Unsuitable Men 6: The Willpower Deficit
In entry 133, I wrote: Not hurting requires two components. The one, who hurts, needs to know, that he is hurting, and he needs to be motivated not to do so.
After reading and thinking about willpower and depletion, it seems, that I omitted the third factor, willpower and self-control.
There are the men, who may well be theoretically motivated not to hurt a woman. But their individual general supply of willpower is so low and their selfish impulses are so strong, that they cannot help it but hurt the woman against their own wish or attitude. They have developed psychological mechanisms to successfully trick themselves into not feeling bad about it.
http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/msh/pdfs/Hagger%20et%20al.%20%282010%29%20PB.pdf
"numerous capacity-based theories of self-control also conceptualize selfcontrol as a dispositional, traitlike construct that differs across individuals"
"This implies that people high in dispositional self-control will have more resources at their disposal. Such individuals will have more resources remaining after engaging in a self-control task of a given duration and resource demand than will individuals lower in trait self-control. Trait self-control may therefore serve to insulate a person from the depleting effects of self-control tasks and moderate the ego-depletion effect"
In entry 134 I described how the coercion to get advantages from her can deplete the willpower of a woman.
When a man has a personal disposition of only a low amount of willpower, and he attempts to control his selfish impulses, he also depletes himself by doing this. In reality, he may be only slightly or intermittently successful, in his own perception, he feels as if making huge efforts, while his partner experiences him nevertheless as a hurting and selfish person.
She needs from him the ability not to hurt her, and subjectively, he struggles to do so. For her it is not enough, while he perceives his attempts and efforts as not appreciated.
It is the old dilemma of what is fair compromising and what is giving up basic human rights and reasonable requirements concerning a relationship. Between one, who prefers hiking, and the other, who wants to visit a museum, an arrangement can be a fair compromise. When a woman gets hurt less, she is still getting hurt. Any amount of hurting is no correct treatment. Therefore any compromise between hurting a lot and not hurting, that results only in hurting less, is not fair and not acceptable.
A man, who receives a woman's feedback, that she feels hurt by his behavior, and who consciously would not want to hurt her, would feel shame and guilt. He certainly does not like to feel the loser and wimp, who hurts someone, whom he would prefer not to hurt.
Therefore he uses some psychological strategies to cope with this.
1. He prevents himself from consciously knowing, that he indeed is hurting her. He uses denial to avoid her feedback ever reaching his mind. He defines her feeling hurt as her defect and flaw. He blames her to fail her duties to him so he believes his behavior to be justified.
2. He does the same as the penitents in Sevilla, described in entry 135. Subjectively he buys himself the license for all the transgressions, that he feels too weak to avoid by self-control.
He attempts to compensate by doing things for her, that he subjectively considers as caring. Valuing the fulfillment of his own needs as something of a paramount importance, he projects his own needs upon her and does for her, what he enjoys himself, or what he assumes, that she wants. Then he expects a lot of appreciation from her for what he does.
But he is oblivious of what she would consider as caring, of what she really needs and wants. It does not even occur to him to ask the woman, what is really important for her. The efforts, that he invests in his compensating activities, are only enough for his own having the illusion of doing more for her than he gets from her, she does not perceive it this way. Because he is not making any progress towards ending his transgressions, his compensations are not a personal sacrifice for him, and she continues to experience him as using her for his own selfish advantages.
This leads to an insurmountable impasse, if they differ in a basic attitude. If in her value system moral transgressions cannot be compensated for, while he considers compensation a reasonable procedure, then they are not compatible and there is no rational compromise to solve the conflict.
If the woman is like me, she considers moral transgressions like hurting as absolutely not acceptable. The man is not suitable, because he is hurting her, she may consider him a jerk, a wimp, a moron, depending on his reasons. There is no way to compensate for hurting. Nothing he does, has any value, as long as he continues his hurting transgressions.
When the man in his own perception has not only compensated, but even overcompensated for his transgressions, when he feels to have already paid a high price for his license to continue hurting her, then he starts to think, that he is entitled to get this license and that she owes him to forgive the transgressions of the past and to tolerate his future transgressions. When the woman refuses this deal, he feels rejected, even outraged.
It really is an impasse. She is as convinced of her right to not be the target of transgressions as he is convinced that he has the right to be allowed the transgressions in return for the imposed compensations.
In entry 133, I wrote: Not hurting requires two components. The one, who hurts, needs to know, that he is hurting, and he needs to be motivated not to do so.
After reading and thinking about willpower and depletion, it seems, that I omitted the third factor, willpower and self-control.
There are the men, who may well be theoretically motivated not to hurt a woman. But their individual general supply of willpower is so low and their selfish impulses are so strong, that they cannot help it but hurt the woman against their own wish or attitude. They have developed psychological mechanisms to successfully trick themselves into not feeling bad about it.
http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/msh/pdfs/Hagger%20et%20al.%20%282010%29%20PB.pdf
"numerous capacity-based theories of self-control also conceptualize selfcontrol as a dispositional, traitlike construct that differs across individuals"
"This implies that people high in dispositional self-control will have more resources at their disposal. Such individuals will have more resources remaining after engaging in a self-control task of a given duration and resource demand than will individuals lower in trait self-control. Trait self-control may therefore serve to insulate a person from the depleting effects of self-control tasks and moderate the ego-depletion effect"
In entry 134 I described how the coercion to get advantages from her can deplete the willpower of a woman.
When a man has a personal disposition of only a low amount of willpower, and he attempts to control his selfish impulses, he also depletes himself by doing this. In reality, he may be only slightly or intermittently successful, in his own perception, he feels as if making huge efforts, while his partner experiences him nevertheless as a hurting and selfish person.
She needs from him the ability not to hurt her, and subjectively, he struggles to do so. For her it is not enough, while he perceives his attempts and efforts as not appreciated.
It is the old dilemma of what is fair compromising and what is giving up basic human rights and reasonable requirements concerning a relationship. Between one, who prefers hiking, and the other, who wants to visit a museum, an arrangement can be a fair compromise. When a woman gets hurt less, she is still getting hurt. Any amount of hurting is no correct treatment. Therefore any compromise between hurting a lot and not hurting, that results only in hurting less, is not fair and not acceptable.
A man, who receives a woman's feedback, that she feels hurt by his behavior, and who consciously would not want to hurt her, would feel shame and guilt. He certainly does not like to feel the loser and wimp, who hurts someone, whom he would prefer not to hurt.
Therefore he uses some psychological strategies to cope with this.
1. He prevents himself from consciously knowing, that he indeed is hurting her. He uses denial to avoid her feedback ever reaching his mind. He defines her feeling hurt as her defect and flaw. He blames her to fail her duties to him so he believes his behavior to be justified.
2. He does the same as the penitents in Sevilla, described in entry 135. Subjectively he buys himself the license for all the transgressions, that he feels too weak to avoid by self-control.
He attempts to compensate by doing things for her, that he subjectively considers as caring. Valuing the fulfillment of his own needs as something of a paramount importance, he projects his own needs upon her and does for her, what he enjoys himself, or what he assumes, that she wants. Then he expects a lot of appreciation from her for what he does.
But he is oblivious of what she would consider as caring, of what she really needs and wants. It does not even occur to him to ask the woman, what is really important for her. The efforts, that he invests in his compensating activities, are only enough for his own having the illusion of doing more for her than he gets from her, she does not perceive it this way. Because he is not making any progress towards ending his transgressions, his compensations are not a personal sacrifice for him, and she continues to experience him as using her for his own selfish advantages.
This leads to an insurmountable impasse, if they differ in a basic attitude. If in her value system moral transgressions cannot be compensated for, while he considers compensation a reasonable procedure, then they are not compatible and there is no rational compromise to solve the conflict.
If the woman is like me, she considers moral transgressions like hurting as absolutely not acceptable. The man is not suitable, because he is hurting her, she may consider him a jerk, a wimp, a moron, depending on his reasons. There is no way to compensate for hurting. Nothing he does, has any value, as long as he continues his hurting transgressions.
When the man in his own perception has not only compensated, but even overcompensated for his transgressions, when he feels to have already paid a high price for his license to continue hurting her, then he starts to think, that he is entitled to get this license and that she owes him to forgive the transgressions of the past and to tolerate his future transgressions. When the woman refuses this deal, he feels rejected, even outraged.
It really is an impasse. She is as convinced of her right to not be the target of transgressions as he is convinced that he has the right to be allowed the transgressions in return for the imposed compensations.
A man, who would hurt me, is not suitable for me, no matter, how much he is willing to compensate for hurting. If he wants to be suitable, he has to refrain from hurting me.
