255. Why Decent Women Stay Too Long With Jerks - 1

Why Decent Women Stay Too Long With Jerks - 1

It can be explained by their attempt to avoid cognitive dissonance.

"For the same reason you keep spending money to fix up an old car when it just doesn't work - or keep investing in the same company when it's failing. Humans throw good money after bad all the time. When we have invested a lot in a choice that turns out to be bad, we're really inept at admitting that it didn't make rational sense. Other research has shown that we romanticize our relationships with spouses and partners significantly more when we believe we have sacrificed for them."

http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/04/why-having-kids-is-foolish/print/#ixzz1G3NlULbe

The following does not apply to promiscuous women from the gutter, for whom physical intimacy does not create or enhance emotional attachment.   They cannot forfeit a dignitiy, that they do not have.  

But a decent monogamous woman makes a huge emotional investment, when she allows a man the intimacy of her body.    She makes this investment for the purposes of getting commitment, bonding, devotion, a reliable safe haven.    She risks a lot of pain in the case of having the bad luck of accidentially getting emotionally attached to someone, who himself does not get committed.   
Decency adds to a woman's self-esteem and self-respect, but it has its price, it makes women very vulnerable.   


During the engagement phase (entries 178 and 252), both prospective partners are driven by incongruent motivations.   

• Even a decent, considerate and monogamous man is unfortunately often too much afflicted by his instincts.  When his need to restore his sexual homeostasis is strong, this blurs his clear thinking, sound reasoning and his long term rational judgement.  This can be as bad as detering him from a wise choice of a partner.   
• The woman wants to ascertain, that her emotional investment of allowing physical intimacy leads to the payoff of acquiring commitment.  As long as she cannot be sure, she recoils from precocious intimacy.   

In this situation, a woman's only choice is between two risks.  

• If she postpones physical involvment too long, she risks that even a decent man is driven by his need for homeostasis to choose another woman, who is less reluctant to accomodate his instincts.  
• If she allows a man the access to her body and discovers only when it is too late, that he has used her body without feeling committed, this is a very painful and severe shock.   She suffers remorse and shame for having sunk as low as allowing a man to soil her dignity in his gutter of promiscuity.   

When she gets aware of her mistake and ends the relationship, this does not undo the humiliation of having been used instead of respected.   He moves on without feeling guilty.   Instead he subjectively experiences it as the success of having found satisfaction for his instincts.  
This is very different from experiencing the failure of a relationship, after two partners with mutual respect had tried their best to make it work.  
    

As a result of this difficult choice between two evils, women who have fallen in love sometimes get physically involved with a man before they really feel comfortable to do so based on their own long-term need of commitment.  

At the beginning of every relationship there is a lot of reciprocal adapting required and of learning how to treat each other.    Conflicts, by which one partner gets hurt by the other accidentially and without any bad or selfish intentions, are unavoidable.   Solving such conflicts by constructive communication is an investment into long-term happiness and harmony for both.   
When the man is decent, mature and caring and they are mutually committed, they solve their conflicts with agreements and general consent to avoid similar conflicts in the future.   They learn, how to make each other happy and how to avoid hurting each other.

When a woman gets herself involved prematurely with a man, based upon her expectation of giving him sexual homeostasis in exchange for his full rational attention and cooperation in improving their bonding, then she is at risk to invest a huge amount of pain, stress and endurance before she finds out, that she got involved with a man, who is not committed.   

• An emotional moron learns nothing and there is no progress.   Conflicts are not solved, he does not understand, what he is doing, and he is not capable to communicate.   
• A narcissist learns how to dominate and gain power to get narcissistic supply.    There is no communication, as he feel entilted to get his needs out of her.   
• A psychopath and malicious jerk learns, how to hurt the woman on purpose, whenever he wants to do this.  

As soon as his behavior gets bad enough that she cannot but start to doubt, that the man is not feeling committed and bonded, a decent woman gets into a state of severe cognitive dissonance.  

She does not want to feel humiliated, she does not want to reproach herself for having got involved with a man not worthy of her, she does not want to loose her self respect.   

Therefore she clings to the illusion of the man's commitment, as long as she can.   Instead of seeing his hurting behavior as an indication of his bonding disability and his lack of commitment, she continues to interpret it as conflicts to solve and she continues to invest the endurance of suffering into futile attempts to improve, what she misinterprets as a committed relationship.    She lingers in her denial to acknowledge, that he uses her body again and again without this ever making him feel bonded and belonging together.  

Having choosen the man as similar to herself in what she perceives as his values, his tastes, his interests, it is an easy mistake to wrongly assume, that emotionally he experiences getting physically involved similar to how she herself experiences it.   She falls into the trap of projecting her own automatic committing upon the man, even though she knows theoretically, that there are many men from the gutter, who copulate like dogs, but succeed in pretending to be decent.   It is difficult for her to connect this theoretical knowledge with a man, whom she has choosen as appearing compatible and similar to herself.    It is somehow beyond her imagination, that men from the gutter can share the same physical intimacy, but just not feel the least commitment, bonding or belonging.    

As a consequence, she invests all that is in the scope of her endurance and resilience into the one goal of a payoff, which is to spare herself to feel humiliated by acknowledging, that her body has been used by an non-committed man.    She invests and invests in the goal of finally experiencing the unequivocal proof of his being committed.     She invests in preserving her self-respect of being a partner and not an object.     She invests in gaining his expression of respect for her.   

When she finally gets aware, that the man either is not able to improve his behavior or that he even has learned how to abuse and take advantage of her, she has invested already very much.    She has invested so much, that it is very hard to accept, that there will never be commitment, that there will never be a payoff for all her pain.  
 
Instead of being consequent and leaving the jerk, she lingers and clings to the illusion, that after investing so much, she just needs to invest a little more and the final payoff of commitment will come.  She lingers, as long as she has the illusion, that the payoff depends on her competency and her efforts.  

But when the man does not feel commitment, all her investments are in vain.   If a man is disabled to feel committed, there is nothing a woman can do to gain commitment.
Only when she finally wakes up to see the jerk and emotional moron really as the hopeless and bonding disabled case, who will never commit, she is free to give up.