aurum

@Miguel1 I think you know some of my thoughts on this. It sounds like you are organizing your dating life around maximal disclosure. For you, the more vulnerability and openness, the better. That is not how I think about dating. Disclosure needs strong boundaries, especially during the early stages of meeting someone. You don't just dump everything on them. You should be selective with what you share. I do not consider that discernment a violation of truth.

Type shit https://englishinprogress.net/gen-z-slang/type-shit-explained/

Also, how do you now have more forum posts than me? You are a forum fiend

This is a bad take. Yes, online dating apps are playing a larger role, which are visually driven. But that does not mean the chief thing women desire from modern men is now their looks.

Probably a backlash from everything Trump-related.

Bro, social media is not stopping women from getting horny. Attraction is way too serious and deeply rooted in survival for that to happen. If some reasonable percentage of women are not finding you attractive, you are doing something wrong. Period.

This is just completely false. I get that you're in a bad spot right now, but this ain't the answer.

There’s no easy answer for that. You have to develop wisdom and choose your pressures wisely. That’s the only real solution.

Yes that’s the crux of the issue. Ultimately, you want to ground your masculinity in something not tied to success with women at all. You should be able to be an old, decrepit monk living in the forest alone and still be 100% masculine. But that’s not the full story. You are never going to experience being a man outside of the pressures and expectations that come with that. To be a human at all is to be an amalgamation of these pressures. So give up looking for your authentic self as a human. Your authentic self is not human at all. The goal becomes not just to burn off all these expectations but to learn to relate to them more consciously, more deliberately.

Valid points. I will be taking a different approach, but yes just teaching men tricks on how to get laid is grossly insufficient if you're serious about masculine development. My project will focus on sense-making around masculinity and what it means to be a good man. Everything else is secondary.

This is good advice. Fits in well with my own experience.

I’m not suggesting it’s perfectly predictable. Obviously there is uncertainty, struggles, difficult conversations. This is not a contradiction. The only kind of love humans do is ego love. If you want non-ego love, you can’t be a human. To be a human in human relationships means ego love. Regardless of how developed you are.

Quite the assumptions.

I’d disagree. The distinction is not that clear. Even a more genuine kind of love is extremely predictable.

People are not that unique. They’re generally all looking for the same things.

I’m not just talking about addiction. I mean long-term human love as well. It’s still extremely predictable.

It really doesn't though. What makes people fall in love is extremely predictable.

Are we sure this isn't actually Russel Brand though???

Newsom seems like the most likely option, assuming we don't get some out-of-left-field contender rise up the way Mamdani did. Newsom's biggest weakness is that he's not winning over a lot of the DSA, progressive wing of the democrats. They see him as a centrist, neoliberal who is still going to ultimately cuck himself to the oligarchy. I think he also gives them the vibe of that old-school, white, toxic patriarchal masculinity. John Ossoff I know almost nothing about. So no comment there.

My gut says not the right move. I don't see her as someone who is going to really energize voters.

I get it, but faking being married is not the solution. You gotta be smarter than that.

But if you want that and to make good money, you'll probably have to spend a lot of your time abroad still working. It's not just going to be an infinite vacation where you can do whatever. You'll be in India, but just glued to your laptop.

Less you think about the opener the better, especially at night. Start talking before you know what you're going to say. The first 10 seconds is way more about vibe than content.

Sounds like his views on masculinity might be skewing his perception here.

Because they are manipulative, usually cringey and actually preventing you from learning real socialization. By relying on these tricks, you avoid the hard work. How desperate do you need to be to fake being married?