If I could sum this up: It’s OK to be a horn dog who wants anal, that doesn’t make you less of a man.

Before I start,

Grab Softbone

I used to think of the red pill as a useful framework to help guys focus on the details in their life that matter. I thought that because that’s how I used it in my own life. Not just me, but also some of the guys you may know if you’re an old head to my work.

But with any new thing, niche space, or cultural enclave, it grows. As it grows, it regresses to the mean. I’ve come to see the mean, and I don’t like it.

I couldn’t tell you if it was a childhood full of farm work, my time in the military, or the many teaching gigs I’ve had over the years, but I cannot understand guys who do things without understanding why they do them. For example: living life versus letting life happen to you.

This case study is another Billy. I can’t fault anything he’s doing. He’s lifting, getting stronger, reading material from the sidebar, and making progress. At least that’s what it would look like, just like the other hundred times I’ve seen it. It’s cookie cutter, paint-by-numbers masculinity with an online misogynist flavor.

The problem is, there’s no why. Why do any of this? What are we doing here? He, like many others, shows up and starts doing what everyone else is doing, then comes up with justifications for why it’s good or bad.

If you’ve really read through the red pill, I’m not talking about Andrew Tate saying CPR on a man means you’re gay, or Myron Gaines suggesting that women won’t sleep with you unless you have an iPhone. I’m talking about the real content, the stuff buried inside ten years of posts, essays, and field reports. If I hadn’t put it together on a modern platform, it probably would have disappeared by now. What I’m talking about are the two reasons to even bother:

Male sexual identity – Wife won’t have sex, I can’t get laid, how do I fix this?

Positive male identity – I don’t know who I am. I’m not proud of who I’ve become. What should I do?

None of this matters if you don’t know what you’re trying to do. Field reports aren’t about getting the approval of others, though most people naturally fall into that pattern. They’re about using writing to get past your ego, which tells you not to worry. Writing forces you to articulate things. The ego glosses over details. It sounds cliché, but you’re literally writing for yourself.

Now, this is Billy. When you read his first field report, what do you see? He lists lifting stats, some sidebar reading, and a checklist of actions. What’s missing is what he actually wants. From reading it, you have no idea if he has a sex life, if he feels any kind of malaise now that he’s in his 40s, if there’s a pending divorce, or if anything else of note is going on.

Why do any of this? What are we doing here?

That’s the problem with most men. It’s not that they can’t do things, it’s that they don’t know why they’re doing them. They need to outsource purpose to someone else. They need approval before acting. They can’t accept that making a mistake is fine. They can’t accept that just because they don’t fit what others expect, it doesn’t mean they’ll be abandoned.

This becomes an exercise in navel gazing. “I noticed I’m spending a lot of time thinking about sex. I should do something about that some day… some day.” So what are we doing here?

OYS #1

Age 42, 1.83m, 76kg, 20% body fat. Wife 42, married 9, together 11, kids 6 & 7.

Lifts (estimated one-rep max): bench press 30kg, overhead press 28kg, Romanian deadlift 72kg, split squat 38kg

Reading: Mindset Action Plan

Physical:

Lifted 4 times. Added weight to bench press, overhead press, and Romanian deadlift. Need to check Romanian deadlift form, seems like quite a lot of weight there already.

Mental:

A lot less anger. Still ruined an evening by getting all moody about not having sex all day. Managed to shut the fuck up about it.

Journaling daily. Reviewing it, there's a lot about sex. Further evidence that I need to set some goals. A mission won't just fall out of the sky, but something concrete to grind towards for the next six to twelve months will keep me occupied.

Social:

The Toastmasters meeting was nice but it's a 40-minute drive each way to get there. Not very feasible to do on a weekly basis. Need to find other social outlets closer by.

Stood my ground when a neighbor messed with the boundary of a garden plot we own. He was acting all offended that I gave him a deadline to fix things or face legal action. I'd normally get apologetic but I just shut the fuck up. Issue got fixed the next day.

Family:

Roughhoused with the kids several times, spur of the moment. I loved it and so did they. Hadn't happened for a long time.

Initiating a lot — nearly daily sex, not particularly enthusiastic most times.

Wife noticed something was up. She figured I wasn't jerking off (she knows that I'd regularly do it to deal with having less sex that I wanted). She later asked what else was going on. Shut the fuck up didn't work very well, "I have a lot of stuff to process" even less so. Told her that I went over old journal entries and found the same patterns over and over again, that I was embarrassed about what I saw, that I need to do things differently, and that I don't want to talk about any details (all true). She left it alone since.

Been paying attention to my tendency to placate her or figure out what she's feeling and shut the fuck up instead. Noticed a shit test for the first time, don't think I was particularly amused or masterful about it but I certainly didn't defend, explain, excuse, or rationalize as usual.

Buy Dread

Buy Frame

Analysis

Do the lifts even matter? What are we doing here?

A full paragraph to say he’s lifting. A 30-kilogram bench press isn’t lifting, by the way; the bar is 20 kilograms. He’s weak. But again, why does that matter? Does he know? Is getting strong a requirement? If so, why is it a requirement?

I’ll let you in on a secret. The lifting isn’t about the weight. I’ve written this in Frame. Lifting has a few reasons it’s so important in the Red Pill:

No one knows you. You may be wasting people’s time that could be spent on themselves or someone worth a damn. The closest thing an open internet has to gatekeeping is asking if someone lifts. It’s the one universal action you can take that everyone agrees is useful. If you can’t be bothered, you will definitely be wasting people’s time on everything else.

For some guys, validation from their wives is everything. Everything is selfless. That 45 minutes at the gym is often the first selfish thing a guy has done in his life. Selfish means self-worth.

Compound lifts increase testosterone. Testosterone mutes the empathic response. Being a neurotic bitch is correlated with a lack of testosterone.

I know why lifting is important. You know why it’s important now. Did he? Or did he do it because everyone else does it? It’s hard to be independent when everything you do is just conforming.

He complains about not getting laid. He looks at his notes and sees that most of it is him being angry about not getting laid. It’s the only thing he wants to fix, and yet he spends no time using an OODA loop to fix it. He promises himself he’ll look into it at a future date. Only here have I seen guys come for one reason and then spend all their time avoiding that one reason for as long as possible.

Are we that far gone that a guy who wants to have sex is considered the worst thing in the world?

She figured I wasn't jerking off (she knows that I'd regularly do it to deal with having less sex than I wanted).

“Honey, you seem to be hornier lately. Have you stopped jerking off?”

My brother in Christ. Is it so hard to hold your wife to a standard? To even articulate that a standard exists? She is comfortable with the status quo, and he has given zero indication that he will change anything. He will mope and seethe, and all she has to do is wait it out and let the status quo continue.

This doesn’t work if you’re not willing to make the hard decisions to change your life. I get that it’s a first report, but still. If you’re not willing to fuck someone else, or kick her to the curb, or both, then all this is for nothing. It’s just masturbatory, and I’ve wasted a decade on any of it.

Wives need anxiety to feel desire. I don’t know why. I don’t care. It just is. And if your problem is a dead bedroom, the easiest way to fix it is to have options. Wives are amazingly good in bed when they know another woman is chomping at the bit to replace them.

And before you throw up your Christian morality, I love bringing up the Martin Luther quote on frigid wives:

So don’t give me any crap about the sanctity of marriage. A wife putting out was Protestant from the start, as was kicking her to the curb if she didn’t. Don’t be afraid to hurt her feelings. It’s the Christian thing to do.

But this is what happens. A guy has one singular goal. That’s fine. Then he spends 90 percent of his time on things that don’t matter and don’t move the needle. Meanwhile, he buries the one thing he actually wants somewhere in the back of his field report.

This won’t work if you’re lying to yourself, or hiding the badness. Glover’s words—No More Mr. Nice Guy.

Funny how the basics are 90 percent of what I talk about. They really do solve almost all the problems.

So, what are we doing here?

You’ll be surprised what he does next.