This post is influenced by u/Archwinger's "Men are not happy."

RE : The reevaluation of male expectations in a relationship and the resulting outcomes.

Archwinger observes the reason why these things happen, and blue pill men and women offer their judgement on these observations. I'm going to comment on the decision economics and strategy involved.

It should be noted if you are only spinning plates, or do not have children, or will never have children then this post will be of little value to you outside of understanding the decision economics. In these cases, an overnight bag and a new phone number end the problem. And any other situation where you're focusing your effort on a single woman in which you don't have children with, your attempt to call due any debt on your value has a negative return on investment in terms of time invested to return. In these cases, you shop in the open market and reset your value instantly if she calls your bluff.

Before & After

Blue pill men and women address the relationship in the before and after state. And they address it as correct and failed. As in, the relationship was correctly oriented then failed when men asserted their value. Sort of a moral warning. "You better not try and assert your value, or, you'll lose the one." Maybe even your kids. If the relationship has not failed, it is abusive or going to fail.

Archwinger disputes this by positing the relationship as one in which we can argue at least one of the parties is unhappy, who then takes the reins and begins to get some of what they want, risking failure in the process.

Fundamentally what blue pill men and women are not addressing here, is that these situations are really men who are realizing the value they bring and are calling due the debts accumulated by the women in these relationships while they work on increasing their own value.

When a woman is unwilling to pay up, then both the man and the woman agree that they can't meet each others expectations. The correct thing for this relationship to have done at this point is actually to have "failed."

Balloon payments and adjustable rate relationship mortgages

So now you've got a guy that is unhappy about some part or many parts of the relationship who has a set of expectations, and he'll move through the stages of dread but ultimately it comes down to two parties entering a hostile negotiation.

These women then either have to pay up, trade while attempting to prevent accumulating negative equity or default.

When a woman decides she's made an error in the value of the mate she's chosen and treated him below his new found evaluation of value, she pays up. It would be too forgiving to assign this as a function of her misattribution of value. In this case you can expect she's already shopped for a replacement and realized that she was wrong. She didn't come to this conclusion based on your demands or facts. But instead based on her doing an opportunity cost analysis. This is a very important contribution that all men should pay close attention to. If you make a large demand that she has rebuffed before, and in short time she accepts your demands, it is very likely she's already done actual choice analysis.

There can be a large degree of pulling teeth here. But the takeaway here is that ultimately she decides she will pay the demands to prevent default.

Men have often posited that "going beta" is one of the best ways to get a woman to leave a relationship, I can't disagree more.

It is my belief, and I will write to it in the future, that men should raise their cost until such a cost is no longer tenable. More often than not, men will realize their value is much higher than they thought.

Turns out that maybe you are worth a threesom, a girl on the side, getting better or more sex etc. Maybe not, that's up to her and you can't be operating under the idea of not rocking the boat. If that is how you're going to play, then you're entitled only to her desired valuation. That is the price you pay for outcome dependence.

Blue pill men and women operate under a presumption that for a woman to pay up is wrong. They won't have a very specific reason why, just that you're changing the rules of the game. And in fact, I believe this objection is innate.

It is my personal experience that a woman being influenced to pay up, can only be done with a man's willingness to leave and exercise options in two domains.

1. His time and attention
2. His physical fidelity

I do not believe women will tolerate emotional infidelity coupled with physical infidelity in any meaningful amount.

On process

For any man who feels that he is undervalued, and is willing to leave the relationship he is in, the mechanics are simple.

1. State your demands in a polite manner : "I'm unsatisfied with X, and I expect Y because Z."
2. When these demands are met, repeat step 1 for other issues.
3. If you are satisfied with the relationship at this point, stop.
4. If these demands are not met, withdraw your willingness to give your time and association and begin the process of revoking your fidelity, overtly.

The situation will resolve itself much quicker than you think.

On failure

Failure is a real possibility for a lot of reasons when someone tries to change or reboot a relationship that has operated under provisioning principles. The most obvious of which, is that the relationship was built under a paradigm which is fundamentally suboptimal and misaligned with arousal. If your read studies on arousal and long term relationship orientation, you'll see a trend. Women select against a lot of arousing traits in the long term mate, and select for unarrousing traits. That's because for most women her selection for a long term mate can be based on only a few usual outcomes.

1. He is a prospective father for her children, and expects that he will raise them.
2. He supports her lifestyle through status or niche fetishes (and is controllable)

The first is evident by selecting for traits that are correlated against arousal, such as nurturing and other traits that indicate there is a primary interest in being able to control her mate. The goal here is to make sure he sticks around and can't leverage value in the SMP.

The second is evident by a myriad of interests and non-primary attraction triggers given substantial preference in selection. These are primarily upper and upper middle class women who look for men who give them status who are primarily fetishising shared interests or attitudes into some amalgamation of arousal ("I love that we're both gamers"). This is lampooned in The Lobster as their "distinguishing characteristic."

These men and women are looking for some post-hoc rationalization for a minimal amount of attraction and some ill defined future goal for their relationship (which usually in this arrangement is child free, at least for the time). Otherwise the relationship would subsist on pure arousal alone or would be a family arrangement.

Where this all starts to go very wrong is when the men involved in these arrangements start to place what they perceive to be accurate valuations on their contribution to the pairing and begin to see their bargaining position deteriorate. They struggle to understand why they can't demand their value, not realizing they have none. And that their values are not shared between male and females.

Either he believes that him being the father of their children to be very important, or that his unique composition and history with the woman to be more important than it truly is.

These incongruities are simple to pick apart.

Their children is instead her children. The nuclear family is a recent, male value system, which is evident when you align it with Briffault's law. There is an expectation that men will take care of their children, so this presupposition is the basis of it having little to no value.

If she does have to trade, she assumes he will share parenting. And therefore she can pair off with another lemon, in the market for lemons, that is sharing parenting. If such an expectation is revoked, she will quickly realize that not many men have the time or patience to deal with a full time single mother. I will write about this more in the future.

If this is revoked as a presumption, she will properly value this input. And it is very large. If not, his parental contribution will hold no value. She'll use it in good times to puff up your ego, but make no mistake, men provide little value to children directly. Their primary purpose is to provide boundaries and run the household. I've been told I make a terrible mother, and I agree. Men should not congratulate themselves on their nurturing skills, though no man should feel shame enjoying things such as sleeping with an infant, tickling a toddler etc. Taking parenting hyper literal is no different than the story of the guy "holding frame on his boss."

The second largest valuation deficit is a man's belief that his relationship and history with a woman, along with their "distinguishing characteristics" hold value. They do not. This is also related to Briffault's law. Men in the protector category are not exempt from this. What this means, is that men are disposable. We compete.

The only real provisioning value men hold are their relationships to their children and willingness to provide child care. All other provisioning values are likely available readily and freely with a replacement mate.

Men who compete on a strictly physical or sexual basis will always have a guy who is better looking or better in bed. And even if such a thing wasn't true, there'd be someone almost as good, but different.

Valuation inefficiencies in men who reorient themselves to female value systems

The most common area to "clean up" will be the difference between what a woman is willing to give a man who can maintain attraction and what she has been giving him when he's undervalued himself and lacked the frame to set clear expectations.

The process above remains the same. But ask yourself "what are some reasonable demands I have, that aren't being met?"

Don't fight every battle, but demand and expect change. This is also a great area to see if the woman in your life is holding you in a degree of contempt. A recent post talks about making small requests and paying attention.

Maybe you'll realize she doesn't even think you're worth being polite to. And once you realize that, you won't feel so bad as you boil the frog. In the process you'll find out what you're really worth.

And turns out, it's probably a lot higher than you think.