- 5/15/2025
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Lucio Buffalmano is a sociologist and global authority on power dynamics and men’s self-development.
He founded ThePowerMoves in 2016 to help good men win—without becoming as*holes.
Today, TPM is the #1 site for mastering power, strategies, and winning at life.
🌐 https://thepowermoves.com/
Lucio Buffalmano is a sociologist and global authority on power dynamics and men’s self-development.
He founded ThePowerMoves in 2016 to help good men win—without becoming as*holes.
Today, TPM is the #1 site for mastering power, strategies, and winning at life.
🌐 https://thepowermoves.com/
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LearningTranscript
00:00Have you noticed? Men are angry, women are disappointed, nobody seems happy with
00:05dating anymore. Everybody's talking about it but nobody is getting to the root
00:11cause of this issue. In this video I will explain the number one scientific
00:17reason behind the dating struggles in the modern West. So let's start. Scientific
00:25research has shown that there are two types of men when it comes to attracting
00:29and keeping women. Number one, in the scientific literature refers to it as
00:35conferring benefits. And number two, it's the opposite strategy which is about
00:44inflicting costs. Call this taking value.
00:50There are two types of men go for the inflicting cost strategy. These are, you
00:56will never guess, dark triad men.
01:00And crucially, to explain the dynamics of dating disappointment, it's lower value
01:06men who go for inflicting costs. If you think about it, this is logical. High value
01:13men can give benefits. So most of them prefer giving benefits. Lower value men don't
01:22have value to give. So they resort to inflicting costs to keep a woman.
01:29These are not conscious calculations, by the way. Men and people in general run
01:35these calculations subconsciously. But when they realize that they don't have
01:40many benefits to keep a woman happy and attracted with them, they resort to
01:45inflicting costs. What are costs? Well, there are a million ways of inflicting costs.
01:52But the most common ones, manipulation, gaslighting, undermining her self-esteem,
01:58physical abuse, unfortunately, verbal abuse, and they too often overlap.
02:03It's mate guarding, excessive jealousy, accusing her of being disloyal. Or it can also be breaking
02:13down when she wants to leave. This is called a pity play, etc, etc.
02:18What are inflicting benefits? It's the same. There are a million ways of giving value.
02:23But at the core, this is about who you are. This is about personality. If you're a cool guy,
02:30that's all that is needed. High confidence, high self-esteem, positive social dominance,
02:38make her feel great when she's with you, great conversational skills,
02:42can be being good and bad as well, being good at cooking, whatever.
02:49But the more benefits one can give, the more he will tend to use this positive approach,
02:58which is win-win and makes for great relationships. The fewer good traits he has,
03:05the more likely it becomes that it will be a toxic relationship based on taking value,
03:14pushing, making her worse off. Why is this so crucial for modern dating?
03:22It's because, historically, women have been lower value than men, as a class, at a society level.
03:34Now, as you can imagine, in the last decades, and it accelerated in the last years,
03:40women are empowering themselves more and more. So at a social level, it means that fewer and fewer men can give benefits.
03:51So more and more men have to resort to value-taking approaches. More and more men become abusive.
04:01Unfortunately, this is a case where the pie is fixed at a group and social level.
04:09Because if women increase their power vis-a-vis, face-to-face with men as a class, men have lower benefits to give as a class.
04:23And this is crucial, and this is why here at The Power Moves, we encourage men and people in general to think of themselves as individuals first.
04:33Because then the solution, the root cause solution, becomes obvious.
04:39And it's you become a more empowered, cooler guy, and then you have no problem with women empowering themselves.
04:49As a matter of fact, women empowering themselves is a boon, it's a boost for cool guys.
04:55Because cool women, empowered women, have nowhere to go but with the very few top cool guys left.
05:05This is also why we probably see a rise in voluntary celibates.
05:10It's because these lower value men cannot attract empowered women.
05:18If we go back long enough, everything was different.
05:22Women could not vote, they would not go to higher education, they would make less money.
05:28But it has also then consequences at a psychological level that matters even more.
05:34Those women were less confident, had lower self-esteem, and looked up to men as a class in general.
05:42Back then, the average man, just being with a woman, he would be the breadwinner.
05:48He would give benefits because he was higher status in society.
05:53Today it's not like that anymore.
05:55The average man today is underwater, value underwater.
06:00Because he makes less money than women, he's less educated.
06:04And that reflects mentally, he's less confident, lower self-esteem.
06:09And then women also become more demanding.
06:13If they are higher level, most women want a guy who is above them and they cannot find him.
06:21So let's go back to the solution now.
06:23Number one, what's not a solution, and what unfortunately is so common in male self-development these days,
06:30which is to complain about these social dynamics trends.
06:35They will never say it explicitly, but what they sub-communicate when they complain about modern women, it's this.
06:43Women are too high power for me now.
06:48I cannot attract and retain a woman as things are.
06:52So I need to push them down so I can attract a woman and keep her.
06:58However, you don't want to sub-communicate this.
07:00This would be controversial.
07:02But I would even say that you want to avoid over displaying a conservative attitude, a socially conservative attitude that overlaps with social dominance orientation, which sounds cool, but it's not.
07:17Social dominance orientation is all about keeping the class power structure as it is.
07:24For men, that means keep men higher up and keep women lower down.
07:30That sub-communicates that the man does not feel confident, empowered, strong and cool enough to attract and maintain an empowered woman.
07:43It's a no-no in today's dating.
07:45You don't want to sub-communicate that.
07:48Even if you're conservative, even if you want a housewife, supportive, submissive, feminine type of woman, it's not the right strategy to say it up front.
07:59The right strategy is the opposite.
08:02To show yourself as the cool guy who is cool with empowered women.
08:06What happens then is that even empowered women, more of them, will be okay to be supportive and to be feminine and to be submissive to a cool guy.
08:17Again, it's logic.
08:18Why would a cool, empowered woman with her job and her money want to be feminine and submissive with an abusive loser?
08:26Nobody wants that.
08:28But a lot more are open to be so to high value, high power, confident men.
08:35So what you want to say and sub-communicate instead is that you are cool with women empowering themselves.
08:44For example, you go on a date and the woman talks about her dreams, her goals.
08:50The threatened guy thinks, oh, she's not for me.
08:54I need a stay-at-home wife.
08:56The cool guy instead tells her, yes, you go for it.
09:01You can do it.
09:02You got this.
09:04You go, girl.
09:05A little bit of a power move.
09:07You go, girl.
09:08If you are closer, you can say, you go, baby.
09:11You got that.
09:12This is the positive male chauvinism which is attractive.
09:17The negative one is the fearful one who is afraid of empowered women.
09:23Now, this is the next level.
09:26The mindset of this type of guy.
09:30It's this.
09:31It doesn't matter how much you empower yourself.
09:36You will never be in my level.
09:38That's why he's so confident in saying, you go for it.
09:43You got this.
09:44Because deep down he thinks, no matter what you achieve, I'll always be a step ahead.
09:51You don't want to say that, but that's what you want to think deep down.
09:57And if you do the work on yourself, it's the truth.
10:02Top men are a step ahead top women.
10:06That's how it is.
10:08Another move I use in dating sometimes is storytelling.
10:12Unfortunately, this dynamic has become so common that most women have experienced or know about a friend
10:21who was in a relationship with a guy who was overly jealous, mate guarding or semi-abusive or semi-toxic.
10:28Or completely abusive.
10:29So what I say is, these days, for a cool woman, it's better to be single or to be lesbian than to be with one of these guys.
10:42That is so good at many levels.
10:44One, it sub-communicates that you're open-minded and that you are not like one of those guys.
10:50You are one of the cool guys who is not afraid of empowered women.
10:55Number two, it also opens the thread of open-mindedness and open-mindedness about sexuality.
11:02So if you want to move fast and maybe have things happen that same night with a date, that's also very good for that.
11:13I tried it many times and it always worked perfectly.
11:16Now this is another important point between these two.
11:19There are three levels of men here.
11:22The lower level, the too nice guy, he's encouraging women, he's okay with feminists, but not because he's really okay and secure.
11:31It's because he's afraid of telling the truth.
11:35He's afraid of taking action on his own fear.
11:39So he says, oh yeah, I'm all for feminists, but not because he's a cool guy.
11:44It's because he's a pushover.
11:46It's because he's afraid of saying what he truly thinks.
11:50The second level is what we mentioned to not to do.
11:54It's what you see a lot in the male self-development.
11:58And it's the criticizing the empowered women, sub-communicating that men should be above, sub-communicating about men, talking about men's power.
12:07They will never say this, but deep down what they are saying is men should be above, women should be below.
12:13And then there is the third level, which is what we are embracing here, is that you either are truly open-minded, you are more of a lover type, or three, you are so cool and confident in yourself that you truly think it's a good thing that women empower themselves.
12:33And to me, this is the only healthy possible approach.
12:38Anything else to push women down, it's so toxic.
12:43How are you going to implement that solution without pushing down on millions of women?
12:50It's so toxic, and to me it's also so weak, so fucking weak.
12:56That's why I've also been very critical of some guru personalities in the male self-development sphere.
13:03Finally, if you want to commit, if you want a positive relationship where she's attracted and admires you, you want to ask these four crucial questions.
13:14We outline them in this video here.
13:17Check it out. Cheers, guys.
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