Seth_Rose said:
Caleb Jones over at Black Dragon Blog wrote an article on this as it pertains to monogamous marriage:
http://www.blackdragonblog.com/2017/10/12/another-pick-up-artist-gets-married-an-analysis/
Would be curious what you guys think of that article.
I'm ambivalent about Caleb and blackdragon for three particular reasons:
* It sounds too good to be true: buy my book and you too can have a main lady who is OK with you fucking other girls on the side. (as a caveat I will say: I've never done what he's done, so I can't say it doesn't work. But I'm not convinced marriage as an institution is doomed to fail).
* Ego investment in narrative that traditional marriage is doomed - keep in mind this guy got married at 25 to an older woman who already had a kid from a previous relationship and he was a self-described beta at the time. I've found guys like him (divorced after picking a bad woman) almost always shit on marriage. They can't admit maybe they fucked up, rather they take the easier route of saying the whole institution of marriage is fucked up
* He's a self-described INTJ - huge red flags. INTJs absolutely suck, just completely, at relationships. I say this as an INTJ myself. You need to put a lot of work into developing your shadow side (your weaker functions). I can attest it's a lot of work, as an INTJ you're naturally horrible at relationships. But having read a lot of Caleb's material, I get the impression he's never fixed his inner game. He basically went from divorce to pickup to his current system. In essence, he figured out how to make a broken system work (hint: never go completely monogamous)
There are people out there who have successful marriages. The problem is that they typically don't venture into the manosphere. I mean, I assume you can use both your legs - are you engaging with paraplegic forums or blogs? Most men who've figured out on their own how to have a successful marriage have no reason to visit our neck of the woods.
That said, as the breakdown of men-women relationships is linked to general degeneracy, I have found a few guys who seem to be crushing their marriages finally interacting with the manosphere.
I can't 100% endorse these guys, as I don't know them personally, but their stories/blogs seem legit: Hunter Drew (TheFamilyAlpha) and Craig James (MasculineByDesign) on Twitter. I think Hunter's been with his wife for 12 years, married for 7. Craig has been with his wife for at least 11 years I believe.
A vast contrast to Caleb, who a) is an INTJ, b) had a bad divorce, c) has a financial interest in promoting his OLTR theory.
As for this particular PUA guy, I get the impression he's very much in the same boat as Neil Strauss - knows how game works, can get laid, but internally completely fucked up. As such, I agree with Caleb that his marriage may not work. But it won't be because monogamy doesn't work, it'll be because this guy never went beyond the PUA stage of life.
Game works, but my impression has been that if you've only got game and nothing else going on in life, yeah you'll constantly fail in long-term relationships as sooner or later women will see your unresolved insecurities. Similar to how Mystery ended up in the hospital. Dude was a master at game, but a disaster at relationships. A lot of these PUA guys made the mistake of becoming financially successful because of pickup, and thus they becoming married to their ideas, never allowing themselves to evolve beyond. You can see this everywhere - people will rather die than give up on the idea that made them financially or professionally successful. Again, not to say game doesn't work - but if internally you're not right, your relationships won't last. To provide another resource, look up Pat Stedman, he has some interesting observations on the limitations of just using game:
http://patstedman.com/2017/06/29/who-needs-game/
