In the first of a series of articles, I want to look today at a prickly but important topic: harem.
The term harem refers to the building, stabilizing and maintaining of a network of women you will be romantically involved with simultaneously. This is commonly known in seduction terminology as “mLTRs” (for “multiple long term relationships”).
We’re not going to get into the specifics of tactics and techniques required to start building a harem today (for those wanting a preview, check out Managing Open Relationships). Instead I want to talk about the background work that needs to go into preparing oneself mentally to engage in this sort of behavior.
Building a harem is a big undertaking for the majority of men; it’s not ordinary, easy, simple or cheap, and there are some fundamental attitudes that have to be in place before one can even begin the work. We will go into some of those attitudes below; but first, we must ask (and answer) the most important question of all: why harem?
Why Have a Harem At All?
You have to ask yourself, why do I want this? What need am I really filling with these women and my relationships with them?
Then you have to listen, very very closely, and not just with your head, but with your heart. The still small voice inside will answer if you tune your inner ear to it. You might need to ask many many times. Keep asking and keep listening, because the answer DOES exist inside you.
In my view there are only a few answers that will legitimately qualify a given man to harem building; that is to say, there are only a few motivations for harem building that are aligned with sound moral thinking.
Of course, because of the dominant paradigm of monogamy in Western culture, the motivations of any man who sleeps with (or aspires to sleep with) multiple women at once will always be suspect; but the suspicion is irrelevant as long as the man’s moral thinking and intentions are aligned with, and proceed from, a place of genuine goodwill.
This is where introspection and self-knowledge become absolutely essential; along the road to the harem decision, the moral tar pits are many and varied. It is all too easy for a harem to be a means of social validation (especially if the man is active in the seduction industry and recognized for his harem), a source of self-esteem (a vain external attempt to fill an internal void) and/or a means of denigrating or degrading women (as a way to seek revenge for past hurts).
There’s no question that harem building is possible with even the worst of motivations. It is this author’s sincere belief, however, that it will be not only more successful, but more fulfilling if one’s intentions are pure. Therefore, examine your intentions with your hardest and most unflinching gaze.
If you can do that successfully, you will have already won your most difficult battle.
Finding the “Perfect” Girl…Twice
Most men have had the experience of running into a girl they really like. And I’m not just saying a girl you sorta like, as in, “yeah, this is a cool girl, I want to spend time with her.”
I’m talking about a girl you REALLY like. The kind of girl that makes grown, otherwise-sensible men use words like “perfect” and think about weddings. THAT kind of like.
When this happens, the tendency (for most men anyway) is to get very, very focused: on their new “perfect” girl, on making her their girlfriend, and on basically consolidating, cultivating, and prolonging the good feelings she generates in them for as long as humanly possible.
And that, my friends, is a completely natural human reaction, totally in line with our evolutionary heritage and the good sense of our breeding imperative. Through the lens of evolutionary psychology, a highly-quality woman that makes us think of adjectives like “flawless” has been lit up by our animal brains as a really good breeding choice, and we want to capture that breeding resource as quickly and comprehensively as possible. This is only natural and right, so let’s not fight it.
Let’s instead look at our evolutionary drive in a more complex way, that takes into account the complexity of modern life and the choices offered by reproductive technology, as well as our more recently-developed neocortex, which allows executive planning and decisions that can override the primal breeding instinct.
Here’s the question that should drive our thinking on this: if one awesome girl in our life is possible, why not two?
If you want to have a harem, that is the question you need to answer for yourself, because that’s what a harem really is; having near-constant access to 1+ desirable mates.
The reason that men who really want a harem don’t have one — and not every guy should want or need a harem — is not at root a failure of skill, attractiveness, or resources. It is a failure of imagination.
That is the root of harem: imagination. Being able to say to oneself, while in contact with a wonderful woman, “This is great. But why stop here?”
If your mind is recoiling at this idea, you are probably not ready to build a harem. But if you want to get there, you need to start with this question, and with your imagination.
Here’s another way to look at it. Life is short; why limit yourself to engaging with wonderful women one at a time?
You have to be able to ask these questions, and contemplate their answers seriously, before you can proceed.
Deservedness
So far this article has been all about questions. The question of What our core motivation truly is; the question of Why not be deeply engaged with more than one woman at a time; and now, the questions underlying all of this, questions of deservedness and value.
The questions that will lead you to harem are expansive by nature. They will expand your mind, your thinking about the nature of relationships, and ultimately, your range of experience — maybe beyond what you ever thought possible.
These expansive questions taps deeply into the absolute root of your being, including self-esteem, your relationship values, and perhaps most importantly, your sense of deservedness. Do you really feel you deserve to have excellent intimate relationships with more than one woman in your life? More than one woman at a time?
Don’t get me wrong; the question of deservedness, that is, “How many beautiful women do I feel worthy of sleeping with,” is also somewhat incomplete, since it implicitly reduces women to a discrete, quantifiable prize status — like pieces of candy. The guys who brag about “I’ve slept with X many women” or “I slept with 3 women in one day” are talking about some very real reproductive success, but are missing the larger context of “success”, unless they are simultaneously addressing the quality of experience.
A guy can sleep with 200 women in his life or have a 6-girl harem and still fail to improve the experience of the women he is with, or himself, in the slightest.
And this is where I really think the sense of deservedness comes into play. In a way, it is about quantity — for if you don’t believe you deserve a variety of good experiences, you most certainly won’t get them — but beyond a certain point it is just as much about quality, and the mutual enrichment that intimate relationships provide space for.
The value of mutual enrichment, of course, is not quantifiable; there is no single objective unit of measurement of learning, growth, joy or enrichment that can be applied to all people across all relationships. But saying “we can’t know” is not to say “we shouldn’t try [to do good and to learn]”.
That is the essence of relationships: I will help you along your road, and in so doing will be helped along mine. This view begs a fundamental question of self-worth: am I the type of quality individual who can really offer enrichment to a variety of different women simultaneously, while staying grounded in my own developmental process? Or am I deluding myself, and trying to take from many women, while not offering enough in return?
Am I operating from a place of lack and neediness, or abundance and happiness?
A pioneer of the seduction industry, a man named Mark Cunningham, is reputed to have said about women: “Leave them better than you found them.” The idea that every woman you encounter intimately will benefit from the experience is a tall enough order; what about many women, continuing to benefit from simultaneous and continuous interactions with you?
Before moving on, I want to comment that none of these questions are quantifiable in nature, or even concrete enough to be wholly answerable. Rather, they point down a path of engagement in a process that will hopefully keep one true to oneself, and the women one is with, in the best spirit of goodwill and mutual enrichment, while engaging in a harem lifestyle.
Why This Won’t Work Unless You Really Commit
Harem won’t happen if you’re wishy-washy about it. It’s alright to accept these ideas intellectually; it’s another thing to actually begin walking down the path. This is a life dream for many men; an “impossible” future that will only be manifest if one is fully engaged in the questions asked above, and continuously answering the question of what it means to be a man who loves many women.
You can’t think yourself into this one. It will take work, and not just mental work expanding your expectations and beliefs about what is possible, but physical work as well (ask any man with a harem about “load management” and you’ll get an earful). As with many relationship and seduction topics, it is possible to deal with this entirely on an intellectual level; but unless your practice is also connected to your physical body, and rooted in physical reality, you won’t get far.
So, before you even think of getting started, be sure you are really ready for this. It may well bring up shit for you that you didn’t even realize you had; but it may also be one of the most liberating and expansive experiences of your life.
If you feel ready, keep an eye on this space for Part II.