Why are women fascinated with therapy?

Remember the Sopranos scene with Carmela’s therapist? The therapist cuts through all of Carmela’s rationalizations about staying with a monster (which are also, tweaked slightly, the viewer’s rationalizations for liking Tony). The therapist says Carmela has to leave her husband and that Carmela is enabling evil. Carmela thinks she should leave but says, “You’re going to charge the same anyway,” and he says, “I won’t accept blood money.” It’s this incredible fight for values, and Carmela can’t comprehend the therapist’s values: her whole world requires her not to comprehend him, including his statement, “many patients want to be excused for their current predicament.” 

Here’s one of my private theories about why women are fascinated with therapy: Until the post-war era, most women married who their parents told them to marry, or at least someone within their communities, and they lived in communities that effectively directed their lives and major life decisions, at least until the women themselves aged into becoming matriarchs, grandmothers, etc.[1] Camille Paglia likes to talk about how in Italian communities, young wives were bossed around by their husbands’s mothers, and the old women wielded much of the power; today, old women are ignored by anyone not in their families, and young women have all the power, until they become crones, at which point they’re discarded by anyone who’s not their husbands or families. I exaggerate, yes, but by much? Pre-war, women had relatively few choices. The “point” of life was not individual self actualization or pleasure, it was sustaining the community, having enough to eat, putting a roof over the head, raising the children. Low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and therefore (relatively) easy to accomplish. Expectations differ today.

You can, naturally, contrast the pre-war world with pretty much everything today: women are highly autonomous. They earn their own money and keep their own households. They have infinite freedom and choice–with it the ability to fuck up easily. A lot of people, I think, can’t handle and don’t like choice, but almost no one in the media will write an article about how choice sucks, and having less choice can be desirable to some people. So what’s the female response to total freedom? Often: anxiety, uncertainty, therapy. A lot of women get enormous social and sexual power in their teens or early 20s and wield it how one might expect someone to wield a huge amount of power with minimal guidance (that’s also the plot of every young-adult, adventure-save-the-world story).

*The Average American Male*, a novel by Chad Kultgen

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE is a novel you should read because, good or bad, it’s different than most novels: most novels are about one of two ridiculous kinds of males: pussy beta males who need to hit the gym and ask the girl out already, or ridiculous fantasy men running around with guns and improbably saving the world. THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE is neither… though it’s billed as outrageous, probably I’ve read too much game literature, cause I read it and was nodding along, like “Okay, yeah, I get it, you’re a horny bastard, whatever, I’m well familiar with the ‘shocking’ male mind.” The guy’s got weak game but he tries and doesn’t whine about failures with chicks, not too much. THE GOOD GIRL, my novel, is also different than anything else I’ve read: in it, a player tries to seduce a girl on the streets into the non-monogamy world. The guy from Chad’s novel needs to go hang out with and learn from the guy in my novel: I should do a fan-fic mashup.

The protagonist narrator of THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE isn’t named, so we’re going to call him Richard. There are plot “spoilers” of a sort ahead, which don’t matter cause this isn’t a book you read for the plot or to figure out who killed the president, you read it for the voice, and the supposedly outrageous things the narrator says, like… that he wants to fuck the hot chicks he meets, he doesn’t want to fuck the fat ones, and he finds his girlfriend’s parents annoying. What’s he bring, though? Guys who bring things to the world find themselves in better situations, guys who don’t, don’t. Richard seems not to have a job. He seems not to have any special skills or abilities. He’s not trying to develop them, which makes him average, but who wants average? This guy needs non-monogamy, which is how he can try to f**k as many chicks as he’d like. Watching him attempt to date is like watching a six year old attempt to build a house, nothing works. I know how to build the house. I know how to do non-monogamy. That’s what this guy, who’s kind of a bitch, needs to learn. Watching some idiot struggle and flail… it’s a bit painful. Funny, but painful. He’s at a stage I passed many years ago, and am now helping other guys pass, if they so desire. I’m not selling coaching but the magic & method of what I do is in the free book. Most guys lack the skills they need, that Richard needs, but there’s no excuse for that in the age of knowledge.

THE GOOD GIRL, a novel, is out today

I’ve been writing Red Quest for four years and have asked you for nothing, until now, when I ask you to buy a copy of THE GOOD GIRL: A NOVEL. It’s out today as an ebook and paperback, and it’s a great yarn:

He meets Maggie on the street, cold reading her like she’s a tarot card and hoping she’s entertained enough not just to say she’ll go on a date, but to actually appear on it.

She’s between boyfriends and more open to men than usual, but wary enough of a random man’s birdsong, however compelling the initial birdsong might appear.

He’s got a secret plan, she’s got justified suspicions, and the game that unfolds is, in some sense, The Game—the universal game all men and women play.

The tension between them can’t be resolved without destroying the game, and yet the tension and uncertainty draws them both together, propelling them towards unpredictable ends that will leave both changed, forever.

You’re interested in game and most fiction bores the pants off you: THE GOOD GIRL is the cure to those problems. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s witty, it’s surprising, it’s a journey into madness: everything you’ve been looking for in a story and not yet found. So get a copy. My last book was and is free and open source, and thousands of guys have benefited from it; this one isn’t, but I think the free balances the scales with the paid. 

The main reason to read a book or watch a film is pleasure, and THE GOOD GIRL delivers pleasure. But beneath the tension in the story there are also lessons, many of them subtle, about how to live and how to interact. We learn best through stories, and that’s what THE GOOD GIRL is: a story, one that’s in some ways ancient and in others contemporary. It’s the book I wish another guy had written. 

One reviewer says, “to say we don’t love, and don’t feel the other emotions, would be wrong for at least some of us… some of our value as seducers is learning to convey those emotions well and in an attractive way” and “This world Red Quest paints seems to be a real, achievable future, no longer some mere fantasy.” Enter the world. 

“Just go talk to her:” how to think about meeting women

Xbtusd returns, with the ways talking to strangers has improved his game, and life.

I’ve been privately sharing some FRs with RPD and RQ over the summer, and I’ve started to notice some things shifting; RPD, for example, reports that some of his clients don’t stick around long because a lot of them need an accountability buddy more than they need specific dating tactics and strategies. They start approaching women, and instantly their results with women get better. To that end, I have to give credit to RPD, because I’ve never met anyone who so consistently cold approaches. He gave me a lot of confidence that yes, I too could and should approach more girls. It’s been amazing to have someone who I can always come to with n00b questions and, more importantly, an accountability buddy who wants me to succeed. Who would have predicted that speaking to women would be a crucial part of having sex with them?