What is the Structure of Authority in your relationship (or another relationship you are observing)?

Readership: All
Theme: IOIs and Vetting
Length: 1,300 words
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Introduction

In response to Vetting Social Systems (2023/10/19), Red Pill Apostle posed a question that tests our understanding of power structures.

“What are the points supporting and detracting from the following:  The blended Blue and Red System doesn’t really exist.  There is always one person who is in control.  The purple system is just a mirage.”

What is the Purple System?

First of all, the classic definition of the Purple Pill is trying to apply Red Pill insights and praxeology to solve Blue Pill problems.  It is still a Blue hierarchy, but one in which the man is Red Pill informed and usually very confused.  In some cases, the Purple Pill is a transition stage, AKA Purple Haze, in which a man wakes up to Red Pill reality, but is still living in a Blue Pill structure / system.  It takes some time to realize that Blue Pill problems can never be solved without completely abandoning the Blue Pill system.  Men usually don’t complete the transition unless there is suffering involved, and the more suffering there is, the faster the transition is.

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Purple Haze is rather rare anymore, since the Red Pill went mainstream. However, the Complementarianism of today resembles the Purple Haze of 5-10 years ago.  Confused, disoriented husbands wage a continual battle in their minds over every small matter concerning whether it is “right” to assume Headship, whether they really want to go through all the work of maintaining Headship, whether it is more graceful to submit to their wives’ whimsies, and how to keep the peace amid all of this ruckus.  Worse, they may not consciously realize all this internal conflict going on in their minds and therefore succumb to “going with the flow”, and taking a “Happy Wife, Happy Life” approach, thereby folding their Headship responsibilities.

On to RPA’s question.

Does a Blended Blue and Red System Really Exist?

Classic Manosphere lore unanimously states that there is only one person who effectively dominates the relationship.  This is succinctly summed up in Rollo Tomassi’s Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies.

“For one sex’s strategy to succeed the other must either be compromised or abandoned.”

The Rational Male: The Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies (2016/7/29)

Interestingly, or perhaps not so much, the power structure that existed before marriage invariably continues after marriage.  After the Honeymoon phase (about 2 years), we see that…

  • The Tingly Respect of a Red Structure tends to weaken or abate, because The Curse of Eve.
  • The mutual allyship / “friendship” of a Blue Structure mutates into daily sh!t tests, squabbles, and power grabs.
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Wives need to accept male dominance / Headship and become comfortable with it for the marriage to last over the long haul.  Wives usually make their peace with God’s ordained order around the 7 year mark, and many of them (mostly in Blue marriages) can’t adjust and opt out of the marriage at that time, AKA The Seven Year Itch.

The reason for this is as Rollo wrote,

“When a woman’s love concept is the dominant one, that relationship will be governed by her opportunism and the quest for her hypergamic optimization. The ultimate desired end of that optimization is a conventional love hierarchy where a dominant Man is the driving, decisive member of that sexual pairing.”

The Rational Male: Intersexual Hierarchies –Part II (2014/5/13)

IOW, the Feminine Imperative and hypergamic satisfaction demands a dominant man.

There are other foundational factors too, including…

Adding all this together, the man has to wear the pants in the house (and the wife eager to be pantless), in order for the relationship to stick and click.

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How to Identify the Structure?

That said, one question readers might have at this point is, “How do I know what Structure I am in, or what Structure I am looking at in another couple?”

Rollo gives us a clue about how to identify the structure.

“If you want to know who holds power over you, look at whom you aren’t allowed to criticise — or even hint at criticism.”

The Rational Male: Fempowerment (2016/4/24)

Here’s another clue – look at the nature of conflict between the man and woman.

A while back, I wrote about how conflict is indicative of the structure of a relationship and how this knowledge can be implemented to assume Headship.

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In addition, I’ve written dozens more posts based on this model, too many to list here.  For those interested in reading these posts, look for the pingbacks under these 3 posts.

To summarize this concept in terms of identifying the structure and vetting, Dominance is shown by the one who is making the demands in the relationship, and the one who is complying to the other’s demands is the sidekick.

  • A wife’s demands tend to come in the form of nagging, shaming, or sh!t tests.  The husband responds by appeasing her, enabling her, tolerating her, or avoiding her*.  This is a Blue Structure.
  • A husband’s demands aren’t really a demand or even a request as much as it is an expectation that is reinforced by words and actions (maintaining Frame). The husband expresses an expectation of how the relationship is to be conducted with an explanation of the benefits. The wife responds to his expectations by either meeting it or by explaining why she cannot (submission, which makes it a Red Structure), or else ignoring it or making it clear in her words or actions that she will not meet it (non-submission, which makes the Structure questionable and unstable at best, or Blue at worst).

Of course, there is always some give and take, but there is always one person who does the majority of demanding with regularity, and if the other person doesn’t comply, then there is tension and conflict indicating a challenge to the power structure.

* The exception is when avoidance is used as a form of Dread Game.

Concluding Statements

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The reason why the hierarchical structure of a relationship is not often easily identified is because most people are not cognitively aware of the mechanics of an intersexual structure of hierarchy and so they don’t pay attention to it.  (This is why I’ve often written about this — to increase awareness.)  People run on autopilot and do not monitor each and every interaction in terms of the nature, frequency, and ratio of bids and demands, and then analyze what the structure of the relationship is (like Dr. Gottman did).  They live in their own bubble and have other thoughts about the relationship or are mentally consumed with real life issues, so they seldom have any real cooperative interaction that would instantiate a clear power structure.  The underlying power dynamic will only be manifested in cases depicting the most extreme imbalances of power, which we recognize as meme worthy tropes.

In summary, if a relationship doesn’t expressly fit into a Red or Blue System, it does NOT mean there isn’t a relationship structure nor that the relationship is Purple.  It means people are too ignorant to know how to play their role properly and consistently — or perhaps they DO know, but they don’t care enough to go to the trouble of getting themselves and their spouse into the habit.  So it is an autopilot Blue System by default.

Readers are welcome to suggest other methods to determine the Structure of a relationship, or to debate other aspects of the Purple Pill / Structure I may have missed.

Update

DeepStrength has written a post, Delusions of blue and purple and removing the haze (2023/10/22), which describes another Purple Structure. Men who are naturally attractive, and/or naturally good with women can believe in “true love” because it’s easy for them to arouse women’s desire. They have never really experienced the uglier side of female nature, and their sexual charisma props up their delusion that women will love them unconditionally for who they are, so it’s easy for them to coast through life without a clue. Click on the link to read more.

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