707. Selfish Men's Delusion And Myth

707.   Selfish Men's Delusion And Myth

Recognizing the biological reality, that only a man has a recurrent physiological urge to get rid of body waste, which women do not have, enables him to acknowledge, what a woman really does, when she contributes to his maintenance of his homeostasis.   He appreciates this as a gift of love from her.   As a caring and equal partner, he returns his own gift of love, by equally fulfilling her needs: He bonds with her in committed monogamy, he reciprocates her emotional attachment and the feeling of belonging together, and of being a unit, he shares intellectual intimacy, he enables her to feel significant and protected in a reliable save haven. 

But there are also those men, who want access to women's bodies without giving any of the above, and nevertheless they avoid to experience themselves as selfish or abusive.  The complete denial of the biological asymmetry is their method.  

These men have created a myth, which is perpetuated by the male dominated media:   This myth is a collective male delusion and fallacy, that allegedly women would have the same need for sex as men and would therefore also equally benefit.   This claim serves as these men's justification to refuse giving anything to the women or to ever accept any obligation to fulfill women's different needs.  

But it gets even worse.   Not all women are brainwashed by the oversexed social norms, some are quite aware of their own reality, that a behavior, which every animal without a rational brain does by instinct, is just too banal and stupid to be bothered about it.   For an intellectual woman, the question, how much or how little she enjoys a book, an art exhibition or a theater play is so much more significant than the question, how much she enjoys food or sex.   When a woman states this comparison about food, most men are able to grasp this.   But not about sex, which blurs male brains.   Whenever a woman has the self-confidence to insist, that she considers the male needs merely as an unavoidable banality in a relationship, most men are just unable to accept or respect this attitude.   Instead of recognizing, that some women's cognition is above such banalities, these men defame such women as flawed, inhibited or repressed.  

642. Statistical Evidence Of The Asymmetry Of Instincts

642.   Statistical Evidence Of The Asymmetry Of Instincts

According to estimates recently published in the local newspaper, the yearly transaction volume of prostitution in Germany are € 14.5 billion and the daily number of abusers (euphemistically called clients) of prostitutes are 1.2 millions.    The population of Germany is nearly 82 millions.    

Even by a cautious interpretation of estimated numbers, the magnitude of this market gives clear evidence of the biological asymmetry and the differences between male and female animal instincts.
 

I am basing my consideration, that prostitution is clear evidence for a blatant asymmetry upon the logic in people's decision, what they are willing to pay for and what they only supply in return for payment.  
People choose to pay money for the fulfillment of a need by another person, who himself does not benefit from his part in the activity and who therefore has no own reason to engage in unless for money.      
Outside training and instructing, people have no need to pay a partner for shared activities as is playing chess, tennis or dancing.  Such activities are chosen by both partners in a symmetrical dyad for the purpose of mutual benefits. 

Someone shining another person's shoes does not do this for personal benefits or by deriving pleasure engaging in such an activity.  Without being paid, nobody would shine shoes.  The person wanting his shoes shined can therefore obtain this service only by the compensation of payment.   

The statistical fact, that so many men can only restore their physiological homeostasis by paying indicates very clearly, that the emotionally unattached copulation of two bodies is not or rarely experienced by women as beneficial.    

1.  Evolution

 

Some men justify their abuse of women as this being natural and that humans are just animals and thus nothing were wrong with behaving as such.  This is a fallacy, because it does not take into consideration the very unique distinction in humans between the evolution of both genders, where only in the females the cognition has evolved towards overriding the force of instincts.

Most species of non-human mammals copulate for the purpose of procreation at the moment of the female estrus.   As these animals are lacking the human cognition, especially the long-term memory, copulation does not create attachment.  For animals, copulation is a physiological act of limited duration, which leaves no traces except fertilization.  For most mammals, male dishomeostasis and female estrus are balanced and occurring following a similar cycle of recurrence.  

In humans, this balance is disrupted and modified in several ways. 

• The female estrus cycle is about one month, while male sexual dishomeostasis is a cycle of days or even hours.  
• Women are neither consciously and innately aware of nor signaling the moment of the estrus.
• The moment of estrus is for women only an option to become pregnant, not an automatic urge.

This means, that the human evolution has changed male instinctive urges to copulate with a female body only towards a higher frequency of the dishomeostasis.    But it has separated the female urge to procreate from being driven by the estrus to copulate for the purpose of becoming pregnant.   Emotional attachment has replaced the estrus as what is motivating women towards physical intimacy.  
If women were able to react adequately to this imbalance by refusing any abuse of their bodies and demand emotional attachment from men as a condition for giving them homeostasis, the human species would have been extinct a long time.   

But the concurrent superior male physical strength has enabled men to enforce their homeostation by the abuse of the bodies of non-consenting women.   Thus the ability for emotional attachment did not evolve equally in men.    

2.  The effects of this evolutionary asymmetry on contemporary people. 

A man wanting to merely copulate with a female body has only the choice between abuse by force or abuse by payment.   If he wants a woman's motivation to give him his recurrent homeostation, he has to take care, that she has a reason to experience physical intimacy as beneficial for herself.   This reason is giving her emotional attachment, bonding and long-term commitment.  

In modern civilized countries, the risk of the dire consequences of abuse by force is so high, that the abusers usually choose prostitution. 

   
Prostitution is for the man the exact simulation of the situation of the animal copulation.   But a woman, who is not driven by an estrus to get pregnant, has no own reason to copulate with a body.   She does not experience any personal benefits by being abused as a toilet for men's body waste.   The prostitute takes money as a compensation for the damage of allowing herself to be abused (if this even is a free choice). 

2.1.  Modern communication technology like the web enables people to find a partner for any activity.  Whenever an activity supplies reciprocal and symmetrical benefits, people can find a partner without needing to pay.  

If uncommitted copulation of two bodies were beneficial for more than a tiny minority of women, men would find them and avoid paying for prostitution.   The web is full with ads and profiles of men, who want intimate encounters, no strings fun, friends with benefits or any other euphemism for wanting a woman as a living toilet. Any woman (if there are any) attracted to be used this way, would be certainly found.   But the € 14.5 billion yearly only in Germany show, that the consent to be abused is not available for free, it is only sold.   

2.2. There is a big difference between reducing dishomeostasis and attempting to find and indulge in pleasure.   Dishomeostasis is experienced as an urge to remove or reduce a state of discomfort and return to the neutral relaxed state.    This urge can severely disrupt rational thinking and distort appropriate behavior.   

When in a relaxed state there is a free choice for additional pleasure and enjoyment, this is an undisturbed mind's wise choice or preference.   

Most people would prefer to buy for example a piece of cake or a newspaper rather than a painkiller.   But when they experience the dishomeostasis of having a headache then they need the painkiller and cannot spend that money on buying something else.   They are more driven to pay for relief than for pleasure.   

A man in the state of homeostasis can wisely choose between spending a sum of money on a book, a visit to the zoo or in a restaurant.    But a man, who pays a prostitute instead of buying a book is unable to make a wise choice, he is driven by an urge to reduce his physiological discomfort.    

2.3.  By evolution, women's strong need for emotional attachment has replaced the urge to copulate as being identical with the urge to get pregnant at the moment of a noticeable estrus.   This need to not only be in a situation of being able to get attached but also to experience the attachment as reciprocal is doomed to bring harm and pain, as long as it is onesided, because too many men are driven towards copulation without attachment.   

Many women get emotionally attached to their children, while they commodify and take advantage of men as material providers.  Based upon the evolutionary asymmetry, I am wondering, what is cause and what is reaction and how many women do breed not by really preferring their children for emotional attachment, but by perceiving this as their only chance to get any emotional attachment, which they do not consider possible with a man. 

  

Women commodify men as purses and men objectify women as bodies, but there is a huge difference.    Men are at least respected as being able to fill the purses.   Women are perceived as bodies only apt to trigger men's instincts, which is not considered as an achievement requiring a brain and justifying respect. 

2.4.  By recognizing the reality of men's instinctive urges I do not excuse or condone any abuse of women.  Men have the problem, it is their task to cope with it without abusing women.    

When someone has a recurrent problem, which causes him so much discomfort, that he is willing to pay for a remedy, because he is unable to solve it in any other way, this is usually considered as an affliction, as an unfortunate and detrimental situation.   
But when the recurrent problem is a man's sexual dishomeostasis, and his choice of a remedy is paying for prostitution, because he is unable to get emotionally attached in a serious relationship, then this man often feels proud of his high libido and is in complete denial, that he has an affliction, a disability and a defect.  

I consider men, who are proud of their high libido, as pathetic idiots.   

The man, who has a low libido and no need for emotionally unattached copulation is the winner in the lottery of life, which has given him the genes, which cause the least harm to himself and to women and the most long term benefits.   

High libido is as obsolete as excessive hunger or appetite.  For long parts of human history, overeating served survival.  Fat stored on the body, when food is plenty was needed in times of scarcity.    Before modern medicine, the mortality was so high, that male high libido combined with physical strength enabled men to force so many pregnancies on women, that the species survived.    Today, the same combination has led to overpopulation.    Men overeating damage themselves, men driven by high libido towards abuse damage women.  

Unfortunately, people are more prone to change attitudes and behaviors, when they experience the damage on themselves, then when they only harm others.   

Not all men abuse women, and there are many, who theoretically and generally agree that women deserve better than being abused, with or without being paid.    But this is not sufficient.    What is really needed is a radical change of men's attitude towards their own libido.   

 

It is the same as with obesity.   As long as a man considers it as good to be fat, he will continue with a positive attitude towards overeating.  Only if he changes his attitude and considers overeating as harmful and undesirable behavior, he can control. his behavior and loose weight.   As long as a man considers it as good to pay for the abuse of prostitutes, he will continue with his positive attitude towards a high libido.   Only if he changes his attitude and considers copulation without attachment as abusive, harmful and undesirable behavior, he can control his behavior and stop all abuse of women.  

While there is nothing wrong with any amount of libido, as long as it can be absorbed entirely by the physical intimacy earned by emotional attachment in a bonded monogamous long-term commitment, men need to acknowledge and recognize, that all libido beyond this is a dangerous and detrimental affliction.    Only then the world can become a better place for women.

594. The Difference Between Control And Influence

594.  The Difference Between Control And Influence

In entry 593 I mentioned, that control and trust are mutually exclusive.    But it is very important to distinguish between control and influence.   While control destroys a relationship, reciprocal influence is needed.

Control means, that the relationship is asymmetrical.   One person not only has power, but uses it to gain selfish and onesided benefits from another person, who is helpless, powerless and unable to impede being coerced under domination.

Egalitarian relationships can only work, when reciprocal influencing makes them symmetrical. Influencing means to be able to get one's own needs met while being fully aware of and considering also those of the other, without refusing, ignoring or denying them.   

Having influence includes to be heard, taken for serious and rationally convinced in a process of constructive communication.  
Being influenced requires more than just listening, but also recognizing the other as the only reliable source for information to be learned by active interest and asking.  
Reciprocally influencing partners never do anything, which has any impact upon the partner, without first having reached an agreement.   They only act based upon shared decisions.      


It is the commodifying and not trusting man's fallacy to believe, that he cannot get a fair deal without control.   In reality, control serves him to usurp more than what is fair.   His fallacy is confounding his selfish benefits with what is fair.  
A genuinely fair deal requires reciprocal influence, because a deal is only fair, when it is fair to both, not only experienced as fair for oneself but also knowing this being the same for the other.  

A commodifying and controlling man experiences a relationship only as satisfactoy and functional, as long as the commodified woman does not make any attempts to influence him. When she shows passive compliance, he confounds this with her alleged consent with his entitlement delusion.   

Influence as a reciprocal process of sharing decisions is unknown to him.  All he knows is either the security of having power or else distrust and the expectations of unavoidable doom under her alleged power and usurping of control.  He misinterprets any of her attempts to influence him towards a fair deal as if she were taking control.  Therefore this functions as a trigger to enhance his own use of power as his method to prevent her alleged harming him.  

577. Propinquity - Significance - Importance - 2

577.   Propinquity - Significance - Importance - 2

This continues entry 575.  

Significance is correlated with propinquity, importance is not and can have many reasons.

The difference between significance and importance determines the behavior towards others.   The difference between being important and being significant determines what behavior can rationally be expected.  
But this difference is too often blurred in too many people's awareness.  This is the cause of a lot of unhappiness and harm.  

The following are some possible constellations of this difference. 

Reciprocity

• Neither significance nor importance
  
  As long as people do not know of each other's individual existence, they cannot experience each other as significant or important persons.  
  
  
• Importance without significance
  
  People can be important to each other without being significant.  The bus driver is important for someone in need to go someplace, and the paying customer is important for the bus driver to earn his wages.    They can either have nothing in common or they are ignorant about each other's person.   In either case, there is no subjective propinquity and they are not significant to each other.  
  
  
• Limited significance
  
  Acquaintances, coworkers, sport buddies, pen pals and such can have a partial area of propinquity and a limited significance to each other. 
  Their propinquity is either limited, because they do not know each other well.   Or it is counterbalanced by some essential disagreement, which creates a mental ditch.   
   

• Predominant significance
  
  People can be friends, when the areas of propinquity are far bigger and more attractive than what separates them mentally, and when they can rely upon not being harmed.   The limitations of mere friendship of not sharing the home, nor all hazards of life nor the full intimacy including the body allows some tolerance for differences.
  
  
• Ubiquitous significance
  
  A committed, bonded relationship including intellectual intimacy and trust requires propinquity without mental ditches.   
  The partner is the one person specially elected for the privilege of sharing a safe haven with.  He is the one chosen as deserving unrestricted full intimacy, even including the body.  
  He is not just a friend, he is the one best friend having a special significance, which would be disrupted by mental ditches. 
  
  

Asymmetry

• Anonymous partial significance
  
  Asymmetrical, anonymous propinquity of any degree can be experienced with persons, who are known by any media, books, movies, public events, newspapers.  
  Reading, watching, listening to their expression of the perceived propinquity reinforces their partial significance.  This is independent of their own ignorance of the existence of any individual person in their audience.     
  This can be any author, actor, philosopher, musician, scientist, politician, no matter if dead or alive.  
  
  
• Onesided significance and/or importance in personal interaction
  
  
  • Interaction based upon propinquity is sometimes a onesided choice.   Someone choosing a trainer for what he is fascinated with as an essential area of propinquity makes the trainer significant.  But if the trainer happens to be teaching, what does not really interest him, then the pupil is important as a source of income, but not significant due to lacking propinquity. 
    
    
  • A chosen guru or teacher can be very significant to the pupil, while for any guru each of a multitude of his many pupils is someone with propinquity but does not have the same significance for him.
    
    
  • Interaction based upon propinquity is a choice.  But there are many situations, where interactions are instead forced upon by circumstances in the absence of any propinquity and where there is no significance.  The school teacher of a disliked subject is an example.   So is the boss of a disliked but needed job.
      
    
  • Many dysfunctional relationships are pseudo-reciprocal in spite of being dyads. A woman, who has chosen a man by propinquity experiences him as significant for herself. But when he has followed his instinctive urges and objectifies her, then she can be an important utility, yet she is not significant.

560. The Bigfeet Relationship - A Metaphor

560.   The Bigfeet Relationship - A Metaphor

There is a proverb about the existence of a good match if found.  
'Every pot finds its lid.'  
But as an egalitarian, this is too asymmetrical for my taste.    A pot has a value even without a lid, while a lid without a pot is useless.   If I were to make a guess I would expect men to claim to be the pots.

So I have come up with my own symmetrical metaphor.  

A couple having a viable relationship is like an entity moving smoothly along the road of life on two feet in comfortably fitting shoes.   Each partner contributes one foot and the shoe for the other's foot.  

A foot represents a partner's relationship needs, a shoe is the place available in the own life for a partner.  The size of the available place for a partner is determined by what is offered to fulfill the partner's needs, and this depends on what is expected by a fair deal in exchange for getting the own needs met.          
Fitting means, that both feet and both shoes are all of the same size.   Both partners' needs are reciprocally met.   

When fitting shoes and feet are large, couples share intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy as much as both feel comfortable with.    

They are reciprocally significant to each other.

When fitting shoes and feet are small, both partners commodify each other in a complementary way.  This is for example the case, when the man only wants the regular use of the same body and the woman only wants his regular income for a materially secure life.  They both fulfill their other needs elsewhere.   

They are reciprocally insignificant to each other.


Couples are mismatches, when the sizes of the shoes and feet do no match.   When one partner's foot and shoe are small and the other's foot and shoe are large, their feet are not comfortable.  They have difficulties to move forward, stumbling and struggling instead.  

The one with the bigger foot is the one with the major disadvantage.   A large foot in a too small shoe hurts and gets harmed, while a small foot only is loose in the too big shoe, which may slip off.    The too big shoe does not hurt while worn, but walking barefoot on rough ground is painful after having lost the shoe.     
Walking in too small shoes causes painful blisters.  When the blisters are inside the shoe or sock, they are not visible to others.   Unmet emotional and intellectual needs are like invisible blisters.    

The one, whose needs are not met, suffers deficits and deprivations.  The other one getting all needs met would be satisfied, but experiences the other's expectations, demands and pressures as annoyance.   

Thus the damage to the relationship starts on the side of the unmet needs but has an impact upon both.  The failure of such a relationship by removing both shoes is experienced differently.  The one suffering harm from unmet needs tends to feel relief by removing a hurting shoe, while the one getting all needs met suffers a loss, when forced to walk on bare feet without the protecting shoe.     

There is also a variety of this situation, in which shoes do not fit by being too large in one direction and too small in the other, simultaneously hurting and being loose.   This is the common situation, when both have needs not met by the other.    Each partner suffers from the own unmet needs and is annoyed by the demands from the partner.

People needing the safe haven of bonded, committed close relationship have big feet.   Thus it can be called a 'bigfeet relationship'. 

550. The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

550.   The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

Whenever I am the recipient of a diatribe or angry rant, I am puzzled about why people bother to approach me in this way, even though this is not a method to gain anything.   The last good example is a comment to entry 549.   

http://dictionary.reference.com

Diatribe
noun:  a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism:
Rant
noun:  ranting, extravagant, or violent declamation.
noun:  a ranting utterance.

The following is not about the benefits of people sharing the same grievances against any third party while being in harmony with each other, nor is it about someone finding relief by telling grievances to a sympathetic friend.   Many important social and political movements have been initiated by a few justified diatribes. 

It is about the irrationality of sending me diatribes by email or blog comments.    Such diatribes are as irrational as is the man's behavior in Watzlawick's story:

A man wants to hang a painting. He has the nail, but not the hammer. Therefore it occurs to him to go over to the neighbor and ask him to lend him his hammer. But at this point, doubt sets in. What if he doesn’t want to lend me the hammer? Yesterday he barely spoke to me. Maybe he was in a hurry. Or, perhaps, he holds something against me. But why? I didn’t do anything to him. If he would ask me to lend him something, I would, at once. How can he refuse to lend me his hammer? People like him make other people’s life miserable. Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer. This is got to stop ! And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor’s door, rings, and before letting him say anything, he screams: “You can keep your hammer, you bastard.” (Paul Watzlawick, “The Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness”)

There are many reasons, why any man and I are not suitable to have any beneficial contact.   The rational reaction of such a man is to zap without wasting any further thoughts on me, when while reading this blog or my profile on a matchmaking site he notices such reasons.
In the case of doubt, a friendly question invites a friendly clarification.    Any provocation on my part is not intended and it is no invitation to hostile arguments.    There is no rational reason to express anger by attacking me with diatribes.  

The irrationality of sending diatribes indicates, that the sender has some problems, concerning both the cause of his anger and his hostility when coping with it:

1.  Entitlement and grandiosity delusion. 
A man feels entitled to get anything and this is justified for him by nothing more than his wish to have it and/or he believes himself to be god's gift to women, who cannot have a valid reason to reject him.    Therefore he considers the choice of a partner only justified by his own selection or rejection. Being rejected is not acceptable to him.   Even anticipated rejection due to my clearly expressed criteria is for such a man a reason to be angry.   A woman's disagreement with his grandiosity is also a reason to be angry. 
2.  Displaced anger.   Something in my text triggers anger, which is caused by his own experiences and has nothing to do with my person.   This something can be either a provocation by any real attribute of mine or it can be something misunderstood and misinterpreted.   

3.  Paradoxical coping with the anger.   The devaluation of what is not available as in the fable of the fox and the sour grapes are a valid coping strategy as part of realistic resignation.    Attacking someone with the declarations of devaluation by email is absurd.    

When people write emails, they enhance the probability of getting a reply by showing as much appreciation for the recipient as they can do sincerely.   In the case of intended manipulation, appreciation is insincerely exaggerated.   

An email of devaluations is supplying the recipient with reasons not to reply and not to communicate.   Therefore there is no reason to ever bother to write devaluing emails, while not writing has the same effect without wasting time.  


The diatribe comment on entry 549 gives examples.   His (assuming the commenter to be a man) attacks me for being German.   This indicates displaced anger about Germany or German culture or maybe some German individual.   Now he attacks me for being German in spite of my explicit declaration of not identifying with being German.

I cannot know his level of formal education.   But his attack on my valuing a university degree makes it obvious, that he has none but does not accept this as a reason to be not suitable for me.  

He calls me 'dogmatic, unscientific, irrational, dictating, intolerant, sexist, emotional, arrogant'.   These being obviously all unacceptable attributes in his opinion, I can fully agree with him that any woman, whom he subjectively perceives as having such attributes, is not suitable for him, no matter who and how she really is.   I have no problem with being perceived as not suitable by an unknown commenter.   But his bothering to write a comment, which forfeits any communication, is weird.  


Expressing and sending a diatribe is a distorted method of counterproductive communication.    Constructive communication motivates the recipient to reciprocate an interaction perceived as beneficial.   Diatribes create antipathy for the hostile sender, who presents himself as someone to be avoided, not as someone to interact with.    Everybody writing and sending diatribes just wastes his own time and gains nothing.  

1.  One possible interpretation of diatribes is to see them as related to real life bullying.    

Based upon his physical strength, a man can sometimes succeed to get his will by intimidation.  A woman cringing under outbursts of anger does not dare to resist.   The woman suffers and is driven away by this bullying.    

Men with long term thinking and wisdom learn, that bullying gets them nowhere and nothing.   But when they are only learning short term direct effects, they are mislead to learn, that expressing anger is a successful method to get their will.    Bullies misinterpret the success of their outburst of anger as if this were a method of influencing the victim's thinking.   They mistake enforced apparent acquiescence with agreement and they believe in their power to obtain agreement by expressing anger.         

As a result of this distorted learning these men are oblivious of the limited reach of the weapon of anger.   Anger and aggression only work in direct contact, when the intimidation triggers spontaneous fear, elicited not in accordance with the probability of a physical attack but by the mere possibility.    

Therefore expressing anger at the target by email is the futile attempt of distance bullying.    Due to not eliciting fear, this does not work.   Diatribes are the consequence of a man's overestimation of the power of his anger without physical intimidation.   

2.  Diatribes are an indication of an asymmetrical attitude to women and of the intention and purpose of a relationship for getting advantages by commodification.   A man pursuing a symmetrical relationship appreciates the information of any woman's needs and preferences for his own evaluation of possible symmetry.   Finding out that he cannot give her, what she needs, is not a reason to get angry and even less to send a diatribe.   For him it is a reason to accept incompatibility.  

533. Cohabitation And The Safe Haven

533.  Cohabitation And The Safe Haven

Some days ago, I exchanged a few emails with someone, who appeared as a good match by the first superficial impression.   But the futility of pursuing this contact became evident, when he explained his situation:   By marrying or cohabiting, he would loose his rather high widower's pension.  

I personally consider a happy relationship being a safe haven as worth much more than money.   I would not hesitate to accept a man, who is suitable and compatible, no matter his poverty.  I would reject an unsuitable and incompatible man, no matter his affluence.  Generally I think this widower's priority of his money is a mistake.   
But when it comes to considering my own person, I do not even expect, let alone demand from someone to value living with me as preferable over his money or any other priorities.  A man has his priorities and choices, and whenever they are incongruent with mine, I do not consider myself as a sufficient reason to modify them.   Any decision in my favor would only be valid, if it is based upon a man's need, independent of any influence from my side. A man's incongruent priorities are a reason to keep away from him, not a justification for stupid and futile attempts to influence him   

The essence of a bonded and committed relationship is for me the safe haven, which it cannot be without cohabitation.    Only a cohabiting couple really sits in the same boat, for better or for worse.  Only when sharing the home and applying the shared survival resources, both financial and skills, then all troubles, inclemencies and problems of everyday life really concern both partners equally without a back door. Whenever something breaks or goes wrong, the partner in a LAT-relationship can feel relaxed as he is not under the same pressure to solve the problem.  Having still his own home to retreat to, he has the back door to abandon the partner in need.   

Practical problems like when a needed household appliance or installation breaks cause situational pressure.  The less there is the alternative of affording the easiest and most comfortable solution, the stronger is the pressure upon me.  My resources are more skills than money.  Being alone under the pressure of needing to cope with situational problems of any kind drains and exhausts me, no matter how successful I am in solving it.   Even when I find a solution making me feel clever and adding to my confidence, the coping process nevertheless leaves me drained.    

The safe haven of a cohabiting relationship, in which the partner is equally concerned by situational pressures of any kind, is the relief I need to not get drained.   Being alone when problems require coping is what drains me.
Of course, being equally concerned does by itself not suffice as a relief.  A safe haven requires not only to be equally concerned as a team by all problems, but also to share basic agreements about rational coping strategies derived from the same evaluation of the shared situation and resources.   Only this enables a couple to be a team in problem solving and a source of relief to each other. 

Someone adding more pressure upon me than the problem itself can instead make the situation even worse. 

I cannot accept a man's putting pressure upon me to waste my own money.   If a man is as poor as I am, I expect him to support me in solving problems by the principle of compensating for expenses by efforts.  He can give me the best relief by sharing the efforts.  

Only if a man can afford himself the comfortable expensive solutions preferred by him, it is his choice.   

But the poor man putting pressure upon me to waste my own limited money on the comfortable solution sparing him efforts drains me even more, having to cope with the combined pressure of the technical problem and from him.     

A safe haven can bring reciprocally many protecting and relieving benefits, no matter if the problems are practical, social, psychological, physical.  The emphasis is on the reciprocity.     The more a man also needs a safe haven, the more I can expect to be given one in return.    This is very significant. 

A man's refusal to cohabit tells me, that his goal is not the same kind of a safe haven as is mine and logically then a safe haven is also not available for me.   

A LAT arrangement enables a man to get all the benefits of using a woman's body at his convenience, as this can be achieved without cohabitation.   But a LAT arrangement also enables a man to limit, what he decides to give to the woman.     

A man's refusing to cohabit indicates and implies the presence of some or all of the following good reasons justifying suspicion.  While his superficial reasons may appear as convincing as is the example of the widower's pension of my contact, but the following reasons are probably hidden behind:
1.  A man does not expect a safe haven available from any woman, because he commodifies her and he is blind to even notice any other option besides using her.   A man can experience a safe haven only, if he is aware and appreciative of women being persons with cognitive qualities sufficient as providers of a safe haven.    
2.   A man has already a fragmented supportive system consisting of any combination including his family of origin, friends and even exes and children.  He does not feel a need for a safe haven, which would motivate him to provide one for a woman.   Having sufficient supply for all other social and psychological needs, a woman is only a body.   Only homeostasis is not available from his supportive system.   

3.   A man is so powerful and affluent, that he solves all problems by paying services, no matter if it is the craftsman or the therapist.    If he is decent, he prefers a monogamous relationship for his homeostasis over paying prostitutes.      


As I mentioned already before, the decision to get involved with someone has to be a very careful rational decision, which certainly cannot be rushed into without a high risk of failure.   What matters is is the shared goal of cohabitation and the shared need of a safe haven.  Sharing the goal of cohabitation is very different from making the mistake to rush into cohabitation with a haphazard person.

The refusal of cohabitation is a good reason not to pursue a contact, but the shared goal alone is only one of many necessary but not sufficient criteria for compatibility.    

527. Objectification And The Empathy Gap

527.  Objectification And The Empathy Gap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_gap

"A hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias in which a person underestimates the influences of visceral drives, and instead attributes behavior primarily to other, nonvisceral factors."

"The crux of this idea is that human understanding is "state dependent"."

"Implications of the empathy gap were explored in the realm of sexual decision-making, where young men in an unaroused "cold state" failed to predict that in an aroused "hot state" they will be more likely to make risky sexual decisions,"

But this works also in the inverted situation, when they make risky sexual decision, which are risky not for themselves as predators, but for their unfortunate victims.
 
Men, who are driven by a high physiological urge of sexual dishomeostasis are often void of all empathy for those women, who are free of such an urge, but who crave instead for attachment and bonding.   Due to this empathy gap, some such men even have the delusion of their implicating women as instruments for their homeostation as being equally beneficial for the women.   These men are clueless, that in reality the women experience this implication as objectification and abuse.   They are unable to realistically evaluate the amount of pain, harm and even trauma, which they force upon the objectified women deprived of the reciprocity of commitment.

Outright jerks are dangerous beyond remedy, when they objectify women's bodies ruthlessly and with no consideration or responsibility.

As a consequence of the empathy gap, it is possible, that some men commodify women even though they do wish to be responsible and considerate.   They are so much caught in the biological trap of their instinctive urges, that when they use a woman's body without getting attached, this is due to their fallacy of not only assuming, but taking for granted the alleged reciprocity of the objectification by consent.  
Being tragically afflicted with their deficit of the emotional response of getting automatically attached by physical intimacy, their lack of empathy causes them to remain completely unaware of the devastation done to those women led on to onesided attachment before being dumped. 
Their objectification and commodification of women as a fallacy due to the empathy gap is a deficit in these men's education and maturation.   This fallacy is perpetuated by the fatality, that the afflicted men do not suffer themselves, instead imposing the suffering upon the women.    This fallacy is additionally enhanced by the social norm of the oversexation of society and the empathy is further damaged by the desensitization following the oversexation.  

468. Reactions To Alleged Flaws

468.   Reactions To Alleged Flaws

The topic of entry 466 was the implication, that ascribing a flaw means the indirect claim of the allegedly flawed person's inferiority.   There is a clear distinction between a friendly and respectful noticing of someone's peculiarities and the devaluation of ascribing a flaw. 

1.  My definition of a flaw:

A flaw is a peculiar attribute, that is   

• detrimental to the own life of the flawed person or
• detrimental to the targets of flawed behavior

1.1.  A flaw is not trivial. 
It is a significant detriment according to the evaluation or experience of the one calling it a flaw.  Without being detrimental, it is a peculiarity and not a flaw.   Ascribing a flaw is a devaluation, calling something a peculiarity is not. 
Alleging a flaw without consent is always an insult, even when someone recognizes having the peculiar attribute, but disagrees to evaluate it as detrimental.  
When the alleged flaw concerns attributes or traits contributing to the person's identity, then it is not only an insult, but a rejection of the person. 

1.2.  There are detriments, that people cannot agree about, unless they share some basic values and attitudes.  

1.2.1.  A good example is the reciprocal disrespect of christians and atheists.  
For an atheist like me, a christian is flawed, because his behavior is often detrimental to others not sharing his beliefs.   Christians' belief in the reward in the afterlife is their justification to hurt others.  

Christians believe atheists to be detrimental to themselves as they are believed to suffer in hell.  

Atheists and christians can never agree on who is flawed, because they derive the logic for their mutual evaluation from incompatible premises. 

1.2.2.   When people share basic values and they are mutually significant as equals, then flaws are experienced as disruptive for their relationship.  This goes both ways, because they want to respect and to be respected.  Apparent flaws are a problem to be solved.   Both partners communicate, until there is no more misunderstanding and misinterpretation leading to the allegation of non-existing flaws.  

1.2.3.   There is a difference between permanent irreversible and temporary flaws.  

A person's real but temporary flaws like irritating bad habits or states of stress can be overcome, when the flawed partner accepts support from the other.    This requires agreement concerning the detriments and disadvantages of the flawed behavior.  Based upon this agreement, the partners can cooperate towards reducing the flaw and restoring equality. 
Innate promiscuity is an example of an irreversible flaw.    Innate promiscuity is an incurable detriment to any person with the quality of innate monogamy.    

2.  The target's reaction to the allegation of a flaw depends on the social roles and the reciprocal personal significance.

2.1.  People are usually not bothered about flaws alleged by insignificant persons.   Not sharing basic values or the awareness of each other's disrespectful opinion impedes any attraction between people.  They do not become significant. 

2.2.  There are specific problems of disruptive entanglement in family constellations, where the significance precedes the allegation of flaws.  Examples are siblings, of whom one is a christian and the other an atheist or one is a soldier and the other a pacifist.

2.3.  Situations of asymmetrical significance can be very painful.   People wish to be reciprocally considered and treated as equals and as significant by those, who are significant for them.   A person's significance determines, how much his allegations of flaws are experienced as insults, humiliations, degradations and indignities.     It is a very disruptive situation, when a person does not reciprocate his significance to another, but instead claims his superiority by alleging flaws and expecting acquiescence.   
    

2.3.1.  Between men, such an insult often provokes aggression, fighting and even bloodshed. 

2.3.2.  When women are men's targets of the same insult, they are supposed and expected to react with acquiescence.  The implications of this upon women as partners in a relationship or when choosing a mate are the topic of the next entry.  

456. The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

A symmetrical committed bonded relationship between egalitarian partners is based upon the combination of physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy in balanced reciprocity.  

In asymmetrical relationships one partner has privileges and the other has disadvantages.   

There are three kinds of asymmetry due to an imbalance, that is often very painful for a woman:

1.  Physical asymmetry.  
A man has a polygamous harem.    
A man cheats on his wife.

2.  Emotional asymmetry. 
One partner offers and needs emotional exclusivity of reciprocally being the most important and most significant person on earth for the other.   The partner refuses to concede such exclusivity.   He is only available on the condition of sharing his emotional ties with outsiders, often his children and/or his ex-partners.

3.  Intellectual asymmetry. 
Physical and emotional asymmetry are easily recognizable, because other persons are involved as intruders and obstacles. Intellectual asymmetry is more subtle, less easily recognizable.  It can be very damaging, even though the man may be convinced to be a considerate and moral person.  
Intellectual asymmetry is the consequence of attitudes concerning the perception of the role, qualities and place for the partner in life.  The disadvantaged partner offers and expects more, than what the other is interested and motivated to give and to share.  

Men are generally prone to cause asymmetry in relationships because of their subconscious animal instincts.  Too often a man feels justified to initiate physical involvement with a woman by nothing better than the mere infatuation with her body.   He even is ignorant, that this is not, what the woman wants.   

For a woman with self-respect, this is not a sufficient reason to agree and comply.   She allows him access to her body, only when she not only considers him as suitable to be her companion, with whom she wants to share everything for the rest of her life, but when she also is convinced, that this is reciprocal.  
Unfortunately, women are often mislead and mistaken.  Instead of becoming appreciated egalitarian companions, they get themselves into the situation of onesided and very painful disadvantages.

Even if a man commits to be monogamous, and even if he forces no intruders upon her as a source of physical and emotional asymmetry, this does not automatically ascertain intellectual intimacy and symmetry.   The woman wants a companion based upon equality, she wants to share everything with him.   But If he is satisfied with her nightly availability in bed, while she is of not other significance for his life and he has not wish to share anything except her body, he is the one, who gets, what he wants, but this is far from what she wants and needs.   

The one, who wants less is always the one, who has the power to dominate and to enforce his conditions.   When he only wants her body, this is a form of asymmetry, that makes her helpless and defenseless.  
The woman in an asymmetrical relationship is powerless to make it symmetrical.   When a man only perceives her body and is oblivious and in denial of all her invisible qualities, then there is nothing, that she can do.   No matter, how much she deserves being appreciated and valued as an equal, significant, trusted companion, she has no power to get, what she needs and wants, if the man is not able to perceive, notice and value her qualities.  

When the woman wants to share decisions, but the man does instead, what he wants and forces his decisions upon her, he has the power to do so, but she has no power to stop him.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to share all innermost feelings with a mindmate, he has the power to refuse to communicate.   She has no power to make him listen nor to make him tell her, what he feels and thinks.   She suffers.  
When the woman wants to share time and activities with the man, but he prefers to spend his time without her, he has the power to go and leave her behind, whenever he wants.   She has no power to hold him back and make him stay with her.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to be mutually significant and to be the most important person, but the man treats her as a commodity and as insignificant, he has the power to do so, but she is powerless to defend herself.  She suffers.

An egalitarian woman with self-respect suffers humiliation, indignity, degradation, disrespect, devaluation, depreciation, when she is powerless in an asymmetrical relationship.   When the circumstances make her powerless, she cannot fight for what is out of her reach and not obtainable.     
But suffering without fighting does not imply mental acquiescence, even though it may superficially appear as if she would accept her disadvantages.  The man, satisfied in an asymmetrical relationship, is often oblivious and in denial.   Her silent experiencing of outrage and indignation cause devastation, but the suffering is hidden behind resignation and apparent submission.   The relationship is toxic and the woman has no other way out except leaving the relationship.

So men have the power to choose wisely, if they are aware of this, before it is too late:  

They can make a relationship symmetrical by giving a woman, what she really needs and wants: The respect and appreciation for a person in a balance of giving and sharing physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy.

They can enforce an asymmetrical relationship upon a woman, profit from this, as long as possible, until they have devastated one woman and move on to the next.
Women have only the choice of prevention, they can refuse to enter a relationship, when the risk of asymmetry is recognizable.   Once they have made the mistake of entering an asymmetrical relationship, they are doomed.   They cannot make it symmetrical against the will of a man, who prefers the benefits of the asymmetry.   

440. The Benefits Of Giving In The Balance Of Giving And Receiving

The Benefits Of Giving In The Balance Of Giving And Receiving

I claim, that only a balance of giving and receiving leads to maximized total happiness in a couple bonded by caring love.  Today I read about scientific research about the emotional benefits of giving:

'Tis Better to Give Than to Receive? Life Scientists Find That Giving Support Offers Health Benefits -- To the Giver

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109152213.htm)

'"When people talk about the ways in which social support is good for our health, they typically assume that the benefits of social support come from the support we receive from others, but it now seems likely that some of the health benefits of social support actually come from the support we provide to others," said Naomi Eisenberger'

"The life scientists found that when women gave support to their boyfriends in pain, the women showed increased activity in reward-related regions of the brain,"

"In addition to being a pleasure center, this region plays a role in threat- or stress-reduction by inhibiting other regions of the brain that process threats, such as the amygdala. Researchers found that the women who showed greater activity in the septal area also showed less activity in the amygdala."

But of course this does not imply, that people, who only give, while receiving nothing, would be the most happy.   The subjective benefits of giving are not indiscriminate of whom they are bestowed upon.   Giving is most beneficial when based upon experienced and expected reciprocity.   The conscious evaluation of the partner as someone worthy, benign, decent and trustworthy is crucial to the experience of the own giving behavior as subjectively beneficial.   

When one partner is selfish and only takes all benefits obtainable from the other, while giving nothing or too little, this has consequences.   The giving partner experiences this as being used and exploited, as being disrespected, depreciated, devalued.    This causes pain, that outweighs the benefits from giving.

  
Happiness in long-term commitment is only possible, when giving and receiving are balanced. 

426. Breeders, Non-Breeders And The Reciprocal Accusation Of Selfishness

Breeders, Non-Breeders And The Reciprocal Accusation Of Selfishness

Breeders and non-breeders often accuse each other of being selfish.   This is remarkable, as being selfish means attempting to get benefits for oneself disregarding conflicting interests.    Accusing someone else of being selfish implies the agreement, that the allegedly selfish behavior is indeed beneficial for the accused. Evaluating another person's behavior as self-damaging would lead to call him a fool, insane, irrational, pathetic, anything except selfish.  
Therefore a breeder accusing a non-breeder as selfish implies the admission, that not breeding is more beneficial than breeding, and vice versa.   This paradox needs to be explained.    

So far, I had attributed the decision to breed or not to breed only to the need for homeostasis due to differences in the strength of the procreation instinct serving directly the survival of the genes.   I consider this as distributed along a bell curve, where at one extreme end people feel a strong procreation instinct, while at the other end, this instinct is absent.  

But there is a second scale, which I have up to now omitted, the innate nurturing instinct.  It is also distributed as a bell curve.  The innate difference is between being attracted to spend time with and to care for helpless beings or not.   At one end are those people, who feel very emotionally attracted to babies, children, pets, not only their own but in general.   At the other extreme are those people, who are just not attracted to any beings, who are lacking the cognitive abilities of a sane adult.   

These two scales are not or at least not fully correlated.   To illustrate the problem, I compare the four combinations of the extremes, but the same problem will also be to a lesser degree the case with the majority of people anywhere in the middle of the bell curves.   And of course, people are often influenced and brainwashed, so they are not aware of their true inclinations.  

1.  High procreation and high nurturing instincts:  
Such people experience raising children predominantly as restoring homeostasis and therefore subjectively as their self-interest.   They are those, who rather feel indiscriminate pity for the childless and the childfree and rarely call them selfish.

2.  High procreation and low nurturing instincts. 
Such people discover, that they experience raising children as a burden and a sacrifice only after they have them, when they are unable to undo the irreversible mistake.  They experience cognitive dissonance, they are envious of the childfree and they call them selfish.    

3.  Low procreation and high nurturing instincts.  
Such people are attracted to children, they choose to be dedicated uncles and aunts, to adopt, to be school teachers.  They perceive pets as children.   While they are rationally aware of the overpopulation and other external good reasons for not breeding, they are secretly dissatisfied of not being able to spend as much time with children as would give them homeostasis for their nurturing instinct.   As a result, they secretly envy the people, who have own children in defiance of any rational considerations, and they accuse them of being selfish. 

4.  Low procreation and low nurturing instincts.   
Such people are attracted only to beings, with whom intellectual communication is possible.   They are emotionally attracted to those people, with whom they can share the joy of consent by having something in common, by the intellectual intimacy with a mindmate.  
They can find it interesting to watch other people's kids for a few hours and to enjoy a visit to the zoo, but such beings just bore them after a while and caring for them is not an attraction, but an unpleasant burden to be avoided.  This lack of the instinct to asymmetrically care for the young has of course nothing to do with the symmetrical willingness to care for a sick partner in a committed relationship.    Such people are not driven to find someone as a target for an asymmetrical nurturing instinct, they choose someone to get attracted to by a wise intellectual choice, and caring is a symmetrical part of commitment.  
Such people are aware, that society as a whole needs some procreation to survive.  For them, being free from raising children is a privilege, they are content, that others do the unpleasant chore.  They are grateful to have been spared.   They have no reason to call breeders selfish.   

416. An Epicurean View On Conflict Solving

An Epicurean View On Conflict Solving

On a forum about relationships, I read about a conflict between a couple.   While having a cat before, the husband had experienced this as very unpleasant, especially due to feeling disgusted by the smell.   After moving to a new house, the wife wanted to have another cat and he did not.   

What surprised me very much, was the following discussion based upon a general evaluation, that it were a conflict between two equal positions and equal needs.    The discussion centered about the difficulty of a compromise between having a cat and not having a cat. 

But the positions in this conflicts are far from equal and therefore not a basis for a fair compromise.   A compromise means finding a fair balance of giving and taking for both sides involved.   But in the cat example, the wife wanted a onesided benefit only for herself, for which only the husband would have to pay by suffering discomfort.  

In the sense of Epicurus' principle of not harming and not be harmed, his moral right to maintain a life without discomfort is a stronger right than her wish to get an additional benefit.  The wife is already in a situation of wellbeing and without discomfort.     A cat is not a necessity, that causes dishomeostasis when there is none.   The husband's need are much more basic, he wants to maintain the homeostasis of not suffering as a part of daily life the discomfort of disgusting smells.   
 

The fair solution is the reciprocity of consideration.   While she owes to him to refrain from a wish causing him discomfort, he owes her the same consideration of not causing her discomfort or pain.    The balanced reciprocal avoidance of harming and hurtful behavior is much better than balancing sacrifices in the form of suffering for each other.    

390. The Emotional Anhedonia Of Jerks

The Emotional Anhedonia Of Jerks

This continues entry 389, where I defined hedonists as persons, whose pleasure center is more or less insensitive and imperceptive to emotional and non-physical stimulation.   
One of the emotions, that hedonists are deprived of, is feeling affection.  Affection is the stimulation of the pleasure center by the mere inactive presence of a significant and valued other person, even while this person does nothing beneficial and is at this moment not physically stimulating to the pleasure center.  
Affection between a couple logically leads to the wish to be together, because this causes good feelings.    Affection is an important part of caring love, affection causes a couple to feel bonded and to enhance this feeling reciprocally.   

Commitment means to be bound by certain obligations like sharing decisions and being reliably and predictable there for the other.   Affection causes a partner to be bound by intrinsic commitment.   When feeling intrinsic commitment like affection as a positive stimulation for the pleasure center, then what otherwise would be defined as even burdensome obligations, is instead experienced as a natural own wish to express love, care and affection.  


As long as I made the mistake of projecting on men my own innate reaction, that getting physically involved automatically creates affection, bonding and commitment, I have been puzzled, why and how it is possible, that so many men are jerks, who ruthlessly use a woman as a commodity without feeling guilty.   

By now I have come to the conclusion, that the core problem is their inability to feel affection for a partner.   What I called bonding disability before, it is the lack of feeling connected by affection, in spite of getting sporadic or recurrent benefits in the form of physical pleasure from her.    While affection motivates a couple to care reciprocally for their emotional and physical wellbeing, without affection there is onesided exploitation and abuse.    

Unfortunately for the woman, in the beginning of a relationship, before both partners know each other well enough, the behavior of a man driven by strong sexual dishomeostasis to gain access to the woman's body shows behaviors, that are easily confounded with affection.     Once he has succeeded and is in a state of temporary homeostasis, the truth becomes obvious.    The bonded man continues to express affection, the man in control over a source of benefits seizes the behaviors, that had appeared as affection, because he has reached his goal.  

Anhedonia is described as a symptom of several clinical disorders, when there is a general insensitivity to feeling pleasure in spite of the presence of stimuli.   But I did not find any information about any form of innate anhedonia as a personality trait, which is only partial and limited to non-physical stimulation.    So this is my speculation:  There exists an innate emotional anhedonia, which includes an inability to feed affection, and which as a consequence makes instinct driven men use women's bodies without commitment.   

Emotional anhedonia deprives hedonists of the ability to experience affection both as a motivation for the own behavior and also when expressed by the partner.    This does not only cause the hedonist to perceive a woman as a commodity, it also deprives the hedonist from the major information input about what to expect concerning the partner's motivation to remain with him.   The hedonist cannot calculate the probability of her staying with him by the information from her expression of love and affection, because he is mindblind to perceive them as such.    

Therefore unfortunately for the woman, the hedonist, who gets benefits from her as from a commodity, knows only one method to ascertain her future availability.   This method is  domination by power and control over her. 


Hedonists are not automatically jerks.   As long as hedonists are aware of their limitations, they can choose fellow hedonists as partners.    Hedonists can be realistic and rational and accept the principle of earning and of a fair balance of giving and receiving.    A hedonist can agree upon extrinsic commitment.   He can get from a woman all the physical pleasure that his infatuation enables him to perceive, and he can decide to give her in return, whatever she asks as a fair deal.  

But when a hedonist gains domination and control over an epicurean victim, who does not get, what she needs and wants, then he becomes a jerk and a hazard for her.   Therefore jerks are hedonists with a victim.   

There are variations of the dynamics, why a woman perceives a hedonist as a jerk due to his treatment of her. 

1. The emotional moron is simply oblivious that she suffers from the restricted and humiliating role in his life, because he projects and believes to give her the same as he wants and gets.    In the latency times between the homeostations of his needs, the woman is of no interest to him.   He calls it his personal space and is willing to allow her the same.    He is not aware that her affection for him causes her the wish to share more than he wants.
2. The psychopath knows, that she suffers from the restricted and humiliating role in his life, but he has not conscience and is as unable to feel guilty as he is to feel affection.
3. The narcissist also feels no affection for her and considers her as a commodity for his physical needs.    But he also feels a primitive non-physical dishomeostasis in his need of narcissistic supply.   When he does notice her behaviors meant to express love, care and affection, he misinterprets it as her agreement with his entitlement and grandiosity delusion.   But when her expressions of appreciation and her caring acts for his wellbeing are not received with responsiveness and reciprocity, but mistaken as fulfilling her purpose, duty and due to him, this causes her also to be a suffering victim.    When this destroys her affection and her motivation to express it, he considers her as flawed.     The narcissist wants more benefits from the woman than the psychopath and emotional moron, but it is also humiliating her by only using her as a commodity.        

In previous entries I had already speculated, that maybe those men, who in our times appear immature, selfish, cruel and irresponsible are just genetic relapses to earlier stages of evolution.   This can also include the relapse back to when affection and monogamy had not yet evolved, when men procreated purely by physical infatuation with the body of a woman.    Epicureans have a brain evolved for abstract cognitions, abstract emotions, non-physical pleasures and the joy of being bonded by affection and are therefore the farthest advanced in the evolution towards the ability to strive for individual subjective wellbeing.    Hedonists were and are still so much driven by instincts and dishomeostasis, that while they were very successful in multiplying the human species, the price for this was paid by the suffering of the women, who were used predominantly as breeding bodies.     

389. The Pleasure Center In The Brain - 2

The Pleasure Center In The Brain - 2

This continues entry 388.  

In previous entries, I have already been describing the difference between the instinctive and the intellectual relationship paradigm, between infatuation and caring love, between the bonding disability of emotional morons and the bonded commitment of mature men.   
I described the behavior, the impact upon the partner, the viability of such a relationship but without explaining its causes beyond the vague attribution to a difference in the wiring of the brain.

Looking now more closely at individual differences between the sensitivity, perceptivity and responsiveness of the pleasure center to different kinds of stimuli enables me to speculate more plausibly about the dynamics between the partners of compatible and of mismatched couples.   When comparing the pleasure centers of two different brains, one wired to be hedonistic, the other wired to be Epicurean, the different treatment of, the attitude towards and the kind of a relationship with a partner can be logically explained. 

The following does not include survival homeostation by very basic needs of air, water, food under starvation, it is restricted to analysing the dishomeostasis and pleasure center stimulation under the circumstances of every day life.

Based upon the differences between which stimuli are perceived with predominant sensitivity by their pleasure centers, hedonists and Epicureans experience their social and material environment, including a partner in a relationship, very differently.

1.  Hedonists

• The hedonistic pleasure center is very perceptive, sensitive and responsive to any physical stimulation, while non-physical stimulation is either not perceived at all or if, then only by rough and primitive emotions like the pleasure of having power and be able to dominate.   
• Auditory, olfactory and visual stimuli only serve as the information of the presence of agents, which can be used for physical stimulation of the pleasure center.
• Dishomeostasis is a strong force and it is nearly always physical.   Any emotional dishomeostasis like frustration or anger are a reaction to not being able to restore physical homeostasis. 
• Physical dishomeostasis is usually a recurrent cycle.   The perception of the dishomeostasis triggers behavior of homeostation, followed by a latency period of saturation until the next perception of dishomeostasis restart the cycle.   
• Physical dishomeostasis is usually endogenous, its cause is independent of the social and material environment, while homeostation depends on the availability of resources in the environment.

The hedonistic brain experiences both the social and material components of the environment as sources, tools, utilities or commodities existing for the hedonist's convenience to fulfill physical needs, when he perceives dishomeostasis and or discovers something, of which he expects stimulation of the pleasure center.    Whatever causes high pleasure stimulation is experienced as something, that the hedonist loves.    There is no reciprocity between a hedonist and his commodity.    It is the control of the user over the availability of the commodity.

• Due to the cyclic dishomeostasis, in the moment of perceiving the dishomeostasis of being hungry, the hedonist loves cheese.   In the moment of feeling pleasure by riding a bicycle, the hedonist loves his bicycle.    In the moment of sexual dishomeostasis, the hedonist loves the woman's body, with whom he is infatuated.   
• In the moment of saturation, all the commodities, the cheese, the bicycle and the woman become temporarily insignificant and he has no reason to focus his attention upon them.    He wants to have them available in storage for the next use.    When in the state of saturation, any focus of attention on the commodities causes no pleasure or only the pleasure of being in control and of having the power to repeat the use in the future.
• Sometimes the hedonist values the pleasure of using those commodities enough to pay high prices for cheese and for a bicycle and he pampers the woman with expensive gifts to ascertain her availability.   
• The hedonist is aware, that taking care of good maintenance prolongs the usability of his commodities.   The cheese needs to be stored in the fridge, the bicycle needs greasing, and the woman needs food, shelter and health care.    The hedonist considers it as his option, how much maintenance he invests in expectation of how long he wants to keep the utility ready to serve him.  
• Neither a bicycle nor cheese have any feelings and own needs, and the hedonist assumes the same also to be the case with a woman as a commodity.   
• A dysfunctional commodity can make the hedonist angry, but a commodity does not hurt the feelings of a human.   The hedonist feels no personal or emotional connection with the commodities as entities.   His love for the commodities is the love for the benefits.    He feels no affection for a commodity.
• The magnitude of the stimulation of the pleasure center of a hedonist depends only on his needs and his perceptivity and the quality of the stimulus, but not on other commodities.   The piece of cheese does not taste any better, when eaten on the bicycle or in presence of the woman.  
• When a hedonist feels the dishomeostasis of being hungry, then a woman is experienced as either functional, when she contributes to his getting food, or dysfunctional, when she impedes him from getting food. 

2. Epicureans

• The Epicurean pleasure center is very perceptive, sensitive and responsive to any intellectual, emotional, auditory, olfactory and visual stimulation, which overrides physical stimulation in its impact.   
• Emotional dishomeostasis is a stronger force than physical dishomeostasis.  
• Emotional dishomeostasis is usually a persistent state of unpleasant feelings, that lasts, until the reason has been removed.   
• Emotional dishomeostasis is often exogenous, it is triggered, caused or modified by the interaction with the social and material environment.   

For an Epicurean in a bonded commitment, reciprocal caring love and affection has very strong effects upon the pleasure center.   The Epicurean feels bliss, joy and happiness by nothing more than being together with or near the beloved person, while there is no emotional dishomeostasis.     The perception and knowledge of being loved, respected, appreciated, cherished, significant, cared for stimulates the pleasure center.   Reciprocal proactive expressions of caring and loving behavior as described in entry 385 enhances this perception.    Being together is experienced as triggering affection and is a permanent stimulation of the epicurean pleasure center.    

• If there is emotional dishomeostasis, it is very disruptive and a very serious problem.   
• The Epicurean joy and happiness depends on reciprocity, it depends on triggering the same emotions and attitudes from the other as one feels oneself.    Getting the contrary of what one gives and expects causes pain and feeling hurt and this leads to a state of dishomeostasis.    The more one partner has and expresses respect, appreciation and significance for the other, the more s/he feels hurt, when experiencing disrespect, depreciation and insignificance in return
• Emotional dishomeostasis is a serious problem needing to be dealt with, no matter if the trigger of it is real or only perceived as the result of a misunderstanding and misinterpretation.   
• As soon as one partner feels emotional dishomeostasis, this impedes feeling affection, joy and happiness in the presence of the other and as a consequence it also impedes further expressions of love.   
• Emotional dishomeostasis of one Epicurean partner leads to emotional dishomeostasis of both.   Communicating about all conflicts, until mutual respect, appreciation and significance are restored, is a task of paramount importance for an Epicurean couple's bonding and closeness.  
• The Epicurean pleasure center gets stimulated by the intellectual joy of visiting an interesting museum or watching a fascinating theater play and by being together with a beloved partner.   The pleasure stimulation by both sources not only adds its magnitudes, but multiplies it.   
• The Epicurean joy of being together often compensates for discomfort of any kind.    Bonded committed Epicureans are sometimes oblivious of physical discomfort when they are absorbed in the joy of being together.    

3.  Epicureans and hedonists are mismatches.

Both relationship principles are as incompatible as the differences in the responsiveness of the pleasure centers.   

A hedonistic man and an Epicurean woman are a tragic mismatch.   

Being Epicurean does not preclude the occasional indulgence in physical pleasures like delicious food, it is a known experience of little importance.    But the hedonist is ignorant and oblivious of the intellectual and emotional stimulation of the Epicurean's pleasure center, which he has never experienced due to his lacking the perceptivity and sensitivity.    When the hedonist keeps a woman in good maintenance, allowing her the same amount of physical stimulation of the pleasure center as he wants for himself, he firmly believes to be doing the right thing for having her as a long term commodity.    He is void of feeling affection.

Hedonists cannot be blamed for lacking affection due to lacking the perception of emotional and intellectual joy in their pleasure center, just as deaf persons cannot be blamed for not hearing music.    A deaf and a hearing person cannot share the joy of listening to music and the deaf person cannot be motivated to go to a concert, that he cannot hear.  
The hedonist cannot imagine the joy of bonded togetherness just as a stone age man could not imagine to hear the high quality sound of an entire orchestra played from a tiny box into his ears.  
A hedonist and an Epicurean cannot share the joy of being together and of sharing intellectual and emotional stimuli, because this does not stimulate the hedonist's pleasure center.  There is nothing to motivate him to participate in behaviors that contribute to kindling love (entry 385).   He does not feel affection and he does not recognize affection for him.  The hedonist has no reason to be together with the Epicurean woman, except when he needs her for his homeostation or any other purpose.  
Therefore the hedonist is clueless, that she perceives her restricted role as a commodity for his physical stimulation as humiliation, indignation and devaluation.   He is often completely oblivious, that he is causing her emotional dishomeostasis in growing magnitude, until the relationship has become toxic.   If he notices at all, that she has reached the limit of her endurance, he cannot comprehend, why and interprets this as her defect and flaw.