657. An Example Of An Emotionally Hazardous Man

657.   An Example Of An Emotionally Hazardous Man

In entry 650 I compared the asymmetry in how male and female singles are coping with their needs and instincts.    Singles of both genders can successfully established a network of sources for their intellectual and emotional needs.   By this network of family, colleagues, friends, buddies, all cognitive needs are fulfilled.  What remains unfulfilled, are only the instinctive urges.  

Under such circumstances, men continue to be driven by dishomeostasis towards the use of female bodies.    But women are in the fortunate situation of not being afflicted with the same recurrent urge to get rid of procreative body waste.    Therefore women in the same situation either feel no additional needs of a kind, which requires a man's body.   When women are driven by instincts, it is towards breeding and towards a man as a provider.   Only very few women are ever driven towards a man for the mere purpose of copulating with a body.   Women who want nothing better are very rare, while there are many men preferring them.  

The consequence is a very unfortunate imbalance.   There are many men with no other relationship needs except for a female body, but whose basic decency causes them to refrain from paid abuse.   They search in vain for women, who also have no needs or demands for anything better than a male body.    When they get instead in contact with those women, who need a bonding companion, a safe haven based upon emotional and intellectual intimacy, these women are at a very high risk of being hurt.

This risk is aggravated by some men's insufficient theory of mind.   Being unaware of the implications, that women are not afflicted by the same body waste dishomeostasis as men are, they have instead the delusion, that women share the same instinctive needs.    Only those men, who know, when they hurt and abuse women, have a choice to refrain from doing so.   

A woman needs to be very perceptive for red flags indicating the hazard of being hurt, the earlier and the better she notices them, the more she can protect herself.    


The following is a good example.

I have been contacted by a man, who has listed some search criteria in his profile.
Unfortunately he did not reply to my asking permission to quote him literally, so I try to paraphrase him with the least distortion.   And of course, the following are conjectures from limited information.

    
Two of his criteria are red flags, and his replies to my reservations about these issues made the red flags grew even bigger. 
   
1.   By his criteria, a woman should not require to be his only female friend.   In his reply he claims that jealousy is poisonous and a consequence of a weak relationship.

2.   By his criteria, a woman should not hold him responsible for her emotional wellness.   In his reply he claims that a whole person cannot be hurt by anybody, that being vulnerable means a need to work on oneself and that people are only accountable to themselves for what they feel.  


This man is a nightmare for any woman, who wants a bonded companion, an exclusive confidante, a safe haven, a mindmate.   With him, there is nothing better available than a body in bed.   When his denial of a woman's non-physical needs and his emotional cheating with other women hurt her, he does not take responsibility but blames it upon her flaw and weakness.   Oversimplified, the gist is that if a woman disagrees with how he treats her, it is the woman's defect, while nothing he does, can be wrong.  

1.   For simple minded and immature people, the simple definition of cheating is not getting physically involved with any other person.   Anything else is not understood as cheating and is considered as permissible.   Any objection is rejected as unjustified jealousy.
People without a mature theory of mind are unaware of the harm done as a consequence of this oversimplified definition.   
When such a man's entire non-physical needs are met by his network, he can be misled to firmly believe to be a trophy husband, as long as he spends every night in the bed shared with his partner and does not touch other women.    

When he shares his innermost feelings and troubles with female confidantes other than his bed partner, whom he emotionally and intellectually excludes from being a companion, he feels justified and entitled to do so.  
When he knows in advance his strong permanent and persistent need for multiple important female friends, this clearly indicates, that no woman has ever any chance to become exclusively significant as his one and only bonded companion and confidante.    The exclusivity of only one significant partner is beyond his imagination.        

A different man, mature and with a good theory of mind, is able to draw a clear line between female acquaintances, who are kept at a sufficient and safe emotional distance.   He is able to understand the importance of having close friends as common friends.

2.  Healthy people do not get hurt by insignificant persons, and they are capable to choose, who is significant.    People with a healthy emotionality are vulnerable to what significant people do to them.  Entering a meaningful personal relationship with a significant other implies to make oneself vulnerable.   It implies to give the significant other the power to have an impact upon the emotional wellbeing and it is based upon the trust, that this power is not abused.
People, whom nobody can hurt, are either robots, monsters or psychopaths, or they are unable to perceive someone as significant and to allow anybody to become significant.   One method to interpret this man's normative statement is to imply, that he avoids being vulnerable by not allowing any person to get close, not even a woman in a relationship.  
If this man does, what he claims, he would not hesitate to return every night to the bed of a woman, who lies, cheats and betrays him, and the lacking emotional impact of her behavior upon him clearly indicates, that to him, she is not a person of significance, but only a body and an object.    As long as the availability of her body serves his physiological needs, nothing else of what she does matters.   And if he considers this as normal, then he obviously has never in his life experienced a woman as significant.  

Enhancing the shared happiness is a common goal of a bonded couple, while it is an illusion to passively expect to be made happy by the other's proactive actions.  A partner has no obligation to add to the other's emotional wellbeing.   But the trust of making oneself vulnerable causes and justifies the other's moral obligation and responsibility to avoid hurting, harming and damaging the emotional wellbeing.   It cannot be justified, that one partner profits from a relationship and in return damages the other's emotional wellbeing.    The baseline has to always be Epicurus' principle of not harming and not being harmed.   

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."

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.

575. Propinquity - Significance - Importance -1

575.   Propinquity - Significance - Importance -1

I just got aware of a word, that suits to be used in my quest: Propinquity.  

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

"In social psychology, propinquity (from Latin propinquitas, "nearness") is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Propinquity can mean physical proximity, a kinship between people, or a similarity in nature between things ("like-attracts-like"). .....just as two people with similar political beliefs possess a higher propinquity than those whose beliefs strongly differ. "

Propinquity as the psychological proximity depends on the identity by what is subjectively experienced as constituting the essence of the personality.   

Perceiving propinquity means having an awareness of the own identity and having knowledge about the similarities with the other's same traits and attributes.

Experiencing propinquity means the additional knowledge of the other's sharing the same identity.     

Propinquity is cognitive or intellectual between those persons, who identify with the same cognitive essence of their personalities.   They share similar cognitive preferences as are attitudes, opinions, convictions, beliefs, values, morals and world views.   Cognitive propinquity is often not obvious but requires profound knowledge about a person's cognitive preferences.   Ignorance or misinformation impede it. 

But the subjective perception of the importance of areas of propinquity can vary widely.   People can for example also identify by their looks, by their physical fitness, by their fertility, by their religious delusion, by their artistic abilities, by a shared passion for a hobby or by congenital traits as ethnicity and nationality.   

Propinquity creates attraction, and attraction contributes to the perception of people as significant.    But attraction can also have other causes, which then lead to the perception of people as only important but not as significant. 

Significance and importance are not the same.   Any inanimate object and any person can be important as a source of benefits, while remaining insignificant as an individual specimen.  
When any smashed regular car is replaced by another, the new car becomes equally important for giving the equal benefits as a vehicle.  But the last remaining specimen of an antique car is significant, because it cannot be easily replaced.  
The same with persons.   When a man is attracted to a woman's body due to obtaining a lot of pleasure from using her, she can be very important for him as long as he gets, what he wants.   But when he dumps and replaces her with another equally attractive body, this body becomes just as important.  These women are important, but they are not significant.   
But when a man is cognitively attracted to what he shares with a woman's unique brain and personality, then she is more than important, she is significant for being herself, and when lost, she cannot be easily replaced.  

Significance is more than importance.  People can be important to each other without propinquity, but only propinquity makes them significant. Therefore propinquity and significance are correlated, while importance can have many reasons.   

People can even be negatively important.  It can be very important to avoid those, who are unpleasant, repulsive and aversive.

There are several constellations of reciprocity or asymmetry concerning propinquity, significance and importance.   This will be continued in another entry.