507. The Cassandra Dynamics

507.  The Cassandra Dynamics

When a catastrophe comes out of the blue, it is a challenge allowing oneself to use the own resources and abilities to deal with it.   When one faces a problem and does not know, what to do, it is also a challenge to find a solution by using one's own resources.  

But the situation of the Cassandra dynamics, when knowing exactly, what needs to be done, while being prevented from doing it, is a situation of the extreme emotional stress of being made helpless and powerless.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_%28metaphor%29

"The Cassandra metaphor is applied by some psychologists to individuals who experience physical and emotional suffering as a result of distressing personal perceptions, and who are disbelieved when they attempt to share the cause of their suffering with others."


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cassandra%20Syndrome

"Cassandra Syndrome
   
1) The condition of speaking the truth and having no one believe you.

2) The condition of being able to predict the future, be it the outcome of a particular event, or the reactions of others to the same event, and having no one believe your prophecy until it transpires.

3) Being able to see or understand things long before others, often resulting in them coming to the same conclusions long after your own initial analysis. "

The expression 'syndrome' is misleading, because it focuses too much on Cassandra herself as being the person having some psychological troubles.   I prefer to call it Cassandra dynamics, because it concerns the disrupted interaction of two or more persons.   Cassandra herself has not the problem, she is implicated by the problems of others. 

Cassandra is usually a woman, but sensitive men can also be trapped in the situation of being aware of some development leading towards a breaking-point, the pending catastrophe. 

1. Cassandra dynamics are defined by:

• The catastrophe is pending either for Cassandra herself or for someone else or for both.  
• Cassandra alone is aware of the pending catastrophe.
• Cassandra needs the other person's cooperation to avoid the catastrophe.  
• The involved person's cooperation is not obtainable.   
• Cassandra suffers feeling powerless.

2. Cassandra's circumstances

2.1.  Cassandra dynamics as a partner in a relationship.   Cassandra suffers emotionally beyond her resilience:

• Her emotional needs are not met by the partner.
• She is blamed for not meeting the partner's needs.
• She is blamed for her reactions to how she is treated.

2.2.  Cassandra dynamics by altruism and caring.  Cassandra feels empathy and wants to support others with insights, which only she has.    

3.  The partner's unobtainable cooperation to avoid the catastrophe.

• Cassandra cannot convey to him, that there is something wrong.
• Cassandra cannot convey to him her suggestions, what to do.  
• He is unable to recognize Cassandra's competence.
• He perceives Cassandra not as an equal partner. 

Examples of men's fallacies, flaws and mistakes causing the unobtainability of their cooperation:

3.1.  Asymmetrical relationship. 

The man gets all his relationship needs met, because he experiences and considers a woman merely as a body chosen for physical homeostasis while not expecting anything more from the relationship.   He fulfills his social and intellectual needs elsewhere.   He projects his own contentment onto the woman.    In this situation, nothing is wrong for him subjectively.  

3.2.  Imposing gender roles.

The social roles of male superiority causes the man's false belief, that he is the one to define the rules, structure, framework and conditions of the relationship.  What he considers as correct treatment of a woman according to gender roles has to be automatically sufficient and suitable for any woman.   If she suffers, the man considers it as her flaw, for which he does not need to take any responsibility.

3.3.  The Dunning-Kruger effect. 

The man overestimates himself and underestimates the woman.  The man considers only himself as being competent to decide, how to manage a relationship.   Even if he recognizes, that something needs to be improved, his attempts to do so are only decided upon in accordance with his own judgment.   If he changes his behavior, he does so by trial and error.   This aggravates the situation, speeding up the arriving of the catastrophe.   He only throws the woman from the frying-pan into the fire.  

3.4.  Immaturity

Immaturity, lacking empathy, a low EQ or NLD (Non-Verbal Learning Disability) can cause men to be unable to understand other persons' including a partner's needs or to communicate successfully.   Sometimes such men rely on simplified recipes from self-help books, how to handle or even manipulate women.   The man's belief of behaving correctly according to his faulty concept of how to treat a woman makes him mindblind to perceive and understand any verbal or non-verbal information indicating her suffering.   Such a man is prone to believe the recipes written by male relationship gurus more than a real woman's feedback.   

3.5.  Selfishness

Psychological problems cause some men to have a selfish attitude and entitlement delusion.   They experience and consider others including the partner as utilities existing to serve their needs.   They handle, use and maintain them at their convenience, instead of caring for others' individual needs, of which they are oblivious.    As long as a person functions according to the purpose for the selfish man, there is nothing wrong and no reason to bother.

3.6.  Need for power

Psychological problems cause some men to feel a need for power and control, which causes them to struggle for domination.   Narcissists or men with a strong need to reduce anxiety and insecurity, are examples.   When they want to believe in their own morality, then they can avoid cognitive dissonance only by the full denial, how much domination causes suffering to the repressed woman.

My mindmate to be found is someone, with whom I will not experience the Cassandra dynamics. 

466. Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Assuming the following constellation (, which in this context has nothing to do with couples supporting each other by agreement):    

A woman is egalitarian and has the need to be appreciated and treated as an equal partner and companion.
A man considers, perceives and interprets an expression of her thinking or behavior as flawed, while she disagrees.  

This implies, that the man creates a hierarchy of perfection, and he ascribes to her an inferior position below himself.   He also creates a hierarchy of competency of judgement, where he puts himself above her as the one able to assess her as flawed.  
This happens in his mind, no matter if the woman knows it or not.  Her ascribed position is his solitary decision, this deprives her of any influence to change her position.   By defining her low position, he perceives her as too inferior to be an equal companion. 

1.  In the case, that the man is brainwashed to accept the traditional gender roles, forming a hierarchy based upon imaginary flaws does not disturb him subjectively at all, he experiences this as how things are naturally meant to be.   
1.1.  When he only tells the woman, that he considers her as flawed, this hurts her emotionally as an insult and degradation, she feels humiliation and indignity.   She experiences any consideration based upon alleged flaws as condescension.
1.2.  When he also expects from her proactive acceptance of her inferior position, then this is narcissistic.
1.3.  When he feels entitled to do, what he wants to do, ignoring her subjective suffering by attributing it to her own alleged flaws, then this is domination.  
1.4.  When a man is not bothered about how inferior he perceives the woman, then this is a slippery slope for her.  While she does not qualify to get her own needs met as an equal companion, he often succeeds in benefiting from her as from a utility and commodity, used without being respected.  

2.  It often happens, that someone spontaneously reacts at first to any incomprehension by ascribing a flaw to the other.   But in the case, that the man himself wants equality as much as the woman, perceiving incomprehensible expressions as a flaw causes discomfort also to himself, maybe as much as it causes her.    His own wish to perceive her as equal companion and free from flaws is as strong as her own wish to be perceived as an equal companion.  
Therefore this case is a challenge for both of them to cooperate, until the misunderstanding has been cleared.   They communicate, until they both are content to have restored equality.   If he has explicitly blamed her of being flawed, he also takes this explicitly back.  
2.1. Either she explains herself until he has full comprehension of her reasons.
2.2. Or he accepts his personal limits of empathy, understanding and imagination as his own problem of not being able to judge her.   He recognizes the existence of differences and reasons, that are valid for her independent of his comprehension.  

How someone deals in the search for a mate with his incomprehension of the other's behavior is an indication of his innate ability to be an equal partner.  
If he feels ok by claiming a partner's flaws, this is a big red flag, because it is usually the first step leading to worse and more hurting behavior like domination.   If someone feels ok by taking advantage of someone judged as inferior, there is nothing to be done by the taken advantage of victim.  There is no way of convincing someone to change his behavior, while he feels good by having got, what he wants.  
I admit, that whenever a man claims me to be flawed but considers this as no problem, this not only hurts but also scares me very much.

Only if someone is intrinsically motivated and inclined to correct his spontaneous impulses to devaluate, this is a good sign.   I can rationally convince someone, who is interested and open to be convinced.   

My quest is to find someone like this as my mindmate.

465. The Implications Of Temptation

465.   The Implications Of Temptation

Somewhere I read a man's opinion about temptations and at first I was a bit astonished.  

It was in connection with remarks about the weird focus of the christian religion upon the repentant sinner.   In christianity, the repentant sinner is valued more than the innocent person, who has never done harm.    The repentant sinner seems to be the preferred role model of displayed obedience to the deity, whose restored power is considered as more important than sparing the victims from being harmed.  

Deities seem to be more often than not imagined as somewhat narcissistic.  This is not really astonishing considering how their representatives on earth consider themselves as mirroring the deity having allegedly been created to resemble him. Those representatives do not experience enough submission to both the deity and themselves from those, who never do anything bad enough to be forgiven by the deity.    

This man stated as a generalized opinion, that he is more impressed, gives more credit and has more respect for those, who resist and conquer temptations than for those, who are free from these temptations.    This view focuses on evaluation and judging the real or potential perpetrator only and it not concerned about the potential victims.  

While the religions' repentant sinner has conquered his previous weakness of succumbing to temptation, there is a related concept of struggling with temptations, to which also outspoken atheists adhere. 


This can only be explained by looking at it from the point of what some men value themselves as their ideal of masculinity, which unfortunately includes competing, fighting and winning.   If the winning cannot be over another man, then at least it has to be a hard victory over oneself.  
Therefore in a man's perception of treating women, masculinity can be either expressed by luring them into bed or by having a strong temptation to do so, but overcoming this temptation.    The reasons to choose between the two options are both reasons according to male judgment, in both varieties the women are objects and targets, whose own wishes do not count.    The reasons to resist temptations are often religiously or philosophically motivated or else they are utilitarian for gaining some compensation or not losing further access to a specific woman's body.    It is clearly only based upon how men are judging each other, not concern or consideration for women.   Sparing the potential victims is not a part of such masculinity.

Here again is a case, where men use religion to value and justify the expression of their own subconscious instinctivity, which is consciously experienced as masculinity.   As long as they are respected by other men, their lack of concern about the impact upon women is perceived as excused. 

Seen from the point of view of someone, who does not want to be a victim, the evaluation is very different.   Because the person, who does not want to be hurt, wishes to feel more safe and less at risk and is not bothered about masculinity.

As an analogy, someone living at the bank of a river tends to feel the more safe and relaxed, the longer there had not been any flood.   But as low as the probability of a flood may seem due to the past experience of its absence, the possibility cannot be excluded.   The person is still aware of living at an unsafe place, while the person living on a hill above the river can really feel safe, because there is no probability of ever being flooded.  

The man, who is susceptible to be tempted to cheat, but who resists temptation, can be experienced as dwindling risk by estimated probability, the longer and the more often he does successfully resist temptation.   But the risk remains, because nobody can predict, if in the future he will nevertheless cheat under changed circumstances.
Only the man, who is not tempted to cheat, because he is predominantly attracted to a woman's brain and personality, offers the relaxed safe haven, which the man, who merely controls his temptations, can never offer.  

More drastically expressed:  A man fighting temptations needs will-power as a crutch for a moral disability.   The man without temptations can walk freely.  

In entries 206 and 208 I expressed my attraction to psychological androgynity.   Masculinity and femininity in thinking, attitude and subconsciously determined behaviors are a result of instinctive difference leading to distinctive gender roles.   Taking away the impact of all those detrimental instincts, there can be psychologically androgynous humans, who have no need to fight, compete, exploit or seduce.   Instead they are able to be just egalitarian monogamous humans with a brain for shared joys and companionship.   

454. Narcissism Explained By The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

Narcissism Explained By The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

I suggest to first read entries 452 and 453, where I defined the differences between an egalitarian and a hierarchical-gregarious brain.   The psychological differences between the two brain dispositions are different causes for dishomeostasis and differences in what stimulates the pleasure center of the brain, and how strong is this stimulation.

People with an egalitarian brain have a strong need for respect, appreciation, dignity.   Disrespect, depreciation, humiliation, indignity cause them a strong dishomeostasis of emotional pain.    

People with a hierarchical-gregarious brain and the aspiration for a high position have a strong dishomeostasis for power, praise, prestige, veneration.    They are attracted to find as many inferior people as possible to give this to them.   They are void of any empathy or awareness, that what they want is a source of dishomeostasis for egalitarian people.   

People with a hierarchical-gregarious brain but with the acceptance of gaining benefits by having a low position experience this position as being in homeostasis.  They are also unaware, that egalitarian people suffer dishomeostasis, when forced into the same position.     

People with an egalitarian brain gain self-esteem and confidence by comparing their own achievements only with their own goals.   Therefore they have no reason to become narcissists.

People with an hierarchical-gregarious brain, who feel a strong dishomeostasis for the emotional benefits of a high position without being able to earn such a position by appropriate achievements are prone to become pathological narcissists.   Their bluff fails sooner or later and they lose their temporary source of narcissistic supply.   Then they fall back to enforce domination on the women in their lives, who are the most vulnerable and the least able to end the ordeal. 

In entry 453, I mentioned already the situation, when legal and external circumstances like slavery force people with an egalitarian brain in an unwarranted low position.   Chosen alliances are a different situation.  

1.  Memberships in ingroups, which are chosen without any external necessity, are chosen only for the attraction and benefit of the group itself.    Such groups are for example sport clubs, sects, cults, political initiatives, charities, self-help groups. 

1.1.   In hierarchical groups, leaders with a hierarchical-gregarious brain have earned the position by hard work and talent, but they acquire special benefits as an incentive.   

1.1.1.  Power reduces the dishomeostasis of fear and anxiety.   

1.1.2. Adulation, admiration, veneration fulfill narcissistic needs, that can either cause dishomeostasis or at least have a strong impact upon the pleasure center.   

As long as these benefits are earned by real achievements, rejoicing and indulging in them is different from pathological narcissism.  
Followers with a hierarchical-gregarious brain in such a group have a realistic view, that they either cannot become leaders or that the effort to strife to become leaders is too much.    They accept their lower position as a consequence of accepting hierarchy as the unavoidable structure of any group.  

But being a part of the group also reduces their dishomeostasis by giving protection against fear or by catering for some special need.   

In addition, they generalize the achievements of the leaders as if they were achievements of the group, which justify the prestige of the group.   Then they identify themselves with the prestige of the group.   They enhance their own self-esteem by experiencing themselves as partaking in the achievement of those, whom they follow.  
The fans of a football team are proud of the victories, as if they had played themselves.  The members of a cult, who have in reality paid a lot of money to be allowed in, feel as if they were the elected and privileged few.  

1.2.  When someone with a strong hierarchical-gregarious need for a high position lacks either the abilities or the motivation to invest efforts and cannot achieve such a position, he sometimes becomes a pathological narcissist.   Where he fails to achieve, he develops a grandiosity delusion, where he does not earn adulation and veneration, he develops an entitlement delusion.  When he does not get the admiration he feels entitled to, he blames this as the fault of those refusing to give him enough narcissistic supply.  A pathological narcissist is able to bluff people for a while, but he usually gets soon unmasked.      

1.3.  Egalitarians in egalitarian groups are joining for the benefits of the shared purpose, and by giving special functions to members, they do not give them power nor do they put them upon a pedestal.  

1.4.  When egalitarians do join hierarchical groups for a special purpose, they do this without accepting the hierarchy as justified.   They follow their own purpose, as long as they can do this without being required to show adulation or veneration, that they do not feel.   

1.5.  Sometimes a pathological narcissist chooses an egalitarian group as a stage to bluff competence in the hope to establish a hierarchy.   He considers it as an easy endeavor, because there are no competitors for a high position in an egalitarian group.   The pathological narcissist is unaware of the egalitarian group's rejection of a hierarchy, because he mistakes hierarchies as something ubiquitous.   But the entitlement delusion and the treating of egalitarian people as inferior causes the egalitarian group members to feel insulted and they soon end his attempts.   

2.  Couples are a special form of a group, they are the smallest and closest ingroup consisting of only two members. 
 
2.1.  Traditionally, while men were given education and earning possibilities, of which women were deprived, there were couples of two hierarchical-gregarious brains, in which real differences caused a woman accept an inferior role under a patronizing man.   The engineer marrying his secretary is an example.

2.2.  Two egalitarians choose each other for shared traits based upon reciprocal respect and appreciation.

2.3.  A man with a hierarchical-gregarious brain, who feels entitled to dominate and patronize a woman with an egalitarian brain, causes her serious suffering.    Sometimes the man feels entitled to the top position by the mere fact of being male, sometimes he is a pathological narcissist and has the delusion of superiority, that he does not have.  

But there is a big difference between being a member of a group and being half of a couple.  
 

The person, who has a strong need to gain the benefits of a high position in a group, but who is earning it does not automatically assume the same role in a relationship.   When he succeeds to get his needs met in a high position in his job or in a chosen group, he is not driven to establish a hierarchy also in a relationship with a woman, who prefers to be an equal partner.   

The pathological narcissist is the real problem.   He has such an urge for adulation and veneration, while he is unable to earn it, therefore he is eternally driven to manipulate, bluff and coerce people to comply with his delusion of giving him his narcissistic supply, but it never lasts.   When his narcissism becomes disruptive in a group, he can either be removed or the person feeling disturbed can leave the group unharmed.   Only the egalitarian woman, who had the bad luck to have become emotionally or legally tied to him is suffering a pain, that does not end, until the relationship has failed. 

410. A [Unfavorable Evaluation Omitted] With A Halo

A [Unfavorable Evaluation Omitted] With A Halo

When reading the following quotes:

"I truly believe that men were created to lead."

"Most of the women I’ve counseled have longed for their husbands to step up and lead the family."

I was speechless for a moment.  Against my habit of giving the source, I quote this anonymously, because this does not deserve my contribution to publicity.

If this were just a man's private opinion, it would not be worth a comment, because unfortunately he shares this attitude with millions of men.   But the author of the quotes is "a licensed marriage & family therapist."

A therapist has a responsible function.   In this role, it is his professional task to teach and support people to become equal partners.   He does the contrary.    He implicitly declares equality and the cooperation of egalitarian partners as unnatural.      
What he considers and proclaims as therapy means in reality to convert a healthy decent nice man into a sick jerk, who wants to lead.   

He sees psychologically deformed woman wishing to be led and dominated as clients in counselling.  But he does not recognize them as the partner with the disturbence.   Instead he perceives her as a prototype of a healthy woman suffering because of a sick man.   

As a result, a healthy nice guy and a sick docile woman enter therapy.  When he considers the couple as cured, they have reached the balance of what is called d folie à deux, a form of mental illness, where both partners are complementary in their insane behavior and delusions.   After what he considers successful therapy, the man is sick enough to dominate, and the women is still as sick as before wanting to be dominated.  

The entitlement delusion of being born to lead for no other reason than being genetically male is a part of male narcissism.  By proclaiming the man's justification of leading with the authority of a therapist, he dangerously enhances narcissism instead of curing it.  
A man's usurpation of the leading role can cause a lot of conflict and pain, when the woman disagrees.    A man, whose narcissism is still only at a low level, is still able to seek counselling, because he still considers the possibility, that he may be contributing himself to the failure of relationships.   He is at a decisive crossroads of his further development.   

A responsible therapist teaches the man to renounce the leading entitlement delusion in favor of becoming an egalitarian partner.    An irresponsible therapist, who reinforced the entiltlement to lead, can fix the narcissism beyond cure and deprive the man of ever finding happiness in egalitarian commitment.    

393. Alexithymia

Alexithymia

In entry 390 I speculated, that a man, who does not feel any affection for his partner when passively in his presence, even though his pleasure center is responsive to direct stimulation by the infatuation with her body, could have some form of what I called 'emotional anhedonia'.   

In entry 391 I defined a jerk as someone, who perceives and treats a woman as a commodity, causing her a lot of suffering due to his not feeling affection for her, and who is also afflicted with the narcissistic entitlement and grandiosity delusion, which makes him unable to acknowledge his own attitude and treatment as inappropriate.

After some googling, I discovered the concept of alexithymia as a personality trait.   If someone with alexithymia would develop reactive narcissism as a form of comorbidity, his behavior could be experienced by his victim the same way as in my suggested 'emotional anhedonia', but for very different underlying reasons.

Simplified, alexithymia means limitations to the ability to understand, describe and interpret the own and other persons' emotions.   

A conscious psychopathic jerk, who decides to enter a friends with benefits relationship, which is based upon nothing more than infatuation with her body, lacks affection.  There is no bonded commitment with someone, who is considered as insignificant, who is not trusted, not respected, who is not expected to meet emotional or intellectual needs.    The conscious jerk knows, that he does not love but use the woman.
  
The alexithymic jerk is different.   He can be in a relationship, which is a mismatch, but he is oblivious of this.  He treats the woman as a commodity, but he confounds it with love.  He subjectively may even believe her to be the love of his life, because he is unable to distinguish between infatuation and caring love.  
He treats her in accordance to what he does not feel, as merely a friend with benefits.   His treatment represents his true attitude.     Were he to meet the woman, whom he would experience as someone worthy to respect, to trust, to share emotional and intellectual intimacy with, he would consciously experience the same kind of love, but he would treat her much better, his behavior determined by affection and care.    
As a result of the same confusion, he also cannot understand her expressions of affection any better than his own emotions, nor what she expects from him but misses.  

Therefore he is oblivious and unable to comprehend, why and how she experiences his treatment as a humiliation.   To her, he is a jerk, because he does not take responsibility for her pain.

It is a sad pattern, when a man has some kind of personal problem, no matter if it is by naming just a few examples, alexithymia, asperger's, ODD, ADD, NLD.   With the support of a caring partner, coping with the problem would be a shared task.   
Instead he reacts with narcissism and becomes a jerk, who considers himself as god's gift to every woman.   He hurts her, he dislikes her reaction to the pain, and he blames her to be the one with a personal problem.    It is a sad pattern, that someone in need of a partner's support is locked behind a wall of a delusion that deprives him of what he needs.


Alexithymia could also be a relapse to earlier stages of evolution, as I speculated about hedonists in entry 390.    In those past epochs, when higher emotions like affection and the attraction of bonded monogamy had not yet evolved, men procreated purely by physical infatuation with the body of a woman and they were very successful in multiplying the human species.   But the price for this was paid by the suffering of the women, who were used predominantly as breeding bodies.   
Many of today's jerks would have been successful cave men.   

391. The Definition Of A Jerk

391.  The Definition Of A Jerk

A jerk is a man,

• whose behavior or attitude causes a woman harm, pain, discomfort, annoyance
• who does this because he has some serious personality problem
• who is in denial, that he has such a problem
• who reacts with defiance to feedback about his behavior
• who attributes the woman's disapproval of and reaction to his behavior as her problem

A man is not a jerk,

• who takes responsibility for harm, pain, discomfort and annoyance caused by him
• who is realistic about his own personality problems
• who acknowledges to need the support of a partner
• who is motivated to find out from her, how the woman needs to be treated
• who follows her advice and guidance when needed  

If a man experiences failure due to his personal problems and reacts as compensation with the narcissistic entitlement and grandiosity delusion, then a woman experiences him as a jerk, no matter how miserable he feels himself.    A relationship with such a jerk is toxic for a woman, and there is nothing, that she can do to improve the situation.   His narcissistic strategy enables him to reduce his own sufferings by making the woman suffer instead.   As long as he can reduce his own pain by this method, he has no motivation to change himself.      His reactive narcissism is a logical relief for him, but a deterrent for a bonded relationship.    Having compassion for a jerk is not a reason to expose oneself to toxic behavior. 

Fixing someone is certainly not a role that would attract me to a relationship.    But being the victim of a jerk in a toxic relationship is even worse.   Therefore I am willing to support someone, who wants to fix himself as his contribution to prevent hurting me.    
But I think, that men in my age group should have learned their lesson and have grown mature.   Who at this age is still a jerk will most probably die as a jerk.    Unfortunately many of those jerks, who have not learned how to treat a woman, have learned during a lifetime to hide their troubles and their being jerks.    

The real issue is not so much to offer my support to who would want and need it, but to spot the red flags and avoid the hidden jerks in the disguise of a mindmate.   

390. The Emotional Anhedonia Of Jerks

The Emotional Anhedonia Of Jerks

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

379. Thoughts About Disrespect

Thoughts About Disrespect

In entry 377, I mentioned that when there is disrespect, the best way to handle it is mutual avoidance.  

But disrespect should be looked at a bit more closely.  

There is disrespect due to a specific, defined reason and there is diffuse disrespect.  
In the case of a specific reason, the disrespectee knows, why he is disrespected, no matter, if he agrees with it or not.  

Some criminals have the insight to have earned to be disrespected.
When an atheist disrespects a religious person due to stupidity, the religious person knows why but disagrees.

When disrespect is diffuse, there are several constellations.

• The disrespectee perceives to be treated with disrespect, but without any acceptable reason.
  Example:  A narcissist disrespects a person and attempts to press that person into the role of a narcissistic extension.
• The disrespectee does not perceive the hidden disrespect.  
  Examples:  A manipulator uses a gullible person for his purposes.  A man promises a woman a long term relationship by pretending commitment, but only wants to use her.  

Both cases are reasons for the disrespectees to avoid the disrespector, because they have no chance to ever be respected.

But there is a different situation, when the disrespectee perceives non-existent disrespect.      

• There is misunderstanding, misinterpretations, misperception.
• The person feeling disrespected has personal problems.  
• The person perceived as disrespectful is not aware of how his behavior is received by others.  

In these cases, people have a chance to overcome the difficulties by communicating, until they reach an agreement of reestablished mutual respect.  


If couples are at all concerned about the importance of respect and not just driven by instincts, they get involved by reciprocally respecting and feeling respected.    They have the impression of sharing all the values and attitudes, that are the fundament of disrespect and therefore for a committed relationship.
Disrespect is the result of either getting aware, that the respect had never been justified but had been an error all along, or of losing respect due to experiencing behavior indicating it as an error.  

An example is the pseudo-non-believer described in entry 305.   When I got in contact with him on an atheist dating site, I wrongly interpreted this as him being an atheist worthy to be respected.    When I discovered on his website his praise of the bible as a book of wisdom, and when he admitted to be a cultist of tai-chi and to chant to a Japaneses scroll, I rapidly lost respect.   He did not pretend to be an atheist, he was convinced to really be one in spite of all his irrational religious behaviors.           

360. Domination and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Domination and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

In entry 354 I mentioned, how sometimes an intelligent woman deliberately dumbs down for the purpose of having a relationship to thus make an intellectually inferior man believe in being her equal.  She appears less intelligent than she is, while he can be realistic about himself.

Domination is a defect and fallacy of men, who are or feel too incompetent to solve conflicts rationally or to gain a woman's benevolence otherwise.  They use either situational power or the fact of their superior physical strength to compensate for their incompetence.   Their purpose is obtaining the benefits from being with a woman, while they are oblivious of any other method except gaining control.     

Narcissists dominate women, because their grandiosity delusion has completely deactivated any perception of the real intellectual ability of a woman, even in contradiction to blatantly obvious evidence.  

But there are also many men, who feel entitled to dominate women by the error of feeling sincerely justified to do so, because of really believing to know better and of doing something good to the dominated women.   This can be explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect, which explains how men overestimate themselves.  Their research was done on subjects in the scope of average mental health, but I assume that it would be especially harmful to women, when the men are emotional morons or sufferer from NLD (entry 356) or something similar.   

"The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when incompetent people not only fail to realise their incompetence, but consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. Basically - they're too stupid to know that they're stupid. "

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

308. Control Freak or Dominator

Control Freak or Dominator

Domination is abomination.  I have already written several blog entries about how devastating it is for a woman to be dominated.   Domination over a woman can have many reasons.  

1. It can be an expression of the hierarchy instinct, a man is sometimes misguided to establish a hierarchy in his private life, when he had to struggle in competition to earn his living.    
2. Over centuries in western societies and in many societies it is still like this today, that women on average had and have less access to get an education appropriate to their intelligence.   Men dominated and dominate over women, who having been deprived of developing their real intellectual potential. 
3. Domination over a woman can also be the misguided consequence of having grown up under feudalism as a member of the ruling class being so used to be served on command.  A man takes his entitlement to dominate over everybody including a woman for granted.  

Dominators, who are no Control Freaks, can be quite content with their own life.  They dominate by a distortion of their thinking and judgement only.  Petruccio in 'The Taming Of The Shrew' (entries 301 and 302) is an example of a jerk, who just takes his entitlement for granted.    In spite of the ludicrous ending of the play, it could have ended very differently, if he would have matured to learn, that Kathrina is an intelligent and educated partner, who could enhance his life much more as an equal partner than under domination.   
Mark Twain's 'The Prince And The Pauper' is an example from literature, how someone can discover, that there are alternatives to dominate.    

Such dominators dominate, as long as they get rewarded by benefits from domination, but they are able to give it up, should equality become more beneficial.

Control Freaks as already described in entry 307 are a subform of dominators, who are driven to alleviate their pathological fears and anxieties by control over people, including the women in their life.   Control Freaks are very unhappy people, who have succeeded in using domination as a method to reduce their own suffering by making others suffer as their proxy and scape goats.    Control Freaks dominate as a consequence of emotional problems, that are often enhanced by the delusion of being entitled to do so.    Control Freaks are driven to dominate by an urge to reduce their own suffering and they do not experience having any choice to give up control.

This is a good description of Control Freaks:
http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Control_freaks.htm

There are several scenarios of control freaks, depending on the severity of the morbidity or co-morbidity.

1. The basic factors are a combination of pathological fears, anxiety, paranoia and worries, in combination with an inability to trust.  The Control Freak has never trusted anybody in his life.   Therefore even forcing himself to try behaving as if trusting is not an option for him.    He has as little imagination of trusting as has a person born blind of colors. 
   If someone with anxiety issues were able to trust, a loving and caring partner could support him to live with his troubles without harming her. 
   But when there is no trust, then the control freak is caught in the trap of his morbidity.   Without trust, he can never let go of his control and attempts to control, so he can never make the experience of what would happen without control.   He is deprived of ever making the experience, that without control, he would get just as much of a fair deal by consideration and compassion, as he gets by coercion.   He makes the woman's life miserable and gains nothing by this except a reduction of his fears. 
   
   In this scenario, he keeps the woman at bay as a friend with benefits, with whom he limits his interaction to his own convenience.
   
2. If the Control Freak is additionally afflicted with selfishness and the delusion of being entitled to get more than he gives, then controlling serves a dual purpose.   Not only does it reduce his fears, but it is also a cruel but logical method to usurp his selfish wants and needs, that he would not get otherwise.   In this case, he uses rage, intimidation and other means of extortion to get advantages and benefits.   The relationship is a power struggle between his selfish greed and her attempts to get a fair deal and to protect herself.    She is exploited, but as someone taken for serious, a respected enemy in the war for resources. 
   
   In this scenario, he expects the woman to have the role of a mother with benefits.  The mother gives all her unconditional love to a child, but the child does not give anything back to her.  
   
3. Another scenarios is the control freak, who is also a narcissist.   He adds a grandiosity delusion to anxiety, distrust and entitlement to selfish advantages.    That means, he adds disrespect and depreciation to the pain of being dominated.   He considers her as faulty and inferior, as someone, who should be grateful to be allowed to be under his control.    He believes himself to be a good person by doing what he does, because in his delusion, his behavior is what he perceives as correct by his birthright, while her inferior role is her purpose in life.   Being aware, that she has some needs, he cares for her only by giving her, what he believes that she needs.    This believe is a combination of projections of his own needs and of what he has gathered from hearsay as how women should allegedly be treated.   It does not even occur to him to consider direct information to be obtained from her concerning her real needs.  
   
   In this scenario, the woman is like a well cared for pet with benefits.   Just like a pet owner, he may consult with other women owners about how to care for the women, but he does not ask the woman herself.    Had he no physical needs, he would choose a pet, where control is easier and socially more acceptible.    Instead he gets the benefits in bed, but controls her just like the pet, that he would prefer.
   
4. In a variety of scenario 3, the woman is not a pet with benefits, that is taken and treated as a being with innate limits.    He takes on the role of a father, whose task is to improve his daughter with benefits and to fix her.   He believes that he is doing this as a favor to her.     The power to modify her to better serve his convenience is an even more rewarding form of control than just forcing her to do, what he wants.   So his believe to be able to fix her is especially effective in reducing his fears.      
    
5. In a more extreme variety of scenario 3, he is a not only a narcissistic control freak, but also an emotional moron.   He confounds caring for her with the maintenance of a commodity and utility, as if her body needs to be maintained to function similarly to the maintenance of a robot. 
   
   In this scenario, the woman is a painstakingly maintained robot with benefits. 
   
6. The worst scenario is the narcissistic control freak, who is psychopathic.   He has no conscience, and he knows exactly, that all the atrocities done by him to the woman are hurting her, and are not, what other people consider correct and moral behavior.    He commits transgression knowingly, but he is just not bothered or concerned.   
   
   In this scenario, a woman is a utility with benefits, used and then thrown away, not considered worth neither care nor maintenance.     

Control Freaks of all subtypes are the most devastating dominators.    I am willing to be a supportive partner to anybody, who has problems and entrusts himself to my support.   But without trust, a relationship is doomed to become toxic.  

294. The Effect of Bullying upon Love

The Effect of Bullying upon Love

When a man wants a woman to do something for him, no matter what it is, he has the choice between two principally different strategies.

1. He bullies her to do it using pressure, threat, anger, extortion or intimidation.
2. He treats her so well, that she cares and loves him enough to do it by her own good will.

The starting point for both strategies is the relationship deal, in which they have agreed to fulfill each other's needs.   

When the man's focus is selfish, then he chooses the first strategy.  His priority is to ascertain, that he gets his needs met by applying whatever power he has, be it physical strength, situational or financial advantage.   As far as he does give something back to the woman, he restricts it to just as little as he believes is enough to make her function.  

When the man's focus is based upon trust and appreciation, then he chooses the second strategy.   He makes efforts to earn the woman's love and care, he gives first, because he trusts her, that the more he gives, the more he will get in return.    With this strategy, love, attachment, bonding grows stronger over time.


Of course, no woman would consciously decide to become a selfish man's commodity, if she would notice, that this is his goal, before it is too late.   But there are reasons, why a woman can temporarily be in a relationship, where she is bullied.   

1. The man fulfills the woman's needs in one aspect, like sharing activities of traveling and attending cultural events.  His bullying does not drive her away immediately, because she attempts to put up with it, as long as her resilience lasts.
2. The man starts like a nice man as described in entry 285 about the abuse-hoovering cycle.   He only converts into the bullying guy after she had already fallen in love with the apparently kind and caring man.
3. She has become afflicted with the jerk attachment syndrome as describe in entry 268.

So there is the situation, that a woman by mistake loves an unworthy man, who bullies her.   She can rationally come to the conclusion, that he is unworthy, she could even take the decision to end the relationship in spite of her fatal love.  But she cannot just decide to stop loving him as a consequence of her insight, that he does not deserve her love.   

Fortunately for her, he himself helps her to get out of the trap, and he is often oblivious of this.   Every time, when he hurts her, and it is not accidentally but by his choice of selfish behavior, the pain she feels decreases her love.    Being bullied to be a commodity is a powerful love killer and when she is cured of her misplaced love, she is free to end the relationship and feel relief.   

A woman can go through this experience either with a jerk and psychopath or with an emotional moron.    But there is one huge difference.  
The jerk knows, that he can bully a woman to serve as a commodity only for a limited time.    After that time, he has to move on and find another victim and he has no conscience to stop him.   The jerk is not bothered, what the woman thinks or feels, as long as he gets, what he wants.   
The emotional moron has no clue, what is going on.   As long as the woman does, what he wants, everything seems ok for him.    He is oblivious of the difference between a woman acting by her own benevolent choice or by intimidation, and he has no clue, that his bullying is a love killer.      His own behavior could even shock him, were he able to get aware of the woman's real agony.  
The emotional moron is misguided by a logical error.   He believes that when the woman yields to his bullying and does or allows without resistance, what he wants, she has automatically changed her mind to agree with his entitlement delusion. He believes, that he is able to coerce her to think, what he wants her to think.   He does not consider his behavior as bullying, but as doing her a favor against her resistance.  He believes to improve her cognition and to teach her her appropriate role in his life.   He has not perception, that she feels hurt by being bullied and dominated.    

288. The Distorted Memory of the Emotional Moron

The Distorted Memory of the Emotional Moron

Some emotional morons seem to have a very specific distortion of their memory.     They store every blame, grudge and devaluation of a woman in their memory as carved in stone for eternity.   But they store the explanation and information in favor and defense of the woman as if written with chalk on a slate, that gets washed off by the next rain.    She has no chance to ever counterbalance his wrong perception and opinion of her, which gets from bad to worse as a consequence of the distorted memory.   

When a woman experiences something distressing, some disappointment, something hurting, no matter if caused by the emotional moron himself or by someone else, and he does not understand, what is going on, he automatically jumps to the conclusion, that she is a drama queen, hysterical, flawed.  
As an emotional moron, he is oblivious, that someone can experience anything, which he does not know of or which he would not be affected by at all.  In his simple mind, what does not exist for him, cannot exist for her.   An emotional moron not only lacks empathy, but he lacks any knowledge of the fact, that other people have very real and valid feelings and experiences, even though he himself has never even heard of them and they are beyond his imagination.    He is completely oblivious, that he cannot evaluate other people's behavior without sufficient information about their invisible emotional reality, and this information can only be obtained by asking for and listening to their introspection.   
Instead, he believes in his wrong assumptions based entirely on observations.  As a result, he observes the woman's incomprehensible distress without the shade of a doubt as an indication of her flaws and he stores this observation and interpretation in his permanent unmodifiable memory.    It just does not even occur to him to wonder, what really is the matter with her, let alone ask her a respectful question about her subjective experience.  

The woman wants a relationship to be a bonded intrinsic commitment based upon sharing the innermost feelings and understanding each other.    When she gets aware of his unfavorable evaluation of her distress, she makes efforts to explain to him everything she has experienced, felt and thought, in the hope to gain his understanding and his appreciation, that her distress was an appropriate reaction to her experience.  
Being an emotional moron void of any understanding about intrinsic commitment and such abstract needs of her, he has no clue, why she is so anxious and driven to explain herself to him, why it is important to her at all. 
If he finds no way to avoid it, he sometimes does listen with reluctance, he even tells her that he has understood her explanation and her introspection.  
But the next time, when he finds a new blame to put on her, when he starts another rant about his new and all his already accumulated grudges and blames, he is back at repeating his original claim of her being a hysterical drama queen, just as if she had never attempted to make him understand her feelings and her reality.    His grudges and blames accumulate, her explanations disappear without any effect.  

She might even write her explanations down, print them and hand them over to him to read.   This way she wants to give him a chance to make an attempt at his own speed, ease and convenience to understand her better.   It is all futile.  There is no way to influence him.   Her distress in previous episodes will forever be in his mind as an indication of her being flawed, and he will again and again repeat this to her.   

The question remains, why then did he claim at one moment to have understood?    There are several possibilities, and they are probably all of them sometimes valid.
1.   He temporarily understands but does not store this in his memory but forgets it immediately or very soon as if she has never said anything.
2.   He pretends to have understood, because he is not at all interested in her explanations, he is bored and wants to end the discussion.
3.   As a narcissist, he appreciates every indication allowing him to believe in her being flawed, but her explanation is not welcome, so he only pretends to listen and to have understood. 
4.   His ability of abstract thinking and of understanding mature emotions is so impaired, that he is unable to understand her explanations, but does not admit it.    He only pretends to have understood.
5.   He does not take her for serious or does not trust her to tell the truth.    He believes his own interpretation of his observations more than he believes her introspection and explanation.   He pretends to have understood, because he did not value her enough to listen.

This accumulation of unfavorable interpretation of more and more instances of her behavior has a very detrimental long term effect upon the relationship.    Events, that are incomprehensible only to an emotional moron and make the woman appear in an unfavorable light, happen in every relationship and cannot be avoided.    The longer this goes on, the more he devalues her, and she has no chance of stop this process.

She has no influence on what the emotional moron thinks of her and as a consequence, she also has no influence, how he treats her.   Since his opinion of her determines how he treats her, devaluing her serves to him as his justification for domination and bullying.   Along with the accumulation of grudges and devaluation, his treatment of her deteriorates.      

Every once in a while, when something pushes his hostility and anger button, he starts to declaim his whole database of blames and grudges like pouring a flood of mental diarrhea over the woman.    It is a known psychological fact used in commercials, that the more often something is repeated, the more people start to accept it as true.  The emotional moron obviously believes, that by repeating his claim of her alleged flaws often enough, she will finally agree to be flawed.    But as long as the woman's self-esteem remains undamaged, his repetition of his same old grudges and blames is just a painful nuisance for her and the harm done by it is indirect.   His ranting about her deficiency has the effect of convincing himself, and with every of his repetitions, he believes more in her flaws.  

287. The Narcissistic Bluffer

The Narcissistic Bluffer

A narcissist has a never satisfied need for adulation, adoration, admiration.   Even when he has successfully got a woman into the role of his doormat, he still wants to get more narcissistic supply from additional sources.   

If he were really good with some skills or qualifications, he would have no reason to be a narcissist, he could feel good about his true accomplishments.    But his intelligence and general aptitude are somewhat limited.   If he has a good memory and enough talent in his verbal expression to compensate for other deficits, then he is predestined to become a bluffer.  

First of all, he carefully chooses his audience.    They are all people, who have some kind of a problem, either psychologically or intellectually.  From his subjective perspective, he chooses his suitable ditch full of people, to whom he can feel superior.   All new age, religious and selfhelp groups are the ideal playground for the bluffer.  Either he only pretends to have the problem of the group's focus, or maybe he has it very lightly, or he may only believe to be afflicted himself.    He has not real convictions, in the core of his personality his is just gullible.    He can change his religious and new age believes easily and radically, if he has exhausted the patience of one group and moves on to another.    Everything except the narcissism is only skin deep, all the bluffer's convictions, attitudes and his pseudo-wisdom.

The bluffer enters the group apparently as a member like everybody else.   But as soon as he gets the occasion, he climbs on a pedestal and starts to impress the group with his monologues.   He comes well prepared, he has read books about the specific problem or belief system of that group, and he has memorized a lot of theory and advice, that he now pours out over the awe stricken audience.   For them, it is impressive, but they have no clue, that he repeats, what he has read, without any deeper comprehension.    Even though he has elevated himself upon a pedestal, the ground above the ditch is still much higher.  

For an observer from a distance, all his pseudo-wisdom is nothing more then mental diarrhea.    He pours out so much of it, that hardly ever anybody has a chance to get a word in.   But he only focuses on his own performance, and he does not even notice, that when the genuine sufferers in the group talk about their experiences, he lacks empathy and understanding.    He is a parrot and not a participant.   

In religious groups the bluffer learns the specific scriptures of the group by rote and preaches from his pedestal.  Here his role is even easier, because the religious believes make no rational sense to nobody except the believers.   Only skeptical people outside are able to be critical about it.   
He appears quite genuine and convincing, with an assertive body language and a strong voice.   He is not consciously bluffing the others, he is also bluffing himself.    He is oblivious, that what he repeats from books are only words for him, and that there is a more abstract and complex meaning for others, that he looses completely.  
   

If anybody would ask really learned questions, it would fast become obvious, that the bluffer has no comprehension of what he talks about.     It would be obvious to anybody but the bluffer himself.    The bluffer reads some books about a topic, and then he believes he knows it all and is the specialist.   When he meets a real professional with a degree, and he cannot comprehend him, the bluffer does not recognize his own limitations, instead he declares the professional as incompetent.    

 
He succeeds to bluff the people in the groups, because all he does is talk.   He could for example preach about the importance of responsibility, even though he himself has no clue, what responsibility means and how to apply responsibility to his own behavior.
The narcissistic bluffer could even join a self-help group of victims of jerks.   He would sincerely believe to be himself the victim of abuse, even though he has a suffering doormat at home.  When at the end of the micro cycle of abuse (entry 286) he himself had driven the woman into outbursts of calling him idiot or a**hole, he starts to believe her to be the abuser.  

The bluffer does not communicate, he only distributes his mental diarrhea.   Input by perception of the utterings of others is impeded.    He has a filter, which allows the narcissistic supply in form of praise and admiration pass through a wall, of which most of other people's utterings, especially the critical ones, bounce off.    He does not bother to listen, because while he believes that everybody else can learn from his alleged wisdom, he does not expect any valuable input from others.   He does not listen to people's feedback, so he avoids to ever be made aware, that in reality he has no clue of what he talks about.

When one group tires of him, he just moves on to another.   People, who recognize his performance as mental diarrhea shrug their shoulders and shun him.   Those who attempt to give him any critical feedback are shunned by him.   The bluffer has many superficial acquaintances, whom he has impressed.  As long as he impresses them, they are blind to what is behind his bluff.     

But he is very alone, because whenever people get close, they do not stay close for long.    They experience the inconsistencies and discrepancy between his words and his behavior, and his hurting and annoying treatment drives them away, before they can become real friends, who would bother to give him the sincere feedback, that he would need.   Instead they just avoid him.    

He has no chance to ever improve.   Over time the bluffer looses the touch with reality.   He believes more and more in his grandiosity and expects, that everywhere the pedestal is already waiting for him, not only in the ditch, but also, when he moves around on the ground above.  
   

With women, his method is similar.   He bluffs any woman ready to be bluffed to believe, that he were the kind of man she is looking for.  What person she is, makes no difference, as long as she looks up to him, accepts his pedestal as his birthright and gives him narcissistic supply.    Not having a real personality, he again bluffs himself to believe to be the match for any woman, who gives him narcissist supply without resistance.      

But if he ever errs in his choice of his victim and bluffs a fervently egalitarian woman to mistake him for an egalitarian man wanting a close and committed relationship, then trouble starts.   When such a woman experiences in real life, that his behavior is the contrary of his big words, then his bluff stops to be impressive for her.   
They are not in the ditch, and when he climbs onto his pedestal to be above her in his attempts to get her adulation, she pulls him down from the pedestal.   The bluffer becomes furious.   If he is not allowed to be above her on the pedestal, then he considers her appropriate place below him in the ditch.   When he attempts to push her down into the ditch, she resists and they struggle until she can free herself.    

At the time, when he bluffs her into the relationship, she considers him to be at par with herself.  But as soon as she starts to see through his bluff, she wonders, if it is not he, whose place is down in the ditch.   

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.      

285. The Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle

The Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle

There are many web pages full with heartbreaking stories of women, who have been devastated by going several times through the Abuse-Hoovering Cycle.   The men may be narcissistic psychopaths or narcissistic emotional morons or any other kind of jerks.   
But there is a general pattern.   These men appear all to have two distinct personalities like Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.   In the experience of the victims, they switch unexpectedly from one mode into another.   

The woman meets nice Dr. Jekyll, gets involved with him and after a while, he converts into the abusive Mr. Hyde.   When the victim's tether is reached, she is either able to end her agony herself, or the abuser dumps her in search of other prey.   Some time later, the abuser comes back as nice Dr. Jekyll and hoovers her in to restart the relationship.    Then comes another round of abuse, another end, another hoovering and this goes on much too long for the victim.

The victims are usually very puzzled, how the same man can be so different.    The explanation suggested most often considers the abuser as the genuine person, and the nice Dr. Jekyll as a perfect act of role playing to manipulate the victim.   

I think, there is another possible explanation.   For a narcissistic person, anybody else, including a partner, is a commodity serving to supply him with adding value to himself in his own experience and perception.   
This can be reached by two methods.   He can either devalue others to feel superior, or he can feel lifted up by the contact with someone, whom he idealized, glorifies and admires.    When an abuser oscillates between being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he oscillates between applying one or the other of the two methods, always choosing the one, which gives him the most narcissistic supply out of the woman at any moment.  
 

The tragedy starts, when nice Dr. Jekyll meets a woman, whom he secretly considers as out of his league, as too good to be true, as a trophy, whom to show off and feel uplifted in his self-esteem.    He courts her, idealizes her, cherishes her, worships the ground she walks on.   But after they get involved and he gets to know her better, things change drastically.   He discovers, that she is a person with her own needs and not there to serve his only, and in his eyes, that is a huge flaw and ends his idealization of her.   Even worse, she gives him feedback about things, that others would accept as a part of the normal process of adapting to each other.   In his perception, her criticizing devalues her.    He pushes her from the throne. 

She is not above him anymore, no more good enough as the trophy to be proud of.   At that point, he converts into nasty Mr. Hyde.    He starts to abuse her and treat her as his doormat, until she breaks down and becomes dysfunctional.   Once he perceives her as dysfunctional, he is able to regard her as inferior and subjectively gain value for himself by comparison with her.   But being abused, he women stops to give him any more narcissistic supply, she does not admire or adulate her abuser.   It she stays with him, it is because she is afflicted with the Jerk-Attachment-Syndrome (entry 268).   In this case, he leaves in pursuit of a source for better narcissistic supply.    Else she leaves, when she has enough.   
But after some time, if both are lonely, the cycle restarts.    He has attempted to get narcissistic supply from other women, but did not succeed, and in his memory, he reidealizes and reglorifies her.   Thus he reconverts himself back into the nice Dr. Jekyll and starts to hoover her.   If her Jerk-Attachment-Syndrome is bad enough, she gets sucked in for another round of the Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle.        

It is such a tragedy for the women, and it happens so often, and the question is, why.   But that will be the topic of another entry.  

284. Trust

Trust

A bonded relationship with intrinsic commitment is based upon mutual trust and trustworthiness.    This requires two partners, who both are able and motivated to make the fair balance of giving and receiving the basis of the relationship.   
Trust implies, that one partner can tell his true innermost feelings to the other and the other will never use this knowledge for selfish purposes.   
Trust implies, that one partner can influence the other in constructive communication to treat him the way he needs to be treated. 


1.  There is no trust, when two persons do not know each other well enough and are not interested or bothered to do so, because they both limit the relationship to be superficial and physical, like being friends with benefits and other arrangements for convenience based upon physical infatuation.    But the lack of trust is not a problem, if it is by consent.  

2.  There is no trust, when there is a power struggle or domination, and it is a tragic problem.  
In a power struggle, both are fighting to get, what they subjectively believe, that they are entitled to get.   
In domination, one had the better weapons and has established a hierarchy of power.

A power struggle can happen:
2.1.  When someone like a narcissist has the delusion to be entitled to special privileges and is not aware, that this impedes the other from getting a fair balance of giving and receiving.  
2.2.  When two persons have contradictory needs and are not aware of it.   They both believe to rightfully struggle to get a fair deal from someone appearing to claim onesided privileges.

The power struggle ends either with ending the relationship or:
1.  When the narcissist has established his domination and is able to apply his power to press his all his needs out of the subdued victim.    
2.  They gain mutual awareness of each other's needs and find a compromise to fulfill them and establish a trusting relationship.

Dynamics: 
A jerk or psychopath establishes domination, because he knows, that he is not trustworthy and that no woman in her right mind would trust him and accept her role in his life as to be used and abused.   For him, domination is the only way to have a relationship to fulfill all his needs and privileges, that he feels entitled to.   He knows, that with trust, he cannot get this.

A sane and mature man knows, that he cannot have a committed relationship without trust, and he attempts to build trust.   If he cannot trust a woman, he does not get involved with her.

An emotional moron does not know, what trust means.   He also does not know, where and when his selfish needs curtail the equally justified and valid needs of others. 

As a consequence, he believes, that every relationship is a power struggle, and that he can only get his needs fulfilled, if he is able to become the dominating male in a relationship and to limit the subdued woman's allegedly selfish taking advantage of him.  
An emotional moron is someone, who believes in his privileges as he believes, that the woman's purpose and even own wish is to serve his needs at his convenience.   He enforces domination in full oblivion of the woman's perception of it being abuse, he enforces domination as establishing, what he believes as correct.    An emotional moron believes in sincerity, that a woman exists for his convenience, as I have explained in entry 282.   He sincerely believes, that there is something wrong with a woman, if she resists to serve his convenience.   Logically, every woman, who insists to be a partner and to get a fair balance of giving and receiving, is considered as warranting to be forced into her right place by domination.  

An emotional moron is pathetic figure stuck in a dead end.    He is caught in his false belief of an entitlement to so many selfish onesided privileges in a relationship, that no mature woman in her right mind will ever concede them to him as justified.   He projects his own selfish entitlement of privileges onto her and believes, that if he does not struggle, he will get nothing.    

==> Every attempt he makes to have a relationship leads automatically in a struggle, when the woman defends herself against his unjustified claims of entitlements.   
==> Due to his belief, that without struggling he gets nothing, he never yields, when a woman struggles in self-defense.   Thus he can never experience, how much he would get without struggling for more, if instead he would take, what the woman gives him deliberately.  
==> Being deprived of the experience of how much of value he can get without struggling, he is unable to correct his unrealistic and unjustified expectation.   He cannot learn, what expectations are fair enough to get them from a woman without struggling and domination.  

He has no chance to learn, what is a fair deal, and he cannot learn to trust a woman to get a fair deal from her.