I was – and sometimes still are – the “analysis paralysis” guy. “Turning off my brain” in the sense of just doing things never really happened.

What I did was being gripped by overthinking, until the emotions suddenly overrode my brain, and I made an impulsive decision which almost always was bullshit or bad. But I learned that sometimes you should be overthinking in a relationship. And here’s why.

Disclaimer: This post is based on a classic on the MarriedRedPill Subreddit. The ones I deem the most valuable I moved over to my blog (and added my own thoughts, it’s not a blatant copy) because knowing Reddit, they’ll likely ban this subreddit at some point. The old TRP is already “quarantined.” Only a matter of time. Now let’s get to the meat.

The issue with overthinking

I bet you reading this had the same issue many times. I’m talking about the Beta Bob who’s unhappy about something, would weigh the best way to address it, couldn’t figure out a way that would be confrontational, and would just say nothing and keep eating shit from everyone in their lives.

Then eventually there’d be an exceptional set of stressors — let’s say the in-laws are staying over during the holidays — and Beta Bob finally decides “that’s the last straw” and refuses to comply with the last shitty directive ordered by his Wife. And his wife would naturally shriek, you having a problem with doing this NOW, of all times, when MY FAMILY is here? 

Impulsive decisions and lash outs ALWAYS happen in the worst times

This man already has a problem operating in his wife’s Frame, which means this Shit Test is definitely not going to go well for him, and will probably end up with a hysterical wife and him apologizing.

And why did Beta Bob decide “this was the last straw”? Maybe because he read a bunch of Red Pill content, and was in the process of trying to wrap his mind around it, and then he sees comments saying things, “stop overthinking it, just act like Chad,” even though that guy clearly does a lot of goddamn thinking. Maybe he was in the anger phase because of all the Red Pill Content, and tried to apply lessons like a child with dynamite. Just exploding without any frame of reference or proper appliance.

How overthinking in a relationship can be good

Let’s use an example of an anxious wife from one of the MRP members to explain this a bit better. Note: The next passage is completely taken from jacktenofhearts on MRP. I couldn’t have phrased it any better.

Gave her my old navy smarties (adivan) and told her to leave them in her purse, just having them available if needed will be enough, call me if you decide to take one.

Why was this effective? He’s offering the option of practical assistance. He’s not trying to solve his wife’s problem, because it’s not his problem. It’s entirely within her agency whether she wants to take this option or not. But he’s not being an unresponsive idiot about this. And the solution itself probably causes some self-reflection from his wife, as she subconsciously asks herself, Am I really THAT anxious that I need to take prescription medication? Am I really THAT incapable of calming the fuck down on my own?

try poking fun at her pet peeve and holding frame

Why does this work? Because “pet peeves” are essentially things we hate with an irrational magnitude relative to the impact on our lives. It’s a pet peeve of mine when I text someone and they immediately respond by calling me.  IF I WANTED TO TALK ON THE PHONE I WOULD HAVE CALLED YOU, DIPSHIT! So let’s take a situation where I’m taking myself way too seriously. Maybe I have a big meeting with a prospective client, but then I’m told the CMO is in another meeting and he’ll be with me “shortly.” So I’m snarking, “Great. I knew this was a fucking waste of time. Fucker’s gonna make me go through this song and dance just so he can tell the CEO he explored outside agencies but still wants to do it in house. And this asshole can’t even be on time so I can get this bullshit over with.”

And my business partner says, “You should text him. He’d have to end his meeting to call you back.” And I laugh, and this works, because I know I take the whole “I text you/you call me” thing irrationally seriously, so I might be taking this whole situation about the CMO running late to seriously too, and maybe I should just relax and drop the cynicism, because on the off-chance this CMO isn’t just jerking me around, taking any of that cynicism into my presentation isn’t going to help.

Unless he was my old business partner, who I very much didn’t respect, then I’d just think he was fucking moron who clearly didn’t understand the magnitude of this situation. I’d think his attempt at levity was an unserious, unconstructive, and unhelpful.  You think this is funny, asshole? We’ve busted our ass for a week on this presentation and all we need is for the fucking client to show up to the meeting on time and he can’t even do that?

Which should hopefully illustrate that “poking fun at her pet peeve and holding frame” is just “tease her and be the kind of person whom she’d appreciate that teasing coming from.” But, you know, the latter part of that isn’t trivial. An MRP noob who “teases his wife” in response to her anxiety, I don’t think that’d go very well. Because if your wife reacts positively to that teasing, you’re not just holding frame, you’re suggesting to her that she enter your frame, the frame where pet peeves are silly and so is her anxiety and it’s not worth getting worked up about either one of them.

I say all this to demonstrate with some thinking, it’s actually very easy to deconstruct why his actions got such a positive reaction from his wife. But also identify a key requisite is not just “holding” frame, and why a newly unplugged guy who previously had always walked on eggshells to placate his wife’s anxiety – maybe he doesn’t have the frame to do something like that yet. Maybe he needs utilize actions that subtler responses, like immersing himself in external activities so he’ll just be able to say, “look, your meeting tomorrow will go fine, I gotta get to my soccer game, love ya babe.”

Because, if she tries to Shit Test him, the only frame he needs is: seriously, is she that distressed she thinks her husband should skip a commitment just so she can whine about being anxious? That’s a very manageable frame for a unplugged guy to handle. And then once he’s established his own external commitments take precedence over his wife’s anxiety, THEN he can move on to internal commitments. In my opinion, thinking through that kind of approach can turn around a guy’s life and marriage with a minimum of disruption.

So you should think more?

That was very well put by jacktenofhearts.

This whole post is especially helpful for guys who have an anxious wife. As I mentioned in videos and posts, the anxious wife operates differently than a confident woman that is just shit testing you. You cannot just deflect the shit test with a rock hard frame, you also need to address her anxiety.

And you do this by thinking more. Maybe even overthinking. Dealing with shit tests is simple. You got a bunch of tools like Amused Mastery and whatnot, but the basic gist is always: Don’t give into her bullshit. Don’t enter her frame.

That’s a simple mindset to have when dealing with shit tests. But how do you address her anxiety?

You lost your sexual mojo

Here’s an analogy. Say you’re a golfer or baseball pitcher. Some guys take care of every single muscle movement to be perfect, so they try to remember 1,000 things when swinging the club and they fail. Much like guys read the Sex God Method and try to remember EVERYTHING (even though I say in the post you shouldn’t do all at once) and then sex is just mechanic bullshit.

Some guys end up after the red pill or even my blog worse of than before, because they’re trying too hard to do everything right. They would be better off just FEELING what feels right and just swinging the golf club like they did as a kid. When they were just doing things for themselves all was good, but now that you are focusing on other people too much, it doesn’t work anymore! This is where “Shut up and just play Amused Mastery” works well.

But then there’s the guys who had that mojo with their swing going on but lost it one day. To whatever circumstance. Things were going well. You were good with women, then you met that nice girl, marriage, house, kids, and now your life seems to revolve mostly around other people and not yourself. What the fuck?

How do you get that mojo back of just being the Alpha? Just enjoying your life? Maybe indulging into years of video games and porn finally caught up on your mojo.

How do you improve at something you never knew how to do to begin with?

For you (like my older self), you might have to rebuild your entire golf swing from the ground up, by understanding yourself, women, and what you actually want. And this is where the classic Alpha approach doesn’t work with you or some women.

How to address her anxiety with overthinking

I assume you do NOT fail at being physically attractive, if so, fix that here. What you likely fail at is being emotionally empathetic. If your wife said in a fight, “Maybe I’d have sex with you if you did the dishes once!” obviously wasn’t about the dishes, but at least you did the dishes as a good beta afterward.

If I tell you to be alpha and don’t worry about her feelings too much that just makes you the beta who doesn’t even do the dishes. In other words, you’re not just a Nice Guy, you’re a Mean Nice Guy. That’s just fucking worse.

All these complaints about the dishes aren’t about sex, they are about emotional empathy. It’s a wife thinking, “How does he see these dirty dishes and not care? How the fuck am I married to someone who doesn’t even notice this shit? He knows it bothers me, he knows it’s important to me, but he just walks by these dirty dishes every single time and doesn’t do shit. What the fuck is his problem? How hard is it to notice this?“

Here is where you need to think more. You come home from work, eat a meal your wife cooked, and then you play two hours of Xbox. When your wife walks past and asks, “You coming to bed?” and you just say “Nah, not yet” what she really asks is, “Do you care to at least spend some time with me?”

But you rather kill some guys in PUBG.

And you wonder why she doesn’t feel too bad about rejecting YOU when you want sex?

Now, the Red Pill Gurus and Alphas will come in and say that you are your own man and you shouldn’t care too much about a woman. And I get it. This works well when you’re spinning plates, but if you’re married this doesn’t. Unless you want to go through a divorce and only see your kids once a week, sleeping on a futon.

If you want sex, you also need to address her emotions. You need to learn to read between the lines of what she’s actually saying. What she actually wants. Which in most cases means more feels. Emotions. Experience. THEN, she will be open for more. I mentioned in a recent post how easy this is actually to do.

Now if you’re a man on a mission, you might not have time to do this all the time. In this case you need to address her anxiety of not getting enough emotion out of this relationship. By saying, “Look honey, I know you want to spend more time with me, and I, too, want to do so, but if I want to get this family to live freely and in abundance, not worrying about money too much, then I need to spend time on building this now, so we can reap the rewards later. Can you live with a little less of me right now so we can live comfortably later?”

You are emotionally understanding her. She finally feels HEARD. She likely be totally up for that plan. You also made it a team game. You can also give her a task, to keep household stress away from you until you can afford to pay for someone to do that or whatever. You’re on the same path and her anxiety is taken care of.

If in this case you just throw the Alpha, it’s like, “Act like an even more ignorant inconsiderate shithead than your wife already thinks you are, and ignore everything she’s upset about. It’s a Shit Test, bro. Just STFU and go lift.  You’re thinking too much.”

I know you would LOVE to hear that because it’s easy to implement, but it likely won’t work.

Add value to people

You don’t need to jump and do the dishes and virtually do everything her emotions demand. This just brings you back into beta territory, but you should probably add some value to a woman’s life first, before you withdraw whatever little value you currently do add right now in a shit test.

So ask yourself what you currently do. And there could be many things:

• Are you overweight, fapping to porn, only playing video games. This is simple. You suck, you add zero to her life.
• Are you a career beta, adding money but nothing else (emotions, experience?)
• Are you reading your wife properly? Is she just being a huge bitch? -> Be the Alpha. Is she actually anxious about changes or you leaving her? -> Overthink a bit.
• Does she add value to your life? Yes, then give her some emotions. After all she ADDS to your life. Is she just an emotional vampire and just takes but never gives? Ask yourself why you married a bitch.

If you lost your mojo or never had one to begin with, you gotta start learning how to be a social human being. How to interact with people. How to read them.

Because trust me, people are funny, they tell you ALL THE TIME what bothers them. Sometimes directly, sometimes covertly. But they are always very open.

The issue is just that we never listen or observe what’s actually going on due to our huge entitlement and Ego.