something_else

If only the forum had a PM feature

Being bisexual doesn't mean a girl wants to share her partner. Most are still monogamous. I've participated loosely and known a fair few people who have been more deeply involved. Guys who are trying to build a harem have a very poor reputation in that space. Especially when using poly terms to legitimise their harem-building. It is quite a common trope. Power dynamics are fun in bed when everyone consents, yes. But actual relationships built upon heavy power imbalance are not ideal. You've got the logic of my argument backwards. I don't think Google is exploitative because they're worth trillions of dollars, I think they're worth trillions of dollars because they're exploitative. It is a fundamental tenant of capitalism that to make money you must exploit people. In smaller scale businesses it's pretty minimal, but for a company like Google the exploitation is far more prevalent. There are children in Africa mining the lithium that goes into every Pixel phone, and a big chunk of of their money comes from selling customer's data to the highest bidder. There are plenty more examples of exploitation, but those were the first two that came to mind. What you describe isn't a polycule though, it's a harem. "Anybody who disagrees with me is just defending their own ego" is itself a mechanism for defending your own ego. People who disagree with or criticise you aren't necessarily doing so because you hurt their egos and threatened their status. It's beneficial for you to believe that because this mechanism allows you to discount almost any criticism as ego-backlash.

It's scary, but the answer is probably nobody. Some people have lots of power and influence, yes, but the idea that there is some secret organisation controlling everything in the world is just an oddly comforting fantasy. It's much scarier to face the fact that the world is a chaotic mess and nobody is really in control of anything that is happening.

I think this is quite a heavy generalisation. "American girls" and "European girls" are incredibly broad categories with a ton of individual variation. Regardless, I'll take on your premise and disagree. European girls are pretty comparable culturally to American girls in their mindsets towards sex, if anything I'd argue they're more open. Especially in places like Germany, Netherlands, France, the Nordics and Spain. Not an exhaustive list either.

I think it's a fair comparison. It's going to be close to impossible to maintain a harem unless there's a significant power dynamic at play. How many women do you think grow up fantasising about being in a man's harem one day? Not many. It's not something a woman typically wants, it's something a woman tolerates in order to gain access to resources, or it's something she's manipulated into. Which means there is an exploitative power dynamic at play. This analogy harms your argument more than it helps it. The larger a business gets, the more unethical and exploitative it must become. There are zero businesses making hundreds of millions of dollars which don't exploit people. In the same way, the more women you bring into your harem, the more exploitation becomes necessary to maintain it. Wanting 5 wives all to yourself is equivalent in this analogy to running a multi-billion dollar company, which cannot exist without serious exploitation. The fundamental drive creating such a business is greed, ego, status and desire, and the same is true for explicitly wanting a 5-wive harem. I think a lot of the poly community would dislike how you use their language. There are terms in that community like "harem-building" and OPP (one penis policy) which are used to identify men who want to join the poly community as a means to building a harem to satisfy their ego and status.

Ehm, kind of agree. Although if you are doing a lot of work and not getting what you want out of it, it's worth being aware of what you are actually trying to achieve. I've typically taken a different approach anyway, I've never really done the hardcore pickup stuff where I'm approaching on streets, I've always viewed it as learning social skills, making friends, going to parties, clubs, bars with friends etc. More normie pickup I guess.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be annoying. There are quite a few threads from you here and I haven't actually read all of the replies to them through fully, I wasn't aware that other people had asked that already.

I didn't mean it as a judgement. More so that it sounds like you're doing well, girls are responding well to you, but it also seemed like it hadn't really gone anywhere with a girl and I was wondering why. The high standards answers that I guess. Will this be your first relationship?

I find it interesting and impressive that you’ve met so many girls recently, well done for the effort. But out of curiosity, are any of these interactions actually going anywhere? Like a phone number, date, kiss, hookup?

You end up so in tune that you know who is best suited to handling a given situation. It’s intuitive, it doesn’t always require active discussion. Think of it like sex, even dom guys typically like the girl to take control sometimes, but it’s not like there’s active discussion about it. You feel out each other’s rhythm, preferences and skills, then control naturally flows back and forth based on that.

I think that’s an assumption. I may not be right, my direct experience of long term relationships is to some degree limited, but generally my experience of the healthy relationships I’ve seen or been in is that both members take on the leadership role at different times depending on the situation. When I see meet couples where one member, man or woman, does all the talking and decision making for the other it rarely seems like a healthy and happy dynamic. When I see relationships where they bicker and tease, where one member doesn’t always just submit like a wet rag, I think those relationships actually seem a lot healthier. I think it gets tiresome to always feel like you need to be leading and in command, and it sucks to always be submissive and have no control. I don’t think it’s sustainable. Perhaps this is a unique preference of mine and not a general pattern though.

Yes, agree 100%, I think healthy relationships should be built around equality, shared values, and shared life goals. Not fucked up power dynamics

It isn’t sad, though. There is nothing sad about just wanting to have sex. Or about being a guy. The part that makes it sad is the crudeness of how some men express this stuff. The lack of calibration to others. You can express the same stuff with a touch more consideration for others around you, and then it stops being sad and starts being cool.

Yes, two. Both were pretty solid for the most part. One had mild controlling tendencies though they stemmed from abusive parents and probably anxious attachment of some kind. It wasn’t her trying to be the boss so much as her wanting my attention all of the time because she got anxious when I wasn’t around. Obviously not a super healthy dynamic which is why we broke up, but I don’t blame her in the slightest. She had a hard life. The other was super chill and one of the least controlling people I’ve ever known. I don’t think it’s true that women always try to be the boss in relationships. It definitely happens, but to claim it is the norm requires some evidence. I’ve probably seen an equal number of relationships where the man is controlling.

If you experience that with every relationship you’ve ever been in, perhaps it’s more reflective of your own personality patterns rather than those of women as a whole. Or perhaps you just got unlucky in your relationships. Either way, it’s not true that women are always controlling in relationships. Certainly nobody here is trying to take away your voice, it’s mostly just people asking you to be slightly more considerate in the way you word things, especially as a moderator. It’s really not a big request.