There are, by some lights , alpha males and beta males. Alpha males don’t take shit and beta males are alternatively pussy whipped or pussy deprived and subservient to women. Alpha good; beta bad. If it sounds sort of like a cave man mentality, “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” it’s because it is.
And it worked pretty good for tens of thousands of years. It made sure the strong and genetically stable males remained well fed and able to procreate with as many genetically stable females as possible and thus populated the world. Go team.
But the advent of the frontal cortex brought drastic change to our world, and thinking became more important than clubbing some pathetic delta or theta to death over a fertile woman. I promise you it was undoubtedly some beta who first strung a bow and from a safe distance flung an arrow into the heart of a club wielding alpha. Brain trumps brawn.
And despite the fact that over half the world still keeps women in subjugation, it soon became clear to even the most underutilized intellects that women could think too, and in some cases they could think better than their male counter parts and before you know it the whole alpha male paradigm began to fall apart, and a new relationship paradigm had to evolve that incorporated and respected our intellectual equality.
Intellectual equality doesn’t mean pretending that Jim is just as smart as Bob, it means accepting that we have as a species evolved to a point where we are all smart enough that if we respect each other and work at it we can communicate, cooperate and understand one another on a level far beyond the basics of Me Tarzan, you Jane.
Many attack the philosophy behind How To Save Your Marriage by Becoming a Better Man as one that emasculates men, that it asks them to be less manly, less alpha.
And to the extent that HTSYMbBABM encourages men to act like men and not cave men, they have a point.
But to the extent they suggest that being able to control your anger, to respect another’s reality, to listen effectively, to state your needs clearly, to know and enforce your legitimate boundaries, that this some how makes you less of a man… au contraire: it is the definition of a man.
It is the true man, the real alpha, who in times of stress and challenge does not regress to the atavistic traits of aggression and dominance. It is the true man who can think past the reactivity of the moment, who can set aside the immaturity of others, and who can lead a relationship past the brink of irreconcilable differences and into a new frontier of happiness.
I shit you not.
