The Desire for Confirmation

A woman explains the compulsive hypergamy loop

In case you ever wondered why women cannot be trusted at their word, not even with something as simple as just saying that A = A, this woman’s explanation of what she calls “the compulsive hypergamy loop” should provide sufficient explanation:

I get the desire for confirmation. These days, no-shows are so common that people are genuinely surprised when I make plans and actually show up, on time, even! But if you need reassurance, it's mechanically easy to just send a simple “Hey, we still on for today?” It’s not a big deal.

HOWEVER. Rom-com/Insta culture has drilled into us that initiating like this somehow devalues us; that it makes us look desperate or like we’re chasing. We’re taught to "lean back," care less, and let the other person pursue to maintain power in a relationship. These stupid games might create short-term pursuit dynamics and the illusion of real interest, but it obviously kills authenticity and real connection. In my experience, men respond really well to clear, direct, honest communication.

Women? Not so much. A lot of women find that kind of approach threatening, to the point that it often triggers a primal fight/flight/freeze response, so getting them to function from that place is very tough. Even if it's just a simple check-in about an appointment. On top of that, women are deeply conditioned to expect obsessive, over-the-top pursuit from men, and to feel slighted if they don’t get it. But ironically, when they do get it, it triggers the ick.

It’s this weird mental loop: “He’s chasing me, which my ego enjoys. But if he wants me so badly, he must not be able to do better. That makes him less appealing. What I really want is the kind of guy who could get a Swedish supermodel, but chooses me, because that would finally make me feel valuable.” But of course, even then, that validation wouldn’t last, because it’s all rooted in low self-esteem; so she will push, drag, beat that high value guy down over time, so she doesn't have to face her deep feelings of insufficiency.

This is a big part of the compulsive hypergamy loop, and as a woman, I can tell you it’s fundamentally exhausting. The good news is, all of it starts to unravel with some self-knowledge and radical honesty with oneself.

Translation: women are constantly playing games with themselves inside their heads, games that you can neither observe nor understand.

Women can, at any moment, rationalize literally anything to themselves at any time. They can recast the hero as the villain and the villain as the victim without there being any connection between these recastings and the actual facts, and they can blithely ignore any inconsistencies or contradictions between their beliefs in one moment and the next.

This is not to say they do this all the time, but they are capable of it at any time, and it is impossible for a man to know when it is happening, much less why. So the only reliable response to this internal game-playing is to refuse to engage with it in any way.

This is one of the differences between high-status men and low-status men. High-status men simply ignore “this weird mental loop” and pursue their objectives without paying any serious attention to what a woman is saying at that particular moment. They don’t take it personally when she says “I hate you” and they don’t put too much stock in her promises either. They understand that the only thing that matters is the observable pattern of the woman’s actual behavior over time.

Notice her direct assertion: women find clear, direct, honest communication to be threatening. Now, ask yourself what sort of person finds clear, direct, and honest communication to be threatening, an honest person or a dishonest person? The sort of individual who lies to himself is not only going to assume that everyone else is lying, he’s actually going to prefer that others don’t engage in direct and honest communication with him. Hence the relentless passive-aggression of the woman and the Gamma alike.

Low-status men, on the other hand, have a tendency to take every word a woman says as gospel, which is why they tend to find themselves feeling angry and confused by women on a regular basis, because they are building their model of anticipated female behavior on a foundation of constantly-shifting sand.