He Who Loves Least Loves Most… ps and science!

Does this post title sound like a paradox? It is to virgin ears which have yet to hear the Rude Word of CH. But once again ♥science♥ waltzes onto the Chateau ballroom floor to plant a giant wet kiss on the stubbled cheek of your e’er ‘umble host and announce with stentorian resolve that “Aloof Indifference Game” is real and it works.

Erin Whitchurch and her colleagues conducted a study on 47 female undergraduates to find out. Each woman was told that several male students had viewed her Facebook profile and rated how much he’d like to get to know her.

One group was told that they would be seeing the four men who had given them the highest ratings (“liked-most” condition). Another group of women were told that they would be seeing the four men who had given them average ratings (“liked-average” condition. Finally, another group of women (“the uncertain condition”) were told that it is unknown how much the guy likes her. The women then viewed four fictitious Facebook profiles of attractive male college students.

After they viewed the profiles, they reported their mood and rated multiple aspects of their attraction to the male students (e.g., “someone I would hook up with“). The participants then rated their mood again, and also reported the extent to which thoughts about the men had “popped into their head” during the prior 15 minutes.

They found evidence for the reciprocity principle: women liked the men more when they were led to believe that the men liked them a lot compared to when they thought the men liked them an average amount.

Women in the uncertain condition, however, were most attracted to the men. Women also reported thinking about the men the most in the uncertain condition, and there was tentative evidence that the effect of uncertainty on attraction was explained by the frequency of their thoughts. In other words, it wasn’t the uncertainty per se that was attractive but the thoughts it induced.

Interestingly, women in the liked-best condition were in a more positive mood than women in the liked-average condition, but women in the uncertain condition were no different in mood than women in the liked-best condition. Women felt just as positive under uncertainty as they did knowing for sure the guy liked her!

When women think of assholes they don’t want to date, they’re thinking of caring assholes. The kind of men who are clingy, mate guarding buffoons. The assholes who are loved by women are the men whose jerkitude is implied through emotional distance, cocksureness, outcome independence, and inscrutability. The man who cares least earns the most love (and sex) from women. The gradient of this Uncaring Male-Loving Female curve is steep at the beginning of a relationship (courtship, dating) and levels off as the relationship deepens, to a point where the man’s SMV is noticeably higher than his lover’s and she is practically begging for romantic beta signs of his continued love and commitment.

The Uncaring Male-Loving Female curve is also dependent on the comparative sexual worth of the partners. A beautiful woman with a lot of options will be more attracted to romantically ambivalent men. In contrast, an ugly woman with few options will need and feel grateful for conspicuous signals of sexual and romantic interest from men.

As a man with game, you should always default to the Uncaring Male-Loving Female dynamic. If you overshoot, you have room to rein your indifference and bedaub the woman with tiny jewels of romantic intent; if you overshoot in the other direction — i.e., you lavish too much beta wooing on a woman — there’s no chance to come back from that category error.

Interestingly, psychologists are coming around to the CH theoretical (and field-tested) framework that the frequency and amplitude of “care least” courtship and dating rituals are increasing. Women, at least those in the highly sexually charged ruthouses of our major anonymizing cities, are responding more to aloof men, and are themselves mechanistically cranking the reverse gears of their pair-bonding algorithms. There are a host of reasons for this state of arid affairs, but one major factor has to be something like this: Women have become as men, and the flipped sexual polarity is warping every incentive structure of the dating market.

We’re tits-deep in the era of men and women competing like cheap date gladiators for the honor of most invulnerable animatronic ego maximizer.

One thing for certain: In this environment women are unhappy, society loses, and men with game win. Because if it’ll be about nothing but banging with piston-like efficiency and avoiding romantic entanglements, men will clean up the arena with the battered husks of women’s egos.