in this post, we deconstruct the what and how of the phrase “just be yourself”, and draw some powerful conclusions about relationship game.
the WHAT:
this is quite simple.
when women tell a man “just be yourself”, what they mean is “just be congruent.”
yep. that’s it.
that’s all they mean.
now, the HOW:
this is where we’re going to need another analogy.
so far we’ve got the elastic band, which represents the sum of a woman’s experience. however, it would be inapposite to try to incorporate the man’s personality into the same image.
while there is certainly a correlation in most normal relationships — i.e., men who are more objectively “alpha” tend to stretch the woman’s experience to a greater extent — the two are not the same. much more importantly, we need an analogy that quantifies the idea of congruence.
i thought really hard for a long time — almost thirty seconds — and came up with the notion of using a mixing board, with various sliders that can be pushed anywhere from -10 to 10, to represent the male personality.
here’s the way it works:
* there are alpha traits, and there are beta traits. a beta trait is NOT just the inverse of an alpha trait.
note the final sentence above: yes, kids, that’s right, alpha and beta are actually two separate concepts. in the context of a long-term relationship, as we will soon see, it’s quite possible for a man to be both an alpha and a beta. (most PUA sites are justified in ignoring this distinction, since alpha and beta traits become mutually exclusive if the timeframe is short enough.)
* there are no binaries. each trait lies on a continuum.
this one is a mindfuck for lots and lots and lots and lots of people.
in particular, most people think of these things in terms of binaries — one/zero, on/off, etc. — because binaries are soft, warm, fuzzy, and easy to understand. this is the reason why children’s literature never develops characters beyond good guys and bad guys, and it’s also the reason why kids are taught the words hot and cold before learning more finely differentiated terms, such as tepid, warm, cool, and frigid.
note, however, the terms “children’s literature” and “kids” in the above sentence. these terms are not an accident; they are there because, when it comes to human personality traits, binary thinking is juvenile thinking.
here are a few examples of alpha sliders, with approximate reference points.
ALPHA TRAIT: CONTROL THE CONVERSATION
-10 = he doesn’t talk until she lets him
-5 = she interrupts him regularly; he doesn’t interrupt her unless he’s being unusually emotional, in which case he feels apologetic for interrupting
0 = symmetric conversational pattern
+5 = he interrupts her regularly; she rarely interrupts him, in which case he will simply finish his thought anyway, ignoring what she says until he’s done talking
+10 = she doesn’t talk until he lets her
ALPHA TRAIT: ALL INTERACTION IS SEXUAL
-10 = she won’t even let him get near her
-5 = she only feels amorous on special occasions; he occasionally attempts to initiate, but will immediately back off if she rebuffs him
0 = somewhat regular sex, but almost never before “more important things” are taken care of; the couple’s general vibe when they are doing random things together is “platonic” or “playfully affectionate”
+5 = frequent sex that occasionally overtakes “more important things”; he will start to ignore her if she doesn’t give him enough physical attention
+10 = he completely ignores her unless he’s fucking her
ALPHA TRAIT: AUTHORITY
-10 = he does whatever she tells him, whenever she tells him, sometimes even before she tells him
-5 = she clearly runs the show, but he is occasionally in charge of things she doesn’t really understand
0 = fifty-fifty equalist relationship
+5 = he clearly runs the show, but she is occasionally in charge of things he doesn’t care about or doesn’t feel like doing
+10 = he runs everything; she has no say in anything
ALPHA TRAIT: INDEPENDENCE
-10 = she sets, controls, and enforces his schedule
-5 = he regularly lets her know where he is and what he’s doing, even when he’s doing relatively unimportant things, and will inconvenience himself to accommodate her schedule
0 = he doesn’t bore her with details, but lets her know his general schedule, any important events, and any significant changes; he is willing to adjust his timeline if he thinks her stuff is important enough
+5 = she only has a general idea of what he’s doing, unless she is directly involved; he isn’t willing to change his schedule for her unless the matter is extremely urgent
+10 = she never has any idea where he is, unless he’s standing directly in front of her; he makes plans as though she doesn’t even exist
those are four of them. note that these traits and scales are, for all practical purposes, universal; they are largely the same in any imaginable situation.
there are also beta sliders — for instance, affection, material provision, and attention. these are more complicated than the alpha sliders, because they are context-dependent.
for instance, the “material provision” scale is drastically different for a married man whose wife is mostly or exclusively home with their three small children than it is for a swinging single guy who’s dating one of his colleagues.
so, we’ll leave the discussion of those for later.
—
i’ve got good news and bad news.
the bad news is that there are lots of sliders, a situation that is completely as expected; no one ever said human personalities were supposed to be simple.
the good news is that a full understanding of the sliders, and an understanding of how to tweak them, will make it really easy to understand and manipulate certain aspects of your relationship.
—
here’s the key:
you are CONGRUENT, in women’s eyes, if all of the alpha sliders are set to the same number.
do the following exercise:
* read ALL the rows marked -10, and form an image of the type of man who would earn such scores.
this guy would obviously be a pathetic shell of a man.
but he would be consistent, through and through — i.e., he would “be himself”.
* now do the same for the rows marked -5, 0, +5, and +10.
check for consistency.
these men are all “being themselves”.
women have no ability to detect whether the sliders are at their default settings, so “be yourself” DOES NOT mean that you have to be who you have always been.
women are only capable of telling whether the sliders are set to the same value AS EACH OTHER. if they are, then you are “being yourself”.
even if this self differs from previous selves.
—
and now we will answer three questions, just to demonstrate the power of this sort of approach.
1. what does “just be yourself” mean?
answer: this means that women will freak the fuck out if you have vastly differing scores on any two of the alpha sliders. (remember that there are a lot more than four of them!)
2. what is “better relationship game”?
the answer to this is really simple: better relationship game means moving ALL of the alpha sliders up, by the same amount, at the same time.
notice what i said: the ANSWER is simple. i did not say that the PROCESS was simple; there are a shitload of sliders, and you have to push all of them up at the same time.
exercise:
go back and read all the 0’s again.
now read all the +5’s.
now imagine a man going gradually from all 0’s to all +5’s.
that, folks, is “better relationship game”.
—
3. why are most men so bad at improving their relationship game?
the answer to this one is also really simple: most men think that a large positive change in one of the alpha traits is equivalent to a set of small changes in several of them — e.g., that upping just one of the sliders by, say, 5 points will produce the same result as will upping five of them by 1 point each.
this reasoning is eminently understandable, but completely incorrect.
in fact, if you adjust only one of the sliders at a time, by a massive enough amount, you will sacrifice that all-important quality of CONGRUENCE.
and then, women will freak the fuck out.
exercise:
go read all the 0’s again, and imagine a man with those traits.
now imagine the following:
wifey/gf says “you’re being really rude lately” –> what this really means: dude pushed the “control the conversation” slider up to +5, but left all the others at 0
wifey/gf says “you’re too much of a horndog” –> what this really means: dude pushed the “all interaction is sexual” slider up to +5, but left all the others at 0
wifey/gf says “you’re being too bossy, i don’t like it” –> what this really means: dude pushed the authority slider up to +5, but left all the others at 0
wifey/gf says “you’re too distant” –> what this really means: dude pushed the independence slider up to +5, but left all the others at 0
finally, i’ll leave you with some shit that will shake your understanding of relationships to its very core:
now, make all four of the foregoing changes at once.
dude is now a rude, bossy horndog who is too distant…
…and wifey/gf loves every minute of it.
—
trailer for future program:
note that the optimal settings are not +10/+10/+10/+10.
it is quite possible to be too alpha.
—
this program has been a production of narciso enterprises.
2010/06/24 at 11:50
Dammit, NB.
This is exactly it. Distilled.
I need to go over this and process. Some elements don’t fit.
But this is a good analysis.
Hm.
Keep me working.
2010/06/24 at 12:16
gorb #1 —
this is just a supply-side analysis. in fact, it’s just the beginnings of a supply-side analysis.
we don’t yet have enough machinery to start analyzing the relationship between supply and demand.
2010/06/24 at 12:18
I have to get back to work now, but I like the mixing board analogy.
I think your point on congruency is correct.
It is important to emphasise though, that congruency is not enough, it is necessary but not sufficient, the particular scale the sliders are at is also relevant. A woman who is happy with sliders at +10 is not going to be happy with them at -10 and vice versa.
I’m not sure exact congruency would always be required (maybe a 5 difference would be permissible? particularly on the control the conversation thing? some women enjoy conversation too much to be capable of playing a subsidiary role here, it would be as bad as having to bite off their tongue) but I’ll keep an open mind on this pending the mixing in of the stuff on the beta traits.
I would also add that when women say, be yourself, we usually don’t mean that this will necessarily work, just that there might be a chance of it working (of course the man always takes the most favourable view and assumes that he is being guaranteed success if he does this). This ties in nicely with the necessary but not sufficient point above.
How do PUA techniques fit into this slider scale?
2010/06/24 at 12:27
Apologies, I should have been speaking in terms of tongues (pl) rather than tongue (s).
2010/06/24 at 12:27
It is important to emphasise though, that congruency is not enough, it is necessary but not sufficient, the particular scale the sliders are at is also relevant. A woman who is happy with sliders at +10 is not going to be happy with them at -10 and vice versa.
don’t worry, we’ll get there; these are just first principles. but of course you are correct.
it’s also more complicated than just “happy with”; there are going to be numerical thresholds beyond which certain roles are impossible.
for instance, plenty of hotwife types would be perfectly happy with a cuckold husband at all negative 10’s, but no woman would ever be happy tied into a commitment with such a man. likewise, plenty of women would fuck a man with all positive 10’s (in fact this type of man will easily be the most successful at, say, scoring a fuck in less than twenty minutes), but few would want to raise a child with him.
although conceiving a child with him is another matter entirely. heh.
2010/06/24 at 12:31
sdaedalus —
How do PUA techniques fit into this slider scale?
it’s not my intention to spend much and bandwidth on pickup techniques themselves — there are thousands of other blogs in that market niche already, not to mention the fact that i am personally almost the exact antithesis of the target audience for that sort of thing.
however, since i made the scales up from whole cloth, i suppose that i owe at least a perfunctory attempt to fit short-term relationships into them.
i’ll have to think about that.
2010/06/24 at 12:45
Just a brief note fitting them in would do. There is no need to go into huge detail. I suspect they work because they give the appearance of congruency at the higher end of the scale. Confirmation of this would be sufficient.
One of the reasons why they don’t work in the long term is that the techniques give the superficial appearance of congruency without actually focusing on obtaining congruency itself.
2010/06/24 at 12:54
sdaedalus #7 —
yeah, to a first-order approximation that’s it, although note that PUA-style pickup methods are incompatible with the highest extremes. (a truly congruent “all +10” guy would be a terrible pua, although he could score plenty of women of certain types by little more than pointing at them; a pretender to all +10’s would probably be beaten up on a daily basis.)
however, there are a couple of really big problems with just throwing pua techniques onto these scales:
1) these scales are designed for relatively stable traits that are observable over the long term; they don’t account for rapid deltas. PUA techniques are built on position, velocity, and acceleration — not just position.
2) some of the sliders, such as “independence”, don’t apply at all in short enough (one-night) situations.
3) there are sneaky pua techniques that can be used successfully by guys who are pretty low on these alpha traits; consider hipster game and “fake gay” game.
but, as a first-order approximation, that’s not bad.
2010/06/24 at 12:54
Great post clarifying how to use the slider method. Previously I’d thought you were suggesting advancing sliders in alternation, using one’s advantage to leverage the next. This makes more sense.
In my view, “just be yourself” is mainly a matter of body language and the value you claim. Congruent body lanaguage, if it is not aggressive or anxious, makes us comfortable. That range can go from submissive to dominant, and should fit one’s status level as well as being self-consistent. Congruence implies a minimum level of confidence, that one isn’t trying to modify anything, and I don’t mean consciously. That minimum is attractive enough to get at least some girls, if not the hottest, depending on the rest of your social status package. Women want men dating at their pussy-order ordained level anyway. Hence they feel very good about giving the advice, “just be yourself.” The happy retard and the movie star will both find equalist love.
There is some intersection between the mixing board model and the above, but not total. I think your mixing board model is very useful, but it’s geared towards practical relationship behavior modification, not an explanation of what “just be yourself” means. I don’t think a woman ever means “have all sliders at 10” when she says “just be yourself.” She’s thinking more in the 0-4 range. What she wants is an uncomplicated read on your value and a comfortable experience interacting as she entraps you.
Where your and my understanding becomes the same, is if we posit that 1. body language is a single slider that’s never internally inconsistent and 2. congruently claimable value is purely a function of slider equalization. I agree with 2. as long as we’re talking about a pre-existing LTR. I know you don’t think 1. either, you’re just ignoring that dynamic here. A body language centric approach to congruence is more germane to pickup than LTRs, but then so is “just be yourself,” in my experience.
Congruence is a much larger term, so your argument that adjusting just one slider leads to incongruence is incontrovertible.
2010/06/24 at 13:00
In my view, “just be yourself” is mainly a matter of body language and the value you claim.
dude, body language is just another slider. there’s no need to confer special status onto it.
I don’t think a woman ever means “have all sliders at 10″ when she says “just be yourself.” She’s thinking more in the 0-4 range.
wrong — you can’t define this sort of thing in solely supply-side terms; it’s radically different from woman to woman. (see comment #2.)
my longest relationship was with a woman who, in her deep dark heart, needed the sliders at +7 at least. maybe even +8-9. she would’ve driven most men to ruin in weeks.
there are at least two other huge things here, too, that i haven’t even mentioned yet:
1) there are limitations to how far up (or down) you can conceivably go. i.e., you are not going to take a church boy from iowa and make him all +10’s, or take a street kid and make him all -10’s.
2) you can’t be too consistent — your behavior needs to oscillate around your chosen mean value, with some amplitude.
stay tuned.
2010/06/24 at 13:08
jb #9
more regarding this claim:
I don’t think a woman ever means “have all sliders at 10″ when she says “just be yourself.” She’s thinking more in the 0-4 range. What she wants is an uncomplicated read on your value and a comfortable experience interacting as she entraps you.
well.
i’ll give you that most women consciously think they want a man in the 0-4 range. (in fact, there are lots of women out there, especially the rising-professional type, who consciously think they want to commit to a man between -5 and 0.)
the problem is, that’s what they consciously think.
aaaaaannnnddd … they’re wrong.
and they will start shit testing you.
and you’ll have to stretch the elastic.
the upshot is that most women will underestimate the # at which they truly achieve resonance with their inner desires, and you’ll have to stretch the elastic until you get them there.
see how this shit all fits together?
2010/06/24 at 13:13
I really do have to get back to work now, but I would have to say that I completely agree on underestimating the #, I think this is much more common than overestimation and I believe that this is because of cultural conditioning.
2010/06/24 at 15:11
I think most of the disagreement is due to 1. My focus on the initial approach for most of my game framework and 2. My focus on relatively innocent girls. It’s quibbles as far as practice goes. I will definitely stay tuned.
No disagreement on the point about women’s conscious thought. We were, after all, discussing what women actually say. What that “actually” means, depends on whether “actually” refers to her conscious interpretation, or something deeper. The rabbit hole winds ever and on.
2010/06/24 at 15:54
this isn’t really what congruent means. congruent means a man’s behavior on these and related scales are equivalent to who he really is. a milquetoast can’t pretend to be a warlord, and vice versa. what you have identified here seems to be better described as consistency, not congruence.
good post though. the sliders are a degree less simplistic than the other analogies, if still reductive. So progress in five days – very good. (i kid: you are brilliant.) i think the idea of alpha and beta as totally separate clusters of traits is a lot more correct than the idea of beta as the absence of alpha, which is the simplistic and reductive meme on the Roissy board. (although Roissy himself is a little more subtle when he gets into the details.)
absolutely right that women, in general, want the more masculine trait clusters (+5-10 on your scales) and have been miseducated into thinking they don’t.
2010/06/24 at 16:18
Incongruence of thought and action = “creepy.”
Congruence of inner state and outer state = “cool.”
My husband acts like a nerdy dork but is quite confident about it. That makes him quite attractive to nerdy dorky females like me. I would agree with maurice; he is congruent with himself because that is who he is. It takes no effort for him to be this way he is.
Reading over j5’s brief list, I think my husband is somewhere in the 5 to 7 range. He is clearly the leader and the one “wearing the pants” in our marriage. He acts the natural leader among other men, and he basically behaves the same with me. But that is very much tempered by “beta” traits like being caring, affectionate and loving.
Part of the “slider” equation is the female’s behavior. I basically do not push back at all and just let him be as masculine as he wants in most areas. He is happy being the way he is naturally, and of course it goes without saying that I like being under his authority.
2010/06/24 at 16:20
Maurice
Congruent and consistent are the same thing.
http://thesaurus.com/browse/congruent
Obviously the items to be examined for congruence/consistency may differ.
In this case the writer has defined these items as the four alpha traits, he is looking for consistency/congruence in the level of these traits for any given individual.
You, on the other hand, are looking for consistency/congruence between someone’s actual personality and the personality they try to express.
The difference is in the comparators examined for congruence/consistency in each process, but what you are looking for is the same and the term congruence/consistency can equally be applied to it.
2010/06/24 at 16:48
I think what maurice is saying is this: expressed levels will not last long if too far from original levels. The sliders eventually “snap back” to the original levels, because a natural “loser” can’t permanently become a lion.
I think it depends. It is difficult to modify one’s behavior in the beginning, but easy after it has become practiced habit. The long-term result also differs from person to person. Some analogies can be seen in dieting, exercising, and learning new skills.
2010/06/24 at 16:56
I think what maurice is saying is this: expressed levels will not last long if too far from original levels. The sliders eventually “snap back” to the original levels, because a natural “loser” can’t permanently become a lion
I thought this point was already made by me re PUA techniques in comment 7 and also by J5 in comment 10 above.
2010/06/24 at 16:58
It’s also entirely possible that congruence is better for the person concerned generally quite apart from its effect on attraction (and presumably on interpersonal relationships generally).
This would reduce any likelihood of slipping back, provided that attaining congruence merely involved adjustment of one or two outlier factors rather than a complete reassignment.
2010/06/24 at 16:59
snapping back not slipping back, sorry.
2010/06/24 at 18:08
Do you write this based on real life interactions with women? Or is it just a theory?
2010/06/24 at 18:11
Hope understands what I was trying to say, and yes, it’s sort of an obvious point that has been said before many times. But it’s also that congruence is a specific vocabulary term in PUA lingo, which is understood as I defined it and which is different than narciso’s definition in the post.
not that that’s bad – he can use whatever terms he wants, but it is a little confusing given that common use and the topic of the blog. sdaedalus’s magnificent pedantry aside, what i was trying to do was eliminate that confusion by introducing a new, near-equivalent term with that different specific meaning that he was describing.
inasmuch as narciso appears to be methodically laying out a whole philosophy of sexual psychology, though, maybe his creation of a new meaning for congruence was deliberate, as a way to distinguish his oeuvre form the more commercially minded stuff.
never mind.
2010/06/24 at 18:40
@narciso
What do you think of David Shade’s material? How does your way of looking at things intersect/ not intersect with his?
2010/06/25 at 04:04
It’s interesting how well Cesar Millan’s philosophy adapts to Game. The below is mostly just an interchange of dog for woman, from his book Cesar’s Way.
Women are living by the law of nature while men try to live by the law of civilization. You cannot lead a woman sexually by compassionate or kind or wise or lovable or unstable leadership. You must project calm assertive energy. When leading a woman sexually, there is no right and wrong. You must project the most obvious and uncontestable strength. In sexual leadership, there are only rules, routines, and rituals – based on survival of the strongest, not of the smartest or fairest.
The +1 SD increased perceptivity of women is similar to the dog’s unbluffable capacity to detect energy changes. You cannot “bluff” a woman the way you can a drunken poker buddy. Once you shift into the emotion of fear, the woman instantly knows she has an advantage over you. You are projecting a weak energy. In the sexual world, the weak get weeded out quickly. There’s no right or wrong about it – it’s just the way life on earth has worked for millions of years.
2010/06/25 at 08:49
Here’s another interesting adaptation from the same source:
when we relate to a woman, we must not relate to her as simply a name first, then a personality, but as:
animal->woman->?culture?->personality
animal key words: natural and freedom
we contain an animal when we bring them into our environment. but she still has the same needs mother nature gave her.
we must fulfill an animal’s natural needs to be happy and balanced.
animal life is beautifully simple.
animals live in the present, all the time.
woman isn’t thinking about what she did yesterday. she isn’t premeditating. she’s reacting.
to a woman, your energy in the present moment defines who you are.
2010/06/25 at 14:42
“When leading a woman sexually, there is no right and wrong. You must project the most obvious and uncontestable strength”
Wasn’t it Sylvia Plath who wrote “every woman adores a fascist”? (googles) Yes, it was. What she means by “fascist” is probably about the same as what’s mean by “thug” in “women like thugs” discussions.
It’d be useful to deconstruct the aspects of thuggery that appeal to women, for example how much of it is about power versus how much it it is about cruelty?
2010/06/25 at 18:10
Psycho-sexual response is not the same for every woman. Some women require caveman-like violence, while others crave a huge status differential and fantasize about famous celebrities and rock stars.
Still others prefer the deeply moving emotional experience. I fall squarely under this camp, with a heavy lose of love as requirement before arousal. I suspect many women with a “romantic” streak are like this. Strength is great, but only after the emotional connection has been established.
2010/06/25 at 21:41
Some women require caveman-like violence, while others crave a huge status differential and fantasize about famous celebrities and rock stars.
false comparison — these aren’t alternatives, though i can see why you might at first cast them as such.
fame and status (and wealth, and good looks) are “wildcards” that allow, however temporarily, a wider margin of error around the optimal slider settings. for instance, a woman who would most truly resonate with a +6 man would feel happy with an famous, high-status, rich, or extremely handsome man a few points below — at least for a while. when the wildcard effect wears off — watch out.
this goes a good way toward explaining why so many hollywood stars’ and rock stars’ marriages don’t last: they are mistaking the wild-card effect for true resonance, until it wears off.
2010/06/26 at 15:51
“this goes a good way toward explaining why so many hollywood stars’ and rock stars’ marriages don’t last”
Why is it always the woman who’s losing interest? Couldn’t it also be that the men have so many new women throwing themselves at them that they are constantly tempted? Or that the men really couldn’t bother to give the women any attention due to their status and schedule.
2010/06/27 at 14:18
Fabulous post. I think some of the +10 stuff being a negative reflects not so much being “too alpha” but a lack of some of the beta traits.
For example only paying attention to her while actually fucking relfects a lack of beta listening ability for example.
2010/06/27 at 14:34
athol —
I think some of the +10 stuff being a negative reflects not so much being “too alpha” but a lack of some of the beta traits.
that’s also an issue. in fact, both of these are issues; they are completely distinct.
it’s definitely possible to be too alpha; our all-plus-ten boy is best exemplified by a gorilla pimp. while a lot of women would fuck a gorilla pimp, or would hide behind him for security, almost all of them would be ultimately more content in a relationship with a man who dialed down the alpha just a bit from +10.
the beta traits are a separate issue. basically, the idea is that they produce long-term bonding, but that this same bonding will undermine sexual heat (the dreaded “i love him but i’m not in love with him”) if the beta is dialed up too high relative to the alpha traits. ideally, you’ll keep the beta traits going, but never let them out of the shadow of the alpha traits.
2010/06/27 at 14:44
also, “listening” per se is not inherently a beta trait. it can go either way, depending on what you do with it.
if you “listen” with the intent of exploiting and manipulating the resultant information to cement your own dominance, then “listening” is alpha.
if you “listen” with the intent of indulging the woman’s wants directly (as opposed to ignoring the literal words and giving her the dominance that she truly craves), then “listening” is beta.
the best situation is one in which you can control the beta traits — because you don’t truly feel them to anywhere near the extent that you strategically and intermittently portray — and can thus shape them to achieve optimal ends for yourself (which, ironically, will strengthen her bonding to you).
although truly feeling the beta traits on occasion ain’t a bad thing. there’s nothing like falling madly in love with a woman all over again, especially when this time you’re falling in love with the slut you’ve made her into.
2010/06/27 at 14:50
I have to disagree that bonding undermines sexual heat. I take Dr Fisher’s viewpoint that being “in-love”, pair bonding and sexual drive are three seperate biological systems.
I think we just see an awfully common thing where males pair bond to a woman and he gives up everything alpha about him in relation to her. It’s not the pair bond that’s killing things, because her side of the pair bond is attracting her to him, it’s the repulsiveness of the lack of alpha that overrides the pair bonds positive pull.
Otherwise we wouldn’t call them pair bonds, we’d call them pair repulses.
That being said I think we have much we agree upon in the basics. The LTR sweet spot is very much balancing alpha + beta traits.
2010/06/27 at 15:03
athol
It’s not the pair bond that’s killing things, because her side of the pair bond is attracting her to him, it’s the repulsiveness of the lack of alpha that overrides the pair bonds positive pull.
i think we’re in agreement here — note that i said the bonding will undermine sexual heat if it outshines the alpha traits. so yeah, same page.
another element, which i’ll write about in future posts, is unpredictability — your actions and affects have to have a nonzero standard deviation, so to speak. in fact, you are better off erring on the side of being a volatile, bipolar powder keg than on that of being a predictably reliable dullard, even an alpha dullard.
out of curiosity, how do you define “in love” independently of those other two factors?
perhaps i’m used to women more primal than most, but, beyond innocent schoolgirl crushes, “in love” and “dying to be ravished” reach their confluence fairly quickly in my experience.
2010/06/27 at 15:32
In love = Dopamine based excitement / OCD like mental obession on person of desire. (This is why SSRIs can kill off romance and interest in sex btw)
Pair Bond = Oxytocin / Vasopressin based emotional bonding and closeness
Sexual Drive = Testosterone based all purpose generic horniness towards the opposite sex.
That’s the Dr Helen Fisher summary. All peer reviewed, shoving people in MRIs to look at their brains, lab tests for hormone levels yada yada yada. You gotta read her.
The thing is women don’t just leave a man they have a pair bond with because he’s not alpha enough. The leave him because another man enters the picture and they have “in love” feelings for him and they get the Dopamine OCD thing happening about the new guy.
When a woman tells a man “ILUBINILWU” that means 9 times out of 10 there is a guy she is in love with that has entered the picture.
A woman can have minimal “in love” feelings for her husband she is pair bonded to and having reasonable sex with and just coast along for YEARS with no apparent cause for concern. But once a new man enters the picture that flips her Dopamine on, things can unravel between her and her husband very quickly.
For the most part this sort of thing works the same way for men too.
2010/06/27 at 15:49
athol —
nice analysis.
one hedge against the dopamine issue is constantly “stretching her elastic” as detailed here.
2010/06/27 at 16:13
That too. Basically just don’t be boring with her fixes the Dopamine issue. Will be posting on this later today. Gotta run and do some beta stuff at in-laws lol.
2010/06/27 at 17:34
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2010/06/27 at 19:01
My husband takes a low dose SSRI, but he was on it before we met and still managed to fall in love. Sometimes I do wonder if it makes him more distant in behavior and therefore drives me crazy. But he has some OCD tendencies still, with regard to his hobbies and so on. I don’t think dopamine is the whole story.
As a wife, the woman can perfectly well control her own behavior and never fall for another man if she doesn’t engage in high-risk activities like having male friends, confiding her thoughts and feelings in other men, etc. I don’t ever entertain “crushes” on other men. There’s only room for one male obsession in my soul, and that is firmly occupied.
But yes, Helen Fisher’s analysis is quite accurate from a biochemical side. She’s just not able to tease out the behavioral-neurological feedback loop. Scientists still haven’t been able to understand why 1/10 of 15 year couples still show brain activation patterns of brand new couples in love. It is merely descriptive. My own desire is to be one of those 10%, and thus far the formula seems to involve at least some dose of idealization, mysticism, and spiritual bonding via earthly means.
2010/07/08 at 15:17
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