Heliocentric Universe

Then I can be your Sun, you can be my Earth

Resurrect the God through birth

-Method Man “All That I Need”

Recently, newly minted blogger Dalrock posted This is What a Beta Looks Like. Besides being a good post that garnered a lot of discussion, it included these lines:

My goal isn’t to shame anyone into changing or choosing something they don’t want. My goal is for you to have a good life, however you choose to define that. So be who you are and choose what you want. Just make sure what you choose is actually what you want.

For many men, just not necessarily those who reside in the Roissysphere, the good life includes choosing to go with a steady woman and choosing to have kids. The taxonomy of alpha and beta is fairly useless for such men because men who are successful at long term relationships must straddle the categories.  The goal is not to be alpha, beta, or gamma, but to be yourself and display the traits from each category that you personally find natural and satisfying. You cannot put on a show for your wife; it’s always got to be about you and what you desire. The trick is to balance your wants and needs in a way that most benefits the family. Though this implies a certain amount of sacrifice, it is not a sacrifice. Instead, it is a worthwhile effort undertaken in pursuit of a worthwhile goal.

But it has to be a choice. Your choice. Made for yourself.

Beta behaviors cannot be undertaken in an effort to placate your wife or drive her happiness. Beta behaviors must be undertaken not because successful relationships require a bit of beta, but because you get satisfaction from those behaviors or the fruits thereof. You feel satisfaction from getting the room you’re about to sit down and enjoy a cocktail in clean and neat. You enjoy looking at a freshly mowed and weeded yard. You enjoy cooking a delicious meal. Your wife enjoys the benefits because you enjoy them. To put her happiness first is to guarantee that neither of you will be pleased with your efforts. As Alkibiades explained:

That was a time when, at least for my father and my mother, the shared but different sacrifices were recognized by both parties.  My mother was and still is appreciative of all that my father does for her.   As such my father believes deeply that it is the man’s responsibility to provide for his wife and to ‘keep her happy.’  Only by doing so can a man be truly happy.

My father trotted this pretty lie out once again over the weekend.  I laughed when I heard it for the countless time.  I deadpanned back to him that keeping  a woman happy is impossible.  She will be happy if she chooses to be such, or she will be unhappy and make her significant other miserable if she chooses.

Finding the correct balance between alpha and beta behaviors will do wonders for your long term relationships. Your alpha displays will keep her deliciously lusty; your beta behaviors will keep her comfortably protected. In other words, you will satisfy all her primitive needs. But the focus must always be you. You are the sun, she is your earth. The orbit is around you and the choices you’ve made. Be like Copernicus, except, you know, marry and have kids. It’s kind of hard to make the concept of a geocentric universe your bitch if you don’t have an earth to orbit you and your fiery glory.