Going to bed before midnight

Short morning meditation with visualization

Cold morning shower to make me more alert

Holding my frame with a goal-oriented mindset and no anxiety

No movies or TV series

No social networks

No procrastination on the internet

No simple sugars or junk food

No eating after 7 pm

No stress and pressure

No traveling

No porn, video games or gambling

No new contracts or tasks that aren’t connected to my new goals

No reading fiction or using apps that aren’t connected to my goals

No over-analyzing whether I’m making a mistake by being in monk mode and stressing myself out (this is
what I’m going to do for a minimum of 6 months, a maximum of 12 months, and period)

No judging and worrying about what other people think of me and my monk mode

No dealing with haters whatsoever

No replying to e-mails that aren’t connected to my new path and my goals

No shopping and living as frugally as possible

I will cook my own meals as many times as possible

Sexual gratification of any kind – Complete abstinence if possible

Intermittent checking of smartphones – In line, when bored, etc.

Needless conversation for the sake of conversation

Purposeful and selective isolation** – Conscious withdrawal from social obligations

Spending deep work sessions on important projects

Skill-based learning intended to increase standing in life

Completing backlogged tasks that were constantly pushed to “tomorrow”

You’ll want to keep a journal. This will allow you to observe your day-to-day feelings and moods in
addition to noting any changes you witness in your internal and outward disposition.

Meditation/mindfulness is an essential part of monk mode. Meditation is a way to enter the silence of
your person and transcend thoughts and feelings, allowing you access to a deeper presence (God).

3. Follow a Plan

Reflect. Take plenty of time to yourself and reflect on who you are, where you come from and where
you’re going.

4. Don’t Forget to Exercise

RULE 2: 30 MIN WORKOUT IS A MUST

Rule 7: No Fantasizing

3. Discipline yourself

The need for stimulation (mental, physical, social and otherwise)

Pessimism or malaise resulting from prolonged isolation

Push back from friends and family

Temptations of pride or superiority over others

Self-loathing as you become more aware of your

#7 Cut Out Pointless Noise

Eliminate Gluttony In All Its Forms

In addition to glutting ourselves on endless distractions from media, we also drown out our inner voice
with excessive enjoyment of food, drink, and more.

So one important facet of monk mode is identifying and eliminating your sources of gluttony ー
excessive enjoyment of physical pleasures. Here are some of the temptations you should consider
cutting out completely or severely restricting:
Sweets and sugary drinks

Caffeine

Alcohol

Snacks between meals

Fast food

Drugs

Pornography and sex

#11 Schedule Time For Deep Work

Work, Work, Work

Productivity Gain

Highly driven: it’s a must for you guys

Stop waiting. Feel everything. Love achingly. Give impeccably. Let go.”

“If you want real passion, you need a ravisher and a ravishee; otherwise, you just have two buddies who
decide to rub genitals in bed.”

“Ongoing sexual passin requires “polarity”, a masculine pole, and a feminine pole, it doesn’t matter who
takes on those roles, but the dynamic and the exchange of energy is necessary for true passion.”
“You must recognize and accept which pole you gravitate towards.”

“These concepts are for people who recognize men and women’s euqliaty, while alwso recognizing their
varying masculine and feminie energies and how those energies play out in relationships and sex.”

“Most men make the error of thinking that one day it will be done. They think, “If I can work enough,
then one day I could rest.” Or, “One day my woman will understand something and then she will stop
complaining.” Or, “I’m only doing this now so that one day I can do what I really want with my life.” The
masculine error is to think that eventually things will be different in some fundamental way. They won’t.
It never ends. As long as life continues, the creative challenge is to tussle, play, and make love with the
present moment while giving your unique gift.”

“It’s never going to be over, so stop waiting for the good stuff. As of now, spend a minimum of one hour a
day doing whatever you are waiting to do until your finances are more secure, or until the children have
grown and left home, or until you have finished your obligations and you feel free to do what you really
want to do. Don’t wait any longer. Don’t believe in the myth of “one day when everything will be
different.” Do what you love to do, what you are waiting to do, what you’ve been born to do, now.”

“The feminine always seems chaotic and complicated from the perspective of the masculine.”

“You can’t escape the tussle with the feminine. Learn to find humor in the unending emotional drama
the feminine seems to enjoy so much. The love that you magnify may realign her behavior, but your
effort to fix her and your frustration never will.”

“Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease, or
women. Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you
can to give it today. Every moment waited is a moment wasted, and each wasted moment degrades your
clarity of purpose.”

“If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in
the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place.”
“Admit to yourself that if you had to choose one or the other, the perfect intimate relationship or
achieving your highest purpose in life, you would choose to succeed at your purpose. Just this self-
knowledge often relieves much pressure a man feels to prioritize his relationship when, in fact, it is not
his highest priority.”

“Tell your woman that you love her, but you cannot deny your heart’s purpose. Tell her that you will
spend 30 minutes (or some specific time) with her in absolute attention and total presence, but then you
must return to carry on your mission.”

“Your fear is the sharpest definition of your self. You should know it. You should feel it virtually
constantly. Fear needs to become your friend, so that you are no longer uncomfortable with it.”

“Few men are willing to give their deepest genius, their true endowment, the poetry of their very being,
with every thrust of sex and life. Most men are limpened with doubts and uncertainties. Or they hold
back their true drive because of fear. So they diddle their woman and the world just enough to extract
the pleasure and comfort they need to assuage their nagging sense of falsity and incompleteness.”

“The other way is to “fuck” both to smithereens, to ravish them with your love unsheathed, to give your
true gifts despite the constant tussle of woman and world, to smelt your authentic gifts in this friction of
opposition and surrender, to thrust love from the freedom of your deep being even as your body and
mind die blissfully through a crucifixion of inevitable pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion, gain
and loss. No gifts left ungiven. No limit to the depth of being. Only openness, freedom, and love as the
legacy of your intercourse with woman and world.”

“About once a week, you should sit down with your closest men friends and discuss what you are doing
in your life and what you are afraid of doing. The conversation should be short and simple. You should
state where you are at. Then, your friends should give you a behavioral experiment, something you can
do that will reveal something to you, or grant more freedom in your life.”

“Good friends should not tolerate mediocrity in one another. If you are at your edge, your men friends
should respect that, but not let you off the hook. They should honor your fears, and, in love, continue to
goad you beyond them, without pushing you.”
“Choose men friends who themselves are living at their edge, facing their fears and living just beyond
them. Men of this kind can love you without protecting you from the necessary confrontation with
reality that your life involves.”

“The superior man is not seeking for fulfillment through work and woman, because he is already full. For
him, work and intimacy are opportunities to give his gifts, and be vanished in the bliss of the giving.”

“Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and
useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure.”

“Whereas many women waste precious time swirling in emotional currents and eddies, many men waste
their birth seeking the completion of tasks. Nose to the grindstone, day after day, year after year, and
you become a robot of duty. Rather, raise your eyes, see to the horizon, and do your tasks in the spirit of
sweeping out your house on a sunny day.”

“The masculine grows by challenge, but the feminine grows by praise. A man must be unabashed and
expressed in his appreciation for his woman. Praise her freely…Praise motivates. Challenge doesn’t. Try
it. Praise specific things you love about your woman 5 to 10 times a day. Find out what happens.”

“Instead of tolerating your woman’s moods of closure and complaint, open her moods with your skillful
loving. It is your gift to give. Both of you will grow more by your giving than by your tolerating. A superior
man sees his woman’s moods not as a curse, but as a challenge and an amusement. There are many
ways to creatively deal with her moods and help her to open. Tickle her. Take off your clothes and dance
the watusi. Sing opera for her. Make animal sounds. Shout at her louder than you ever have and then
kiss her passionately. Press your belly into her until she melts. Lift her off the ground and spin her
around. Occasionally, talking with her helps, but not as often as humor and physically expressed love.”

“The amazing thing is this: 90% of a woman’s emotional problems stem from feeling unloved. So don’t
stand back and analyze her, like a doctor diagnosing a patient, or like a therapist questioning a client.
Give her your love—the same love that is motivating your questioning—immediately and unmistakably.
Walk over to her, look deeply into her eyes, hold her and stroke her, tell her how much you love her,
smile, hum her favorite song and dance with her, and chances are, her emotional problem will
evaporate. She may still have some situation to deal with, and you may be able to help her with that, but
the emotional aspect will be converted to love.”

“[Getting to do anything they want] is exactly the opposite of most women’s idea of an ideal birthday
present. Most women would get far more excited if you were to say, “You’ve got 30 minutes to pack your
bags. Don’t ask me where we’re going, but we’ll be gone for the weekend. Everything is taken care of.
Just pack your bags, and leave the rest to me. I’m going to give you the best birthday you’ve ever had.”

“When was the last time you really ravished your woman? That is, when was the last time you really
“took” her, savagely, lovingly, with no inhibition whatsoever? Or, has it been so long that you are
fascinated and even turned on by rape scenes on TV or in the movies?”

“The difference between rape and ravishment is love.”

“One part of your woman is happy she made you come. She is happy you are relaxed and enjoying
yourself. Another part of her is disappointed that you’ve allowed yourself to choose a temporary and
pleasurable spasm over the endless ravishment of her and the world.”

On non-ejaculatory orgasm:

“The first step is undoing the habits you learned while masturbating as a teenager. Instead of tensing
your muscles as you become sexually stimulated, learn to relax them. When you notice your face
squinching up, relax it. When you notice your breath getting fast and shallow, slow it down and deepen
it. When you notice your belly tight and your chest hard, open your belly and soften the area around
your heart.”

“The next step is to redirect your attention. Learn to feel your partner more than your own sensations
during sex. Rather than curling attention into yourself and feeling the pleasures moving in your own
body, feel outward, into, and through your partner. Feel your partner more than you feel yourself. Feel
her movement, her moans, and her internal energy.”
“Think of tonight as a video game. It is not real. Every time you do an approach, you are playing this
game.”

““The number one characteristic of an alpha male is the smile,” he said, beaming an artificial beam.
“Smile when you enter a room. As soon as you walk in a club, the game is on. And by smiling, you look
like you’re together, you’re fun, and you’re somebody… Besides confidence and a smile, we learned, the
other characteristics of an alpha male were being well-groomed, possessing a sense of humor,
connecting with people, and being seen as the social center of a room.”

“the three-second rule. A man has three seconds after spotting a woman to speak to her, he said. If he
takes any longer, then not only is the girl likely to think he’s a creep who’s been staring at her for too
long, but he will start overthinking the approach, get nervous, and probably blow it.”

““Never,” Sin admonished me in his adenoidal voice, “approach a woman from behind. Always come in
from the front, but at a slight angle so it’s not too direct and confrontational. You should speak to her
over your shoulder, so it looks like you might walk away at any minute.”

“Women are sick of generic guys asking the same generic questions: “So where are you from?… What do
you do for work?” With our patterns, gimmicks, and routines, we were barroom heroes, saving the
female of the species from certain ennui.”

“The PUAs have a name for this: They call it one-itis. It’s a disease AFCs get: They become obsessed with
a girl they’re neither dating nor sleeping with, and then start acting so needy and nervous around her
that they end up driving her away.”
“…lions bite each other’s mane during sex, and how pulling the back of the hair is another evolutionary
trigger.”

“Most men make the mistake of believing that an attractive woman who doesn’t talk to or acknowledge
him is a bitch. Most of the time, however, she’s just as shy or insecure as the less attractive women he’s
ignoring— if not more so.”

“In some respects, surfing reminded me of sarging. Some days you go out and catch every wave and
think you’re a champ; other days you don’t get one good wave and you think you suck. But no matter
what, every day you go out and you learn and you improve. And that’s what keeps you coming back.”

“Girls don’t respect guys who buy them drinks.”

“The key to physical escalation, David DeAngelo had said in his seminar, is always two steps forward, one
step back.”

“And as a knight he has been trained to observe a strict code of conduct, which includes the rule of
never asking questions or speaking unless he is addressed first. So he goes to bed without talking to the
king. In the morning, he wakes to discover that the grail castle has disappeared. He has blown his chance
to save king and country by obeying his training instead of his heart. Unlike the scorpion, Parsifal had a
choice. He just made the wrong one.”
“Seduction is a game of psychology, not beauty, and it is within the grasp of any person to become a
master at the game. All that is required is that you look at the world differently, through the eyes of a
seducer.”

“What will seduce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how
much they are worth.”

“Seducers take pleasure in performing and are not weighed down by their identity, or by some need to
be themselves, or to be natural.”

“Every seduction has two elements that you must analyze and understand: first, yourself and what is
seductive about you; and second, your target and the actions that will penetrate their defenses and
create surrender.”

The Seductive Character

Successful seduction starts with who you are and the type of seductive energy you express. It requires
creating yourself, or refining yourself, in one of the seducer categories.

Sirens have an abundance of sexual energy and know how to use it.

They lure in their targets, like the sirens of Odysseus, through their image and teases. Crafting the
perfect seductive pose for their target.

Rakes insatiably adore the opposite sex, and their desire is infectious.

Unlike the normal, cautious male, the Rake is delightfully unrestrained, a slave to his love of women.
There is the added lure of his reputation: so many women have succumbed to him, there has to be a
reason.

Remember: it is the form that matters, not the content. The less your targets focus on what you say, and
the more on how it makes them feel, the more seductive your effect. Give your words a lofty, spiritual,
literary flavor the better to insinuate desire in your unwitting victims.

To play the Rake, the most obvious requirement is the ability to let yourself go, to draw a woman into the
kind of purely sensual moment in which past and future lose meaning. You must be able to abandon
yourself to the moment.

If no obstacles face you, you must create them. Seduction requires obstacle.
Ideal Lovers have an aesthetic sensibility that they apply to romance.

Casanova was perhaps the most successful seducer in history; few women could resist him. His method
was simple: on meeting a woman, he would study her, go along with her moods, find out what was
missing in her life, and provide it. He made himself the Ideal Lover.

But appeal to their better selves, to a higher standard of beauty, and they will hardly notice that they
have been seduced. Make them feel elevated, lofty, spiritual, and your power over them will be limitless.

Talleyrand simply held up a mirror to Napoleon and let him glimpse that possibility. People are always
vulnerable to insinuations like this, which stroke their vanity almost everyone’s weak spot. Hint at
something for them to aspire to, reveal your faith in some untapped potential you see in them, and you
will soon have them eating out of your hand.

Dandies like to play with their image, creating a striking and androgynous allure.

Most of us feel trapped within the limited roles that the world expects us to play. We are instantly
attracted to those who are more fluid, more ambiguous, than we are— those who create their own
persona. Dandies excite us because they cannot be categorized, and hint at a freedom we want for
ourselves.

Dandies seduce socially as well as sexually; groups form around them, their style is wildly imitated, an
entire court or crowd will fall in love with them. In adapting the Dandy character for your own purposes,
remember that the Dandy is by nature a rare and beautiful flower. Be different in ways that are both
striking and aesthetic, never vulgar; poke fun at current trends and styles, go in a novel direction, and be
supremely uninterested in what anyone else is doing. Most people are insecure; they will wonder what
you are up to, and slowly they will come to admire and imitate you, because you express yourself with
total confidence.

Naturals are spontaneous and open.

Coquettes are self-sufficient, with a fascinating cool at their core.

Coquettes seem totally self-sufficient: they do not need you, they seem to say, and their narcissism
proves devilishly attractive.

People are inherently perverse. An easy conquest has a lower value than a difficult one; we are only
really excited by what is denied us, by what we cannot possess in full. Your greatest power in seduction is
your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction.

To understand the peculiar power of the Coquette, you must first understand a critical property of love
and desire: the more obviously you pursue a person, the more likely you are to chase them away.

Self-esteem is critical in seduction. (Your attitude toward yourself is read by the other person in subtle
and unconscious ways.) Low self-esteem repels, confidence and self-sufficiency attract. The less you
seem to need other people, the more likely others will be drawn to you.
Charmers want and know how to please— they are social creatures.

Charmers do not argue or fight, complain, or pester— what could be more seductive?

First, they don’t talk much about themselves, which heightens their mystery and disguises their
limitations. Second, they seem to be interested in us, and their interest is so delightfully focused that we
relax and open up to them. Finally Charmers are pleasant to be around. They have none of most people’s
ugly qualities— nagging, complaining, self-assertion.

Charismatics have an unusual confidence in themselves.

Learn to create the charismatic illusion by radiating intensity while remaining detached.

Creating the air of charisma:

Purpose. If people believe you have a plan, that you know where you are going, they will follow you
instinctively The direction does not matter: pick a cause, an ideal, a vision and show that you will not
sway from your goal.Mystery. Mystery lies at charisma’s heart, but it is a particular kind of mystery— a
mystery expressed by contradiction, by having conflicting traits.Saintliness. Most of us must compromise
constantly to survive; saints do not. They must live out their ideals without caring about the
consequences. The saintly effect bestows charisma.Eloquence. A Charismatic relies on the power of
words.Theatricality. A Charismatic is larger than life, has extra presence.Uninhibitedness. Most people
are repressed, and have little access to their unconscious— a problem that creates opportunities for the
Charismatic, who can become a kind of screen on which others project their secret fantasies and
longings.Fervency. You need to believe in something, and to believe in it strongly enough for it to
animate all your gestures and make your eyes light up.Vulnerability. Charismatics display a need for love
and affection.Adventurousness. Charismatics are unconventional.Magnetism. If any physical attribute is
crucial in seduction, it is the eyes. They reveal excitement, tension, detachment, without a word being
spoken.

People do not want to hear that your power comes from years of effort or discipline. They prefer to think
that it comes from your personality, your character, something you were born with.

Stars are ethereal and envelop themselves in mystery.

People are hopelessly susceptible to myth, so make yourself the hero of a great drama. And keep your
distance— let people identify with you without being able to touch you. They can only watch and dream.

First, you must have such a large presence that you can fill your target’s mind the way a close-up fills the
screen.

Second, cultivate a blank, mysterious face, the center that radiates Starness.

The Anti-Seducer: those who repel

Anti-Seducers come in many shapes and kinds, but almost all of them share a single attribute, the source
of their repellence: insecurity.

It is critical to recognize anti-seductive qualities not only in others but also in ourselves. Almost all of us
have one or two of the Anti-Seducer’s qualities latent in our character, and to the extent that we can
consciously root them out, we become more seductive.

The Brute: Who has no patience, who wants to skip the seduction, who offends with egotism.

The Suffocator: Those who cling incessantly to you, love you before you know who they are, or who
make themselves a doormat to you in their obsession.

The Moralizer: Who wants you to bend to their standard.

The Tightwad: Cheapness displays more insecurity beyond money.

The Bumbler: The awkward speaker, who makes others feel awkward too.

The Windbag: Who won’t shut up.

The Reactor: Who is terrified to have their ego damaged.

The Vulgarian: Who ignores the rules of the game, presents a garrish image, does not play the game and
yet expects to win.

It is rather because wordless communication (through clothes, gestures, actions) is the most pleasurable,
exciting, and seductive form of language.

The 18 Types of Seducer Victims

Never try to seduce your own type.

People are constantly giving out signals of what they lack, you have to tune in to these signals and
interpret their type based on them.

The Reformed Rake or Siren: They desperately long to escape whatever corralled them in, what is
preventing them from being their normal freely sexual self.

The Disappointed Dreamer: They long for adventure, but are stuck in a boring lifestyle.

The Pampered Royal: The long to be swept off their feet by a prince charming and let them live out their
fantasy of being pampered and treated like royalty.

The New Prude: excessively concerned with their outward appearance, underneath they want to release,
but they fear judgement. They must feel like they’re sharing some secret with you…
The Crushed Star: No longer the center of attention, they long to have that sense of being adored back.

The Novive: They want to at least feel that you’re somewhat “young” too, but are also excited by the
possibility of being introduced to a new, darker world…

The Conquerer: You must give them an obstacle to overcome, a mission, a goal.

The Exotic Fetishist: They want novelty, new experiences, things on the edge, you must position yourself
as something exotic.

The Drama Queen: They long for drama in their lives, so you’ll need to help create it in order to keep
them rapt.

The Professor: They analyze and think deeply about everything, but long to be overwhelmed by a more
free spirit who can help them release their mental barrier.

The Beauty: Used to being appreciated, you must focus on the less complimented features like her
intellect or wit.

The Aging Baby: Still immature and wanting a supportive parent, you must enable their childish desires
while still occasionally reeling them in.

The Rescuer: They long to feel like they’re saving someone from themselves, you must make them feel
that they can “save” you from something and they will become obsessed. Let her be your maternal
protector.

The Roué: Experienced in life, they desire to educate someone more naive.

The Idol Worshipper: You must become their object of worship that provides the meaning in life that
they seek.

The Sensualist: Driven by their senses, you must overwhelm their site, smell, and touch, to fully draw
them in.

The Lonely Leader: Act as their equal or superior, the kind of relationship they rarely have.

The Floating Gender: Float with them.

Seduction Phase 1: Separation, Stiring Interest and Desire

Choosing the right victim

The right victims are those for whom you can fill a void, who see in you something exotic.

To leave people who are inaccessible to you alone is a wise path; you cannot seduce everyone.

Never rush into the waiting arms of the first person who seems to like you. That is not seduction but
insecurity.
People who are outwardly distant or shy are often better targets than extroverts. They are dying to be
drawn out, and still waters run deep.

On the other hand, you should generally avoid people who are preoccupied with business or work—
seduction demands attention, and busy people have too little space in their minds for you to occupy.

Creating a False Sense of Security, Approach Indirectly

Once you have chosen the right victim, you must get his or her attention and stir desire. To move from
friendship to love can win success without calling attention to itself as a maneuver.

First, your friendly conversations with your targets will bring you valuable information about their
characters, their tastes, their weaknesses, the childhood yearnings that govern their adult behavior.

Second, by spending time with your targets you can make them comfortable with you.

Then, surprise their expectations with an errant touch or suggestion, make them now interested.

There is nothing more effective in seduction than making the seduced think that they are the ones doing
the seducing.

The first move to master is simple: once you have chosen the right person, you must make the target
come to you.

Too much attention early on will actually just suggest insecurity, and raise doubts as to your motives.
Worst of all, it gives your targets no room for imagination. Take a step back; let the thoughts you are
provoking come to them as if they were their own.

In all arenas of life, you should never give the impression that you are angling for something— that will
raise a resistance that you will never lower. Learn to approach people from the side.

Send Mixed Signals

What is obvious and striking may attract their attention at first, but that attention is often short-lived; in
the long run, ambiguity is much more potent. Most of us are much too obvious —instead, be hard to
figure out.

To deepen their interest, you must hint at a complexity that cannot be grasped in a week or two.

If you have a sweet face and an innocent air, let out hints of something dark, even vaguely cruel in your
character.

Appear to Be an Object of Desire: Create Triangles

You see a man alone, whom nobody talks to for any length of time, and who is wandering around
without company; isn’t there a kind of self-fulfilling isolation about him? Why is he alone, why is he
avoided? There has to be a reason.
When people’s vanity is at risk, you can make them do whatever you want. According to Stendhal, if
there is a woman you are interested in, pay attention to her sister. That will stir a triangular desire.

Men who believe that a rakish reputation will make women fear or distrust them, and should be played
down, are quite wrong. On the contrary, it makes them more attractive.

Create a need, stir anxiety and discontent

People are always susceptible to being seduced, because in fact everyone lacks a sense of completeness,
feels something missing deep inside. Bring their doubts and anxieties to the surface and they can be led
and lured to follow you.

Make people anxious about the future, make them depressed, make them question their identity, make
them sense the boredom that gnaws at their life. The ground is prepared. The seeds of seduction can be
sown.

Master the Art of Insinutation

There is no known defense, however, against insinuation— the art of planting ideas in people’s minds by
dropping elusive hints that take root days later, even appearing to them as their own idea. Make
everything suggestive.

Enter Their Spirit

Play by their rules, enjoy what they enjoy, adapt yourself to their moods. In doing so you will stroke their
deep-rooted narcissism and lower their defenses.

Create Temptation

As the serpent tempted Eve with the promise of forbidden knowledge, you must awaken a desire in your
targets that they cannot control. Find that weakness of theirs, that fantasy that has yet to be realized,
and hint that you can lead them toward it.

Find that childhood insecurity, that lack in their life, and you hold the key to tempting them. Their
weakness may be greed, vanity, boredom, some deeply repressed desire, a hunger for forbidden fruit.
They signal it in little details that elude their conscious control: their style of clothing, an offhand
comment.

Phase 2: Lead Astray — Creating Pleasure and Confusion

Keep Them In Suspense, what comes next?

Behave in a way that leaves them wondering, What are you up to? Doing something they do not expect
from you will give them a delightful sense of spontaneity— they will not be able to foresee what comes
next.

There are all kinds of calculated surprises you can spring on your victims— sending a letter from out of
the blue, showing up unexpectedly, taking them to a place they have never been. But best of all are
surprises that reveal something new about your character.

Reliability is fine for drawing people in, but stay reliable and you stay a bore. Dogs are reliable, a seducer
is not.

Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion

Inflame people’s emotions with loaded phrases, flatter them, comfort their insecurities, envelop them in
fantasies, sweet words, and promises, and not only will they listen to you, they will lose their Will to
resist you.

A woman was beautiful, yet lacked confidence in her own wit and intelligence? He made sure to say that
he was bewitched not by her beauty but by her mind.

Pay Attention to Detail

Poeticize Your Presence

You can be dangerous, naughty, even somewhat vulgar, depending on the tastes of your victim. But
never be ordinary or limited. In poetry (as opposed to reality), anything is possible.

The only thing that cannot be idealized is mediocrity, but there is nothing seductive about mediocrity.
There is no possible way to seduce without creating some kind of fantasy and poeticization.

Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability

The best way to cover your tracks is to make the other person feel superior and stronger. If you seem to
be weak, vulnerable, enthralled by the other person, and unable to control yourself, you will make your
actions look more natural, less calculated.

Remember: what is natural to your character is inherently seductive. A person’s vulnerability, what they
seem to be unable to control, is often what is most seductive about them.

A woman, for instance, may be attracted by a man’s strength and self-confidence, but too much of it can
create fear, seeming unnatural, even ugly.

Confuse Desire and Reality— The Perfect Illusion

Your task as a seducer is to bring some flesh and blood into someone’s fantasy life by embodying a
fantasy figure, or creating a scenario resembling that person’s dreams.

Isolate the Victim

Separate them from their environment physically, emotionally, and mentally, so they can become further
engrossed with you.

Phase 3: The Precipice, deepening the effect through extreme measures

Prove Yourself

Do not worry about looking foolish or making a mistake— any kind of deed that is self-sacrificing and for
your targets’ sake will so overwhelm their emotions, they won’t notice anything else.

Cleverly lead your victim into a crisis, a moment of danger, or indirectly put them in an uncomfortable
position, and you can play the rescuer, the gallant knight.

Effect a Regression

Stir Up the Transgressive and Taboo

Making your targets feel that you are leading them past either kind of limit is immensely seductive.
People yearn to explore their dark side.

But we are strange animals: the moment any kind of limit is imposed, physically or psychologically, we
are instantly curious. A part of us wants to go beyond that limit, to explore what is forbidden.

The most blatant way to do this is to engage in behavior that gives you a dark and forbidden aura.
Theoretically you are someone to avoid; in fact you are too seductive to resist.

Use Spiritual Lures

Everyone has doubts and insecurities —about their body, their self-worth, their sexuality. If your
seduction appeals exclusively to the physical, you will stir up these doubts and make your targets self-
conscious. Instead, lure them out of their insecurities by making them focus on something sublime and
spiritual: a religious experience, a lofty work of art, the occult.

Mix Pleasure with Pain

Lure them in with focused attention, then change direction, appearing suddenly uninterested. Make
them feel guilty and insecure. Even instigate a breakup, subjecting them to an emptiness and pain that
will give you room to maneuver

Your seduction should never follow a simple course upward toward pleasure and harmony. The climax
will come too soon, and the pleasure will be weak. What makes us intensely appreciate something is
previous suffering.

Without tension, without anxiety and suspense, there can be no feeling of release, of true pleasure and
joy. It is your task to create that tension in the target, to stimulate feelings of anxiety, to lead them to and
fro, so that the culmination of the seduction has real weight and intensity. So rid yourself of your nasty
habit of avoiding conflict, which is in any case unnatural. You are most often nice not out of your own
inner goodness but out of fear of displeasing, out of insecurity.

Phase 4: Move in for the kill

Give Them Space to Fall— The Pursuer Is Pursued

Stir the pot by seeming interested in someone else. Make none of this explicit; let them only sense it and
their imagination will do the rest, creating the doubt you desire.

Understand: a person’s willpower is directly linked to their libido, their erotic desire. When your victims
are passively waiting for you, their erotic level is low. When they turn pursuer, getting involved in the
process, brimming with tension and anxiety, the temperature is raised.

Use Physical Lures

While your cool, nonchalant air is calming their minds and lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice,
and bearing— oozing sex and desire— are getting under their skin, agitating their senses and raising
their temperature.

Second, be alert to the signs of physical excitation. Blushing, trembling of the voice, tears, unusually
forceful laughter, relaxing movements of the body (any kind of involuntary mirroring, their gestures
imitating yours), a revealing slip of the tongue— these are signs that the victim is slipping into the
moment and pressure is to be applied.

Master the Art of the Bold Move

One person must go on the offensive, and it is you.

Beware the Aftereffects

Stir the pot, even if that means a return to inflicting pain and pulling back. Never rely on your physical
charms; even beauty loses its appeal with repeated exposure. Only strategy and effort will fight off
inertia

Maintain your mystery and lightness

Avoid the slow burnout, Once you feel disenchanted and know it is over, end it quickly, without apology.
Once you are truly disenchanted, there is no going back, so don’t hang on out of false pity. It is more
compassionate to make a clean break. If that seems inappropriate or too ugly, then deliberately
disenchant the victim with anti-seductive behavior.
Five principles of mating success:

Make decisions based on science, not bias

Account for the woman’s perspective

Own your attractiveness

Be honest with yourself and others, don’t try to “game it”

Play to win-win, don’t see it as competitive

This leads to a five step process….

Get your head straight

Develop attractive traits

Display attractive proofs

Go where the women are

Take action

Getting your head straight

The only effective strategy for gaining real confidence is to develop skills and demonstrate performance
of those skills.

In any domain, you have to go through the valley of genuinely low confidence before you can reach the
peak of genuinely high confidence.

Metaconfidence: the more skills you learn and master, the more you’ll be confident about picking up
new ones

Mating confidence is the result of developing confidence in all the areas women desire.

Developing attractive traits:

To be an “effective male” and thus attractive, you need to demonstrate the traits that make you effective
at life, and to demonstrate the ability to use those traits to provide for a woman what she needs for
reproductive success.

In terms of priorities, start by not sucking, then get awesome.

Three primary concerns in assessing male value:

Does he carry good genes? “the ultimate evolutionary fantasy is finding a new male lover who has
awesome traits that testify to his great genetic quality, who is from a strange new tribe that offers
genetic innovations unavailable domestically, and who is worth getting pregnant with tonight even if he
gets killed in battle tomorrow.”

Will he be a good partner?

Would he make a good dad?

“Attraction is an emotional, unconscious reaction to the suite of traits men present to women; it is NOT a
conscious decision that they deliberate about.”

Get in shape. Develop a cool life that you like. Be interesting, smart. Develop willpower.

Display attractive proofs:

Social proof: show that people like you and respect you, project confidence.

Financial proof: you don’t have to be a millionare, but you have to be able to provide. Live reasonably,
have fun, don’t be a workaholic, like your work, show creativity on dates instead of money, value
experiences over possessions.

Aeshetic proof: Dress well, take care of yourself, develop attractive skills like music or craftsmanship,
learn to dance, learn to tell stories

Romantic proof: show and share your feelings, respect her having greater emotional needs than you do,
be respectful, caring, compassionate, cuddle

Go where the women are:

Find good mating markets, women don’t compare you against all the men in the world, they compare
you to the other men they have access to.

Be clear in what you want. Short term? Long term? Partner? Casual sex? Know what you want before
you go looking for anything.
Find activities that you enjoy where you’re likely to meet the kinds of women you’re interested in. What
do they do for fun? What does their social circle look like? Where would your hobbies overlap?

Taking Action

8 rules for good conversation

Be a good host, make sure the conversation is enjoyable and interesting

SOFTEN your body language (Smile, Open posture, Forward lean, Touch, Eye contact, Nod)

Establish commonality, find something in common, talk about your currently shared reality

Gauge and respond to feedback

Don’t seem too excited or too aloof

Ask questions and listen to her responses. Think of conversations as a detective game where your goal is
to learn as much about her as possible.

Respond with validation, insight, or debate (yes, disagreeing is good, so long as it’s respectful and in fun)

Be vulnerable

Good dates

Should be able to afford doing it twice a week

Make it fun, something she would tell her friends about

Do something where you can display positive proofs

Create a “default date plan” that meets these criteria:

Weekday evening (probably Wed or Thurs), earlier on like happy hour time

Easy out and easy escalation. If it’s bad, a way to go after an hour, but if it’s good a “next stop” to go to
(e.g. dinner, dancing).

Cheap but not boring

You don’t have to be rich and famous to be attractive, but you should display the qualities that show you
have potential to be rich and famous, which is indicated by your social status and behavior, which is
indicated by how you behave around others, how others behave around you, and how you treat yourself.

Both men and women are aroused by being desired, but since female arousal is more psychological than
male arousal, the sense of “being desired” is even stronger in determining a woman being attracted to a
man. This is why the more physical assertiveness you pursue a woman with, the more aroused she
becomes, even if she wasn’t interested in you to begin with. Bold and aggressive pursuit can turn a
woman on to the point where she comes around and wants to get to know you. (The pickup term for this
is “sarging”)

“It’s important to relate this back to the original dichotomy of female attraction and arousal mentioned
earlier in the chapter. Status attracts women, but by itself, it only attracts them in a way that they want
to be your girlfriend, not jump your bones. It’s a psychological, long-term, identity-level attraction. On
the other hand, being physically assertive and sexually forthright triggers a woman’s sexual arousal and
makes her want to have sex, often right then and there, and often even if she rejects your advances two
or three or ten times.”

How attractive a man is is proportional to his True Confidence, simply, being less invested in other
people’s perceptions of you than in your perception of yourself.

The way to build true confidence and become more attractive is to invest heavily in oneself, women are
typically more attracted to men who are more invested in themselves than they are in them.

“If you’re at the top of the food chain, you have no reason to be inhibited or to defer to others (unless
you want to). If you’re at the bottom of the food chain, your entire life will revolve around the deferring
to others.”

Set very high standards and stick to them, don’t waste time with anyone who doesn’t meet those
standards. This goes for casual sex and serious dating, know what you want and what you’ll put up with,
and what you won’t. If someone isn’t meeting those standards, move on.

“So the catch is that everything you say must be as authentic as possible. There’s no shortcut. There are
no tricks. You say it because you mean it and mean it because you say it. The more nervous it makes you,
the better, because it means you’re being authentic and making yourself vulnerable. How attractive you
are is based on your confident behavior. Your confident behavior is based on how vulnerable you’re able
to make yourself. And how vulnerable you’re able to make yourself is based on how honest you are to
yourself and others.”

Don’t try to “be cool” and “act like you’re not interested,” by honestly expressing your interest in dating
someone, you shortcut the “invsetment paradox” and demonstrate both interest and confidence at the
same time. If a guy weren’t fearless about being rejected, he wouldn’t have the confidence to honestly
express his attraction to a woman. This is “True Honesty”.

What you actually say doesn’t matter nearly as much as why and how you say it.

Dating Strategy

Rejection is a good thing, it saves you time filtering them out later.

If you don’t find a woman attractive, don’t approach her. It’s not practice, it’s desperation.

Think of splitting women you’re interested in into three categories: Receptive, Neutral, and Unreceptive:

Unreceptive is when they’re simply not interested for whatever reasons in their life. Don’t waste time
trying to win them over.
Neutral is when a woman is on the fence about a guy. Men usually know yes/no whether we want to
sleep with someone quickly, women spend more time in the grey zone.

Women don’t stay here forever though, they will always polarize one way or the other, and if you don’t
show clear interest in them then they will move towards unreceptive (i.e. the Friend Zone)

The goal with neutral women is to take polarizing action that forces them to decide if they like you or
not: touch them, ask them out, tease them, flirt with them, etc.

Showing desire isn’t a problem, but showing it in a way that communicates being overinvested is.

Receptive women are already sexually attracted to you. You can tell from them initiating with you (eye
contact, approaching, touching, etc), or reciprocating your advances enthusiastically.

Reciprocating is leaning in to your touch, making an effort to stay near you, touching you back, etc.

Your strategy will be different depending on which category a woman is in:

As soon as she’s clearly unreceptive, ditch her, or keep her as a friend. Don’t try to move them out of
unreceptive, it’s not worth it.

The goal with Neutral women is to get them to stop being neutral as soon as possible.

“If you express your truth and demonstrate not only that you’re confident but also frictionless for her
(similar interests, values, life situation, etc.), then she will become very Receptive. And when I say very
Receptive, I mean very.”But don’t try to act in a way to make every woman like you, then you’re pining
for approval again. You need to elicit a reaction, good or bad.You do this by making yourself vulnerable,
sharing yourself unabashedly, and polarizing her one way or the other and being comfortable with
whichever result.Mark’s Favorite question for neutral women: “What’s Your Favorite Thing in the
World”?

Receptive women you just need to escalate with, don’t treat them like their Neutral or Unreceptive. If a
woman moves from Neutral to Receptive, and you don’t escalate, she’ll drift back to Neutral, so you have
to keep the momentum.

“The percentage of women who are Receptive to you will increase proportionally to the quality of your
lifestyle, your social status and your looks. The percentage of women that you’re able to move from
Neutral to Receptive will be proportional to how good your “game” is, or how well you’re able to
communicate and express yourself with women. And your ability to sort through each type of women
and meet as many as possible will be determined by how fearless and bold you are when it comes to
meeting women.”

The Three Fundamentals

Creating an attractive and enriching lifestyle. (Honest living)

Overcoming your fears and anxiety around women. (Honest action)

Mastering the expression of your emotions and communicating fluidly. (Honest communication)

Honest Living

“What I recommend to every man before he even begins talking to women is to sit down for a while and
ask himself some questions:

What do you value in a woman? Honesty? Affection? Intelligence? Curiosity? Similar interests?
Education?

Women with the traits that you value, where do they frequent? Where are you most likely to find them?

What do you enjoy doing most? Do you love to read/write? Do you play music? Do you enjoy sports and
competitions? What are events or organizations that you can become involved in that explore your
hobbies?

How to be interesting:

Develop artistic tastes

Try new things

Have opinions – the easiest way to be interesting is to have an opinion one way or the other, and not
worry about people being insulted by your opinion

Honest Action

“I personally think anxiety is the biggest culprit when it comes to preventing men from being attractive
and successfully meeting and dating women. You remove anxiety, and trial-and-error will take care of
most of the rest.”

How to break your own pattern:

Take a moment and think about what you’re most anxious about. Is it approaching? Is it showing sexual
interest? Is it asking a woman out? Is it the first kiss?

Now write down your pattern with it. So for instance, “Calling women, pattern is apathy,” or
“Approaching women, pattern is blame game.”

Now, create a goal for yourself, for instance, “Call every phone number I get, no matter how much I don’t
care.” Write it down.

Tell a friend or a buddy what you plan on doing and ask him to keep you accountable.

To up motivation, masturbate only once a week without porn.

Attack anxiety through consistent, incremental exposure:

Approach a few womaen each day just to ask for the time

Once that stops feeling difficult, ask them how their day is going afterwards

Keep making it harder until you can walk up to women by telling them you think they’re attractive and
asking them out on a date.

“Greater boldness leads to greater polarization” and “always err on the side of aggression.”

Honest Communication

There’s no such thing as a guy who’s good with women who isn’t sometimes creepy. If you’re open about
your sexuality, that’s going to weird some women out, but that’s fine since you don’t want them anyway.

“For instance, let’s say you meet a woman and just come right out and say, “I think you’re beautiful, I’d
like to take you on a date.” it’s one of the most powerful and practical things you can say. Not only is it
vulnerable, as we’ve discussed at length, but it also builds far more sexual tension. ”

Improving your honest, more deep communication:

Becoming aware of your own emotions, motivations and life story.

Taking the lead by sharing those emotions, motivations and life story first.

Sharing first creates trust and encourages her to open up and share herself in return.

Ideally, the more this goes on, the more personal the stories become and the deeper the emotions in
which you connect with.
“When in doubt on how to approach a woman, simply walk up and introduce yourself and explain to her
that you wanted to meet her. I know this sounds drab and boring. But remember, it’s not about
entertaining her; it’s about exuding confidence and genuine interest in her. During the day, I often prep
the introduction by saying something like, “Excuse me, this is kind of random…” Also during the day, I
usually tell them that I think they’re cute.

SMILE!

If you’re getting a lot of rejections, it’s one of these problems:

You’re presenting yourself poorly — i.e., you dress poorly, bad looks, bad style, bad body language.
Review Chapters 8 and 9 again.

Your intentions are off. You’re approaching for the wrong reasons. The wrong reasons include anything
that is not, “She’s cute, I want to meet her.”

You’re startling her / trying too hard / not smiling

Questions Versus Statements: Creating threads of conversation through statement is far more powerful
than questions. This is because it assumes rapport and makes conversations more personally instantly.

Instead of asking her a question about herself, you guess the answer to your question and then state it.
Here are some examples:

“Where are you from?” translates to: “You look like a California girl.”

“What do you do for work?” translates to: “You seem to be a creative person. I bet your job is
interesting.”

“How do you guys know each other?” translates to: “You guys look like you’ve been friends for a long
time.”

You should cold-read as much as possible. Any time you’re asking a question that requires a factual
answer; take a stab at the answer instead of asking.

It’s better to be random and interesting than predictable and boring. Don’t be afraid to just blurt
something out.

If you teach yourself to recognize jump off points and take advantage of them as soon as possible, you’ll
be able to sustain a conversation with almost anybody indefinitely.

Dates

Break a date into 3 distinct chunks, don’t just go do one thing. At least one of the three things should
have opportunities for touching and closeness:

Meet for coffee -> get ice cream down the street -> check out the big swing in the park -> shopping at
quirky book store

Salsa class -> Drinks next door afterwards -> walk around neighborhood -> Your apartment

Interactive Improv comedy show -> Walk through the local park -> Dancing at a lounge near her place

If you tihnk you can kiss her, you probably could have 10 minutes ago.

“We each sit alone, staring at this black screen with a whole range of emotions. But in a strange way, we
are all doing it together, and we should take solace in the fact that no one has a clue what’s going on.”

“We want something that’s very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go. In the past, people weren’t
looking for something boiling; they just needed some water. Once they found it and committed to a life
together, they did their best to heat things up. Now, if things aren’t boiling, committing to marriage
seems premature. But searching for a soul mate takes a long time and requires enormous emotional
investment. The problem is that this search for the perfect person can generate a lot of stress. Younger
generations face immense pressure to find the “perfect person” that simply didn’t exist in the past when
“good enough” was good enough.”

“Since our expectations are so high, today people are quick to break things off when their relationship
doesn’t meet them (touch the hair, no boner). Cherlin would also like me to reiterate that this hair/
boner analogy is mine and mine alone.”

“Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children
and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all
these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate
lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to
give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me
continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge.
Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given,
and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.”

“…the muscles in our brain that help us with spontaneous conversation are getting less exercise in the
text-filled world, so our skills are declining.”

“It made me wonder whether our ability and desire to interact with strangers is another muscle that
risks atrophy in the smartphone world. You don’t need to make small talk with strangers when you can
read the Beverly Hills, 90210 Wikipedia page anytime you want. Honestly, what stranger can compete
with a video that documents the budding friendship of two baby hippopotamuses? No one, that’s who.”

“As a medium, it’s safe to say, texting facilitates flakiness and rudeness and many other personality traits
that would not be expressed in a phone call or an in-person interaction.”

““After I left he texted me, ‘Hi [name redacted], this is [first name, last name], we’re going on a date.’ His
confidence, straightforwardness, and refreshingly gentlemanly approach (vs. skirting around ‘lets hang
out some time’) made for an incredible first impression and had a lasting effect.””
Good texting:

A firm invitatoin to something specific at a specific time

A throwback to something that happened in a previous interaction

A humorous tone

There is no official guidebook anywhere on texting yet, but a cultural consensus has slowly formed in
regard to texts. Some basic rules:

Don’t text back right away. You come off like a loser who has nothing going on.

If you write to someone, don’t text them again until you hear from them.

The amount of text you write should be of a similar length to what the other person has written to you.

Carrying this through, if your messages are in blue and the other person’s messages are green, if there is
a shit ton more blue than green in your conversation, this person doesn’t give a shit about you.

The person who receives the last message in a convo WINS!

“However, the women were most attracted to the “uncertain” group. They also later reported thinking
about the “uncertain” men the most. When you think about people more, this increases their presence
in your mind, which ultimately can lead to feelings of attraction.”

Online Dating:

“Now, those results are not very surprising, but what’s weird is that men actually fare better when they
are not smiling and are looking away from the camera. Whereas women did worse when they didn’t
make eye contact, for guys, looking away was much more effective. This seems really counterintuitive.
These are good photos? What are they looking at?”

“Oddly enough, for men the most effective photos are ones with animals, followed by showing off
muscles (six-packs, etc.), and then photos showing them doing something interesting. Outdoor, drinking,
and travel photos were the least effective photo types.”

“Most intriguing to me, though, was when Rudder looked at the data of what photos led to the best
conversations. Whereas “cleavage” shots of women got 49 percent more new contacts per month than
average, the images that resulted in the most conversation showed people doing interesting things.
Sometimes faces didn’t even need to appear. A guy giving a thumbs-up while scuba diving. A woman
standing in a barren desert. A woman playing a guitar. These photos revealed something deeper about
their interests or their lives and led to more meaningful interactions.”

“If you are a guy, take a shot of yourself holding your puppy while both of you are spelunking.”

“Laurie Davis, author of Love at First Click and an online dating consultant, advises her clients to
exchange a maximum of six messages before meeting off-line.”

Choice and Options:

“That’s the thing about the Internet: It doesn’t simply help us find the best thing out there; it has helped
to produce the idea that there is a best thing and, if we search hard enough, we can find it. And in turn
there are a whole bunch of inferior things that we’d be foolish to choose.”

“In one of our subreddit threads we asked people to tell us about their best first dates, and it was
amazing to see how many involved doing things that are easy and accessible but require just a bit more
creativity than dinner and a movie… more interesting dates = more romantic success.”

“The couples that did the novel and exciting activities showed a significantly greater increase in
relationship quality.”

“Initially, we are attracted to people by their physical appearance and traits we can quickly recognize. But
the things that really make us fall for someone are their deeper, more unique qualities, and usually those
only come out during sustained interactions.”

“There’s something uniquely valuable in everyone, and we’ll be much happier and better off if we invest
the time and energy it takes to find it.”

“Stack the deck in your favor. Go on interesting dates. Follow the “monster truck rally” theory, and do
things that are going to help you experience what it’s really like to be with this person.”

“We’re better off spending quality time getting to know actual people than spending hours with our
devices, seeing who else is out there.”
“When I’m single, I want to be in a relationship. When I’m in a relationship, I miss being single. And worst
of all, when the relationship ends and my captor-lover finally moves on, I regret everything and don’t
know what I want anymore.”

“Perhaps marriage is like buying a house: You plan to spend the rest of your life there, but sometimes
you want to move— or at least spend a night in a hotel. “So if you were so happy with this other woman
and so unhappy with your wife, why didn’t you just get divorced?””

“You don’t have time to think. If you ever want to be truly happy in this lifetime, you have to recognize
that you’re using sex like a drug to fill a hole. And that hole is your self-esteem. Deep down, you feel
unlovable. So you try to escape from that feeling by conquering new women. And when you finally go
too far and hurt Ingrid, all it’s going to do is reinforce your original belief that you’re not worthy of love.”

“In this life, we don’t meet many people who truly love us, who accept us for who we are, who put us
before themselves. Maybe a parent or two if we’re lucky, perhaps a couple of previous partners. So what
kind of person rewards someone’s love with lies, betrayal, and pain? A selfish person. A coldhearted
person. A thoughtless person. An asshole. A liar. A cheater. A guy who thinks with his dick. Me.”

““Exactly. To survive painful beliefs and feelings, we often mask them with anger. That way, we don’t
have to feel the shame behind it.””

““Being overcontrolled as a child sets you up to lie as an adult,” she concludes. “So the theory of sex
addiction is that when you feel out of control or disempowered, you sneak around and act out sexually
to reestablish control and regain your sense of self.””

““Intimacy problems come from a lack of self-love,” she continues. “Someone who fears intimacy thinks,
unconsciously, If you knew who I actually was, you’d leave me.””

““I’d be willing to bet that after the high of the intensity, there’s a comedown, and you feel not so great
and you need that next hit of intensity,” Lorraine responds coolly. “So ultimately, you can live your life
like a hamster on a wheel, chasing after the next hit to keep yourself spinning. Or you can realize that
ultimately it’s all a distraction to avoid the harsh reality that you are not connected to yourself.””

“I used to think that intelligence came from books and knowledge and rational thought. But that’s not
intelligence: It’s just information and interpretation. Real intelligence is when your mind and your heart
connect. That’s when you see the truth so clearly and unmistakably that you don’t have to think about it.
In fact, all thinking will do is lead you away from the truth and soon you’ll be back in your head, groping
with a penlight in the dark again.”

“There’s one thing I’ve been striving for all my life: with sex, with writing, with surfing, with partying,
with anything and everything. And that is to be free. It’s the one feeling I never had growing up.”

“So far, it sounds like their open relationship has just as much drama as a closed relationship. And the
drama is about the same thing: trust. Perhaps the reason friendships tend to last longer than
relationships is that most of them don’t come with rigid rules and exclusivity clauses.”

“But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in
the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that’s when all
the forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed. I share this with Veronika and teach her
about the different ego states. Soon, we’re connected again.”

“I sit in silence, processing this. In my heart, I know she’s right. I spent all year thinking that if somehow I
found the right relationship, my problems would magically disappear. But the one relationship I didn’t try
was the one with myself. For a love avoidant, I’ve done a good job of constantly having some sort of
girlfriend for the last eight years. Maybe that’s because there’s no better place to hide from intimacy
than in a relationship.”
Stop hoping for a completion of anything in life

“As long as life continues, the creative challenge is to tussle, play, and make love with the present
moment while giving your unique gift,” writes Deida. Things never end, so don’t act like they will.
Embrace the fight and march ahead.

• Live with an open heart even if it hurts

Boys don’t cry—according to the old macho ideal. According to the Way of the Superior Man, they do
when they need to, because it is much better to live with a hurting, than a closed heart. Don’t act: stay
and act from inside the wound of pain.

• Live as if your father were dead

Both literally and metaphorically. A man must love his father, but he must never allow to live in his
shadow. That’s why, in strictly Freudian manner, it is essential to kill your father.

• Know your real edge and don’t fake it

Each man has a capacity for growth, i.e. a limit. Don’t forget this. Because “where a man’s edge is located
is less important than whether he is actually living his edge in truth, rather than being lazy or deluded.”

• Always hold to your deepest realization

Find your why and hold onto it. Do anything necessary to discover your purpose and then organize your
life around it.

• Never change your mind just to please a woman

Holding onto your why means not being a wimp: never betray your purpose for a woman.
• Your purpose must come before your relationship

“Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship,”
writes Deida. “If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself,
disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer her full, undivided
presence.”

• Lean just beyond your edge

Don’t stay in your comfort zone. Freedom is all about pushing your limits. Lean just beyond your edge
and do this constantly. In everything you do.

• Do it for love

“The way a man penetrates the world should be the same way he penetrates his woman,” says Deida in
an oft-quoted sentence of this chapter, “not merely for personal gain or pleasure, but to magnify love,
openness, and depth.”

• Enjoy your friends’ criticism

Women are hurt by criticism: this is, after all, their nature. Men, however, should never be. They should
always be open to receiving direct criticism from other men and make use of it. This is the sign of the
Superior Man.

• If you don’t know your purpose, discover it, now

Back to your purpose. What are you doing without it, man? Men without a purpose are not only lost and
drifting, they are also sexually impotent and incapable of putting things into motion.

• Be willing to change everything in your life

If your purpose doesn’t align with your form of living, you must be prepared to alter absolutely
everything about yourself to make amends and start living the life you were destined to.

• Don’t use your family as an excuse

“A man should, of course, be a full participant in caring for children and the household,” writes Deida in a
controversial sentence, “but if he gives up his deepest purpose to do so, ultimately, everyone suffers.”

• Don’t get lost in tasks and duties

There is nothing more important than your purpose. Everything else is just a bunch of minutiae. Don’t let
yourself get lost in these everyday tasks and duties. Focus on what’s important.

• Stop hoping for your woman to get easier

In a way, a woman is created to test her man—in the form of “complaining, challenging him, changing
her mind, doubting him, distracting him, or even undermining his purpose in a subtle or not so subtle
way.” Appreciate and embrace this. Because, as Deida writes:

The most loving women are the women who will test you the most. She wants you to be your fullest,
most magnificent self. She won’t settle for anything less. She knows it is true of you. She knows in your
deepest heart you are free, you are Shiva. Anything less than that she will torment. And, as you know,
she’s quite good at it.

Part Two: Dealing with Women

On the subject of women—in part two, Deida explains how a man should deal with them in the proper
manner. And he shares seven insights and practical bits of advice:

• Women are not liars

The word “lying” is a masculine word, in the sense that only men are consistent and can lie or tell the
truth. Women, being emotional, say how they feel at the present moment. “A man’s word is his honor,”
says Deida. “A woman’s word is her true expression in the moment.”

• Praise her

Men grow by challenge, while women by praise. So, praise your woman freely and unabashedly.
• Tolerating her leads to resenting her

In yet another somewhat paradoxical piece of advice, Deida claims that while a man should love a
woman and serve her with every ounce of his being, he “shouldn’t tolerate bitchy and complaining
moodiness.” Tolerating leads to resenting, and resenting to breaking up or divorcing.

• Don’t analyze your woman

As we said above, women are not consistent. And because they change constantly, no analysis will ever
pin them down. Accept your woman the same way you accept the weather: even the storms are part of
a pattern that promises a sunny day just around the corner.

• Don’t suggest that a woman fix her own emotional problem

A big no-no: the feminine is “pure energy in motion” and self-analysis or fixing are negation of this. And
if the suggestion for something like that comes from you—that’s even worse!

• Stay with her intensity—to a point

Apparently, when a woman gets emotionally intense, the superior man is capable of penetrating her
mood “with imperturbable love and unwavering consciousness.” Try doing that and stop being the
mediocre man who wants to discuss things over.

• Don’t force the feminine to make decisions

One of the foundational masculine traits is taking responsibility. And making decisions comes with this.
Forcing your woman to make decisions—or even allowing her this—may backfire, because, unlike men,
women don’t feel comfortable taking responsibility.

Part Three: Working with Polarity and Energy

As the old wisdom says: opposites attract. Here’s Deida take on this:

• Your attraction to the feminine is inevitable

About 80% of all men have a more masculine sexual essence, says Deida, and all of these men are
attracted to all things feminine (radiant women, music, nature, beer, etc.) It is simply inevitable. Don’t
hide this attraction: allow it flourish.

• Choose a woman who is your complementary opposite

Love is a simple equation according to Deida: “If a man is very masculine by nature, then he will be
attracted to a very feminine woman, who will complement his energy. The more neutral or balanced he
is, the more balanced he will prefer his woman. And, if a man is more feminine by nature, his energy will
be complemented by the strong direction and purposiveness of a more masculine woman.”

• Know what is important in your woman

As can be deduced from the quote above, the more masculine a man is, the better it is not only for him,
but for his woman as well. Because the more masculine is, the more he will crave for his woman’s
feminine energy, giving her a chance to develop in the right direction.

• You will often want more than one woman

There is no way to avoid this. However, there is a way to not act upon it. And you shouldn’t—because it
eventually ends up complicating your life much more than anything else.

• Young women offer you a special energy

Even old men like younger women, and young men rarely like older women. Why? Because “youth in a
woman bespeaks radiant, unobstructed, and refreshing feminine energy.”

• Each woman has a “temperature” that can heal or irritate you

Time for another generalization: there are “hot” and “cool” women. If you need a stereotype, dark-
skinned, brunette, red-headed, Korean, and Polynesian women are hot, and blonde, light-skinned,
Japanese, and Chinese women are cool. It is irritating to have a hot woman when you need someone to
cool you, and vice versa. Understand the temperature of feminine energy and choose wisely.

Part Four: What Women Really Want

Just like Mel Gibson in the similarly-titled movie, Deida knows precisely what women want. And he
shares his findings in the fourth part of The Way of Superior Man.

• Choose a woman who chooses you

Evolutionary biologists mostly share this opinion: it’s the ladies who choose. Deida phrases this thus: “If
a man wants a woman who doesn’t want him, he cannot win.” So, choose a woman who choose you to
be her partner.

• What she wants is not what she says

Men and women speak different languages, so don’t try to hard to understand your woman. Instead,
think of her outbursts and illogical beliefs as tests, and pass them by magnifying love, consciousness, and
success in your woman’s life, in spite of her requests.

• Her complaint is content-free

Don’t believe the literal content of a woman’s complaint. Just like babies’ cries, a woman’s complaints
are warning bells and indications of a mood. Act accordingly, and never steer away from your purpose.

• She doesn’t really want to be number one

“Although she would never admit it,” writes Deida, a woman “wants to feel that her man would be
willing to sacrifice their relationship for the sake of his highest purpose.” So, don’t treat her as if she is
more important than that, once again, in spite of her requests.

• Your excellent track record is meaningless to her

Even if you are perfect for ten years, thirty minutes of idiotism will cause your woman to forget your
excellent track record. Men base their opinion of women on their past behavior, but for women this is
irrelevant.

• She wants to relax in the demonstration of your direction

Take charge: financially, sexually, emotionally, and spiritually. A woman can relax only if you take the
wheel and steer the course independently from her.
Part Five: Your Dark Side

Don’t allow, for a second, to lose track of your dark side. A woman wants a man’s dark side. In fact, that
is precisely what she wants in a man: the monster, the killer, in him. (Think Fifty Shades of Grey, for
example).

• You are always searching for freedom

“The masculine is always seeking release from constraint into freedom,” writes Deida. “The feminine
often doesn’t understand these masculine ways and needs.” Regardless of the latter: try to find your
freedom.

• Own your darkest desires

It is dark the masculine force; if you disown it, you are kinking its hose and. thus, you weaken your
masculine capacity to face the unknown while still being able to love your woman.

• She wants the “killer” in you

Fearlessness is “a quintessential form of the ultimate masculine gift.” A woman is turned off by men who
are afraid: she wants someone capable of killing a mouse without blinking, someone ready to face
everything that comes along the way, no matter how scary.

• She needs your consciousness to match her energy

“The feminine destructress must be met by the masculine destroyer. The goddess of devotion must be
met by the god of all-pervading love.” Equal the energy of your woman with appropriate consciousness:
all other ways lead to destruction.

Part Six: Feminine Attractiveness

What makes the feminine in a woman attractive? Here’s what:

• The feminine is abundant

In women, there is never a shortage of feminine energy. There is, however, “resistance to receiving,
trusting, and embracing it.” Open your heart and stop resisting: Life itself is the feminine.

• Allow older women their magic

Men shouldn’t compare older women to younger women: they should allow the former to be wise and
powerful, intuitive and healing.

• Turn your lust into gifts

Don’t deny your sexual attraction to a woman, but don’t disperse it in mental fantasies as well. Let it
circulate through your body and fill your heart.

• Never allow your desire to become suppressed or depolarized

A man must cultivate a polarized relationship to his woman and his world: this is the only way for him to
remain in relationship with either. If you deny your desire for the feminine, you depolarize yourself, and
that leads to impotence and purposelessness.

• Use her attractiveness as a slingshot through appearance

“A man’s attraction to women must be converted from attraction to women into attraction through
women,” writes Deida. “He must feel through her beauty, into the very delight of which her beauty is but
a ripple and reminder. His whole relation to appearance is epitomized in his relation to women, either as
obsession, distraction, or revelation.”

Part Seven: Body Practices

You know you want to hear Deida’s opinion on sex. So let’s talk about the physical aspect of relationship
a bit!

• Ejaculation should be converted or consciously chosen

If you don’t have control over your ejaculation, then you cannot meet your woman’s needs. You must
learn to convert the ejaculation “into non-ejaculatory whole body, brain, and heart orgasms.” Whatever
that is.
• Breathe down the front

“The principal bodily key to mastering the world and women is maintaining a full and open front of the
body at all times,” suggest Deida. “The best method is through full and relaxed breathing, drawing
energy down the front, and freeing attention from neurotic self-concern.”

• Ejaculate up the spine

Through the use of breath, feeling, and intention, you can contract the pelvic floor near the genitals and
draw some energy up the spine. The result is a rejuvenating orgasm, which Deida poetically describes as
an explosion of energy into the brain, from where it rains down through the body “like an ambrosial
bliss.”

Part Eight: Men’s and Women’s Yoga of Intimacy

The final part of The Way of the Superior Man is dedicated on something Deida calls the “yoga of
intimacy.” Here are his final instructions which should help you become a more evolved form of a man.

• Take into account the primary asymmetry

The only way for a relationship to work between a man and a woman is for them to respect each other’s
priorities. The more masculine a man is, the more important his mission is to him; the more feminine a
woman is, the more important an intimate relationship is to her. How one can solve this “primary
asymmetry” through something more than just “taking it into account,” we don’t know. But one must—
for a relationship to work.

• You are responsible for the growth in intimacy

A woman is responsible for her man’s bodily energy (i.e., erections), and a man is responsible for the
woman’s openness of mood and depth of love. In other words, the “direction of growth of a relationship
is primarily the man’s responsibility”

• Insist on practice and growth

A macho man’s way of dealing with his woman is “My way or the high way.” Mr. Nice Guy’s way is the
way of compromise or even self-negation: “OK, your way.” But a Superior Man’s way is the way of
inspiring his woman to tread the path that most serves her growth in love and happiness.

• Restore your purpose in solitude and with other men

A woman strengthens her feminine radiance best “in the company of other women in mutual
celebration and play.” A man, on the other hand, restores his purpose mainly in solitude, when faced
with challenges, or in the company of other men like him. Arrange for all of these forms of restoration.

• Practice dissolving

“Like dissolving in the intensity of an orgasm, a man’s greatest desire is to be utterly released,” writes
Deida in his final lesson, once again in a poetic manner. “Die in the giving of your gift, so you don’t even
notice you have stopped holding onto yourself. Fear is your final excuse. Don’t fight it. Love through it.”

Key Lessons from “The Way of the Superior Man”

1. Your Purpose Comes First, Your Women Come Second

2. Embrace Both Your Masculinity and Your Woman’s Femininity

3. Own Your Darkest Desires

Your Purpose Comes First, Your Women Come Second

“Your mission is your priority,” writes Deida in the first part of The Way of the Superior Man. “Unless you
know your mission and have aligned your life to it, your core will feel empty. Your presence in the world
will be weakened, as will your presence with your intimate partner.”

So, the next time you notice yourself “giving in” to your woman and denying your true purpose to spend
time with her, Deida advises that you should stop.

“Tell your woman that you love her,” he says, “but you cannot deny your heart’s purpose. Tell her that
you will spend thirty minutes (or some specific time) with her in absolute attention and total presence,
but then you must return to carry on your mission.”
Supposedly, this should work. (Our note: it rarely will).

Embrace Both Your Masculinity and Your Woman’s Femininity

Deida believes that men are women are profoundly different and that the more attuned each of the
sexes is to their ancestral and essentially unchangeable yin/yang energy, the more intense and stronger
their sexual and spiritual union will be.

A man who is not embracing his masculine energy (i.e., who spends a lot of time combing his hair and/or
buying clothes) opens a vacuum for this kind of energy that must be filled by the woman who, in turn, is
thus stimulated to act more manly.

The bottom line: the more masculine a man is, the more space he allows his woman to embrace her
femininity, and vice versa.

Own Your Darkest Desires

“The masculine is always seeking release from constraint into freedom,” says Deida, which is why a man
must always be ready to own his darkest desires. Without doing this, he is purposefully limiting his
freedom, which, as we said above is possibly the basic masculine trait.

If you are not free, you’ll never be able to find your life purpose, face your fears and lead a relationship.
And without this, you’ll never be the man you can be and you’ll never give your woman the chance to
see the best version of you.

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“The Way of the Superior Man Quotes”

Every moment waited is a moment wasted.CLICK TO TWEET

A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn’t aware of his
fear.CLICK TO TWEET
One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy is precisely not to have to always figure it out for her
man and guide him.CLICK TO TWEET

Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.CLICK TO TWEET

You must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor.

-Be a perfect houseguest

-Fight like a gentleman using the art of bartitsu

-Help a friend with a problem

-Give a man hug

-Perform a fireman’s carry

-Ask for a woman’s hand in marriage

-Raise resilient kids

-Predict the weather like a frontiersman

-Start a fire without matches

-Give a dynamic speech

-Live a well-balanced life

hunger for the masculine

The male initiation ceremonies of all cultures is a deepening, a forced discovery of the dark side. Women
can’t initiate men. In many cultures, a boy is taken off from the women who have so far managed his life,
and made to live among older men for a while. Modern society has few structures for initiation, and boys
can spend their teenage years prolonging their freedom, manifested in wild behaviour, rudeness to
parents (particularly the mother), and clothing and music that attracts attention.

Millions of men have grown up with an environment of feminine energy – which is isn’t a problem in
itself but boys also need the masculine. Men start to think more about their fathers as they get older,
and mythology has a lot to say about the heaviness of ‘entering the Father’s house’, leaving behind the
expectation of lightness and comfort to face grim reality. Bly says Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, is
an elaborate metaphor for this process of moving from the mother’s side to the father’s.

Coming to ground

A man may spend his twenties and thirties as a sort of ‘flying boy’; in his imagination, nothing can hold
him down. But for a man to be made whole, there has to be something that rips him open, a wound
which allows soul to enter. In many myths, a wild animal gets close enough to a young man to gore his
leg; in the Iron John story, it is a knight who chases after the prince and stabs him in the leg. As he falls
off his horse, the golden hair he has hidden from everyone underneath the helmet is revealed. Until then
he has seemed two-dimensional. Appreciation of pain and sorrow, Bly says, is as vital to a man’s
potentiality as having the ability to soar through the air.

Re-awakening the warrior

Warrior energy, if not honoured or channelled, ends up expressed as teen gang warfare, wife beating,
paedophilia, and feelings of shame. If used rightly, it can become a source of delight to all in its
refinement. How else, Bly asks, can we explain the unconscious admiration for the glorious knight, or a
man in starched white uniform and medals? This image represents the civilisation of warrior energy.

The author also calls for the warrior spirit and occasional ‘fierceness’ to be used in relationships. He
quotes Jung, who said that American marriages were ‘the saddest around because the man reserved all
his fighting for the office’. At home he was a pussycat. Fierceness involves protecting what is rightfully
yours, and women want to know what a man’s boundaries are.

Bly makes the important distinction between the Wild Man and the savage man. The savage is the type
who has wrecked the environment, abused women and so on, his inner desperation having been pushed
out onto the world as a disregard or hatred of others. The Wild Man has been prepared to examine
where it is he hurts; because of this he is more like a Zen priest or a shaman than a savage. The Wild
Man is masculinity’s highest expression, the savage man its lowest.

A civilized man tries to incorporate his wildness into a larger self. When the prince in the story risks all
and goes into the forest with the Wild Man, the parents simply think their boy has been taken by the
devil; in fact it is a profound initiation, an awakening. Bly’s message is that the modern obsession with
making childhood a cocoon of light closes children off to sources of power. Addictions and psychological
disorders mirror society’s inability to accommodate the ‘dark side’.

Bly believes that New Age thinking about harmony and higher consciousness holds a dangerous
attraction to naive men. Mythology beckons us to enter fully into life, with all its blood and tears and joy;
the way we achieve full realisation of ourselves is to focus on ‘one precious thing’ (an idea, a person, a
quest, a question) and the decision to follow it at any cost is the sign of maturity. When we make a clear
choice, the King inside us awakens and our powers are finally released.

Colours of a life

In Iron John, the prince, disguised as a knight, rides a red then a white then a black horse. These colours
have a logical symbolic progression in relation to a man’s life: the ‘redness’ of his emotions and unbridled
sexuality in younger years; the ‘whiteness’ of work and living according to law; and the ‘blackness’ of
maturity in which compassion and humanity have the chance to flower.

In the later years of his presidency, Bly says, Lincoln was a man in black. He had seen it all. No longer
ruled by his emotions (red) or some external set of principles or law (white), he had ceased to blame,
and had developed a brilliant, philosophical sense of humour. You tend to know a man who has begun to
move into the black because he is really trusted. There are no hidden corners, because he has fully
incorporated his shadow.

Final word

Why has Bly’s retelling of a fairy tale appealed to millions of Western men?
Iron John has been told around campfires for millennia. Unfortunately, like an inheritance that lies
uncollected, many men did not know exactly what they had missed, but this book’s impact suggests that
many overdue claims for genuine masculinity are now being made - and women and the rest of society
will be better off for it too.

The men who may laugh at a book like this are probably the ones who need it the most. The most
destructive types tend to be those with the least developed powers of self-examination, and women
should welcome any efforts to revive a forceful, but non-destructive, spirit of masculinity. What Iron John
has done for men, Women Who Run With The Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes) has achieved for women,
and is highly recommended.

Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and
ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an
endangered species. For though the gifts of wildish nature belong to us at birth, society’s attempt to
“civilize” us into rigid roles has muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy
tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the
fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in
this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against
our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates divides the soul into three parts: the rational, spirited, and desiring
elements. The presence of the so-called “spirited element” ( to thumoeides or thumos) in the Republic
adds an element of complexity to Platonic psychology not found in earlier dialogues. Prior to the
Republic, when the subject of psychology comes up, the human personality is usually defined in terms of
a simple dichotomy between reason and desire. The prominence of the spirited element in the Republic
has long posed a problem of interpretation for scholars. As Angela Hobbs points out, the spirited
element or thumos is associated with a wide range of attributes not usually thought to cohere: “anger,
aggression and courage; self-disgust and shame; a sense of justice, indignation and the desire for
revenge; obedience to the political authorities though not necessarily to one’s father; a longing for
honour, glory and worldly success; some interest in the arts but a fear of intellectualism; a preference for
war over peace and increasing meanness over money” (p.3). In her thoughtful and important book,
Hobbs (hereafter H.) examines Plato’s thinking on the nature of courage and manliness.

In the manner of Homeric ring-composition, H. begins and ends the book with the treatment of courage
in the Republic, describing its close relationship to the spirited element of the soul, the thumos. In the
middle chapters, she analyzes in detail the treatment of courage in earlier dialogues, the Laches,
Protagoras, and Gorgias, and then briefly draws into the discussion the Apology, Hippias Major and
Hippias Minor. H. treats the earlier dialogues in some detail in order to argue that Plato was unable
properly to account for the virtue of courage as long as his psychological thinking was based on the
dichotomy between reason and desire. Only in the Republic, when the autonomy of the thumos was
recognized, was Plato able to provide an adequate account of the workings of courage. The Homeric
ring-compositional element of the book’s structure, beginning and ending with the Republic, serves to
reinforce the significant role that Homeric poetry, according to H., plays in the development of Plato’s
mature psychology. Plato’s thumos emerges as a kind of “living repository of Homeric values” (p.141,
n.14), an element of the soul that the philosopher wishes to harness and control through the
educational scheme of the Republic. H. gives further validity to Arthur Adkins’ succinct observation,
“Scratch Thrasymachus and you find Agamemnon,”1 except that Achilles rather than Agamemnon is the
Homeric hero lurking behind such important and obstreperous Platonic characters as Thrasymachus,
Callicles, and Alcibiades.

In Chapter 1 (“The puzzle of Plato’s thumos“) H. rightly notes that scholarship traditionally fails to do
justice to the emphasis Plato puts on the thumos in the Republic (pp.3-4). Thumos is essential for the
operation of courage ( andreia) (p.9), which in the early books of the dialogue is associated with
“manliness” (p.13). However, thumos is not simply a raw, warlike drive; it is responsive to the educative
influences of poetry and music and is partly formed by social and cultural influences, most importantly,
H. argues, a society’s heroes (p.12). Indeed, the subject of proper education for the Guardians only
emerges when their need for thumos is first brought up (p.11). Thumos is the natural ally of reason and
may conflict with desire, the lowest of the soul’s three elements or parts (p.17). Unlike reason, however,
thumos does not question appearances (p.17) and is concerned with moral issues only insofar as these
relate directly to an agent’s self-image (p.19). The essence of the thumos in humans is “the need to
believe that one counts for something” and central to this need is “a tendency to form an ideal image of
oneself in accordance with one’s conception of the fine and noble” (p.30). The chapter closes with a
consideration of how Aristotle, Nietzsche, Adler, and Freud have all valued characteristics of the human
personality that Plato associates with thumos (pp.37-49).

In Chapter 2 (” Thumos, andreia, and the ethics of flourishing”) H. continues the discussion of the place
of role models in Platonic ethics. Plato’s fundamental ethical starting point is the question of how one
ought to live (p.50), a question that he answers in terms of how one can achieve eudaimonia (here
translated as “flourishing”), which is identical with virtue ( arete, p.53). The question of how to
“flourish,” though formally framed by reason, is also prompted in part by the thumos and its tendency to
emulate cultural heroes (p.55). H. claims that Plato’s emphasis on role models is extremely important
and largely ignored in contemporary ethical philosophy (p.59). (The voluminous writings of R. Girard on
the subject of role models are strangely overlooked, though perhaps they do not count as ethical
philosophy.) Role models can continue to be helpful long after reason is formed, as they appeal to the
“non-rational elements” (p.60) of the soul and give to human life a shape and structure that cannot
easily be discerned from within the stream of an individual’s experience (p.64). (M.M. Bakhtin’s
important work on the uses of narrative to make sense of human life as it is lived from moment to
moment could usefully have been brought into the discussion.) The available role models in ancient
Greek culture, however, are largely ideals for young Athenian males. H. postpones until Chapter 8 a
consideration of the question whether Greek culture ever allowed for the possibility of courage in
women. That is, was the idea of courage ever fully disentangled from the virtue’s association with
“manliness” (p.69)? H. describes this question as one of the central issues of her book (p.69). But first
Chapters 3-6 step back to consider Plato’s treatment of courage in a number of earlier dialogues.

In Chapter 3 (“Arms and the man: andreia in the Laches“) H. examines one of Plato’s early treatments of
courage. In the Laches, we are told, Plato wanted to disentangle the concepts of courage ( andreia) and
manliness (p.78). He wished to open up the possibility of a gender-neutral form of courage in order to
extend the exercise of courage beyond the martial arena to the realm of philosophy (p.96). He wanted
first to attract people to philosophy by describing the discipline in traditionally “manly” terms and then
later to convince them that philosophy properly befits both men and women (p.98). (Plato’s rhetorical
strategy here might be described more concisely as an example of what the philosopher Charles
Stevenson called the use of “persuasive definition.”2 “Persuasive definition” involves the attempt by a
speaker or writer to alter the normal use of value terms in his or her own interest. Arthur Adkins first
applied this concept to the study of ancient philosophy with great success.3) Three definitions of
courage are offered in the Laches. Courage is first defined as a non-cognitive psychological capacity
(“endurance of the soul,” p.88); secondly, as a non-cognitive psychological capacity accompanied by
wisdom (“wise endurance,” p.91); thirdly, as a cognitive state alone (“knowledge of what is to be feared
and dared,” pp.99-100). When read in the light of Plato’s mature psychology, the Laches implicitly
demonstrates the need for the thumos. In the Republic Plato adroitly combines the second and third
definitions of courage offered in the Laches, defining the courage of the Auxiliaries as “the capacity
( dunamis) to retain in all circumstances correct belief concerning what is and is not to be feared”
(p.110). (We will take up below the question of whether H. is correct in viewing courage based upon
correct belief as courage in the strict sense of the term.)

Chapter 4 (“Odd virtue out: courage and goodness in the Protagoras“) surveys the Protagoras but comes
to the same conclusion reached through the study of the Laches : courage cannot be properly
understood without a more complex account of psychic structure and motivation than Plato yet has at
his disposal (p.135). Unlike Vlastos and others, however, H. wants to see the Protagoras as constituting
an advance over the Laches in its representation of the nature of courage (p.117). For unlike the Laches
the Protagoras offers a science of measuring pleasures and pains, represented by the hedonistic calculus
(p.128), which is said to provide some insight into occasions on which the virtue of courage might be
exercised. Yet, as even H. admits, it is difficult to imagine that Socrates really believes what he is saying
when he identifies the good with pleasure (p.128). I find it difficult to see how the Protagoras can be
thought to mark an advance in Plato’s thinking about the nature of courage.

Chapter 5 (“Why should I be good? Callicles, Thrasymachus and the egoist challenge”) primarily concerns
Callicles but also draws Thrasymachus, Alcibiades, and Achilles into the discussion. All emerge as victims
of ungoverned thumos. Despite being a hedonist by declaration, Callicles aspires to be well respected
( kalos k’agathos, p.137). He believes that one should emulate men who possess wealth and reputation,
and thus he demonstrates an interest in ideals and role models. (H. fails to note that Achilles’ interest in
role models, only briefly referred to in an early footnote [p.60, n.26], might provide a significant parallel
with Callicles.) H. argues that Socrates is once again, as in the Laches, trying to rework the notion of
courage as “manliness” so as to move toward the “ideal of ungendered humanity” (p.153) that will
finally come to fruition in the Republic. However, Socrates will require a psychology and a sense of the
meaning of human “flourishing” more sophisticated than is at hand in the Gorgias (p.162), though the
dialogue’s notion that psychic order will be to an agent’s advantage clearly anticipates the psychology of
the Republic (p.156).

Chapter 6 (“Heroes and role models: the Apology, Hippias Major and Hippias Minor“) is somewhat of a
distraction in this otherwise clearly argued book. H. begins the chapter by showing that the old Homeric
heroes like Achilles and Odysseus are still powerful influences in Classical Athens, and she rightly points
out that if Plato wishes to establish Socrates as a new role model “he has competition on his hands”
(p.175). She finds it “odd” (p.180), “baffling” (p.183), “puzzling” (p.185), “somewhat puzzling” (p.188),
and “all very strange” (p.195) that Socrates is frequently compared to Achilles in early dialogues, yet she
sheds little new light on the reasons underlying the various comparisons between the hero and the
philosopher.

Chapter 7 (“The threat of Achilles”) is a gem. H. demonstrates in convincing detail that Achilles has fallen
from grace in the Republic and is now depicted as “a highly undesirable role model in every way”
(p.199). Achilles embodies the thumos of Republic 4, and he resembles the “timocratic” man of book 8.
Diminishing Achilles’ stature emerges as part of a larger project: Plato is concerned to undermine the
Iliad‘s tragic view of life. Achilles’ tragic choice between returning home and dying in battle in book 9 is
predicated on the idea that an individual may sometimes be compelled to make choices between the
noble (winning fame and dying in battle) and the “beneficial-in-all-other-respects” (p.211), in this case
returning home. For Plato, however, “flourishing” can never be divorced from noble and virtuous action
(p.218); the potential for tragedy is thereby removed from human life. H. demonstrates a clear
understanding of how Achilles was viewed as the quintessential hero of both the Greeks and the
Romans. This chapter should be required reading not only for philosophers but for students of Homer as
well; it provides a sober corrective to much modern scholarship on the Iliad that views Achilles as
somehow managing to transcend the heroic ethic at the end of his poem. (One relatively minor
correction: the work of Gregory Nagy, Pietro Pucci and others undermines H.’s claim that “Achilles and
Odysseus are not actually rivals in Greek mythology” [p.196].)

In Chapter 8 (“Plato’s response: the valuable as one”) H. returns to a consideration of the Republic and
demonstrates that the courage ( andreia) of Achilles is thoroughly transformed by Plato “into something
altogether calmer and more dependable,” a state of the soul akin to moderation ( sophrosyne, p.231).
According to H., the role model for the new age would be a “suitably purified” Odysseus (p.239),
Socrates himself or, given the nature of the ideal philosopher, perhaps no human role model at all is
appropriate (p.240). As for the question of the relationship between courage ( andreia) and manliness, a
topic early said to be a major theme of the book (p.69), H. modestly concludes that Plato probably has
not reflected as much on this issue as one would wish (p.247). Who, after all, will be the role models for
the Philosopher-Queens (p.248)?

Chapter 9 (“Alcibiades’ revenge: thumos in the Symposium“) makes a strong case that the explosive
appearance of Alcibiades in the Symposium marks the later failure of Plato’s hopes to educate and
harness the irrational in general and the thumos in particular—at least outside the context of the ideal
state (p.261). A brief epilogue (“The weaver’s art: andreia in the Politicus and Laws“) concludes the book
on a somber note. The Politicus and the Laws provide compelling evidence that Plato ended his life
doubting the compatibility of courage ( andreia) and moderation ( sophrosyne) that is emphasized
throughout the Republic. The prospects for transforming the raw drives of the thumos into true courage
are not encouraging.

On your average weekend, how many fights to the death do you witness? It would be a fair guess to say
none. Yet, if you were alive some two thousand years ago and were a citizen of the Roman Empire, the
answer would likely have been completely different. These days, most of us enjoy the benefits of living in
what is, relatively, one of the most peaceful periods in human history. We don’t witness anywhere near
the level of violence experienced by our ancestors.

But this doesn’t mean that violence is no longer a pervasive force in society – you only have to attend a
mixed martial arts (MMA) fight for proof. After all, violence is a natural impulse for humans, one deeply
ingrained in our DNA. But modern-day humans have learned to channel this violence into less
dangerous, more controllable pursuits. This book summary explain just how this happened.
In this summary of The Professor in the Cage by Jonathan Gottschall, you’ll also learn

how our ancestors fought to prepare for war;

about the violent origins of lacrosse; and

why males and females fight differently.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #1: Fighting is a human act, but over time it has become more and
more codified.

Some people fight for revenge, others for prestige and still others just fight for fun. But one thing is for
sure: people have been fighting since the beginning of human history.

However, certain aspects of fighting have indeed changed. In the past, men have fought in ways that
would seem brutal to people today. They would batter each other to death with stone axes, slice each
other to pieces with swords and burn each other alive.

The reasons why people fought would also seem strange nowadays. For example, honor used to be one
of the main reasons for fights, because a person’s capacity to defend his honor defined his social status.
And without social status, a person was nothing in the eyes of others.

Clearly, our species’s past was quite violent. But over the course of many generations, humans
collectively learned how to control their violent urges by allowing society to codify violence.

Take duels as a case in point. Instead of a fight breaking out without warning, duels controlled violence
by codifying strict limitations and rules. For example, opponents had to agree on a time and place to
fight, and only “civilized” weapons, like swords or guns, could be used. And if you could get your
opponent to back down instead of fighting, you could win before anyone got hurt.

This pattern of increased codification of violence continues right up to the present.

Even though fighting still happens, and people do fight for honor, most of it is highly codified. Take the
incredibly popular sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Although there are barely any rules regarding the
actual combat, the act of fighting itself is highly codified: it’s limited to a specific time and place, and is
closely supervised by a referee.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #2: MMA attracts people as a way to fight bullies, but also as a form
of ritualized combat.

At some point during our life, we’ve all encountered a bully. Most people will have met one when they
were still a child, while playing at school.

But bullying goes far beyond the playground; it happens in societies around the world because it’s
universally effective. By picking on weaker members of society, bullies can boost their social status at the
expense of their victims, without running the risk of facing retaliation.

It’s because of bullies that many people want to learn how to defend themselves. If a bully thinks he
might not win, he’ll be less likely to pick on you. This is why MMA is so popular: it’s a very effective form
of self-defence that anyone can learn. It’s also a less popular sport for elite athletes to engage in, so even
the very unathletic don’t need to feel intimidated when getting started.

But defending against bullies isn’t the only reason people engage in MMA. Such violent sports are also
examples of ritualized combat, a codified fight that aims to establish the winner while lessening the risk
of serious injury through clear rules and limitations as to when, where and how it happens.

The origins of ritualized combat run deep. It is employed by our closest animal relatives, the
chimpanzees, to establish societal hierarchies. Chimpanzees will puff up their chests and scream to try
and get their opponent to back down. But if no one yields, the ritual breaks into a fight that only ends
when someone surrenders – or is seriously injured.

Ritualized combat is actually very similar across species. For example, it typically begins with staring:
humans and chimps stare at their opponents to try and intimidate them. Human boxers often try to
break each other’s confidence in this way before a fight, with Mike Tyson being the obvious master of
this.

But why have we barely mentioned women in all this talk about violence? In the next book summarys,
we’ll look at the relationship between violence and gender.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #3: Fighting is closely linked to masculinity.

In recent decades, our conceptions of men and women have changed radically. Gender stereotypes
dictating that women stay at home to care for children while men work to provide for their families are
being dismantled.

However, there’s one thing that definitely separates the sexes, namely the interplay between
competition, violence and masculinity. In fact, there’s a clear evolutionary reason that males are more
competitive and violent than females: reproductive differences.

While women generate around 400 eggs in their lifetime, men produce 3.6 billion sperm. This means
that men can parent many more offspring than women, especially when you consider that women
cannot conceive during pregnancy or after menopause.

The consequence is that, at any given time, there are more males than females who want to reproduce,
which leads to competition for females – and, in turn, violence. This reproductive disparity is why it’s
mostly young, unmarried men who commit the majority of violence in society; they are the ones in
fiercest competition.

The composition of the male body itself reflects this predisposition toward violence: despite being, on
average, only 20 percent heavier and ten percent taller, men have 60 percent more muscle mass than
women.

But although women are generally less competitive and violent than men, it would be foolish to think
that they don’t also fight. Instead of physical violence, though, women are much more likely to attack
indirectly. For example, they tend to attack reputations or spread rumors about their rivals. In doing so,
they reinforce traditionally female cultural concepts like fidelity, modesty and honesty.

In turn, masculine cultural concepts of dominance and honor encourage men to take more risks, like
engaging in a fight even though they might get hurt. This risk-seeking behavior can be seen in other
realms too: men are more likely to die from lightning strikes, because they’re too “brave” to seek refuge.
In the next book summary you’ll see that these differences between the sexes aren’t only present in
adults, but can be observed very early on.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #4: Boys tend to play more competitively while girls prefer
cooperation – and the same is true for adults.

Often when you see boys playing, it involves some kind of fight or competitive game. In contrast, girls
tend to play together, rather than against each other.

This difference in playing style is observable from a very young age. Because of these different styles, the
sexes tend to play separately from the get-go. Preschoolers are three times more likely to play with
children of their own sex – by the age of six, this likelihood will have increased elevenfold.

The sexes segregate themselves in this way because their playing styles are fundamentally incompatible
and unchangeable. Boys tend to play more competitive games than girls; as time goes by, these
competitive games turn into ritual forms of combat.

Girls, on the other hand, also play competitive sports, but differently. Although modern-day women are
no longer excluded from competing as a result of near-continuous pregnancies and a patriarchal culture
that encouraged them to stay at home, they still tend to be more attracted to cooperating and
establishing bonds through sport, rather than competition and victory.

Studies demonstrate that this effect is even present in professional sports: male athletes put a higher
priority on competition than female athletes. Studies show that even in local five-kilometer races, three
times more men than women finish within 25 percent of their gender’s world record. In other words,
men run to win.

And this trend goes beyond sports – men seek to win in every form of conflict, from physical fights to
verbal arguments, which can result in some peculiar rituals.

Take rap battles, where opponents try to spontaneously come up with the best insults to win. On the
surface such rituals might appear ridiculous. But they actually have a vital function: by ritualizing conflict,
societies can establish hierarchies and social roles while limiting violence. This allows for society to be
hierarchically organized without losing citizens to injury or death.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #5: Historically, sport helped train for war, but also helped avert it.

Have you ever felt yourself wishing for the other team to be obliterated while playing a sport or cheering
on your favorite team?

That’s because many sports are ritualized forms of warfare.

For a long time, sports, whether sword fighting, boxing or chariot racing, existed as exercises to prepare
for war. For example, medieval warriors would hone their fighting skills in huge tournaments, sometimes
fighting to the death.

And even though the connection between sports and war isn’t as apparent today, if you look beneath
the surface, you’ll see the common root.

Consider the vocabulary: in American football, terms like “blitz” are still used, while an overwhelming
victory is called a “massacre.”

Or look at the fans. They dress in the colors of their team, roar battle songs and demand that the players
give their all to benefit the team. In fact, being a fan has an even deeper historic connection to war:
throughout history, people who couldn’t defend themselves would take the side of great fighters,
supporting them with gifts and praise, and gaining the fighters’ protection if they won.

But sports did more than just help warriors prepare for battle. They also helped groups fight for
supremacy in a less violent way than a full-blown war.

For example, Native Americans developed a precursor to lacrosse, which could be played among teams
ranging from a few players to thousands. It allowed tribes in a given area to see who was the strongest
without resorting to explicit violence.
But sometimes even the sport couldn’t prevent a war, like when the Creeks beat the Choctaws in a game
of lacrosse in 1790. The next day, the furious Choctaws attacked and murdered some 500 Creeks.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #6: Humans have always been excited by the spectacle of violence.

Have you ever seen the film Gladiator? If you have, you’ll know just how much people were entranced by
violence in the past.

Indeed, there’s lots of evidence to suggest people have had a long-standing love affair with the spectacle
of violence. In the Coliseum, the Romans watched gladiators fight to the death, and prisoners of war
battle for their lives against wild animals. And in the Middle Ages, even children were taken to public
executions to watch criminals being burned or buried alive.

But we’re much more civilized now, right? Well, not really.

Although we aren’t as violent as our ancestors, we’ve by no means lost our hunger for violence as
entertainment. And if you look at much of today’s popular culture, you’ll see that violence lies at its very
core.

Take the success of books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, which are packed full of
instances of rape and murder. Or look at the Saw film series, which is more or less a clever glorification of
torture.

The big difference between today and the past is that real suffering has been replaced with fictional
violence in books and films.

But why do we love to watch violence in the first place?

Because it shows us the most exciting and appalling sides of humanity at the same time.
Consider an MMA fight. Not only is it a stunning display of brute force, it’s also an exciting spectacle of
two people fighting for supremacy with everything they can muster – their skills, their strength and even
their grace.

This excitement is also why violence is often compared to sex.

Some soldiers who have been to war have expressed that they hated and loved it in equal measure. Even
though war is hell on earth, it’s also one of the most physically exciting things they’ve ever experienced.
So although they don’t get sexually aroused by it, many soldiers have indeed compared war to the
intense excitement of sex.

The Professor in the Cage Key Idea #7: Of all martial arts, MMA is the closest to real combat.

We’ve seen that sports have a direct link to war and violence. But this doesn’t mean that all sports are
created equal – in fact, one sport stands above the rest.

MMA is the most brutal, hierarchical and realistic of modern combat sports.

Don’t be put off by the name. When some people hear of martial arts, they think of complex
choreographies of movement that may look impressive, but are harmless.

MMA is a whole other world.

The artificial restrictions of other martial arts is one reason why MMA started: there was a desire to
recreate the old-fashioned sports used to prepare for war. Fighters from around the world, whether
trained in the dojo or in the streets, meet in ritualized combat to see who is the strongest of them all.

And in MMA, the strongest usually prevails. Unlike other sports where the underdog can win, where
David beats Goliath, MMA is closer to reality. It’s rarely a fair fight, and the best fighter usually
dominates.
Another reason MMA started was to allow the different martial arts to prove their respective claims.
Each martial art has claimed to be the most powerful, but because their adherents never fought against
each other, there was no way of proving who was the best.

Of course, to accommodate all these different disciplines, this new form of fighting had to have very lax
rules. In the beginning, there actually weren’t any rules or weight classes, and actions like biting weren’t
banned, just discouraged. Today, some rules do exist; for instance, competitors must wear gloves and
weight classes prevent Goliaths from winning every time. Even so, MMA remains the closest thing to a
real, no-holds-barred street fight.

MMA also stands out from most Asian martial arts traditions because of its lack of a religious
component. MMA doesn’t accept religious concepts of authority and rules, or of ancient rights and
artistic purity. Instead, MMA gyms are like laboratories where different martial arts are tested and
combined into the ultimate, most effective way of fighting.

In Review: The Professor in the Cage Book Summary

The key message in this book:

Violence is a fundamental part of human nature. Over time, however, we have learned how to better
bring these instincts under control. By channelling violent human tendencies into sports, martial arts and
fiction, we have managed to create organized societies that don’t tear themselves apart.

Suggested further reading: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

The Better Angels of Our Nature takes a close look at the history of violence in human society, explaining
both our motivations to use violence on certain occasions and the factors that increasingly restrain us
from using it – and how these factors have resulted in massive reductions in violence.
The hunting hypothesis is the hypothesis that human evolution was primarily influenced by the activity
of hunting, and that the activity of hunting distinguished human ancestors from other primates. It is
contrasted to the gathering hypothesis.

Advocates of the hunting hypothesis tend to believe that tool use and toolmaking were an extremely
important part of human evolution, as tools are essential to effective hunting.

Among the most famous books to advocate the hunting hypothesis was The Hunting Hypothesis by
Robert Ardrey.

Opponents of vegetarianism sometimes use the hunting hypothesis to make the case that humans
should eat meat. Vegetarians, however, either counter that the hunting hypothesis is wrong, or that,
even if it were true, that it should have no effect on what modern humans eat.

Key Points

1. Manliness Requires Leadership

To be a “manly” masculine man means, first and foremost, that you are a man with a plan.

You are a leader.

If you want to be the strong man that a woman truly wants, then the first step is to start leading the
women in your life.
Don’t shirk all decision making and responsibility onto your woman with the mistaken belief that you are
“empowering” them.

Women don’t want that responsibility.

They want a man who can take charge, step up, and lead them to a better life.

And it starts with the simple decisions each and every day.

If you ask a woman out on a date, then show up with a plan.

If you decide to take your wife or girlfriend out, do so with a plan of action.

Just step up and take charge of the relationship.

Women can only fell truly feminine, safe, and secure when they are with a man who is willing to take
charge and lead them forward.

2. Women Want Men with Strength

A big mistake that many men make is to follow the false belief that women want men who are “nice”
and tender.

Sure, women want a man who can be soft and loving.

But more than these feminine qualities, they want a man who is strong.
Strong in his morals, strong in his convictions, and strong in his character.

How can a woman feel safe with you if you are not willing to stand up for what you believe in?

If you allow women to step on your values and your beliefs because you don’t want to be overbearing,
you are slowly and quietly undermining your strength and eroding your woman’s ability to trust you .

You must eradicate this nice guy behavior from your life.

Stand up and be strong.

Speak your mind and don’t hold back.

3. Find Successful Men and Emulate what they Do

If you want to be a better man, then surround yourself with men who are better than you.

It’s that simple.

If you want to figure out how to be the “manly” man who is respected by his peers, society, and his wife,
then find men who possess those qualities and emulate them.

Join a men’s group, find a sport’s team, join a local mastermind.

Find places where strong men congregate and then show up humble and eager to learn.
The more you can surround yourself with strong manly men, the stronger you will become.

4. You Must be More than a Provider

As a man, your primary role is that of the provider.

Your job is to protect and provide for those that you love and to make sure that they are taken care of.

However, your job goes much deeper than that.

If you are just providing your wife and children with financial wealth and stability, you are not doing your
job as a man.

Your family needs more from you.

They need you to be present.

They need you to be available to help them through their struggles, support them through their hard
times, and love them unconditionally.

Yes, you need to provide for the people in your life.

But you also need to realize that provision is not your sole job as a man.

5. Take Ownership of Your Problems

If you are facing problems in your personal, professional, or romantic life, then you need to take
responsibility and own the problem.

Stop blaming your wife, your boss, or your peers.

If you have a problem, it is your fault and no one else’s.

Period.

You are the one who decided to get into the relationship, to take the job, or to get involved with that
group.

You hold ultimate responsbiilty for every situation in your life, and as such, you also hold every solution
to solve the problems that you are facing.

So take extreme ownership for your life, cut the excuses, and achieve greatness.

Influential Books

No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover

If by Rudyard Kipling

Connect with Elliot Katz

beingthestrongman.com

Next Steps
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Reclaim Your Personal Power and Masculinity

If you have Nice Guy Syndrome, it’s usually because you were forced to give up some of your personal
power as a result of your childhood circumstances. You may have grown so used to making that sacrifice
as an adult that you’ve locked yourself into a career or relationship that fulfills that expectation. But it
may lead you to feeling frustrated, helpless, and resentful. You feel more out of control when you
approach life with the coping techniques you developed as a child.

So, how can you reclaim your personal power?

For starters, when you have personal power, you believe you can deal with unpleasant situations. You
recognize that you are human and that you experience fear from time to time, but you also believe in
your ability to overcome obstacles on your own.

Being honest with yourself about your needs, weaknesses, and desires is an important part of reclaiming
your personal power. You must become comfortable sharing your feelings and opinions. It’s fine if
expressing these leads some people to leave you. Those who care about you will value your feelings and
thoughts even if they disagree with them. Accept that you can’t influence or manage how others feel
about you, and that you may experience rejection and criticism occasionally.
Reclaiming your masculinity goes hand in hand with reclaiming your personal power. To various men,
being a man means different things, and it’s your responsibility to figure out what that means to you.

Embracing your masculinity entails forming strong bonds with other men and seeking a mentor,
particularly if you don’t have a father. There’s no reason to feel bad about engaging in hobbies and
connections that bring you joy.

StoryShot #2: Have Higher Standards and Don’t Accept Second-Hand Behavior

If you are too nice to people, somebody will take advantage of you. Both men and women take
advantage of guys who try to be amiable all the time. So, what do you do to stop this from happening?
The answer is to have higher standards for how people should treat you.

For example, imagine you’re with a group of friends. One of these friends makes a joke about you, and
everyone starts laughing. Banter is a natural part of male friendship groups, so it is normal. Consider if
your friend kept making jokes about you every time you saw each other. In this case, these jokes have
gone from being lighthearted and fun to outright disrespectful. At this time, it is time to say something to
him about it.

So, to stop being too nice, you have to set high standards for yourself and others’ behaviors. If the girl
you like is always playing hard to get, you need to know your limit. If she persistently falls below your
high standards, you should cut her off immediately. Apply these standards to all areas of your life. Never
tolerate any behavior that crosses the line or disrespects you.

StoryShot #3: Speak With Conviction

One of the fastest ways to tell if a man is too nice is to pay close attention to how he says something. A
man who’s too nice tends to speak with little conviction or with no personality. He wants to avoid hurting
your feelings or any conflicts, so he will say what you want to hear instead of what he really believes.

Speaking with conviction is a powerful way of demonstrating to other people that you know what you
want. It also shows that you’re confident in what you say. So, when someone asks you something, make
sure that your words show your conviction. It will be easier for the person on the other end of the
conversation to listen and understand your point of view.

If you want to speak with conviction, here are the four things you need to control:

Keep your voice at an even volume.

Keep it at a steady pace.

Avoid shouting.

Don’t talk over people.

StoryShot #4: Stop Agreeing So Much

Agreeing with someone is an easy thing to do. We all do it subconsciously, but every so often, it isn’t the
most helpful thing for your wellbeing. Studies show that people perceive those who always agree with
others as less intelligent and less confident.

If you’re the man who always agrees with people, simply practice disagreeing with other people on
purpose. You can start that by disagreeing with people about little things. For example, if you enjoyed a
movie and your friend didn’t, you should challenge them and try to understand why they think it was
disappointing. Ask them what points they were disappointed by and come up with counter-arguments to
the points you disagree with.

StoryShot #5: Tracking Your Good Deeds Leads to Resentment and Anger

Tracking your good deeds is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. This can be one of the most
significant sources of frustration for nice men.

Nice Guys will do something pleasant for someone, especially girls, and then keep track of that deed.
This deed is one of the hundreds of other nice things they have done for people. Nice Guys will then
secretly expect something in return. The attractive girl that a Nice Guy is trying to impress is not keeping
track of these deeds.

Tracking good deeds can be the cause of many problems for Nice Men. Anger is a common emotion
associated with giving good deeds without people reciprocating. It is also common for Nice Guys to start
to resent those who do not repay their good deeds. This feeling of being indebted is not healthy and will
only lead to negative emotions. Dr. Glover does not recommend you avoid good deeds. Do a good deed
and then move on. You can enjoy the good deed at that moment, but you should not look back and use
that as evidence for being indebted.

Give without expecting something in return.

StoryShot #6: Don’t Hold Back

Nice Guys hold back despite their urge to say something. The foundation of this is that Nice Guys find
conflict and people not liking them scary. They also dislike showing who they are to people. So, they
filter their thoughts and keep quiet when they want to say something.

Holding back is a massive problem because avoiding expression and your true self will mean others will
never actually know who you are.

A man who doesn’t hold back is much more of a man than one who is afraid to rock the boat. Fewer
people might like the man who doesn’t hold back, but they will like him for whom he really is.

If you want to say something, then say it. If you want to do something, then do it. Don’t be afraid of
what others will think of you, and don’t let this fear hold you back from simply being you.

StoryShot #7: Stop Fearing Confrontation

Many guys allow girls, and other men, to walk all over them. They allow others to verbally control and
dominate them because they are so scared of confrontation. Imagine a bully in school who picks on a
smaller child because he’s skinny and weak. What if, one day, the kid finally stands up to him and fights
back? The bully in school constantly searches for the easiest targets. The skinny child in school is weaker
and will likely be targeted. Being courageous enough to stand up to the bully will put them off. This
courage makes this child a slightly more challenging target. The bully will move on to another Nice Guy.

Once you start embracing confrontation, you will realize it’s not that scary at all. Even if it’s something as
simple as not agreeing with other people’s opinions, you are confronting fear.

Embracing confrontation will make you feel more like a man than ever. Each time you engage in
confrontation, you will build your confidence in who you are. Not to mention, you are making yourself a
more attractive man overall.

StoryShot #8: Make Your Needs a Priority

Realize that only you are responsible for meeting your needs. Stop blaming and start acting. Be assertive
about your needs, and get rid of any hidden agendas.

Never be a wimp and never act like a victim. It helps if you are thankful for difficult situations. These
circumstances are the ones that present a chance to grow as a person and learn for future
circumstances.

Express your feelings, face your fears, set boundaries, and develop integrity. Don’t try to control
uncontrollable things. Some circumstances will be too challenging or time-consuming to control, so you
must be willing to walk away from circumstances and people. Don’t try to make an unhealthy
relationship work. End it and find somebody more suitable for you.

StoryShot #9: The Importance of Boundaries

The common theme throughout this book is the importance of boundaries. If you are a recovering Nice
Guy, this might be the most critical factor for you. Boundaries are particularly relevant when considering
your relationships with women.

Nice Guys often believe that not having boundaries, being overly tolerant, and accepting everything their
partner does is a beneficial strategy for a relationship. Nice Guys often learn the hard way that this isn’t
true.

You will need boundaries to strengthen the relationship. It is a need for you and your partner that can
strengthen the relationship for both sides. Boundaries equal respect, and women desire a partner who
sets boundaries. So, incorporating boundaries into your life will create personal respect and improve
your chances of developing a healthy romantic relationship.

StoryShot #10: Choose a Partner Who Doesn’t Need Considerable Support

Dr. Robert Glover provides multiple tips on romantic relationships in this book. These tips cover the
categories of sexuality and women.

Robert recommends you focus on the relationship, not the partner. Ask yourself: How does the
relationship meet my needs? Is the relationship healthy? Can we learn from the struggles we encounter
together? (NEEDS WORK) Use your boundaries to stop your partner from engaging in undesirable
patterns of behavior.

One of the common mistakes made by Nice Guys is to choose a partner who needs considerable
support. These partners often need help and want somebody to fix their lives for them. Nice Guys are
attracted to problems and want to fix their partners. These relationships will allow him to show the
world what a good boyfriend or husband he is. The motivation behind this is always the approval of
others. Suppose you have been in an unhealthy relationship. In that case, you will know that this often
stems from one partner seeking the approval of others.

StoryShot #11: Choosing the Right Sex Mindset

When it comes to sex, you will also have to change your mindset. This is easier said than done, but using
the following guidelines can help you re-orient back to the best approach. Use these tips to improve your
chances of becoming an integrated male:

Get rid of shame and fear about being sexual.

Get your needs met: quantity and quality.

Get comfortable being pleasured and ask for it.

Never avoid conflict because you are scared to lose a sexual opportunity.

Get rid of porn.

No More Mr Nice Guy Final Summary and Review

Glover’s premise is that childhood and society have conditioned Nice Guys to act the way they do. They
have been told that they will only be successful if they make everyone happy and don’t produce conflict.
That said, this desire for approval results in self-loathing. In other words, nice guys want approval but
don’t think they deserve it. This creates internal frustration since nice guys never try to obtain what they
want in life.

The Nice Guy’s desire to obtain approval from everyone (especially women) can cause him to behave in
unnice ways. These behaviors include dishonesty (about themselves) and passive-aggressive behavior
(being unavailable, forgetting, being late, or not following through).

Dr. Glover’s prescription involves encouraging Nice Guys to recognize that their needs and desires are
essential. To make others happy, they must first learn to make themselves happy. One of the best ways
to seek happiness is to learn to embrace and develop your masculine traits instead of fearing and
suppressing them.

No More Mr Nice Guy Quotes

“Self-respect, courage, and integrity look good ona man.”

― Robert A. Glover #nomoremrniceguy

Click to Tweet

“List one fear that has been controlling your life. Once you decide to confront the fear, begin repeating to
yourself, “I can handle it. No matter what happens, I will handle it.” Keep repeating this mantra until you
take action and stop feeling fear.” – Dr. Robert Glover

“In general, people are not drawn to perfection in others. People are drawn to shared interests, shared
problems, and an individual’s life energy. Humans connect with humans. Hiding one’s humanity and
trying to project an image of perfection makes a person vague, slippery, lifeless, and uninteresting.” – Dr.
Robert Glover
Fix-It and the Home Improvement Committee

“Not to be needed is a slow death for a man.” – John Gray

The book starts by describing how each sex works and the type of praise they enjoy.

Men generally prefer to work on their own. They see assistance as an attempt to undermine their
capabilities. They exercise their ability to solve problems quickly and love to have these abilities
recognized and appreciated. Therefore, they also hate to have their skills ignored or mocked. Men do not
generally use feelings to guide their behavior as they believe this produces unreliable results.

Women are entirely different. Women prefer to co-operate and generally avoid working on their own
where possible. To women, others working independently are viewed as undermining the team’s efforts
to work interactively. Women believe that abilities are generally unimportant, as they result in cold and
aggressive competitiveness. Instead, women exercise their feelings through interacting with other
women.

In sum:

Men desire their abilities to be appreciated. Women desire their assistance to be appreciated.

Men Go to Their Caves and Women Talk

As well as differing in the ways they work, men and women differ in how they react to tough problems.
When faced with a difficult problem, the typical reaction for men is to become non-communicative. The
reason they do this is that they are hoping to solve this problem by themselves. They do not want
interference from others. If men communicate, this is so they can get the point across quickly. In fact,
they generally avoid listening where possible.

In comparison, women are always seeking out communication as they want to work out how they can
help others. Women also like to show their feelings during this time. They like to communicate for the
sake of communicating, and they are more than happy to listen.

How to Motivate the Opposite Sex

“If I seek to fulfill my own needs at the expense of my partner, we are sure to experience unhappiness,
resentment, and conflict. The secret of forming a successful relationship is for both partners to win.” –
John Gray

Generally, men instinctively look after themselves. This selfishness can be at the detriment of those
around them. In a relationship, men have to learn to care for another person: their partner.

On the other hand, women have the instinct to look after others, even at the expense of themselves. In a
relationship, women have to learn how to be cared for. If women learn this, then both members of the
relationship can have their needs met.

Both sexes winning is better than a relationship based on instinctive behaviors. Issues can arise when
one of the partners continues to act on their instincts. They will not be successful in pleasing their
partner. This partner could then revert to their instinctive behavior, leading to the relationship
unraveling.

In sum:

Men-
Need to feel that their attention is required. Men must express their desire to fulfill their partner’s needs
and for her to accept his care.

Women-

Need to feel that their needs are being accepted and considered. Therefore, women must express their
desire for his care and encourage their man that they are worthy of fulfilling their needs.

Both-

Must remember to appreciate, accept, and forgive the other. Must avoid blaming the other when failure
occurs.

“Men are motivated when they feel needed while women are motivated when they feel cherished.” –
John Gray

Speaking Different Languages

Men tend to talk in a very literal way. Their primary purpose is to provide information. Therefore, men
generally like to sort out their thoughts before communicating. Non-communication can arise, as men
want to spend time alone considering their thoughts. Men must reassure women that they are just
taking time to think.

Women tend to use language more dramatically and artistically. This allows women to express their
feelings fully. Women sort their thoughts out during the process of communicating them. While
providing this stream of concerns, women must reassure their partners that they are capable of caring
for them.

Both men and women must focus on avoiding the blame game. When partners are dealing with
problems, blaming yourself or the partner is not useful.
Language While Struggling

When troubled, men do not want their partner to express concern for him. Instead, men want to be told
that the problem at hand is within the man’s abilities. They want to be left to sort the problem out
themselves. Sympathy will only feel like the woman is undermining the man’s abilities.

When women are troubled, they love their partner to express concerns for her. Women don’t like being
told that the problem is simple. Describing her problems as simple rejects the woman’s concerns. A
solution should only be sought when all of the woman’s feelings have been considered.

Too quick a solution justifies his abilities but devalues her concerns; too enduring a problem justifies her
concerns but devalues his abilities.

Men Are Like Rubber Bands

“Remember, if a man needs to pull away like a rubber band, when he returns he will be back with a lot
more love. Then he can listen. This is the best time to initiate conversation.” – John Gray

Men run away from things when they feel that their self-sufficiency is being threatened. Subsequently,
men can become unapproachable. They should be given space during this time, and, if granted, this
support should feel better soon enough. This temperamental behavior can be challenging for women,
though. Like rubber bands, men snap back into their natural state if given time.

As well as the woman’s reaction being appropriate, men must also give women assurance that they will
return to their usual happiness soon.

Women Are Like Waves

“When a woman’s wave rises she feels she has an abundance of love to give, but when it falls she feels
her inner emptiness and needs to be filled up with love.” – John Gray

Women periodically sink into a depression when they feel they need to express their emotions. These
emotions will have built up over time and can relate to recent or long-standing problems. If they cannot
find any real troubles, women might still find other worries. When women feel like this, they will no
longer be givers. They will demand the right to express their feelings. If supported and given time to
express their feelings, women will recover and soon be back to their usual selves. As men spring
between unhappiness and happiness, women’s slow sink into depression and back up to happiness may
be hard for men to understand.

Additionally, women must assist their partners by not being overly concerned when they are sinking into
their depression. Women should explain to their partners that it is not their partner’s fault.

Issues can arise when a man’s periodic need to be free coincides with a woman’s periodic need to be
heard. At this point, the woman should make do with being heard by her friends instead.

How To Avoid Arguments

Arguments are less about what is said and more about the tone of voice and body language.
Communication should always be loving and respectful.

One of the most significant flaws of men is their inability to pay sufficient attention to women’s feelings
during an argument. On the other hand, one of the most significant flaws of women is being overly
critical of men. Either of these flaws can be the trigger for an argument. Each of these flaws can also
trigger the flaw in the partner to arise, which further develops the argument.

When men make mistakes, they become frustrated and angry. During this time, women should leave
their partners alone so that they can calm down.

Apologies are viewed as different things by different sexes. Men consider apologies to be admissions of
guilt. Women consider apologies to be expressions of compassion. This difference leads to issues, as men
are much less willing to apologize.

Within arguments, the tone is often different between sexes. Men generally use aggressive words to
ensure that they win the argument. Women generally back down during arguments as they don’t want
to engage with these aggressive words.
Additionally, men and women adopt different approaches in attempts to avoid arguments. To do this,
men will withdraw and refuse to talk. On the other hand, women will pretend that the disagreement has
been forgotten and will move on. The peace will always be a cold one, though, and the issues will
remain. Therefore, men should listen without getting defensive. Plus, women should try and express
their feelings without being critical.

Scoring Points with the Opposite Sex

Men value results and women value the thought. Issues can arise from this difference in values.

If men do not receive what they want, they may suspend giving. In this instance, women will continue to
give even though they feel they are giving more. However, the woman will start to feel unloved,
unappreciated, and resentful.

There are a few things that men and women can do to overcome these differences. Men should try and
identify little ways to show they value their partner without being asked to do so. Men should also avoid
the mistake of assuming their partner is happy giving without receiving anything back.

On the other hand, women should avoid pretending that they are happy with the inequality of giving. If
women start to feel resentful, they should start to slowly reduce their giving and learn to ask for things in
return. Also, women should provide remarks of appreciation when their partner does something loving.
These remarks will encourage their partner.

How to Communicate Difficult Feelings

“If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have
to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow.” – John Gray

Avoiding negative feelings doesn’t make them go away. We must embrace negative feelings with
compassion, and then we can heal these feelings.

To avoid pain and fear, men tend to show anger and ego. They do this because they are always in the
pursuit of success. To avoid these same feelings, women can lapse into depression.
Constructive communication is a critical skill to learn. To engage with this communication, we must also
unlearn the repression of negative feelings. One way to do this is to start writing our feelings down.
Writing our feelings down allows us to express our negative emotions in a controlled manner, rather
than letting them explode. After this, we will be in a better position to explain ourselves calmly.

How to Ask for Support and Get It

Men enjoy proving their worth by doing things. However, they generally wait to be asked and struggle
remembering to offer their services. Therefore, women must learn to control their expectations. Men
will not always be able to anticipate women’s needs. Women should ask for help when they need it but
avoid making it sound like a demand.

Questions that begin with the words ‘Could you’ or ‘Can you’ are often interpreted by men as
questioning their abilities. Therefore, they respond more positively to the same questions if they begin
instead with ‘Would you’ or ‘Will you’.

It is best to allow a man to do things in a way and at a time that works for him. If a man complains about
a request, this is generally a good thing. It means he is considering doing it, and the best approach is to
wait for him to come to a decision.

Keeping the Magic of Love Alive

“When men and women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to
blossom.” – John Gray

Love inevitably changes over time. The honeymoon period won’t last forever, and we all have flaws that
will make relationships difficult. However, understanding the other sex means we can sustainably love
each other at a healthier and longer level. To do this, we must accept that our partner is different from
us and adapt accordingly.
1. King

The King energy is primal in all men.

In old civilizations and traditions, the king provides order, fertility, and blessing.

It bears the same relationship to the other three mature masculine potentials as the Divine Child does to
the other three immature masculine energies.

It comes first in importance, and it underlies and includes the rest of the archetypes in perfect balance.
The good and generative King is also a good Warrior, a positive Magician, and a great Lover. And yet, with
most of us, the King comes on line last.

We could say that the King is the Divine Child, but seasoned and complex, wise. and in a sense as selfless
as the Divine Child is cosmically self-involved.

The king is:

Centered

Decisive

A man of integrity

A protector of his realm

A provider

This is how the authors describe the king:

It stabilizes chaotic emotion and out-of-control behaviors. It gives stability and centeredness. It brings
calm. And in its “fertilizing” and centeredness, it mediates vitality, life-force, and joy. It brings
maintenance and balance. It defends our own sense of inner order, our own integrity of being and of
purpose. our own central calmness about who we are, and our essential unassailability and certainty in
our masculine identity. It looks upon the world with a firm but kindly eye. It sees others in all their
weakness and in all their talent and worth. It honors them and promotes them. It guides them and
nurtures them toward their own fullness of being. It is not envious. because it is secure, as the King, in its
own worth. It rewards and encourages creativity in us and in others.

The King also embodies all the other masculine archetypes:

In its central incorporation and expression of the Warrior, it represents aggressive might when that is
what is needed when order is threatened. It also has the power of inner authority. It knows and discerns
(its Magician aspect) and acts out of this deep knowingness. It delights in us and in others (its Lover
aspect) and shows this delight through words of authentic praise and concrete actions that enhance our
lives.

The King Shadows

Tyrant: He is only destructive. He does so because. as we’ve said. he lacks inner structure. and he is
afraid and terrified of his own hidden weakness and his underlying lack of potency.

He is very sensitive to criticism and, though putting on a threatening front, will at the slightest remark
feel weak and deflated. He won’t show you this, however. What you will see, unless you know what to
look for. is rage. But hidden behind the rage is a sense of worthlessness, of vulnerability and weakness.

The tyrant hates. fears, and envies new life, because he feels the new life is a threat to his slim grasp on
his own kingship.

Weakling: The hidden presence of this passive pole explains the hunger for mirroring -for “Adore me!”
“Worship me!” “See how important I am!”- that we feel from so many of our superiors and friends. This
explains their angry outbursts and their attacks on those they see as weak that is those upon whom they
project their own inner Weakling.

General Patton was a closeted weakling, say the authors.

Watch this scene:

Instead of reacting with the compassion of the life-giving King who knows what his men are up against,
Patton flies into a rage and slaps the soldier across the face, calls him a coward. humiliates and abuses
him, and sends him from the hospital to the from lines.

Though he does not know it. what he has seen is the face of his own hidden fear and weakness
projected onto another. He has glimpsed the Weakling within.

And again, say the authors:

The heroic General Patton.

Though immensely imaginative, creative, and inspiring to his troops, at

least at times sabotaged himself with his risk-taking, his immature

competition with the British General Montgomery, and his insightful

but boyishly brash remarks.

Rather than being assigned a mission for which his true talent qualified him {to head the Allied invasion
of Europe, for instance). He was sidelined precisely because he was a hero and not fully a warrior.

My Note: Eye-opening, stay away from gratuitous meanness

This was truly deep and insightful.

Be careful of men who are too mean and aggressive towards other people’s faults and weaknesses. Not
only are they potentially hiding insecurities, but they are often poor leaders.

I often felt the same about general Mattis, who always loved to sound tough:

James Mattis: When you men get home and face an anti-war protester (..) shake his hand. Then, wink at
his girlfriend because she knows she’s dating a pussy

#2. Warrior
The warrior:

Is efficient because he realizes how fragile and mortal he is

In addition to training, what enables a Warrior to reach clarity of thought is living with the awareness of
his own imminent death. The Warrior knows the shortness of life and how fragile it is. A man under the
guidance of the Warrior knows how few his days are. Rather than depressing him, this awareness leads
him to an outpouring of life-force and to an intense experience of his life that is unknown to others.
Every act counts.

Also read:

The Power of Accepting & Leveraging Death to Live Fully

The warrior raises above pettiness

The true Warrior rises above pettiness.

Says the authors:

Living in the light of lofty ideals and spiritual realities such as God. democracy, communism, freedom, or
any other worthy transpersonal commitment so alters the focus of a man’s life that petty squabbling and
personal. Ego concerns no longer matter much.

The warrior can be a destructive force. But it’s a destructive force for good

Say the authors:

The Warrior is often a destroyer.

But the positive Warrior energy destroys only what needs to be destroyed in order for something new
and fresh, more alive and more virtuous to appear. Many things in our world need destroying-
corruption, tyranny, oppression, despotic systems of government, corporate hierarchies may get in the
way of the company’s performance (…).
And in the very act of destroying, often the Warrior energy

is building new civilizations, new commercial, artistic, and spiritual ventures for humankind.

For the warrior, women are just there to fulfill sexual needs

When the warrior is disconnected from the lover, women are just for fun, or to fulfill sexual needs.

Even the positive Warrior (the Warrior in his fullness) can be disastrous. As we have said the Warrior in
his pure form is emotionally detached; his transpersonal loyalty radically relativizes the importance of his
human relationships. This is apparent in the Warrior’s attitude toward sex.

Women, for the Warrior, are not for relating to, for being intimate with.

They are for fun.

(…)

Even if he has a family, the human warrior’s devotion to other duties often leads to marital problems.

Businesspeople consumed by work are also warriors

Say the authors:

This same thing occurs outside the military as well.

In the relationships and families of men whose professions call for a great deal of transpersonal devotion
and long hours of disciplined work and self-sacrifice. Ministers, doctors. lawyers, politicians, dedicated
salespeople, and many others often have emotionally devastating personal lives.

Their wives and girlfriends often feel alienated and rejected, competing hopelessly with the man’s “true
love,” his work.

In addition these men, true to the Warrior’s sexual attitudes, often have affairs with their nurses,
staffers, receptionists, secretaries, and other women who admire from a safe (sometimes not so safe)
distance their masculine Warrior proficiency and dedication.

My Note: Great analysis, but flawed on the sexual side

Very, very good analysis.

Yet, it’s also flawed when it comes to sexual dynamics. The authors fail to realize that those men
developed a drive to hard work because of the more sexual opportunities that the fruit of their work
awarded them with.

But our society isn’t very welcoming of warriors

Say the authors:

We live in a time when people are generally uncomfortable with the

Warrior form of masculine energy, and for good reasons.

Women especially are uncomfortable with it since they have often

been the most direct victims of its shadow expressions.

The Warrior Shadows

Warriors that are completely unemotional or only destructive are poor and underdeveloped archetypes
of masculinity.

The movie “The Great Santini” is an example of the shadow Warrior with too much aggression and too
little emotional depth:

Say the authors:

Most of his remarks and behavior toward his wife and children are depreciating, critica, commanding,
and designed to put distance between him and the family members, who keep trying to relate to him
lovingly.

The destructiveness of this way of “relating” eventually becomes so obvious to everyone, especially to
the older son, that there can no longer be any hiding from the fact that Santini’s sometimes violent
behavior results from his own inability to be tender and genuinely intimate.
Many young men these days admire the wrong kind of warriors. Say the authors:

A contemporary image of the Warrior turned passionless killing machine is, of course, Darth Vader from
the Star Wars saga. It is alarming how many boys and adolescents identify with him. In this same
connection, it is also alarming how many of these young men become members of survivalist and neo-
Nazi groups.

The Warrior as a destructive can overcome us when we are frightened or very angry, like in this scene
from Apocalypse Now reference by the authors themselves:

And that’s the importance of inner mental control to be an effective and value-adding warrior.

Sadist: Though detachment in itself is not necessarily bad. as we’ve said. it does leave the door open to
the “demon” of cruelty. Because he is so vulnerable in this area of relatedness. the man under the
influence of the Warrior needs urgently to have his mind and his feelings under control-not repressed.
but under control. Otherwise. cruelty will sneak in the back door when he’s not looking.

Far too often We see this same kind of sadism displayed in boot camp in the name of supposedly
necessary “ritual humiliation” designed to

deprive recruits of their individuality and put them under the power of a transpersonal devotion. Far too
often, the drill sergeant’s motives are the motives of the sadistic Warrior seeking to humiliate and violate
the men put in his charge.

Masochist: the masochist is the “pushover” and “whipped puppy” that lies just beneath the Sadist’s
rageful displays. The Masochist

projects Warrior energy onto others and causes a man to experience

himself as powerless. The man possessed by the Masochist is unable to

defend himself psychologically; he allows others (and himself) to push

him around.

Finally, say the authors:

If we are accessing the Warrior appropriately, we will be energetic, decisive, courageous, enduring,
persevering, and loyal to some greater good beyond our own personal gain.

We will light good fights in order to make the world a better and more fulfilling place for everyone and
everything. Our war making will be for the creation of the new, the just, and the free.

#3. Magician

The Magician is the knower, the one with technical expertise and knowledge of all kinds.

Write the authors:

The energies of the Magician archetype, wherever and whenever we encounter them, are twofold. The
Magician is the knower and he is the master of technology. Furthermore, the man who is guided by the
power of the Magician is able to fulfill these Magician functions in part by his use of ritual initiatory
processes. He is the “ritual elder” who guides the processes of transformation.

This is the magician era, in a way, since it’s an era where technology is put to use to control our
environment.

But it’s the other form of Magician energy that is in short supply, the one based on psychological and
spiritual initiatory processes.

The Magician Shadows

Detached manipulator: more details on manipulation here, and more information on dark psychology
here

Denying “innocent” one: using guilt-tripping and covert power moves to control others

Dark Psychology: 7 Ways to Manipulate People

#4. Lover

The lover enjoys life’s pleasure and is comfortable in his own skin and own body.
But there is also something deeper about the lover and about his interconnectedness with the world.

Say the authors:

The Lover is deeply sensual-sensually aware and sensitive to the physical world in all its splendor. The
Lover is related and connected to them all, drawn into them through his sensitivity.

His sensitivity leads him to feel compassionately and empathetically united with them. For the man
accessing the Lover. all things are bound to each other.

But he is also a rebel:

The man under the influence of the Lover does not want to stop at socially created boundaries.

He stands against the artificiality of such things. His life is often unconventional and “messy”.

The major religions have always prosecuted the lover, say the authors.

The Lover Shadows

Addicted lover: the addictive personality that gets lots in short-term pleasure

Impotent lover: feel nothing, live in a muted world, and are chronically depressed

The Lover needs the Warrior in order to be able to act decisively, in order to detach from the web of
immobilizing sensuality, and he needs the Magician to help him back off from the ensnaring effect of his
emotions.

Boyhood Archetypes

Like for the masculine energies, the boy energies also overlap and inform each other.

All the shadow forms of the immature masculine can be carried over adulthood if they are not fixed.
Divine child

The divine child is the future king.

The shadows are:

High-chair tyrant: needs to learn that he’s not the center of the universe, and the people and the world
do not exist to serve and glorify him

Weakling prince: the polar opposite of the high-chair tyrant. The Weakling Prince appears to have very
little personality, no enthusiasm for life, and very little initiative. This is the boy who needs to be coddled,
who dictates to those around him by his silence or his whining and complaining helplessness. He needs
to be carried around on a pillow. Everything is too much for him. He rarely joins in children’s games: he
has few friends; he doesn’t do well in school; he is frequently hypochondriacal; his slightest wish is his
parents’ command; the whole family system revolves around his comfort. He reveals the dishonesty of
his helplessness, however, in his daggerlike verbal assaults on his siblings, his biting sarcasm directed
against them, and his patent manipulation of their feelings. Because he convinced his parents that he is a
helpless victim of life and that others are picking on him, when a controversy arises between himself and
a sibling, his parents tend to punish the sibling and excuse him.

Later, when he is an “adult” and functioning primarily under the dominance of the Weakling, his
repressed grandiosity may explode to the surface, completely raw and primitive, completely
unmodulated and very powerful. This is the man who seemed coolheaded and rational and “nice” but
who, once he’s been promoted, suddenly becomes “a different person, “a little Hitler”. This is the man
for whom the saying “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” is entirely accurate.

Precocious child

He is the future magician.

The Precocious Child manifests in a boy when he is eager to learn, when his mind is quickened. when he
wants to share what he is learning with others.

The shadows are:

Know it all trickster: verbally abusive of others whom he regards as inferior. Carried over into adulthood,
the man is cocky and smug, with a superior grin. But he can be good at pricking the bubbles of other big
inflated egos. Also see the “smart alec” in the “archetypes of dominance“.

Dummy: like the Weakling Prince, lacks personality, vigor, and creativity. He seems unresponsive and
dull. He can’t seem to learn his multiplication tables, count change, or tell time. The Dummy’s ineptitude,
however. is frequently less than honest.

He may grasp far more than he shows, and his dummy behavior may mask a hidden grandiosity that
feels itself too important (as well as too vulnerable) to come into the world. Thus, intimately intertwined
with a secret Know-It-All, the Dummy is also a Trickster.

Oedipal Child

He is hte future lover.

He is passionate and has a sense of wonder and a deep appreciation for connectedness with his inner
depths, with others, and with all things.

He is warm. related. and affectionate. He also expresses. through his experience of connectedness to
Mother (the primal relationship for almost all of us), the origins of what we can call spirituality. T

his Mother is not his real, mortal mother.

She is bound to disappoint him much of the time in his need for connectedness and perfect or infinite,
love and nurturing. Rather, the Mother that he is sensing beyond his own, beyond all the beauty and
feeling (what the Greeks called eros) in the things of the world.

The shadows are:

Momma’s boy: tied to Mama’s apron strings.” He causes a boy to fantasize about marrying his mother,
about taking her away from his father. in adulthood, he often gets caught up in chasing the beautiful, the
poignant, the yearning for union with Mother from one woman to another. He can never be satisfied
with a

mortal woman, because what he is seeking is the immortal Goddess. Here we have the Don Juan
syndrome, The Oedipal Child, inflated beyond mortal dimensions, cannot be bound to one woman.

Dreamer: while other children are playing, he may sit on a rock. dreaming his dreams. He accomplishes
little and appears withdrawn and depressed. Often his dreams rend to be melancholy, on the one hand,
or highly idyllic and ethereal

on the other.

All the immature masculine energies are overly tied to Mother, and are deficient in their experience of
the nurturing and mature masculine. But especially so is the Oedipal Child.

The Hero

He is the future warrior.

The “death” of the Hero in the life of a boy (or a man) really means that he has finally encountered his
limitations. He has met the enemy, and the enemy is himself. He has met his own dark side, his very
unheroic side.

The “death” of the Hero signals a boy’s or man’s encounter with true humility.

The shadows are:

Grandstander bully: The boy (or man) under the power of the Bully intends to impress others. His
strategies are designed to proclaim his superiority and his right to dominate those around him. He claims
center stage as his birthright. If ever his claims to special status are challenged, watch the ensuing
rageful displays! is not a ream player. He is a loner, a hot-shot junior executive, salesman, revolutionary,
stock market manipulator. He’s the soldier who takes unnecessary risks in combat and, if he’s in a
position of leadership, requires the same of his men (these are the officers who get “dragged“).

Coward: shows an extreme reluctance to stand up for himself in physical confrontations. He will usually
run away from a fight. perhaps excusing himself by claiming that it is more “manly” to walk away. But he
will feel wretched in spite of his excuses. It is not only physical fights he will avoid. however. He will tend
to allow himself to be bullied emotionally and intellectually as well.

Say the authors:

And all three energies give rise to the Hero, which breaks them free of the domination of the “feminine”
unconscious and establishes the boy’s identity as a separate individual. The Hero prepares the boy to
become a man.

But the Hero still needs to grow and mature:

The Hero is, in fact. only an advanced form of Boy psychology-the most advanced form. The peak,
actually, of the masculine energies of the boy, the archetype that characterizes the best in the
adolescent stage of development. Yet it is immature. and when it is carried over into adulthood as the
governing archetype, it blocks men from full maturity.

The book starts with the beginning of Dan’s journey for enlightenment. He has realized that, regardless
of his accomplishments, he feels an enduring sense of emptiness. As a society, we constantly strive to
meet our goals, believing that once we get there we will find a sense of satisfaction or peace of mind.
Dan discovers this to be untrue, and it causes him to call into question everything he took for granted in
his life. He searches for that which will give his life meaning and truly ignite his spirit.

Dan’s recurring nightmares focus on the subject of his own mortality, depicting a strange old man with
white hair, an important figure that Dan sets out to find in real life. Dan haphazardly bumps into the old
man at a gas station and concedes to be his disciple, learning everything the man has to teach him about
the proper way to live. Dan nicknames the man Socrates for his extensive knowledge and wisdom.

Passing along his knowledge through lectures, Socrates also sends Dan visions. Through these
techniques, Socrates reveals the mind is the ultimate source of dissatisfaction. According to the old man,
attempting to decipher the meaning of life and the world around us can only bring unhappiness. The key
to true freedom is in learning to live in the moment, accepting things as they are. He teaches Dan that he
must tame his thoughts and learn to live free of the shackles of his own mind.

Although Dan seems to have unlocked the answer to living a peaceful life, following through with this
knowledge is not so simple. The initial clash of his newfound wisdom with his old life and friends is
painful. He has trouble understanding who he is beyond a star gymnast and popular college student.
Socrates urges him to relinquish his attachments in the physical world and learn to rise above and
harness the power of his mind.

Dan is enamored of Joy, another of Socrates’s disciples who appears and vanishes at will. They are both
on the same path set out for them by Socrates, and are learning to be in the moment, which Socrates
assures them is not innate but a practice, and a conscious way of living. Dan realizes that for him,
gymnastics is a way of quieting his mind and practicing being in the moment.

The teachings of Socrates are driven home for Dan when he gets in an accident and badly injures his leg.
The old man greatly speeds up Dan’s healing process. He brings Dan to a café where he introduces him
to Joseph, one of his former disciples. At this point, he tells Dan that he should give up mind-altering
substances, eat a healthy diet of light food, and adopt a life of celibacy.

Dan does his best to follow the teachings of Socrates, though at first, he finds this new way of life
restrictive. Although he fails along the way, he keeps trying and always brings himself back on track with
the old man’s wise words. Socrates also begins to train Dan physically, working on improving his
gymnastic form as well as running and introducing him to new activities, such as aikido, tai chi, and
meditation. Socrates teaches Dan to correct his posture and control his breathing, allowing him to find
new power in his body.

When Dan graduates from college, Socrates tells him that it is time for them to part ways; Dan must
forge ahead on his own, using what Socrates has taught him. In the following years, Dan marries Linda,
but the marriage is ultimately a failure. He then embarks on a great journey, traveling the world for six
years in search of a sense of belonging or inner peace, but he comes up short.
Desperate to gain some kind of understanding, Dan returns to Berkeley where he reunites with Socrates.
The old man, now over one hundred years old, tells Dan that he has come to the right place and that he
is close to achieving his goal. Socrates gives Dan one last vision; in it, Dan dies but still remains conscious.
This allows him to overcome his fear of death and fully take on the teachings of Socrates, finding
happiness without reason.