Dated mostly virgins in college and my 20s, got married, divorced 7 years later. Now dating again, even the Christian pool over 30 is almost entirely non-virgins. I'm looking for the most virtuous option available. But given the choice, I'd still prefer a virgin. It points to character and faithfulness.
@Pat_Stedman Reacting hands her control. During my divorce with my abusive ex, I stopped engaging with her outbursts and just walked away. We still got divorced, but ironically she became far more respectful through the process once I stopped caring/reacting.
AI didn't just make building cheaper. It made building anything cheaper.
Which means "I can build it" stopped being the hard part. Almost everyone can now.
The hard part is: does anyone know it exists, and do they trust you enough to try it.
Same logic applies everywhere. If thousands of people can produce work that's roughly as good as yours, "I can do the thing" stops being a differentiator. Everyone can do the thing.
What doesn't commoditize:
- A community that already trusts you
- A voice people recognize
- Proof of work people have actually seen
More products. More good work. Same finite attention.
The people who win the next few years won't just be good. They'll be known.
@Pat_Stedman Something that I am very aware of now is dating is observing the relationships of their parents and siblings. She will likely operate very similarly and be influenced by their attitudes towards their husband.
I genuinely believe you are operating in good faith.
But you and all the other conservative, Christian women who get on stage and talk about the problems with men (regardless of how correct you may be) unfortunately do not understand what you are doing isn't only unhelpful, it's inherently contradictory. Rather than solve the problem of male leadership you lament, you in fact underline the cause of it.
Men become leaders for one reason: because a man - either from his own Will or from fate thrusting it upon him - realizes that he must. He notices there is a problem that needs to be solved. He either sees incompetence or a vacuum, and decides he must step forward to either correct or fill it.
A man does not become a leader when he is nagged into it by a woman. A man does not become a leader when the legitimacy of his actions is measured by how much they align with a woman's interests. He does not have authority in such a scenario because his authority is constantly questioned. He has the responsibility of acting and bears the consequences of these actions, but he lacks agency to determine which actions to take. He might be out in front, but he is not a leader - he is a sock puppet. Really, he is a slave.
This is how most women want it, or at least it's what they have been taught is normal and correct. Liberal feminist women do not want men to have any authority and so this undermining is natural and congruent to them. Yet most conservative women in practice operate in the same way, even though they do not align ideologically with feminism. They DO want men to lead. They just want them to lead the way they want them to.
These women think this is OK, and that there is no reason they shouldn't tell men what and how to fix things, because this will help men to lead better. But it does not. What it does - especially for men who have been emasculated all their lives - is it makes them shut down and escape. They realize they don't have authority, so naturally they shirk responsibility. By instructing men you are telling them they are stupid and that you don't trust them to step up on their own. You are mothering: they respond like little boys accordingly.
So what are you supposed to do? You are actually, believe it or not, supposed to get out of the way. You are supposed to create the vacuum - to say "men, we have these problems - can you fix them?" You are supposed to submit and surrender to our judgement and authority, and to trust our competence - not to tell us what to do. You are supposed to believe in us and our latent capability and foresight - you are not supposed to second guess us or argue. And if we make mistakes, which is inevitable, you are supposed to have faith that we will figure things out and course correct.
I understand obviously this submission is scary for most women. It is the fairer sex's big stumbling block: you see it in the discourse on here all the time, the defensive and angry demeanors of women hardened towards life and love. It's unsurprising of course; many women have been disappointed and betrayed by men who have fallen short of their hopes and expectations. Yet while a woman should be judicious in her selection of a man, if she is to ever feel cherished and retain her femininity she still must ultimately give herself up to him. This requires deep trust, and it's why when women choose men in their love lives, they should choose men with vitality and most importantly integrity.
Yet hard as it may be to surrender, if a woman is to remain in essence a woman she must nevertheless find the courage to do it. In the same way that a man is defective if he does not lead, a woman is defective if she does not submit. This is what men mean today when we say "women aren't women anymore." Women like you, Allie, mean well but you do not know how to let go of control. You do not know how to get out of the way. Frankly, you do not know when to shut up.
The good news is that the response men are having towards you shows that men are actually becoming men again. It may still be the early, adolescent rebellious stage against the devouring mother that our society - and yes, our Church - has become. It may at times seem immature and petulant. But it is nevertheless the sign of a masculine spirit stirring: a spirit which is at its core is sovereign, and resists being controlled.
Because the first step of men becoming men again, ironically enough, is when they no longer care about listening to women. That is not because women aren't important to men; women at their best inspire and support us, indeed our growth and strength comes from our need to care for you and please you. It grows from the extent of our responsibility, which masculine men invariably seek out as they gain more authority.
But it does not come from listening to your lectures, which are not only disrespectful but frankly have little value to us - not because you are wrong about us per se, but because when women do not take responsibility for their own behavior, their judgment of us is unearned and becomes irrelevant. This is not sexist; it is also how men treat other men. Masculine men only care about the opinions of men who are in the arena. If you enter the domain of men be prepared to be treated like one.
In the end, if society is fixed it will come down to the men finally stepping up on their own and doing what must be done. Women can help with this, but not in the way they have been doing it. They can only do so by creating the vaccuum for men to step forward more easily. Indeed, the most productive thing conservative women can do with their platforms is to focus their attention on other women, calling out their own sex's vices and entitlement, and encouraging more humility. In other words, to focus on the problems women today have - which are equally manifold - rather than attempting to solve mens'. Men will sort out their own; we already are. What men need are not your exhortations, but your actual faith. And I mean faith in action. Your prayers for us are beautiful, but they come across as empty and self-centered without your surrender.
Not every man will rise to the task when you give him this trust. But most will - far more than most women appreciate - and the performance and courage of men in the West will rise in proportion to the amount of trust their women put in them. The blueprint for manhood is still in us, even if we have forgotten how to follow it. Yet what we require to remember it isn't your advice. It's your belief.
This is the power of feminine energy that has been forgotten by women today, in their foolish and unfruitful quest to be inferior men. They have forgotten that they have the ability to get everything by doing nothing. They are not builders at their core; they are amplifiers. Men naturally create structure, but it's women who create the reason to make it in the first place.
I hope that women rediscover this power in themselves. The West needs as many muses to survive, as it does warriors.
Nobody falls in love with someone they can't see.
Nobody builds a life they're hiding from.
I started showing up more. Showing up online, in rooms, in conversations I used to talk myself out of.
Old friends came back. New people showed up. Life got fuller.
Presence is magnetic. In dating, in friendship, in everything.
You can't attract what you're invisible to.
@Pat_Stedman Lived this. Ex wife was constantly making bad calls but wanted full control. Now that she's divorced and has to actually live with the consequences of her decisions, she's a completely different person. Accountability changes everything.
This is mostly true, and it’s something I’ve been banging the drum on for years. Now we’re seeing it acutely. Half of men in the West aren’t going to find women because half of men simply don’t have the evolved consciousness to meet what women are looking for in a partner. Providing still matters, but only as an amplification of who a man fundamentally is. Making money to support a family simply isn’t enough anymore.
However what is overlooked here is that the same consciousness separation is happening to women. Women may have started this collective process of shadow integration, but they have stalled out in recent years. Woke entitlement blew out their egos and set them back tremendously in their deveopment.
For as much as the average man is falling short, the bottom line is most women do not really offer anything compelling to men either. It used to be enough for a woman to take care of a home and put out. But despite what you hear online from some guys who lament the lack of femininity in modern women and think this is all they want, in practice it really isn't anymore. Sex is easy to come by, and the lack of zest and agency in simple albeit feminine women is basically intolerable for integrated men to commit to longterm. I have worked with tons of guys who reject these women, who are great on paper, because they have no individuality or spirit. They are submissive, but are psychological and often practical burdens.
Providing — whether financial or sexual; whether man or woman — just isn’t going to cut it to keep people devoted to you longterm anymore. You need to have a spark in you. You need to ignite the other person and their expansion.
It’s still about the dance of masculine and feminine, but at a higher octave than before. This new masculine has profound strength but also sensitivity, and this new feminine has deep compassion but also will.
This evolution has been happening slowly for decades, but it is accelerating exponentially as technology makes utilitarian forms of relating between the sexes obsolete. And it is a major reason for the genetic bottleneck we are now facing demographically. Certain types of humans with lower consciousness and spiritual development will not make it through. They will succumb to carnal and transactional tendencies and never find love, and as AI grants them greater and greater abilities to escape from themselves, few will reproduce. You can see it happening already.
Gen Z is as nihilistic as they are because they were the last generation to become adults in the old world, which is deteriorating before our eyes. Gen Alpha will experience something very different when they come of age. Indeed, I suspect there’s a reason some people in power decided to name these generations what they did.
But the future many cannot see is just around the corner, and though it will be terrifying and disorienting for some, for those who have done the work it will be beautiful.
The goal right now is to get as many there as possible.
He also genuinely loves the people around him. No hidden agenda. No performance.
Just this guy who knows exactly what he wants and who he's fighting for.
You can't fake that. People feel the difference.
I started posting content every day in 2022 anonymously.
My content was going into the ether with minimal engagement.
Talking to a wall essentially.
Then, in 2023 I started posting YouTube videos with my face.
The second I did that, everything changed,
> My booking rates on outreach messages went up.
> My cold email performance went up.
> My call booked rate and close rate went up across the board.
In every single case, I was linking people towards my YouTube videos to prove that I was real and actually knew what I was talking about.
That was literally it.
My entire reason for posting content was never to get clients, but to help people cross the trust gap so they'd actually get on a call with me or trust me enough to sign the contract.
And it worked. People saw I existed.
They watched the videos, built trust, and the sales process became so much easier because of it.
Then by the end of 2023 something happened I didn’t expect…
I actually started getting clients directly from the content itself!!!!
People would find a video, watch it, and book a call literally ready to buy.
No outreach, cold email, or selling on the call was needed anymore.
People would find a video, watch it, watch more over the next couple weeks, like what I put together, and book a call wanting to work with me.
That changed my mind and perspective forever.
You can literally post into the ether, spend no money, just invest your time, and the right people will find you and come ready to buy.
In a saturated market (like email marketing) YOU as a person are the differentiator, and your content proves that.
Just post more content.