672. Avoiding Commitment Is Unhealthy

672.   Avoiding Commitment Is Unhealthy

Often people, who are not in a relationship, especially those, who had been hurt, cope with this situation by distributing their emotional and social needs over a variety of sources, children, family, colleagues, buddies.   What first starts as a method of substitution, sometimes reduces or eliminates all subjectively felt need to find a partner and the situation is perpetuated. 

  
Women in such a situation often claim to not need a man at all.  Thus they at least do not harm anybody.  
Men in such a situation unfortunately are also a jeopardy for women needing a companion, because while they can fulfill all their emotional and social need by combined substitutes, they continue to have physiological needs.  They restore their homeostasis by the temporary abuse of female bodies, but refuse commitment.   

According to this research, such a system of substitutes does not suffice to maintain optimal health:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130703101607.htm

"New BYU research finds that people in happy marriages live less "in sickness" but enjoy more of life "in health."

In a 20-year longitudinal study tracking health and marriage quality, BYU family life researcher Rick Miller found that as the quality of marriage holds up over the years, physical health holds up too."

This has unfortunate implications.   The more people feel a deficit, the more they are motivated to change this actively.   Men on dating sites, who have settled in such a system of substitutions, are often not motivated to make the least efforts towards finding a committed relationship, while they are still healthy and fit.   They make the big mistake of waiting passively and with inertia, until some perfect dream woman would falls from the sky directly into their bed.    

In my age group, these men's mistake can be fatal.   They are in denial, that once they have undermined their health and are already sick, frail and in need of a caring woman, then it is too late to find one.   Few women are interested to start a relationship as a nurse.        

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.   

386. Criticizing - Love - Respect

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

336. Amending or Preventive Responsibility

Amending or Preventive Responsibility

I do not expect from a man to make me happy as a onesided activity of his.  

Happiness depends on the coaction of

• the wise choice of a compatible partner, who is able to fulfill all important relationship needs.
• a relationship deal as a carved in stone agreement concerning the fulfillment of each other's relationship needs, this being the precondition for getting involved.

Besides relationship needs for proactive behavior there are needs for abstinence behavior, which are at least equally important.   Often people are well aware of their expectations of a partner's specific proactive behaviors, while they cannot foresee all future abstinence needs.    Obviously, a person cannot know or think of all behaviors, by which s/he will feel hurt, disturbed, annoyed and even damaged, until having experienced them for the first time in this relationship.  

Therefore, it is easy to make a comprehensive list of proactive behaviors to be included in the relationship deal.   But it is difficult to include all abstinence behaviors, while not knowing in advance, which behaviors will cause disruption in the future.   

Therefore responsibility is of paramount importance.    A responsible person is motivated to do no harm to another, and if harm is done, is motivated to undo it or compensate for it.  

Taking responsibility or not can have several patterns.

1. Transgressions
   
   A transgression means, that the transgressor causes harm knowing in advance, that his behavior is harmful, therefore he has a choice to cause the harm or to refrain.  
   1.1.  No responsibility
   The transgressor feels either entitled to his transgressions or he feels entitled to excuse and exonerate himself in disagreement with the victim.
   1.2.  Extrinsic amending responsibility
   The transgressor does not take responsibility as in 1.1, but he makes amends for the sole purpose of precluding bad consequences for himself.   He considers the transgression as a mere mistake in reaching his own purpose.  
   
   When there are transgressions, the relationship is doomed.  
   
   
2. Accidental harm
   
   Accidental harm is often caused as a consequence of ignorance, carelessness, oversight, distraction.
   
   2.1. No responsibility
   An emotional moron is not able to take responsibility for any harm he ever does, instead he excuses and exonerates himself, even in disagreement with the victim.   In this case, the relationship is doomed.
   2.2. Intrinsic amending responsibility
   A person feels and accepts responsible for all the harm, that he does, once it comes to his awareness.  Then he apologizes, feels sincerely sorry and makes amends.   But he is not bothered, until the harm is done and it is too late to avoid it.   Life with him is a roller coaster of the cycles of harm and amends, often as a repetition of the same hurtful behavior.  Sincere apologies and amends are a way of restoring harmony, but every harm causes nevertheless sufferings, that should be avoided and prevented.
   2.3. Preventive responsibility
   This is an important requirement for happiness in a committed relationship.   It means, that a partner considers the consequences of his behavior upon the other, before he acts, while he still has a choice.   If he does not know, how his behavior would impact his partner, he consults her, before he proceeds.   If he has done accidental harm, he not only makes amends for what has been done, but he focuses upon learning, how not to repeat the same or similar harm in the future.   
   He cares for her emotional wellbeing, and he expresses this in his attempts to learn to know her well enough to know, what specific behaviors to avoid as being especially hurtful, annoying and discomforting for her.  
   

Bonded committed partners, who both are motivated by preventive responsibility, are sharing a learning process, during which they will succeed to cause less and less harm to each other, the longer they are together.  While for instinct driven people, especially men, the importance of a relationship fades along with the initial physical infatuation, for bonded and committed companions, the relationship develops towards more happiness over time.    

That is, what I wish to happen with my mindmate to be found.  

295. Intrinsic Commitment and Emotions

Intrinsic Commitment and Emotions

A viable relationship has to be a fair balance of giving and receiving, according to the relationship deal.     I can only last, if both partners feel satisfied with the relationship.    

Entries 262 and 98 are about the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic commitment.   But there are some more differnces:

• How the satisfaction with the relationship is measured.
• If and how information about satisfaction or dissatisfaction is conveyed and shared.
• How a partner handles dissatisfaction.   

Extrinsic commitment is based upon the balance of material and practical benefits and services.   In extrensic commitment, the compliance of the deal or the dissatisfaction of the failure thereof can easily be claimed and evaluated.     If a man demands a  specific service or benefit from the woman, no matter if by agreement or by his entitlement delusion, it is easy to specify and to blame her for what he did not get.    

A man, who considers the woman as a commodity, has the power to bully her to do and to comply with what he wants.    Bullying it the man's method to deal with his dissatisfaction, that the woman does not agree to be a commodity.   She has only the power to leave, and that is, where his power ends. 
Bullying as a love killer (entry 294) therefore only happens, when the bonding-disabled man establishes extrinsic commitment.    Bullying happens, when either the woman wants intrinsic commitment or accepts extrinsic commitment, but as a fair deal and not as his commodity.  

The man remains ignorant, that the woman's dissatisfaction is caused by the imposed role of a commodity, he is deaf to her complaints and blames her dissatisfaction instead upon her alleged flaws.    Bullies are unable to trust, that makes them such a hazard.   The man does not trust the woman, he never believes any of her statements about her feelings, he cannot be influenced to alter his using her as a commodity.  When she tells him, how much a specific behavior is hurting, he believes, that this behavior cannot hurt anybody, because it is his entitlement.   He attributes her feeling hurt as her own flaw and continues his hurting behavior.   Her pain accumulates, until the relationship has no more value for her and she leaves.  


Intrinsic commitment is about emotions, the relationship deal is giving each other the feelings of wellbeing in a safe haven. Nothing can be gained by power.   A man can never bully a woman to love him.   If he wants to be loved and his wellbeing to be cared for, he can win her good will only by treating her the way she needs and wants to be treated.   

The conscious measurement of satisfaction with the relationship is the perception of pleasant and unpleasant emotions elicited by the partner.   While extreme emotions are usually visible, more moderate emotions are often not visible on the outside, but have nevertheless a significant impact upon a person's general wellbeing.   This impact can accumulate.   A person can feel either content and happy or hurt most of the time, but this can be hidden from the awareness of the person causing these emotions.    Therefore sincere communication about the true innermost feelings is the only way to find out with certainly, if the partner is satisfied with the relationship.   This means to ask, to listen and to trust, that the other tells the truth.  

Each partner evaluates the relationship very subjectively by what he feels.  These emotions are real and valid, they are the true measurement of the quality of the relationship, because the only purpose of intrinsic commitment is to be more happy and less unhappy than alone.   The partners can compare notes about the dynamics of their behavior, but the emotional reactions are subjective.   People can react very differently to the same experience.   What is extremely painful for one person can be of no significance to another.    In this case, the subjective experience has validity, no matter, if the cause of the experience has empathy, understanding and insight or not.  
Therefore intrinsic commitment requires absolute trust in the truth of the other's declarations of how he feels, and it requires taking everything said for serious and at face value.    It requires to ask and show interest in the emotional reactions of the other as a result of the own behavior.   Intrinsic commitment is the never ending endavor of making each other perceive the relationship as emotionally beneficial.   

Whenever a woman tells a man, that she feels hurt because of a specific behavior of his, he knows that he needs to change the behavior.   If he continues his hurting behavior and she reaches the point of feeling more hurt than happy, then the relationship has become worthless for her, and she has no reason to stay.  

A sane, decent and mature man in intrinsic commitment is aware of these basic facts:

1. The emotions of a woman are real, true and valid for herself, no matter, what others think or claim that she should feel.
2. The woman's evaluation of the relationship is based only upon her own subjective emotions, as she experiences them.
3. Disagreement, claims, denials, accusations, interpretations can influence and distort, how the man perceives and interprets the expressed and declared emotions of the woman, but he cannot influence, what the woman subjectively feels.  
4. If the man wants to influence the emotions of the woman, he can only change his own behavior, that causes the emotions.   If he wants her to feel happy, he has to treat her well.
5. The only way to make a woman stay in a relationship of intrinsic commitment is to treat her in a way, that causes her to feel happy, and to abstain from all behavior, that hurts her.    
6. A woman has no rational reason whatsoever to be or to remain in a relationship, where she experiences more pain than joy and happiness and the pain is a result of the man's behavior.  
7. Pain caused by hurting behavior cannot be annihilated or compensated with any other benefit.    Such pain can only avoided by stopping the hurting behavior.  

The jerk or the emotional moron asks, how good he feels because of having control over a woman as a commodity.    

The wise man asks, how good he can make the woman feel, when and because she is with him.

286. The Micro Cycle of Abuse

The Micro Cycle of Abuse

The Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle in entry 285 is a macro cycle, but there is also a micro cycle of abuse.   In entry 124 I used the example of a couple walking through a city and the man suddenly stopping in front of a ticky-tacky restaurant to illustrate the difference between a caring man and a jerk.  

A considerate mature man would only suggest to her to eat there.    If she does not like the place, they would agree on a compromise.   They would look around for a while, maybe an hour, if they find another place, that they both like, but if not, they would come back.    
The considerate man also is someone, who informs a woman in advance of what is going on, so that she can be a part of all decisions.  He does not wait to tell her of his wish to eat, until he stands with pangs of hunger in front of a restaurant.  He takes note of first signs of getting hungry, and before he is craving for food, he suggests to find a place to eat that both like.

The jerk feels entitled to get, what he wants, immediately and the woman is a commodity to serve his needs.    The jerk is alone in this world, he has no shade of a doubt, that no alternative exists to his executing and enforcing his solitary decision, what to do about a need, as soon as he gets aware of having it.   Any other person in his reach is either a tool or a hindrance to his decision.  
If the restaurant scene is in a foreign country, the woman is the commodity to translate the menu.   With the jerk, she has no chance to have her needs and wishes considered as equal to his.    He either bullies her with an outburst of so much anger into the restaurant, that she has no choice but to submit, before it escalates into a public scene.   Or if he outwardly agrees to find another place to eat, even if indeed they find a really nice place where he does enjoy the food, he still blames her forever for her resistance to submit to his needs in immediate obedience.    He perceives her resistance to be a commodity as an outrage and not as her right of an equal partner.

If the woman is someone like me, then the most important part of a relationship is the closeness of reciprocally sharing all the innermost feelings.    That means, that he tells her his true and uncensored feelings, but also, that he is interested in hers and that he wants to know her true feelings in his attempt to treat her, how she needs and wants to be treated.  

After having been bullied into the restaurant, the woman feels extreme pain due to this act of devaluation and disrespect, of not being asked but dominated, of having his will forced upon her, of her needs not even being considered.     Mistaking him for a good natured and decent man, who just was not aware of what he is doing, she later on attempts to share her feelings with him.   She tries to make him understand, how much his behavior has been hurting her, and why.   Under the assumption, that he cares for her, she attempts to support him in learning how to treat her in the future with more respect and consideration.   
But instead of getting signs of caring understanding, she talks to a wall.   With some annoyance, he keeps on repeating, that he was hungry, as if being hungry is enough justification for his domination.   He firmly believes, that when he is hungry, he alone has the right to decide, what to do about it, as if she did not exist.   This for him is just self-evident and nobody and nothing can instill any doubt about this in his mind.   

She talks to a wall, when she craves to get the understanding of a mindmate.   She feels alone, but she had entered a relationship to be the safe haven of being understood and considered.   The pain of feeling alone and not understood aggravates the feelings of having been humiliated by the bullying.    She wants to find relief from her pain, and the only possible relief for her is getting through the wall and change his attitude about what is the correct way to treat her.   

She repeats her attempts to explain her feelings, her experience, her perception to him, but it is as futile as the attempts of a fly to leave through the window pane.    In the meantime, he continues to use rage and anger to get her compliance with whatever he wants, and thus things are getting worse for her.   

After a while, her craving to influence him to stop his hurting behaviors becomes a compulsion, and the futility finally makes her loose her countenance.    When she calls him an idiot and an a**hole and such, then this confirms his belief, that she is inferior, flawed and hysterical.   It enhances his already strong belief, that what goes on in her mind is of no significance at all.   
He had started the abuse by bullying her into the restaurant, but in the end, he can point out, that it was her, who used abusive language.    This reinforces his delusion, that his behavior is correct, and her disapproval and her sufferings are indicating, that she is flawed.   He feels even more self-righteous, when he continues to bully her.   As a consequence, she suffers more, her self-control gets weaker, her outbursts get more frequent and more vehement. 

 
If the woman does not have the wisdom and the strength to get rid of that jerk, before it gets too bad, then she will break down one day.      

280. Subjective Reality - 2

Subjective Reality - 2

A viable relationship is based upon the common endeavour to spare each other pain and to care about each other's happiness.    This requires a mutually full awareness of each other's subjective experiences as valid and real.   It also requires the full unrestricted mutual disclosure of both partners' true innermost feelings.   What causes pain and how much is respected as a part of the partner's personality and not devalued as a weakness and a flaw. 

Both partners need the validation of their feelings as real and as appropriate.  They need mutually to accept, that each other's reactions are logical, in proportion and adequate to the severity of what they have subjectively experienced, even if they would not react the same under similar circumstances. 

One partner has either the empathy to feel the pain of the other or he has the trust to take any of the other's statements about subjective experiences as true.   Otherwise he is unable to care and to alleviate pain and discomfort.   Caring persons never assume or tell their partners, what they should feel and what not.   They are interested to know, what the other really feels, and this can only be found out by asking and by listening.  

When one partner respects and appreciates the other as an equal and as a person of rationality and intelligence, then not understanding the other's behavior or utterances is considered as a matter of communication.    Jumping to the conclusion, that all incomprehensible behavior of the other indicates flaws, shows disrespect.    Asking and listening until there is understanding shows respect.  
This goes both ways.   Not explaining, when the other does not understand, but expecting submission to incomprehensible behavior is also disrespect.    Appreciation is based on both, on interest in the other's subjective reality and on sharing the own.  

When such partners support each other with advice, suggestions and offering help, this is based upon the accepted reality of the other, not by redefining and reinterpreting it.

This requires, that both partners have full understanding of the dynamics between them.   It requires especially the full awareness of the difference between when one partner initiates an action, and when one partner reacts to what the other has initiated.    A completely logical reaction can appear incomprehensible, if mistaken for an action by the own initiative.     

This requires trust.   If one partner doubts the self-disclosure and statements of the other with suspicions of a hidden agenda or exaggeration for the purpose of manipulation, he can never know the true subjective reality.
  
It also requires mutual verification, that what one understands as the other's reality is the same as what was attempted to be conveyed.   

Undistorted knowledge of the other's subjective reality requires to beware and not to fall into psychological traps of doing the following without correction by verifying it:

• Projecting the own reality upon the other.
• Taking anything for granted
• Jumping to conclusions instead of listening
• Confounding wishful thinking with reality
• Avoiding the truth by denial

In short, it is important to avoid applying to the partner's reality the same defense mechanism, that people are prone to use in distorting the full awareness of their own reality.

The three steps to understanding the partner's reality are:

1. Acknowledging the own complete ignorance of the partner's subjective reality.
2. Asking, listening to and verifying in cooperation and communication with the partner without doubting the sincerity and accuracy
3. Accepting the partner's reality as equally valid and justified as the own

Accepting the partner's reality is not possible, when it contradicts the own basic values or needs.   In this case the couple is not compatible as mindmates in intrinsic commitment.    Tolerance and denial are not a solution for bonding.   
Tolerance only works for those couples, who have the mutual agreement of being only infatuated with each other's bodies, without a wish to deeply be bonded or of breeding as the main purpose of the relationship.   

Example:   When one partner's subjective reality is based upon religious believes, while the other's reality is based upon rationality and science, then the two can gain full knowledge of the partner's subjective reality, but they are incompatible, because the can never accept the other's reality as equally valid and justified as the own.   Their tolerance is mutual condescension.   The religious person often feels sorry for the nonbelievers lack of enlightenment and dire fate after death.   The rational person considers the blind belief as a deficit in rationality.  

277. Bonded Love

Bonded Love
My purpose for writing this blog is to find my mindmate to spend the rest of my life with.   But I hardly ever use the word love.    Love is such a fuzzy, evasive word.  It has too many different meanings under different circumstances and for different people.

Love is a word like weather, which can mean sunshine, rain or storm.   

People call it love, when they mena

• infatuation with a body
• attraction to benefits
• the closeness to a sibling
• the addiction of a parent to care unconditionally for a selfish, even unworthy child
• the adulation for a person far out of the own league or out of reach
• the attraction to a delusional entity like a deity   

And it can be the emotional expression and perception of intrinsic commitment.    That is, why I prefer to talk of intrinsic commitment as what I am looking for and not of the love that comes along with it.    I could talk of love and implicitly imply, that intrinsic commitment comes along with the kind of love that I want.  But this would not be obvious.    

For the purpose of clarity, I will call it 'bonded love'. 

When a man tells a woman, that he loves her, this statement by itself conveys very little information.   It tells only, that he has a reason for wanting to interact with her.  What kind of love he feels can only be inferred indirectly from the way he behaves and treats her as a result of his attitude towards her.     

There are several indications, if a man feels bonded love or not:

1. Trust
   With bonded love, a trusting man shares his innermost feelings and expects support but never any bad consequences or selfish motives.
2. Esteem
   If a man in bonded love makes a mistake in his evaluation of his beloved, he overestimates her by worshipping the ground she walks on, but he does not underestimate her.  
3. Care
   He cares for her wellbeing at least as much as for his own.   He feels even driven to make sacrifices for her, for which she does not ask at all.   He only feels good and happy, if it is the same for her.  
4. Unit
   He has the identity of being half of a unit.    He cooperates with her to make the relationship as beneficial as possible for both of them together. 
5. Importance
   She is an important part of his life.  
6. Affection
   Affection is an ingredient of bonded love.   Affection is usually noticeable in the tone of the voice, facial expression, body language and gestures.  

Just as in science, a woman can suspect, that a man's love is not bonded.   She cannot prove the absence of bonded love.    But when a man claims to have bonded love for her, she can disprove his claim, if she experiences the evidence of behavior, that contradicts the above list of indications. 

An example of such evidence is a man's use of rage and intimidation to bully a woman to do or to allow, what he wants, but what is unpleasant, annoying, uncomfortable or painful for her. 

This is a clear disproof of a claim of bonded love, if he has made such a claim.   Otherwise it is a disproof of her assumption of  his declared love being bonded love.   She cannot really know, what the word love means to him, therefore she cannot disproof the claim of love by his own definition.

1. Lack of Trust
   He does not trust her, that she is motivated to be fair and caring.  He does not trust her to compromise based upon a consideration for his needs as equally valid to hers.   
2. Lack of Esteem
   He has not enough esteem for her to honor her with rational communication until she is convinced, that they have solved a conflict in a fair way.   
3. Lack of Care
   He does not care for her needs, she is a tool for the purpose to fulfill his.   
4. Not a Unit
   He perceives and considers himself as a single man competing and struggling with her to get selfish benefits..   He wants to gain power to ascertain his control over the benefits.   
5. Lack of Importance
   She is not important enough to convince her of what he wants, by bullying he can procure it faster and with less effort.
6. Lack of Affection
   When a man says 'I love you' and 'I love peanut butter' in exactly the same way, this most probably means, that he has no affection for the woman.  

I am looking for bonded love as a logical side effect of intrinsic commitment, and I do not take words for it, if  contradicted by behavior.   

But I am always willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt.    It is possible, that I experience a man's behavior as bullying, and he has no clue of the impact of his behavior upon me.   Then it is a conflict that needs communication to solve it.    

If I after my explanation of why I felt bullied he still considers the bullying behavior as his entitlement, then this is the verification of the disproof of bonded love.  

If he acknowledges, that he made a mistake and needs to learn, how to treat me better in the future, then the conflict is solved and bonded love is not disproved.  

276. Needs, Habits, Consideration and the Relationship Deal

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

There are very different kinds of needs.   Some needs are

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

1.  Subjective and individual needs:

Examples:

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

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

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

Example:

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

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

3.  Considerations

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

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


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

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

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

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

273. Subjective Reality - 1

Subjective Reality - 1

A bonded intrinsic committed relationship implies, that both partners share a common reality.   

The conflicts of my examples in the entries 271 and 272 are extreme situations, because one partner is an emotional moron.   But those examples illustrate the extreme situation, when each partner in a relationship has a different reality, is ignorant of the reality of the other, either denies the existence of the reality of the other or rejects it as unsuitable for himself to adapt and compromise.    The meaning of the shared realities of mature people will be the topic of another entry.

The woman's reality is based upon her value system, that having a physical relationship is inseparably connected with sharing and intrinsic commitment, and that from the beginning of physical intimacy on, both have mutual obligations to each other.  One of these obligation is to consult each other and share decisions and never ever force solitary decisions upon the other.    Her reality is determined by her strong sensitivity for abstract and complex emotions like dignity, respect, equality, humiliation and such.
In the man's reality determined by his impaired abstract thinking, every woman in a relationship is a friend with benefits, if there is not marriage, and if he accepts any obligation, it is the one not to cheat.   He has no doubt, that he is justificed to decide alone, because he is a single man and therefore she is not a part of his life, but only a peripheral addition to it.    

Every time, when he imposes a solitary decision upon her without consulting her, she feels extremely hurt, while he believes to be a good man doing nothing wrong.   

In the worst case, they both are clueless about each other's reality.  They both project their own reality upon the other and take it for granted, that the other has the same reality.  Therefore they have wrong expectations of each other.
She is extremely hurt, because she perceives his behavior as betrayal and she considers him as a jerk, as selfish and abusive.    He is annoyed about her incomprehensible behavior, because he cannot understand, that she has reacted in a logical way to his behavior.    The visible behavior of a person can be immediately understandable as the pain and outrage after having been hurt, while it would appear puzzling and weird to someone ignorant of her pain.

This couple has reached an impasse and a dead end.    Each other's behavior based upon the subjective reality is hurting or disturbing, and neither of them knows why.   

Theoretically, they could either both become friends with benefits, or both become committed.    But this is not a real solution.  

Even when the woman has enough insight to find out, that he is an emotional moron and not a jerk, and that he does not intent to hurt her due to having not the slightest comprehension, that and why she feels hurt, and even if she can see, that in his way of thinking, there is no commitment without marriage, this does not mean, that becoming a friend with benefits is emotionally an option for her.   She would only exchange one extreme pain, that of being disrespected and betrayed by the refusal to be a partner in making decisions, with the other extreme pain of hurting her dignity and self-respect by allowing a man to use her body without giving her the respect of commitment.    She would jump from the frying pan into the fire.  
Therefore she is trapped in a relationship, that will always be painful.  

In entry 272 I described the mechanisms, how the emotional moron with impaired abstract thinking is trapped by his own impairment and immune to being influenced by the woman.    With the man described there, the relationship is doomed, he will never stop to hurt her without knowing, what he does.     He is moron variety A, who lacks trust and who attributes failure to others rather than to himself.  

But there can be a different kink of the emotional moron with impaired abstract thinking, I will call him variety B.  

• He fully trusts the woman and takes at face value, what she says.
• He acknowledges his limitation in understanding her abstract way of thinking and feeling.  
• She is very important to him and he acknowledges and admits it.

Moron A is convinced not to do anything wrong, and attributes all her incomprehensible behavior to her flaws.   What he does not know, does not exist.    He does not trust her.   Whatever she says, he doubts it, because he suspects her of having a hidden agenda of attempting to take advantage and dominate him.  He thinks that she exaggerates as a part of her agenda.  When she attempts to tell him, that she feels very hurt by his behavior, he reinterprets this as if she said that she feels a tiny bit uncomfortable.   But most of the time he is not bothered to listen at all, because from a flawed person he does not expect anything worth listening.     That is, why he cannot help it but to start the spiral of causing her more and more pain and interpreting her more and more devastated behavior as her being more and more flawed.

Moron B is very different.   He has accepted that his impairment makes it sometimes very difficult to understand people's abstract and complex reasoning and emotions.    He is aware that he has the problem and needs supportive people to explain things to him with patience.    He acknowledges, that her reality is sometimes different from his, because of her abstract and his concrete thinking.    He does not blame his failure on others, he does not project his own deficit on the woman as her flaw.  
When she tells him, that she feels pain, because he had excluded her from the decision, he takes this at face value.  He accepts, what she tells him, without doubting it, even though he takes being friends with benefits so much for granted, that he himself also does not expect from her to consult him prior to a decision.    He neither doubts the magnitude or her pain nor that he is the cause, even though he did not intend it.    He is willing to take responsibility.
He attempts to understand her explanations, but even if he cannot, he asks her, what she expects him to do.   He does not want to cause her pain.    He is an emotional moron and his abstraction ability is impaired, but caring for her is important for him.   He cares for her wellbeing without projecting, and due to his being limited by concrete thinking, his guidance in caring is her feedback, what of his conduct is good and what is painful for her.  
If he does not understand, what betrayal, commitment, obligation, responsibility mean in the world of abstract thinking, then he just asks her for instructions of how to treat her.    In this example, they can agree on a simple rule, that whenever there is something to decide, they talk about it first and that he never decides anything without consulting her.  Slowly, rule by rule, he can learn to behave exactly like a committed partner, even though he cannot understand the abstract concept of intrinsic commitment.   
This can work, but only, if he entrusts himself without restrictions and hesitations to her guidance. 

Not all emotional morons are doomed to remain alone or drive a woman into despair, but when they have the additional affliction of narcissism and distrust, then it means disaster for the woman.  

271. Emotional Morons and Impaired Abstract Thinking - 1

Emotional Morons and Impaired Abstract Thinking - 1

In entry 161, I distinguished between the jerk and the emotional moron in the amount of damage done to a mature woman due to the absence or presence of a conscience.  
In entry 264, I compared the emotional effects of an emotional moron with those of Procrustes.

But my description of an emotional moron was only describing one subtype.    The problem is more complex.  

The damage done by an emotional moron depends on two main factors.

1.   He does not know, how to treat the woman according to her wishes and needs.  
2.   He cannot be influenced by her to treat her the way she needs to be treated.

In scenario 2 of entry 161, I described the emotional moron as an immature man with enough insight, empathy and perception to allow to be influenced to improve.    He is someone, who has developed at least normal intelligence and abstraction abilities, but his development of emotional intelligence is delayed and lagging behind, maybe as a result of not having had the occasion to learn.   

There is a different type of emotional moron, who appears even more like a jerk without being one.    He has a general problem with impaired abstract thinking.   

1.  The emotional moron with impaired abstract thinking is oblivious of how to treat a woman the way she needs to be treated, but he does not know it. 

The development of the human mind goes from egocentric and concrete thinking during childhood to the ability of abstract thinking of adults.    Abstract thinking also is a development from the simple knowledge, that for example what someone says can be either true or false to the more complex understanding of the manipulative purpose of lies and intrigue.  

When someone's development gets stuck somewhere between concrete and simple abstract thinking, this causes an impairment in his coping with many aspects of life.    This can remain unnoticed by superficial contact.   It has the most detrimental impact on very close persons like a partner or family members.  

An excellent memory enables a person with impaired abstract thinking to compensate so well, that he can bluff others to appear intelligent.  He does not bluff consciously, he bluffs himself too, because he is not aware, that he has a deficit.  He lives with the belief, that all others are like him, having an excellent memory and concrete thinking.  He even can get a university degree by memorizing abstract ideas so well, that he can pass tests by reproducing, what he had read without comprehension.    He can impress people by talking about what he has not really understood, as long as he can avoid situations, where appropriate behavior is impossible unless guided by the full comprehension of complex abstractions.     He may fail at a job without this being attributed to a lack of abstract thinking neither by him nor by others. 

Emotional intelligence is more than the innate ability to feel empathy for someone visibly experiencing something familiar due to own experience.   It requires also the simple abstract thinking to perceive, that the other can visibly experience things, that oneself does not experience the same way, and comprehend, that this is nevertheless the other's valid reality.   But that is not enough, there is also the requirement to accept, that the other has a subjective reality, that is not visible and different from the own.    This reality is only accessible by inquiry about the other's feelings and needs, and by taking the answer for serious and at face value.   A caring mature partner uses this information as his guidance how to treat the partner.
  
The emotional moron, who is stuck in concrete thinking, is unable to take this perspective.   Depending on when his development got stuck, caring is limited.   He can emphasize with tooth ache and project his own physical needs upon the partner.    But the abstract understanding of the hidden different but genuine needs, emotions and perception of another person is beyond his ability.  
Just as he can bluff to appear intelligent, he can also use his good memory to bluff himself and his partner to appear having emotional intelligence.   As with general intelligence, as soon as he needs to behave in accordance with his bluff, of which he is unaware, he fails.  

1.1.   The emotional moron cannot experience abstract emotions.

Example.   An emotional moron has derived theoretical knowledge about relationship matters from books and he believes to know how to treat a woman.   As a result, he promises her to never embarrass her.    She is pleased and misinterprets this as an indication of his emotional intelligence.    But the word embarrassing just does not mean the same to him as to her.   
For him, it has only the very simple concrete meaning of not showing any really gross behavior in public.    For her, the word means a lot more, it is an abstract concept of never doing anything, that would cause her to feel bad due to strangers being witnesses of what he does.    For her, conduct like letting strangers hear private conversations, bad table manners, public inappropriate behavior of any subtle kind and much more are embarrassing, while for him, it is not, because he is oblivious, that such behavior can be perceived as embarrassing by anybody.
As a consequence, in spite of his good intentions and his promise, he is unable to avoid to embarrass her once in a while.   This has detrimental consequences on two levels.    Not only does she feel embarrassed by his behavior, while he has no clue of what he is doing to her.   Even worse, on a more abstract and complex level, she feels betrayed by the fact, that he has broken his promise.  This is painful to her and he is unable to comprehend it.    

In his concrete reality, only emotions and sensations like hunger, fear and anger are real.    In her abstract reality, there are complex and abstract emotions, like respected or hurt dignity, appreciation or depreciation, equality or humiliation and much more, that he has never felt.    He has some fuzzy and vague idea of the meaning of words like dignity, and believes to know, what they mean.   But he has no clue, that he is personally void of something.   He believes that such abstract emotions are rare and experiencing them is restricted to the realm of special people like philosophers.      Therefore he is unable to comprehend or even imagine to ever cause her such feelings, and  even less that those feelings can be strong enough to have an devastating effect upon her.  

1.2.  The emotional moron cannot experience the emotions derived from abstract concepts and life philosophies:

Example:  Concepts like intrinsic commitment as a safe haven based upon the trust that the partner is reliably bound by accepted obligations is far beyond the impaired abstract abilities of an emotional moron.   
His concrete world is simple:   Marriage means to accept all the obligation, that the law has defined for a married man.  Any other obligations are unknown to him and beyond his imagination.   For him a monogamous relationship without being married is exactly the same as being friends with benefits with exclusivity added.  He is oblivious of any implicit obligations beyond not cheating.  He sincerely considers himself as a single man, free to do, what he wants to do.    What he in this concrete thinking believes to be correct behavior, in her reality of abstract emotions can be a transgression and a painful, even traumatic experience.    

When a woman gets involved with a man based upon his declaration that he means it to last for the rest of his life, she takes this as an implicit promise to be a committed partner sharing decisions.    When he then decides something important by himself, excluding and not even consulting her, in his concrete thinking he has acted appropriately as a single man.   To her, it is a very serious pain on two levels of abstraction.   First, she feels very disrespected as not important enough to be consulted, but on a more abstract level, she feels this as a betrayal in her understanding of commitment.   


To be continued

262. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Commitment and the Relationship Deal

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Commitment and the Relationship Deal

I already described the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic commitment in entry 98.    I described the problem of a mismatch between a woman in search of intrinsic commitment with a man, who offers her anything except this, in entry 256.    Also there is an extra page about what kind of relationship deal I am offering to my mindmate.

A relationship is a deal, and when people are entering a monogamous relationship, this decision is based upon the evaluation , that what they offer and what they expect to get is a fair balance.    A man often enters a monogamous relationship for the purpose of acquiring a steady method of maintaining sexual homeostasis, when he subjectively wants to be decent in not abusing women or when he prefers this over the efforts needed to regularly chase new prey, of both.   In return he offers, what he has to offer, what he is willing to offer, and what he believes that the woman wants.  

Both intrinsic and extrinsic commitment start like this.    But from then on, what women experience from bonding-disabled men limited to extrinsic commitment, and what they experience from mature high quality men able to give them intrinsic commitment, is very different.   

1.  Identity:   

An intrinsically committed man changes his identity.   By getting committed, he starts to experience and to perceive himself as half a couple, as part of a unit, as an ingroup consisting of two partners.   He merges into being incomplete without the other half.

An extrinsically committed man experiences and perceives himself as continuing to be a single man with a woman attached, who requires some price to be paid regularly to keep her there.     She is peripheral to his life.   He does not need her, she is a body, that can be replaced.    He experiences himself as someone protecting and defending his boundary and his space against someone, whom he wants to keep at a safe distance.   He wants her body to be available, but she is supposed not to interfere too much with his life.

2.  Deal:

For an intrinsically committed man, the calculating, how much he gives and how much he gets in return, ends with the subjective merging into a unit.   From then on he experiences himself as acting in the best interest of the couple, who has joined forces in the shared competition with their environment.    In his talking and in his thinking, he replaces 'I', 'me', 'mine' by 'we', 'us', 'our'.  

An extrinsically committed man continues to evaluate the benefits of the relationship by book keeping, by which he keeps record, if he gets enough and does not give too much.     He is ready to end the deal at any moment, when he experiences it as no more beneficial for himself.

3.  Obligations:

An intrinsically committed man considers the obligations of the relationship governance not as restrictions or as a burden, because his partner and her behavior is important enough to value her being bound by the same obligations.     He adheres to rules like not cheating, being bound by agreements, being honest, because it is for him the method to ascertain, that his partner's behavior is reliably determined by the same rules.   He perceives not lying as a very fair price for his own need of a partner's honesty as a basis of mutual trust.     He experiences mutual obligations as a part of making the relationship a safe haven for both of them.

An extrinsically committed man may consider it as a burden, when he has to pretend to be honest and try not to be caught lying., even though he is completely unconcerned and uninterested in what the woman says, be it honest or a lie.   Her honesty has no value, because all he wants is her body.    Not lying or not being caught lying is therefore for him an unpleasant price to pay to keep the woman available in bed.   It is not a price that he perceives as worth paying for her honesty, if he does not care about it.    He perceives all obligations as a restriction to his liberty, that he grudgingly pays to have her in bed.

4.  Caring and Consideration:
An intrinsically committed man perceives his partner's wellbeing as equally important as his own.   Whenever he is at the point of doing something, he automatically considers first, what impact his action would have on his partner.   If he cannot know it, he asks her.  He trusts her word, that she means, what she says and is honest about it.    He feels responsible for every impact, that he has upon her.    He cares to spare her pain and to fulfill her needs.  

An extrinsically committed man thinks economically.   He wants to get as much advantages as possible from his partner for the least cost, that makes her stay.    He cares about a woman's wellbeing only, when she explicitly asks for it as a part of the deal.  He ignores and denies her needs unless he is risking to loose her services in bed.    When  he cannot avoid caring for her needs, such a man bargains to get as much and pay as little as he can get away with.  

5.  Time Together:

An intrinsically committed man wants to be together with his partner and share those activities, where he can rejoice all the qualities, that she has in his evaluation.    He clings to being with her, because being with her is rewarding.

An extrinsically committed man wants to have the woman in his bed in the night.   If he shares other activities with her, this is not of any emotional benefit to him.    As long as he gets his homeostasis, he can be content to spend a lot of time without her.   

6.  Being Together:

An intrinsically committed man would not even think of dumping a partner, because he perceives her as an essential part of his life, of himself in his identity as a merged unit.   He feels only complete when being with her.  It would not even occur to him to incomplete himself, to amputate an essential part of his life.

An extrinsically committed man does not hesitate to dump a woman, as soon as he does not get anymore, what he wants from her.    

7.  Sharing Resources:

An intrinsically committed man accepts, that he joins assets and resources with his partner and that these are then joined property to be used only by joined and shared decisions.    Whenever the resources are limited, they both give priority to spending money on what is of benefit for them both together.    Spending money benefiting only one is based upon a shared decision.  

An extrinsically committed man considers a woman as a commodity and a tool to add as much benefit to his life for the least cost, he does not enter a relationship for her benefit.   Such a man spends as much money on himself as he has to fulfill this own selfish needs first.    Only if it pleases him to feel good about doing it or if he has the misguided wish to give something back for the woman's service in bed, he decides to spend money on her.    But no matter, if the spends money on himself or on the woman, he reserves the decision for himself and excludes the woman from it.

8.  Sharing Decisions:  

An intrinsically committed man has chosen his partner for her intellectual and emotional qualities.    Whenever he wants to do something, he expects to get some additional valuable input from her.   Therefore he talks about his plan and discusses his suggestions with her until they can agree and share the decision.    With this attitude towards her, consulting her before deciding anything is an automatic reaction.    Whenever some idea occurs to him, his next impulse is the question, what she thinks about it.   
Therefore such a man shares decisions with his partner as a method of enhancing the qualities of his decisions and the quality of the life of both.    He does not feel limited by this behavior.

An extrinsically man is convinced, that he knows best what is good for him.   He is focusing only on gaining his own benefits in competition with her and in using her.   He expects the same selfish goals from her too, he considers her as competing with him for resources.    Logically he does not trust her advice or her being a fair partner when sharing decisions.  

He wants the availability of her body and nothing else from her.    Therefore he decides, what he wants for himself, then he just does it without any consideration for her.   If she is involved in the execution of his decision, he uses, whatever means he has, to make her comply with his decision.
When she asks to be included in making decisions, that impact her, he perceives this as her attempts to control him.   

9.  Communication:

For a man with intrinsic commitment, who has chosen a woman for her intellectual and emotional qualities, deep unrestricted communication about his and her innermost feelings and thoughts are a rewarding activity of joy.   Trustful self-revelation and shared introspection enhance bonding, togetherness. belonging and feeling close.    Accepting each other's support is a welcome and asked for part of the commitment.    Such a man values his partner's support as he appreciates her personality.    Therefore, he feels good to tell her everything that he feels and thinks, spontaneously and without hesitation or restriction.

An extrinsically committed man has chosen the woman for the benefits of her body.   He is not really interested in her personality, he expects nothing from her.    He does not want to communicate with her, her attempts to communicate annoy him.    He considers his own inner life and his feelings as his private matters and none of her business.   He perceives her attempts to talk about it are as a violation of his boundaries.    He feels an urge to protect his private life from her, because he perceives her as a competitor for resources, for power, for control, and the more she knows, the more she becomes dangerous.   
He either avoids communicating or he derails all communication to topics, that he does not consider as dangerous, while he keeps all real important information about himself hidden from her.  



Of the above list of the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic commitment, only the first item of the man's identity is hidden  from direct experience and only accessible by the man's own declaration.   Everything else can be experienced by how the man behaves and treats the woman.  
If a woman wants intrinsic commitment and there is the question of getting married, she is wise, if she first makes sure to experience his ability to offer her the intrinsic commitment, that makes a relationship for her to be a safe haven of mutual trust, reliability, predictability and security.

256. The Relationship Deal and the Reciprocally Wrong Currency

The Relationship Deal and the Reciprocally Wrong Currency

A viable and happy relationship is based upon a fair balance of giving and receiving.   That implies that both partners give and receive, what they mutually really need.   If one or both give, what they wrongly believe that the other wants or needs, this leads to disruption.    While one does not get, what s/he really needs, the giver perceives the receiver as ungrateful for not appreciating, what is of no value to her or him.  

As a consequence of biological differences, men and women have different needs in a relationship.  If they are not aware of this, they reciprocally project their own needs on the partner and then they are puzzled, when this does not have the expected result. 

It is biological fact, that the average man has a considerable higher physiological need for sexual homeostasis than the average woman.    

Lacking homeostasis disturbs men's functioning in their every day life occupations, it diminishes and even deactivates their full use of their reasoning capacity and their ability to focus on what they wish or need to do.    

Lacking homeostasis reduces even highly intelligent and cultivated men to mere animals. 
Lacking homeostasis derails their focus from intellectual pursuits of higher value to activities aiming at regaining homeostasis.  This need for homeostasis is so strong, that men are willing to pay for it.  

Of course, this is not the same for all men.   Like many other human traits, it is distributed along a bell curve on a scale from high needs (HN) to low needs (LN).    At one end, there are the men, for whom the need of homeostasis is extremely high, driving them to behavior very detrimental to themselves and their female victims.  At the other end are the asexual men, who are either not interested in women, or who want a woman as a true buddy, companion and committed mindmate.  

 

Men are physically stronger and dangerous as predators, who can force their will upon women.   Also men have used their greater physical strength to gain control over the access to means of survival.    As a result, many times women have no choice but to pay with their bodies for having one man's material providing and protection.  

What women expect in this deal is also distributed along a bell curve on a scale from material interests (MI) to non-material interests (NI).    At one end, there are the promiscuous women, who sell their bodies for money.   At the other end are the decent women, who are not at all interested in money, but who trade physical intimacy only in exchange for non-material benefits like commitment, bonding, intellectual and emotional closeness and a relationship as a safe haven. 

As long as a man and a woman have similar positions on the respective scale, they both get from the deal, what they want.   Else they are a mismatch.  

A predominantly LN man and predominantly MI woman are usually capable to mutually avoid each other, as they can easily get aware, that their needs cannot be fulfilled.    A man, who refuses to pay, and a woman, who wants to be paid, make no deal.

Real problems start, when a predominantly non-materially interested (PNI) woman gets involved with a predominantly high need for homeostasis (PHN) man.   In entry 255 I already explained, what she subjectively experiences.    When the man consciously takes advantage of the woman, then it is outright abuse and not a deal and therefore not in the scope of the topic of this entry.    If the PHN man is aware of the true needs of a PNI woman and knows, that he cannot give it to her, he can refrain from getting involved. 

Therefore the real problem are PHN men, who are bonding disabled either by immaturity or otherwise, and who therefore are not aware, that any woman would ever expect anything immaterial.  They enter a deal with a PNI woman by ignorance, willing to pay a fair price but in their own currency.  

Such a deal is tragically imbalanced.   The woman gives the man the sexual homeostasis, that he needs.    But he does not get committed and bonded.    She experiences this as only giving and not receiving anything in return, that has value for her. 

She projects her own needs for sharing and commitment, for caring for each other's emotional needs upon him.   When she offers him bonding and sharing, she makes the mistake of believing to offer him, what he would also want, need and appreciate.   She feels hurt and betrayed, when he does not bond.    She perceives giving him his needed homeostasis only as a secondary extra benefit, while she considers the bonding as her major offer.    She is not aware, how much he values his homeostasis, that it is the only benefit, that he wants from her, and that he is oblivious of anything else that she has to give.

As a PNI woman, she is capable to survive without being financially provided for, and when the man makes her gifts, invites her to expensive activities and offers her material benefits, this is meaningless to her.   Some men are even as dumb as projecting their physical needs on all women.   Such a man sincerely believes, that if he attempts to be a good stud by making enough effort in his physical performance, this were of such a value, that he would owe nothing else to the woman.   The PNI woman makes him the gift of his homeostasis, and he believes to be pleasing her.  

Whatever it is, that he believes to be giving to her, he expects her appreciation of the price, that he pays and that he subjectively considers as a fair.    Bus she cannot be grateful for what has no value for her.   Therefore he gets, what he wants, but he does not experience, that what he subjectively is giving, is received as a payment. 

This is therefore a really tragic constellation.    She fulfills her part of the deal, but does not get back, what she needs.   He gets his needs fulfilled, but is unable to give her, what she needs, while what he thinks to give is wasted, as it is not welcome.   

219. Correlation of Dominance, Promiscuity and Immaturity

219.  Correlation of Dominance, Promiscuity and Immaturity

I assume, that male dominance over women, promiscuity and immaturity are correlated.   Therefore also the male ability to be an egalitarian committed partner is correlated with maturity and the intact promiscuity inhibition.  

This is a follow-up to entries 101, 104, 108 and 109 about promiscuity, entries 213 and 214 about domination and entry 113 about bonding disability.

1.   The non-promiscuous man gets bonded to his partner by the symbolic and meaningful act of entering physical intimacy as an addition to emotional and intellectual intimacy.   Non-promiscuous means, he experiences this as a special event and feels bonded and attached from then on.    Feeling bonded includes non-selfish caring love, which means automatically equality.  It is mutually exclusive with domination and exploitation.    Feeling bonded, he also wants to stay together and not jeopardize the relationship by harming his partner.    Maturity enables him to know, that only a fair balance between giving and receiving leads to a viable and lasting relationship.

2.   The promiscuous man cannot get bonded, because the promiscuous routine of using any haphazard female body as a toilet and forgetting her in a jiffy has destroyed once and forever his ability to experience the mental connection between physical intimacy and commitment.  
A promiscuous man can get infatuated with a woman's body to the extend, that he wants to secure its long-term use.   For this purpose, he even marries her.   But that does not create the emotional bond of unselfish caring love.    He is married or extrinsically committed (entry 98) to her for the selfish purpose of getting his own needs, wishes and whims out of her.    Domination and exploitation are logically the most successful method to acquire his privileges and advantages.    Being promiscuous, it is logical to discard and replace her, as soon as he no longer gets enough advantages out of her.   Therefore he has no reason to treat her well to make the relationship last.   An unmarried non-bonded man is prone to dump, a married non-bonded man is prone to cheat.   He is selfish and dominant, because he is immature.   

In entry 113 I described the bonding disability as a consequence of immaturity.   But promiscuity is not independent of immaturity.    Those men, who desensitize themselves to become promiscuous by emotionally detaching the use of a woman's body from perceiving the existence of a person inside the body, usually do this during puberty and young adulthood.   It happens at that age, when their sex drive is the highest, while they are still too immature to be aware of the resulting psychological damage.         

If such a man stays immature, he will never be able to feel bonded.   He will remain one of those men dominating women as described above.

But if he grows into maturity, if he rationally understands that meaning of a committed relationship, but his ability to automatically feel a bond by entering physical intimacy has been destroyed, for such a man it is very difficult to get bonded.      
If he is already in a relationship, where he dominates a woman, with whose body he is infatuated, then there is the possibility, that as a part of maturation, he slowly grows into feeling emotional and intellectual intimacy and a more caring love, while his domination will be gradually reduced.    He may develop a bond even though physical intimacy is disconnected from it.   This bond can become strong enough to motivate him to stay on and treat the woman with decency, once the infatuation has faded.    It can happen.  

If he is not in a relationship, the situation is more difficult.    Even with the best intentions to get committed, as soon as he enters physical intimacy, emotionally he falls back into the psychological rut of the promiscuous perception of temporarily controlling a body, that is just a utility.    The only remedy for him is to be for a considerable time under circumstances, which force him into close platonic contact with a woman, while the use of her body without a bond is impeded and postponed.     For example they could be colleagues during a scientific field trip, working together but living in a camp with little privacy, slowly developing intellectual and emotional intimacy as a result of the shared work.    When they finally also get physically involved, they already have such a strong mental bond, that his inability to feel bonded by the physical intimacy cannot diminish the bond.   
 
I already called promiscuity a scourge of humanity.   It really is.   It damages the men's psyche, while they themselves are not even aware of their emotional disability.  The men are inflicted with this abomination, but they themselves do not suffer, instead they make the women suffer as their proxies.   The men's inbuilt capacity for domination makes the suffering of the victims more horrific.  

218. Domination, Egalitarian Commitment and Special Problems

Domination, Egalitarian Commitment and Special Problems
This is a continuation of entries 216 and 217

Domination is a method to get something from someone by using coercion and intimidation.   In combination with only having selfish, uncaring utility love for a woman, whom he perceives as a resource for benefits and advantages, a man can exploit a woman, who feels bonded with caring, unselfish love.  
Domination is a potential in most men, because they usually have the physical strength to back up the intimidation with the ability to batter.   In the absence of unselfish care for the woman's wellbeing, there is nothing to hold a man back from exploiting and dominating her.  

This does not imply, that there are no couples with the different constellation, where the man has caring love for a woman with only utility love.   But whatever method of manipulation and tricking she may use to take advantage, it rarely is the same as is male domination.   But as I am writing this blog as a woman, who is looking for a mutually caring commitment with a non-dominating mindmate, such women are not the focus of my considerations.  But even if it seems so, I am not claiming, that most men are bad and most women are good.  


But to further illustrate the difference between a dominator-dominee and a egalitarian couple, here are three more scenarios of couples, where one partner has a flying phobia.       

1.  The man is an uncaring dominator, the woman has the flying phobia.    In this case, he uses extortion:
He buys the flight tickets and tells her, if she refuses to come along, then he will dump her and look for a better companion, with whom he can enjoy frequent exotic vacations.  

2.  The man is an uncaring dominator, but he has the flight phobia himself.    He feels entitled to be accepted as he is:  
The woman is the one, who loves to travel, and she gently suggests to him to go on a anti-flight-fear training course.    But he gets angry, he insists, that it is his right not to fly, if he does not want to.   If this does not please her, she is welcome to go.    

3.  There is a couple of two egalitarian, bonded, caring partners.   She has the flying phobia.    Both feel care for each other, and both are guided by the obligations of commitment, they can handle the problem in a constructive and considerate way.     Love means to perceive and experience such obligations not as obligations but as caring.    

In this case, he is bound by the obligation of not hurting the other.   He does not put pressure upon her but offers his support for whenever she wants it and in the form she considers best.  
The partner with the fear to flight also has obligations.  She has brought a onesided problem into the relationship, she feels responsible for the disadvantages caused by it.  Therefore she is motivated to do everything possible to overcome her phobia, so that she can comply with his wish to travel together at some time in the future.  
The important focus of both partner is on the own obligation and caring disposition to act for the benefit of the other.   They both do there own best to improve the situation, they do not make mutual demands and they do not take the care of the other for granted.  

Two cooperating caring partners can solve problems, that cause disruptive conflicts between a dominator and a dominee.