732. How Men Could Cope With Their Physiological Urges Without Disrespecting Women

732.   How Men Could Cope With Their Physiological Urges Without Disrespecting Women

This continues entry 702. The Male NoFap Movement Brings No Benefit For Women, which seems to have been misunderstood.    So I add some clarification:

An unpartnered man, who respects women as humans with a brain and a personality, behaves following these guidelines: 

He recognizes the risk of making himself a nuisance to women and the necessity to avoid this.   He accepts to prevent causing any harm to women and to his own ability to respect woman.   He never copulates like an alley dog, not by payed abuse nor by taking advantage of the consent of women without self-respect.   His need to cope with his recurrent physiological tensions requires a non-abusive method to maintain his homeostasis.

This method is the unrestricted use of his hand but with the clear cognitive attitude and goal of this being a merely mechanical way of cleansing.  
He is motivated to not jeopardize his respectful attitude towards women.   Therefore he avoids anything, which would desensitize him and which would trick his subconscious mind to automatically confound female bodies as toilets for his body waste.   
He distinguishes cognitively between mechanical cleansing and physical intimacy as a facet of a longterm monogamous bonded attachment.  

Therefore he never looks at pornography.  
 

Pornography has been made by abusing real women.  The customer of pornography is mislead towards the cognitive pseudo-justification and trivialization of watching women apparently enjoying copulation.  He avoids cognitive dissonance by the complete denial, that abused and disgusted women have only feigned and pretended in front of a camera, what appeals to the animal in him.  

The realistic quality of photos and movies tricks the male mind to confuse the combination of his manipulations while merely watching as if he himself had also experienced the performance of what he does not recognize as abuse.   The result of habitual exposure is a fatal desensitization and subconsciously learning and enhancing the automatic and spontaneous degradation of women as objects.   

Exaggerated male urges for female bodies have evolved over millions of years.   Photography only exists since 200 years.  Therefore a man needing mechanical relief can perform this without pornography.  

He never fantasizes about any really existing woman.  

Alley dog copulation without longterm emotional attachment and respect for a woman's brain and personality are mutually exclusive.  
When a man's animal instincts make him feel the urge to copulate like an alley dog, his choice of subsequent behavior makes a big difference only for the targeted woman.   If a man approaches her suggesting the physical abuse of her body, this informs her of his disrespect.   If he only abuses her in his fantasy while finding solitary relief, she usually does not even know it.  
But for the man's subconscious mind in both cases the experience is similar.  It is the successful and pleasurably rewarded degradation of a woman's body as a toilet.   Thus his respect for her person is damaged in both cases, no matter if she has agreed to real abuse or if her agreement was only a part of his fantasy.   

Only the woman, who is approached, can show her indignation and adjust her behavior towards him.   In the case of fantasized abuse, the targeted woman is impeded from appropriate reactions by the ignorance of his unnoticed disrespect.   While due to her unawareness of his hidden degradation and insult she continues to be friendly to an unworthy man, his subconscious mind is prone to misinterpret her lack of any indignation as consent or even encouragement.   

The side effect hereof is the deformation of his expectations and his accompanying loss of respect for women.  Instead of acknowledging all degradation and objectification of women as an outrage, he gets mislead to consider the indignation of women with self-respect as a defect in comparison with too many women appearing to him as if not bothered. As the result of this desensitization he considers only those women, who seem to comply with their own objectification, as healthy and appealing.    

Preserving the ability to respect women requires to avoid this effect.   

Any man, who disagrees with these guidelines, does not respect women.  

715. Love Cannot Be Defined, But A Loving Relationship Can

715.  Love Cannot Be Defined, But A Loving Relationship Can

Love is an emotion, which is felt and cannot be clearly defined.   It is easier to define, what is not love, than what is.  
The mere urge to copulate with a body is certainly not love but only a virulent expression of the procreation instinct.    Whatever form of attraction there may be, nothing can be called love with justification, unless there is the recognition and appreciation of the cognitive qualities and personality of the partner. 

The relationship of a couple can be defined as loving by behaviors, by which the quality of the bond between the partners is directly or indirectly expressed.
  
The criteria of a loving relationship:

1. Emotional attachment and emotional intimacy
2. Physical intimacy
3. Some amount of intellectual intimacy, depending upon the amount of intelligence and education
4. Exclusivity, each being special to the other in a way, which nobody else is
5. No need or inclination to wish or to search for someone else

When all the above criteria for a loving relationship are present, and when the couple has also explicitly agreed to stay together indefinitely, then they have accepted to be a loving couple.  Obviously both experience sufficiently, whatever love means for them personally.

But when two persons share physical intimacy repeatedly with each other during a considerable time, even for years, and they do not consider themselves as a couple in a loving relationship, there can be very different arrangements.  

In the case, that it is really only physical intimacy and nothing else, then this is just a variety of reciprocal abuse and taking advantage of each other, while they prefer the practical advantage of avoiding the recurrent hunt and search for someone different.

But there is also the concept of friends with benefits (FWB), where the word friend really means true friendship, and is not just confounded as synonymous with mere acquaintance.   

A true friend is someone, with whom there are ties of emotional and intellectual intimacy in some form.    This is the essence of friendship.  When physical intimacy is added to the true friendship, then this combination contains all esential ingredients for a loving relationship.   

When the couple nevertheless explicitly puts emphasis upon the distinction of being FWB, but not being a loving couple, this means more often than not, that their are some serious personal problems.

1. It can be a sign of selfishness and greed, when someone wants all the benefits of being in a loving relationship while also wanting all the advantages of being single.   It is an attempt to get all needs met while not having any obligations to also meet the other's needs.  
   
2. There can be fear and apprehension.  
   Someone may fear commitment and obligations.  
   Someone may fear failure and getting the more hurt, the more he allows involvement.   
   Someone may be torn apart between the fear of a repetition of a very hurtful past experience and the wish to have a better relationship. Someone may fear to fail, would accepting love lead to the next step of further closeness by living together. 
   Someone may succeed to maintain the denial of such fears by insisting on the denial of any emotional involvement.  
   
3. There can be unrealistic hopes and expectations.   The real quality of the present relationship is not appreciated as sufficient in comparison with imaginary ideals.  The relationship is considered as a temporary arrangement until either the ideal and perfect partner is found or until someone experiences that overwhelming sudden sensation, as which love is presented in fictional novels or movies. 

This FWB concept seems weird.

It cannot be explained by evolutionary biology.    By instinct, men want to sire as many offspring as possible with as many different sets of genes.   By instinct, women want commitment and attachment as the best way of provision for their offspring.   

While FWB does not cater for the needs of the instinct driven, it nevertheless also does not serve the specific needs of those with a very low instinctivity, the brainiacs, eggheads and intellectuals. Their needs for intellectual and emotional intimacy, for the companionship of shared extensive cultural and cognitive activities are best fulfilled in a close loving relationship.
 
Maybe FWB suits predominantly the needs of the people in the middle of the instinctivity bell curve, who are the most disturbed by their internal struggle between the contradictory forces of instincts versus rationality and self-control.  

As long as both persons implied want either love or FWB, they can get, what they want.   But sadly enough, often there is a disparity, probably when people differ very much in their level of instinctivity.  While one partner experiences all the criteria as given and thus himself as being in a loving relationship, the other is afflicted with some of the problems listed above and keeps on enforcing a distance by insisting to be only FWB.    

702. The Male NoFap Movement Brings No Benefit For Women

702.   The Male NoFap Movement Brings No Benefit For Women

I just happened to read for the first time about the NoFap movement.   My first superficial reaction was to welcome the rejection of pornography.   But then I found out, that this is not the objective, but an unintended side-effect.   The real objective is men's very selfish intention of some weird form of self-improvement.   Reducing the plight of women is not the goal.   Women are insignificant in this concept.

The man watching pornography indirectly damages some women.   His victims are the women, who are abused by the production of pornography.   By his demand for pornography he contributes to producing more and thus abusing more women.  
He also desensitizes himself towards perceiving women as objects and not as persons, which harms women, who by mistake get involved with him with wrong expectations.  
But even though the pornography temporarily enhances his dishomeostasis, his subsequent solitary manual restoring of homeostasis has no direct victims.  

In the case of a not partnered man, there can even be a collateral benefit, when thus restoring temporary homeostasis, this can reduce his being a nuisance to all women, who do not want to be involved with him.    

The man on a NoFap project refrains from pornography but only as a collateral side-effect.   This is not his goal, the pornography has only lost its utility.  On a small scale this abstaining does unfortunately not suffice to reduce the market and the abuse of producing more.   
The not partnered man's goal is the self-improvement of learning to live with his urges.   During his NoFap periods, he lives in the state of permanent and growing physiological dishomeostasis.  Would he not get innately into such states, he would never have developed those habits, which he now wants to discontinue by NoFap.   This makes him anything between a nuisance and a hazard to all women around him.    

Even if he does not transgress boundaries by harassment, assault or rape, any interaction with him can be very unpleasant and unsuitable for a woman.   Though a woman wants a rational, decent and serious conversation, this is not available from a man, who is disabled and deranged by his instincts craving for her body.   So while in a state of homeostasis, he could be an interesting person, his NoFap inner battles deprive her of a rational interaction with him.

NoFap is not an appropriate solution for the male physiological affliction.   Instead it is necessary that men take full responsibility to cope with their biological predisposition in a way, which eliminates all abuse of women.  

There cannot be any doubt, that men in a state of homeostasis are much better not only for women, but for everybody around them and even for themselves.   The recurrent male dishomeostasis needs to be remedied.   

Men need to learn, that the best, if not the only non-abusive way of coping with their biology is forming stable, bonded, monogamous relationships, in which intellectual and emotional attachment with a woman as a person prevents abuse.   

Otherwise men's manual remedy needs at least to be mentally separated from any imagination or observation of the abuse of any living woman.   Men need to learn and to comprehend, that while their biological urges are real, this does not mean, that women exist to be abused for this purpose.   

Women are there to connect with emotionally and intellectually, or else they are not to be touched.   NoFap does not help men to learn this.    

Additional thoughts (2015-3-31).

It seems that the above text can be misunderstood.   I have therefore written an additional entry elaborating this topic:

732.   How Men Could Cope With Their Physiological Urges Without Disrespecting Women

678. Misconceptions Of Commitment Impede Relationships From Being A Safe Haven

678.   Misconceptions Of Commitment Impede Relationships From Being A Safe Haven
 
Since reading ads and profiles on the web, I have been getting more and more aware of several misconceptions of commitment. 

The following is not about those nasty promiscuous guys, who abuse women by outrightly and consciously refusing any commitment.  It is about misconceptions, which lead to hurting behavior in spite of this not being intended.
 

For many women a relationship is a simple deal, even though they may themselves not be aware of this or they may even deny to put it as bluntly as I do.   Realistically seen, when they supply their bodies for men's instinctive urges, it is meant as the price for getting a safe haven in return.  
But when men are ignorant of women's non-physical and non-material needs, they do not comprehend this deal.  Their misconceptions are harmful to women.   

When such a woman allows a man the access to her body, she instantly wants the safe haven to be given to her.  Not as a vague expectation for the future, but immediately in return, as in a fair deal.   But due to misconceptions, the man does not or not yet pay this price.  This often leads to situations, when women feel like creditors, while men do not comprehend, that they have a debt or what they owe.  

 

When there are misconceptions, there is no malice and not even selfishness, but just ignorance and misguidance by those men, who deprive women of a safe haven..    

  

Misconception 1.    Men project their instinctive cravings upon women and are not aware, that this is not symmetrical due to physiological differences.   They are unaware, that women expect the safe haven as a price owed to them.  

When, as a metaphor, an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic sit down together to drink a bottle of wine, they can seem superficially to do the same.   Both appear to enjoy the flavor of the wine.   But it is not the same.   The alcoholic craves the wine for the alcohol, he has no choice to refrain from drinking.  He would drink any other alcohol, even horribly tasting stuff.  The non-alcoholic drinks the wine as a conscious choice to do so, he is free to not drink what he does not like to drink.   

When a man and a woman get physically involved, the situation is equally asymmetrical.   The man's instincts crave to copulate with a female body because of his recurrent physiological dishomeostasis.  If he is also attracted to the woman's brain, it is only an additional bonus, not a significant reason.    The woman is free from such compulsions, she has a real choice.   She is able to choose physical intimacy, when enjoying it is part of the whole package of also intellectual and emotional intimacy, which are the preconditions for a safe haven.   She has no need for a mere male body, if she gets nothing better than a body.  
 

This misconception impedes men from comprehending the women's deal.  They are in full denial, that they owe a safe haven in return for homeostasis.  

Instead these men have the delusion of a different deal, by which they were merely obliged to satisfy allegedly equal female instinctive urges.  In the case of apparent success, they sincerely believe to have no further obligations.    They are dangerous fools.     


Misconception 2.   This misconception equates commitment with monogamous exclusivity.  

Under this misconception, people choose or attempt to find relationship constructions, which are sometimes called LAT (Living Apart Together) or by others friends with benefits.    When and as far as they feel committed, they confound this with the mere restriction of physical intimacy to only one partner, while they do not feel any further obligations or responsibility for what they do to the other. 

Thus a man can acquire sufficient access to a woman's body to maintain his homeostasis and nevertheless keep her completely out of his own life, but continue to live at his own convenience as a bachelor.   

He fulfills his physiological needs without paying a price. In combination with misconception 1 he is oblivious that this favors only his onesided advantages but harms the woman, who is denied a safe haven.


Misconception 3.   Only the legally binding act of an official marriage with a signature is considered and perceived as commitment.  

Under this misconceptions, all obligations of marriage under the respective laws of any country are accepted as binding, but nothing else.   This is not a safe haven.    Legal obligation care for the spouse's material minimal requirements, but not for emotional needs.  

This misconception has several possible consequences.   

Consequence 1.   When a man does not understand the real meaning of a safe haven, but wishes to fulfill a woman's non-physical needs, he may be prone to hasten to marry before both have discovered, if they really are a good match.  

Consequence 2.   When a man mistakes the fulfillment of legal requirements with fulfilling a woman's needs, the laws of a country, especially gender asymmetrical ones, can make a man to wrongly believe to be a good husband.  But when he dominates, forces his will upon her for his convenience, then there cannot be a safe haven for a woman.
 

Consequence 3.   For those persons, who understand the real meaning of a safe haven and of intrinsic commitment, the obligations to each other are morally indistinguishable between a legal marriage and cohabitation without the signature.   But a man, who does not feel committed unless he is married yet who intends to be decent, is motivated to get engaged to be married.   The phase of being engaged is especially beneficial for his combined needs.

With such a man, aggravated by misconception 1, the premarital phase of physically intimate engagement can be very destructive and hurting for the woman.   She expects the safe haven to have already been created, while the marriage to come is only a tiny insignificant addition.   

But for such a man this engagement phase is subjectively as if he could temporarily eat as much cake as he wishes and continue to keep it all.  
He has the illusion to be decent and correct, because he has principally accepted to start having obligations, but only at some moment in the future.   He already fully enjoys the use of the woman's body, while temporarily not feeling obliged to already pay any non-material price.   

While being merely engaged he still feels the uncommitted freedom of the bachelor.   He still feels no obligation to share any decision with the woman.   He still feels entitled to have everything at his convenience and to enforce this.   He still considers his time and his money as his own.  
For the women, this is very painfully the contrary of a safe haven.  
For some such men, this is a very agreeable situation to be prolonged by delaying the marriage.    


As a result of the prevalence of any or all these misconceptions, a woman cannot get the pursued safe haven in return for allowing a man the access to her body.   All these misconceptions are especially found in persons, who experience themselves as singles in the interaction with someone perceived as very distinct. 

A safe haven is based upon a general intrinsic attitude towards the partner, which leads to behaviors enabling her to feel and experience emotional safety.  

Life is an never-ending sequence of problems, troubles, inclemencies, pressures, which are prone to exhaust and burn out those persons, who are forced to cope alone.    Household items and installations break, neighbors, bosses or family members cause struggles and disputes, legal and financial problems arise. 
 
The person, who is alone when afflicted with any such problem, is often ultimately very helpless.    Platonic friends and non-cohabiting LAT partners can be or at least can attempt to be supportive by listening, by giving advice or by supportive actions.   But in the end, it is not their own problem.   They have a backdoor, they can sooner or later withdraw and go on with their own life.   Being supportive is merely their choice, a onesided altruistic act, for them it is not an own necessity.   In the end, the person remains still alone with the problem.      

A safe haven is very different.   A safe haven means, that both partners intertwine their lives and their circumstances so much, that they both are concerned and struck together by such problems. They have an identity as being two halves of a unit.  Whatever happens to one automatically also happens to the other, because it happens to the unit.  The shared life causes being struck together by the impact of the same circumstances and events.   Both partners have no choice and no backdoor, they need to cooperate to solve common problems by common activities.    Whatever they do or fail to do causes either benefits or damage to both.   

677. Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

677.   Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

Again and again I see on dating sites calculations and concepts, which indicate the implicit assumption, that someone could be more or less a match by nothing more than only the additive presence or absence of shared and welcome traits.        

This is a very hazardous fallacy.    Relationships fail predominantly, when one partner's attributes, traits, attitudes, values or habits cause the other to feel and experience harm or at least discomfort and displeasure.    In such cases, both partners are mutually unsuitable.   

Therefore differences in how much someone is suitable are only of any significance, when there is no unsuitability at all.     

 

As a metaphor, the most delicious ingredients can be mixed elaborately into a perfect treat.  But one single addition of a foul tasting or toxic ingredient suffices to make it entirely unpalatable or dangerous.  

It is the same with a partner.   A man could have dozens of traits and attributes making him appear as nearly perfect and as a dream come true.  But one unbearable and intolerable attribute can suffice to nevertheless make the relationship toxic and devastating beyond endurance.   

 

If accidentally there is salt instead of sugar in a cup of coffee, it can be thrown out with a shrug of a shoulder and new coffee brewed.   But if there is accidentally salt in the tiramisu or chocolate cake, which had required a lot of work to make, the disappointment is much bigger.  

The same goes with a man.   The more a man seems to be perfect in many other aspects, the more it is painful, when his hurting behavior cannot be stopped.   Avoiding to be hurt by a man by avoiding him entirely is easy, as long as in all other aspects he is merely just acceptable.   Yet he is acceptable for a harmonious relationship, as long as there is no unsuitability.  

 

Suitability can be additive depending upon how much is shared.   Unsuitability is not additive.   One aspect of unsuitability is enough to define the entire unsuitability.  

If there is only a lot of salt in the coffee, it cannot be drunk.   If there is only arsenic in it, it is not to be drunk.   Salt and arsenic together would not make it any less drinkable.    The behavioral consequences of not being able to drink the coffee are the same, even when the reasons are different.

One unsuitability suffices to make a man unacceptable, no matter what he is otherwise.    For me, a man with children is unsuitable, a man with religious beliefs is unsuitable, and a man with both religion and children cannot be less suitable than any one with only one of these unsuitabilities. 

Therefore what defines someone as a match and as a suitable partner is the absence of unsuitable attributes of any kind.   What these are, varies individually.  

Such unsuitable attributes can be

• cognitive, when mental traits like attitudes and beliefs elicit disrespect, repugnance or repulsion.
• behavioral, when habits and instinctive urges cause harm and hurting
• incongruency of significance, when the need for a partner does not fit with what is offered and expected reciprocally
• situational, when circumstances impede fulfilling the other's needs.

I am not looking for a dream partner or for someone perfect.   Instead I am looking for someone, who is in no aspect unsuitable for me.   

This means the absence of anything, which impedes me from respecting and appreciating him as a mindmate and he is someone, who by his own inclinations and decision does nothing, which I experience as harm and by which I feel hurt.      

653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

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

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

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

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

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

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

Who:
 

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

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

Cooperation and consistency:
 

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

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

Trust:
 

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

Reinforcement:
 

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

Emotional risk:
 

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


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

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

Who:
 

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

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

Competition and no consistency:
 

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

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

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

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

Trust:
 

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

Reinforcement: 
 

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

643. A Man's Persistent Contact With Ex-Partners Is A Variety Of The Traditional African Polygamy

643.   A Man's Persistent Contact With Ex-Partners Is A Variety Of The Traditional African Polygamy

In entry 642, I pointed out, how prostitution simulates the copulation of mammals, where the male is not impacted by any emotional or cognitive trace after copulating with a female body.  

When a man perceives a deactivated intimate partner as not different from someone, who had never been more intimate than a platonic friend, this also is evidence, that this man does not experience physical intimacy as creating an irreversible permanent special bond, which can never be undone,  but only drastically broken and severed.


I once wrote a term paper upon traditional African family structures.    Simplified, it was like this:  When a man marries for the first time, he and his wife have one hut each in a compound.   They have an intimate relationship, until the first child is born.   Then the physically intimate relationship with this wife is deactivated.   The man marries a second wife, who gets also her own hut.   When she has her first child, the physical intimacy with her also gets deactivated.    Depending on his material resources, he may add several more wives.   When he reaches his limit, he reestablishes the intimacy with the more ancient wives, until they again are pregnant.  
This means, such a man has a harem, which consists during long periods of one active intimate relationship and several deactivated intimate, but temporarily platonic relationships with women, whom he has not discarded as unsuitable.  

A man, who enters a new intimate relationship, while maintaining a platonic friendship with deactivated intimate partners, has the same kind of a harem.  If he would experience emotional attachment as connected with physical intimacy, he would know this.   But if physical intimacy does not create any permanent emotional trace, then he is not aware of creating a harem and he does not know, what he does to the women, whom he denies exclusivity by placing them in the harem.   
He is oblivious of the decisive difference between a deactivated intimate partner and an ex-partner.  


I define an ex-partner as someone, who is discarded from all voluntary contact as being unsuitable for a relationship. 
A woman, who was an intimate partner and who is still treated and considered as a platonic friend, is not an ex-partner, but a deactivated intimate partner.  

I define monogamy as having only one intimate partner at the same time, no matter if active or deactivated.    

I consider and perceive a person, who is not suitable for friendship as also no suitable for an intimate relationship and the step from friendship to physical intimacy as a one-way street and there is no way back.  


I have been thinking hard, but I cannot imagine any valid reason, why two persons get intimately involved and end the relationship, and in spite of this can continue to reciprocally merit each other's friendship.    A valid reason to end a relationship and valid reasons to reciprocally merit each other's friendship are mutually exclusive. 

• When a relationship ends, because one commits an unforgivable transgression, then this means, that the basis for friendship has been forfeited and destroyed.  
  
• When two people have made the mistake of getting involved by infatuation, while they had nothing in common to keep them together, then the they cannot remain the friends they never had been.
  
• When a man gets aware of the banality of his recurrent urge to restore his homeostasis, then as a wise man he understands, that this is inherent in human cognition, which enables intelligent humans to compare more rewarding intellectual activities with the primitive homeostation of animal instincts.  This awareness does not diminish a mature man's attachment to the person of his partner.  
  But if experiencing his own needs for homeostation as a banality suffices for a man to replace his companion's body with another female body for the purpose of enhancing the sensation of primitive thrills, then he is a worthless idiot and an immature jerk and he does not deserve the discarded woman's friendship.  

Therefore any man, who needs to continue the contact with his deactivated intimate partners, scares me for two reasons.  
It makes me suspicious, that physical intimacy is for him not connected with emotional attachment, bonding and commitment, and it indicates a high risk of me being hurt by his ending the relationship for invalid reasons.  

640. Interesting Research Results

640.   Interesting Research Results

I have been mentioning before, that in my understanding people's conscious attitudes are influenced or determined by their instinctive urges and that as a result of evolution, men and women differ in what is predominant as their strongest instinctive urge.  
If men are driven by strong urges, then towards using a female body to restore sexual homeostasis.   If women are driven by strong urges, then towards breeding and getting attached to children.

The following source seems to supply some evidence:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213214620.htm

"Mothers are more negative about relationship quality, relationship with partner, relationship maintenance and happiness with relationship/partner than childless women. However, mothers are significantly happier with life that any other group, indicating that children could perhaps be the primary source of happiness for women.

Mothers are also almost twice more likely than fathers to say that their child/ren are the most important person in their life. Fathers are much more likely than mothers to value their partners as the most important person."

The study also backs up my own notion of the importance of sharing and of the preference for the match criteria of being likeminded and similar.

"The survey also revealed how sharing values, a faith, beliefs or interests with a partner is very highly regarded and participants expressed disappointment when the everyday experiences of life could not be shared.

"Holding things in common was seen by participants as a key "connector" in the couple relationship,""

639. A Disheartening Research Result

639.   A Disheartening Research Result

People are generally motivated towards behaviors for the purpose of improving or maintaining their subjective well being (SWB) as far as ability, moral restrictions and circumstances allow it.

The following study about the positive effects of power on the SWB is very scary for women.    It implies indirectly men's asymmetrical option to enhance their SWB by harming women.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/15/0956797612450891.full

"Across four surveys representiedly different primary social roles (general, work, romantic-relationship, and friendship surveys; Study 1), and in an experiment (Study 2a), we found consistent evidence that experiencing power leads to greater SWB. Moreover, authenticity mediated this effect. Further establishing the causal importance of authenticity, a final experiment (Study 2b), in which authenticity was manipulated, demonstrated that greater authenticity directly increased SWB. Although striving for power lowers well-being, these results demonstrate the pervasive positive psychological effects of having power, and indicate the importance of spreading power to enhance collective well-being. "

The power situation between women and men is asymmetrical.    Men have a choice, which women do not have.  

Men are on average physically stronger than women.   They have the innate options to either install power over women or to voluntarily refrain from doing so.    If women have any option at all, it is only the option to avoid those men, who would use power to harm them in the case of their exposing themselves to be harmed.   Women have no option to remain unharmed once they have allowed themselves to be under the control of a man using power.   In civilized countries, women have the option to refuse and to leave a relationship with a man using power.   But there are still many societies, where women are owned, sold and married forcefully by their parents.  

If a woman and a man were stranded on a deserted island, this innate asymmetry becomes virulent.  He has a choice, while she is at his mercy.   As long as there is nobody else present to interfere, he has unlimited power over her.  He has the physical strength to do, whatever serves his convenience.    He can kill her, rape her, deprive her of supplies, coerce her, constrain her, torture her, exploit her.   

If he helps and protects her and shares the supplies, he does it by choosing this as an option.   The woman has no options.    


Women can only have power, when they either have a weapon or when their power is provided by rules, laws, law enforcements and third parties protecting her and acting on her behalf.  
A women can have the power to control something, which a man wants or needs, but only under the condition that usurping it by coercion is either made impossible or if the serious consequences are worse than not having it.   A man can use physical force to take away any object from a woman, but he cannot get at what others control on her behalf, like her bank account.   The fear of being severely punished serves in a limited way as a deterrent against men coercing women.   
  

Therefore women's safety, wellbeing, let alone happiness, all depend on men's voluntary choice of not using the power, with which they have biologically been endowed.   The result of the study implies a special hazard for relationships.   

Both genders usually enter a relationship for the purpose of enhancing the SWB.    Between egalitarian partners, this can be symmetrically, mutually and reciprocally beneficial for a shared and interdependent SWB experienced as a unit of being a couple.      
But men are favored by the asymmetrical alternative option.  They can choose to install power and thus enhance only their own SWB, while this automatically damages the women's.


While men usually know what harm they inflict when applying power or intimidating to do so for the purpose of getting what they want, they are often not aware of the detrimental effects of unintended intimidation.   

Women can never be fully sure, what those men will do to them in the future, who have so far never used the powers available to them.   Violence against women is ubiquitous and men's innate option to decide at any moment to use power and harm women is real.   Living under the permanent threat of male power is a part of women's life, no matter how much this threat is conscious or only subtle and subconscious.

   
Men are encouraged and they learn to fight and to use aggression as a way of getting their due from other men.  They choose their behavior based upon the expectation of resistance.   But when men express anger and aggression towards women, who lack sufficient physical strength for successful self-defence, the effect is intimidation due to women's realistic awareness of being at the men's mercy.    While intimidation can be subtle and subconscious, it nevertheless prevents women very often from daring to stand up for what they really want, need and consider as fair and correct.   
 

Intimidation leads to unfortunate consequences.   When a woman's only option to end being harmed by a man using power is to leave him, while she has no option to make him stop his harming behaviors and enable her to stay together, this impedes women from reacting appropriately to all transgressions, which are below the threshold for leaving.   Men do not only get away with inappropriate and harmful behavior, but they also get the wrong impression as if women would accept, what they merely do not dare to protest against due to intimidation.   Thus men are mislead to enhance their SWB by damaging the women's, even when the men are not aware nor intending to do this.           


Sadly enough, it is logical when seen as a result of evolution, that physically strong men using power on women had also the result of unwanted pregnancies and that they contributed more to the gene pool than the considerate and respectful nice guys did.   

I am wondering, if the combined effects of birth control and low risk abortion with the modern technology of intelligence being more important for survival than physical strength could influence the evolutionary trend.   

Maybe over the next many thousands of years, the difference in physical strength between men and women could dwindle?
But even if there will ever be a golden age, when men are no longer stronger than women, I will not be around to enjoy it.  

633. Science Suggesting The Importance Of Relationship Maintenance

633.   Science Suggesting The Importance Of Relationship Maintenance

When men driven by sexual dishomeostasis choose those female bodies, which trigger the strongest infatuation in disregard of women's personalities, and when women driven by the urges of the procreation instinct choose suitable providers by physical fitness and assets in disregard of men's personalities, relationships are doomed to fail.

According to this source, relationships need maintenance, which requires cognitive human qualities far outside of the scope of instinctive behavior.    Animals copulate and procreate, but humans use their cognition to create and maintain bonding and attachment.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130109110059.htm

"Relationships are like cars in that you have do certain things to keep them running, especially when your goal is to strengthen and preserve your bond with your partner,"

"The research showed that openness, positivity, assurances, shared tasks, and a shared social network are strategies that couples can use to make their relationship better,"

"To "open up" your relationship, the researchers encouraged not only talking about your feelings but getting your partner to talk about what she is feeling as well. "

"It's also important to assure your partner that you're in the relationship for the long haul, to divide household chores and responsibilities equally, and to make an effort to include your partner's friends and family in some of your activities,"

"Persons who use any of these maintenance strategies will not only be more satisfied with and committed to their relationship, they are also likely to continue to love and, yes, even like each other throughout its duration,"

"These approaches had the most influence on the quality of the relationship when persons believed their partner was also performing relationship maintenance,"

"The study suggests that what you do doesn't matter as much as whether the things you're doing are noticed by your partner."

598. Commodification And Delayed Gratification

598.  Commodification And Delayed Gratification

This continues entry 597.

When one partner of an egalitarian, bonded and caring couple expresses a wish to the other partner, this is based upon the realistic expectation and trust, that the partner is motivated to gratify the wish, if and when it is possible at any unspecified time in the future.   

This includes the awareness, that the partner has a mental to do list, where the wish gets a place according to the urgency, priority and circumstances of all the other list items.   The delayed gratification is trusted to be available without any exertion of control or power. 

When a man commodifies a woman, the situation is very different.   A man using a utility like a vacuum cleaner expects a simple dichotomy: The machine either functions immediately after pressing the button or not at all, in which case it is broken.   Even programmable appliances like a video recorder are under his full control, they start to function at exactly the time, which he has determined and can thus predict.   

The commodifying man expects the same dichotomy also from the woman, whom he confounds with a utility:   
When he demands something from a woman, he expects her immediate compliance.   If she intends to gratify his wish but with a delay, he automatically misinterprets this as a complete refusal and experiences her as dysfunctional.   By confounding her with a utility, he is unable to appreciate her as a person with an own mind.   He neither trusts to get anything from her without having full control nor does he consider her able to accept his wish and gratify it later.  
He confounds the delay of gratification with a complete refusal and reacts with pressure upon her.   He is oblivious, that she would comply immediately, were this feasible.    Pressure does not make it any more feasible, therefore the pressure achieves nothing.  The motivation to do favors for the trusting and patient partner are an ingredient of a caring relationship.  

Reacting with pressure upon an only alleged refusal destroys her motivation to gratify his wishes.   By using pressure he earns a real refusal and gets less than what he would get with patience and trust.      Pressure deteriorates the relationship.   

597. Commodification And Wanting

597.   Commodification And Wanting

When a sane, mature and rational person declares to want something, this is an expression of a mere wish and of nothing more.   Wishing does not imply any assumption concerning the availability or feasibility nor does it imply any claim to get it.

Attempts towards gratification are an independent next step.   Such attempts are limited by the full recognition of and awareness for the rights of others and by the moral obligation to refrain from harming others and from usurping and seizing.     

The rational method to get gratification is earning it.  When it comes as a gift, it is received with gratitude and not taken for granted.
 

Immature and selfish jerks have a blatant delusional fallacy in their thinking.  When they say 'I want x', they really mean to say 'I demand x, because I believe myself to be entitled to get x immediately'.  They confound wanting something with the entitlement to automatically get it.  They believe, that everybody and the society owe to given to them, whatever they want and when they want it.  

Relationships are entered for the purpose of meeting specific needs.   The difference between mere wishes and claims of alleged entitlement contributes to the difference between egalitarian bonded couples and asymmetrical commodification.   

A bonded, caring, considerate couple feels reciprocally responsible for the careful use of their pooled resources.   Those expenses have priority, of which the benefits are shared by both partners   Any expenses only benefiting one partner are secondary.  Shared decision are based upon agreement as being fair.  Reciprocal gratification of wishes is perceived with gratitude as a gift or as a favor.     

The commodification of women is one special case of the fallacy of mistaking wanting as an automatic justification for claims, demands, coercion and usurpation.  A jerk informing a commodified woman of what he wants feel automatically also entitled to get it immediately. 

• Commodifying men experience and consider it as their baseline of normality, if they always get everything immediately whenever they demand it.   
  They take all received benefits for granted.  They are blind to recognize, when someone does something for them by choice and by a voluntary decision.   They do not know, what favors are.  They do not know gratitude.  
  Any expression of love, care and affection by voluntarily doing something for such a man is lost and not recognized as such.  Whatever gratification he receives, he always confounds it as if it were his due and as if she were only doing her duty. 
  
• When the reaction to commodifying men's demands is refusal,
  
  • they seize their alleged due by hook or by crook, by domination, coercion, bullying, if they have the power to do so.
  • they get extremely angry, aggressive, frustrated and unpleasant, when they lack the power to enforce gratification.

596. Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor

596.   Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor


While people can often improve their relationships by feedback and constructive criticism, those men, who commodify women are unfortunately out of the reach of improvement by feedback. 

The spell checker metaphor:

Using a spell checker when writing a text in a foreign language helps to find mistakes and to learn better spelling.   Without the spell checker, the same mistakes are repeated and become a habit.   

A spell checker offers to its user the choice to change his spelling, whenever and if he agrees to do so.  Ignoring the errors indicated by the spell checker can have the unfavorable consequences of reactions to bad spelling.   

The benefits of using a spell checker as a learning aid are limited by preconditions.   It is only a valuable tool to improve the spelling competence, if it is reliable by only indicating real mistakes and by finding (nearly) all of them.  

1.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many false positives.   When the spell checker uses a wrong language on a text, this leads to so many false positives, that the real mistakes are lost between the many apparent mistakes.  

2.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many mistakes.  
When someone's knowledge of a language is only minimal and below the threshold for writing correct text, too many mistakes are discouraging and beyond the capacity to memorize all the corrections. 

3.  Relying on a spell checker, which overlooks mistakes, is worse than not using one.  Whatever is not indicated as an error is wrongly assumed and reinforced as correct.   This leads to learning mistakes.  


Feedback as a behavior checker:

Being influenced (entry 594) by the feedback of the partner concerning the preferred behaviors and especially concerning what hurting, annoying and disturbing behaviors need to be avoided is an important method and part of the learning process for improving a relationship. 
The partner's feedback indicates inappropriate behaviors.  Accepting feedback can be seen as using a behavior checker.   Feedback offers the choice to change the behavior in the case of agreement with the necessity to do so.    Ignoring and rejecting proffered feedback can have the unfavorable consequences of strong reactions to the persistent criticized behaviors.

The benefits of feedback as a tool to improve a relationship are limited by preconditions.   Feedback is reliable, when it is welcome by the recipient as justified and when both partners agree, that and how the criticized behaviors need to be changed.   

1.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many false positives of unjustified and irrational criticisms.   When a commodifying man's entitlement delusion causes him to have absurd expectations and make inappropriate demands on a woman, which she refuses to comply and submit to, then his criticizing her for not serving his delusion is not justified.   Under an overwhelming pressure of his absurd and unwarranted blames and reproaches she has no chance to ever discover and consider those few instances of justified feedback.   

2.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many justified reasons for criticism.   When a man has very many hurting, annoying and disturbing habits and attitudes, then getting too much justified feedback is more than what he can cope with.  This can happen, when someone is immature and ignorant, or when he is suddenly exposed to new expectations after having been considered as unfit for learning by feedback as in 3.

By the reaction of blocking and denial to overwhelming criticism he avoids any change.  But giving too much justified feedback is in such a situation not the woman's fault.    Her feeling hurt and annoyed is real and shifting the suffering upon her to spare him is not an improvement for them both as a couple, only a redistribution of the burden.   Her refraining from giving justified feedback is not a solution.  

Whenever there is a persistent conflict, because there is only the choice between him suffering from her feedback or her suffering from his behavior, they are a mismatch and not suitable for each other.    

3.  Not giving feedback reinforces habits, even though they are hurting or disturbing to others.   This happens, when someone gets the fool's or insane's license, not being taken for serious but instead considered as a weirdo and too deranged to change.  While he himself remains ignorant of his unfavorable reputation as a hopeless and incorrigible case, he believes to be respected and accepted.  He misinterprets the absence of feedback as if his behavior were experienced by others as correct and appropriate.  

4.  Learning by feedback does not work without agreement concerning the justification of the feedback.  
Making a relationship work requires a process of adapting to each other.   But not all people are suitable to reciprocally adapt.   When people's basic attitudes and values are too disparate, they cannot agree concerning which behaviors are acceptable and which are not and thus they also cannot agree, which feedback is justified.  They cannot adapt to each other, they are a mismatch and doomed to accumulate more and more unresolvable conflicts.  

5.  Feedback does not work, unless it is understood by the recipient as it was meant by the sender.   When feedback is incomprehensible or distorted by dysfunctional communication (entry 595), it does not help to learn and does not lead to improvements..  

The commodifying men's fallacy:

Spell checkers compare written text with an internal dictionary of correct words.  This dictionary represents the generally agreed upon correct spelling of a language.  Some spell checkers allow people to enter additional own words as correct into this dictionary.     Any fault entered as correct into the dictionary would no longer be found by the spell checker.  But entering faults is of course a completely irrational method of avoiding to notice the own errors by distorting the spell checker.

Yet the method applied by commodifying men, when handling women's feedback is as if someone would adjust the spell checker by feeding mistakes into the dictionary, until all the mistakes are hidden.   Text thus only appearing as if correct is then believed it to really be correct. 

But the dictionary of correct behaviors is in the woman's head, outside the commodifying man's control.  Feedback concerning his outrageous behavior and his absurd attitude towards women does not elicit the appropriate reaction of his correcting his behavior. Instead he believes the dictionary of correct behaviors in the woman's mind to be faulty.  He reacts with attempts to fix the woman, which for him means to make her modify her allegedly wrong feedback and the faulty concept of correct behaviors causing this feedback.   

Whenever by any method, threat, coercion, exhaustion or domination he succeeds to make her discontinue her feedback, he interprets this as having successfully fixed the woman.  

By this mechanism, men commodifying women are out to the reach of being influenced.    

595. Communication: The Importance Of The Correct Conveyance Of Information

595.   Communication:  The Importance Of The Correct Conveyance Of Information

Communication is a process of conveying non-obvious information from one brain into another.   Cooperation, agreement, consent require the availability of the same information to all parties involved.   

Whenever information does not reach the recipient (listener or reader) unaltered from how it was supplied by the sender (speaker or writer), the result is distorted communication and subsequent unsolved and unsolvable conflicts.  In this case, relationships are doomed by the accumulation of more and more unsolved conflicts.   

Communication works best, when the information sent is neither redundant nor insufficient but conveys just all, which is really needed based upon a realistic evaluation of the targeted recipient's knowledge.     
Communication is distorted, when the information contained in the sender's statements does not match the needs and expectations of the recipient.

The cause of distorted communication and incomprehension can be on both ends:

1. Information provided by the sender does not correctly reach the recipient.  

• The recipient fails to listen.
  
  • He believes to know already, what will be said, based upon his assumptions, prejudices, preconceptions and misinterpretations.   
  • He underestimates the sender and does not consider his statements as worth to listen to.
  • The topic does not interest the recipient, no matter how important it is to the sender.
• The recipient confounds, what is really said, with what he only imagines as said or has heard elsewhere.   This creates a false memory, by which the recipient believes to have heard, what in reality was never said.  
  
  
• The recipient receives only a selection of the information sent. 
  
  • He listens not for the purpose of receiving information, but for the purpose of finding something to contradict and to believe himself to be right.
  • He listens for the purpose to find a hidden agenda or hidden truth in the distrusted sender's statements.   The interpretation is believed and confounded with what is really said but lost.
  • He filters the conscious reception of information to avoid hearing, what would make him feel bad. 

2. The sender fails to communicate well.   Too much redundancy forfeits attention, in which case also important information is lost.  This has a similar effect as has insufficient information, it leads to incomprehension.  

• The sender can have a memory problem. 
  • He forgets, what he has already told and repeats it too often.
  • He confounds, what he only thought about and intended to say, with what he really had told.

• The sender overestimates his own importance and expects the recipient to have paid attention and to remember everything told just once.   

• The sender is generally unable to evaluate, what information is required to be understood.
  
  • He cannot distinguish between general information to be expected from the target recipient, and specific information only available to himself.
  • His statements are omitting some information replacing them with  implicit interpretations and conclusions, which are not comprehensible, unless the recipient shares some cognitive common ground of shared values and attitudes.   
  • He is influenced by hidden and invisible sensations and emotions and is not aware, that the recipient cannot mindread and does not share his state.  

3.  The sender conveys a specific level of informational content, which is suitable for preselected recipients only,   

• He fails to adjust the level of information correctly to the recipients.
  
  • He overestimates the recipients cognitive ability and knowledge, and this leads to incomprehension.   
  • He underestimates the recipient's comprehension and ability to remember, what was already told,  The redundancy bores the recipient.  Too banal and obvious information can appear as the assumption of lacking intelligence.   

• The recipient overestimates himself and chooses communication situations, where his incomprehension is unavoidable.   

Communication can only be constructive, when both partners are both able and motivated to make it thus.   

When the communication is distorted with dynamics like described above, then a couple can spend years together and never find out, who and how the other really is.  

Instead of getting to know each other better, they reciprocally create false alleged personalities of the other.  With every conflict and misunderstanding the false image gets more extremely distant from the misjudged person's reality.   Being treated as the alleged false personality can be very painful and the relationship is doomed.

594. The Difference Between Control And Influence

594.  The Difference Between Control And Influence

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

593. Commodification And Trust

593.  Commodification And Trust

A correct assessment of trustworthiness is very important when interacting with others, especially when deciding on future interactions.    The better the assessment of trustworthiness, the better the prediction of behavior.  

Consciously paying attention to consistent, congruent and plausible behaviors is one method, but there is more:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120911113047.htm

"Certain nonverbal gestures trigger emotional reactions we're not consciously aware of, and these reactions are enormously important for understanding how interpersonal relationships develop,"

"Nexi is a humanoid social robot  ....  While conversing with the participants, Nexi -- operated remotely by researchers -- either expressed cues that were considered less than trustworthy or expressed similar, but non-trust-related cues. Confirming their theory, the team found that participants exposed to Nexi's untrustworthy cues intuited that Nexi was likely to cheat them and adjusted their financial decisions accordingly."

While too much trust bears the risk of being harmed, there cannot be any close relationship without or with insufficient trust.   

A close relationship is symmetrical between equal partners based upon mutual trust and reciprocal trustworthiness.  
Trust is based upon the expected trustworthiness as a trait, whenever somebody is considered to be a person and a human being.   Only persons are checked for being trustworthy, and clues as in the research for trustworthiness are only perceived and expected from persons (or robots imitating them).  

Commodification is asymmetrical between a user as a subject and a used utility as an object. Utilities are functional or dysfunctional and the prediction of their reliable functioning in the future is a question of probability and experience.  In the case of inanimate objects, this is logically not a question of trust and trustworthiness.  A utility like a vacuum cleaner is not asked, if it intents and is able to function the next day, followed by the assessment, if the answer is honest or a lie.  

Due to trust not being a relevant factor when using an inanimate utility, the commodification of women as if they were inanimate objects creates a distorted situation.  
The owner has full control over a utility.   When he puts the vacuum cleaner in a closet, he can expect to retrieve it in an unaltered state, whenever he wants.   He has no need to trust the vacuum cleaner to not leave the closet.
When a man has established control over a commodified woman, he expects to have once and for good ascertained her availability for being used at his convenience without this being a situation requiring to consider trust.


It the comparison with a vacuum cleaner appears a bit too drastic, here is another metaphor:   When a man commodifies a woman, she is for him, what a dairy cow is for a farmer.   

A farmer's dairy cow is valuable possession under his full control. 
The cow brings him lots of benefits, as long as she receives careful maintenance for her physical wellbeing.  He is aware that appropriate maintenance is in his own self-interest.  
The farmer learns, how to handle a cow, from instructors and books, by observing her for signs of dysfunction, by using trial and error and by consulting a veterinarian.
The farmer does not expect to get any information from the cow by asking her questions, nor does he bother about intellectual or emotional needs.  She is a body and he gets the benefits from her body.  
Trust or any personal traits do not contribute to his prediction concerning the amount of future benefits or the assessment of the cow's value.   


But a woman is not a utility, and in contrast to a vacuum cleaner or a dairy cow, external and physical control does not include control over her mind, having full control over her is only the controlling man's illusion.    Neglect, oblivion or denial of the importance of the woman's trustworthiness and personality does not annihilate their impact.   

Whenever the woman wants to trust, to be trusted, to find trustworthiness in a partner and recognition of her own trustworthiness, then being kept outside his protective defense of control dooms the relationship.     

Omitting any focus on or attention for the assessment of trustworthiness makes commodification even also risky for the man himself.   If he is unfortunate or stupid in whom he picks as a utility to be used, he does not get control as expected over a suitably helpless victim.   In the worst case for him, he gets commodifed in return, for example by a breeder, whose priority are her children and who only exploits him materially as a provider. 


Trust and control are mutually exclusive, while control is a behavioral consequence of or ingredient in commodification.    

This leads to distinguishable dynamics:  

• If a man lacks the ability to assess trustworthiness and gets harmed too often by trusting the wrong persons, resorting to the replacement of trust by control is his method of coping, the result is commodification.   
  It could be called secondary commodification, because it is a side effect of control as a coping mechanism.
  
• If a man is driven by instincts to perceive women principally as commodities, control is the method to establish the commodification.   In this case trusting and the perception for any information serving the assessment of trustworthiness are deactivated as not needed and they may have never been trained and developed. 
  This could be called primary commodification.  Control is used, because women do not opt to be commodified, as long as they have a choice for an alternative.  

This distinction is of no practical significance to the woman, who is helplessly under the control, until she removes herself. This distinction would only be important, if such a man ever attempted to overcome the commodification.   But as commodification means, that a man subjectively has the power to get the benefits he wants, unfortunately he lacks any motivation to end it.   

Trustworthiness as a human cognitive trait and trusting as a person's reactive attitude have both an impact upon behavior, even though they are ignored when replaced by control.   There are many more traits and attitudes having an important reciprocal impact upon the interaction between cognitive humans, but which are not expected from commodities, no matter if inanimate objects or animals. Their denial is as detrimental as is the denial of trust. Responsibility, consideration, empathy, caring, intellectual appreciation are just a few of a long list.  

591. Commodification And (Cyber-)Stalking

591.  Commodification And (Cyber-)Stalking

Commodification while the relationship lasts and stalking after its end are connected, because they are both caused by the same distorted attitude towards women.     

People are protected by the law against real life threats from real life stalking, cyberstalking without any physical danger is a more subtle, but nevertheless a form of abuse.  There are many other kinds of cyberstalking, the following concerns the variety based upon commodification.   

When egalitarian, mature, rational and responsible people discover to have become involved by mistake, due to not having enough in common or to having irresolvable conflicts, they communicate until they end the relationship by a shared decision.

When egalitarian, mature, rational and responsible people later suggest a reconciliation, they do this based upon the insight and motivation to offer a drastic change of their own behavior.  They do not approach the ex-partner with demands while they offer nothing.    In the case, that they cannot or do not accept to change their own behavior, they recognize the final failure of the relationship.   They have the consideration of ending all contact and allow the ex-partner to forget and to heal.


Men who commodify women are neither egalitarian, nor mature, nor responsible.  They are also not rational, else they would know, that relationships are doomed by their commodification. 
Commodification is based upon the asymmetrical attitude, even entitlement and grandiosity delusion, that women exists for nothing more except to serve men's needs, wishes and whims at their convenience.    

Commodifying men believe to have been born with a free flatrate for being served with unlimited benefits by women.    

This can lead to two patterns of disastrous dynamics.   

• Pattern 1.  Commodifying men hurt women so much by domination, disrespect, coercion, control, disregard, objectification, until they are devastated and run to save themselves.
• Pattern 2. Woman having enough self-esteem and self-confidence to resist enforced commodification get dumped and discarded as being flawed, defective and dysfunctional.   

In both pattern, men do not get, what they expect according to their entitlement delusion:  Utilities always serving their needs but not asking or expecting anything in return.   Nor do they elicit women's agreement with the men's delusion of being perfect, while anybody else is to be blamed for men's every dissatisfaction.  

Cyberstalkers are angry and frustrated men.   They reproach fate, life, a deity, cosmic power or any other vague entity for failing to give them, what they feel entitled to:  Complying and submitting women.   

• In the first pattern, they are angry for having lost a satisfying commodity.  They demand to be given back, what they consider as their rightful possession.     
• In the second pattern, they feel defrauded by having been given a dysfunctional commodity.   They feel entitled and demand not to get a discarded insufficient  possession back, but to get it first fixed, repaired and improved.       

Some cyberstalker write angry diatribes full of grudges, complaints and reproaches, claiming what they believe to be entitled to and declaring their outrage of either having lost it or of having been given only a deficient and dysfunctional substitute.    These diatribes are implicitly written to the entity, not to the woman.  They are angry with the entity, whom they consider as responsible for their frustration.   

When someone buys a faulty machine, he blames the shop keeper, not the machine in the case of a defect.   But there is no such entity, neither generally nor as someone owing them anything.   So there is nobody to which to address complaining diatribes.   Lacking any better valve for their anger, cyberstalkers misaddress and displace their diatribes to the incommodifiable women.    These cyberstalkers are like the legendary man, who was dissatisfied with his inability to use his computer, so in a burst of anger he shot a gun at it.      

This is not only a fallacy, it is completely irrational and leads nowhere.    Cyberstalkers waste their time and achieve nothing except making themselves repulsive and aversive.      At the moment of breaking up, the dumped or driven away commodified women may have moved on with still ambiguous feelings.  The annoying and obnoxious stalking behavior helps the process of killing, whatever positive feelings may have been left.  

Stalking has several effects upon the victims.

Emotional:

• Being reminded of what the victims want to forget slows their healing.  Poking into someone's emotional wounds for the purpose to delay healing is adding more cruelty to the previous abuse.   It adds repulsion to the estrangement.
• Being triggered to relive memories of the abuse during the relationship is painful.
• Post relationship harassments add to feelings of being ashamed for having been involved with an unworthy and deranged man.

Cognitive:

• Men confirm by cyberstalking their being good riddance and not valuable enough to yearn for.
• The repetition of grudges confirms their magnitude and puts emphasis upon those differences, which indicate a mismatch.   
• The vindictiveness of efforts to prevent the victims' healing clearly indicate the cyberstalkers' unworthiness.
• The irrationality of stalking without benefits not even for the stalkers themselves indicates the men's lacking of intelligence and/or sanity.  

Stalking is paradox.  Even if the cyberstalkers would really want the women back, their behavior nevertheless drives them only further away.   The cyberstalkers reassure women of their unworthiness by adding some more to their previous reasons for rejection.