<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I'll start with what Sine said about my old relationship.
<i>"I saw two problems with your relationship. One, it sounded like it was based around attraction. Stuff like "we get blown away by this cute new transfer" or "I had another beautiful girl chasing after me" or "full-fledged puppy love". That's all fine and dandy, AS LONG AS SOMETHING ELSE IS THERE! I didn't hear anything like how she had a great personality, or sense of humor, or the things you share. Being there as a boyfriend and being there as a husband are two different things. It's deeper. It's not puppy love, like you refered to it. It's knowing that no matter what, she will be there for you, even if you are maimed for life or lose your job or whatever. It's trust. It's devotion. It's domestication, the thing you so feared."</i>
First, I was describing the bare outlines and history of the time we spent together. I didn't have time to include every single detail when the more important thing I was trying to do was empathize with Eric and show him that I was as deep as he was and I turned out okay.
Second, you did a fantastic job of reading selectively, only focusing on the first part of the description, and then missing the point completely. Did you miss the part about how I spent every waking moment taking care of her when she was sick? Did you miss the part where I helped her move and stored half of her stuff in my car all summer? I also didn't mention that from the moment we started discussing marriage we were ostensibly living together - we didn't officially have the same rooms on campus, but we spent every night together, left stuff in each other's apartments, did each other's laundry, etc. I also didn't mention how we sang in our groups together, watched all 95 episodes of Rurouni Kenshin together, spent major holidays together...I could go on and on.
The point which I was trying to make clear to Eric in my original post and that you missed <i>spectacularly</i> as evidenced by the last sentence of your paragraph, is that I *did* domesticate myself for this girl. Completely and totally, <b>because I didn't know then what I know now</b>. And I ended up getting burned because when I did that, I domesticated myself to the point that there was love, but no attraction.
What I've just realized while writing this is that I think the reason you are disagreeing with me is that you seem to think that attraction and love for the same person are mutually exclusive. They're not! And that's really the whole key to what I was trying to tell Eric in the second half of my original post, although it's obvious I didn't make myself clear. The process that I was trying to describe to Eric, and that I myself am trying to use in my search for a relationship, is:
1) meet and attract
2) fall in love
3) keep doing the things that attracted in the first place
And step 3 does not mean never doing the dishes or refusing to settle down. Being attractive in a relationship is all about the "inner game" - your attitude and personality. Here's an excerpt from one of the newsletters I get from David D. that might help explain what I mean:
<b>1. Most men behave like WUSSIES when it comes to women and dating.
2. Women NEVER feel the powerful and magical emotion called ATTRACTION for WUSSIES.
So let's take them one at a time.
WHAT exactly IS a WUSSY?
A Wussy is a guy who kisses up to women.
A Wussy is a guy who does whatever a woman wants him to do, and doesn't even know if or when a woman is testing him.
A Wussy is a guy who accepts manipulative behavior from women, and doesn't care if a woman flakes out
on him, takes advantage of him, or acts overly dramatic around him.
A Wussy is a guy who has no backbone, and caves when challenged by a woman.
A Wussy is a guy who feels that he needs to BUY or PAY FOR a woman's attention and affection with
gifts, dinners, compliments, and other forms of payment and flattery...because he can't imagine that a woman
would want to be with him just for HIM.
In short, a WUSSY is a submissive man who tries to compensate for his lack of ability to attract women
by being overly accommodating and generous.
NEWS JUST IN: MOST MEN ACT LIKE WUSSIES!
And if that wasn't bad enough, here's the REALLY bad news: Women will NEVER feel ATTRACTION for this
kind of behavior, or this kind of guy!
(If you even doubt what I'm saying for a SECOND, then try this simple test: Find 3 attractive women,
and ask them if they ever feel a gut-level ATTRACTION for guys who kiss up to them and act like Wussies, and
watch what they say.)
Want some even WORSE news?
When this kind of tactic doesn't work for a guy, he'll usually TRY HARDER, and become even MORE of a
WUSSY to make a girl like him... and the more a girl runs away, the more a WUSSY most guys become.
YOU DO THE MATH and figure out the outcome of this equation.
It totally blows my mind how a guy will kiss up to a woman and watch with HIS OWN TWO EYES as she
becomes more and more distant... and instead of him realizing that it's his own WUSS behavior that's causing
the woman to run away he just keeps doing it... AND EVEN INCREASING IT!
And I think that MOST guys go their whole lives without realizing this critical insight.
[...skipping ahead a bit...]
4. Men are NOTORIOUS for showing their "non-Wuss" side early on, but then somehow turning into a woman's
worst nightmare Wuss Boy as the relationship progresses.</b>
Okay? Do I make any sense now? What I was trying to say, based on what I read of Eric's post and my own experience, is that after we fell in love with our respective girls, we domesticated ourselves to the point of turning into Wussies, and ended up losing them because there was love, but no attraction. Eric and I trusted our girls, yes, but our trust was based on incomplete information. If you don't know that attraction is more powerful than love and you don't know that acting like a Wussy will kill any attraction your lover has for you, you're leaving the door open to the possibility of being hurt.
One of David D.'s favorite expressions is "Attraction is not a choice." Acting on it when you're already in a committed relationship is (from what I gathered, however, Eric's girl broke up with him before she did anything besides have feelings for this other guy), and I do of course place some fault on the girl for that. All I said was that it wasn't ALL her fault - if Eric had done what I should have done and not turned into a Wussy, there would have been attraction for Eric in this girl as well as love and she wouldn't have been tempted by the other guy in the first place. Eric agrees with me, why can't you?
Regardless of what the majority of player literature has to say (which you are incredibly prejudiced against, for no reason I might add, since it's all advice and can be taken however the reader wants to take it), what I'VE learned from studying seduction is that you can be in a committed, loving relationship WITHOUT being a Wussy.
Which brings me to another point...
<i>"The trick is getting the right types that would actually go for the long haul. In that respect, chasing after the bombshells isn't the best idea. In general, the level of commitment (and personality/intelligence) is inversely proportional to how good her body is.</i>
That is <i>bullshit</i>. That's the kind of self-limiting, stupid bullshit that causes guys everywhere to settle for less. When they're ready to go long-term, guys who think like you figure "well, regardless of the problems we have, this is the best I'm going to do, may as well stick with it instead of a girl I'd rather have who I might be even happier with." Hell, it's guys believing crap like this that fosters situations ripe for male infidelity (for those who have less self-control than you, of course). The point here is that if you know how to keep a girl attracted to you after you've fallen in love - i.e. if you know how to not act like a Wussy - if you and your girl are truly compatible, you never have to worry about losing her.
Okay, that's the first part taken care of. *phew*
<hr>
Next, Seraphina. Let me give you a hypothetical situation.
Let's say I'm standing in a gigantic parking lot, with cars stretching as far as the eye can see, and I need to take the front tire off a car until I find a tire that I really, really like. When I first showed up at the parking lot, somebody handed me a socket wrench with a socket already attached to it, and there's a box with the rest of the sockets on the ground next to me. I try my wrench on a whole bunch of the cars around me, but it doesn't work on any of the bolts - not only that, most of the bolts seem to be the same size.
In this situation, would you suggest I wander aimlessly around the parking lot until I find a car that my wrench just happens to fit, or should I go back to the tool box and change the dumb socket?
Here's another, possibly more apt example. You're raising a child who behaves incredibly rudely in social situations. Do you change his behavior so that he's suitable for company, or do you let him ruin function after function until you find a group who laughs and says "What a cute little tyke?"
<hr>
Kupek...
You seem to be focusing most on taking what I intended to be generalizations and discounting them completely because they're not infallible or don't precisely apply to a particular situation. Of course what I'm talking about doesn't apply to ALL women and ALL men and ALL relationships. But it does apply to MOST women and MOST men, and David D. says so repeatedly in his materials (heck, he even says it in the excerpt I clipped above, which was part of the email I forwarded to you).
Perhaps I phrased things wrong when I mentioned that these are theories. The people I've read and learned from didn't learn all this stuff by sitting at home and making guesses. They <i>talked</i> to women. They've figured things out from countless conversations and experiences, and yes, even sitting down and brazenly asking women "So what kinds of things do you find attractive?"
You've been quick to discount all the things I've been saying, and you've been backing yourself up mostly by saying "I don't think..." As I stated when I made my initial rebuttal - you are ONE person. I've read and learned from the experiences of HUNDREDS of people (as has David D., he used to be a poster on that newsgroup I mentioned, remember?), and from my point of view, you thinking that your experiences and opinions on this subject are automatically somehow more valid than a large group of people's who have spent at least a million times more time and energy actively studying that subject than you is the height of closeminded arrogance.
I mean, from what I can tell, it's like you're saying that because you changed your oil yourself a couple times, you know more about cars than the entire team of mechanics at the Daytona 500. (I just picked up my new car last week, that must be where all these car metaphors have been coming from.)
There. I've made my replies. Do with them what you will.
Regards,
<i>-57</i></div>
<i>"I saw two problems with your relationship. One, it sounded like it was based around attraction. Stuff like "we get blown away by this cute new transfer" or "I had another beautiful girl chasing after me" or "full-fledged puppy love". That's all fine and dandy, AS LONG AS SOMETHING ELSE IS THERE! I didn't hear anything like how she had a great personality, or sense of humor, or the things you share. Being there as a boyfriend and being there as a husband are two different things. It's deeper. It's not puppy love, like you refered to it. It's knowing that no matter what, she will be there for you, even if you are maimed for life or lose your job or whatever. It's trust. It's devotion. It's domestication, the thing you so feared."</i>
First, I was describing the bare outlines and history of the time we spent together. I didn't have time to include every single detail when the more important thing I was trying to do was empathize with Eric and show him that I was as deep as he was and I turned out okay.
Second, you did a fantastic job of reading selectively, only focusing on the first part of the description, and then missing the point completely. Did you miss the part about how I spent every waking moment taking care of her when she was sick? Did you miss the part where I helped her move and stored half of her stuff in my car all summer? I also didn't mention that from the moment we started discussing marriage we were ostensibly living together - we didn't officially have the same rooms on campus, but we spent every night together, left stuff in each other's apartments, did each other's laundry, etc. I also didn't mention how we sang in our groups together, watched all 95 episodes of Rurouni Kenshin together, spent major holidays together...I could go on and on.
The point which I was trying to make clear to Eric in my original post and that you missed <i>spectacularly</i> as evidenced by the last sentence of your paragraph, is that I *did* domesticate myself for this girl. Completely and totally, <b>because I didn't know then what I know now</b>. And I ended up getting burned because when I did that, I domesticated myself to the point that there was love, but no attraction.
What I've just realized while writing this is that I think the reason you are disagreeing with me is that you seem to think that attraction and love for the same person are mutually exclusive. They're not! And that's really the whole key to what I was trying to tell Eric in the second half of my original post, although it's obvious I didn't make myself clear. The process that I was trying to describe to Eric, and that I myself am trying to use in my search for a relationship, is:
1) meet and attract
2) fall in love
3) keep doing the things that attracted in the first place
And step 3 does not mean never doing the dishes or refusing to settle down. Being attractive in a relationship is all about the "inner game" - your attitude and personality. Here's an excerpt from one of the newsletters I get from David D. that might help explain what I mean:
<b>1. Most men behave like WUSSIES when it comes to women and dating.
2. Women NEVER feel the powerful and magical emotion called ATTRACTION for WUSSIES.
So let's take them one at a time.
WHAT exactly IS a WUSSY?
A Wussy is a guy who kisses up to women.
A Wussy is a guy who does whatever a woman wants him to do, and doesn't even know if or when a woman is testing him.
A Wussy is a guy who accepts manipulative behavior from women, and doesn't care if a woman flakes out
on him, takes advantage of him, or acts overly dramatic around him.
A Wussy is a guy who has no backbone, and caves when challenged by a woman.
A Wussy is a guy who feels that he needs to BUY or PAY FOR a woman's attention and affection with
gifts, dinners, compliments, and other forms of payment and flattery...because he can't imagine that a woman
would want to be with him just for HIM.
In short, a WUSSY is a submissive man who tries to compensate for his lack of ability to attract women
by being overly accommodating and generous.
NEWS JUST IN: MOST MEN ACT LIKE WUSSIES!
And if that wasn't bad enough, here's the REALLY bad news: Women will NEVER feel ATTRACTION for this
kind of behavior, or this kind of guy!
(If you even doubt what I'm saying for a SECOND, then try this simple test: Find 3 attractive women,
and ask them if they ever feel a gut-level ATTRACTION for guys who kiss up to them and act like Wussies, and
watch what they say.)
Want some even WORSE news?
When this kind of tactic doesn't work for a guy, he'll usually TRY HARDER, and become even MORE of a
WUSSY to make a girl like him... and the more a girl runs away, the more a WUSSY most guys become.
YOU DO THE MATH and figure out the outcome of this equation.
It totally blows my mind how a guy will kiss up to a woman and watch with HIS OWN TWO EYES as she
becomes more and more distant... and instead of him realizing that it's his own WUSS behavior that's causing
the woman to run away he just keeps doing it... AND EVEN INCREASING IT!
And I think that MOST guys go their whole lives without realizing this critical insight.
[...skipping ahead a bit...]
4. Men are NOTORIOUS for showing their "non-Wuss" side early on, but then somehow turning into a woman's
worst nightmare Wuss Boy as the relationship progresses.</b>
Okay? Do I make any sense now? What I was trying to say, based on what I read of Eric's post and my own experience, is that after we fell in love with our respective girls, we domesticated ourselves to the point of turning into Wussies, and ended up losing them because there was love, but no attraction. Eric and I trusted our girls, yes, but our trust was based on incomplete information. If you don't know that attraction is more powerful than love and you don't know that acting like a Wussy will kill any attraction your lover has for you, you're leaving the door open to the possibility of being hurt.
One of David D.'s favorite expressions is "Attraction is not a choice." Acting on it when you're already in a committed relationship is (from what I gathered, however, Eric's girl broke up with him before she did anything besides have feelings for this other guy), and I do of course place some fault on the girl for that. All I said was that it wasn't ALL her fault - if Eric had done what I should have done and not turned into a Wussy, there would have been attraction for Eric in this girl as well as love and she wouldn't have been tempted by the other guy in the first place. Eric agrees with me, why can't you?
Regardless of what the majority of player literature has to say (which you are incredibly prejudiced against, for no reason I might add, since it's all advice and can be taken however the reader wants to take it), what I'VE learned from studying seduction is that you can be in a committed, loving relationship WITHOUT being a Wussy.
Which brings me to another point...
<i>"The trick is getting the right types that would actually go for the long haul. In that respect, chasing after the bombshells isn't the best idea. In general, the level of commitment (and personality/intelligence) is inversely proportional to how good her body is.</i>
That is <i>bullshit</i>. That's the kind of self-limiting, stupid bullshit that causes guys everywhere to settle for less. When they're ready to go long-term, guys who think like you figure "well, regardless of the problems we have, this is the best I'm going to do, may as well stick with it instead of a girl I'd rather have who I might be even happier with." Hell, it's guys believing crap like this that fosters situations ripe for male infidelity (for those who have less self-control than you, of course). The point here is that if you know how to keep a girl attracted to you after you've fallen in love - i.e. if you know how to not act like a Wussy - if you and your girl are truly compatible, you never have to worry about losing her.
Okay, that's the first part taken care of. *phew*
<hr>
Next, Seraphina. Let me give you a hypothetical situation.
Let's say I'm standing in a gigantic parking lot, with cars stretching as far as the eye can see, and I need to take the front tire off a car until I find a tire that I really, really like. When I first showed up at the parking lot, somebody handed me a socket wrench with a socket already attached to it, and there's a box with the rest of the sockets on the ground next to me. I try my wrench on a whole bunch of the cars around me, but it doesn't work on any of the bolts - not only that, most of the bolts seem to be the same size.
In this situation, would you suggest I wander aimlessly around the parking lot until I find a car that my wrench just happens to fit, or should I go back to the tool box and change the dumb socket?
Here's another, possibly more apt example. You're raising a child who behaves incredibly rudely in social situations. Do you change his behavior so that he's suitable for company, or do you let him ruin function after function until you find a group who laughs and says "What a cute little tyke?"
<hr>
Kupek...
You seem to be focusing most on taking what I intended to be generalizations and discounting them completely because they're not infallible or don't precisely apply to a particular situation. Of course what I'm talking about doesn't apply to ALL women and ALL men and ALL relationships. But it does apply to MOST women and MOST men, and David D. says so repeatedly in his materials (heck, he even says it in the excerpt I clipped above, which was part of the email I forwarded to you).
Perhaps I phrased things wrong when I mentioned that these are theories. The people I've read and learned from didn't learn all this stuff by sitting at home and making guesses. They <i>talked</i> to women. They've figured things out from countless conversations and experiences, and yes, even sitting down and brazenly asking women "So what kinds of things do you find attractive?"
You've been quick to discount all the things I've been saying, and you've been backing yourself up mostly by saying "I don't think..." As I stated when I made my initial rebuttal - you are ONE person. I've read and learned from the experiences of HUNDREDS of people (as has David D., he used to be a poster on that newsgroup I mentioned, remember?), and from my point of view, you thinking that your experiences and opinions on this subject are automatically somehow more valid than a large group of people's who have spent at least a million times more time and energy actively studying that subject than you is the height of closeminded arrogance.
I mean, from what I can tell, it's like you're saying that because you changed your oil yourself a couple times, you know more about cars than the entire team of mechanics at the Daytona 500. (I just picked up my new car last week, that must be where all these car metaphors have been coming from.)
There. I've made my replies. Do with them what you will.
Regards,
<i>-57</i></div>
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