655. The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

655.   The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

Sometimes men give me the feedback, that they disagree with my searching strategy as is outlined throughout this blog.    This disagreement is a mixture of lacking comprehension and of the error of considering the instinct induced focus as better than a more rational but eclectic and uncommon approach.  

But my approach and my strategy are not even my invention, very learned people have similar ideas.   I already mentioned Epstein's love project in entries 29 and 385.

Further information can be found on his website in many publications and interviews, some of it about his love project and about arranged marriages:
http://drrobertepstein.com/index.php/media-coverage

This short video gives a good introductory overview:
http://www.sandiego6.com/san-diego-living/this-week/tuesday/Science-of-Love-139242443.html



1.  The self-arranged commitment project.
 
When more than a decade ago I first read about Robert Epstein's love project, I perceived this as a very good representation of my own previously more vague inclinations and wishes.  At that time I had already implicitly developed the paradigm of my own matching strategy, but the awareness for this was still emerging.   I immediately recognized my own inclinations, convictions and attitudes in Epstein's idea and I fully agree with his principles.  

My own strategy for a 'self arranged commitment' differs only in details.        

• A signature under a contract is only of legal significance.   If there is not enough trust between two persons to feel bound by a verbal agreement, then there is no base to attempt a relationship. 
• Paying for counseling is too much of a financial burden.   In the case that not each partner is able to comfortably afford a fair share of this burden, it is not such a good idea to require financial sacrifices, which may jeopardize the project. 
• I consider a very careful choice of the suitable match as even more important than it seemed to Epstein.   He admits to not even have read most of the over 1000 emails he got after the announcement of his project.  Instead he chose for his first attempt a woman, whom he met in an airplane.  

As far as I can make a guess, Epstein developed his love project as a consequence of his psychological research and as a remedy against being misled by his own inclinations.   To me the idea of the self-arranged commitment comes as a most natural expression of my own needs.   It is the result of full awareness of my own inclinations.


2.  The influence of instinctivity.

Unfortunately, Epstein's love project is spontaneously counterintuitive to men, who react strongly to the effects of female bodies upon their instincts.   It needs some intelligence and theory of mind to comprehend its wisdom.

The self-arranged commitment project can be chosen for disparate reasons, which are connected with my recurrent topic, that individual differences in the power of instinctivity have a very strong impact upon personality, attitudes, perception, decisions and behavior.
   
Men with high instinctivity cannot help but experience instinctive reactions when interacting with possible mates.   These reactions blur and distort rational long-term reasoning.   

This works both ways.   Such instincts can cause

• strong physical attraction and fast infatuation.    
• strong frustration, when the expected infatuation is not experienced immediately.   

Both effects impede rational decision and a wise choice of a mate.  


The choice of the self-arranged commitment project is influenced by a man's instinctivity and by the quality of his theory of mind: 

• The stronger a man's instinctivity, the less he is prone to comprehend and accept my strategy of the self-arranged-commitment project.  Only a man with an exceptionally good theory of mind and ability for the long-term anticipation is able to think independently and to act rationally in spite of what his instincts urge him to and in spite of the distortion by infatuation.   
• The less physical infatuation at the beginning of a relationship, the better the chances of rational choices and reasonable behavior and long-term happiness.   Only a man with low instinctivity and high predominance of cognition can meet a possible match without any expectation for strong physical attraction and without immediate infatuation.  Only he has a sufficiently clear mind to consider long-term compatibility and to welcome a self-arranged-commitment project.   

Men's instinctivity causes often an asymmetrical constellation.    While men get immediately infatuated with bodies, women can also get infatuated and blurred in their decision, but in a very different way.   Women can get infatuated with the prospect of and hope for a safe haven, a reliable companion, a trustworthy lifelong partner, a mindmate, in short with the fulfillment of all their cognitive relationship needs.  
The asymmetry dooms the relationship.   When the man's infatuation wears out, he discovers the reality of how much or how little both have in common.   The woman, who enters a relationship for the purpose of getting her non-physical needs met, discovers after a while, that she was infatuated with a delusion, and there was no safe haven, only a man wishing to get access to a female body.   The man gets tired of the woman and the woman gets hurt.  

Starting a relationship as a self-arranged-commitment project is a method to avoid such an asymmetry.   The less a man is infatuated, when he agrees to build a relationship, the better are the woman's chances to be offered realistic prospects and no delusions.   

Therefore a self-arranged commitment project is for me a method to reduce the risk of getting hurt. 


3.  My inclinations towards the self-arranged commitment project.

I have never experienced or expected infatuation, immediate love or love at first sight or anything of this kind at the first encounter with someone, neither online nor previously offline.  It seemed natural to me to let love and attachment grow slowly.   Reciprocally meeting each other's basic criteria was to me always the starting point for the cooperation to create long-term attachment.    

I mistook this for the logical way how things were usually going.   For a long time I had the wrong impression, that most people were more rational and cognitive than they really are.   I thought that passion was an invention of novelists and that those men, who were driven be passion to annoy and to harm women, were only a sick and deranged minority.  

Only when learning about evolutionary biology and when the internet allowed me access to many public personal accounts of the experiences of real people, I understood the sad reality of the huge power of instincts over the majority of men.  It was really disheartening. 

I was not really astonished, that when Epstein created a project of what to me had always been sensible, reasonable and logical, it was perceived as an extraordinary and very novel project and stirred a lot of publicity in the media.      


4.  The scarcity of men inclined towards the self-arranged commitment project.

There is nothing wrong with being a nobody.   There is nothing beneficial in being famous.   Fame is merely the situation of being known by notoriety, admired, despised, envied or hated by lots of haphazard and insignificant persons.  

There is only one disadvantage of being a nobody.   There is no way of getting publicity, when there is a need to find something scare, rare and hidden.

Unfortunately there are very few men sharing Epstein's wisdom.  When I am in contact with men, whom I consider as hopeful candidates for a self-arranged-commitment project, they usually do not understand my intentions.   While hoping for a positive response, I am getting rejected as a consequence of their incomprehension. 
There are certainly a few men out there somewhere, who are innately suitable and motivated for a self-arranged commitment project.  Some may share this inclination, some may have been convinced by Epstein.   

Somewhere out there, there is one who would be as happy to find me as I were happy to find him.   But I just do not succeed to reach him.  
 
Epstein had one big advantage:   As the then publisher of Psychology Today, he had sufficient publicity, when he announced his love project on their homepage.    He got over a 1000 emails as a reaction, many from interested women.  

I am looking for and offering nearly the same as Epstein did.   But I am a nobody, I am unable to get sufficient publicity.  This blog is implicitly an elaborated synopsis of my self-arranged commitment project.   But writing 653 blog entries appearing in google searches in more than two and a half years has not given me even a tiny fraction of the resonance, which Epstein had in a few days. 

Life is not a novel.   If it were, a journalist from a widely read web site would discover this blog and help me to get the publicity needed to enable my mindmate to find me.   Or someone would start a matchmaking site especially for people interested in self-arranged projects of any kind and I could find my mindmate there.   

385. The Dynamics Of Kindling Or Killing Love

The Dynamics Of Kindling Or Killing Love

This is a continuation of entry 277, where I defined 'bonded love'.   
In entry 314 I described the difference between the instinctive and the intellectual mating strategies.
In entry 39 I referred to Epstein and his concept of 'self-arranged marriages'.   I prefer to call it 'self-arranged commitment', because feeling bound by commitment does not require a signature in the town hall.  

Bonded love consists of the combined and inseparable elements of physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy and is the stronger, the more the couple shares basic values, attitudes, tastes, interests and other traits.  

The concept of self-arranged commitment means, that a couple decides to cooperate to create a balanced bond of all three intimacies.        

Physical intimacy is triggered by instinctive urges for homeostasis, especially in men, as long as there is no repugnance or repulsiveness.    This comes by itself and needs therefore to be controlled from getting dangerously predominant.   A man drooling over a woman's body in blind infatuation is not in the state to be rational in his evaluations and decisions. 

But a couple has a lot of control and influence over the kindling or forfeiting of emotional and intellectual intimacy and thus over the quality and intensity of bonded love.    They need to be aware of what influences their love and they need to be motivated to kindle it.   

The proactive strategy of kindling bonded love has two major aspects, associative learning and reinforcement.  

1. Associative learning by sharing any activity or situation, which causes the subjective feeling of wellbeing.
   

   1.1. Simple associative learning
   When sharing joy, pleasure, pleasant thrill, bliss, pleasant sensations of any kind, no matter if it is hiking in the moonlight, enjoying the same kind of music, sharing the fascination of a visit to an interesting museum or place, then the good feelings are associated with the person, with whom the experience is shared.   
   1.2.  Complex associative learning.
   Sharing hardships, difficulties, discomforts of any kind and experiencing the partner as supportive, empathetic, understanding, reliable, trustworthy associates the good feeling of having been successful in dealing with a challenge with the partner. 
   A bonded couple is not affected by spending a night in a bus station, because the positive feeling of being together compensates for merely external discomfort.   It creates a positive memory of a shared adventure.   

2. Reciprocal reinforcement.
   
   Anything perceived as love between two adults triggers an urge or at least a wish to express it or act upon it.  This implies, that it is also understood and received by the target as an expression of love.  
   Verbal expressions of love are very unspecified, as long as the same word 'love' can be used also very selfishly, when someone means about the same love of getting benefits when saying: 'I love you' and saying 'I love cheese'.
   
   Expressions of love by actions and behavior are much more specific.
   Infatuation with a body urges a person towards sexual activities.    Bonded love creates an urge or wish to express love in any way, that makes the other feel loved, cared for, appreciated, cherished, respected, significant, needed, happy, content, in a safe haven.   Love is also expressed by the imperative of never harming or hurting but protecting the other from harm.
   
   The neutral baseline is the commitment governance (entry 185), that both have agreed upon.   Behaving according to the commitment governance is an accepted obligation, not an expression of love.    Expressing love is proactive behavior by a deliberate and voluntary decision to do something beneficial for the partner. 
   
   Such an expression of love is lost, if it is not experienced, perceived and interpreted by the recipient as an expression of love.   Any such proactive behavior of one partner is experienced by both as anything between being only beneficial for the other or beneficial equally for both.   
   It can be that one partner has a skill and uses it to make something for the other, it can be one partner preparing and initiating an excursion to enjoy together.  
   This leads to reciprocal reinforcement.   The more one experiences the other's expression of love, the more this kindles the own love, which enhances the wish to react also with returned expressions of love.    It is like a ball game, in which the ball thrown grows steadily.         
   This works, when both consciously want it to work, and when both are informed, what proactive behavior does make the other feel loved.  

But just as bonded love can be enhanced by applying conscious strategies, it is also fragile to being damaged and destroyed by the opposite behaviors.  

1. The same intensive situations of shared positive experiences, when love can be kindled to grow, are also the situations, where love is most vulnerable to being damaged and destroyed.    Hurting in such situations has the most detrimental effect.    Being the target of an outburst of anger during a moonlight hike meant to be romantic has much more detrimental effects than an outburst of anger while doing chores in the kitchen.     
2. Discomfort, hardship and such are enhanced, when instead of being shared, on the partner blames them on the other.
3. An expression of love is not received as such by a partner feeling entitled to the other serving his needs and taking this for granted.    The one, who considers the other as a commodity existing for the purpose to fulfill all his needs, is deprived of the experience of being loved.    Whatever the other decides to do voluntarily as an expression of love is either not of value or considered a fulfilled duty.
   Expressing love for the reward of being loved back is a decision.    Being expected and even pressed by coercion to serve the other's needs, devalues any act of doing a favor into the experience of being used.    Being under pressure to serve the other's needs impedes and forestalls any occasion of expressing love by a voluntary decision.  
4. Expressing love by proactive behavior requires communication about what behavior is perceived as expressed love.     Projecting the own needs and remaining ignorant about the partner's needs is not enough.    Hurting the other and resisting to feedback is an even worse love killer.   

Expressing caring and bonded love by proactive behavior is a method to kindle and to avoid killing love.   But it is also an important strategy for the creation of 'self-arranged commitment'.   By applying the same behaviors, that can be an expression of love, the process of creating love can also be started and triggered due to the reinforcing effect.  

29. Self-Arranged Relationships or Marriages

Self-Arranged Relationships or Marriages

About a decade ago, I first heard about the love project of Robert Epstein.   I was intrigued, because he made a project of what had been my inclination long before I heard of Epstein.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122400057.html

http://drrobertepstein.com/downloads/Epstein-HOW_SCIENCE_CAN_HELP_YOU_FALL_IN_LOVE-Sci_Am_Mind-JanFeb2010.pdf

I like the expression 'self-arranged', somehow it is a good extension to the ERCP.   But according to what I have read, Epstein has focused mainly upon how to make love grow after two persons have met.   I prefer to take it one step further.   I doubt, if it is a good start, if the two partners have met in any haphazard way.   

With the possibilities of communication via the web, with the modern easy means of transportation, geographical distances are easier to overcome than mental distances.   

The most important step towards a 'self-arranged' relationship is a very careful choice.   I have joined far beyond 100 dating sites in several languages.   Creating a profile is done in a short time, and with every additional site, the chances to find a match with mind-mate qualities is enhanced.    Doing some deep mind-searching to get full awareness of my own needs and of what is important, and who is compatible, was a part of this.  

The prize for a rash choice is most probable a lot of pain to follow later.  Tolerating in a partner, whom one wants to respect as equal, what one does not allow oneself or what one would despise in oneself is no basis, and the necessity of adapting too much to each other because of too much difference is also an additional obstacle.    My experience in my focus to find someone really compatible has made me aware, how unconcerned men usually are in their haphazard contacting strategies.   Out of every 100 men, who contact me on a dating-site, at least 95 are completely unsuitable, and they could know it, if they would even bother to carefully read my profile first.  

I am getting tired of all the stupid warnings on dating advice sites, which tell people all the things they should avoid doing or admitting.  If traits and interests and tendencies are distributed along a bell curve, then somewhere is the compatible person even for rare cases at both ends of the curve.  

If they would follow the advice and hide, who they really are, they would get in contact with the incompatible average person and not with a like minded person.  

There is nothing wrong with being clingy and wanting to be together 24 hours every day, and there is nothing wrong with being happily working 60 hours a week and only wanting to be together in the limited leisure time.   It is only vital to be aware, what place one wants to have and to give to a partner in the future and to make a choice of someone, who has the same concept and tendencies.

If the clingy person attempts to force himself to be or to pretend to be less clingy, and if the workaholic takes a resolution to work less, they will probably fall back into their own old ruts and the disaster cannot be avoided.  

So, I am looking for someone just like me, who does not hide his true self, nor will I hide myself as I am.