As an update, the 3rd thing I tried also failed. Now I ran out of things to try.
I wouldn’t be discouraged. There are a lot of ways to do “the same thing” differently, and I wouldn’t expect a first try success. In particular, I’d expect you to need a lot more time letting yourself “run free”—at least “in sim”—and using that to figure out what exactly it is that you want and how to actually get it without screwing anything else up. Like, “Okay, if I get that, then what?”/”What’s so great about that” and drilling down on that felt sense until something shifts.
Sure took me a while, at least. And I wouldn’t claim to be “finished”
The problem is that anything that is non-sexual love seems to be corrupted by sexual love, in a way that makes the non-sexual part worse. E.g. imagine you have a female friend that you like to talk to because she is a good interlocutor. [...] I expect that if you would now start to have sex with that female friend your mind would get corrupted by sexual desire. E.g. instead of thinking about what to discuss in the next meeting, a sexual fantasy would pop into your head.
How sure are you that this is actually a problem? Is it the hypothetical female friend that has an issue with just focusing on sex as much as you’d be tempted to, or is it a you thing? The former can definitely complicate things, but if it’s the latter I’d be inclined to just run with it and see what happens. It’s a lot harder to get distracted by the possibility of having sex immediately after having it.
My current strategy is to just not think anything sexual anymore, and be sensitive to any negative emotions that arise. I then plan to use my version of IDC on them to figure out what the subagents that generate the emotions want. So far it seems that to some extent realizing this corruption dynamic has cooled down the sexual part of my mind a bit. But attempt 3 only failed yesterday so this cooling effect might only be temporary.
Yeah, that’s the inhibitory side of the equation. Kinda like fasting for a while and realizing that it’s not necessary/helpful/appropriate to panic about being hungry, and chilling out for a bit.
But if you don’t eat sooner or later or make an earnest effort to obtain sufficient food, it might not stay so easy to continue to set the hunger aside.
I feel like I have figured out a lot of stuff about this general topic in the last month. Probably more than in the rest of my life so far.
:) good.
I also realize now that this just solves the problem that I have had with romance all along. That is the reason why I did not like how my mind behaved. My mind normally just starts to love somebody immediately, overwriting all of the other aspects of the relationship. This is exactly not what I want love to be.
This does sound like premature/overattachment. I bet watching what happens to the other aspects of the relationship puts a damper on that impulse.
The ideal version of this is getting maximally close in a relationship via some context, and only once you get maximally close in that context do you extend the context. And then again you optimize for getting as close as possible in the new extended context, before extending the context again. And you add things to the context sorted such that you add the less impactful stuff first. Adding the component of love to the context should be very late in this chain. [...] I want love to be the thing that follows after everything else is maximally good. And I want the same to be true for other attributes. E.g. before feeling friendly with somebody, you should like them as much as possible, and get as close to them as possible, without that friendliness feeling there.
This sounds pretty idealized. “Should” is a red flag word here, as it covers over what “is”, the reasons things are the way they are, and why you want things to be another way instead. In context, “maximally” is too because “maximally” on any dimension rarely matches “optimally”—so whence this motivation, and what is being avoided?
That’s not to say that it’s wrong or misguided as ideals often have important value, but the real world tends to be messy and bring surprises.
I wouldn’t be discouraged. There are a lot of ways to do “the same thing” differently, and I wouldn’t expect a first try success. In particular, I’d expect you to need a lot more time letting yourself “run free”—at least “in sim”—and using that to figure out what exactly it is that you want and how to actually get it without screwing anything else up. Like, “Okay, if I get that, then what?”/”What’s so great about that” and drilling down on that felt sense until something shifts.
Sure took me a while, at least. And I wouldn’t claim to be “finished”
How sure are you that this is actually a problem? Is it the hypothetical female friend that has an issue with just focusing on sex as much as you’d be tempted to, or is it a you thing? The former can definitely complicate things, but if it’s the latter I’d be inclined to just run with it and see what happens. It’s a lot harder to get distracted by the possibility of having sex immediately after having it.
Yeah, that’s the inhibitory side of the equation. Kinda like fasting for a while and realizing that it’s not necessary/helpful/appropriate to panic about being hungry, and chilling out for a bit.
But if you don’t eat sooner or later or make an earnest effort to obtain sufficient food, it might not stay so easy to continue to set the hunger aside.
:) good.
This does sound like premature/overattachment. I bet watching what happens to the other aspects of the relationship puts a damper on that impulse.
This sounds pretty idealized. “Should” is a red flag word here, as it covers over what “is”, the reasons things are the way they are, and why you want things to be another way instead. In context, “maximally” is too because “maximally” on any dimension rarely matches “optimally”—so whence this motivation, and what is being avoided?
That’s not to say that it’s wrong or misguided as ideals often have important value, but the real world tends to be messy and bring surprises.