653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

With whom to spend the rest of the life together is a very significant decision.  Mistakes can have very grave, long lasting, irreversible and extreme painful consequences.   

In entries 174, 176, 178 and 185 I developed a model for the process of getting to know each other.    The decision phase in entry 174 can be further divided.  
The preliminary phase is the phase of corresponding and talking over the phone to find out, if there is enough in common to rationally justify a personal meeting, the main decision phase follows the first meeting and includes further meetings.  

The duration of a phase includes a certain number x of hours of time spent by focusing the attention upon interacting by telephone, correspondence and even pondering over the prospects.   These x hours can be distributed over many months of only a short time daily or even weekly, or they can be spent with priority during a short period of time of intensive and extensive interacting.     
 

The more someone is an individual and not average, the more difficult it is to find someone suitable.  Therefore these phases, especially the preliminary phase, are usually repeated with several or even many different possible matches, before two persons find each other suitable enough for considering and attempting a relationship.   

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding just the one partner, who is minimally suitable for a relationship, but also sufficiently suitable to impede any further interest in others.   In this case, the most rational approach is to focus on only one intensive and extensive contact with one person at a time and to postpone considering and evaluating other contacts to after the possible failure.

Who:
 

The absolute approach suits and attracts those persons, who know themselves and their own needs well enough.  They are aware of what they are looking for in a partner and what they cannot accept.  

The absolute-cooperative approach only works, when two persons choose it as an option.  

Cooperation and consistency:
 

This approach is a form of cooperation.  Both share the task of discovering common ground and affinity and welcome finding them.   Every consent about any topic benefits both in getting them nearer to their goal, no matter if it is a trait, attitude, interest, habit, attribute.   The situation is transparent and to a certain degree reliable for both of them.   

No matter if the consent is more like tolerance by indifference or more like enthusiasm, as long as it is a consent between two persons, who want the consent, both can reasonably expect the other to be consistent.   Consent will not be easily converted into a reason for rejection out of the blue. 

Trust:
 

Growing reliable consent creates trust along with the growing probability of being compatible.   This reinforces and motivates to open up and to share more personal matters, which are also important for compatibility.   

Reinforcement:
 

Trust, consistency and discovering affinity and common ground reinforce the reasons for focusing upon exclusively this one possible match.  This then again reinforces the creation of trust and further affinity.

Emotional risk:
 

Every contact is of course emotionally risky.   But the risk of the absolute-cooperative approach is not so much the risk of an incomprehensible rejection.   It is mainly the risk of ending a contact by agreement because of discovering clearly defined lacking or intolerable traits and attributes.  By accepting someone's having rationally comprehensible criteria, an agreement of not meeting the criteria is not even really a rejection but the consent to be not compatible.  


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding the best of all possible matches, not just one good match.   Nobody can really know, who is the best unless after having scrutinized every one of them.   As this cannot be done, every good match is considered with the doubt, that there could be a better match yet to be found.    The rational procedure for this goal is to prolong any phase and to explore and to compare many possible matches simultaneously.

Who:
 

The relative approach is often an expression of immaturity, ignorance, lacking self-awareness and having a limited theory of mind.   Some people enter the contact with haphazard persons without a clue about how little there is in common nor what they really want.  Some are attracted by looks, but beyond this they are not able to find out, what they do or do not want, unless and until they are confronted with it.  They only experience incompatibility by noticing the contrast in comparison with someone else.   They need to compare to find out, whom they want.  
Being vaguely discontented but not knowing why leads to a process of recurrently and endlessly probing, discarding and moving on attempting to find someone better.  They continue like this, as long as they are unable to decide, what and who is good enough for them.  

Whenever one person chooses the relative-competitive approach, the other has no choice to get anything else if preferred.

Competition and no consistency:
 

In the relative-competitive approach, there is not consistency.   Consent about a topic is not a reliable step forward towards a wider common ground, consent is only temporary and easily annihilated onesidedly, as soon as someone else appears to be better.   Being accepted or rejected does not depend primarily upon one's own traits and attributes, instead it depends at least as much upon those of competitors.   

These competitors are unknown powers in the background.   Ignoring both their number as well as their traits and attributes makes losing the other's consent by being compared with a successful competitor an unpredictable event coming out of the blue.    

When people are competing to get a job, they do know, that they are competing and they have some idea, what is required.  They have a clue about the qualities for being the best   This gives them a chance to attempt appearing as the best.

The person in the situation of competing against unknown competitors for an appealing partner is in a much less advantageous situation.   Due to not knowing anything about a potential match, there is no way to influence the comparison with others nor to attempt to appear being the best.  Who is perceived as better is determined by the lottery of who happens to be there to be compared.  

Trust:
 

When the rejection can come at any moment out of the blue and cannot be predicted, there is no reliable consistency.   This impedes trust.  The relative-competitive approach keeps contacts superficial and less personal.   The possibility of a rejection out of the blue does not motivate anybody to open up and get more personal.   

Reinforcement: 
 

The fragility of a contact adds to the maintenance of some mental distance.    Being prepared for a pending rejection at any time makes the own relative-competitive approach the most reasonable behavior.   If the rejection by the preference for someone else can happen at any time, then it is beneficial to also have other contacts to fall back upon.   The fragility and superficiality of the relative-competitive approach also reinforce it by preventing trust and closeness.   
 
Emotional risk. 
 

The main emotional risk is the unpredictability of a onesided incomprehensible rejection at any moment and for unknown reasons.   Having such a rejection imposed upon oneself without having any part in causing it is much more painful than an end by agreement.


When the situation is asymmetrical, then the person following or preferring the absolute-cooperative approach is the one having all the disadvantages.   

Jerks play games and pretend to follow also the absolute-cooperative approach, until they find the someone to prefer and then they reject the flabbergasted other out of the blue.  

When the situation is clear, the person with a preference for the absolute-cooperative approach has two options, either to recoil directly or to go along while also continuing to search, but not to find someone better but someone, who shares the preference for this approach.     

The relative-competitive approach is probably enhanced or rather aggravated by the social norm of the lifestyle in capitalistic countries, where people are encouraged and brainwashed towards consuming and discarding, towards the greed of wanting always more and always something better.    

When people are made to buy a better car, a better computer and a better cell phone every few months or years instead of using things until they break, then it is not really astonishing, that they generalize this consumers' attitude also to human relations. 

536. Peripherisation And The Lack Of Intellectual Intimacy

536.    Peripherisation And The Lack Of Intellectual Intimacy

Commodification and objectification are blatantly painful for many women, and the resulting deterioration and destruction of the relationship is usually a fast and unavoidable process. 

But there is another detrimental asymmetrical attitude, which is more subtly painful while less blatant and obvious.   It is the peripherisation of a woman's place and role in a man's life.  
In the best case, this is quite different from the full degradation by commodification.  
Peripherisation does not exclude a man to be considerate and responsible by exclusive monogamous commitment enabling physical and emotional intimacy with her as a person.   But she is not allowed the mental closeness of the bond of intellectual intimacy.   Her place is restricted to the periphery of his inner self and his cognitive life.   Therefore I call this peripherisation.   


Intellectual intimacy means to me:

• Experiencing the joy of consent and agreement. 
  This joy is not someone's agreement with what I have been saying.   It is also not the agreement after me influencing someone to change his mind and thereafter to agree with me.    It is the joy of someone saying, what I agree with, before he even knows, what I think, while he is still ignorant of my agreement.    It is the expression of him and me innately and independently thinking alike.  
  Once I can be reasonably certain, that what someone says or does is a genuine and sincere expression of his personality, and there is consent, then I experience every repetition as an intellectual hug.  
  Such intellectual hugs are to me as important and as enjoyable as are physical hugs.  
  
  
• Psychological bonding.
  Psychological bonding means that the shared discovering, exploring, reflecting and revealing concerning the innermost personality of both partners is experienced as a source of joy and of fascination.   Spending time communicating about the dynamics of the relationship, the interactions, the reasons for behaving and for reacting in a specific way is experienced by both partners as rewarding. 
  The benefit of such communication is the reduction of misunderstanding, wrong assumptions, ambiguities, suspicions, insecurities.  This contributes to the growth of reliability, trust and predictability.  Therefore it is an important activity towards making the relationship a safe haven. 
  I experience the partner's interest in the dynamics and quality of the relationship and his motivation to communicate as a very important intellectual expression of affection. 
• Intellectual pleasures.
  Passive participation in and exposure to events and sources of intellectual quality are not much more than high level consumption, if this does not lead to someone also experiencing active reflecting and pondering about the intellectual stimulation as a pleasure. 
  Sharing activities like watching movies and theater plays or visiting museums and exhibitions together does not enhance intellectual intimacy, unless it is followed by the exchange of thoughts and impressions as a shared pleasure, which enhances the experience of such events for both partners. 
  Not only can another person point out additional unnoticed aspects and creative thoughts.   As a side effect, it also provides additional occasions to experience the joy of consent, whenever the partner expressed the same reaction as is the own. 
   

I consider and experience any relationship without intellectual intimacy as worthless.  

Intellectual intimacy makes the difference between being used and being appreciated.  


When a woman needs and wishes intellectual intimacy, but a man does not provide or offer it, this can have many reasons:

1. It is just one facet of commodification and objectification.
2. He is not a match for her, because he lacks sufficient intelligence and/or education.
3. He is not a match for her, because while there is the potential of his having the cognitive qualities and abilities, he experiences the behaviors for creating and maintaining intellectual intimacy as stress, burdensome, unpleasant.   He is not motivated to do, what he perceives as the contrary of joy.       
4. One of several varieties of peripherisation impedes intellectual intimacy.   Each different aspect or facet of what in combination could constitute the intellectual intimacy in a relationship is felt as a need or motivation to share it.   But what should be an important ingredient of a relationship is shared instead with others as substitutes.   They can be coworkers, friends, buddies, family of origin.
   
   

   Peripherisation 1:
   
   Intellectual intimacy with a woman is impeded by the fallacy of the man's ignorance or unawareness of its existence as an option and of its importance for women.   The man deprives himself of the benefits of intellectual intimacy by not pursuing it as it is beyond his imagination,
   
   This can be due to men's general underestimation and prejudices concerning women's cognitive capacities or to the man's definition of the purpose of a relationship as an interaction restricted to the realm of his need of homeostasis and his pursuit of easy pleasures.   
   
   Usually both fallacies, the underestimation of women and their limited role in a man's life are reinforcing each other.
   
   Peripherisation 2:
   
   A man has chosen a woman too much by the instinctive attraction of her body.   For reasons in himself, for example ignorance, misinterpretation, misunderstandings, overreaction to bad experience, distorted perception, he is not able to trust her or to appreciate her qualities.  
   
   Even when they have both the wish and the potential for intellectual intimacy, he is the obstacle.   (There are also many female obstacles, for examples breeders pursuing a man only as a provider.  But this is outside the scope of this topic.) 

Finding a mindmate for shared intellectual intimacy is difficult, because it requires someone, 

• who is cognitive able
• who enjoys it
• for whom the mate in a relationship is his first choice of the person to seek intellectual intimacy with, while anybody else can never be more than an insufficient substitute.  

This is rare and hard to find.   When I am reading men's profiles on matchmaking sites, I am looking for clues for the probability of intellectual intimacy.    

This will be the topic of another entry.  

494. The Fallacy Of Self-Overestimation

The Fallacy Of Self-Overestimation

I am sick and tired of men's fallacy of attempting to establish an intellectual hierarchy of their superiority, even when this is in no way justified.    This entry explains the general fallacy, the next entry will explain, why this fallacy is toxic in a relationship.

It is an everyday experience to feel the need to base an evaluation, interpretation or decision upon insufficient information and to fill the gap with an estimated probability of what seems most plausible.    Otherwise people are paralyzed from acting.  Therefore the strategy to derive the best estimation is very important and that includes to avoid fallacies.  

One common fallacy is the overestimation of oneself in the situation of either lacking sufficient information about another or of being biased by a prejudice to underestimate this person.    This happens often, when communication leads to a reaction of disagreement.    In this situation, self-overestimation and the underestimation of another are two sides of the self coin.

Person S as the sender makes a statement, which does not convey a convincing message to the receiving person R.   Theoretically, while omitting in this context the distorted transmission of the message, this can be explained by a deficit on either or both sides of the sequence of sending and receiving.  

• Distortion 1: Person S makes a wrong, false, stupid, unlearned, irrational statement.
• Distortion 2: Person R lacks enough knowledge, education or intelligence be able to comprehend or evaluate S's statement.

Based only upon one or a few statements from S, it is often not possible to decide, which of the two distortions is more probable.   Because S's knowledge and learning is like an iceberg.   As is known, only about one seventh of an iceberg is visible, while most of it is invisible.   Every one of S's statements is connected with all his learning and experience stored in his brain.  The more R knows about S, the better R is able to evaluate S's statements, even when the statements by themselves may appear misleading or insufficient.   Considering them as wrong is a fallacy.   The statements require further explanations and information. 

A simple example:  

S makes a statement about the harm of herbicides that is different from what R so far had heard of or considered as probably correct.   R cannot evaluate, if this statement is more probable without further knowledge about S.   When R knows, if S is a gardener having left school after tenth grade or if he has a degree in chemistry, then R has some valuable information for the evaluation of the statement.

After only hearing the statement, R needs to make a temporary decision of how to proceed in reaction to the incomprehensible statement.  There is a variety of possible reaction.   Ending the communication, ridicule, asking curious questions, ask other people, find independent information, gullibly believe it.    The better the information about S, the more appropriate is the reaction.  

When people have a realistic view about themselves, they can evaluate not only the knowledge of the other, but also their own knowledge in comparison with the other's competence.  

A realistic gardener is aware, that he knows less about herbicides than the chemist, while the realistic chemist acknowledges, that the gardener has more knowledge about pruning fruit trees.   The one with less knowledge asks questions and is motivated to learn.    

But there are people, who are not realistic.   Whenever they do not understand the other, they automatically believe, that they are right and the other is wrong.    A gardener, who claims his knowledge about herbicides to be better than the chemist's or the chemist, who claims to know better than the gardener how to prune trees, are absurd.   They are not aware of the limitation of their knowledge to their own specialty.    They are both afflicted with the fallacy of unfounded self-overestimation.   The gardener, who disputes the chemist's superior knowledge concerning herbicides and the chemist, who disputes the gardener's superior knowledge concerning pruning are both ludicrous and a nuisance.   

This fallacy can be avoided or at least drastically reduced by an a priori decision of how to handle the ambiguity of the two distortions.   This decision is to always give S the benefit of the doubt by first asking questions and getting more information and by postponing the final conclusion of considering the other as wrong, until there is no more doubt..  

423. Mate Search And The Emotional Dynamics Of Consent And Dissent

Mate Search And The Emotional Dynamics Of Consent And Dissent

This continues entry 420.   There I declared: 

Consent and agreement make me feel good, dissent and disagreement make me feel bad.  

I am fully aware, that this is my personal tendency, which I share only with the minority of those people, whose brain is predominantly Epicurean.   That includes the innate trait, that their pleasure center is more sensitive, perceptive and responsive to emotional and intellectual stimulation, and less to physical stimulation.   As a consequence, they are attracted to a mate, with whom they can develop emotional and intellectual intimacy, before they want physical intimacy.  
 

All those people, who get infatuated with a body as a consequence of being driven by the mate selection of their subconsciously acting instincts, seem determined by this and consent or dissent have no emotional impact upon them.  

Sometimes people in profiles on dating sites or on dating advice pages claim, that if two partners were too much alike, this would make the relationship dull.  There are also many people, who are willing to mutually tolerate very contradictory attitudes in a mate, like christians and atheists or the politically left and right wing oriented.  The only explanation for this is the force of infatuation completely overriding anything else.  

For people emotionally reactive to consent and dissent, being alike and sharing interests is important.   If for example two partners both enjoy visiting museums, there are more museums on earth then any couple can ever visit together during a lifetime.   Sharing impressions, pointing things out to each other and agreeing on the opinion is joy.   Why would people need to argue about a different or controversial opinion?   It is the same about movies, books, lectures, theater plays to be shared, which then leads to the joy of consent.    Doing sightseeing in a church or temple and sharing the mockery about that preposterous faith is so much more enjoyable than visiting the same church but being obliged to bite my tongue to avoid hurting the feelings of a believer. 

Logically for all those, for whom consent causes pleasant emotions, the expectation and probability of consent is an important criterion in the choice of a mate,    Experiencing consent requires knowledge about what the potential partner thinks.    Whenever I am in contact with someone, who could maybe be a mate, I am avidly reading, whatever expressions of his attitudes, values and opinions I can find.   I am very motivated to find consent and to discover the red flags of dissent.  
But this is only reciprocal, when a man has the same wish to find his own consent with my expression of my personality too.    That means, a man, who is more attracted to feel consent than to get infatuated, would be as much motivated to read this blog as he is interested in getting to know my person.   

But this is not, what usually happens.   Often when I get in contact with someone and I suggest to him to visit this blog and find out, if we are compatible of not, there is no or little interest.   Instead they demand a picture, or they want just small talk in the chat.   With the same frame of mind, many men are not bothered to fill in their own profiles, or they contact me in spite of clear statements in my profile, that they do not fulfill my criteria.   

Sometimes I am getting reproached for not being sweet.     If a man wants me to be sweet, nice, kind and friendly, the best method is to make me feel good by enabling me to experience consent.    But someone, who instead of cooperating to discover consent, leaves me ignorant and thinks that his attention alone of contacting me or chatting should make me feel good, is not the kind of man, who is compatible with me.   

The world is full with two legged male animals, but mindmates with an epicurean brain are very rare.    

420. The Emotional Dynamics Of Consent And Dissent

The Emotional Dynamics Of Consent And Dissent

I am rational, I am an Epicurean and I can be very emotional.  This is not a contradiction.  Being rational does not impede being emotional, it only influences the triggers and the predominance of specific emotions compared with others.  Concerning human interactions, my emotions are mainly elicited as a reaction to my cognitive evaluation of people.
 

Consent and agreement make me feel good, dissent and disagreement make me feel bad.   

The emotional effect of how people treat me depends not so much on their behavior itself, but upon my consent or dissent with the attitudes causing the behavior.  

Consent and dissent about core values, attitudes and moral principles has a much stronger impact than about superficial opinion.    Atheism is a core value, it is wired into my brain as a part of my identity, therefore consent is of paramount importance as a condition to feel close, while dissent makes me feel a ditch between believers and me.   

Consent or dissent about a political issue like for example nuclear power is of much less significance.  A preference on such an issue is the result of the momentary level of knowledge, which can change, because the problem is too complex for a lay person to ever know enough.      

The emotional effects of consent and dissent differ depending on the kind of relationship.
With strangers and all people of no personal significance for me, the situation is asymmetrical.  Consent can always make me feel good, while dissent has no impact upon me.
Sympathy for an acquaintance or a friend depends on the net result of consent and dissent.   When that result is antipathy, I avoid the person and thus I avoid the bad feelings.
Bliss and happiness in a committed relationship depend upon the sum of consent plus the absence of any dissent in all core values.   

The emotional reactions require the honesty and sincerity of revealing the genuine opinions and attitudes.    The fake consent of 'people pleasers' or 'conflict avoiders' can be temporarily very misleading.   As it is with lies and manipulations, when the truth gets known, the effect is very unfavorable.   Fake consent is as unpleasant as is dissent.

The emotional benefit of consent is a win-win situation based upon the symmetry of both being right and nobody being considered and tolerated as being wrong.   Whether someone agrees with me or whether I hear or read something, that I can agree with, has the same effect.  This is the contrary of the zero-sum situation of the triumph, that some people feel, when they can prove someone else wrong and thus one person pays the price of feeling bad for the other's feeling good.  

This dynamics of consent and dissent are the basis of my search of a mindmate and of the egalitarian rational commitment paradigm.   More about this in another entry.