Natasha Tori Maru

From perfect. I can be a right little shit! Online is very different to real world - although I have met some great people online who were as they appeared. All of these strategies and ways of being were hard earned, I had my trial by fire and made many, many mistakes along the way. I dare say you just see a better version of me now that I have grown. They say "beware wisdom that is unearned". My shit was earned. Through suffering - yes, but crazy resilience and self belief. I guess this process developed a deep sense of self trust and connection. So I remain clear in who I am and what I want. I am very different in real life to how I might present online. I am not a very serious person I know there are others out there like me, there just have to be! Finding them would be the difficult part. There is simply SO much less face to face interaction these days compared to when I was younger. That makes it hard. I have no clue how to find someone like me. I have the same trouble from the other side of the yin/yang coin

Someone linked this to me, haven't gotten around to it ( if any of you stupendous souls want to dive in )

In the autobiography of Steve Jobs, people around him said that he creates a "reality distortion field". His narrative was so strong that people believed it, even if it made no sense and wasn't real. He had a strong, powerful, compelling narrative, and many people around him accepted it as reality. This is a type of frame control that doesn't use overt coercion - although this is a description of an interpersonal effect and not necessarily a deliberate frame control technique he consciously employed. I think he just did it.

Depends how you approach dating. All my best, deepest and longest lasting relationships were with men who I was great friends with prior. I still love those men (even if not romantically) and speak to them regularly. I approach it like friendship; I see one friend for coffee on a Tuesday, squeeze in an impromptu river walk with another Saturday morning etc. Whatever I can do to keep up connection and mutual care/fun. I just do the same with dating, as I firmly believe establishing a basic friendship is the fertile soil for a great relationship. I am slow to warm up, my feelings and attraction develop over time. I like to see men in different situations & experiences and how we both react separately, and then contrast this. I like to allow attraction to develop alongside knowledge of the person. I don't necessarily think "You need to be friends first", more that a strong romantic relationship usually benefits from the qualities of a good friendship. This method avoids some pitfalls I fell into when younger in less mature relationships - I get to prioritise liking the person before I idealise them and it assists me in observing character as attraction develops. I get to test compatibility through normal, ordinary life and I get to witness interactional patterns over time as opposed to isolated behaviour. When I was younger I was much more inclined to fall for my idea of a person's potential, or my own fantasy a life with them.

There he is Appreciate the input

There might be some gentleman around here who know about how it works in a beneficial way Thinking of maybe @aurum As someone on the receiving end of it done poorly - it feels like someone trying to force control and transmits low intelligence, stubbornness and insecurity.

... when you don't understand wtf you are doing Certainty is NOT a proxy for strength and disagreements aren't a dominance contest. It is a nice way to invalidate first person knowledge and creates a wonderful little self-sealing psychological model. Mind reading, rewarding one's own projection, discouraging honest and genuine curiosity. Bad frame control makes any sort of repair process difficult while suppressing reciprocal emotions. Causing nothing more than misunderstanding and division. The opposite of connection - what relationships are all about. It is the essence of performative masculinity. Nothing screams "low on the totem pole" more. It also selects for women who tolerate being overridden (bad boundaries and sense of self). You push way women who value maturity over hierarchy, women who can distinguish confidence from rigidity, women who don't need a man to tell them who they are, women who don't reward status games & appreciate being challenged but not overridden. Women that want to be encountered and not just emotionally dissected - women who want to be met with emotional intimacy. Women who genuinely find vulnerability more attractive that invulnerability. Good frame holding doesn't require you to actually control someone else's frame.

I'm on it boss. Master origami pretzel mode myself into perfection. Conditioning? Dissolved

🤣🤣🤣 Get ready

This thread is the definition of unhinged ⊙⁠.⁠☉

I don't want to straight pathologise him; but he really displays a lot of the markers for body dismorphia

I see that there are women who do play by the paradigm he operates from. I simply don't fit that. It's a flaw to flatten an entire sex down into generalisations with no nuance.

I get that, but AION isn't trying to understand anything about me. He is trying to force me to fit into his model of how women work, and when I claim that's not me, that's not how I work, he is incapable of accepting that claim. This is why I think it's weird. And mansplany. And once again applying a sweeping generalisation to all women and how they work. No nuance. Just "all woman work that way"

I don't know what this is about. It seems confused. You don't know any of my wants or needs from men??? I never said or made this explicit. I never claimed life wasnt fair or complained about it. You can have your needs. And it's perfectly fine to want to be part of status hierarchies. I am saying I don't go for those guys. It's your choice not to believe it. You express so much indignation because I don't fit your model. I just don't fit your model.