trenton

I have as well. Part of the problem is that the definition is inconsistent, so men in particular struggle with it. Sometimes sexual abuse is defined broadly, but other times narrowly.

The damage rapists do is even worse than just to direct victims. Firstly, people have to fear being raped even if it doesn't happen to them. Secondly, family members become divided and destroyed over a family member who raped a child. There are also problems with proof standards such as he said she said. Too often rapists get away with it which undermines faith in criminal justice. Even when you end up in prison there is still a lot of prison rape, not to mention juvenile sexual abuse in the justice system or even within a religious institution. Even if your child wasn't raped, it can cause a crisis of faith for a Catholic. You also have to worry about the two tiered justice system for those with money and power. While it is definitely true that rapists cause a ton of harm to the direct victims, the true harm to society overall caused by rapists generally extends far beyond just the direct victims. It easily extends to those who have a relationship with the victim and throughout various institutions such as schools which now have to ban private lessons precisely because of this problem. There are even some cases of therapists sexually abusing people who go to therapy for being raped, if you are concerned about how to recover from such a thing. Now add to that the harm caused by psychological warfare in the military such as mass public rapes to terrorize populations like in the Rape of Nanking. Militaries commonly use rape as a torture method while demonstrating impunity. The problem doesn't stay overseas. After everything soldiers have been through, including sexual abuse by their own military personnel, sometimes they come back home with untreated PTSD, resort to alcoholism, and go to commit more sexual assaults against people back in their own country. Rape overseas against our enemies doesn't stay with just our enemies and it does make it back to us if a soldier's head gets messed up so badly that now he develops a taste for children, leading veterans to position themselves in schools where they can access minors in private lessons. Add to that child pornography which human traffickers profit from. Add to that the toxic masculine attitude of domination which rape reinforces. Add to that the suicide rates exacerbated by child sexual abuse. The list goes on and on. The point is that while the harm to direct victims is severe, it is by no means anywhere near the end of it when discussing how rapists harm society overall.

I tried emdr with another therapist. I tried it but had mixed results. We eventually stopped. I feel like I need somebody who loves me for who I am. My parents didn't and I never learned how to love myself as a consequence. There love was always conditional on me erasing myself. There appears to be a chemical imbalance created in my brain as a consequence of my experiences such as the excessive shame and lack of acceptance. What I need to learn isn't learned intellectually, but rather through relationships. I am willing to try dating, but my job situation is really annoying right now.

AI fan makes funny picture

I don't think this expression means anything. It was probably a video with one awkward frame when put in slow motion. There are lots of weird faces you can get by doing this and they don't necessarily express any particular emotion if it is mid speech in an awkward position for instance.

I was diagnosed with autism. I scored 35/50 I think this test is terrible and inaccurate because it doesn't account for the fact that autism commonly is a condition alongside OCD and ADHD. Additionally, I would be more extroverted if not for the fact that people decieved me and betrayed me. For people with autism they are more easily tricked by people with bad intentions which is likely the true cause of introversion in many cases of autism. The problem with these online tests is that they can't detect overlapping conditions. This is why they generally are not trustworthy.

@Leo Gura there are also autistic extroverts. Part of the problem with autism tests is this very stereotype. Some autistic people get a lot of attention by playing into their weirdness which people find hilarious or socially bold should they swing the pendulum. These autistic people would love to socialize and have lots of friends. I used to do this as a child, but I gradually became more introverted and afraid following child abuse which is common autistic or not. I'm not naturally introverted unless I am sufficiently threatened and become afraid of others which autistic people often do because they end up being hurt for being different even if they can't help it. Autistic introversion is an adaptive response, but not necessarily a part of autism itself.

This feels like the problem with the criticism. It sounds more like making fun of this person rather than offering a constructive method of preventing Russia from annexing whatever country they feel like invading with impunity. If Putin is rewarded for this behavior, then why not do it again and again like he already did with crimea for instance? If we make Ukraine give up, then Russia will just invade someone else, kill a bunch of people, and then have the victims blamed for not surrendering. It is called appeasing the bully. It is the same geopolitical strategy we used against Hitler during WWII.

Regarding the Spanish Inquisition, I think it demonstrates the vacuous nature of baptism. Supposedly it is meant to make me clean or reborn, but in practice this clearly isn't true. If I were baptized, I would need to keep in mind that I lack Christian blood or was not Christian my entire life. Therefore it does nothing prove any purported faith on the surface. Action becomes irrelevant. Ultimately, it was a form of magical thinking since the beginning with no real fundamental change. The ritual could have instead been any number of imaginable things and still empty in the end like the purported faith. I could always be called a fake Christian anyway.

I agreed and resonated with this point deeply. First of all, my high school teacher told me that I was wasting my education if I didn't go to college such that I may as well drop out now and work a dead end job. The goal of education is to get a higher paying career which if you don't get, then you wasted your time. Additionally, when I learned about how Americans live paycheck to paycheck, I remembered how much purpose meant to me. The economic system is designed to crush your dreams and passions while pretending to support them. In my case I wanted to be a chess grandmaster, but the economy makes this infeasible and college is irrelevant to this goal. The economy is therefore designed in such a way that it prevents most people from achieving such goals while calling it a problem of effort and talent. Given that my family wasn't worth living with either, the outcome is that I would be working a dead end job until I get old and die. I will be suffering meaninglessly for the rest of the foreseeable future while calling it opportunity on the belief that I might one day get to retire. My grandpa also told me I was worthless and end up at a dead end job like Kroger. I agree with Leo 100 percent. I would rather commit suicide because this life is pure resignation and no reason to exist other than being someone else's pawn for profit and exploitation. I have been taught since childhood that working such a job is dehumanizing, degrading, and a representation of how much your life is valued when you scrub period blood of public toilets. Yet we wonder why Americans don't want to do certain jobs given this messaging about what it means to work a normal job by our culture. There are therapists who call this sentiment crazy, but I think my therapists are idiots if they expect me to resign myself to such a life rather than commit suicide. Therapists would probably call Leo crazy for that, but I already felt this way anyway. I need a reason to exist other than being a drone. Otherwise you may as well erase my entire inner world and disregard everything I ever think or say as though I were a mere animal to you. This is way capitalists have also made explicit that you are like a dog who needs to be starved and kept desperate or else you will get complacent and refuse to work if not for constant fear of homelessness and starvation. This is literally how capitalists think about these jobs when you go to work in the morning. It is about controlling your entire life while calling it opportunity. Why would this kind of outcome in life be acceptable to you? I don't think our system has a real answer for why I shouldn't kill myself in this scenario. Therapists and the mental health system are in complete denial of this psychological abuse and character assassination through dehumanization designed by the capitalist system.

@Leo Gura can you outline the standards you would use to determine when it is okay to criticize somebody versus when it is shameful? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to know how the pattern would hold up under different scenarios. Am I going about this wrong by expecting there to be consistent standards in how one relates to reality? Is reality fundamentally inconsistent in some domains such that "which standards" would be the wrong question?

@Leo Gura Can you create a list of biases you have been accused of and your reasoning for why those are projections? I think that would help narrow down the range of what you could be called out for. I know the cult accusation is one and you covered this one extensively. Finding what your biases are might require sorting through a mountain of bullshit to find a kernel of truth buried in it. Given all of the stupid accusations people would have thrown at you, it might make it harder for you to tell which ones are actually valid or in good faith. Do you have this list somewhere? It would help to have a list of examples which you agree have good points and are not in bad faith.

The problem I have with this position is that you are asking us to point out your biases, but it sounds like you are the one evaluating what counts as a serious submission. It makes me think that you would be unable to remain receptive to people pointing out your biases if there isn't some other way to determine which submissions should be considered and why you should be the judge and not somebody else. Is the selection of which submissions as to what your biases are itself informed by your biases? If it is, then that would be a limitation of the medium. I consider this a serious submission, but do you? If you don't then why isn't that a consequence of your biases? You appear to be biased toward your own standards as to what counts as bias. There is no agreed upon standard as to what counts as bias. For example, are you biased toward Truth or God? Or are you less biased as a consequence of prioritizing Truth or God? Some standards define bias as a deviation from facts, but if you are factually correct that you are God, then that would make you unbiased by this standard. If bias is relative, then this creates a problem for how we are supposed to answer this question. Whose standards of bias are we supposed to be using? It looks like we are supposed to be using yours based your standards of what counts as a thoughtful, serious submission.

Have you guys researched the psychological profiles of sex offenders? I don't think you have. The opportunistic or situational offender is usually someone socially isolated and desperate for connection. Therefore, this person is psychologically prone to seek approval from any group available including anti social peers who encourage this behavior. An example would be a man who sexually harassed a woman for the approval of his peers despite deep down feeling it was wrong. The pattern scales with gang dynamics in which sexual access is used as a sign of status. This includes trafficking and rape while demonstrating commitment to the gang through acts that are universally condemned like child sexual abuse. This is also lucrative as a black market. I should also mention that incest perpetrators often are situational offenders. It can be due to alcoholism combined with many psychological problems that makes a father think having sex with his daughter is love while believing it is not harming her. The grievance based offender is usually an intimate partner. This person is often narcissistic and feels entitled to a woman he treats as property. He often rapes a woman in the bedroom, but if the woman tries to leave then the documented rape will be at the time of the murder. This is why I discussed previously that infidelity can lead to murder in these cases of intimate relationships. A sense of betrayal hurts the fragile ego of a narcissist who wants to be in control. The preferential offenders are pedophiles and sadistic serial rapists who torture victims. These are less common, but because of the tendency to repeat offenses they are classified as more dangerous than the other profiles. If you explore the criminological profiles of sex offenders, then it informs your prevention strategies. Without this information, your positions are probably weak in terms of suggested solutions.

@Majed I think this a complex issue requiring a multi pronged approach due to the variation in psychological profiles behind people who commit rape, both men and women. Currently, the research on female sex offenders isn't as robust as the research on male sex offenders. The combination of issues to address in my opinion include the following. Alcoholism, untreated PTSD, Veteran integration, war prevention (war often leads to rape due to impunity), sex education, sufficient funding for child protective services, teaching children resources their parental abusers wouldn't tell them about, a continued evolution away from the entitlement worldview, Growing recognition of marital rape, Pedophilia prevention similar to Germany which shows promising results with destigmatization, institutional oversight such as in schools and churches by preventing private lessons, a culture more broadly structured for crime prevention that doesn't rely just on the justice system, conflict management and broader social networking to prevent isolation in abusive relationships, effective means of protecting people in immediate danger, accountability for the rich and powerful, blocking CSAM to prevent material from spreading which monetizes trafficking, and many other issues as well. Trafficking and incest are the hardest in my opinion and I don't think there is a clean solution. In the event that you are born to a father who is a gangster, and he likes to hang out with pedophiles who are interested in child prostitution deals while being crack addicts, then how can you realistically prevent child abuse in this situation? In this situation you don't even no what trafficking is until the last minute. I asked experts and political scientists on this issue and they argue that policy wise, there is almost nothing that can be done to protect a child in this situation. At best we can look for general patterns across society aimed at crime prevention, but if a parent betrays a child then realistically policy alone won't be able to solve such a thing. International law and coordinated global efforts should be able to stop human trafficking to some degree, but I doubt that even if we somehow did close the jurisdictional gaps which allow this, that it would ever be enough to stop some parents from betraying their children. This would require a broader cultural and social change which allows a child to have multiple trustworthy adults able to watch each other, but I don't think it would be enough. There is even the problem of siblings sexually abusing other children. If a person's brain development can't be held to the same standard as an adult, then this complicates rape prevention. Family is in my opinion one of the biggest challenges to solving this issue. Parents claim to protect children, but because of their position they are the ones who are most able to exploit such a vulnerability. Rape can realistically be reduced through a multi pronged complex intervention, but it would not be enough be prevent familial betrayal.

@integral I like chess analogies because I'm a chess player. I remember that chess courses are excellent but have diminishing returns once you are above 2000. Also to a beginner it is as if there is no difference between playing me, a world champion, or a computer because you will be crushed no matter what. I would love to know how we would go about figuring out what my rating would be. Do you have an ideas for estimating this? Is Leo like a Grandmaster level, but not perfect? How would we figure out my epistemic rating? Maybe you can evaluate me after I make my summary of project Steelman in video format. The part where I get stuck a lot is metaphysics though. It doesn't look like thought and contemplation can get very far if it does not grasp the terrain on which it stands. Therefore on a metaphysical level, I run into I don't know quickly. I can get creative and come up with different interesting perspectives, but if I am starting from scratch and not taking anything Leo said for granted, then I don't get very far and I just don't know. What questions should I even be asking? Currently I am exploring whether or not control is an illusion, but I currently don't know. Are you able to estimate my rating relative to whatever Leo would be? Also what do you think your rating is and why? How can we improve?

The reason I write this video suggestion here is because you are already posting a lot about the problems with religion anyway. You previously said that religious fundamentalism is so stupid you don't even want to waste your time on it. If this has changed, then would you reconsider discussing the problems with religion. In my opinion there are so many problems it is hard to list all of them. What do you think?

Leo has been making a lot of posts recently about the problems with the historical claims of Christianity. This made me think of how many other religions made historical claims and more importantly, how they would argue against Christianity. One example is Islam versus Christianity. Muslims argue that Christianity is wrong because the resurrection never happened. Firstly, the texts were written in Greek rather than Aramaic. Secondly, there are inconsistencies in the empty tomb story. Thirdly, the Holy Trinity is a later development and a distortion of what was originally a monotheistic message. Fourthly, Christians apply their historical arguments with double standards by claiming other religions fail certain evidentiary standards which they themselves fail. In fact the Quran claims that Jesus was never killed or crucified, leading to the theory that someone else was substituted for Jesus. Surah An-Nisa (4:157): And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. The theory is that when the Romans were going to kill Jesus, one of his disciples played the role of a stunt double. This disciple disguised himself as Jesus to distract the Romans from the real Jesus while he escaped. The outcome is that the man who was crucified is claimed to be Jesus, but is in reality somebody else. Furthermore, it explains why there would have been witnesses to the supposed resurrection. After the supposed crucifixion of Jesus, Christians later found Jesus was still alive. Therefore, they believed that it was the result of a resurrection, but were mistaken. Some Muslims believe in swoon theory, but stunt double theory is now my new favorite instead. Other religions have interesting cases of supernatural historical claims. One example is the Aztec religion, claiming that humanity was in the fifth age and sacrifices were an obligation to the divine to keep the universe functioning. In another example, Ancient Egypt treated its myths as real events such as the death of Osiris. In Rome the belief in their Gods was the result of a tradition in which the fact that their ancestors believed it meant that they should too without using the evidence for historical claims we would use today. I am particularly interested in how religions argue against each other in terms of historical claims. Christianity leans most heavily on historical claims such as the resurrection story.

@Leo Gura I think you operate under ableist biases. I believe I do as well as I typically don't assume a person is disabled in some way when speaking to them online. The reason this is relevant for you is because your spiritual teachings explicitly assume a normal psychology rather than a mind with some kind of disability. This includes various mental health scenarios as well as spiritual genetics that prevent people from being as naturally gifted at spiritual practices. You therefore are aware that almost nobody on this forum will awaken or realize they are God without parroting whatever you tell us while individually deceiving ourselves. My question would be concerning how much depth do you look into mental disabilities? It looks like a subject you tend to avoid looking more closely at even though this forum inevitably attracts people who are suffering such as those with PTSD from child abuse. Part of me is wondering if only you are able to actually verify your spiritual claims because of psychedelics interact with your particular body rather than the body of a disabled person. I'm wondering if people with mental disabilities who claim to have spiritual experiences without psychedelics might complicate your current position depending on how much depth you put into exploring these conditions. Schizophrenia would be one. I have autism. There are plenty of others worth investigating. In my case, I don't know how you would evaluate the experiences I describe. Some cultures think that sleep paralysis dreams come from people with a higher spiritual sensitivity, although my research and understanding rejects this. I did have some sleep paralysis episodes, but it appears to be a manifestation of whatever a person's unconscious insecurities are, oftentimes rooted in PTSD. I saw many things including a ghost dressed like a prisoner. I feel like all of this complicates the hallucination in terms what a spiritual experience is. I definitely saw clearly general grievous from Star wars standing over my bed before he transformed into my closest door. I don't know how to evaluate which hallucinations count as a spiritual experience and which ones don't. Do people with mental disabilities complicate which hallucinations would count as awakenings if not just psychedelic experiences? Are these people more or less conscious and how do you tell? If your framework assumes a normal psychology, then I think you have already cut out a large chunk of the population which is a significant bias. I would love to hear what you think of this. Also if you saw general grievous for real, you would be terrified. That thing is a monster, not something you would be fascinated by when in the flesh. I wonder how this compares to people who saw Jesus in a dream and if it is equally reliable by comparison for determining a savior.

@Xonas Pitfall that is a good argument. I used a version of this when I was a child. My position was agnostic because I wasn't there thousands of years ago to verify these claims. In this case the tribe argues similarly that if this is ancient history then I have no way to verify it, therefore I am in no position to say what it was like in ancient times. I don't know who Jesus was or what he was like.

@integral that is a good parallel. I know that in the end, Frodo was supposed to have failed. He was also corrupted by the power of the ring. If not for Smeagol forcing the destruction of the ring, man would have lost. In the case of Smeagol his obsession is what ultimately destroyed the ring. I'm not sure what the deeper message would be, but given the power of the death note corrupting me, I would be corrupted by the ring too. This also shares a parallel with the Sith from Star wars promising someone their deepest fantasy and desires while claiming power and control can get them everything they want. The costs become easy to overlook when corrupted by the power to the point that Anakin would slaughter younglings without hesitation. I think there is a reason control and power are common themes in evil in fiction. In real life my revenge fantasies are tied in a desire for control and power. The fantasy is that destroying this person will somehow get me what I want, but it won't, and murderers find this out the hard way in prison. Part of the problem for revenge is that harm is diffuse and caused by many partial and ignorant actors such that I can't pin all of my pain on one person as it would be logically incorrect considering the cumulative nature of my pain across different sources. It would probably help to clarify what was taken away from my that felt undeserved. Anakin losing his mother to the Tusken Raiders comes to mind.

I have learned a lot about criminology as I came to understand evil from a psychological perspective. I used this as a tool for self reflection as I learned about the similarities between myself and criminal offenders including the psychological properties of sex offenders which would overlap with my psyche. This information helps inform prevention by not waiting until after we rape or murder someone to self reflect. The reason I ask this question here is because I am afraid of committing murder or suicide if an intimate partner harms me badly enough. Therefore, when I have such thoughts my response is to get away from them and never go back because I need to make sure I don't throw my life away should I act on something like homicidal thoughts. Intimate relationships appear to be the most likely scenario for a murder or rape committed by a civilian. That said, I would like to explore what would make us murder an intimate partner. There are even cases of professional judges committing the murder of an intimate partner. One of them involved a drunken argument leading to murder. Obviously we should avoid using alcohol to escape our problems as that commonly leads to rape and murder. When I had homicidal thoughts they were originally toward family members who were drug addicts. They would steal my money to feed their addiction while yelling death threats at my mother. I became afraid of my homicidal thoughts and instead moved in with a relative. However, the homicidal thoughts came up again because of my older sister. She would spread lies about me, badger me for hours, and humiliate me while other family members shut me down. Humiliation is a typical pattern in intimate partner homicide and it appears to be relevant in cases of infidelity. I can't have a relationship with my family and I'm trying to leave because I can't talk to them without unacceptable risk. When combined with withdrawal from antidepressants, I felt like I was losing control as I was overwhelmed with this rage. In terms of intimate partners, I noticed that oftentimes infidelity leads to homicide. However, it was never particularly obvious to me why this would cause homicidal rage. I instead think of it as although I am distraught and heart broken, this person loves this other man and would be happier with them. Therefore I would tell them good bye and let them be with who they love even if it hurts. I therefore consider cheating a minor offense, but not something I would endorse because of the betrayal of trust. It looks like most people who commit murder or suicide are typically overwhelmed in the moment by grief and they are overestimating the harm caused by act such that some consider cheating to be worse than murder. I don't see myself committing murder over infidelity. The philosophy I have for committing murder is along the following lines. If this person has harmed me so badly that they have made my life unlivable and intolerable, then the consequences of my actions become irrelevant. The goal in murder is not to get away with it, but rather to ensure mutual destruction knowing there will be no victory. If one is willing to accept the consequences of life in prison, then they would have from their point what feels like a justified murder. (Of course this is a bad idea, but it would make sense for a murderer to think this way. We should avoid this.) I noticed that distrust of the legal system overlaps with becoming a criminal. The idea is that if you are going to get in trouble even if you are innocent, then going to prison for being bad doesn't register in the same way anymore. This is also why I felt that I would be more likely to murder someone if they framed me for things I didn't do such as by stealing my social security number and identity while making my life unlivable. Mutually assured destruction would be appealing if I can at least take them out with me. I have been a victim of frame ups and set ups before such as an attempt to frame me for kidnapping and a trafficking scenario because of my father. Presently no modern legal system has a satisfactory answer for frame ups and corrupted evidence implicating someone innocent. Preventing murder would require improving trust in the legal system. Otherwise the threat of going to prison loses meaning. In what scenarios would you murder an intimate partner? Cheating? (Common, but I wouldn't) Rape? (I've seen cases like these, not sure) A frame up? (More likely in my opinion) Identity theft? (More likely in my opinion) Wanting their life insurance? (Unlikely but documented) Domestic abuse: physical, emotional, or sexual? (I felt it in my family) Humiliation? (I felt it in my family) Spreading lies and ruining your reputation? (I felt it in my family) Cutting off your penis? (More likely in my opinion) I would like to mention that I suspect false rape accusations are typically in the form of blackmail. We would not be able to measure the prevalence of this tactic if it is designed to enforce silence. I don't trust the statistics regarding how often women lie about rape. I don't think it can be reliably measured without making a lot of assumptions about how it works. In most scenarios I would leave, fearing what I would become if I commit murder. I would also sometimes feel suicidal because of the harm caused by such relationships. This makes me afraid of relationships because of the harm that comes from them. I prefer to front load trust building before starting a relationship, but most people prefer trust building throughout a relationship. I end up creating barriers to intimacy because of my fear of harming someone or being harmed by them. If I believe my life is intolerable regardless of the consequences, then it would feel easier to justify murder across various scenarios. My last question is that if you find a scenario in which you would want to murder an intimate partner, then would you want to stop yourself? What would make you reconsider or abandon the murder? What would be the advantage of living a life you believe to be unjust and intolerable? I wonder, in the event that an intimate partner stole my social security number and framed me for things I didn't do, then what would be the reason for not murdering them if the outcome is that I will go to prison regardless? Why would I want to live a life of being in prison constantly and having no path forward while this person benefits from my suffering? If the legal system fails people in situations like these, then would I want at least the satisfaction of having this person dead? I'm honestly not sure why I wouldn't choose murder or suicide in the event that the legal system fails me due to being framed. I'm not sure why I would surrender to this outcome and suffer endlessly regardless. Why not murder this person? Can you explain your reasoning as to why you would or wouldn't murder an intimate partner across these scenarios? One example is that a spiteful intimate partner could plant drugs in your car so you get arrested should the cops pull you over. This is one way an intimate partner could realistically frame you and get away with it.

The anime Death Note explores this premise in depth if you haven't seen it. It is all about a man who goes insane with this power and develops a God complex around terrorizing humanity. It is very difficult to resist when something very taboo becomes easy to do because it gives one a sense of impunity. Currently, I don't think I am developed enough to resist such a power because of the promise of making things the way I want them to be. I would become like a God striking down all who I deem unworthy. I would prefer to have my victims publicly struck down by lightning or impaled by crosses. I'm not sure how I would become developed enough to resist such power. I would probably have to realize that I already am God such that the power of the Death Note would pale in comparison to the omnipotence of actual God rather than a tool for a crazed serial killer who feels unstoppable.

It may seem strange, but we can add pregnancy to the list of possible triggers for intimate partner homicide. In some cases, the abuser becomes jealous because the woman shifts attention away from him and toward their recently conceived baby. Therefore, the abuser might escalate his violence to the point of murdering this person because she got pregnant after having sex with him. Homicide is the leading cause of death in pregnant women. I honestly didn't know this, but if you are a woman with someone who beats you, then be aware that the abuse may escalate in the event of a pregnancy. If this person has a firearm, then the probability of a homicide skyrockets. It sounds insane, but it doesn't even have to be infidelity.

Were you guys thinking I was actually planning to murder someone? I mentioned in the opening that this is obviously a bad idea and it should be avoided. Of course that would be insane. What matters for my purposes is understanding the perspective of violent people while integrating a shadow side from unresolved harm while my therapists repeatedly recommend I date. I'm just really afraid of dating because I learned that intimacy was unsafe, but my therapists recommend it still. It is better to address these sorts of things now rather than in a relationship. If I enter a romantic relationship, I still intend to ask a woman, "would you murder me if I cheated on you? I know some would. Personally, I wouldn't like it if you cheated on me, but I won't murder you for it. I just want to know what your standards are like in a relationship. I'm not trying to threaten you or anything." I thought this was a fair and normal question for dating.