I am attracted to women, which makes them seem far more interesting than they actually are.
I find myself marveling at the concept of anything SEEMING more interesting than it IS.
First of all, interesting is not a property of the thing you are interested in, it is your reaction to the thing. Maybe you could say women are far more interesting to you than your rational mind wishes they were, or that because you are attracted to women you find yourself both interested in them and pained at their lack of apparent interest in you, or something like that. But I parse what you wrote as, essentially, “I feel more interested in women than I actually am.”
I think you will find these issues easier and more satisfying to deal with when you treat “interesting” to mean “I am interested in...” and not some property of things outside of you that you may or may not be correctly perceiving. So for example:
So, can someone remind me why I should go out of my way to adjust myself to be women-compatible?
If you ARE interested in women and you’d therefore like to know more of them better, than you would be interested in making yourself more women-compatible, just as if you were interested in skiing you might want to strengthen your legs and build some of your physical endurance before going on a skiing trip.
Conversely, if you are interested in women and skiing, but you can’t be bothered to make yourself more woman-compatible or a stronger skier, you need to decide whether in your out-of-prepared state there is likely to be enough payoff for you in engaging in either skiing or spending time with women anyway.
It is YOU that is interested or not interested, not women that are either interesting or not interesting. It is your decision what you will try in terms of interacting with either women or snowy mountains.
Re-translate it like this: A woman “seems” more interesting than she “is” if after finding out she’s not available suddenly the things she says and does are a lot less interesting and fun to hear about. I’ve definitely had situations where I liked and was interested in someone and then later on looked back and realized they were fairly boring and I was just feeling attraction to them.
At time T1, I am interested in a woman, and think she’s available.
At time T2, I discover she’s unavailable and I am no longer interested in her.
We interpret this as my judgment at T2 being accurate—she actually is boring—and my judgment at T1 was being distorted by attraction, which I no longer feel at T2.
That said… are you suggesting that the connotations of “interested in a woman” are less accurate/relevant? What evidence suggests that?
For that matter, why should I prefer this interpretation over my judgment at T1 being accurate—she actually is interesting—and my judgment at T2 is being distorted by some other factor, such as (for example) “sour grapes”?
For that matter, why should I prefer this interpretation over my judgment at T1 being accurate—she actually is interesting—and my judgment at T2 is being distorted by some other factor, such as (for example) “sour grapes”?
Well, there may be other relevent facts, like “I’m married, and have generally sworn off hedonism except to maintain the meat, I’m only really interested in people as high-intellectual/networking-utility nodes in my social network”.
That sounds like a vitally important detail, which you need to mention in the initial comment lest it gives a totally incorrect impression of what your issue is, especially given your talk of phone numbers near the beginning. (So, you don’t actually have it with women, you just have it with your elephant, do you?)
BTW, do the women you interact with know that? IME, when there’s common knowledge between me and another person that our riders aren’t interested in sex e.g. because either of us is already taken, pretty much no interaction will be taken to be sexual (except jocularly), short of stuff like a kiss on the lips or a hand on the crotch; hell, I’ve had people jokingly proposition me in front of their boyfriend/husband/children. (OTOH, this may just be nice guy privilege and not apply to more masculine guys.) Have you tried to somehow bring up in conversation the fact that you have a wife (and if possible somehow imply that you aren’t looking to cheat on her), and see if the women are still as uncomfortable?
The logic here being that because of those things, I should expect that you are fairly resistant to the natural tendency to judge something as less desirable once it’s no longer available, so they would therefore serve as evidence against the second interpretation?
That is a good approximation, but it is insufficient change. You brain won’t get around a woman’s attractiveness because she is 1)allegedly 2)temporarily 3)according to her, not available.
To get a good sense of how interesting a woman is, you have to imagine she is 50. Beyond reproductive age, then you’ll see how interesting you truly find what she says and does.
I find myself marveling at the concept of anything SEEMING more interesting than it IS.
First of all, interesting is not a property of the thing you are interested in, it is your reaction to the thing. Maybe you could say women are far more interesting to you than your rational mind wishes they were, or that because you are attracted to women you find yourself both interested in them and pained at their lack of apparent interest in you, or something like that. But I parse what you wrote as, essentially, “I feel more interested in women than I actually am.”
I think you will find these issues easier and more satisfying to deal with when you treat “interesting” to mean “I am interested in...” and not some property of things outside of you that you may or may not be correctly perceiving. So for example:
If you ARE interested in women and you’d therefore like to know more of them better, than you would be interested in making yourself more women-compatible, just as if you were interested in skiing you might want to strengthen your legs and build some of your physical endurance before going on a skiing trip.
Conversely, if you are interested in women and skiing, but you can’t be bothered to make yourself more woman-compatible or a stronger skier, you need to decide whether in your out-of-prepared state there is likely to be enough payoff for you in engaging in either skiing or spending time with women anyway.
It is YOU that is interested or not interested, not women that are either interesting or not interesting. It is your decision what you will try in terms of interacting with either women or snowy mountains.
Re-translate it like this: A woman “seems” more interesting than she “is” if after finding out she’s not available suddenly the things she says and does are a lot less interesting and fun to hear about. I’ve definitely had situations where I liked and was interested in someone and then later on looked back and realized they were fairly boring and I was just feeling attraction to them.
So, if I understand the sequence of events, it’s:
At time T1, I am interested in a woman, and think she’s available.
At time T2, I discover she’s unavailable and I am no longer interested in her.
We interpret this as my judgment at T2 being accurate—she actually is boring—and my judgment at T1 was being distorted by attraction, which I no longer feel at T2.
Have I understood this correctly?
pretty much? But when you use “interested in a woman” in that phrase it has different connotations than “a woman is interesting”.
Agreed about different connotations.
That said… are you suggesting that the connotations of “interested in a woman” are less accurate/relevant? What evidence suggests that?
For that matter, why should I prefer this interpretation over my judgment at T1 being accurate—she actually is interesting—and my judgment at T2 is being distorted by some other factor, such as (for example) “sour grapes”?
Well, there may be other relevent facts, like “I’m married, and have generally sworn off hedonism except to maintain the meat, I’m only really interested in people as high-intellectual/networking-utility nodes in my social network”.
That sounds like a vitally important detail, which you need to mention in the initial comment lest it gives a totally incorrect impression of what your issue is, especially given your talk of phone numbers near the beginning. (So, you don’t actually have it with women, you just have it with your elephant, do you?)
BTW, do the women you interact with know that? IME, when there’s common knowledge between me and another person that our riders aren’t interested in sex e.g. because either of us is already taken, pretty much no interaction will be taken to be sexual (except jocularly), short of stuff like a kiss on the lips or a hand on the crotch; hell, I’ve had people jokingly proposition me in front of their boyfriend/husband/children. (OTOH, this may just be nice guy privilege and not apply to more masculine guys.) Have you tried to somehow bring up in conversation the fact that you have a wife (and if possible somehow imply that you aren’t looking to cheat on her), and see if the women are still as uncomfortable?
The logic here being that because of those things, I should expect that you are fairly resistant to the natural tendency to judge something as less desirable once it’s no longer available, so they would therefore serve as evidence against the second interpretation?
That is a good approximation, but it is insufficient change. You brain won’t get around a woman’s attractiveness because she is 1)allegedly 2)temporarily 3)according to her, not available.
To get a good sense of how interesting a woman is, you have to imagine she is 50. Beyond reproductive age, then you’ll see how interesting you truly find what she says and does.