quest


I am a woman born 1949 and my quest is to find a mindmate
to grow old together as a mutually devoted couple
in a relationship based upon the
egalitarian rational commitment paradigm
bonded by intrinsic commitment
as each other's safe haven and secure basis.

The purpose of this blog is to enable the right man
to recognize us as reciprocal mindmates and
to encourage him to contact me:
marulaki@hotmail.com


The entries directly concerning,
who could be my mindmate,
are mainly at the beginning.
If this is your predominant interest,
I suggest to read this blog in the same order
as it was written, following the numbers.

I am German, therefore my English is sometimes faulty.

Maybe you have stumbled upon this blog not as a potential match.
Please wait a short moment before zapping.

Do you know anybody, who could be my mindmate?
Your neighbour, brother, uncle, cousin, colleague, friend?
If so, please tell him to look at this blog.
While you have no reason to do this for me,
a stranger, maybe you can make someone happy, for whom you care.

Do you have your own webpage or blog,
which someone like my mindmate to be found probably reads?
If so, please mention my quest and add a link to this blog.


Egalitarian Communication

Egalitarian Communication

For a person with an innate need for egalitarian commitment, love, attachment, closeness and bonding are inseparable from respect and appreciation as a consequence of reciprocal, active and passive perception of equality.   It is not a compromise, nor a reluctant concession or price paid, but it is a preference and a personal need.

1.  The partner is respected, valued and appreciated as a fully equal person, as someone worthy to be with based upon rational evaluation. 
2. The partner's attitude experienced directly by words and indirectly by actions is perceived as an expression of equality.     

For persons with egalitarian needs, anyhing less than reciprocal equality impedes or destroys love.   Therefore the maintenance of mutual respect and appreciation is vital to egalitarian commitment.   Losing respect by any devaluing attitude even in a very limited way is a jeopardy.   It is the first step to convert egalitarian commitment into a relationship of onesided or reciprocal taking advantages.   

Egalitarian commitment requires egalitarian communication. 
 
The following are some principles specifying, how egalitarian communication can be applied to protect and maintain equality, as long as it exists.   Someone, who cannot agree with these principles, does not share basic values with me and is not a mindmate.   


When someone does not comprehend another person's behavior or attitude, then the spontaneous reaction is often to consider the own inclinations and attitudes as right and reasonable, while the incomprehensible appears temporarily as wrong, stupid or weird.   As an immediate impulse, this is not dangerous.    The wrong conclusions are.  

Egalitarian communication means, that such temporary incomprehension is experienced as an important trigger to indicate the need to restore equality.   Incomprehension is not mistaken as a justification to permanently diminish the respect and to devalue someone.  


Principle 1:   The reaction to incomprehension is a conscious choice.

Egalitarian communication requires the awareness for the detrimental consequences of devaluing the other as inferior by ascribing flaws and defects.   A relationship based upon tolerance for inferiority is a clear indication, that the inferior other is used for some purpose.  This leads to some form of a hierarchy, dominance or imbalance of power and influence.   Men tend to use women's bodies, women tend to take material advantage of men.
When acknowledging the other's equality as being beyond doubt, incomprehension is not interpreted as indicating the absence of good reasons.  The egalitarian partner recognizes instead, that he is temporarily ignorant of the good reasons.  His task is to find out, what was not obvious or which information he is lacking.  The egalitarian reaction to incomprehension is the attempt and effort to comprehend and to understand and to avoid devaluation.

Principle 2:   Egalitarian communication is motivated by the wish for intellectual intimacy.

Egalitarian commitment means to be attracted to and to feel a need for intellectual intimacy and for the joy of consent.   Incomprehension is the absence of consent and agreement and therefore it offers the chance for improving intellectual intimacy.  Enhancing intellectual intimacy and the joy of consent are very rewarding goals. 
Communication between egalitarians is driven by the motivation to discuss and explain the topic until there is understanding and consent.   Communicating for this purpose is shared enjoyment.   This is also the case, when egalitarian communication replaces incomprehension by consent and better understanding.  
If someone agrees to this form of communication only as to an unpleasant chore, then this indicates, that the person wants some other advantages from the relationship and not intellectual intimacy.

Principle 3:    Communication needs to be enjoyed by both partners.

If at least one partner is generally not motivated to enjoy egalitarian communication as in principle 2, then there is no egalitarian commitment.  
But people are not always in the mental situation to communicate, they may be just tired or otherwise preoccupied.   If in this situation someone only appears to participate in improving comprehension, this can deteriorate the situation instead of improving.   Therefore it is important to be unambiguous about really wanting to communicate.  Enjoyed communication is much more successful and constructive than reluctant communication.  

Principle 4:  Ii is important to communicate explicitly, with sincerity and without ambiguity.

Sometimes both partners contribute to situations of incomprehension, which can be enhanced by lacking to be as clear, blunt, sincere and unambiguous as possible.  

Humor, white lies and polite evasiveness have their legitimate places and advantages, when smoothing interaction with people, who are not really close.   Such behaviors are also successful, when someone wants to get benefits from an insignificant or disrespected person.

Reciprocally knowing the true opinion of each other is of paramount importance between egalitarian partners.   Only blunt sincerity helps to avoid and to correct wrong impressions like the impulse to misjudge someone as a consequence of incomprehension.  
Egalitarians tell each other, what they mean and they mean, what they say.   They restrict humor to any topic except what can be misunderstood as devaluing each other.      
Avoiding incomprehension is a task for the cooperation of both partners.  

Principle 5:   The focus of egalitarian commitment is on emotional bonding.  

The purpose of having an egalitarian committed relationship is to experience a net total of more pleasant emotions and less suffering than being alone.   Emotions are real and subjective.   Respecting a partner as an equal includes recognizing the emotional needs and reactions as a part of the personality.   
The quality of a relationship can be evaluated by how much the partners reciprocally have consideration, responsibility and empathy.  This enables them to refrain from hurting and harming each other and to care for the other's emotional needs by an informed choice.    
When the other feels hurt and this leads to incomprehension, this is a special case of the task to correct the interaction.   When the other does not react with pleasure to the attempt to please, this also is a form of incomprehension, that needs to be improved.   
In an egalitarian commitment, incomprehension can never be an excuse or justification to force any behavior upon the other.

Principle 6:  Devaluing attitudes and opinions often lead to hurting treatment.

Incomprehension is the temporary inability to judge the other.  But appropriate treatment of others requires knowledge.  The ignorance, how to treat the other is a consequence of incomprehension, which often leads to harming and hurting.  
Egalitarian communication serves to find out, how the other wants to be treated and then to take the other's introspection and suggestions for serious and valid.   
Finding out, how to get advantages by trial and error degrades a person to a lab rat.   Egalitarian partners communicate.

Principle 7:  Experience helps to adjust the spontaneous reaction.
Rationally predicting someone's future behavior means to estimate the probability based upon previous experience.    An egalitarian partner can learn from experience to adapt the spontaneous reaction to incomprehension.   The more often some temporary incomprehension is later rationally explained and respect restored, the less there is reason to misinterpret incomprehension as an indication of inferiority.   

Principle 8: The third-party-perspective helps to impartial evaluation.

Egalitarian partners consider the needs and wishes of the partner and of themselves as equally justified.   Taking the perspective of comparing both sides as if being an uninvolved third party is a method of egalitarian communication.

Principle 9:  It is important to be aware of external reasons for biased incomprehension

Gender roles and other social roles sometimes blur the perception of equality, especially when the bias is connected with onesided privileges.   Women and men may use the same word 'equality', but this does not imply, that they mean the same.

Attitudes, proactive and reactive behaviors can be checked for a bias by the mental exercise of replacing the gender of the target.   
A man can check his egalitarian tendencies by asking himself, if a woman would also qualify as a choice to be his best friend, if she were a man.   He can ask himself, how he himself would react as the target of the same treatment, which he is applying to a woman.