Emerald

It's mostly that, for romantic prospects, it takes several months of platonic interaction for an attraction to arise for me. I don't really respond well with cold approach because attraction is a very slow burn for me. And there is no guarantee of that, even if I do spend a lot of time around a guy. So, even though I understand that this isn't very actionable from the male perspective, the element of organically growing warm bonds is very important to the attraction process. In order for an attraction to be potent enough to really want it, there has to be that build up and slow bonding process without expectation of romance. But generally, if a guy is into pick-up, it takes away what's interesting to me about the process. It's the idea that he has feelings for me in particular. So, if a guy is approaching me... it stands to reason he's doing that with any girl he finds relatively attractive. So, the specialness, ambiguity, and organic development of relationship is off the table if a guy approaches me. That's really the reason for the filtering. But beyond that, there's the perk of getting to know someone over time and seeing how they are when they're not trying to make a good impression upon you. So, I wouldn't give cold approachers my time in that way, when I can build up warm bonds with men who exist within my social circles and frequent stomping grounds.

Suit yourself. But you'd be wise to realize that you're projecting all kinds of falsehood onto female attraction and that your self-esteem and romantic prospects are suffering for it.

So could any other guy on the planet. But my point was that Ben Shapiro isn't masculine and he's an asshole in comparison to a Dwayne Johnson type who is masculine but seems very kind. My point was that masculinity and being an asshole aren't inherently linked.

I am being very realistic with you by helping you see underneath your projections. A woman being attracted to someone is not a reward. A woman being unattracted to someone is not a punishment. It just is what it is. Women don't even consciously control it. It just happens or it doesn't. Also, I didn't say much of anything about men at all in my last post. I was saying how you're projecting your feelings and worldview onto female attraction. I never said anything about men other than that neither men nor women are punishing people or rewarding people with their attractions. Attraction is just a phenomenon that either happens or doesn't. But honestly, most of what you posted makes no sense in response to what I wrote. It's almost as though you're responding to something else entirely. Yes... all people project meaning onto attraction. But not everyone projects the punishment and reward dichotomy onto attraction like you have. And even if someone does project punishment/reward onto attraction, it doesn't mean that projection is an accurate representation of reality as it is. You can project anything onto attraction dynamics... and it doesn't mean that it's true. And projecting the punishment/reward dichotomy leads to an incorrect, fatalistic, and ineffective worldview around attraction. And furthermore, it makes a person seem desperate and entitled because the idea becomes... if a man's been "good" enough then he should "deserve" sex. And if women don't give him what he's "earned" by being "good", then women are a bunch of selfish people for not bestowing him with his rightfully "earned" sex. And not only is this a selfish mindset, it's also very lacking in social awareness, needy, and unattractive. So, it would be in your best interest to dispossess yourself of that punishment/reward illusion that you're projecting onto attraction dynamics. That's what I'm trying to help you with.

I personally auto-filter guys who do cold approach. It tells me something about them and their priorities that don't jibe with my own. I wouldn't listen when these guys are trying to cajole you into cold approaching women. It is very annoying. If I were going about meeting women as a man, I would just develop some social influence and a wide social circle where I make a lot of organic social connections with many men and women. And then, I could warm approach from within that wider social circle.

Female attraction is just what is. It isn't a reward or a punishment because women don't choose who they are or aren't attracted to. It just happens, and often for no discernible reason or quality. It's the same way that male attraction isn't a reward or a punishment. It just happens. You don't consciously choose who you're attracted to. You're adding too much intention into the attraction process. You're projecting a meaning onto it that simply isn't there. Someone being attracted to you isn't a reward. Someone not being attracted to you isn't a punishment. It may feel that way to you. But it simply isn't the case. You're just projecting your feelings and value system onto the phenomenon of female attraction. From the female perspective, it's usually just "Oh wow! I have a big crush on John. I hope he likes me too." That's all there is... just a flood of endorphins and positive emotions in relation to a particular guy. It has nothing to do with anyone else or how they feel about her attraction to this particular John character. Everyone else is romantically neutral. But fear not, I'm sure you've been someone's John many times and you will be many more. But women tend not to be forthcoming with their attraction. When you like one guy in particular, it's extra hard to confess it because there is no one else like him. And if he rejects you and you have so much investment already, it's a much scarier situation than approaching someone you have no investment in. Also, there is not such thing as deserving and not deserving. This is another projection of your worldview onto reality.

First off, don't think about female attraction as a reward. It's just how she feels. There's no sense of rewarding someone with affection. It's either she is attracted or she isn't. But I think a lot of women would prefer a dominant guy who is an asshole over a submissive guy who is a nice guy. But that women would prefer the confluence of dominance and kindness. A lot of attraction is based on survival. And in nomadic times, if you were with a man who can't protect you and provide for you, then this leaves you and your children dead. So, the ability to be a strong protector/provider outweighs temperament in the attraction process. But the issue with violent ruthless men is that there is a point of diminishing returns. He who protects you and provides for you can also turn on you and beat you and murder you. So, that's when a kind temperament becomes important in the attraction process. So, the most attractive men possess both the capacity to be kind and gentle while also possessing the ability to be a strong protector/provider... which includes the capacity to become violent and ruthless. And then also the ability to consciously choose which mode he's going into. So, self-control is also very important in attraction. From the perspective of our wiring... if you have a man who's too submissive, it's a survival threat. If you have a man who's too dominant, it's a survival threat. Best to shop around for a guy in the Goldilocks zone.

From reading your responses, I'm thinking that you missed the point of the Teal Swan video. She states that if you put a kind man with all the masculine/dominant qualities and an asshole with all the masculine/dominant qualities next to one another, that the kind man would be preferred. There is no link between being an asshole and increased masculinity. The only difference is that assholes won't second-guess themselves or consider others. There are tons of assholes that aren't very masculine, and there are tons of kind men who are. Like, let's take someone like Ben Shapiro... very un-masculine and very much an asshole. Then, take someone like Dwayne Johnson... very masculine and seemingly very kind.

The little girl at 2:08 is low key terrifying.

This music video reminds me a lot of what it was like during the ego death experience I had at my Ayahuasca ceremony last year. Not so much visually... but very good visual metaphors for the experience. Particularly at the 2:06 mark and between 2:40 and 2:53. The same could be said of the creepy part at the end of the video, where the woman turns into a desert. But not quite as much.

The things you need most of to be a good life coach are listening skills and the ability to ask good questions. It's much less about what you know and much more about your ability to facilitate exploration in your clients. So the requisite knowledge you need includes emotional intelligence, connection to the intuition, empathy, detachment from outcome, and the ability to establish rapport. So you don't necessarily need to have subject matter based expertise. You need to be able to help others see things from new perspectives that they haven't considered before.

That mindset is untrue and unhealthy. The vast majority of people will be able to bond with others. The only hard and fast barrier to bonding would be something like sociopathy where a person is physiologically unable to feel their emotions. But Incels are mostly just a group of otherwise normal guys with very intense self-esteem and body image issues... and a tendency to resent women for their perceived deficiencies. And this resentment comes from the false assumption that no woman will ever care about them. And because they get into a group together, they add fuel to the fire of each other's self-hatred. And it is only their mindsets that makes them feel as though they can't bond with others. So, what it takes is a bit of face-to-face socialization, some mindset fixes, and personal development.

I see. It could very well be that you have difficulty picking up on these types of social cues because of the Aspergers. I had wondered when we spoke before if you had a mild form of Autism, because (on first glance) your words read as though you were trying to get a rise out of people. But afterward you were expressing a genuine sense of questioning the social norms. The same thing with this post is true. That's what made me question that. But I think most people wouldn't be aware that these questions are sincere because tone doesn't carry through written messages, and they may not understand the difficulties of processing social cues for someone with Aspergers. So, they might think you're being entitled/arrogant or something like that. And there are plenty of guys out there that would be fully aware of the social norms and boundaries and try to push past them out of a sense of entitlement. There are plenty of guys that come through this forum that might say/do similar things for totally different reasons. So, I think they're interpreting your questions through that lens. But I see that you really mean it when you ask these questions. So, I would say that a good rule of thumb would be to avoid explicitly sexual conversation topics for a while. Now, the difficulty here is that I would typically advise someone to watch for social cues of receptivity. But this is specifically the challenge of being on the Autism spectrum. So, if I were in that position (which I am not, so take this with a grain of salt), I would try to come up with some systematic workaround for that difficulty with picking up on social cues. Like you can learn to recognize certain behaviors like if she's smiling, making eye contact, playing with her hair, moving closer as signs of receptivity. And then you can learn the signs of discomfort like if she's moving further away, frowning, body facing away from you, etc. Now, in a way, I think the ability to disregard social cues has helped you in some ways as well. You have had many experiences with women, perhaps because you've been able to push past certain bottlenecks most men face with ease... because you might not even sense it as being socially difficult. But like I said, even if you have been successful with bringing up porn initially, I recommend starting with something more platonic and working things up and trying to read social cues to see when to escalate. Otherwise, it becomes a roll of the dice in terms of how a particular woman will react to you. And it can lead to a lot of blocking and the like.

I would bet that this is the root of why Red Pill ideologies (and other ideologies that simultaneously give empathy to men's emotions while also confirming their worst fears) proliferate so much. Now, men's issues on their own create an emotional dilemma for men. And with emotional dilemmas that can create the tendency to tongue one's own wounds and create distorted narratives that makes sense of the dilemma. So, things do spread that way. And of course there are uniquely male issues in dating/relationships, paternity, and the way men are viewed by society in general. But also, and I think more importantly, there are people who profit off of that emotional dilemma who can come in and sell men who are dealing with those emotional dilemmas all kinds of solutions to that perceived dilemma. When there's money to be made, there will be campaigns in place to drum up the insecurities that lead to purchasing behavior. And I would guess that a lot of influencers in the Red Pill community and PUA community are grifters who seek to make money by confirming men's worst fears and selling them the solution to those fears. And this is a real problem in marketing. Basically, if you can sell a bleak worldview to people, a person will pay you any amount of money to relieve them of the ails of the worldview you've sold them. The same is true for how women have historically been marketed to... though it has gotten a bit better recently as many women that I've seen in comments sections will respond angrily to any ad that implies that a woman's value is in how a man views her. But this was always an advertising mainstay, to create insecurities in women about their own level of attractiveness and to sell them cosmetic, hygiene, and fashion products to alleviate their insecurities. But this type of advertising to women has been discovered as toxic in a more collective way. So, a lot of recent advertising for women (or at least many of the ads that I've seen) has diverse body types and pro-self-esteem messaging. And those ad videos always get a ton of compliments from women for that reason. And tons of women will be like, "Buying this for the ad alone." The same cannot be said to be true about advertising that plays off men's insecurities.

For me, it has always just happened. I'm usually the one to seek my partner, not the other way around. I generally prefer reserved men who don't wear their sexuality on their sleeves. And I like to be the one that subtly seduces them. It's usually the case that I end up in a social situation where I see a guy often... like work or school or something. Then, over the course of a few months of platonic interaction, I may (or may not) develop those feelings that usually spring up randomly when I think about him at home or in my own space. And then I wonder if he likes me or whether or not something might happen. And one very key factor in the attraction process is that there is that ambiguity where I genuinely don't know if he's into me or not. This gives time for tension to build. It's a really slow cooker of an experience where I get to wonder what's on his mind and if I'm special to him. And from my perspective, a guy approaching me specifically for dating purposes is a red flag in and of itself because he likely does that to lots of women. This means I'm definitely not special to him, and that's a turn off. And also, it doesn't give me any sense of platonic ambiguity and steals the sexual tension that can ONLY build over time. So, there's a kind of boring feeling about the straight-forward and fast method that cold approach is... as it just doesn't give enough time for the fermentation of my desire to happen.

It is a bit different from the female perspective a bit. Women have it too. But it's kind of like how men and women both have nipples... but how male nipples don't develop or function. Women have the capacity to scan for potential male partners that way, but it doesn't give us the same indicators of attractiveness. But I have definitely scanned an environment for attractive/compatible looking guys before. That's how I used to size up who I might be interested in (from elementary up through high school). And I'm sure that, if I were single and in a social environment and looking for a partner, I might do the same thing. But generally, there is a sexually neutral feel to most people. A good looking guy might read to me as romantically neutral as a not so good looking guy. The element that really attracts me to someone is chemistry. It's the impact that their personality has on me. And this can't really be "gamed". It just has to happen. The control is out of my hands. There is a passive quality to it. It either happens or doesn't. So, it's uncommon for me to be really attracted to a guy in a deep way. And it isn't really worth pursuing if there isn't that magnetic chemistry element. But the scanning for attractive guys thing goes on in the background too. It's just that that type of attraction isn't very magnetic, and will probably feel to women as being irrelevant and neutral.

Leo may have assumed that you should know better about the post. There are certain things that are a given and this (from most people's perspective) would be oriented to as an, "Of course I shouldn't do that." And bringing up porn upon first meeting is one of them. Now, it may be the case that you either a. don't have a ton of social experience or b. have a mild form of Autism or something like that that keeps a you from being able to read social situations. Either of these things could make reading social cues difficult. And things that would socially be a given for others, might not be such a given for someone in either of those situations. But in general, the best way to offset this possibility is through the development of social acuity and recognizing how people emotionally respond to things. This means how people generally do react... not how people "should" or "shouldn't" react. To develop social acuity, this means being able to be empathetic and put yourself in the shoes of another person and imagining how that person responds. I can tell you that women are constantly experiencing being approached by men. And it can be either tiring, creepy, or downright threatening when men try to bring things to a sexual level upon first meeting. I've had tons of encounters like this. It's just really awkward at best and scary at worst. So, you don't want to go about things this way even if some women have responded affirmatively to it. This may speak to their lack of boundaries, more than it speaks to the viability of the method you've been using.

Listening to people's struggles is part of what I do for a living. So, there is an awareness that springs from that, that you must validate emotions AND dispel the beliefs that are creating or amplifying certain struggles. It's about helping them let go of false and limiting beliefs. To take an extreme example, if someone believes that they're being stalked by ninja squirrels, my job is to validate their emotions and to help them work through it WHILE ALSO assuring them that they're definitely not being stalked by ninja squirrels. If I validated their emotions and then confirmed their false belief in ninja squirrels stalking them, that would be very counterproductive. It could make their situation worse.

Women are all people capable of both positive and negative behaviors. It seems like you've had a couple experiences with immature women. So, I recommend finding someone that is more mature. Also, we can tend to attract people who mirror our own issues in some way. So, also look internally to see if there is something that has lead you to become attracted to these women or to have weak boundaries that allow others to step over them.

I think it's good that you've found someone who appreciates you for you. That's very important in a relationship. It seems like the guy you were with before had a lot of difficulties with fixating upon women who embody some kind of ideal in his mind. And then trying to use his own fixation to disempower you. It's most likely that, underneath that desire to disempower and poke at your self-esteem, that he could have been dealing with insecurities about his own sexual/romantic value. So, if he could make you feel insecure, it would make him feel more secure... because if your self-esteem is shaken, maybe you'll value him more and stick around. It is often that this type of abusive behavior is a front for insecurities and fears. But my biggest advice would be to look inward at what a relationship to a man means to you. It is often, that our attitude toward romantic relationships reflects earlier traumas. And we often try to recreate patterns from the past to play through old traumas and find resolve. And beyond that, if I were in your shoes, I'd ask myself how I really want to look beyond the expectations of others. So, neither would it be about conforming to what it seems men want you to look like, nor would it be about rebelling against what it seems men want you to look like. Creating a look has so much to do with persona creation and self-sovereignty. Attraction is one faculty of the look we present. But it's so much beyond that. It's about who we want to show up as and what we want to express. I've found it very helpful to have my own style that showcases my unique preferences. And this makes me stand out... meaning that fewer men will be attracted to me, and I won't have quite as much mass appeal. But also, if I were seeking to attract a man, I'd be more likely to catch the eye of one who resonates with something about me and my personality in particular. I'd be more likely to find somebody looking for someone like me... and not just any woman. So, the question is, how do you like to be, and how do you like to look? And to think about this separate from conforming to men's tastes. AND to think about this separate from rebelling from men's tastes.

The main issue with this is that it reinforces some fundamentally untrue beliefs... which constitute a major part of the reason why so many men struggle with low self esteem. So, it strengthens the internal turmoil even as it attempts to give empathy... which is a dangerous combination. It can become an addictive cycle of psychological self-harm for so many men. It's dangerous in this way because it validates men's emotions, which in most other contexts would be a good thing as there are uniquely male struggles and men don't get a lot of space to just be emotional beings... and the video speaks to this. BUT the thing that makes it dangerous is that it reinforces the idea that all women only want the top tier man and that there are just fundamental "loser" men that no one wants... which isn't true. Women are generally looking for their match and for someone she has chemistry with. There is literally no one who won't be desired by someone. And you can't look to dating website statistics to find out how attraction organically works. Dating website stats are skewed by their nature because women are generally most attracted to men's personalities... and on dating websites all you have to go off of is a photo and bio. And most importantly, because it's a mix of emotional validation and a reinforcement of false beliefs, it works incredibly well as propaganda. And this propaganda causes men to feel even more powerless and worthless and sews the seeds of resentment towards women as a whole group.

I can assure you that I haven't seen this song before a few days ago. It's a very memorable music video... especially the creepy part at the end. But it isn't that my experience had these visuals or anything. It wasn't really a visual experience at all during the death. It's more like these visuals are a metaphor for what was experienced... especially where everything dissolved into the infinite body of the Goddess in the video. So, the imagery in the video is very universal/esoteric/archetypal as I can recognize the life mother, the death mother, the magician, and the memento mori as archetypes. But the psychedelic imagery and dissolving is also relevant. I would imagine that MGMT (or whoever created the music video) has experienced ego death while on psychedelics or something like that. My experience was that my body was fragmenting and falling apart and that I died, which was not a visual experience at all. And in the fragmenting, I merged into nothingness and experienced being it. So, the radical de-centering in the video where everything merges into flowers on blackness that make up the body of the deity, felt very reminiscent of the shift in perspective that death is. But of course, neither words nor image can accurately describe it. It just has some semblance to the experience... which is why I said it was a great visual metaphor for what was experienced. I got a little shudder down my spine when I first saw it because it reminded me of it. As close to a representation of death as I've seen.

You're adding a lot of ideas onto sex. Sex is just as much part of one-ness as anything else is. And Tantra is about experiencing being the universe, playing itself out as a physical representation of Yin/Yang... the Dao. Now, we could say that people tend to be very dichotomous in their approach to sex. And sex is motivated by physicality and instinct on the more relative level. But even that more animalistic aspect of ourselves is part of that which is. There is no true dichotomy there.

You're welcome

I haven't listened to much from them other than their three big hits. So, this was a pleasant surprise. Also, I just learned that MGMT stands for Management as a lot of their early stuff was meant to be a spoof on pop music and selling out. But they became popular because of their spoof stuff.