Valach

Obviously vast majority of woman I dated were insecure because those are the ones I was attracted to and also they were attracted to me. On top of that like 95% of population is insecure in my opinion, so it is hard to find the secure ones.

But how does a secure person decides to stay after some abusive, non-aligned behaviour starts happening in a relationship. I am not saying your friend is not secure, I can't know that. My understanding is that the secure person is a person with high self esteem, somatic feeling of safety in their body who respect other people but primarily respect their own body and emotions and integrity. So my understanding is that such person would leave dysfunctional relationship right after being shown signs of any abuse/disrespect whatsoever. I was and still am probably (not dating at the moment) heavy avoidant. It was always only fairly insecure woman who tolerated my behaviour. The secure ones, the moment I pulled one of my avoidant strategies such as being hot and cold, not knowing what I want, emotionally closed off - they dropped me immediately and rightly so. And I was in no way abusive, just a typical avoidant

By no means some relationships are truly horrible. If you experience some deep violation such as rape or sexual assault etc. then yes, even a secure person who had a good upbringing and all could get traumatized. You could argue that secures are more resilient so they are probably still less likely to carry some deep wounds from such relationships but it can definitely happens - do not have any data or personal experience on this (thankfully lol). Then there is another layer though. We are very much so drawn to people who reflect known dynamics and energies from our childhood. So a secure person would not really resonate with a traumatizer. You can see and feel these people on some level quite easily. Secure person might end up in a relationships with someone little insecure yes. But I highly doubt someone secure would ever date someone with deep attachment trauma. Often people claim that their horrific exes looked good until something happened - but I feel like that is simply not true. Part of you had to resonate with this person, always. There is of course an exception. Say you had a harmonic, relatively healthy relationship with your partner. And then he gets called up to a war or experiences some really bad accident and gets traumatized and thus starts hurting you in a relationship. That is very rare though. People do not really switch up in relationships like that.

Disagree. A truly secure person will not get shaken up by bad relationship. A lot of people claim that they were secure until they met person X, but that just means they were always insecure and not yet triggered. Haha, yea I am having the same experience. And I am not even close to secure person yet. But it is so easy to spot this general insecurity in other people. Takes me like 15 minutes to spot it in someone new. And holy shit is it soooo common - truly secure people are super rare.

This problematic on many levels. Eg. This is exactly how a typical avoidant would feel with close intimacy (less peace, less safety) eventhough the person might be a good potential partner. A lot of how we react in a relationship is not about the other person or how they behave but about our own internal reactions and projections. This is not me saying to stay in relationships that are not working out though.

The path of anxious -> avoidant is quite common. What most people do not realize is that many anxious and avoidant people are very similiar. The behaviour might be different but the underlying emotions that drive this behaviour are often same.

I do not have instagram sadly so can't see that.

That's what I believed as well. The more I dive into this the more I can easily see the insecure attachments in other people even when they are not in a relationships.

Beautifully said. Thank you!

I agree completely about your own self worth being the driving factor in how you date/socialize. Though I am not sure how you looking at what you bring to the table or your skillset or successes is also not just an attempt to derive the sense of self worth from external. Ideally (though I know it is hard) you should just feel worthy and have a high self esteem without a reason. I would dare to say that any team you need to justify your confidence, it is not a real confidence to begin with. Same thing applies to social skills. I kind of wondered that when I started my "game" journey. In the past I would use alcohol to relax and ease up socialization. And I had quite a lot of success doing that. But did I learn any game or social skills or technical shit by drinking 2 beers? No. I simply relaxed my nervous system, I simply pushed down the feeling of being anxious and unworthy which was an innergame issue, not social skills issue. Same way with dating a woman. I might go on a date and be nervous and not know what to say or what to do. Then I might have "success", we starting dating/sleeping together. And suddenly I can relax and it is easy to flirt, to be funny, to be confident etc... Again, did I learn any game or social skills in those 3 dates? No, not really. But I did get the validation and that enabled me to relax. So really for me it is more about an inner journey and resolving why I feel unworthy (and thus seek validation) in the first place.

If all the other aspects are same, yes, the good looking guy will have better results. But that rarely happens. The points of the statement about looks not mattering as much is that it is just way more rewarding for a guy to focus on developing his personality, his inner game etc. than to focus on looks. I did not ignore anything. I just do not really know what you mean by the social outcomes, could you expand?

We would be tricking ourselfs if we did not have anything proof from real life experiences confirming that it does not matter that much (at least for men).

You can be whole and still participate in relationships. Stop being so extremist.

What? Why?

Okay, but then you are completely moving away from the topic. You can love someone, deeply and break up and be fine. But you need to have enough self esteem/self love for yourself.

Even this transactional love you are talking about (which i do not consider love) can leave you in stable place when it passes.

Quite to contrary. When you love something, you are not grasping. When you love something, you can let it go.

You can be invested in a relationship without deriving your sense of self from it. Doesn't mean you won't be hurt when it fades, but you will be okay.

You can be invested and yet handle the potential downfall of a relationship well. That is the point of having self esteem kinda.

The fear of her finding this unattractive is exactly what makes a person unattractive. Just do what you want without thinking too much how it comes off. I have been the same (responding very fast to most people) and never had this issue.

I can gurantee you that just from the description alone, you are not secure at all. The online tests are quite bad around determining this - I feel like most insecure people would score secure in them.

I know I keep using this all the time over here but you sound like a person with typical avoidant attachment with all the anxiety and realted stuff. Have you explored that?

Hmmm, I think it's hard to do because I am of the belief that a lot of attraction is even more subconscious than traditional PUA would make you believe. There are the more visible aspects of a person that attracts us such as looks, behaviour, confidence, humor, wit, subcommunication etc. But then there is the whole aspect of this burried deep down in our psyche such as how we relate to persons shadows, how much they remind us of our primary care givers, how familiar the whole dynamic with their relating feels etc. I always used to joke that it was not just looks and personality that I liked about my ex. What was driving me towards her as well was that my demons were really attracted to her demons. So it is a very complex things and some aspects of it are not really that much in our control. The more I think about it the more I belief that a lot of PUA is essentially playing into shadows that are the most common among woman. Who knows how would the society and the whole dating game look like if we all healed.

It is kind of what I meant. When you are screening for longterm relationships, there is gonna be some boredom/seriousness between the two of you. You can coast on just good vibes and emotional stimulations but then you don't really know the person and she does not know you. I do not really like the route that gets often repeated in the pickup community - that you start the longterm relationship the same way you start casual one. This does not lead to longterm satisfaction. At least in my (very subjective) opinion.

Agreed. Feels like game is not really tailored for finding a quality relationship. It is after all gamey and real relationships are about autheticity and vulnerability.