Rollo Tomassi
Master Don Juan
This is a cut & paste from a personal consult. Posted with permission.
Hi Rollo,
my name is Akash and I am big fan of your posts. They are always lucid, logical, and insightful.
I discovered the community about 5 months ago after yet another failed relationship characterized by highly AFC behaviour on my part. I ended it with a tremendous amount of guilt as I felt that because she was a "good person" I ought to have made it work even though I wasn't in love with her. Since then I have attended a JM workshop. I am 27 years old.
Based on your posts I would really appreciate your advice on two issues:
(1) how to make the best use of my impending return to school in May for a second undergraduate degree and;
(2) how to overcome the cognitive dissonance I feel about pursuing women outside the confines of a committed relationship as I still suffer from social conditioning that tells me I will hurt women by pursuing primarily sexual relationships with them and so it is immoral to do so.
If you would like to post a reply on the forum, rather than by a PM, for the benefit of others that is fine with me. I wanted to direct these queries to you though as I believe I could benefit from your worldy wise opinion.
Sincerely look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Akash
Akash,
First off, thanks for the props. I don’t post what I do for money or to sell advice or books or DVDs. I do it because I think it ought to be free in the first place, as I feel that men should already have been taught what I profess from positive masculine role models. Unfortunately these models are few and far between these days. So I’m always appreciative of accolades.
I’ll give you a run down of what I can gather from your initial post, but understand that what you’ve given me here is pretty limited as far as information is concerned. I can only assume certain things from the very brief description of your life so take what I write with that in mind. In the future give me a better account of what your AFC behaviors were, how your relationships have ended, family background, where you live, why you’re pursuing a second degree, etc. I can be more accurate and avoid assumptions this way.
To begin with, if you’ve only been involved in the “community” for the past 5 months so the first thing I’m going to tell you is that it takes time to mold your personality and unlearn mental schemas you’ve become conditioned to consider integral parts of your current personality. One of the biggest obstacles most men have with accepting the fundaments of a positive masculine mindset is the attitude that personality is static and uncontrollable by them. A lot of this “that’s just how I am” mentality comes from this basic conditioning and needs to be addressed from the outset since this almost universally is an ego-investment on the part of a guy who’s probably emotionally distressed, confused and/or frustrated.
Understand now that personality is ultimately what YOU determine it to be. This isn’t to say that external factors don’t influence personality; indeed these variables and outside influences are exactly the reason men such as yourself do seek out the community. However, it is you who determine what is comfortable for you and what will constitute the traits that makes your personality your own. You are most definitely not a blank slate, but you have the capacity to erase parts you don’t like or are unusable and rewrite new parts that you like and prove efficient.
Based on your posts I would really appreciate your advice on two issues:
(1) how to make the best use of my impending return to school in May for a second undergraduate degree
This all depends on what your own personal goals are. The best use you can make of this time is to devote yourself completely to achieving the purpose for which you decided to pursue a second degree in the first place. I can only assume you are working for this degree with a set outcome in mind, but is this what you truly want? I ask this because I know far too many men who’ve altered the course of their lives to better accommodate the women in their lives or to facilitate their insecurities and fear of rejection. It’s not an unfamiliar story to me to hear of how a guy opted for a certain university or a career path because he’d convinced himself that it would sustain a relationship that he was fearful of loosing or he felt was his “responsibility as a man” to be supportive of ‘her’ ambitions at the sacrifice of his own. The conclusion of this scenario, more often than not, ends with a bitter man, mad at himself with the long term results of his choices after the woman he’d strived so long to accommodate leaves him for another man who had held fast to his own identity and ambition – which is exactly what makes him attractive.
I’m not sure how or if this fits into your conditions, but let it serve as an illustration for reclaiming and remolding your own personality. Only you have the hindsight to assess why you made certain decisions in your life. I’m only asking you to be as brutally critical of your true motivations for making them. Maybe it’s time you review why you decided to pursue a second degree?
(2) how to overcome the cognitive dissonance I feel about pursuing women outside the confines of a committed relationship as I still suffer from social conditioning that tells me I will hurt women by pursuing primarily sexual relationships with them and so it is immoral to do so.
Akash, any reasonably attractive woman knows you’d like to have sex with her. It’s a primal, chemical instinct and to be bluntly honest, there’s nothing wrong with it. In certain Muslim sects men are allowed to take “temporary” wives for a set period of time in addition to their “permanent” wives so long as they support them financially. Some Mormons practice open polygamy in a similar fashion. Some men marry and divorce multiple times (and support them congruously). All of these practices are considered, to a greater or lesser degree, moral. But the dissonance occurs when the rationalizations for a behavior conflict with the motivations for it and the associative psycho-social stigmas that get attached to it. Sorry for the $10 words here, but your feelings of guilt or hesitancy in a desire to explore multiple relationships is a calculated result of a very effective social conditioning with a latent purpose meant to curb a natural impulse.
Recognizing this is the first step to progressing beyond it and actually using it (responsibly) to your own advantage. As men, our biological impetus is to have unlimited access to unlimited sexuality with females bearing the best physical attributes. This is a rudimentary fact and on some level of consciousness both men and women understand this. No amount of proselytizing or social conditioning will erase what God and evolution hard-coded into our collective bio-psychological desires and behaviors. Admittedly, social conventions have historically made a good run at limiting this drive, but it can never (nor should it ever) purge this, because in essence it is a survival-ensuring attribute for us.
That said, as a religious man myself, I cannot deny the utility in the latent purpose of absolute monogamy. No other method proves more valuable in parental investment and developing a strong masculine and feminine psyche in a person than that of a committed, opposite sex, two-parent family. I feel it’s necessary to add here that I am thoroughly unconvinced that gender identity is exclusively a set of learned behaviors as many in the mainstream would try to convince us of. There is simply too much biological evidence and the resulting psychological/behavioral response to gender differences to accept this, making it vitally important that a child (and later a healthy adult) be taught a healthy appreciation for both the masculine and feminine influences in their psyches. I certainly would never condone infidelity based on just this principle alone since it seems the most beneficial for healthy adults. It’s when this healthy monogamy becomes clouded by infantile, emotionality and insecure romanticisms with the resulting expectations that are derived by them that it becomes necessary for a man to cultivate an attitude of being the PRIZE and thus broadening his selection of opportunities for monogamy to his greatest advantage prior to committing to it. In other words, if you are essentially sacrificing your capacity to pursue your biological imperative (unlimited access to unlimited sexuality), pragmatically, you’ll want to choose a partner of the highest quality from the broadest pool you are capable of attracting.
The downside of this proposition is twofold. First, your ability to attract a sizable pool of quality ‘applicants’ is limited by factors you immediately have available. At 37, if all goes well, you’ll be more financially stable and mature than you are at 27. The 37 year old Akash will, in theory, be more attractive to a long term prospect than the 27 year old Akash. Secondly, women’s sexual value decreases as they age, meaning there is no guarantee that your beautiful, vivacious, 27 year old bride will remain so at 37. In fact the odds are she wont.
Hi Rollo,
my name is Akash and I am big fan of your posts. They are always lucid, logical, and insightful.
I discovered the community about 5 months ago after yet another failed relationship characterized by highly AFC behaviour on my part. I ended it with a tremendous amount of guilt as I felt that because she was a "good person" I ought to have made it work even though I wasn't in love with her. Since then I have attended a JM workshop. I am 27 years old.
Based on your posts I would really appreciate your advice on two issues:
(1) how to make the best use of my impending return to school in May for a second undergraduate degree and;
(2) how to overcome the cognitive dissonance I feel about pursuing women outside the confines of a committed relationship as I still suffer from social conditioning that tells me I will hurt women by pursuing primarily sexual relationships with them and so it is immoral to do so.
If you would like to post a reply on the forum, rather than by a PM, for the benefit of others that is fine with me. I wanted to direct these queries to you though as I believe I could benefit from your worldy wise opinion.
Sincerely look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Akash
Akash,
First off, thanks for the props. I don’t post what I do for money or to sell advice or books or DVDs. I do it because I think it ought to be free in the first place, as I feel that men should already have been taught what I profess from positive masculine role models. Unfortunately these models are few and far between these days. So I’m always appreciative of accolades.
I’ll give you a run down of what I can gather from your initial post, but understand that what you’ve given me here is pretty limited as far as information is concerned. I can only assume certain things from the very brief description of your life so take what I write with that in mind. In the future give me a better account of what your AFC behaviors were, how your relationships have ended, family background, where you live, why you’re pursuing a second degree, etc. I can be more accurate and avoid assumptions this way.
To begin with, if you’ve only been involved in the “community” for the past 5 months so the first thing I’m going to tell you is that it takes time to mold your personality and unlearn mental schemas you’ve become conditioned to consider integral parts of your current personality. One of the biggest obstacles most men have with accepting the fundaments of a positive masculine mindset is the attitude that personality is static and uncontrollable by them. A lot of this “that’s just how I am” mentality comes from this basic conditioning and needs to be addressed from the outset since this almost universally is an ego-investment on the part of a guy who’s probably emotionally distressed, confused and/or frustrated.
Understand now that personality is ultimately what YOU determine it to be. This isn’t to say that external factors don’t influence personality; indeed these variables and outside influences are exactly the reason men such as yourself do seek out the community. However, it is you who determine what is comfortable for you and what will constitute the traits that makes your personality your own. You are most definitely not a blank slate, but you have the capacity to erase parts you don’t like or are unusable and rewrite new parts that you like and prove efficient.
Based on your posts I would really appreciate your advice on two issues:
(1) how to make the best use of my impending return to school in May for a second undergraduate degree
This all depends on what your own personal goals are. The best use you can make of this time is to devote yourself completely to achieving the purpose for which you decided to pursue a second degree in the first place. I can only assume you are working for this degree with a set outcome in mind, but is this what you truly want? I ask this because I know far too many men who’ve altered the course of their lives to better accommodate the women in their lives or to facilitate their insecurities and fear of rejection. It’s not an unfamiliar story to me to hear of how a guy opted for a certain university or a career path because he’d convinced himself that it would sustain a relationship that he was fearful of loosing or he felt was his “responsibility as a man” to be supportive of ‘her’ ambitions at the sacrifice of his own. The conclusion of this scenario, more often than not, ends with a bitter man, mad at himself with the long term results of his choices after the woman he’d strived so long to accommodate leaves him for another man who had held fast to his own identity and ambition – which is exactly what makes him attractive.
I’m not sure how or if this fits into your conditions, but let it serve as an illustration for reclaiming and remolding your own personality. Only you have the hindsight to assess why you made certain decisions in your life. I’m only asking you to be as brutally critical of your true motivations for making them. Maybe it’s time you review why you decided to pursue a second degree?
(2) how to overcome the cognitive dissonance I feel about pursuing women outside the confines of a committed relationship as I still suffer from social conditioning that tells me I will hurt women by pursuing primarily sexual relationships with them and so it is immoral to do so.
Akash, any reasonably attractive woman knows you’d like to have sex with her. It’s a primal, chemical instinct and to be bluntly honest, there’s nothing wrong with it. In certain Muslim sects men are allowed to take “temporary” wives for a set period of time in addition to their “permanent” wives so long as they support them financially. Some Mormons practice open polygamy in a similar fashion. Some men marry and divorce multiple times (and support them congruously). All of these practices are considered, to a greater or lesser degree, moral. But the dissonance occurs when the rationalizations for a behavior conflict with the motivations for it and the associative psycho-social stigmas that get attached to it. Sorry for the $10 words here, but your feelings of guilt or hesitancy in a desire to explore multiple relationships is a calculated result of a very effective social conditioning with a latent purpose meant to curb a natural impulse.
Recognizing this is the first step to progressing beyond it and actually using it (responsibly) to your own advantage. As men, our biological impetus is to have unlimited access to unlimited sexuality with females bearing the best physical attributes. This is a rudimentary fact and on some level of consciousness both men and women understand this. No amount of proselytizing or social conditioning will erase what God and evolution hard-coded into our collective bio-psychological desires and behaviors. Admittedly, social conventions have historically made a good run at limiting this drive, but it can never (nor should it ever) purge this, because in essence it is a survival-ensuring attribute for us.
That said, as a religious man myself, I cannot deny the utility in the latent purpose of absolute monogamy. No other method proves more valuable in parental investment and developing a strong masculine and feminine psyche in a person than that of a committed, opposite sex, two-parent family. I feel it’s necessary to add here that I am thoroughly unconvinced that gender identity is exclusively a set of learned behaviors as many in the mainstream would try to convince us of. There is simply too much biological evidence and the resulting psychological/behavioral response to gender differences to accept this, making it vitally important that a child (and later a healthy adult) be taught a healthy appreciation for both the masculine and feminine influences in their psyches. I certainly would never condone infidelity based on just this principle alone since it seems the most beneficial for healthy adults. It’s when this healthy monogamy becomes clouded by infantile, emotionality and insecure romanticisms with the resulting expectations that are derived by them that it becomes necessary for a man to cultivate an attitude of being the PRIZE and thus broadening his selection of opportunities for monogamy to his greatest advantage prior to committing to it. In other words, if you are essentially sacrificing your capacity to pursue your biological imperative (unlimited access to unlimited sexuality), pragmatically, you’ll want to choose a partner of the highest quality from the broadest pool you are capable of attracting.
The downside of this proposition is twofold. First, your ability to attract a sizable pool of quality ‘applicants’ is limited by factors you immediately have available. At 37, if all goes well, you’ll be more financially stable and mature than you are at 27. The 37 year old Akash will, in theory, be more attractive to a long term prospect than the 27 year old Akash. Secondly, women’s sexual value decreases as they age, meaning there is no guarantee that your beautiful, vivacious, 27 year old bride will remain so at 37. In fact the odds are she wont.
