Based Camp - Based Camp： Rich Trad Women Turning to Poly & Kink to Get Pregnant

00:00:00.000 We have this algorithm for relationship stability.

00:00:04.140 The stability score is a person's individual value to a specific individual who there is

00:00:09.240 divided by what they think they can get on an open market.

00:00:13.480 And this can be inaccurate.

00:00:15.300 And as long as that number is above one, the relationship will be stable.

00:00:20.640 When the number falls below one, the relationship becomes unstable.

00:00:25.100 And many cultural things can augment this.

00:00:27.540 The reason why celebrity relationships are so intrinsically unstable is because the

00:00:32.600 value of a celebrity on an open market is almost always higher than their value to somebody

00:00:37.720 who's gotten to know them as a human being.

00:00:39.540 Would you like to know more?

00:00:41.240 Hello, gorgeous.

00:00:42.560 Hello, Simone. 0.69

00:00:43.900 It is wonderful to be talking to you today, despite the seasonal affective disorder that

00:00:48.400 both of us are feeling.

00:00:49.640 It's really unfair to us who are affected by summer rather than winter because no one recognizes

00:00:55.320 our plight.

00:00:56.280 But here's one thing.

00:00:57.540 We don't have to worry about that actually makes us extremely smug and I think moderately

00:01:01.700 intolerable, which is our relationship.

00:01:03.580 I feel like some kind of crazy wealthy person in the midst of a sea of poverty that is systemic,

00:01:09.960 that is deeply unfair.

00:01:11.800 And people sometimes reach out to us and they're like, hey, as a single person with X, Y, and

00:01:17.760 Z characteristics, what tips can you give me?

00:01:20.080 And obviously, we try to give whatever advice we can possibly give.

00:01:24.920 But I'm also like, but the system is so broken.

00:01:28.660 I really don't know what you're going to do.

00:01:31.240 And I think it's an interesting thing to discuss, especially in the context of demographic collapse,

00:01:36.420 of pronatalism, of mental health problems, societal decline, as some people like to talk

00:01:41.900 about it.

00:01:42.620 So let's dig into it.

00:01:43.800 Let's talk about broken relationship markets. 0.66

00:01:45.820 We are living in a world today where I feel like both men and women are really screwed

00:01:52.300 in relationship markets, but in very different ways.

00:01:55.580 Yes.

00:01:55.960 And a lot of people feel rightly somewhat helpless in trying to find a partner.

00:02:02.640 And one of the things we're doing is trying to build new cultural solutions.

00:02:04.660 But let's talk about why the existing system isn't working effectively.

00:02:07.620 Okay, so we call this the lazy eight problem.

00:02:10.940 It is a problem that emerged with swipe-based dating, where dating both became associated

00:02:16.560 with very low switching costs, like switching from one partner to the next was fairly easy

00:02:21.080 and seamless.

00:02:21.800 There wasn't a lot of social grief you got for breaking up with someone or ghosting them.

00:02:26.060 But also with swipe-based dating, it became very image-heavy, very aesthetics-focused.

00:02:31.060 So whereas before, even on apps like OkCupid, et cetera, you used to be able to compete or

00:02:37.020 appeal to people based on a lot of different metrics.

00:02:39.540 Like on OkCupid, my whole game, my churn was to answer their weird questions and end up

00:02:45.420 in people's feeds and then catch their attention there.

00:02:47.980 So it wasn't even images.

00:02:48.840 It was like my funny answers and humor.

00:02:51.500 Like that's just not an option anymore.

00:02:53.280 So it's become like really honed in on aesthetics-driven characteristics.

00:02:58.240 So before you move further, for some of our listeners, they may not know the way internet

00:03:02.800 dating used to work.

00:03:04.340 So there were two systems that you used to be able to use for internet dating and Simone

00:03:08.080 made effective use of both of them.

00:03:09.780 And they are radically different from the swipe-based systems you have access to today.

00:03:14.040 Essentially, it was a directory.

00:03:15.960 So I would go, I would create a long form profile that was much more focused on the text,

00:03:20.640 like who I am than what I look like, which gave you an ability to compete on different

00:03:25.780 metrics and not just on attractiveness.

00:03:27.500 Then what you could do is go and search and say, okay, all women interested in men within

00:03:32.740 25 miles that are slender, that are atheists, that are Republicans.

00:03:38.480 You could put a number of metrics in and you would just get a list of every woman who was

00:03:43.300 using the app at that time who fit that criteria.

00:03:46.040 And you could go through, you could sort those people and then outreach to them, knowing how

00:03:51.780 valuable each one of them was to you.

00:03:53.960 While also knowing that once you exhausted a potential lead, that lead was exhausted until

00:03:59.340 new women or men would come onto the app. 0.77

00:04:02.560 Now, this is very different than the swipe-based system where there is a perception that there

00:04:07.720 are always more people out there instead of a, okay, I have a broad understanding of what

00:04:14.080 every one of sort of the things that I value most with that entire dating pool is my area,

00:04:18.880 which actually it might not be good as the older monogamous systems in terms of relationship

00:04:23.960 stability, because those had really high switching costs.

00:04:26.320 And I'm not saying good for quality of life.

00:04:27.960 I'm just talking about relationship stability, but it was dramatically better than the current

00:04:32.120 system because you had a perception that was accurate of what was really out on the market.

00:04:38.080 Now, this created a problem when that perception was inaccurate, which often happened.

00:04:44.140 And that's the lazy eight problem.

00:04:45.460 So talk about that, because that was a problem both in the old system and the new system, I'd argue.

00:04:49.640 Yes, but I think it's become much worse now.

00:04:52.620 So the lazy eight problem is this.

00:04:54.940 You'll see in online dating data that we'll just say 80-20-ish.

00:04:59.680 I don't know exactly what the proportions are, but 20% of men are sleeping with 80% of women,

00:05:04.980 meaning that most men really aren't getting partners.

00:05:07.220 You see this in declining rates of reported sex among men.

00:05:11.500 So that means that most women are dating, you could argue, if we're ranking humans, 0.57

00:05:17.840 especially in terms of attractiveness, partner attractiveness from one to 10,

00:05:21.780 they're dating eights, nines, and tens, even if they are a three, four, five, six,

00:05:28.080 even if they're out, like those men are out of their league.

00:05:30.920 Why is this the case?

00:05:32.220 Think about it this way. 0.99

00:05:33.120 If you are an eight and you're lazy and you just want to have sex one night, 0.94

00:05:37.200 you want to hook up with someone, it's really easy to just reach out to a six or a five or a seven

00:05:43.460 on Tinder on OkCupid and have a one-night stand with them and never get back to them.

00:05:50.120 The problem this creates is the fours, the five, the sixes, the sevens end up thinking that they are entitled to an eight,

00:05:59.100 a nine, or a ten, that they could get an eight or a nine or a ten as a marriage partner, as a long-term partner.

00:06:04.540 I think entitled might even be the wrong word.

00:06:06.900 I think that they're just genuinely confused about the type of guy that they can actually secure as a long-term partner.

00:06:13.360 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:14.520 I guess entitled is a little bit too harsh of a term to use, but they're certainly given the impression that they could-

00:06:21.800 But why would they not be confused?

00:06:22.980 It's a natural thing.

00:06:24.320 This is who is reaching out to them on these apps.

00:06:26.740 This is who is sleeping with them. 1.00

00:06:28.740 So, of course, this is who they can get.

00:06:31.060 And with women- 0.71

00:06:31.760 Which, of course, they can't get that.

00:06:33.220 Yeah, and then with women, you have the secondary problem, which is their perception of the quality of man they can get can also be inflated through reflection on previous men they have slept with. 0.57

00:06:44.200 So, generally, a woman's value was in a sexual or dating marketplace declines over time. 0.99

00:06:50.700 So, let's talk about what we mean when we say people have a value on a dating marketplace.

00:06:55.340 People are like, you can't put a value on humans.

00:06:58.960 That's what you do when you're hiring people.

00:07:00.960 People are products all the time in the economy.

00:07:03.220 What's unique about the dating marketplace is that you're typically-

00:07:07.300 Now, I'm not saying that money is never exchanged or a big part of it, but what you're typically doing is exchanging one product for another, hopefully, equivalent product.

00:07:16.140 That is the core of what you're doing.

00:07:17.880 You are playing in what in business is called, or in economics, is called a two-sided marketplace.

00:07:23.080 This is assuming you're in a heterosexual dating pool.

00:07:26.040 If you're in a bisexual dating pool or a gay dating pool, the dynamics are actually pretty different.

00:07:31.700 And it can cause different sorts of problems in the dating marketplace.

00:07:35.320 But for now, we're just going to talk about the heterosexual marketplace, which is actually much more broken than the gay marketplace. 0.95

00:07:41.760 Yes.

00:07:42.420 Well, because you have a sort of truer equality within the gay marketplace in which you really are exchanging like for like. 0.87

00:07:48.940 We're in the heterosexual marketplace, it's sometimes less obvious how the value of different partners on the open marketplace align.

00:07:57.100 Now, here's what's really important to remember.

00:08:00.100 Every person has two scores above their head.

00:08:02.640 One score is their value on the open marketplace, and the other score is their value to a specific individual.

00:08:12.320 Okay?

00:08:12.800 So if I go into a grocery store, for example, the diabetes medication might have a uniquely really high value to me.

00:08:20.960 I might be willing to pay way more than market rate for it because I need it to survive.

00:08:26.000 And this is true when looking for a partner as well.

00:08:28.460 And we'll get into arbitrage plays and what this allows and everything like that.

00:08:31.260 It's also true for companies.

00:08:32.860 So for a company, while a person might have the average salary they might be able to earn on the open marketplace,

00:08:39.320 within certain industries or for certain companies, they might actually have astronomically higher value than they would have in the open marketplace.

00:08:47.360 Which causes a very interesting negotiation because the company knows they can't earn what they're paying them on the open marketplace.

00:08:56.000 But this person often knows their value to that company specifically.

00:08:59.940 And so we'll get to how that often plays out in dating as well.

00:09:04.240 But the larger point that I was about to make here is that in a marketplace, a woman's value typically declines over time for a few reasons. 0.79

00:09:13.860 One is women generally prefer to date guys who are older than them, whereas men prefer to date women who are younger than them.

00:09:19.800 And it's actually a little bit more complicated than this, and it changes this, people get older.

00:09:23.540 But people dramatically underestimate how much this affects dating pools.

00:09:28.620 So an example that we give in our book where I do the math, but I'm just going to try to go from memory here, is if I am a freshman girl in college, right?

00:09:37.860 I can date freshman guys, I can date sophomore guys, I can date junior guys, and I can date senior guys.

00:09:43.240 If I am a freshman guy in college, typically I realistically only have a shot with freshman girls. 0.99

00:09:49.300 And then I become a sophomore guy, I have a chance with sophomore girls and freshman girls, and then the sophomore girl has a chance with sophomore guys, junior guys, senior guys.

00:09:56.680 What this means is that how difficult it is to date for a freshman, a girl versus a senior girl, or conversely, a senior guy versus a freshman guy, it's literally 42 times harder, if I remember correctly, to secure a partner.

00:10:17.260 Which is wild when you think about the effects that has on somebody who doesn't expect this really radical change in their value on the dating pool.

00:10:26.180 Now obviously people can date outside of college and stuff like that, we're just using college as a constrained data set, so that you can begin to think about how this works.

00:10:35.520 But if I may summarize this, just to bring people all back to the basic points.

00:10:39.440 Let's say I'm a 30-year-old woman, but I am thinking, I'm comparing all partners that I'm looking at from this point on as a 30-year-old woman to all the partners I used to have.

00:10:49.960 We also have to keep in mind that men, regardless of age, seem to find early 20s women the most attractive.

00:10:56.040 So those women have the highest value and can get the best men because they have the highest value. 0.99

00:11:02.640 So I'm comparing what I could get as a 22-year-old woman with what I can get as a 30-year-old woman, which is a false expectation because I can't get even the same guys I used to date earlier as this hypothetical woman, as I can get now, right?

00:11:18.000 Yeah, there's two other factors at play here that are worth noting.

00:11:21.880 One is typically the more sexual partners you have as a woman to the average guy on the marketplace.

00:11:28.040 Now, not all guys care about this, but to the average guy on the marketplace, this is going to decrease the quality of guy you're going to match with.

00:11:34.820 In addition to that, there's the problem that the things that you can build up during that critical period between 22 and 32 as a girl matter a lot less on the marketplace than the things that a guy can build up during the same period.

00:11:49.320 By that, what I mean is a guy's value on the marketplace is more positively augmented by things like a degree, a good job, a lot of income than a woman's is. 0.99

00:12:01.080 This is unfair.

00:12:02.760 I am not saying this is fair.

00:12:05.060 I am not saying this is how things should be structured, but it is objectively true if you look at data and you look at what people say they want in the parter.

00:12:13.420 And it's important to remember that you can find certain subpopulations where this isn't true, and that is what we call an arbitrage play.

00:12:22.060 So an arbitrage play in business is, let's say, I buy some ore from an area where that ore is really common, and then I sell it in an area where that ore is really rare and it has higher value.

00:12:31.660 And this is true for companies, right?

00:12:33.760 You have an arbitrage play.

00:12:35.060 If you have like a skill in astrophysics, in working with a company who needs somebody, it was a skill in astrophysics.

00:12:40.700 You are going to have a higher value to all companies in the astrophysics category.

00:12:44.960 If you are unusual in some way that either helps you with a specific demographic or lowers your value across the market more generally, you are going to struggle.

00:12:55.140 An example of this would be a overweight woman. 1.00

00:12:57.600 There is a specific demographic of guys where that actually positively augments their value on the dating market, but to the average guy that's going to lower their value on the dating market.

00:13:08.500 One of the problems that we have in our society is people are like, you're fetishizing me, or you like me for the thing that makes me different.

00:13:14.960 Like they, I don't understand.

00:13:17.120 I guess I don't get it.

00:13:18.100 Right, like you just like me because of X, or like it's gross that you like me because of X.

00:13:22.740 Whereas the more advantageous mindset to have is, oh, I have this one thing that people disproportionately value that would allow me to get men or women out of my league.

00:13:33.400 I should lean into that, even if it's not necessarily what I'm into.

00:13:37.020 Yes, I think that here's where the cognitive dissonance comes from there, is that part of them believes that they should be ashamed for that.

00:13:45.380 And so if the relationship draws attention to that, then they feel like they might not have earned the partnership as much.

00:13:52.440 And they may also feel the same way that like a really attractive girl in a relationship feels. 0.82

00:13:56.160 Like you only value me for my body, or you disproportionately rate my body in the reasons that you value me.

00:14:04.180 And this is an interesting thing that can also augment the value of a relationship.

00:14:08.060 What's really wild is why.

00:14:10.920 So why I value another person can augment how much they value me.

00:14:17.640 So if I value them for their intelligence, for example, more than their body, they may value me more, all other things actually being equal.

00:14:24.860 Which is a pretty wild dynamic when you're talking about like calculating marketplaces.

00:14:28.680 I can't say I actually had a girl break up with me because she said I only valued her for her brains. 1.00

00:14:32.540 Another interesting one, and I think this is another thing, like reasons why people have run into relationship problems with people.

00:14:38.840 One woman was mad that I called her beautiful, but not sexy or hot. 1.00

00:14:44.460 And that she knew she was beautiful, but her subconscious, like she said that her actual fear was that she wasn't hot.

00:14:52.220 This was a very classically attractive person.

00:14:53.940 High standards, man.

00:14:55.960 And I was like, wow, that's really picky.

00:14:57.940 But I think it shows the way that we use our partners to augment how we think about ourselves.

00:15:04.060 Because these types of things like shouldn't really matter, but they do.

00:15:08.100 And they do change the nature of the relationship to some extent.

00:15:11.560 Somebody who values you because you are beautiful is going to engage different with you intimately.

00:15:16.500 And in a public context than somebody who values you because they think you're like an object of desire, right?

00:15:22.960 Animalistic desire.

00:15:24.000 So anyway, back to the topic here.

00:15:26.020 Yeah, there's actually one more thing which you're missing, which is actually pretty important.

00:15:29.300 Which is the more sexual partners you have, especially as a female, the less you're going to, we'll say, hormonally pair bond with your partners.

00:15:37.920 So I've also had friends who have told me with new boyfriends that they have, as they're now at this point looking to get married, I'm just not feeling the same connection I felt with other people.

00:15:49.920 And they take that as a sign of, oh, because I'm not feeling that, that's a sign that he is not the one, for example.

00:15:57.080 Whereas really what's going on is because they've had more sexual partners, that bonding has actually just gone down.

00:16:05.020 They're not going to feel that feeling anymore, but they don't know that they're not going to feel that feeling anymore.

00:16:10.120 And as Diana Fleischman said on our podcast, this isn't necessarily a negative thing.

00:16:13.860 Right.

00:16:14.320 Depending on your strategy, it can be a very positive thing.

00:16:16.380 And being forced to form an emotional bond to someone just because you're in an intimate relationship with them can have really negative consequences.

00:16:25.440 Yeah, it's a lot of things with the human body are use it or lose it.

00:16:29.060 So if your body is very monogamous, it will use that.

00:16:33.040 It will give you lots of pair bonding hormones and make you really dedicated to a partner and really connected.

00:16:37.640 If your body's given signs that you're not using monogamy, that you actually need to be a little bit more flexible, it's going to adapt to that.

00:16:45.280 And that's a good thing.

00:16:46.060 Like you and Diana point out.

00:16:48.100 But to add all these things together.

00:16:50.620 We should be clear.

00:16:51.700 It doesn't mean you are incapable of loving or forming a bond with your partner.

00:16:55.300 It just means you won't involuntarily form one just because you're intimate with them anymore.

00:17:00.720 You're not going to, there's less of that, we'll almost say like drug-induced connection.

00:17:06.280 But it doesn't mean that there is a component of earlier relationships that are depending.

00:17:11.340 Now, people are different.

00:17:12.380 Some guys are born attractive to God, right?

00:17:15.360 Sometimes people just have an odd biology.

00:17:17.480 But for the average woman, you are not going to easily be able to recapture some of the feelings you had in your earliest intimate relationships in later relationships.

00:17:25.760 Right.

00:17:26.240 Right.

00:17:26.560 So if we add all these things together, first, we have the lazy eight problem where many women who are middling, the average woman is going to be a five, right? 1.00

00:17:34.540 So the average woman is going to be led to believe that she could marry or have a long-term relationship with an eight, nine, or ten, because those are the guys that are sleeping with everyone and probably engaging them. 0.81

00:17:48.420 When ultimately those guys that they have slept with actually would never commit to them long-term.

00:17:53.480 So that's the lazy eight problem, number one.

00:17:55.440 So unreasonable expectations.

00:17:56.700 Two, typically when women are ready to settle down, especially in modern society, because we're encouraged to settle down after we've gone to school, after we've set up our career, after we've done whatever it is that we want to do single, they are able to secure less high-value men than they were when they were in their early 20s.

00:18:15.180 Because at any age range, men are going to prefer women in their early 20s.

00:18:21.080 So they are now comparing their current partner options to previous partner options that they'd never be able to get again.

00:18:27.700 And then third, they are often, to your point, not exploiting market asymmetries that they could be exploiting with themselves.

00:18:35.120 So they're not willing to be a little bit flexible in terms of saying, okay, what do I offer?

00:18:40.140 And how can I find someone out of my league who really wants that one thing?

00:18:43.880 So they're not thinking strategically.

00:18:45.160 And then fourth, they are really expecting to feel that early pair bonding experience, that sort of hormonal addictive surge that they get with new relationships.

00:18:55.400 And they're just typically, on average, not feeling it.

00:18:58.220 So all these factors are leading to one thing, which is women are just not really getting excited about marrying partners that are in their league.

00:19:09.000 But there's a secondary problem here.

00:19:10.500 Yeah.

00:19:10.780 Which we need to talk about, which is if you are a high-value woman. 1.00

00:19:14.280 So suppose you're like a top 10% woman in our society today, especially in regards to social status. 1.00

00:19:19.560 So you're highly educated.

00:19:20.520 You have a good degree.

00:19:21.680 You are moderately attractive.

00:19:23.640 Maybe not like superstar, but moderately attractive.

00:19:26.420 You are actually really screwed on dating markets, even if you want a long-term relationship.

00:19:31.880 And this is because men, the high-value men who you would naturally match with in a totally monogamous society.

00:19:38.400 So that what I mean is if everyone could only choose one partner, you typically get about everyone in a society being paired off with some problems, which we can talk about in other videos.

00:19:47.180 But what happens in this scenario, the way our society is structured, if you are a top-value woman, you are competing with a guy who can go for a lot of women who are lower value than you, who he may value almost as much as a long-term partner.

00:20:03.340 But these other women intrinsically are going to show often more gratitude for the relationship, which guys value a lot in a partner, a lot more than I think a lot of women think. 0.98

00:20:15.760 So a woman who's a six or something and has a high level of gratitude for a relationship is typically going to be chosen over a woman who's like a nine. 0.98

00:20:25.240 And it's not the nine's fault. 0.98

00:20:27.760 She genuinely shouldn't feel as much gratitude.

00:20:29.700 This guy might be below her in social status, in income, in attractiveness, and yet she will have a hard time locking him down.

00:20:37.180 And it creates a really negative environment for women that is incredibly difficult to navigate. 1.00

00:20:43.120 And we've talked about, we'll probably do a video on how, no, we'll talk about it later in this video, I think, how to secure a partner.

00:20:49.260 There's the polygambit that we've talked about.

00:20:51.440 Do you want to go into that?

00:20:53.280 Yeah.

00:20:53.540 So we've talked about the problem at length.

00:20:56.000 The solutions aren't great, so they're not going to take that much time.

00:20:58.740 But one of the things that you can do, which we see working, we've seen a couple of anecdotal situations in which this has worked really well, especially for women, is that women consider entering polyamorous relationships with high value men.

00:21:13.740 So the way the polygambit works is a woman who is not actually a high preference for a poly relationship offers to let the man sleep with other people.

00:21:24.540 And this is where the no D's rule can come from in poly relationships.

00:21:28.660 And what you actually have here is a polygynous relationship, just a classic polygynous relationship across societies where a high volume man basically has multiple partners.

00:21:36.140 But because our society expects monogamy to some extent, once people start having kids, what the woman will do is she'll say, okay, I will be your primary. 1.00

00:21:44.320 You can continue to sleep with other people.

00:21:45.800 You just can't spend resources on them.

00:21:47.400 And you will have kids with me.

00:21:49.460 You want to have kids, right?

00:21:50.340 So this is what we're going to do.

00:21:51.240 And they make this gambit understanding that the guy's testosterone drops after he has kids and that his value also drops to other women after he has a primary partner who he's married to and who he has kids with, which lowers the quality of the partners he can get for intimate relationships to the extent where he may just not be interested in it anymore.

00:22:09.840 So far, we know a number of people who have tried this and it has worked for every single one of them, but it is incredibly risky.

00:22:16.480 Do you know anyone it hasn't worked for?

00:22:17.620 I don't know anyone it hasn't worked for.

00:22:19.560 I guess the risky part, I don't know.

00:22:23.840 I don't think it is as risky as one imagines because what you're really doing is just taking a lot of stuff that happens anyway and you're being really upfront and honest about it.

00:22:36.560 So even if you marry someone and say, I want to have kids with you and I want to be monogamous, they may still be interested in other people.

00:22:44.320 You can't stop that.

00:22:45.360 We can't control how people feel or lust or love.

00:22:48.760 That just happens.

00:22:50.200 And so maybe they may cheat on you. 0.99

00:22:51.740 Cheating is more prevalent than I would have thought when you look at surveys.

00:22:55.660 And they may ultimately break up with you.

00:22:57.760 You might get divorced.

00:22:58.460 So there's no promise that you aren't going to end up as a single parent at some point.

00:23:02.940 I think when you-

00:23:03.580 It was actually a really interesting statistic I saw at one point.

00:23:05.740 And I have to pull this up because it sounds not true to me now that I'm saying it, but I remember seeing it when we were writing our sexuality book, that people in long-term monogamous relationships actually have about the same number of extramarital partners as people in long-term polyamorous relationships.

00:23:20.960 Yeah. See, that's where I'm like, I just don't see where the risk is much higher because at least in this case, you're being honest about it.

00:23:26.820 You're not cheating because rather than obligating your partner to lie to you about extramarital partners, you're just being open about it and probably safer about it.

00:23:36.240 And the understanding is that here are the terms, don't spend money on this other person.

00:23:41.260 And again, like you say, the caliber of someone that a man especially can beg after he has kids, after he's in a committed relationship is just so much lower that the odds that he finds someone who he would want to make a new primary partner are pretty low.

00:23:58.340 And in fact, I would almost argue that it would be easier.

00:24:02.460 Let's say that I'm the other woman and I want to steal your husband from you or your partner from you. 0.99

00:24:08.120 It's going to be harder for me to do it if you're in a poly relationship than a monogamous relationship, because in a monogamous relationship, I'm just going to be pushing for a divorce.

00:24:16.020 I'm going to be pushing for you to, I'm going to be like trying to supplant you.

00:24:19.380 Whereas in a poly relationship, like I probably know you, it's going to be a lot harder for me to undermine you.

00:24:24.620 You can deliver other partners, which is something I have seen people pull in these relationships, which, which has safe relationships that would have fallen apart in a monogamous relationship.

00:24:33.680 They know that their partner is becoming too attached to one person.

00:24:36.140 And it's quite something different to say, stop cheating on me because then the person's breaking the rules anyway.

00:24:40.880 Like they have no reason to listen to you than to say this one person who you're seeing, I have a problem with them.

00:24:45.520 You can see anyone else, you can see this one person.

00:24:49.060 That's a much harder thing for somebody to logic themselves out of, to logic themselves into saying, I'm being the reasonable person and continuing to see this person.

00:24:58.620 Right.

00:24:59.300 So there's the poly strategy.

00:25:00.820 The other strategy that you discussed more in the private guide to sexuality or relationships, I can't remember which, that really was your top of mind one before we discovered more people doing this poly strategy was just entering like kink communities.

00:25:16.440 Because there are many, especially high value single men who are, let's say divorced, who are just like enjoying their sexual rumspringa, who are in these communities and who are like super willing to explore and have fun.

00:25:29.780 And you might find them that way.

00:25:31.760 Like it just seems to be a good place to find high value men.

00:25:35.040 And there's often more arbitrage plays you can make.

00:25:37.560 Yeah.

00:25:37.900 I think what's important to remember within kink communities, within this, what you're really doing with this poly gambit is you are using an aspect of the contract of your relationship. 0.89

00:25:48.040 So in the same way, an apartment where like I allow a dog, that aspect of the contract might increase the value of the apartment to an individual.

00:25:55.500 Right.

00:25:55.580 So this aspect of my relationship contract, my expectations for the relationship, increase the value of the relationship to my potential partner.

00:26:04.080 Especially if it's I won't sleep with other people, but you can sleep with other people.

00:26:07.800 That can increase the value of a relationship to somebody pretty dramatically.

00:26:12.400 And it can be somewhat difficult for other people to compete with that, depending on what the person is interested in.

00:26:17.640 But then in addition to that, in BDSM communities, there are a ton of room for arbitrage.

00:26:23.360 If somebody is within, not necessarily BDSM, but kink communities more broadly, it typically means they have a specific interest that not a lot of people can provide.

00:26:32.380 Or a lot of people providing these interests, even if they're not really that into it themselves, can get them such a higher quality partner that it becomes worth it.

00:26:42.500 And I have seen that work multiple times.

00:26:45.920 And it's often not a dishonest thing.

00:26:48.300 So like many of these people who do the polygambit, many of these people who do this, and this isn't everyone in the poly community.

00:26:53.760 There are some people who are just like genuinely polygamorous.

00:26:55.800 I'm just talking about one strategy I've seen some people use.

00:26:58.500 But within the kink community, we've seen this as well.

00:27:01.360 They often tell people, I'm not really that into it, but I'm doing it because I don't know how else I'm with my partner.

00:27:06.540 The way it's all framed is, look, I'm a successful woman in New York, or I'm a successful woman in San Francisco.

00:27:13.500 Do I really have the option to only date monogamous men?

00:27:16.660 That's really what's often said, because it's true. 0.99

00:27:19.520 Men in these environments are often so inundated with potential partners if they're really high value that there's almost no reason for them to consider monogamous relationships outside of cultural reasons, which is that they culturally value that.

00:27:34.000 But if they don't have some sort of strong cultural connection to the concept, or they don't see some sort of like systemic problem or some systemic value problem with it, they'll usually say, hey, I can get it.

00:27:45.640 So why aren't I taking it?

00:27:47.680 Now, the next thing that we need to talk about is how these low switching costs induced by these environments make relationships less stable once they form.

00:27:55.300 So we have this algorithm for relationship stability, and it goes your sort of value to your partner.

00:28:03.720 You know how we mentioned you have an individual like market price to a partner or value to a partner, and then you have your market price.

00:28:08.720 The quality of the average person you think you could get on the open market, or not the average person you could get, but the person you could reasonably get on the open market, which is similar to how food is priced.

00:28:16.360 Like food isn't priced at the price that the average person who walks into a store would buy it at.

00:28:22.740 That's going to be actually really low.

00:28:24.340 It's priced at the average price of the person who would buy it at.

00:28:26.780 But anyway, so that's what people mean when they say market value, which is actually quite different than what the average person would rate you.

00:28:32.100 But we don't need to get into the economics of all this.

00:28:34.680 And this is actually an economic problem, and a lot of economic theory has gone into this.

00:28:38.720 It's really interesting if you want to go into it.

00:28:40.260 But anyway, the stability score is a person's individual value to a specific individual who there is, divided by what they think they can get on an open market.

00:28:51.480 And this can be inaccurate.

00:28:53.300 And as long as that number is above one, the relationship will be stable.

00:28:58.680 When the number falls below one, the relationship becomes unstable.

00:29:03.120 And many cultural things can augment this.

00:29:05.580 So suppose like a variety or Catholic culture where divorcing somebody is really frowned upon.

00:29:11.640 That's intrinsically going to make my relationship more stable because I know my market value is hurt more than it would usually be hurt by leaving my partner.

00:29:21.740 The problem is that now we live in a society where I can leave this culture.

00:29:24.880 I can leave this cultural group. 0.99

00:29:25.800 And if I'm open to leaving this cultural group, then I typically don't really get my score on the open market hurt quite as much by leaving somebody, which is one of the reasons why you see shaming coming from these communities of people from other cultural groups, even when it may not make sense why they would shame people from other cultural groups, because they do hurt the relationship dynamics in these groups.

00:29:44.120 Now, I don't think they should, I think people should be allowed to leave their group, but it's just true that it does undermine all relationships in the market when people know that it's not going to hurt them that much because they left a partner.

00:29:56.100 And when you're talking about like small tribes or small, let's say an English settlement in like the 1600s or something, it was really hard if you left a partner to find a new partner.

00:30:05.760 That was incredibly difficult because of the social stigma around that.

00:30:09.040 So what that created was an environment where your value to your partner, now for cultural reasons, not necessarily because you actually valued them, was higher than it would otherwise be, or your value on the open market, expected value on the open market, was dramatically lower than it might otherwise be.

00:30:23.280 But there's other things that can augment with this, like the longer I'm with somebody, I may form more emotional connections to them.

00:30:28.260 I may become more financially entangled with them, or I may learn things about them that I didn't know before that begin to grate on me, or the new relationship energy or the new feels might wear off.

00:30:37.680 So this can get augmented over time for a number of reasons.

00:30:41.840 Where this becomes really important is when people believe that they can, one, easily secure new people in the market, and two, when that assumption is wrong.

00:30:54.160 So if you are a woman or a man and you are out in the open market trying to find somebody after a divorce, your ability to secure partners is almost always going to be dramatically lower than it was before the divorce.

00:31:05.400 Yeah.

00:31:05.640 And I think that this is something that the MGTOW and Red Pill community, to some extent, gets really wrong in their assessments to how screwed women get after a divorce.

00:31:15.960 So they often look at things, and the truth is, our courts are really harsh on men after a divorce.

00:31:20.640 Incredibly.

00:31:21.840 Incredibly harsh.

00:31:22.580 It's very unfair.

00:31:23.820 That said, a woman, especially one who hasn't invested in her career and has been a homemaker, but even if she has invested in her career and she's had a couple of kids with you and she's no longer in her 20s, now she's in like her mid-40s, and then she's reentering the dating market, her value has been hurt much more than your value has been hurt over the same period.

00:31:43.540 This has two effects.

00:31:45.300 One is it may cause relationship instability that shouldn't be in a relationship because the woman thinks she can do better out of a relationship than she really can. 0.94

00:31:52.360 But two, it means that women who are cognizant of what's really going to happen to them when they really leave the relationship, it's a really bad situation for relationships to be able to break up like that.

00:32:02.960 So there is actually something to be said for long-term monogamy in terms of the emotional health of both partners.

00:32:08.940 Now, another place where this stability score really becomes relevant is with celebrities.

00:32:12.900 The reason why celebrity relationships are so intrinsically unstable is because the value of a celebrity on an open market is actually almost always higher than their value to somebody who's gotten to know them as a human being.

00:32:24.880 So intrinsically, it's almost always going to be under one, and it's almost always going to cause relationship problems until they reach this level where they begin to realize that pattern, and they're like, okay, now I know I need to stay with somebody long-term.

00:32:38.140 Do you want to talk about problems for guys now, Simone, really quickly?

00:32:41.720 Because I think these are obvious.

00:32:42.820 Yeah, yeah, the problems facing guys, the big problem is that the vast majority of guys are being completely passed over by women because of the unreasonable expectations they've been led to have.

00:32:56.020 So they just, no one's giving them the time of day, even though they quite deserve it.

00:33:01.180 It's statistically true.

00:33:02.980 Statistically true, yes.

00:33:04.100 Yeah, and I love where women, you'll see on these feminist groups, they're like, maybe these guys don't deserve women. 1.00

00:33:08.600 And if there's women of equal quality to these guys who may not deserve guys, who may have like emotional whatever thing, like when you're talking about somebody who's in like the bottom 30% of the dating pool, there's likely reasons for that on both sides of the dating spectrum.

00:33:23.160 And it used to be that they would just get in relationships, and these relationships would be bad.

00:33:27.080 But I would imagine that historically, when you had these monogamous relationships where two people would enter a relationship with somebody who is at this lower end of the spectrum, abuse would likely be pretty common in these relationships.

00:33:36.400 Who knows, it might be a good thing that these people aren't partnering.

00:33:38.140 But then you need the higher value people to have just way more kids.

00:33:43.000 So if I were a guy who has a 7 or below, because we're assuming it's the 8s, 9s, and 10s that are getting all the women on open dating markets, like the broad open market. 1.00

00:33:52.500 I think what I would do, honestly, is turn to religious communities that are more small and niche. 0.99

00:33:59.280 Like I would, I might join the LDS church.

00:34:02.380 I would look at what my local religious communities are.

00:34:05.040 Depending on my age, let's assuming I'm a young man.

00:34:07.420 I might join the LDS church.

00:34:10.180 I might join a singles ward.

00:34:11.940 Because those are smaller dating markets where both men and women have fewer choices.

00:34:16.980 And assuming I'm willing to commit and find a partner and commit to that lifestyle, which I think is pretty wholesome and high value.

00:34:23.180 And I also don't think that a huge portion, especially outside of the extreme, like...

00:34:31.440 Another factor at play here is there's often fewer guys in these communities.

00:34:36.800 Yeah.

00:34:37.420 No, no, but let's talk about the math of why there's fewer guys in these communities.

00:34:40.460 So a lot of people miss this.

00:34:41.580 So if you're talking about, you could go to, as she mentioned, LDS.

00:34:44.300 If you're Jewish, you could go into a stricter Haradi community or something like that.

00:34:48.540 So the reason why there's fewer guys is actually because of the same phenomenon that we mentioned earlier.

00:34:53.020 That people typically like to date people older than them.

00:34:56.200 And these communities are often the one really high fertility place in our society.

00:35:00.920 Now this isn't as true for LDS anymore, but that's why it's true. 1.00

00:35:02.820 The groups are high fertility.

00:35:03.840 And because of that, the cohorts of older ages are always going to be smaller than the cohorts of younger ages.

00:35:11.740 Meaning that there is almost always an oversupply of women looking for partners in these groups, as opposed to men looking for partners in these groups.

00:35:19.060 And it can cause crises within these communities when a lot of people know that they're doing everything right and they still can't get it harder.

00:35:24.620 And it's very unfair.

00:35:26.100 But also there's other reasons.

00:35:28.240 One is that these communities often are much more okay with women converting into the community than men converting into the community and marrying a devout woman.

00:35:38.300 Which can also be another factor of a guy in one of these communities, one of these strict communities might marry somebody of even a different religion so long as she converts.

00:35:45.820 Whereas it can be a little harder culturally speaking when a guy does that, depending on whether it's a Muslim conservative community or Jewish conservative community.

00:35:54.360 It depends on what culture you're talking about.

00:35:57.060 There is the ethical issue where I think you do genuinely need to be okay with buying into a life in that religious structure.

00:36:05.000 Like it would be really freaking evil to like lie to a woman who is- 0.85

00:36:09.920 Well, these communities typically have good policing standards.

00:36:12.800 Yeah, but that's what I would turn to.

00:36:14.600 I'd be like, hey, which religion can I be morally super cool with living with?

00:36:18.560 But I don't know if that's the only-

00:36:19.900 We're trying to build alternate cultural solutions.

00:36:22.040 We are, but they don't exist yet.

00:36:23.440 So I'm just saying what's out there now.

00:36:24.460 And we'll talk about them in future videos and stuff like that, like better types of dating markets that have higher switching costs, but they're not there yet.

00:36:32.560 I don't know.

00:36:32.920 It's just really hard as a guy.

00:36:34.180 There's one other option that I would pursue, which is to go to a dating website like Keeper.ai, which is more focused on ending up with a partner.

00:36:46.580 And also, which if you like put up an upfront, like if you're willing basically to pay more, they're going to invest more in helping you match with someone.

00:36:54.100 And then even sites like Match.com, where it's just more clear that you are willing to commit.

00:37:00.900 Because on mainstream dating sites, a lot of women that are on them kind of just want to pretend that anyone that they're dating with might commit to them.

00:37:09.760 It's understood that's not the agreement on those sites.

00:37:13.160 Whereas if you go to Match.com, it is because you want to marry.

00:37:15.860 You want to lock it down.

00:37:16.920 And people often who meet on Match.com, regardless of age, and I know like people who did this like in their early 40s, people who did this in their 20s, like all over the place, are there to get it done.

00:37:26.940 They get, they meet on the platform, they get engaged, they get married, just done.

00:37:30.660 They're not messing around.

00:37:31.780 So I would go to platforms like that, that are very oriented around generating marriages.

00:37:37.960 And Keeper.ai is partnered with peronatalist.org, our peronatalist foundation.

00:37:42.520 We fully endorse them and we like what they're doing.

00:37:45.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:45.700 It could work.

00:37:46.940 I don't know if it will, but it's an interesting idea.

00:37:49.300 The final thing I would say that if you are a guy who does find yourself at the top of a marketplace, and I think guys who find themselves at the top of marketplaces, one thing they often don't realize, okay, is they often feel like I was a nerdy guy who moved up and now I'm just doing my thing because I can do it now, right?

00:38:07.780 And that's generally usually a wrong perception.

00:38:10.660 It's just that when you're younger, it's typically harder to secure a long-term relationship.

00:38:15.820 And the longer you play on these marketplaces, the more I think it kind of messes with your psychology and it makes it harder and harder to really find a long-term relationship.

00:38:26.700 And you're losing good years because sperm inequality does decline a lot more than the guys think they have forever to find a partner, which just isn't true.

00:38:36.420 If you as a guy are like over 43 when you start looking for a partner, the reality, both because of the age of the person you'll probably realistically end up settling with and because of decreased fertility in both her and your sperm health, you're not going to have that many kids.

00:38:50.300 In truth, you probably won't even breed above replacement, right?

00:38:53.660 And it is not a good strategy as a guy to just say, I'll do it later.

00:38:56.920 I think as a guy, if you want a lot of kids, you really need to start seriously looking for a partner around the age of 22.

00:39:05.820 And as girls, I'd say around the age of 21.

00:39:09.260 But it doesn't matter how old you are, like the same year you start now, the better.

00:39:13.240 Don't wait.

00:39:13.820 It doesn't matter.

00:39:14.500 So when I say serious, I really mean serious.

00:39:16.520 So for me, that was five dates a week at least for years on end.

00:39:21.380 Just hitting it out.

00:39:22.860 I'd go to San Francisco and I had multiple dates booked there that day.

00:39:25.740 And Simone and I both met each other on a day where we had both booked multiple dates that day.

00:39:31.540 We were both going really high throughput.

00:39:34.520 And I think that's one of the biggest things that people miss in terms of often people who do find relationships is they are powering through.

00:39:42.280 And they are not wasting time dating people who they know they're not going to marry.

00:39:46.100 The moment it was clear that any relationship wasn't going to close in a marriage, I would leave it.

00:39:52.040 And I think that you can waste so much time on a bad lead.

00:39:55.060 And in sales, this is the same thing.

00:39:56.540 You've got your sales funnel.

00:39:57.500 You've got your pipeline.

00:39:58.440 And the biggest thing you could do is waste money on a lead with that.

00:40:02.820 Yeah.

00:40:03.000 But I would say a lot of people watching this are probably not 22.

00:40:08.420 And that doesn't mean you should give up.

00:40:10.060 It just means that you should not waste any more time.

00:40:13.880 Yeah.

00:40:14.960 And the thing we've mentioned in other videos, which I'll mention here again, the single most important trait you should be optimizing for is not looks.

00:40:23.280 It is gratitude.

00:40:25.400 The amount of gratitude a partner is showing.

00:40:26.840 I mentioned this was a good thing, but it's actually really important.

00:40:28.740 Because what gratitude really is, it's a measure of how much of a deal they think they have got with you.

00:40:35.920 It's a measure of how much higher the score they have for you is than the score they think they can get on the market.

00:40:42.920 That's really what gratitude is a measure of.

00:40:45.120 And it makes relationships so much easier, especially when both partners feel like they got an absolute steal because you both fit some arbitrage need that the other one that makes them really weird.

00:40:57.520 So consider Simone and me, right?

00:40:59.960 I am in another room recording podcasts instead of in the same room as her because it weirds her out to have a guy in the same room.

00:41:06.460 That might seem like a small thing, but it's something that I think most guys wouldn't respect.

00:41:12.780 They'd be like, get over this.

00:41:14.400 Let's work through this.

00:41:15.640 And you know someone with satism or who's on the spectrum and you get a feel of what their bugaboos are.

00:41:21.700 Honestly, just respecting them and being like, this isn't something we need to fix, but it's something we can work around.

00:41:28.480 That can dramatically raise your value to them much more than any sane person would think.

00:41:33.360 I cannot even begin to tell you.

00:41:34.880 Yeah.

00:41:36.620 Huge.

00:41:37.500 Yeah.

00:41:37.780 I think knowing your value makes such a big difference.

00:41:39.740 And Malcolm, like you were just able to think in ways that I can't.

00:41:43.180 You're able to do things that I can't.

00:41:44.620 And I just don't know what I would do without you.

00:41:48.040 You are my, my, my happiness, my spark.

00:41:50.980 I mean, you're so bad.

00:41:52.560 This is fun.

00:41:53.360 I would say.

00:41:54.460 I love you too, by the way.

00:41:55.880 Oh.

00:41:56.600 And I'm excited for our chicken coop, which is being refurbished today.

00:41:59.160 So we're going to get to do that, that trad cosplay lifestyle.

00:42:02.900 You know, it's dire out there and there's no denying it.

00:42:06.120 I think anyone who's telling you that they have a surefire way to fix this problem is lying to you.

00:42:10.280 That it's really bad and that honestly, the only way that I think you're going to make it through the situation if you're trying to find a partner is one, to work your ass off, but two, to also set realistic expectations.

00:42:24.580 And like Malcolm said, look for gratitude and not glamour because the glamour is where you're going to get caught.

00:42:29.400 I think glamour is where most people are getting caught, especially women, because of the unrealistic expectations that they're setting for themselves. 1.00

00:42:35.220 I think glamour, what I would say glamour is, is the level to which this person augments your status within social communities.

00:42:41.140 Because a lot of times people, I think they're selecting for attractiveness, but I think a lot of people actually select for how much is this going to increase my status within the communities that I'm engaging with. 0.90

00:42:51.600 And that is like the single dumbest metric you can search for. 0.86

00:42:55.020 Yeah. 0.99

00:42:56.080 Want to take a gander at the chicken coop?

00:42:58.760 Very excited.

00:43:00.460 Okay.

00:43:01.380 Let's do it.

00:43:05.220 Let's do it.

Based Camp - July 21, 2023

Based Camp： Rich Trad Women Turning to Poly & Kink to Get Pregnant

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