I find this advice has a couple good points, but is mostly pretty bad.
Be Transparent. Show what you’re feeling; say what you’re thinking. Offer and accept communications at face value. Do this from the beginning, and the bad relationships will run from you like shadows from the light. Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t use non-verbal techniques to make people feel better—but here is the test: If you were to explain everything you are doing and why, would the other person feel exploited, or honored?
This advice can be helpful if you have a relationship with strong gender roles, but it’s not so useful for (a) people with substantial social difficulties, or (b) men in gender traditional relationships.
(a) If you have substantial insecurity or social anxiety, then if you “Show what you’re feeling; say what you’re thinking,” you will just end up voicing your insecurity and anxiety. That’s usually a bad idea in most dating situations.
(b) If you are a man dating a woman with gender traditional preferences, you must be careful about displaying vulnerability, because some women with those preferences find it unattractive.
Become Skilled at Being Single. Learn to make good food, pay your bills, motivate yourself, stay sane, and get sexual release, by yourself and with help from friends. Then why do you even need a partner? Exactly. But you might still appreciate a partner, which is a stronger position.
Not bad advice (though good luck getting your friends to help you get sexual release). The main problem this advice is that it fails to recognize how badly people’s mental health gets trashed by lack of wanted relationships and intimacy.
Embrace the Friend Zone. Having friends is a good thing. The suffering of the “friend zone” is an illusion created by desire. Let go of desire and the prison becomes paradise—or the false friendship is exposed. Of course, you might still fantasize about another kind of relationship. The key is that you are not holding tension between where you are and where you are not.
This is decent advice.
Broaden Your Standards. Typically, guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes, are themselves attracted to asshole women. (Actually, this explains a lot about pickup artist culture.) Remember that nice person who you rejected for not being sexy enough? That’s karma: you must follow the rules you make. At the same time, nobody wants to be settled for. Practice valuing qualities that are valuable.
This could be good advice to someone who generally has narrow standards, but to assume that guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes have narrow standards (or go for asshole women) is baseless prejudice.
Be Like Water. Do not push anything, but move instantly to fill any opening. This will not generate nearly as much sex as aggressive seduction, but it will make it better, by filtering out sex for the sake of proving something, and leaving only sex based on strong mutual attraction.
Good advice.
Sex Is Not the Goal. There is no goal. There is only the process: be who you are, and engage with what you encounter on that road.
This advice is horrible for anyone who is expected to initiate sex. Good luck doing that without any sort of goal-directness.
Unlike a martial arts expert who, instead of resolving a conflict peacefully whenever possible, just wants to kick somebody’s ass.
A martial artist who is violating the spirit (and pragmatics) that form the core philosophy of most martial arts communities. There is much that can be taken from this analogy.
Let’s say you’d never heard of PUArtistry. You’re in a bar (or venue of your choice). What are your objectives
Right now I don’t have any such objectives (and so haven’t gone to any bars in a while). You would have to specify what objectives prompted me to go there as part of your counterfactual.
and how do you meet them?
This depends on the aforementioned objectives. For most likely objectives a plan would most likely involve approaching many women, flirting and conversing.
I don’t have the faintest idea about how I would do that assuming I had no exposure to bodies of knowledge about how such things work. I suspect very badly. Reinventing the wheel would take huge amounts of effort and be a massive waste of my time.
I don’t have the faintest idea about how I would do that assuming I had no exposure to bodies of knowledge about how such things work. I suspect very badly. Reinventing the wheel would take huge amounts of effort and be a massive waste of my time.
I’m trying to establish the best way to stay aware of one’s authentic needs re: companionship, love, and sex. And how to meet those needs.
For me it isn’t so much staying aware as it is becoming aware. The journey to self awareness is one of the most important steps to actually getting what you want.
Again for me personally learning about human psychology in general, including human sexual dynamics, was one of the most effective ways of reaching that level of personal and interpersonal awareness. As I learned the theory all the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. The body of experiences that I had collected from social interactions and observations started fit together and make sense. Like waking up from a dream.
You asked for a prediction about a counterfactual scenario and call my best guess, which was mostly an expression of doubt, a gigantic assumption? That is rather rude.
I was going to ask “why not apply the same energy you put toward PUA techniques to enhancing your awareness of easy, real connection?” but then I realized:
Because there isn’t a dichotomy here. PUA understanding is one of the most effective ways of improving your capability for and awareness of easy, real connection. ‘Easy’ things are usually easy because you have extensive practice at doing them—either deliberately or through incidental exposure over time. Spending time developing the skills for making a human connection does not make them any less ‘real’.
This advice is horrible for anyone who is expected to initiate sex. Good luck doing that without any sort of goal-directness.
My impression is that two people who spend enough time together and are physically attracted to one another will tend to eventually have sex. It usually takes a lot of willpower for this not to be the case.
Not if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t know how ordinary people go about signaling they’re amenable to having sex.
It was only in retrospect after a lot of social learning that I became aware of all the times in my past that I easily could have been having sex, but wasn’t because I didn’t recognize the cues I was supposed to be picking up.
It was only in retrospect after a lot of social learning that I became aware of all the times in my past that I easily could have been having sex, but wasn’t because I didn’t recognize the cues I was supposed to be picking up.
Was sex your goal at the time? How much time did you spend with the person(s) in question? Enough for it to be considered a long-term romantic relationship?
Sex Is Not the Goal. There is no goal. There is only the process: be who you are, and engage with what you encounter on that road.
described my outlook, and still does. I would have been happy to be having sex though.
And it varied; there are simply a number of people, who I spent differing amounts, some quite a lot, of time with, who in retrospect were willing to have sex with me.
Having been in the position of needing good advice, I agree with HughRistik that the advice above is mostly pretty bad unless you’re the sort of person who doesn’t already need the advice.
It’s not for nothing that my post history is full of comments with edit marks next to them. But now if I correct this one, it’ll have a pointless comment box hanging off of it. See what you did?
It might have been clearer if I’d distinguished between advice that is bad because it suggests unwise courses of action, and advice that is bad because attempting to follow it is not a feasible way to modify your actions for the better. I think it’s bad advice of the sort that doesn’t provide enough information to be positive or negative.
I find this advice has a couple good points, but is mostly pretty bad.
This advice can be helpful if you have a relationship with strong gender roles, but it’s not so useful for (a) people with substantial social difficulties, or (b) men in gender traditional relationships.
(a) If you have substantial insecurity or social anxiety, then if you “Show what you’re feeling; say what you’re thinking,” you will just end up voicing your insecurity and anxiety. That’s usually a bad idea in most dating situations.
(b) If you are a man dating a woman with gender traditional preferences, you must be careful about displaying vulnerability, because some women with those preferences find it unattractive.
Not bad advice (though good luck getting your friends to help you get sexual release). The main problem this advice is that it fails to recognize how badly people’s mental health gets trashed by lack of wanted relationships and intimacy.
This is decent advice.
This could be good advice to someone who generally has narrow standards, but to assume that guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes have narrow standards (or go for asshole women) is baseless prejudice.
Good advice.
This advice is horrible for anyone who is expected to initiate sex. Good luck doing that without any sort of goal-directness.
.
A martial artist who is violating the spirit (and pragmatics) that form the core philosophy of most martial arts communities. There is much that can be taken from this analogy.
.
I’m not sure how formalism relates to the context.
.
I understand what you mean by formal now. (Without necessarily agreeing with your prediction of how best to facilitate awareness.)
.
Right now I don’t have any such objectives (and so haven’t gone to any bars in a while). You would have to specify what objectives prompted me to go there as part of your counterfactual.
This depends on the aforementioned objectives. For most likely objectives a plan would most likely involve approaching many women, flirting and conversing.
I don’t have the faintest idea about how I would do that assuming I had no exposure to bodies of knowledge about how such things work. I suspect very badly. Reinventing the wheel would take huge amounts of effort and be a massive waste of my time.
Also,
This feels like a gigantic assumption to me.
.
For me it isn’t so much staying aware as it is becoming aware. The journey to self awareness is one of the most important steps to actually getting what you want.
Again for me personally learning about human psychology in general, including human sexual dynamics, was one of the most effective ways of reaching that level of personal and interpersonal awareness. As I learned the theory all the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. The body of experiences that I had collected from social interactions and observations started fit together and make sense. Like waking up from a dream.
You asked for a prediction about a counterfactual scenario and call my best guess, which was mostly an expression of doubt, a gigantic assumption? That is rather rude.
.
Because there isn’t a dichotomy here. PUA understanding is one of the most effective ways of improving your capability for and awareness of easy, real connection. ‘Easy’ things are usually easy because you have extensive practice at doing them—either deliberately or through incidental exposure over time. Spending time developing the skills for making a human connection does not make them any less ‘real’.
My impression is that two people who spend enough time together and are physically attracted to one another will tend to eventually have sex. It usually takes a lot of willpower for this not to be the case.
Not if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t know how ordinary people go about signaling they’re amenable to having sex.
It was only in retrospect after a lot of social learning that I became aware of all the times in my past that I easily could have been having sex, but wasn’t because I didn’t recognize the cues I was supposed to be picking up.
Was sex your goal at the time? How much time did you spend with the person(s) in question? Enough for it to be considered a long-term romantic relationship?
No. This
described my outlook, and still does. I would have been happy to be having sex though.
And it varied; there are simply a number of people, who I spent differing amounts, some quite a lot, of time with, who in retrospect were willing to have sex with me.
Having been in the position of needing good advice, I agree with HughRistik that the advice above is mostly pretty bad unless you’re the sort of person who doesn’t already need the advice.
(Where ‘already’ probably fits better a few words earlier.)
It’s not for nothing that my post history is full of comments with edit marks next to them. But now if I correct this one, it’ll have a pointless comment box hanging off of it. See what you did?
.
It might have been clearer if I’d distinguished between advice that is bad because it suggests unwise courses of action, and advice that is bad because attempting to follow it is not a feasible way to modify your actions for the better. I think it’s bad advice of the sort that doesn’t provide enough information to be positive or negative.