653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

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

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

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

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

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

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

Who:
 

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

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

Cooperation and consistency:
 

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

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

Trust:
 

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

Reinforcement:
 

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

Emotional risk:
 

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


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

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

Who:
 

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

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

Competition and no consistency:
 

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

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

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

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

Trust:
 

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

Reinforcement: 
 

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

634. Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

634.  Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

Men are not only derailed by merely physical infatuation triggered by their instincts from making a wise choice of a companion.  The capitalistic distortion of deriving and attributing the value of people, especially of men, mainly from their financial power has additional detrimental effects on the mating behavior.   These effects are different for those, who are affluent and for those, who are not.   

  

1.  Men with low or moderate income 

  

Either in their profiles or in private correspondence, men with low to moderate income often express the expectation and fear to be automatically rejected due to lacking assets.   This frame of mind is real and thus it does not matter, if they have come to this state of mind from a realistic interpretation of their experiences.  

   

An unfortunate reaction is their loss of the ability to recognize, to trust or to accept, when a woman expresses clearly, that she is not interested in a man's money.    They appear bitter and angry, some seem to have a low self-esteem, not matter their intellectual achievements.    They are lonely and crave a relationship, but they do not dare to strife for it anymore, instead the rant and complain.  The less they expect, the less they are motivated to invest in any attempt and thus they also have no incentive for the challenge of conquering geographic distance.

It is disheartening for me, when I try in vain to encourage someone like this, but he withdraws, poofs or makes the fallacy to reject me first to prevent a wrongly expected rejection due to his financial situation. 

 

Some of them have been rejected, but for very different reasons being their behavior, habits and/or attitudes.  The attributing of rejections wrongly to lacking money has the unfortunate consequence of impeding the needed self-improvement.   Thus the not corrected reasons for rejections lead to repeated and continued rejections.

  
2.   Affluent men
 

A wealthy man is a hazard to a non-wealthy egalitarian woman.    The ability to spend money gives people power, no matter how much or how little they do enjoy having this power and how much they are not even aware of it.    

Spending money often creates a temporary hierarchy.    The English language expresses very clearly, how monetary transactions divide people between masters and servants:  The customer orders food in a restaurant, and to order is synonymous with to command.   The waiter serves the food.    Not asking a fixed full price, but maintaining the deplorable custom of tipping aggravates this undignified distinction.   The haughty master condescends to give some extra cash to a waiter, whose fake friendliness and servility is nothing better than the manipulation to get tipped.  

Buying bread at the bakers for a fixed price is a form of the division of labor.

The more a man experiences being the master with financial power as a daily routine, the more he is prone to loose all awareness of this being a situation of his asymmetrical advantage.  Instead he is desensitized to perceive this as his innate right.   

Thus he is prone to generalize his allegedly entitlement to power also to the privacy of a relationship.   This means, he is a hazard of not only attempting to dominate a woman, but also of not even understanding, that this is not justified but an outrage.  
      
There is a second hazard, which is often visible in the profiles of those men, who brag about their assets.    They attempt to buy women using material benefits.   The hazard here is the possible fallacy of thinking that by spending lots of money upon women they are dispensing themselves of any non-material obligations or responsibilities.   They mistake giving money for a sufficient substitute for any efforts to make a relationship work.
They are also prone to consider their wealth as enough reason to be eligible for considerably younger women, even though these women often do not reciprocate:  


When given all my other criteria including being in the same age group, men in a similar financial situation are elusive and discouraged, affluent men consider me as too old, while I consider men as old as 78, who have contacted me, as not suitable, no matter who and what they are.
 

There are things like no children and no religion, where compromising for me is out of the question.  But when it comes to the financial situation of a potential mate, I am willing to compromise.   

I do prefer someone of low or moderate income and the subsequent equality of sharing resources, expenses and decisions, who feels comfortable living frugally (entry 631), who does not mind nor hesitate to invest temporary discomfort for saving money, and for whom making the best of limited resources by using his brain and acquiring compensatory skills is welcome as a challenge and an achievement.  
But I am willing to accept a man of any financial situation, if he has the qualities of a mindmate.  

584. Rejection And Objectification

584.   Rejection And Objectification

The more someone is valued and appreciated as a person, the more a rejection by this person hurts.   Experiencing such rejections is a reason to select carefully, whom to approach as a method to preclude avoidable rejections.

This is not only the case in real life, but also when initiating contact on the internet.   

Of course, there is no justification to take a rejection by a complete stranger personally.   The contacted person rejects not the unknown real personality of the contacting one, but merely the apparent impression and perception as presented by the profile. 
But this is principally a rejection of a person by a person, even when the rejected person only exists as a distorted imagination.

Many men contact women in a haphazard and indiscriminate way, without even reading profiles, taking not at all for serious, what the women want.   As a result, they get rejected very often.   Yet this seems not at all to bother or discourage them, they continue as if being rejected had no impact upon them.   

I have got aware of the probable reason.   While women reject these men as unsuitable, or even as weird and foolish for even trying the unattainable, these men do not experience the refusal as being rejected by a person.  
They are like hunters, who have attempted to shoot a rabbit and missed.   Such hunters do not feel rejected by the rabbit, they merely experience this as the failure to have hit one target, which requires to move on and try the next.   They may interpret the rejections as being themselves losers, failures, clumsy, but it is all about have missed to gain access to the use of an object.   Women are no subjects in this, only hunted objects.

They are predators hunting prey, not humans in search of a companion.   

Whenever predators objectify women by hunting them as prey, this automatically precludes their feeling rejected when they fail.    

Whenever men lack to feel rejected, this indicates objectification.  

578. There Is Nothing Wrong With Being Different

578.   There Is Nothing Wrong With Being Different

There is nothing wrong with being different, as long as one does not want to be like everybody else.   It has only the big disadvantage of the scarcity of likeminded people.  

As already mentioned in entries 575 and 577, propinquity creates attraction between personalities, it contributes to people becoming significant to each other.   
When people are forced by circumstances to interact in the absence of propinquity, this can lead to unpleasant situations and experiences.  Those people, who are not only puzzled due to their incomprehension and who misinterpret and misunderstand, often carelessly harm and reject those, who do not fit in.  

The probability of finding propinquity depends upon how much people are average and how much they differ.    The more people are at the extremes of the bell curve for any trait, skill, tendency, disposition, propensity, the less often they find propinquity and the more often they get rejected.  

But not all people suffer from rejection, some reverse the rejection and consider those, with whom they share not propinquity, also as not attractive to interact with.  Instead of feeling rejected by insignificant people, they prefer to search for people with propinquity.  

There are billions of people on this globe, and the leap in technology during the last few decades enables people today to communicate with others, no matter where they are.  Nobody needs to be bothered about insignificant people, while there are ways to find those with the potential to become significant.

According to research, being different can be beneficial for those persons, who are not motivated to be be like the majority:

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=articles

Sharon H. Kim/Lynne C. Vincent/Jack A. Goncalo: SOCIAL REJECTION AND CREATIVITY

"In three studies, we show that individuals who hold an independent self-concept performed more creatively following social rejection relative to inclusion. We also show that this boost in creativity is mediated by a differentiation mindset, or salient feelings of being different from others."