Natasha Tori Maru

@Mondsee I do not doubt it - the phrasing made me laugh, though 🤪

Christ almighty, makes it sound like a geriatric with a walker 💀

Approval seeking is a big one to look for - huge growth there. Often harkens back to approval seeking with parents. This gets reflected into romantic relationships also. You can witness on the forum even, those who seek Leo's approval. This points to some form of childhood love that wasn't pure and unconditional in the users history.

@bazera love all your points. Much of your process reflects my own. It is hard, laborious work. It doesn't often feel good either. The running script like a broken piece of software is an analogy I like to return to often. And I feel the same as you - it is scary to think we are walking unconsciously through life with these old scripts that run the show. Most people do this and will never become aware of it. Just looking for it in ourselves is a huge deal! It's fundamental to raising our consciousness - bring it all into awareness to dissolve in process. Suffering really reveals these scripts to us, in my experience. Hell yeah to us both on the path ay?

Oh yeah, I agree. No judgement to anyone involved - I have a mammoth ego in operation, so I am no better I would call my ego - sly.

Absolutely - we agree on the above. You essentially have to learn to love yourself first - but it is hard to do that if we do not know ourselves, heh! Relationships are a HUGE way to fast track self healing, love and discovery. If done right. IE being self reflective, having a critical and unbiased analysis of behaviour and a growth mindset. These qualities are hard to find though - many people do not want to go through the pains of growth. And that is a huge issue for many - growth doesn't always feel good. It is mostly confronting, painful and destabilising. For this reason, it is essential that whomever I date has a growth mindset. Good openness. Yes. I think it can go both ways. But if one is really self assured, high self esteem and healthy usually they will break off the relationship prior to being damaged or traumatised by it. I think the risk of someone reverting back to anxious or avoidant is more likely if they have had these issues in the past and 'healed' somewhat (like myself, for example). Someone who has been secure from the outset is much more likely to simple break the relationship off. They have such good boundaries and low tolerance for shit they put their foot down quickfast. 100% accurate. The push/pull, hot/cold mechanic is misinterpreted as love. Was by me - because that was the pattern of love I was shown as a child and adolescent. It was what I understood as love. Securely attached people seemed boring and dispassionate to me. So I basically self screened out anyone who was healthy (because I had no chemistry with them) and attracted people with attachment issues. Contrast that to now - I do not trust chemistry as much. I look at behaviour and words and observe people over months. Prior I would jump in WAY too quickly without vetting the person. And initially while I was healing I almost had to totally distrust who I was attracted to. I knew I was broken and that my attraction was NOT to be trusted. You can see how the cycle repeats with attachment styles and people develop pathological thinking; they aren't even aware their own running scripts are corrupt programs that propel them to seek the wrong mal-formed version of love. Secure attracts secure, while avoidant and anxious are drawn irrevocably to each other. I am no expert in attachment theory by any means. But since healing myself I can spot it in others a mile away!

I mean... pretty much. My perception was she had a bigger, more entrenched ego. I noticed that she was very sensitive to being wrong. When Shylo corrected her regarding the Grandmaster Flash example she got very per-snippety! No interruptions allowed when she has the soundstage! There is some delicious self image stuff she needs to confront - delicious in that - if she dissolves those lumps in her gravy she will make leaps and bounds in growth. IF she can confront her ego. Some people do not like their own abyss

Yes, Shilo didn't go further into this - there sort of wasn't room either. The conversation naturally flowed past it.

With avoidance / anxiously attached individuals you will feel a push/pull hot/cold effect in the relationship. This is a big flag something isn't being communicated properly.

He had a healthy upbringing from his parents. Secure attachment is all behaviour based. He was emotionally available in that he could share what he felt without making it my job to fix it. Could communicate when he was hurt by me without turning it into a shut-down or blowup. Didn't disappear when shit got intense. Steady presence. A big one was that conflict did not threaten the bond we had - which was something that was totally foreign to me. Disagreement wasn't felt by me as abandonment, repair would happen because I didn't fear the relationship was going to implode. He trusted me unless given a reason not to; there were no shit tests or loyalty games. My personal independence wasn't taken as a rejection, and he was VERY encouraging of autonomy. Words and behaviour matched. BIG ONE. Ego didn't get in the way of the overall health of the relationship. Giving and receiving was no worries at all... There is probably more but this is off the top of my head

@zurew FWIW I see what you are pointing to regarding terms being very loosely defined in Leo's worldview. I raised this well over a year ago somewhere. I mainly see loose definitions being used as a slippery loophole out of being 'wrong' in some arguments. But at the same time, words are very tricky, as they lack inherent meaning without context. Many of Leo's statements lack context as he shoots for the truth in isolation, removed from context. I do find some of his statements fall apart when viewed from different angles. When this happens it immediately flags lack of coherence in my mind. Normally you can push further nuance out of him which clarifies meaning and intent. Sometimes he does this intentionally to provoke contemplation - but it can really confuse some users also.

This is some wild slippery mental hoop-de-loop for not putting ones balls on the line with an argument to refute. Debating 101. I suppose I can just make wild claims and never have to justify anything. Courts will love this new system!

I read him like this also. I was amused he thought he had his definition of 'evil' down-pat with 'it is just violating another's consent'. He really doubled down there. My first thought was 'What about a parent who takes excessive candy from a child who is destroying their teeth with sugar - is the parent evil for violating the child's consent?'. Then I thought - how funny - is evil only manifesting at a certain 'age' when we gain independence from our parents? Haha Ana seemed much more certain in general. Hard to fill a cup that is already full. Touch of hubris thinking she was 'awakened'. But I think this was simply because she has a different definition of the term to what we consider awakened here.

I dated a man who was securely attached. He showed me good, gentle boundaries and what it meant to show love and compassion toward another in an un-needy and unconditional way. It was a challenge for me, initially. I was very conflict avoidant in relationships, and followed a pattern of over-valuing my partner, and then devaluing. But not in a pathological way - the devalue/overvalue process was more my own internal dialogue that manifested in a gentle openness/closed off push pull my partner felt from me. This would be triggered when my partner would put up a boundary. Instead of hear the boundary and aim to adjust my behaviour, I received it as him pushing me away. The boundary was communicating to me 'I do not love you' instead of 'I love you, this other thing needs to change'. I confused someone communicating difficult things with pushing me away. On addition to this, I would close off when my partner made bids for contact if I felt I was being smothered; the smothering feeling felt as if I was loosing my sense of self (enmeshment) so I would pull back and become quite aloof to try to maintain my self. This was happening because I essentially didn't know who I was. So I was not able to clearly and calmly assert boundaries because... I didn't even know where I begun and my partner ended! It was all a mess. This is fearful/ambivalent attachment. Insecure/anxious or avoidant are the other two types. Ambivalent swings between anxious/avoidant. It would be as simple as 'Hey, when I get home, I need some time to shower, get dressed and have a cup of tea before I get into my day. It is my unwinding process'. I would confuse something as simple as this with 'I do not love you'. Anything respectful request would be percieved as a threat to the union on the relationship. This stemmed from my own boundaries being violated by my family when younger. Through repeated healthy boundary assertion, and a gentle caring securely attached partner who was VERY patient, I gradually learned to also assert my own boundaries. Because attachment issues are a manifestation of violating our own self sovereignty. We have no idea how to advocate for ourselves. Erasing the self in service of love and connection. When it actual fact, I had to learn a relationship was about 3 axis' : the relationship, him, and me. Each as individuals and to be respected as such. Violating my own boundaries by not speaking up and asserting myself built the walls that destroyed all my previous relationships. Overall I see this pattern all through dating. Most people who are securely attached find each other, pair off and become committed. Much of what remains in the dating pool consists of those with attachment issues who attract each other because they each contain the style of love they needed to heal (this was learned in early infancy through parent/child bonding forming the template for love). But they are fundamentally unable to receive that love due to misunderstanding what real, secure, love is. Not all in the dating market have attachment issues. But many who get stuck in patterns and jump from relationship to relationship do. PUA attracts insecurely attached women. It leverages off their weakness.

Attachment styles are huge in attraction and dating. Unfortunately, we can be quite blind to them until we recognise the pattern - because they originate from being shown an incorrect or malformed version of bonding/love stemming from infancy. Typically one endures the pattern until something clicks, or the person begins to self analyse relationship trends they fall into. The concept and understanding of love those with attachment issues have is not really what love is. They misunderstand love/bonding and secure attachment. Healthy love is mistaken for lack of love. I used to suffer from ambivalent or fearful avoidance. My relationships all followed a broken pattern of terrible boundaries stemming from being shown love from broken parents. I have since done a lot of work to break and heal previous patterns. I consider myself securely attached now.