TL;DR: I need some insight on past relationships to close my loop on understanding how TRP theory applies. 99% makes sense except why they were attracted at the beginning.

Hey all,

I recently finished the Rational Male and I started on Preventative Medicine. I’m positive that I missed some stuff and my plan now is to power through to the end and go through the whole series again after.

As a preface, I spent most of “The Rational Male” nodding my head, even at times laughing with how true something is. “Preventative Medicine” contains the first passage I read that really made me angry, but it wasn’t anger at the book, it was a weird feeling of anger and agreeing about the dichotomy of support for men vs support for women especially during their 20-25 phase, as that’s where I’m in right now.

Anyways, maybe this is a common question other people have had and it’s something that keeps sticking out at me. I had 3 decent-length LTRs in my past, which I can’t figure out by what logic these girls decided to go for it. I will lay them out here briefly. There’s been lots of “duh” moments since I started reading, including many moments in my LTRs and moments towards the end of my LTRs. But for some reason, the beginning of them to me is where I can’t come up with a reasoning for, and I want some input.

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LTR 1

I’m 17, she’s 17. She has a BF who is 18 (away at college). She's pretty good looking, does well in school and I've known her for a long time. At the time, I'm obese with a BMI of \~33, wear all kinds of clothes that don't fit and look ridiculous, and I'm in probably the lamest afterschool activities you can be in, certainly not sports. I did have a friend group, but it was nothing special.

I had been an orbiter of this girl for practically her whole post-elementary school life. So practically like 5 years at this point. Emotional tampon, the works.

She asks me to help her study physics, we end up alone at my house several times, which she drove me to, out in bumfuck. One time we make out. She starts getting in fights with BF more often. I am her side chick [sic], lining myself up to date and I am the emotional tampon through the entire fight of 2 months (distance added to the time). Finally she breaks up, goes totally off the radar for like 2 days, comes back and decides she wants a relationship. Whoopee, first relationship.

Proceed to spend the next 1.5 years constantly dealing with bipolar insanity and all sorts of shit. I break up because she is wanting to hang out less and less, literally turning me down to go do actually dumb shit with her friends. She's a cunt to me all the time when I do see her at this point. Unsurprisingly, as soon as I break it off, she quick turns around and wants to fix everything - probably because it was the only time I had ever been 'alpha' with her. I refused, and obviously she got more and more crazy about me for a few weeks before finally fucking some random stoner dude I worked with, probably as 'revenge.'

LTR 2 - note, I kind of understand what happened with this one, no need to spend much time

I'm 18, she is 18. I'm still obese w/ BMI 33. She is also obese w/ about the same BMI.

We met at some college shit a few months before college started, I texted to her a lot during the breakup. Basically orbiting, but she is responding well. We live across the state so nothing doing until college. College starts and we start dating the first day, basically. I know, I know. Probably the dumbest thing you could do. I'll make sure to tell my son, my dad never told me.

We date for about 6 months, and I bitch about my last LTR to her for about 6 months... lol. Things were OK, but I really wasn't attracted to her and eventually I just decided that wasn't what I wanted. She also turned down over time to where hanging out was fucking boring unless we were doing sexual things which I was becoming less interested in with her because she was obese.

Beautiful thing happened after we broke up, since we met day 1 of college, we understandably had basically the same friend group, except she had way more. So when we broke up, she went around and basically poisoned my entire friend group telling them all kinds of bad shit about me. I wouldn't find this out for 1.5 years, after 1.5 years of literally everyone in my friend group being cold as fuck with me inexplicably. After I found out, I slowly was able to fix shit with that group and in the end everybody realized she was a cunt and I was pretty cool. To be honest, I never would've had any animosity for her had she not done that to me. Luckily I had a small side friend group that panned out separately, which leads me to the next one.

Note: after this one, I dropped like 40 pounds to a BMI of like 28ish, where I was for my next LTR.

LTR 3

I'm 20, she's 20. As mentioned, I dropped some weight to about dad-bod level. She's very average looking but normal size.

My "small side friend group" was just one dude who was curating girls in his rotation. I was unknowingly playing along (didn't find out until later that semester). It would be me, him and a group of 3 or 4 girls. They apparently didn't realize but he had banged all of them. New girl comes who he hasn't banged yet, I hit it off with her. Take her to a concert, she meets this jacked tall af dude there who outclasses me by about 6 ranks at least, apparently she knew him from HS. He's working his game, so I basically step in and don't let that happen because I'm not about to get cucked and waste my night. We go back to my place to get her coat I conveniently had her leave there, and then we fuck.

We are hooking up non-stop for about 3 weeks but the following semester she's going to Europe to study 1 sem. Interestingly enough, during those 3 weeks at one point a girl in our small group got drunk and overtly offered to bang me. LTR girl actually offered me to do it and she walk away no questions asked. I declined. Later that semester, the guy who was curating his lineup got really pissy with me and tried making moves on her one last time since he basically 'did all the work' for her, but she declined.

Returns from EU, following semester I hit her up, we hang out. I beg her to date for a week (beta) and she isn't sure, but finally caves. Relationship is really vanilla, which is OK. I'm just watching all of my college sexual opportunities roll by with a dumb smile on my face. I would go back and kick the shit out of myself if I could, but IIWII. She graduates 1 year before me. Proceed to spend my SENIOR YEAR in a FUCKING LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP. I could write you a book why that was dumb. I graduate, we date for about a year more. I'm not bragging, just stating facts here, I cheated about 2 or 3 times in this relationship, which was the first time I had ever done that. Mostly because I wound up in a position where another girl just wanted it to happen and I didn't say no. She finds out about one and (???) stays with me anyways. Eventually I break up because I can't live with that boulder over my head and the LDR complicates it. In hindsight, I think she set me up so I had to break up. As soon as I did, she came rolling back begging to take her back, and as usual, she is banging some other dude within 2 weeks of saying forever shit like that.

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So that's them. I just see all of this mess and think, what the fuck did any of these girls see in me? The only one I think there was any degree of 'alpha' with was the last one, briefly at the beginning. Why did they give away their "peak years" to an LTR with a chubby beta bitch? Particularly LTR1 and LTR3. LTR2, I think I understand that she just saw she was not attractive and probably her best bet was to find a good beta during that time she could groom into thinking it was normal to have an obese girlfriend.

LTR1 and LTR3 both probably could've played 'the game' and enjoyed the 'party life' but chose to be with me instead. This is the missing link. The only thing I can come up with is that both of them had divorced parents and lived with their moms.

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I'm not expecting someone to read my palm here, just spitball some ideas as to why would a girl throw away her peak years for an LTR when there's so many glaring examples of him (me) being a beta? Like pounding on the TV screaming at the guy in the movie examples...

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Thanks