-By Caleb Jones

Years ago there was a decently funny movie called Showtime starring Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy. They played two cops forced to be in a cop TV show. Murphy was very excited because he wanted to be an actor. DeNiro was upset and thought it was a waste of time, but had no choice.

During the filming of the cop show, the producers hire William Shatner, portraying a fictionalized version of himself, to teach the two cops how to act like TV cops, because of Shatner’s experience playing TJ Hooker back in the 80s.

Shatner does things like show them how to taste cocaine with your tongue to make sure it’s real. DeNiro, a real cop, demonstrates how stupid this is, because it could be cyanide, ricin, anthrax or other poison. Shatner spends lots of time showing the two cops how to do “hood jumping,” jumping onto the hood of a car. DeNiro points out that it’s a stupid, useless and dangerous “skill” that no real cop would ever need to use. On and on this goes.

In other words, Shatner teaches the two cops skills and techniques that feel good and look good to others, but don’t actually work in the real world. Moreover, in many cases, these things were not only useless, but dangerous.

While DeNiro is pointing all of this out, Eddie Murphy ignores all of it, is hugely excited and a big fan of Shatner. He slurps up all of Shatner’s stupid “advice” with gusto and full agreement, because being a fake TV cop is much more exciting than real police work, which is often boring and tedious. Being a TV cop also looks more impressive to friends, family, and the public, which, being very outcome dependent, is important to Murphy.

Let’s switch to another illustration. Tony Robbins has been a distant mentor for me for many years. I respect him and think he has really good stuff to teach. His advice on NLP, changing your emotional state and physiology, and general success is among the best I’ve ever read/heard. I’ve used those techniques in my own life and received good results from it.

As many of you already know, Tony Robbins became very famous for this advice in the early 90s. He made hundreds of millions of dollars and became a household name. This is great, and he deserves his money. He’s helped a lot of people, including me.

There was just one problem. Once he became this famous, he started giving advice about other things outside his wheelhouse of NLP and general success principles. As just a few examples…

1. He started giving advice regarding how to marry the woman of your dreams and stay married forever. Then he got divorced. Oops.

2. He started giving advice on time management. I purchased his time management program and it was terrible. I’m a time management expert myself, and I can tell you for a fact his time management advice was ridiculous.

3. He started giving advice on investing. I purchased one of his investment advice CDs, listened to it, and puked. I seriously wanted my money back. It was the single worst audio program on investing I’ve ever heard in my life. His entire advice was pretty much, “buy stocks.” Jesus.

When this was happening, I was shocked that a guy with such quality information started putting out such garbage. Only later did I realize why: since he was now famous for giving one set of advice, he was taking advantage of this and was now giving out advice he didn’t know anything about. So of course it sucked and didn’t work.

Over the years I’ve seen many other gurus in many areas of self improvement do the same thing; get notoriety for giving advice about A, which is good, then start giving advice about B, C, and D, which is terrible and doesn’t work.

Since moving into the self improvement space myself many years ago, I’ve done my very best to not make this mistake. For those of you who have been following my work for many years, you know I have been very careful not to give advice about things I know nothing about, even when I’m asked, which happens somewhat often.

When I started giving PUA advice, I stuck very closely to the three areas I knew well, and didn’t talk much about anything else. These were (and to a degree still are):

1. Online dating

2. Nonmonogamous relationships

3. Older men dating younger women

That’s it. During those years, and to this day, when discussing dating/relationship topics, I’ve only spoken about those three areas and kept any discussion outside of those areas minimal. I’ve never talked about night game because I’ve never done it. I’ve barely talked about daygame since I did it briefly many years ago, but don’t consider myself an expert. I never give relationship advice to men in monogamous relationships because I am not qualified to give such advice. Etc.

You may argue that my advice in those three areas can apply to other areas I’m not focused in. That’s true to a degree, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve stuck with just those three areas, since I didn’t want to do a “Tony Robbins” and start giving advice about some area I didn’t know much about just because I’m good with online dating and open/poly relationships.

This principle of mine extends into my business life, where as a consultant I give time management advice, business management advice, and marketing advice. But that’s it. I never give advice regarding things like human resources, inventory management, or team building. I don’t know about these things, so I keep my mouth shut about them, even when I’m asked about them, which I often am.

If you’ve followed me for a long time, you know that when someone asks me for advice on a topic that I have no expertise in, I will say, “I really don’t know anything about that, you should ask someone else.” This is done on purpose.

Getting Advice from Players Regarding Relationships

For the past 10 years, I have seen men in the PUA community, and now the manosphere, who are really good at laying lots of chicks, suddenly turn around and give relationship advice. This advice is wrong almost 100% of the time. That figure is not an exaggeration. When a player who’s good at banging lots of chicks via one night stands or very short term fuck buddy stints gives you advice regarding ongoing relationships or marriage, it’s dead wrong almost 100% of the time. He will tell you things that will simply result in drama, conflict, confusion, cheating, and breakups or divorces.

It won’t seem like the advice is wrong. After all, clearly this guy understands women, right? Clearly he’s successful with women, right? Clearly this guy is Alpha, right? So his advice about relationships or marriage should be accurate, right?

Wrong.

As I’ve talked about before, pickup/getting laid and relationships are two completely different skill sets. They’re both about women, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t very different. Networking and programming are both about computers, but they’re both radically different skills. You don’t want your IT networking guy writing software for you, just like you would never put a software developer in charge of your corporate computer network. Two different skills.

The proof is all around you. Famous players, like Mystery, Neil Strauss, Adam Lyons, and countless others you and I could both name, have long histories of failed, high drama relationships and/or marriages, one after the next. Other guys like Roosh usually don’t have any relationships that last longer than about three months.

Yes, these guys know how to get laid. Many PUA/players on forums and blogs have better pickup skills than even I do and lay more women than me. But when it comes to ongoing relationships with women, these guys are dreadful. The relationships they attempt are so cluster fucked that even clueless beta males with no game would often do a better job. I’m being 100% serious about that.

The Horrible Manosphere Marriage Advice

This brings me to one area in particular where I think many well meaning manosphere gurus are actually hurting men, and hurting them badly.

This is when manosphere guys present long-term traditional marriage as the endgame goal of men, particularly Alpha Males.

As you know, for years I have given very specific, detailed, massively field tested, step-by-step advice on how to have a long lasting relationship with a woman (including serious, pair bonded relationships) in a way conducive to modern day realities. I’ve discussed this stuff at length here at this blog (check out the archive) and in my books. Long-term pair bonding is wonderful and I recommend it to experienced Alphas over the age of 35 who desire it. But you have to do it correctly, otherwise the odds are overwhelming you’ll end up getting divorce raped, losing your kids, losing your retirement, or best case scenario, you will experience mountains of drama that will make you very unhappy.

Are the pro-traditional marriage manosphere guys and PUAs giving very specific, detailed, field tested advice regarding how to get married and stay married in the modern era? No. Every time I see this “advice,” it boils down to three steps:

1. Find a young, pure virgin (or close to it) who will make a great wife.

2. Get legally married and monogamous.

3. Stay Alpha.

That’s it. That’s always their advice.

The problem is that if that advice worked, you’d have older Alphas and ex-players all over the manosphere and PUA community in long, 15+ year monogamous marriages who are still with their wives, still not cheating (and not being cheated on), and still very happy. Do you see any gurus like that? Other than maybe Dalrock or Althol Kay, I don’t think I can name even one. Even if you can name one or two, you’ve proven my point. One or two out of hundreds? If the get-traditionally-married-and-be-Alpha advice actually worked, there should be tons of these guys all over the place.

That three step “advice” is just like the William Shatner advice. It looks good to society. It makes you feel good (temporarily). It appeals to the more right-wing conservative readership of your blog or forum. But it doesn’t work.

If you’re an experienced Alpha/player and have fucked 50 or 100 women, and then stupidly marry that Unicorn Woman virgin (or near virgin) in a traditional, legal, monogamous marriage in the Western world, you’re going to end up divorced or at least in major drama in less than five years, certainly less than ten. If you don’t believe that, then take a deep breath, calm down, turn on your brain, and read this, this, this, and this to get the facts. Once again, you’re taking advice from guys who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and have not demonstrated any success regarding the advice they’re giving.

I don’t care if your favorite PUA or manosphere guru just got monogamously married (or moved in with his monogamous girlfriend or whatever) and is telling everyone it’s great. Wait 25 years, and if he’s still married to her, still has never cheated on her, she’s never cheated on him, and they’re both still really happy, then he’ll be qualified to give advice regarding traditional monogamous marriage. Until then, he’s just shooting his mouth off and you’re an idiot for listening to him. The odds are overwhelming that woman will be out of his life in less than five years.

Just like Eddie Murphy, I have seen naive guys get very excited when they see a manosphere guru or PUA advocate traditional, legal, monogamous marriage. They think it’s a great thing and can’t wait to hear more advice from the guy who’s never done anything like what he’s recommending (or at best, has just done it, like PUAs/Alphas who are newly married and aren’t even at the three year mark yet).

This is extraordinarily dangerous, and thousands, if not millions of men are following this “advice,” or at least plan to.

The Only Rational Response

There is one, and only one rational objection to what I stated above. That is, if you tell me that you honestly don’t care if you get divorced. I have discussed this concept before, what I call Serial Monogamy Marriage, where more and more Alpha Males (1.0 of course), throw their arms up in surrender and say something like this:

“Well, fuck it! I’m getting married anyway! I want to get married, dammit! I want kids dammit! And yeah, marriage doesn’t work anymore, and women suck now, and I’ll probably get divorced down the road and it will suck ass, but fuck it, I don’t care! I’m doing it anyway!”

The first problem is that he’s falling into the Societal Programming trap of assuming the only way to properly raise children is to get legally married and sexually monogamous, and I’ve debunked that a thousand times already. Proper parenting via long-term co-habiting pair-bonding does not require legal marriage nor absolute sexual monogamy.

The second problem is even bigger. I’ve noticed more and more Alphas/players over the last few years say this stuff and act on it. They get legally married, don’t sign any type of prenup, get 100% monogamous, and when challenged, declare (or subtly imply) that they don’t care if they get divorced later.

I follow a model of long-term consistent happiness. Even if my relationships don’t last, that’s okay because A) I wasn’t planning on them to last forever, and more importantly, B) they’re structured so that they don’t screw up my life when they end (or in my case, take a temporary break, since 94% of women who leave me eventually come back).

The “I don’t care if I get divorced later” model is one of short-term happiness and long-term pain. You’re structuring your entire life around a system (monogamous legal marriage) that is only designed for people who are going to be together and monogamous forever, for 50+ years, when you know it’s going to fail way before then. You’re using the exact wrong tool for the job.

If that’s the model you’d like to follow, and if you really value your future happiness that little, then ignore me and do whatever you’d like. But if you’d rather be happy, evaluate The Only 9 Options for Men as They Age and pick the least bad one for you and your long-term consistent happiness.

Any time someone in the manosphere or PUA realm is offering advice on his blog or via a forum, ask yourself if this guy has actually had harmonious, low drama, long-lasting relationships in the past. If he hasn’t, you need to close your ears whenever he gives his “advice” regarding relationships, marriage, picking the ideal girlfriend or wife, or any of that stuff. Feel free to listen to his pickup and get laid advice, but if he gives relationship advice, you’re seriously better off doing the exact opposite of what he recommends.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.