I have no idea about the PUA community; but from my own experience of times when I was single, there were moments when my desire for a relationship was a 2-place function (i.e. I was pining for this particular woman) and times when it was a 1-place function (i.e. I wanted to have a relationship with some desirable woman). Of course, I’d probably bomb with any girl if I’d admitted to being in the latter state, so there was some level of repressing my awareness of this.
I think that the things pick-up artists convince themselves they believe are kind of irrelevant to actual male psychology; to the extent that my experience is typical and honestly perceived, there are times and places when actual male desire is quite depersonalized, along with times and places when one can be more proud of what one feels.
I can identify too with the 1-place versus 2-place function analogy. Where I part company from the womanizers I’ve known though and that I had in mind with my comment is that even if I think of a generic “desirable woman”, that’s just a placeholder for a real, living, breathing autonomous agent. The womanizers, or the more sociopathic ones, at least, think of it as a placeholder for something to have sex with, which brings us back to the question of objectification and not respecting the agency of other people. I won’t say that I don’t sometimes succumb to what I’m deploring, but I try to catch myself and to do it less frequently.
I have no idea about the PUA community; but from my own experience of times when I was single, there were moments when my desire for a relationship was a 2-place function (i.e. I was pining for this particular woman) and times when it was a 1-place function (i.e. I wanted to have a relationship with some desirable woman). Of course, I’d probably bomb with any girl if I’d admitted to being in the latter state, so there was some level of repressing my awareness of this.
I think that the things pick-up artists convince themselves they believe are kind of irrelevant to actual male psychology; to the extent that my experience is typical and honestly perceived, there are times and places when actual male desire is quite depersonalized, along with times and places when one can be more proud of what one feels.
I can identify too with the 1-place versus 2-place function analogy. Where I part company from the womanizers I’ve known though and that I had in mind with my comment is that even if I think of a generic “desirable woman”, that’s just a placeholder for a real, living, breathing autonomous agent. The womanizers, or the more sociopathic ones, at least, think of it as a placeholder for something to have sex with, which brings us back to the question of objectification and not respecting the agency of other people. I won’t say that I don’t sometimes succumb to what I’m deploring, but I try to catch myself and to do it less frequently.