “Steve, what is breakthrough comfort?” And I said, “Oh, it’s this thing that was taught in Mystery Method that this guy future came up with, and [INAUDIBLE 01:14:34] I taught a couple of classes.
But one of the advertisements was something like a woman would be willing to kill herself if you dumped her. It’s like the old-school pick up ads, clickbaity and stuff. And I just told him, I I said, “But if you really did want to know how to make a woman kill herself” which I’ve never done that.
But it’s just like — there’s probably better ways than breakthrough comfort. I get all of that and I’ve lived all of that. All these guys, what they say their dream is, and it was fun. Like, I remember there were internet marketing parties in Austin, and one of the dudes, they’re all these like fake PUA dickheads and they’re like, “Steve, I bet you can’t get two girls over here and fuck them.”
And I did. And then I said, “Man, you’re not going to fuck me. You’re going to fuck all my friends.” And then they all sat there watching — playing Street Fighter going like, “It’s okay, Steve. You can…” [INAUDIBLE 01:15:28] suck your dicks. It’s like you know.
And they were just like, “Oh, it’s cool.” I mean, I have power sexually over — whatever the fuck that means man. Those things were fun. And in all that, like, I didn’t do that because I controlled them. And here’s the other thing, right? Like, all these guys who have lots of women naturally in their lives didn’t do it out of control or power.
They may have had to be powerful at certain times. They may have had that whatever control, but they didn’t do it by belittling or degrading a woman before they even met her, right? And now, don’t get me wrong. There’s like pimps that are psychologically — then part of that is psychologically like, you know, torturous to females and so on.
And that may happen in those situations, but I just don’t see the red pill guys actually looking at people who have been successful with women in the ways that they think is successful. And when we talk about this, this would be like people who are tyrannical, people who are, you know, pimps.
On a street level, that might be cool, but in the reality of that, it’s not. Real life pimps aren’t like these badass dudes. They’re often times losers or people who are polygamists and so on. There might be some people that are really good with that or live a good life with that. There might be some people that aren’t, but we want this, yet we go about it in a way that clearly comes from our pain and clearly comes from damaged guys.
And they don’t get it. They don’t get it, and they look up like, who do they look up to? A guy that talks shit online about women? You know, a guy that talks… You know, so my wife and I had a problem with one of the dudes who was really into the red pill that we know.
He was in Austin and it was right after we resolved our problem. I said, “Yeah, man. Me and my wife had this problem.” He started laughing and then he said, “What you should have done is you should have tied her up and left her there for a couple of days, and then brought women over and just like fucked them in front of her and then raped her while you did it. This works.”
And I was just like, “Hey, man. It’s cool.” And he’s like laughing, I’m like, “Dude, it’s cool. The reason why we didn’t talk about the solution to this…” And he’s like, “No. People write about this. It’s on the female red pill board.” And I’m just like, “Dude. I’ve not done that, but the desired goal that he thought of humiliating somebody to the point where they would follow you is shit that I’ve been involved with.
And not done exactly that, but like to play that type of thing, and I don’t do that anymore. But he’s never done that. And for that to be delicious for somebody has to come from pain. And I know because I was in pain, that’s why I did it. That’s beautiful.
David Tian: The pain might be so long ago that they’re not conscious of it, and then it becomes just power tripping. I studied that type of control for too many years, and there’s a part of me that’s like, “Yeah, now, I’m the man. If I can make this happen, then I’m basically like Thanos. I’m the man. I can do whatever I want. Yeah. No one can touch me. I’m the shit.”
And I’m very lucky that a few years later, I finally got taken down pretty bad by a woman. That actually led me into exploring the red pill. But yeah, in psychotherapy, control is a bad word. Like, if you’re looking for control rather than — because there’s so many things in life you can’t control. Look for ways of being adaptable, flexible, enjoying the moment, letting go of these neurotic things that you have to control in order to feel secure.
Steve Mayeda: Look, so here’s the other thing too that I think the red pill should be responsible for, because I always hear Rollo Tomassi talk about this. He says that, “So many people come up to me and say that I was about to kill myself, and then I read your book.” That’s great. I think if a lot of guys read your book and did not kill themselves, that’s a good thing, but I work with people who kill themselves.
So, this is what I fucking hate about the red pill, again, is they cite drug addiction and male suicide. And I work with men who killed — I know a guy that got murdered a couple of weeks ago who was 20 years old, who was a drug addict. I know many people have killed themselves, committed suicide, both men and women.
In addiction, there are more men in America that I see, and I don’t know the stats, leaning way more towards men that have it, but nobody gives a fuck. Addiction doesn’t care what religion you are or whatever, if you’re junkie, your life is fucked.
In all of that, I know — and people that I’ve worked with have killed themselves. That’s the reality of mental illness, is a book does not solve that problem. I think that that is such a perhaps narcissistic way to put it.
I work with people who want to die and and have a very tough time with that on a daily basis who get themselves in really bad spots. And the solution is not just something that they read online or a small-knit community. There is a lot of psychotherapy. There’s a lot of fellowship and interacting. There’s a huge component to this, and to put it that lightly, that the problem with suicide politicized into a male problem is terrible.
So then, the other thing too is that when you bring up… First off, the red pill has a lot of mentally ill people in it and they do not address that. That needs to be addressed. You need to get outside. If somebody comes to my groups, I say I’m not against therapy. I’m not against psychotherapy. Please see a therapist. If I think you have a problem, do yourself a favor and talk to somebody. Let’s look at resources of how this can be discovered.
That’s very important when people work with me, because I’m just a coach, and all that sort of stuff. The thing is that in all of that, you do not recognize — and this what the red pill does great, is it speaks to guys in pain so well. And those guys who are in pain, the anger, the judgment, all those things are really great. But somebody who’s in that anger and pain now as an adult cannot see, it’s impossible to see, will laugh at you, even me.
Like, I’m in pain, I’m really sad about something. “Well, Steve, what about with your mom and how you grew up?” And I’m like, that has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it. But if you start working at it in a legitimate way in a legitimate setting, you will see that it does lead there, and that healing does have to happen.
So, when you say it’s like a hurt little boy, nobody sees that. But when you start to go like, “Man, I’m really angry. Why am I angry?” This is an exercise I have people do. It’s like, okay, well, you’re angry about your wife leaving you. What does that mean? Well, I’m not respected, I’m belittled, this and that, like, all the stuff about me, not about her.
Okay, so what happens if you are that guy that’s belittled? What does that mean? It means that I’m a tragedy, my life’s a lie. You keep walking down this more and more, and then we go, “When’s the first time you felt that? When were times when you felt that?”
Really have them think. Like, during adolescence, really have them think with the first time you had fallen in love in a high-pressure situation, and when you were a kid. And it tends to mimic a pattern of how we cope.
I mean, you know this. But it’s just, why isn’t that happening? We’re talking about men’s development. You’re talking about being the best man, and all you’ve got is power, and rage, and control. That’s weakness. Because no greatness, no great act doesn’t come from a massive amount of inventory, whether that’s a martial art, a skill, writing, anything you’re going to master which should be yourself needs to come from the depth of that.
David Tian: Yeah. Absolutely, that’s great. I wanted to acknowledge that. Actually, I wanted to start off by saying there are parts of this ebook too that are inspiring and motivational. So, I can see why a guy in a lot of pain would really resonate with them. It’s also why the first part of this two-parter was mostly focused on trying to resonate, relate to that, how this can feel very soothing when you’re in a lot of pain, to know that you’re not alone, that there is a way to think about it.
It’s really important to see that you’ve got to grow out of this stage if you’re in it though and get out of it, because you’re eventually just going to stay in that kind of white knighting. And here’s an example of what will happen down the road if you stay with this. On page 72, he does talk about his marriage, and he says in the section, Kill the Beta, “This is what marriage is, normal, common, or become so. Not boring per se, though it is more often than not.”
And there’s so many other parts where he just describes his marriage. It’s actually quite sad. I don’t mean that in a condescending way. I really feel that this is tragic for him and that he doesn’t know how to create passion in the long term. He doesn’t actually understand what love is. Because of that, he’s not able to inject love and connection.
In order to have love and connection, you need to be able to drop your guard, and be vulnerable, and be able to deal with the fear and insecurity along with that and handle that, manage that. And then to go further, beyond connection and to love and to unconditional love, that’s another thing you talked about, the myth of female, the feminine mystique.
The feminine unknowability comes along with the idealizations of unconditional love. And this is just because he’s just confused on what love is. He’s in that need love, the transactional love, and this is a great sign, this is a symptom of the fact that the red pill lacks emotional intelligence. Women’s emotions have a logic, it’s just that you don’t know what that logic is.
Steve Mayeda: Oh, yeah. [INAUDIBLE 01:25:53]. It’s kill the beta. Kill the boy. Kill the person. Deny yourself and that’s how you get to the fantasy of what that beta that wanted to be an alpha saw as a solution. It’s so weird.
David Tian: Here’s an example of how they basically just, out of their pain, and fear, and insecurity, they make up stories to explain what happened to them and ways that make them into the victim role because it makes you feel better. Victimization, right? We talked about that in the first part.
And here’s a great contradiction in the whole argument. Women are both the most feeling and the most unfeeling of creatures. On the one hand, they want to say, “Women, they’re all emotions and they’re driven by these needs. They’re just emotions, emotions.” That’s the feminine and the unknowability of it.
On the other hand, they’re like, “Women will turn off these emotions like that.” So, they’re the most feeling but they’re also the most unfeeling. And the way that they try to resolve that paradox is just because, well, when it’s convenient for them. When it’s convenient for the bitter man to claim she’s unfeeling now because he doesn’t understand the logic of what happened.
He’s not making her feel special and secure. He’s not giving her his presence. He’s not giving her the right type of attention or reassurance and he’s let himself go. He’s not growing. He’s not growing and probably she’s not growing. There’s so many reasons why your relationship might fall apart, but it’s like, is this a new fact for you guys that you’re not going to find happiness in life if you don’t keep growing?
Is this a brand new awakening to these guys? Like, yeah, if you stop going to the gym, you’re going to start getting fat and not be so attractive. Is that the new idea? You let yourself go? It’s like, “I want a woman that I can let myself go.” There’s this whole quotation in there about some guy he posts on the forum about how he just wants to rest. It’s a super long thing basically saying, “I just want to rest. I want to find a woman to love me so that I can rest. I can stop working so hard. I can stop…”
This is basically David… A lot of the good stuff in here has already been said decades ago by David Deida and the more cutting-edge pickup artists. It’s the same thing, like the masculine temptation. I think that was chapter one of David Deida’s book, Way of the Superior Man, the temptation to want an end.
Like, you want to get to the end of it and to finally be done. This is an immature masculine. So, almost everything, this whole book is just reeking with the fear and insecurity, and the pain, unfortunately, of the immature masculine who is actually a little boy who is hiding behind — actually, probably a preteen, and then he’s hiding another little boy who just wants love and connection and is hiding behind a shouting, railing, flailing older boy.
Until you break past each of those barriers, and heal and grow each of those layers, you’re never going to actually find peace, and contentment, of happiness and fulfillment. And more importantly, what you’re really looking for guys, which is unconditional love. And you have to give that love to yourself first and discover how to do that. And if you continue with this narrative of you’re the victim, you have to be a certain way, take on a new identity as an alpha energy in order to get women to like you, because you’re still giving too much of a fuck, right? Until you drop that whole agenda, you’re never going to find that love.
Steve Mayeda: Yeah. It’s such a weird thing that guys take this seriously and find peace in it. But I guess that’s kind of the state we’re in of how men can be sad. And I get it. When you’re going through divorce, it’s real easy to look at the red pill stuff. A lot of it makes sense and speaks to you.
But man, I’ll tell you this. Like, it’s much easier when you don’t worry about this stuff and you just get that women are women and men are men. And you don’t need to figure out why. You need to figure out how you can build that bond to communicate, to be a complete man. I always say you need to be completed by the opposite of you, and that is part of the feminine man.
If you deny that and you’re solely a man, a life only as a man becomes a life against women. And man, I’ve always thought this, always thought this, and then it becomes a reality more and more just as time goes on. We just have so many people refracted and alone. To be a divorced man is a great thing in the world. It’s beautiful. It sucks for about a year and a half, all that pain, but god, it’s so great.
When we live in a man’s world, and I’m sure if I was a woman, I’d say we live in a great world for women too, but like, to be a man whether you’re single, there’s so much to do and it’s so great. Don’t waste your time looking at the why. And these guys who’ve never prove — who’s proved themselves? I mean, it’s so weird.
David Tian: He attacks solipsism in women, but he commits a solipsistic fallacy, which is that: just because he hasn’t seen it, it doesn’t exist. So, I want to say that’s solipsism right there. That’s the belief that the world is just you, it’s just ultimate self-centeredness. Just because you haven’t found love doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just because you haven’t found a successful relationship doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Steve Mayeda: The thing that I hate about this whole red pill thing is that it’s kind of ironic. It comes from The Matrix, now those two guys who made it are women, but it’s like you’ve taken the red pill. You wake up, you go back to the life you always lived if you take the blue pill. And then if you take the red pill, you’re awoke in this way.
It is such a lie. The biggest lie is to think that you are awakened to a truth. And here’s another thing. If I were to break down what is wrong with the red pill, it’s like evolutionary psychology. They get that wrong and it’s not a hard science and it’s not meant to be a hard science. And I’m not asking for it for to be a hard science, but don’t assume it’s a hard science.
The alpha-beta thing is a huge thing in the red pill, which I think they interpret completely wrong and fucked up, and I just think it’s a fucked up idea in general. The other thing is sexual market value and we kind of talked about that a little bit.
I think I said objective instead of subjective, but sexual market value or one’s worth is a subjective thing, not a hard-line objective thing, which you then [INAUDIBLE 01:32:36].
David Tian: Mating value?
Steve Mayeda: Yeah, that is a little bit different. The other thing too is going to be hypergamy. Also, when it comes to the red pill, there’s this idea of an absolutism or a truth that cannot be broken and is better than anything else, which mirrors any extremist group you’re a part of, you’re the same thing with.
Islam is a great religion, but when it comes down to extreme Muslim beliefs, you get the same thing like, “Oh, if I just know this, I’m now wise. I’ve looked at Reddit on the red pill and now I’ve been enlightened in this way, which makes me smarter than the average fucking chad out there that just thinks he’s got it better than me. I’m better than them and I’m superior because I have this information.”
It’s the same thing with extreme Christianity or whatever political system. This idea of the truth is not based on your experiences, not based on how you’ve been challenged in life and made decisions as yourself making it your own truth, but it’s a truth that can protect you, and make you better than, and make you more powerful.
And once again, you know, you said in psychotherapy, it’s like control is a bad word, but we get into these zones of what I call scarcity and where — you know, there’s a reason for anger, there’s a reason for fear, there’s a reason for control, there’s a reason for boundaries. But when we start making those our main form of communication to people that we don’t know, like we fear them, we judge them, we try and make control or have control over them and so on, this is tremendously unhealthy. And I think that’s the biggest red flag to say that you’re not developing as a man, to saying that you think that that love is a lie and it can’t be true because you gave it your all.
And you’re probably not even willing to look at it if you didn’t give it your all. Men and women are so different. We have to learn that language, and it’s a beautiful thing. And the more you learn that language, the better off you are as a man or a woman exploring those things.
David Tian: That’s great. I guess we should really be wrapping up here as well. Let me summarize on one of the points, which is the the fear and insecurity. And the insecurity that’s driving the red pill agenda, especially in the Rational Male book, comes out of the the fear that you’re not enough, that you’re not good enough. You’re not worthy of love, not good enough for love, not enough for love.
And it’s just, the entire thing is just coming to terms with feeling that way that I’m not good enough. So, I have to be this guy, this Corey Worthington type of alpha or whatever it is, that they have to be different from who they are, and the toxic shame that they have towards who they are. And there is a theme running through it of like, you can’t just be yourself and be loved; that’s just a myth.
And it’s sad because what they’re referring to is just standard AFC. PUA has been saying that for two decades, and there are much better ways of actually coping with that. So, if you’re going to take that tack, just learn some real game. But even deeper is actually tackling the belief that you’re not enough, challenging that, and then how to actually feel in your core, like it’s a real belief, that you are enough and you are worthy of love.
And the way to do that is to start with meeting your own needs that you’re not driven by this fear anymore [INAUDIBLE 01:36:10] security for love and connection, for feeling important. And then the way to go further from that is integration. So, the term that I like to use is integrating your inner child parts into yourself, and growing and healing those parts, and integrating even the feminine energy, learning how to balance that out, being able to relate to the feminine and even grow some of the management of your own feminine energy within you.
Because that’s what’s required for a successful life, it’s not just 100% toxic masculinity, because it becomes toxic at that point… But to get in there 80-20, 70-30 of having that balance, and integrating that into yourself, and ultimately discovering your true self, and leading with that, and being able to interact with others. What that will do is draw out, call out the true self in others, and those women who are integrated themselves, who are developed on the path, on the pathway there who are growing themselves will be drawn to that.
It’ll be almost at an unconscious level. Whereas if you put the false self out and you’re leading with the false self, all you’ll get will be other false selves, because the true selves will be turned off by that and it won’t be something that they can relate to. So, if you continue to go down this road, you’re going to end up with how Tomassi described his wedding…
Steve Mayeda: “I was married to a cuck.”
David Tian: Normal… Yeah. Even if you do get married, it’ll be normal, common, becomes — or becomes so, not boring per se, though it is more often than not, that fear that there will be no more sex once you move in together, and then you can’t spin plates anymore, all of that fear and insecurity. It’s such a horrible life. And I think red pill guys know it, if you’re just starting down that road.
It just feels like yuck. It feels like, “Okay, I got awoken to…” Matrix is a good example. You look at how shitty the world is. It’s sort of like, and I’ll tell you, the answer is, actually, you have to take another red pill. It’s the red pill for self-discovery, self-awareness, and grow it. This isn’t the reality. This isn’t true reality. There’s something much more beyond this, a lot more color in the rainbow. You’re just looking at one or two colors.
Steve Mayeda: You know, it’s funny because this idea you’re not enough, the red pill blames society, and all of your power comes from evolution. But the definition of alpha isn’t based on evolution, it’s based off of society. And then the sexual market value… And let me just rewind because I know people are going to question. If Rollo Tomassi or any of these guys get challenged on what alpha means, they’re like, “Oh well, it doesn’t mean the pack of wolves guys.” What are we, stupid?”
It’s like, “No, we’re not stupid. We’re asking you the question because you’re using the term because you’re saying, “All of my power comes from my evolution as a man, what it means to be a man.” You’re using terms which don’t define what’s going to help you. So now, alpha is this cool term because everybody knows it, it’s because it’s an evolutionary term, because we’re talking about evolutionary psychology, but really, it means confidence based on society which damaged you.
When you look at Tomassi, he would never survive in an alpha world of what he’s saying men came from. He’s the ultimate bitch. Maybe he’s even the penultimate bitch because he’s second to everybody. But the thing is, is that then we look at sexual market value. It isn’t based on evolution. It’s based on, “Oh, muscles.” And the shape of the body. But then how to get there is societal based things. How can we hack society in this sort of way?
Hypergamy… I mean look, how we evolved if hypergamy is existing would have been represented completely different. There’s problems in our culture, no doubt, but to make yourself think that it is an evolutionary thing so that you could buy into truth, so that you could have power, so that you could represent yourself in a way that can’t be argued and that you could believe in and not look at yourself as part of the problem, that is a circle and a cycle of shit that you’re going to eat for the rest of your life.
If you want to know the David Tian version of that, there’s probably some psychological term of denial and delusion. And that’s so terrible. Nothing is true in this. Like, the red pill, the truth that you’re supposed to take, unveiling the reality of the world keeps you deeper in a world that is a greater lie. And to see the truth isn’t taking a fucking pill or reading a book. It’s living in such a dynamic way to show yourself as you to people and to learn to deal with the pain of that.
And people aren’t going to like you, and you’re going to get screwed over, and you’re going to get fucked worse than you could ever protect yourself. But then you’re going to learn to live through things that you never thought you could live through, and that’s the beauty of it, man.
When you hear a lot of these guys talk about PTSD and trauma, which is a real, real thing and a terrible thing, and it has unique characteristics, they don’t even look [INAUDIBLE 01:41:29]. They just use it as an excuse to diagnose themselves or give reason to why they’re angry. But trauma is accentuated in a culture — or trauma has a different result psychologically in a culture that can’t allow somebody to be a part of something, and that’s what I think we’re dealing with here.
We need more connection and more openness. And the less that we have that, the more we’re just going to see this crazy stuff and see it justified to be angry all the way up to we get school shooters or all the way up to just hating a woman, to thinking that that’s how you’d be a man.
David Tian: That’s great, man. That’s so inspiring. So, to end off, I guess on the community thing, Steve’s got a great community. Don’t go in there trying to push your red pill shit, but he’s got a great community. So, we’ll link that up below. I also have a Facebook group, please join that. Again, we’re probably not going to let you do a whole bunch of red pill bullshit.
Steve Mayeda: You guys are good with that. You’re good at answering questions and you’re good at moderating. It’s pretty impressive, man.
David Tian: Yeah. It’s like a full-time job almost now, moderating that. But yeah, please join either of our groups. There’s a lot of free resources as part of those groups. I’m also going to link up a four-part video series that I’ve mentioned before called Modern Mating Explained that will speak directly to the red pill condition, that’s a good phrase, the red pill condition, and how to heal and grow from it. So, I’ll link that down below.
Steve, it was such a great pleasure. I wish we had a longer period of time so we can really dive deep and it was great hearing your stories and your perspectives. So thankful for having you on here.
Steve Mayeda: Yeah. You got it, man. Thanks for having me. You guys have a good one.
David Tian: All right. Peace out.
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