596. Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor

596.   Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor


While people can often improve their relationships by feedback and constructive criticism, those men, who commodify women are unfortunately out of the reach of improvement by feedback. 

The spell checker metaphor:

Using a spell checker when writing a text in a foreign language helps to find mistakes and to learn better spelling.   Without the spell checker, the same mistakes are repeated and become a habit.   

A spell checker offers to its user the choice to change his spelling, whenever and if he agrees to do so.  Ignoring the errors indicated by the spell checker can have the unfavorable consequences of reactions to bad spelling.   

The benefits of using a spell checker as a learning aid are limited by preconditions.   It is only a valuable tool to improve the spelling competence, if it is reliable by only indicating real mistakes and by finding (nearly) all of them.  

1.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many false positives.   When the spell checker uses a wrong language on a text, this leads to so many false positives, that the real mistakes are lost between the many apparent mistakes.  

2.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many mistakes.  
When someone's knowledge of a language is only minimal and below the threshold for writing correct text, too many mistakes are discouraging and beyond the capacity to memorize all the corrections. 

3.  Relying on a spell checker, which overlooks mistakes, is worse than not using one.  Whatever is not indicated as an error is wrongly assumed and reinforced as correct.   This leads to learning mistakes.  


Feedback as a behavior checker:

Being influenced (entry 594) by the feedback of the partner concerning the preferred behaviors and especially concerning what hurting, annoying and disturbing behaviors need to be avoided is an important method and part of the learning process for improving a relationship. 
The partner's feedback indicates inappropriate behaviors.  Accepting feedback can be seen as using a behavior checker.   Feedback offers the choice to change the behavior in the case of agreement with the necessity to do so.    Ignoring and rejecting proffered feedback can have the unfavorable consequences of strong reactions to the persistent criticized behaviors.

The benefits of feedback as a tool to improve a relationship are limited by preconditions.   Feedback is reliable, when it is welcome by the recipient as justified and when both partners agree, that and how the criticized behaviors need to be changed.   

1.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many false positives of unjustified and irrational criticisms.   When a commodifying man's entitlement delusion causes him to have absurd expectations and make inappropriate demands on a woman, which she refuses to comply and submit to, then his criticizing her for not serving his delusion is not justified.   Under an overwhelming pressure of his absurd and unwarranted blames and reproaches she has no chance to ever discover and consider those few instances of justified feedback.   

2.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many justified reasons for criticism.   When a man has very many hurting, annoying and disturbing habits and attitudes, then getting too much justified feedback is more than what he can cope with.  This can happen, when someone is immature and ignorant, or when he is suddenly exposed to new expectations after having been considered as unfit for learning by feedback as in 3.

By the reaction of blocking and denial to overwhelming criticism he avoids any change.  But giving too much justified feedback is in such a situation not the woman's fault.    Her feeling hurt and annoyed is real and shifting the suffering upon her to spare him is not an improvement for them both as a couple, only a redistribution of the burden.   Her refraining from giving justified feedback is not a solution.  

Whenever there is a persistent conflict, because there is only the choice between him suffering from her feedback or her suffering from his behavior, they are a mismatch and not suitable for each other.    

3.  Not giving feedback reinforces habits, even though they are hurting or disturbing to others.   This happens, when someone gets the fool's or insane's license, not being taken for serious but instead considered as a weirdo and too deranged to change.  While he himself remains ignorant of his unfavorable reputation as a hopeless and incorrigible case, he believes to be respected and accepted.  He misinterprets the absence of feedback as if his behavior were experienced by others as correct and appropriate.  

4.  Learning by feedback does not work without agreement concerning the justification of the feedback.  
Making a relationship work requires a process of adapting to each other.   But not all people are suitable to reciprocally adapt.   When people's basic attitudes and values are too disparate, they cannot agree concerning which behaviors are acceptable and which are not and thus they also cannot agree, which feedback is justified.  They cannot adapt to each other, they are a mismatch and doomed to accumulate more and more unresolvable conflicts.  

5.  Feedback does not work, unless it is understood by the recipient as it was meant by the sender.   When feedback is incomprehensible or distorted by dysfunctional communication (entry 595), it does not help to learn and does not lead to improvements..  

The commodifying men's fallacy:

Spell checkers compare written text with an internal dictionary of correct words.  This dictionary represents the generally agreed upon correct spelling of a language.  Some spell checkers allow people to enter additional own words as correct into this dictionary.     Any fault entered as correct into the dictionary would no longer be found by the spell checker.  But entering faults is of course a completely irrational method of avoiding to notice the own errors by distorting the spell checker.

Yet the method applied by commodifying men, when handling women's feedback is as if someone would adjust the spell checker by feeding mistakes into the dictionary, until all the mistakes are hidden.   Text thus only appearing as if correct is then believed it to really be correct. 

But the dictionary of correct behaviors is in the woman's head, outside the commodifying man's control.  Feedback concerning his outrageous behavior and his absurd attitude towards women does not elicit the appropriate reaction of his correcting his behavior. Instead he believes the dictionary of correct behaviors in the woman's mind to be faulty.  He reacts with attempts to fix the woman, which for him means to make her modify her allegedly wrong feedback and the faulty concept of correct behaviors causing this feedback.   

Whenever by any method, threat, coercion, exhaustion or domination he succeeds to make her discontinue her feedback, he interprets this as having successfully fixed the woman.  

By this mechanism, men commodifying women are out to the reach of being influenced.    

535. Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

535.   Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

I am using burping in the following thoughts as a prototypical inappropriate behavior.    It is a placeholder for many other similar behaviors, this is not specially about burping in particular. 

• Burping is generally considered as inappropriate behavior in most western societies, especially at the dinner table.
• Everybody with a minimum of culture, education and intelligence is aware of burping being considered as inappropriate.  Most people agree.
• People feel embarrassed, when they burp accidentally.  They are anxious to avoid it. 
• The magnitude of the embarrassment depends upon the subjective importance of the witnesses' good opinion.

Therefore the common reaction to be expected after any accidental burp is a more or less embarrassed apology.  How much someone feels embarrassed depends upon the subjective significance of the witness.   Burping is experienced as less embarrassing, when the other at the dinner table is a sibling than when it is the boss to be during the interview for an attractive job. 

 

Someone (unless this person is seriously retarded or disordered) burping freely and without any sign of the least embarrassment is thus sending a significant message concerning the attitude towards the witness.   This message tells, that the witness's opinion is insignificant, that the witness's perception and experience do not matter.   
 

For a woman in the context of searching for a mate, being thus burped at is a big red flag indicating the man's attitude of commodifying women.  
Nobody sane feels embarrassed, when the witness present during burping is only a utility like a vacuum cleaner.  When a man burps freely in the presence of a woman without feeling embarrassment, this is a very strong indication, that he does not really distinguish between a vacuum cleaner and a woman.   Both are commodities perceived as only existing to serve him without any significance as persons.   


When traditionally two persons have a date while knowing very little about each other and thus having few misguided expectations, a woman would probably notice the uninhibited burping as a sufficient reason to refrain from meeting again.   She may not consciously recognize the commodification due to not even be bothered about the reasons for his inappropriate behavior, which suffices by itself to recoil. 

But the situation is different with online contacts, when two persons meet personally only after a long phase of correspondence.   Nobody can burp by email.   When in this situation the woman experiences the man's uninhibited burping during dinner for the first time, this is to her not an unambiguous red flag.  Instead it conveys a message, which is very contradictory to her expectations.   

While the correspondence has triggered her to expect being appreciated and respected, the burping makes her experience the emotional effects of being commodified.   She feels disrespected by what appears to her as a lack of either manners, consideration or politeness.    
Her goal is being shown by his behavior as much of the alleged appreciation, as what she had deducted from his emails.   As long as her focus is upon his burping as if it were a mere bad habit and not on the more serious and significant message of not valuing her enough to feel embarrassed, she attempts to influence him by showing feedback.   

As long as she is oblivious of his underlying attitude of commodification as the true problem, she is mistaken to think that she can influence him to correct his behaviors.   She is mistaken to attempt to be supportive to a shared wish to improve the relationship, while the absence of sharing is a part of his attitude of commodification.   Her feedback is meant as support to enable him to directly improve his behavior as his contribution to his alleged shared goal to improve the relationship.  

Her feedback starts gently and subtly, but gets more and more drastic, whenever it elicits no reaction.   The lacking reaction magnifies her discomfort and suffering from experiencing her insignificance.   
The first hint may be just a frown, followed by a disgusted expression, the next step being a polite remark to please stop burping, repeated in less polite tones and words.   If this escalation continues without any improvement, it ends with her calling him a pig and a plebeian or whatever is the worst word she has in her vocabulary.  

 

But these dynamics are much more than the escalation of her becoming impolite and offensive in her language, it is also a shift of her attitude towards him.   She starts with the attempt to influence him towards solving the contradiction, as long as she still is considering him able to express as much appreciation by his behavior as she had expected as a result of interpreting his emails.  Her goal is the reciprocity of the expression of as much respect and appreciation as she has for him.   

When the escalation reaches the point of her calling him a pig and a plebeian, the contradiction has been resolved the opposite way.   Experiencing the persistent lack of respect in his behavior has caused her to also lose all her previous respect for him.   Her emotional counterpart to being commodified is loathing and detesting him as unworthy.   

Behavior based upon the attitude of commodification forfeits the victim's respect in many ways.  I used burping as an illustrative example.   There are similar escalations, when a man forces harm due to irrational behavior upon a woman and does not react to any rational discussion until she calls him an idiot, and when she cannot stop him from hurting her by transgressions until she calls him an a**e.    The kind of harm due to his behavior differs, when he drives her to consider him either a pig, or an idiot or an a**e.   The dynamics follow the same pattern.


Escalations due to not reacting to the feedback from someone mistaken for and mistreated as a commodity, whose opinion, experience and perception does not matter, destroy a relationship.   The one, who feels offended and blames the other for name calling, instead of asking himself, what he has done to provoke the escalation, is the one, who dooms the relationship.  

409. Poor Men's Mental Trap

Poor Men's Mental Trap

I have been declaring before, that I feel more comfortable to share a frugal life based upon a basis of equality than I would as a woman under the expectations of what a wealthy man may feel entitled to get in return for the money spent on me.   

According to my own observations from correspondence, reading forums and blogs, I have come to the conclusion, that having money or not is in men's own perception and self-assessment the most important factor, to which they subjectively ascribe their failure or success with women.   This is independent of the role and purpose they want the woman for.   

Even the most stupid but wealthy men feel as if they were god's gift to women, while even the most intelligent and educated men feel as losers and disheartened, when they are poor.    There may be exceptions, but I still have not found him yet.  

I am not bothered about the stupid rich, but the disheartened intelligent and educated men's belief to be automatically unattractive to all women while poor is a real problem.   I am aware that they often do get rejected by stupid women, who value a man's money more than his person.    Unfortunately, when this happens too often to a man, especially someone sensitive, this has detrimental effects:  

1.   Withdrawal

He withdraws and gives up looking for a partner.   He could be my perfect mindmate, but if he does not search, if he has not even any profiles on any dating sites, we cannot find each other.     That is tragic, as much for him as for me.

2.   Trust

I found this today:

"In three separate experiments, researchers found that high-status people tended to trust people more in initial encounters than did people with lower status. One experiment showed why: high-status people rated others as more benevolent, which led them to trust more."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110928110012.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fscience_society+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Science+%26+Society+News%29

While the research was based on the general subjective self-attribution of the own status, I see a strong implication of this on the problem of poor men searching for a partner.    A poor men attributing his failure to find a partner to his lack of material resources is someone perceiving himself as a person of low status.

Trust is the basis of a relationship, without trust, a relationship is not viable but doomed to fail.   The process of growing trust as a result of behaving trustworthy and of reacting to perceived trustworthiness is a part of creating commitment.   Lacking trust, commitment is not a safe haven but a danger.  The man, who is unable to trust is also unable to commit.

But when a man with a subjectively low status is unable to trust in oblivion of the trustworthiness of a woman, he risks rejection or the failure of the relationship.    The real reasons are his lack of trust and commitment, but the man is mistaken to attribute the rejection again to his being poor.   This reinforces his subjective low status and his inability to trust even more.   He is in a vicious circle.   

3.   Asymmetry

But there is not only the asymmetry of trust, but also a more general asymmetry of reciprocal evaluation according to a different value system.     Even though a woman like me judges and treats a man by his education, morals and personality as her equal, due to his being brainwashed and guided by his bad experiences, he continues to consider his own social status as not sufficient for her because of his poverty.  
As a consequence, he is prone to react with disruptive psychological dynamics to this asymmetry, which exists only in his perception, while she is not even aware of it.   He projects his own self-attributed low status as if she would attribute it to him.   He misunderstands and misinterprets her as if she treats and considers him as someone of low status, and he does not accept critical feedback as an indication of the necessity to improve his behavior but as a devaluation.    

In short, he is caught in the mental trap of a vicious circle.   He does not see, that he can be rejected for many reasons, including the lack of trust, but also incompatible habits, differences in basic values, not enough shared interests and tastes.   There are many possible reasons, which are not just stupid women's greed.    
It is in his power to change bad habits, learn better communication, find out who really is a match and be more selective to avoid being rejected by the truly greedy women.   But by attributing every failure and rejection to lacking money, he is deprived of the chance to improve the real obstacles to find the happiness with a woman, who is not interested at all in his money.    

386. Criticizing - Love - Respect

Criticizing - Love - Respect
This continues entries 385 and 382.  

Beneficial criticizing by giving and accepting feedback concerning specific behaviors and habits is an important part of the process of a couple's adaption to each other.   
As long as a couple's mutual respect is due to shared basic values and attitudes, they have no reason to criticize anything, that is part of the core personality of the other.   All criticizing is supportive concerning habits.    Beneficial criticizing implies the respect, that the other is able and motivated to improve some peripheral imperfections.  

When infatuation is experienced as the selfish love for the benefits of using another person's body for instinctive homeostasis, this does not require respect.   Bonded, committed and caring love between adult and mature partners is not possible without mutual respect.  

Bonded love is expressed by behavior aiming to enhance the subjective wellbeing of the partner.    The beloved partner perceives proactive acts of caring as deliberate and voluntary favors, not as duties, dues or something to be taken for granted.   

This has a strong impact upon the perception of being criticized.  The difference between experiencing the other's beneficial behavior as either an expression of caring love or of fulfilling a duty and serving a purpose is also the difference between perceiving criticizing as supportive and beneficial or disrespecting, devaluing and rejecting.   

When someone feels securely loved and respected by consciously perceiving the other's behavior as expressing care and affection, this enables him to interpret being criticized as supportive.    The expression of caring love is an expression of respect and nevertheless interpreting criticizing as disrespect would be a contradiction.   
Caring includes also the Epicurean imperative of not doing harm.    A person, who cares enough to have the wish to protect the partner from harm needs to be receptive to feedback.   To avoid harm to the other requires to know, what the other experiences as harm, and this is not always noticeable.   Sometimes only feedback can convey this information.  


But when a man considers and perceives a woman as a commodity and utility, whose purpose is to serve his needs, then he is unable to ever perceive anything of what she does for him as an expression of love.    He is deprived of the experience of being loved by his own entitlement delusion.   This makes him perceive criticizing as expressing disrespect and this makes him feel even less loved.    As a consequence, he is inclined to use control and coercion to get his needs met, because he projects and believes, that otherwise she would also use him selfishly for her needs.    As long as he feels entitled to the priority of his needs, wishes and whims over hers, he is realistic in his evaluation, that he cannot get this by any other means except control and coercion.    

If her baseline is getting as much as giving, then giving more than she receives is from her point of view an expression of love.    

If his baseline is getting all his needs met before bothering about hers, then he experiences even all her expressions of love only as deficient compared with his baseline, and he feels justified to use pressure and coercion to get, what he cannot get otherwise.  

The result is a very unfortunate vicious circle of deterioration.    A woman, who feels loved, cared for, cherished and appreciated has few reasons for peripheral beneficial and supportive criticizing, and he can appreciate it and do his share in improving the relationship.   
But the man, who uses her as commodity, dominates and coerces her to ascertain his selfish benefits gives the woman real and serious reasons to criticize him and even to lose respect.    He needs much more improvement and he needs much more feedback.  But instead of accepting her support, he blames her for daring to criticize him at all.    His denial and defiance to accept feedback and learn how to treat her destroys the relationship.  

Feeling loved, respected and supported by criticizing is a congruent experience in a bonded couple.   

Without the reciprocal perception of expressions of caring love by the other, there is no respect and no trust, that criticizing is benevolent and beneficial.   This effect is independent of the reason of not feeling loved, either by not being loved by a man confounding infatuation with love and domination or by being oblivious of being loved due to confounding expressions of love with fulfilling a purpose and a duty.   

276. Needs, Habits, Consideration and the Relationship Deal

Needs, Habits, Consideration and the Relationship Deal
As already mentioned several times, a viable relationship is based upon fulfilling each other's relationship needs.   A relationship deal is an agreement about which needs each expects to be fulfilled as the purpose of having the relationship.   This also requires, that they agree about how much the fulfillment of every need costs the other.     This means that both partners evaluate, if they can principally fulfill all needs, and if the subjective costs of all the needs of the other are in proportion with what can be gained in return.

There are very different kinds of needs.   Some needs are

• practical, concrete and material, while others are emotional, abstract and immaterial.
• fulfilled by actively doing something, other needs are fulfilled by abstaining from doing something.
• very costly to fulfill, others are easily fulfilled or even cost nothing.
• simple, others are complex on different levels of abstraction.
• subjective and individual of the partner, other needs are based upon general obligations or consideration between decent and civilized humans.

1.  Subjective and individual needs:

Examples:

1.1.  A man snores horribly, whenever he drinks alcohol.    The woman has the need to sleep undisturbed by the snoring, so she asks him not to drink alcohol in the evening.  
This is a practical need.  It is a need for abstaining.  It costs him something, how much depends on how much he needs to drink something to relax, assuming that he is not an alcoholic.   

1.2.  A woman has the need to share as much as possible.   She wants to share activities, this is a practical need.   She wants to share decisions, this is an emotional need.  On the practical level, when money is limited, an important shared decision is the question, what to spend money on.    For example, she wants to spend money on vacations together.   
This is a material need.   Going on a vacation is an action.   The subjective cost can be high or low, this depends on how much the man feels deprived of having more money for personal purposes like buying an expensive car for himself.
It is also an emotional need.   Sharing and consulting her before every decision, that has consequences and any impact upon both her, is an expression of respect, of appreciation, of equality, of closeness, of being important enough to be included in his life.      
It costs him nothing, if he is bonded and sharing is also for him a basis of the relationship.    It is a very costly need, if he is someone considering himself as entitled to dominate.       

2.  The need for the partner's acceptance of his obligation to overcome disturbing habits.

Example:

A man has bad habits like using the f-word or burping, and this disturbs the woman.   When the woman asks him to stop those habits, it is not expressing a need in the sense of a favor to please her.    Overcoming disturbing bad habits is an obligation of politeness and civility.   This obligation is a part of commitment.  

It is important to be explicit in the relationship deal about the obligation to overcome bad habits and to agree, which behaviors are bad habits and which are to be accepted and tolerated as the partner's basic rights to be himself.      

3.  Considerations

Considerations means fulfilling individual needs of the partner, that cost nothing but are important her.
  
Example:

A woman dislikes everything Teutonic, because she associates it with the Nazi history and Auschwitz, and this includes names like Kriemhild (more in entry 186).  She has a strong aversion to be called by such a name.   
Not hearing the name is an emotional need of hers, which costs him nothing to fulfill.    It is an act of consideration.   Considerations are similar to overcoming bad habits, they are included in politeness and civility and therefore a part of the relationship deal.   


When a man fulfills all the woman's needs, that he has accepted in the relationship deal, and when he shows the civility to fight his bad habits and when he has considerations for her, then she can interpret this as an expression of his caring for, respecting, appreciating and valuing her. 

But if the men in my examples continue to drink in the evening, buy a car without consulting her, consider burping and calling her Kriemhild as their entitlement, then this expresses something fundamentally deficient in the relationship.    All these behaviors are clear indications of disrespect, depreciation and lack of caring.    By denying her her needs, civility and consideration, he denies her her most basic emotional need of being treated and perceived as a cherished equal valued and cared for partner.   

If the man appreciates her, and he fails to do something, that she rightfully expects, then he welcomes her feedback as a reminder for him to do, what he wants to do or feels an obligation to do.
But if the man depreciates her, and he fails to do something, that she rightfully expects, then he perceives her feedback as unwarranted criticizing and even as nagging.       

Therefore, the relationship deal and all agreements of a couple need to be carved in stone for both of them, until and unless they both agree unequivocally to change it.   Otherwise the relationship is doomed.