2022.01.05. Lemur.

Introduced myself to another regular at the gym. A young girl who used to work out with her sister, who I haven’t seen in awhile. I got a chance to use my single-finger signal for her to come over. She complied.

“It’s your turn. I’m learning everyone’s name here. I’m Nixon.”

“Hi, I’m Lemur.”

Great rapport. Sweet girl. I didn’t realized she was in high school until she told me. I would have assumed 20, not 18. Her sister has been away at college.

A digression about toxic shame.

When I suffered from it, learning the name of an attractive girl who’s a minor, or talking to her, was a borderline sin. My finding her attractive made me feel like a creep. Despite the inflexible statistical reality that every man alive finds 22 year old women to be the most attractive, I felt shame for find a woman who I assumed was 20 to be attractive.

Shameful Nixon treated her like a distant sex object instead of a human being worth knowing. Like every woman I don’t know, the rest of her humanity exists behind the veil of her sexuality (via her visual attractiveness). As a distant observer, I only ever interacted with her sexuality.

Having nice guy shame always includes having toxic boundary relationships. Because cowardice is present, along with a high IQ, the shameful nice guy deals with the situation by placing as much possible distance between himself and the object of his attraction (without her disappearing). This is a default to self-preservation. If I don’t go near her, I’ll never be publicly accused of being a creep.

The more I nuke my shame, the more I recognize my boundaries. And a healthy concept of boundary now makes it more appropriate to simply know a person. I’m not a fucking 90-year-old man who has lost his mental capacity and lives boundary-less via the hard-on of his youth.

I can’t turn off my attraction when around her. But I know which mindset is more psychologically healthy. And it’s not close. I know my boundaries. Getting to know her is a permissible conversation.

End of digression.

We tested a topic boundary though. People at the gym talk about their bodies. She told me how her sister is skinner and she’s thicker. Her words, not mine. Naturally, I explained to her that she’s at 1.5 c’s on the thiccc scale (compared to her 1 c sister).

I don’t know if thicc is a common colloquial measurement. But the couple times I’ve explained it to women under 30, they understand it immediately. A skinny girl is thick (or not thick). A girl with a massive ass and thighs is thiccck. Or a 3C. Simple.

Another avuncular regular passed by. It became a three-person conversation. They know each other better than I know either, so I had to forfeit frame control. I can’t go around attempting to dominate conversations among people who see me as an outsider. But I did practice frame shift: interjected 2–3 times with relevant topics that steered the conversation… without making me look like a world class asshole.

From my neutral position, I avoided self-negating behavior. This is getting easier to do.

The other guy, who I like, is a social butterfly in a different way than I am. He’s 50ish, married, has kids, and extremely, asexually social. Though he doesn’t have the boundary issues I used to have, he definitely comes off as an orbiter.

As we talked, I picked up on his mate-guarding. His frame was all about family. He talked about all her siblings, including another sister I didn’t know about. He subtly didn’t want me poking into her life. I don’t know if he did this out of envy, or because his parental instinct thought I was making a move on her.

As I say, I know my boundaries. But from within these boundaries, I’m working on game. It’s my resolution. So he was right to guard her a bit. If she was 25, his conduct would read as mate guarding. Basic cock blocking. Though if she was 25, other dynamics would be at play.

This is relevant because I ran a frame experiment, which led to this signal analysis.

Until recently, she and her boyfriend worked out together. Lately, he hasn’t come around. I interjected at a good moment to ask, “How come he can’t keep up with you?” Not an innocent question. But my goal was to frame, lead, and flirt. And this was a good example of all three.

Unbeknownst to me, the question was a catalytic insult. I benignly teased her absent boyfriend. She had a lot to say.

She listed many recent troubles. And said multiple times that he comes from a poor family, to clarify why he can’t get his car fixed, etc. She intended none of this as an insult. But her comprehensive summary of his sad-sack life said it all. The orbiter piled on a bit (in a friendly way) because he was familiar with the story.

I suspect:

First, no matter how shitty his life has been of late, if she was in his frame, she wouldn’t have volunteered any of this information to a male stranger’s ignorant question. Deflecting entirely would have been a real defense of her man. This was a fake one.

Second, no woman of any age would describe her man as a sad-sack loser if he satisfied her sexually. A woman may badmouth her alpha for leaving, or complain about him mistreating her, but never describe him as pathetic. If this kid had earned the relationship, she would have deflected, sincerely defended him, or sincerely berated him.

She did none of these. Instead, she over-confirmed what my question suggested: he can’t keep up. She’s nice, so she did not want any of this to sound mean. But she sounded frustrated.

What of their future?

When a woman has alpha relationship access, the guy will initiate the split. He will either have more options, get caught cheating, or just ramble on. There are two exceptions. 1. he repeatedly mistreats her and she can’t take it anymore. The “and would you believe she took him back!” archetype. 2. his life prospects get worse and worse that eventually even the alpha sex isn’t enough for her to put up with him. The second is the James Woods character in Casino, who kept Sharon Stone wrapped around his finger from a distance despite being a loser.

These are two suburban high school seniors who both live with their parents. I got no whiff of this dynamic. Just a girl who made a crappy first bet on love.

My interpretation.

If she was 22 and I was, well, my age, I would have interpreted her reply to my innocent question as a signal that she: 1. plans on leaving him soon, 2. will be accepting replacement boyfriend applications soon, and 3. is inviting me to apply. This could have been conscious or simply reflexive. If I was the boyfriend and I heard she readily painted this disappointing picture of me to another man, I would not assume smooth sailing.

Mental model.

An alpha mindset must conclude her gripe was a targeted advertisement for a younger version of myself. Being wrong would only mean she says next! Being right would mean access to a potentially high-quality relationship (young, pretty, smart, kind, rich).