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The topic of gaslighting has found its way into popular culture, recently being discussed by MTV, and featured prominently as the theme of a storyline in last week's episode of the HBO drama series, Ballers. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, gaslighting is a sophisticated manipulation tactic which certain types of personalities use to create doubt in the minds of others, according to Dr. George Simon, PHD.

This edition of Real Talk Sessions is going to dive into the truth about gaslighting as it pertains to male-female sexual relationships, and as usual, the truth is ugly and inconvenient.

Let's get it.

The Film Room

In last week's episode of Ballers, a storyline that had been developing on the show for nearly a month finally reached its conclusion. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, here's a brief summary of the storyline that will help you understand the conversation we're about to have.

Spencer, played by "The Rock", and a co-worker of his throw a yacht party to attract more clients to the personal finance firm they work for. During this party, one of their clients, a professional football player who's up for a huge contract extension, is photographed smoking weed and doing lines of coke off of naked hookers -- typical Miami shit. In turns out that the woman, Angela, who took the pictures and threatened to sell them for profit was someone who Spencer used to hook up with. After much back and forth, a settlement is finally agreed upon, but the chick wanted Spencer to meet with her in person to deliver the money and apologize for their failed relationship, something that he was reluctant to do.

In the scene above, Spencer and his ex-jump-off turned girlfriend Tracy, discuss the situation. In the conversation, Tracy accuses Spencer of gaslighting Angela, which from her point-of-view means that Spencer led her on by making her feel special, and then when things started to get too close, he become emotionally and physically unavailable, leaving her confused, and questioning if they really had anything at all. Because of this, the football player attached to Spencer becomes collateral damage whose misfortune Angela can use to profit for her own gain while upsetting Spencer in the process.

Gaslighting & The Female Ego
Those of us who are engaging in casual relationships with no honest, concerted efforts to get married and have families with a person who we love, are actively participating in the Hookup Culture. The Hookup Culture is not personal, it's business. It's a business in which it is imperative that one enters without their ego in tow. It's business because it's never meant to be personal. We are meeting and having sex with people who we don't even really know. A lot of us are using false names, false personalities, GV numbers, etc. as we aim to get what we want out of these interactions, which is undeniably, unattached sex with people who we can disconnect from at a moment's notice. Most people can't enter this business without their egos, and rest assured, there isn't one woman out there who can.

Women are more promiscuous now than at any time of our society's history, yet they've never been more miserable. The problem for them is that we're playing this game from opposite spectrums. Men who are participating in this business are typically higher-value men -- in looks, money, status, etc. -- who can fuck a number of women as they choose to -- not most men, who more often than not luck into some ass from time to time, and certainly not those who haven't had pussy since Obama's first term. Meanwhile the women who are engaging in this business are lower-value women who can get dick from men -- even ones above their pay-grades -- but they can't get the men, and that fact is upsetting them.

Gaslighting comes into play as a go-to victim mentality for women who consciously choose to participate in the Hookup Culture, and don't like their records at the end of the season. Ultimately, they make choices, but they absolve themselves of guilt, and hide behind victim mentalities like gaslighting, as for why they dove into the mud and didn't come out clean on the other side.

This is one-time for the fat chicks who serve as late-night head doctors when guys go down swinging at the club, the cute chicks who don't have the juice to lock anybody down -- they lack the family background, education, money, etc. for someone to take them seriously -- but have just enough ass to get a text from time to time, and other chicks who at-best pass boner tests and make their pussies readily available when the men who they want to give it to are ready to go for a swim.

However, none of them are victims because nobody is making them feel special, look at the nature of the business, women are the bottoms of the rip-and-dip game, so what is the origin of this alleged specialness?

The Three Sides of A Relationship
There are three sides to every relationship: your side, her side, and the truth. Some of us think we're engaging in jump-off relationships, but because you're breaking the rules your jump-off thinks she is more to you than what she actually is. As a result, your truth is downplayed, meanwhile hers is overstated, so the reality is somewhere in the middle, whether you like that or not.

However, we are still not responsible for women's misreads. A lot of the so-called misleading that is done in relationships by men, is actually done by women who live in their own heads. They are constantly connecting dots and translating words and actions into whatever they want to believe, thus, they are misleading themselves.

In Ballers, the tale of Spencer and Angela is in which a go-go dancer feels salty because she had a six-month relationship with a professional football player that didn't go anywhere. One that was never going to go anywhere, which is why it was over after such a short-period of time, after all, she was just a fuckin' go-go dancer. At some point she made a conscious decision to believe her own bullshit -- that she had the juice to be a rich man's wifey -- and when reality bit, it didn't taste like the bullshit she had been feeding herself, so she got mad at the man.

Such a dynamic is at the heart of a lot of jump-off relationships, especially ones that go on for too long. Women start telling themselves things that make them feel good, and when the opposite is revealed to them, they become feigned victims of gaslighting. The fact that you gave them orgasms for six months, a year, whatever, ultimately was your way of making them feel special and manipulating their minds in the process, and then when you one day just decided to no longer answer their calls and texts, you were suddenly playing ignorant, like she meant so much to you, and now you're denying her the place in your life that she was entitled to.

Please.

The Master Manipulators
Women are the master manipulators. Think about the beginning of any relationship, you know that point when you have all these feelings because she's making you feel so damn special, and you start believing this is life, then over time, once you get out of that honeymoon stage, you find who she really is and what she really wants.

Think about all the men who were getting their dicks sucked like bomb pops, and now that they've married those women, they have to go to escorts to get topped off.

Think about the women who enthusiastically go out on dates with men who they have no intention of fucking.

Women are masters at making you believe things that aren't true, while they maneuver towards getting what they want out of you.

More often than not, it is men who are left with the short-end of the stick when it comes to these interactions. It's the man who attempts to start the relationship, and it's the man who jumps through a thousand hoops to try to see the relationship through, all the while dealing with a number of her tests, insecurities, and other obstacles that get in the way of potentially having something special.

Pour Conclure
Sometimes, we have to call a spade a spade. Most of our relationships in this modern dating world are nothing more than DOA relationships, which is unfortunate, because I believe it is in our nature to desire more than that, but it's hard to desire that from the undesirable, so we get what we can off the bone, and then move on when we're full. It's a dog-eat-dog world, there are no victims, just those who are being honest to the reality that they are operating within, and those whose reality isn't honest.