zazen

If a man is to marry, there is reasonable fear the fresh legal supremacy his woman enjoys will disrupt the balance of power that previously maintained their relationship. The informed man is all too aware the legal privilege of the modern wife can be used to force him into domestic servitude, and that legally speaking, the marriage hangs on a thread tied to a hovering sword that follows him wherever he goes. If man fails in his capacity as husband, or is at least perceived to have failed, he loses everything, by contrast if his woman is an abysmal failure of a wife, she gets a pay day and a fresh chance. In today’s society a woman’s marriage risk is minimal, and of course, this comes at the expense of man’s being astronomical. Women do not fear marriage because they have no reason to, men do because they have every reason to. A marriage’s odds of success are merely improved, but still mightily unfavourable for man even when the potential wife is of considerable quality. And so although it is not impossible to become a patriarch, it is a dangerous affair regardless of who is involved. This danger is neither explicitly the man nor the woman involved’s fault, but rather, the fault of a judicial system that makes marriage so costly to men. Bottom line: marry but not legally or with a prenuptial agreement, choose wisely. Chemistry isn't enough, compatibility and character need to be there also.

This thread begs the question of how to maintain a long term relationship, would love Leo's insight on it. As the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt, and living together only accelerates the time until this occurs. Space, and letting the other miss you is important in keeping a relationship healthy and the spark there. Novelty, and creating new experiences to bond over. Showing your partner you are valued through social proof, or her seeing you interacting and being treated well by other people, could be your friends/family, or waitresses/store clerks etc. We become blind to what we have, and need to be reminded of it by 3rd parties. Fear of loss kicks in, or competition anxiety which is healthy to a certain extent. If you push it too far the level of insecurity it causes will backfire and she'll end up leaving, its a balancing act. Value (your strengths as a man financially, socially, emotionally, physically) has to be balanced with comfort (your commitment and connection to her , that she has access to that value and can feel safe). In relationships and in giving your commitment to a woman never lose your value which is what she wanted to secure in the first place. You can relax a little bit as once theirs emotional buy in and a history, women don't want to lose that (sunken cost fallacy) but it can't drop so low. What is promised / committed to in courtship has to be maintained and delivered in relationship.

The promotion and increase in status could explain it, this could translate to her feeling higher than you in a certain way and not satisfying her hypergamy although you have to provide more than just financial strength. Be strong emotionally, lead her, create novel experiences, make her feel like a woman, dominate in the bedroom and make her orgasm. Men aren't just there for financial security but emotional, and sexual also. Combined with working from home, theres no clear delineation of the work version of her and at home version of her. The persona associated at her work place is brought home and she's unable to switch it off to be with you as a woman to man. Maybe create a ritual at the end of work to signal the work day is finished, go for a walk or run, change the environment or dance to music. The clingy/neediness etc which happens naturally as men get taken off the dating market into relationships, and so she becomes the only source of sexual comfort for you, its harder out there in the dating world for men to get sex than women so women have a certain sense of ease and abundance that they can get it whenever they need. Men are more in scarcity in this regard. You being putt off by her turning down sex only further's this fact and shows she's either weaponising it to get her way or just no longer feels the attraction for you. She may have affinity towards you or love you, but isn't in love with you, romantically. My advice would be you have to demonstrate to her she's with a real man and make her feel like a woman. Step into your strength, hang out with guy friends, hit the gym hard, be in a positive mood, don't get your validation or good feelings from her or any woman ever for they are emotional and loyal to how you make them feel, not to you. You have to be the sun emitting light, she's the moon absorbing it. Don't initiate sex for some time, flirt/tease her like you did when you first met and pull away, just drop the comment and leave it. Give her space to work for it, miss your presence. Make her feel pressure that your improving and could get another girl. Remember you are the prize. Quote '' It is unhealthy for a man to live his life in dedication to a woman, for better and more stable dividends are reaped from creation and commerce. It is within the busyness of productivity a man acquires the distance necessary to be more craved by his woman, a boon rather than detriment to the relationship despite her protestations to the contrary. A woman will always complain when a man has a mission greater than her, for it deprives her the flow of attention she requires to optimally function. Yet in the presence of an indentured man, she will complain of a lack of ambition, an absence of mission. A woman’s complaints bear little if any merit, for in much the way crying is the way of babies, complaining is the way of women. An unambitious man elicits complaint just as much as an ambitious one, for dissatisfaction is emphatic and characteristic of the feminine psyche. If you can’t create and manage your own happiness, how can you be expected to inspire hers? A man must look after himself before he takes it upon himself to look after a woman. The express responsibility that comes with romantically associating with a woman all but demands it. Foolish men in their naivety rally to placate the unending demands of the boundary pushing woman, whilst wise men concentrate first and foremost on pleasing themselves. They do not pedestalise the needs of the woman above their own. A man who is pleased with himself is in the position to give the woman with whom he associates the option to accept how he does things or to take a proverbial hike and take her chances out on the dating market. Often, out of sheer respect for “putting his foot down” and the sensationalism of the tingles that such assertiveness elicits, she chooses to do things his way. That ladies and gents, is the basis of “make up sex.” For men, in relation to women, there are few needs other than ensuring a promise of sexual exclusivity that cannot be otherwise provided by an inner circle of male friends. Relational intimacy and emotional closeness with women does indeed have a certain appeal to various men, but it is hardly the necessity for men that it is for women. Rather perhaps much to man’s own romantic disappointment it is simply something to be indulged in from time to time, much like alcohol consumption and recreational drug use. A man who indulges in such vices too often gets irreversibly fucked up. Indulging in too much emotional closeness with a woman is likewise a vice, for it has the propensity to make man weak. This makes him pliable, and from there on we encounter the slippery slope of female contempt for male weakness which begins to manifest and ultimately undermine the health of the relationship. Based on this line of reasoning, such activities should be indulged in sporadically to assure her of your emotional fidelity rather than form the basis of your relationship. For women, association with men is necessary, for they derive much of their self-worth based on the man (or men) they are publicly associated with. Their life is but one continuing stream of social media updates which pertain to their relationship status. A single woman is an unhappy woman, looking for a new man to fill the void in her insatiable appetite for high value male validation, whilst a single man is simply looking to get his end away and nothing more. For women, emotions come before sex. For men, sex comes before emotions. ''

The honeymoon phase of relationships people put on their best selves. Once this fades the true self comes out. Besides that, maybe she's taken on a new job or has new stresses in her life causing her to take on masculine traits, or she's reading/exposing herself to new knowledge on being a strong independent woman and trying on a certain way of being. Coming to yourself, have you weakened in some ways where she feels she has to wear the pants in the relationship? Men can become comfortable and slowly lose the attractiveness that got the woman attracted to you in the first place. To maintain romantic love polarity has to be maintained. When guys get into relationships, it is a battle for we become injected with oxytocin and various chemicals that weaken us, evolutionary this is so we would stick around to provision/protect children. Just be aware of this and maintain your strength as a man. The spark gets lost around the 3 year mark. Long term monogamous relationships are a lot of effort and work on both parties. Average relationships last 2-3 years on average, people just get bored. This could be biological, as past this amount of time if the woman hasn't conceived a baby which is what her biology is drawing her to do with your biology, her body/hind brain checks out of the relationship and seeks to make babies elsewhere. Sexual love fades and is hard to maintain, it has to be turned into spiritual love which is an art form both partners need to be open to learning and living through. Quote on women and femininity ''Women are taught to debauch their femininity in pursuit of power and social acceptance under the rule of feminist dogma. They all too unwittingly realise not what they give up by capitulating to feminism. Much to woman’s detriment, adhering to the feminist roadmap results in a vitiation of her desirability to the kind of man she yearns for. Of specific note in regard to this is the contemporary culture. The current economic model and prevailing social-programming of the time push women towards masculinity by framing it as “liberation.” Feminism sells women the lie that to masculinise is to become free. It convinces the feminine to divorce herself from her nature and to aspire to be that which she isn’t. That her desire to nurture, support and mother is weak. She should become more manlike, fierce, assertive, a conqueror! Indeed what banal trite, there is no man of worth breathing that wants to commit to the fabled feminist “real woman.”

Russell brand isn't creepy because he's attractive, physically and non physically. Most men trying to emulate/act that way would get rape whistled at as it signals to the woman a man with weak genes is trying to reproduce, abort abort! Men have to be attractive, not act it. Attractiveness to women is essentially strength in its forms (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual). Strength on these levels translates to the traits : Appearance/Animality, Assured/Assertive, Attentive/Abundant, Aliveness. These 7 traits also are in line with the 7 chakras. These are traits in your control, because of these traits you will gain value from things outside of your control such as social proof, status, wealth etc. These traits are who an attractive person is, not what they have outside of themselves or what their attractiveness translates to / gets them externally, although the external achievements can re-inforce those traits. Physical / Root/Sacral chakra: Appearance (looks/good genes,protective strength) and Animality (in touch with sexuality/primal) this is what causes you to flirt, lets her know this is a man speaking to a woman. Emotional / solar plexus/heart chakra: Assuredness (of your self worth, value, life and that of others giving rise to compassion, can be an emotional rock for the woman, your not emotionally weak or unavailable but emotionally resilient and hold space for her emotional storms) and Assertive (trust in your ability to act rather than be acted upon by life, you ACTtualise your vision, purpose, potential through ACTion). Mental / throat/third eye chakra: Attentive (towards her, social calibration, you have value but she has to have access to that value, if not caring of her needs with your attentiveness towards them theres no security for the woman) and Abundant (in your vision/view of life and what it has to offer). Rational (attentive) optimist (abundant). Attentive towards life and truth, yet optimistic / abundant for you see beauty inherit in life despite its suffering, and see life for what it could be. Rationality devoid human emotion/vision/spirit is nihilistic. Optimism devoid rationality is destructive. Spiritual / crown chakra: Aliveness (in touch with the spirit that animates life, become full of life/energy others want to bask in, playful, share loving energy, compassionate as you realise the essence in you is shared by the essence in others) The nice guy vs jerk debate Nice defined ; from Old French, from Latin nescius ‘ignorant’, from nescire ‘not know’. Be good, not nice or a jerk. Those are both extremes. What is the nice guy ignorant of : of himself, being in touch with himself or his true nature of which there is the lower and the higher, the animal and the divine, the beast and the bhudda. When you lack integrating your nature, you don't know who you are, what you want and have no boundaries against things that go against who you are and what you want. Women essentially seek strength, great strength comes from integration within ourselves. Jerks are in touch only with their animal self (their balls), however they still signal strength on a primal level which is why they get the girls and why girls end up in bad relationships as their bodies instinctually/emotionally react to these guys. Nice guys are too in their mind and cutting themselves off from their lower nature and so no primal strength is there, only intellectual strength. The good guy is in touch and integrated with all, the balls the head and the heart and so signals the most strength. Women don't like the guy to be the jerk, they like the strength and power that comes with it. You can show strength and power in a healthy manner. Don't be nice, don't be ignorant, become aware of your true self and embody yourself in all dimensions.

Beating oneself over their condition isn't helpful, I understand people should accept how they are (if overweight, socially awkward etc) but one must also self improve. Love your current self, love what you are, but also love your future self and what you could be. Most men do not like obese women and to tell those women that they do is a great disservice to their health and the prospect of finding a partner. Women and men both have societal pressures and issues to deal with, men talk directly about problems whereas women because of their more caring nature wish not to offend and beat around the bush. Women have a greater need to be accepted by the social group as their survival depends on it, hence the need for not offending, guarding reputation, aversion to healthy criticism receiving or being given. The Machiavellian inclined women may even promote fat acceptance as a way to reduce their competition in securing a guy. When truth is avoided however it causes more issues than not in general, the delivery of that truth has to be balanced with trust and care as to not offend. Quote ''Women are not allowed to be criticised anymore as apparently we must place an incredibly high amount of priority on what one could only consider inane sensibilities which manifest from one’s personal insecurities, criticism is about feedback and improvement but women on the feminist bandwagon tend to illogically rationalise anything negative sounding as oppressive and thus shut down completely, resorting to fallacies, shaming tactics and sticking their fingers in their ears to maintain their belief system. For example, most fat women cannot handle being told they’re fat, that they need to lose weight and being given advice on how to lose their weight, more than likely the woman in question will be offended you’ve acknowledged she has an unhealthy BMI and she’ll either shut down on you, or possibly join a fat acceptance movements. In this paradigm where the feminine whims and sensibilities dictate the confines of what essentially constitutes a gynocentric society, society (including lots of clueless men) thus begin to talk more and more bullshit to placate the fragile and delicate egos, rather than be honest and help them to work on improving themselves via the distillation of tough love, also commonly known as “the truth.” This excess feminised perspective permeating the past decades of acceptance and zero judgment etc has its place, but it can also end up hurting if left lopsided and unbalanced. Now we have a snowflake generation easily offended by everything and wanting to cancel everything.

Serial monogamy takes place, the question is monogamy long term? In todays world to be monogamous in the long term requires a lot of self actualisation on both parts, and has to take a somewhat spiritual path of devotion and sacrifice. Your sacrificing a certain kind of freedom for the freedom to be lovingly bonded to another person, lose one freedom to gain the freedom that love gives. The devotion part is in understanding the modern society and temptations present with online dating and big city living, and protecting the relationship from the culture and its laissez faire attitude towards sexuality. People are casually fucking others without any real pair bonding and then opting to settle down when they’re much older out of fear of impending loneliness and forced solitude or choosing not to start a family at all. The mating culture for people of most ages is simply to use people and fuck them, forming no real pair bonds or emotional connections. Some people attempt relationships but the strength of these relationships is adversely affected by the external temptation which is hook-up culture, say when a relationship is going through a turbulent time, the opportunities offered by hook-up culture can seduce a spouse, leading to adultery, the eventual divulgence of said adultery to the other party involved and then typically an end to said relationship. Hook-up culture is a direct consequence of the “sexual revolution” which feminism sparked, ignited and proclaims so loudly to be proud of. The notion that female promiscuity should be untamed and socially acceptable conduct, this can still be seen even today with feminisms efforts to normalise female promiscuity via campaigns such as being “anti-slut shaming” sure, because encouraging promiscuity is not only putting one at sexual risk via the prevalence of sexual disease, but is psychologically unappealing to anyone looking to seriously build and create something for the long-term, thus damaging their own long-term chances at attaining happiness with a suitable suitor.

Generally, women are loved for who they are, men for what they do. There is parallel advantage and disadvantage to living as male or female, for men are by and large deemed more credible, whilst women are more coveted. If you are a man the world is more likely to respect you than it is to desire or care for you; whereas if you’re a woman, the world is more partial to be desiring and caring of you, than it is respecting. On some level, be it conscious or not, it would seem our fair species recognises women as dependants and men as their guardians, treating each accordingly. On the surface this sounds like men get a better deal, and within ideological feminism this is what much of women today believe as they take a perverse sense of pride in being the victim. In reality man’s position comes with a burden, loneliness and difficulty of life that is as equal parts alien as it is undesirable to the feminine. When a woman asks to be evaluated on the basis of her merit in the way a man is (career wise for example) she knows not what she asks for. She seeks greater respect and thus the recognition inherent to said respect, but is blissfully unaware of the drawbacks that come with this. Be it that were she to be respected in the way exclusive to man, she would no longer be cared for in the way exclusive to women. Women retain enough infantile aesthetic in adulthood to elicit the compassion and care the species feels for children. Whereas men are objects of success, that is, a man is to be evaluated on the sum of his utility and achievement. There is no cushion, nor safety net for a man who falls too far into the abyss, yet were he a woman, his decline would be cushioned and prevented by social and governmental support alike. Nobody fundamentally cares for man on the basis that he exists, this privilege is but the preserve of women and children. Rather, his position in the world is predicated on what he can produce and solve, and it is by living in accordance with this nature and having the fruits to show for it a man comes into his own. Simply put, women covet the respect exclusive to men, but do not understand that the respect men receive is a substitute for the care they do not.

Its a problem to not see a problem. Women are instinctually repulsed by pick up artistry because they don't know if the man's value he is displaying is genuine or not. In the past, if a woman slept with and created a life with the wrong man it was life or death, this is why women require standards and to be cautious who the let in. If a woman comes across a man and knows he's been learning pick up she will be wary of whether he is genuinely as attractive as he portrays himself, hence women shit test men to see if their strength is real or not. Women and children are valued by society by default, children for they are the next generation and vulnerable and women for they are the child bearers and producers of life. Sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive. Men sacrifice for women and children, we could have less men but it is women who give birth and not as many men are needed for this as one man produces millions of sperm. Men must become men and prove themselves to society, this is why it can be hard for women to wrap their heads around men improving themselves so much and the common advice of 'just be yourself'.

We have both drives, but we have been evolved under polyamory far longer than monogamy (coming about since agriculture) so its easier to fall into that mating strategy. We get what we feed, and the current environment is feeding our poly instinct, allowing it freedom to move. If we behave in a polyamorous way in our youth and then expect to be able to be monogamous in our later years that could be an issue and people find it harder, although not impossible. When our ancestors lived till about 30 long term emotional stability wasn't considered, only to mate enough and bear enough children for the tribe. Even then, their was a community that gave emotional stability and that raised the children together, nothing like our more isolated way of life now. Now that we live till 70/80 and as our sexual value depreciates as we age another strategy is needed to ensure emotional stability for each individual, and with that stability of society for it to flourish. Not to say monogamy is perfect, but it was functional and grew civilisation, polygamy doesn't seem to be scalable from the tribal settings to multi million population urban centres we live in now, too much chaos and too many options always leaving people with fomo, or if their with the right partner, the illusion of option with online dating leaves us confused and dissatisfied. Even if our ancestors did sleep with multiple partners it probably wouldn't have been more than 5 from the tribal band, nothing like what we have no going into double digits. The way things are now, it seems people only settle into monogamy when their value in the eyes of others starts to decline and they start to notice this themselves. With dentistry, health conciseness, cleaner air/water and cosmetic treatments we are extending our youth and so people seem to settle later or not when they feel they eventually need to. The flip side is the need to pair bond is still there for emotional stability, and yet its harder due to people getting more set in their ways as they age being less compatible with others habits, their hormones no longer biologically at least drawing each gender to the other, their past experiences/baggage making them jaded, bitter or traumatised to be in relationships.

We have pair bonding abilities, yet not sure if we can still have pair bonds and get sexual desires met outside of that (sexual chemistry fades in long term relationship) to maintain some societal stability, guess thats why the oldest profession existed. A lot of people end up chasing that fresh spark again and again, maybe its natures way of saying now you've mated, go elsewhere or just us humans wanting to feel those intense emotions again of getting to know a new partner, it's novelty. Maybe that biological spark is only to serve its own end of reproduction, for that spark to keep going requires a more spiritual angle than sexual as the body has achieved its goal of making babies.. Seems nature made us to be serial monogamists yet society imposed monogamy for life, when really what comes naturally is to be monogamous one at a time. Quoted ''The natural fallacy is the assumption that because something is natural, it is optimum. In this case: “promiscuity comes naturally to humans, therefore, promiscuity is a good thing.” Almost every religious institution to ever dominate the hearts and minds of a society has preached quite mightily the importance of monogamy. Religion as untrue as it appears, is therefore not only a pre-science way of explaining reality, but likewise a civilizational mechanism for social order. It is the imposition of order on creatures capable of order, but lacking the self-discipline to exercise such order without theological arguments permeating the hive mind. Human instinct is not without fault, and thus by merit of its destructive aspects will undo civilization if left unchecked. Religion inherently acknowledges the flawed nature of the human character and so brainwashes humanity in an effort to reconcile human flaw with human ingenuity. Civilization is a construction that balances on the fragile precipice between human instinct and human imagination. Civilizational progress is therefore contingent on the balance of conflict between our instinct to seek what we momentarily desire, and the loftier pursuits of what our minds envisage. The trade-off’s one must make in the pursuit of either is a warring battlefield, one that permeates the root and core of all that we do. Civilization demands imagination, whilst instinct, the mediocrity of self-gratification. Without the subjugation and noblest oppression of the prior, the freedom-seeking of the latter has a propensity to win. And with that victory, civilization falls.''

Everything that exists is true because it exists. Right now the way you are is the way you are, is truth. I guess when we are told to be ourself it means to be our best selves, we all have the potential to be more. To ACTualise we must ACT. You have POTENTial in you which is potent but only when it is realised. Right now it just a seed, action is the water and nourishment that will sprout that seed. Being needy and nice is your true self now, but it is not all you could be. Love yourself as you are now, but also love what you could be. Self accept, then self improve. We all have needs, but to be needy doesn't help us meet those needs, life is counter-intuitive. A needy person wants 100% of his needs met by others, a healthier person who still has needs but isn't needy, has met at least some portion of those needs himself (say 50%) through his own actions and life, and so when you meet people they don't feel the burden of having to fulfil you, most people are also struggling to fulfil themselves. Meet your own needs first and make yourself feel good through exercise, meditation, good diet and sleep, have passions and hobbies you enjoy, watch comedy and laugh, read good books and write. Get into nature. Then from a strong position its possible to love people and women, and not just the idea of them.

Found this interesting. What is a healthy masculine/feminine? Quoted ''The worst men take on traits of the negative feminine, and the best women take on traits of the positive masculine, whilst the best men take on traits of the positive feminine, and the worst women take on the traits of the negative masculine. Men with negative feminine traits are petty, scheming and entitled. Men with positive feminine traits know gentleness and nurturing. Women with negative masculine traits become willful and arrogant Women with positive masculine traits use logic and hold themselves accountable. Whilst it is a woman's nature to view things emotionally, a highly developed woman can engage reason to act with more fairness. Whilst it is a man's nature to view things practically, a highly developed man can engage compassion to tend to the pressing emotional needs of others. The highly developed woman who can engage reason will never be as logical as the typical man, but she is more so than her sisters. The highly developed man who can engage compassion will never be as emotionally sensitive as the typical woman, but he is more so than his brothers. A woman without emotion would cease to be a woman, and therefore we would not want her to be completely rational, in much the way a man who is very emotional would become too meek, and therefore cease to be a man. Neither's consumed by the other. They possess a helpful fraction. A man who complains women aren't logical enough would not be attracted to a cold logical woman devoid of feminine warmth, in much the way a woman who complains men are too unemotional would not be attracted to a fragile, easily upset sensitive man devoid of male stoicism. The optimal balances or ratios are thus something akin to the pareto principle, with your core nature comprising 80% of what you are, whilst the learned positive attributes of the opposite sex that did not come naturally to you comprise the remaining 20%.''

Great your seeing a therapist, keep it up! I guess it was generalised but of course there are exceptions. Also, society conditions us to also expect this idealised type of love which is unfair both to men and to women for pressuring them to deliver on that. Romanticism, disney and religion played on this idea of the romanticised ideal of love or that theres the 'one' in order to keep marriages lasting. This idea of the 'one' leads to distress and depression to those who believed in it totally only to be cheated on or left. In reality, there are many 'ones' we can be with. Realise, the body may need a mate, the mind may need a mate, but your soul doesn't need a mate for it is non dual. In the past, we lived in tight knitted communities and tribes so we would get different needs met by a number of people. Today as we are more individualised and have less stronger social ties we expect the other partner to be everything for us such as friend, confidant, therapist, mother/father, business partner, soul mate, intellectual etc. Be social in general and have friends, this way you don't put such burdens on single people or your future partner. Nice defined ; from Old French, from Latin nescius ‘ignorant’, from nescire ‘not know’. Be good, not nice or a jerk. Those are both extremes. What is the nice guy ignorant of : of himself, being in touch with himself or his true nature of which there is the lower and the higher, the animal and the divine, the beast and the bhudda. Women essentially seek strength in its many forms, great strength comes from integration within ourselves. Jerks are in touch only with their animal self (their balls), however they still signal strength on a primal level which is why they get the girls. Nice guys are too in their mind and cutting themselves off from their lower nature and so no primal strength is there, only intellectual strength. The good guy is in touch and integrated with all, the balls the head and the heart and so signals the most strength. Women don't like the guy to be the jerk, they like the strength and power that comes with it. You can show strength and power in a healthy manner. Don't be nice, don't be ignorant, become aware of your true self. When you get in touch with yourself and become integrated, you will have power and strength. Exercise to get in touch with your body, do loving kindness meditation to get in touch with the heart and have compassion, continue to understand reality for what it is not what you wish it to be, to get stronger mentally, meditate to get stronger spiritual by connection to soul. And then to communicate that value to the outside world and women, get stronger socially. It's not enough to just have value, social skill skills is about communicating that value.

It is natural to fear that which has control over you and your emotions. The pain of getting pleasure (from a partner) is in trying to maintain that pleasure, keep it, and the pain that would come after losing that pleasure. Pain and pleasure go hand in hand, the rose comes with thorns. That is why, after a few relationships people become distrusting and harder to open up / become vulnerable to another partner because the previous times they did, they got hurt in the process of losing that person. Relationships and heartbreak work in a similar manner to addictions, the other person becomes a source of pleasure for you, and once that source goes away you can have withdrawl, and so need to seek those good emotions / pleasurable feelings elsewhere. You have to self generate it through exercise, meditation, laughter, good diet, friends etc. To let yourself get emotionally invested in someone and give your heart to them, there has to be a high level of trust that they will have your best intentions in mind or else they could cause a lot of pain. It is natural to fear that which can cause pain. This fear can be managed, and in relationships with high trust mitigated although never entirely. Even in deep relationships between man and woman, the fear may not be in that the person will hurt them intentionally, but the fear of death taking that person away always exists, consciously or subconsciously.

Not unconditional in the absolute sense, speaking generally to get a point across. This is semantics and definitions, maybe a better word isn't unconditional but less. The love towards and for your child has less conditions, but the environment you'd wished they'd be safe in is highly conditional for that very reason. More conditions are directed at the environment being safe for them then, and less towards the child. The condition for the child is that they listen to your guidance and lessons in being safe, but far more conditions/variables are at play in the environment you have less control over. What condition would reduce your love for your child, if their not behaving properly? Parents love their children even at their worst due to the maternal instinct which has less conditions on their love for child, than for their man. It doesn't mean their love for the child is unconditional, just less conditional.

That was a copy paste from elsewhere, not my words, hence the quotation marks. The author wasn't referring to love with a capital L whether they are even aware of it or not but more so biological realities of male/female dynamics. Love is fluid and can change, what starts as romantic love in relationships often becomes familial, and so the sex / attraction dries up as incest isn't natural. Keeping this romantic love alive takes effort, understanding and work on both parties. It's not higher, lower its different kinds of love. Of course man also has conditions for his love, but women come with a much greater list of conditions and rightly so for they are more vulnerable and have more to lose in the birthing process. By nature they need to be selective in choosing a mate. Women are more unconditional in their love towards children. The forms love take are equally different. Equal in value, yet different in practice. Like the fingers on your hand, they are all different yet equally valued for their role.

Most other types of love include pain to an extent as they are impermanent. The pain of pleasure is in trying to maintain that pleasure, fear of losing that pleasure, and eventually losing that pleasure. Lower case love is in flux and in relationships has to be constantly worked at and maintained. The only permanence is impermanence when it comes to lower case love. Thats why pure love, with a capital L that Leo talks about is really what we all seek and will bring peace. This is derailing the thread so will stop replying at this level of detail lol.

Love is so fine it can't be defined, we can at least attempt to put the limitless into the limits that is our logic and to have some grasp of reality. Love with a capital L at least doesn't come to an end, it is a process. The other kinds of love (lower case) animal, familial etc do as they are bound by form. We are bound by the boundaries of biology and the material and yet, something more in us is boundless. @Gesundheit2 nice share!

It can on a biochemical level, but there are different types of love. The english language is poor compared to others in defining love, for example arabic has 10 types of love, or latin has eros/romantic, agape/unconditional, philia/friend love. It is a thought, emotion, physical and metaphysical all at once. Hard to define and yet we must define it for it is always, in all ways.

Lesson in this: even if a man is of value, it doesn't matter to a woman unless the woman believes she at least has some access to it or chance of securing it. The essential value of men is strength in all its forms (physical, financial, emotional, mental, social etc). Women wish to secure that strength. As a guy, you must communicate and offer that value in the form of showing at least some attention, initiative, and that you wish to be strong for her. A woman who feels a valuable guy is too unattainable will stop pursuing and move on.

When interacting with women its best to be in the moment as its more a emotional / energetic affair and to not be trapped up in the head. Analyse after the interactions. As your logical you may want to understand human nature which will help dispel any grandiosity women may have and therefore help you to be more relaxed around them. Use your own proclivity of being logical, to study nature, accept it, and act accordingly to it. The following may help de-pedestalise women for you. Not to put down women, but just to see them for what they are, not below or above men. If you view them as above you, you won't attain them because they aren't attracted to weakness, but if you view them as below you, how can you healthily love that which you look down on or detest. ''A subset of high value men who don’t commit beyond sex, have a very rosy-perception of women because they’ve got their game down enough not to face too much difficulty getting laid. These men enjoy the best of what women have to offer without being subject to any of the bullshit attached to it; this gives them a positively skewed bias. Perhaps some men are bitter, but bitter rarely means wrong, if anything, bitterness is the unwelcome by-product of a hard learned lesson, it is neither unwarranted nor devoid of wisdom. This is not to encourage bitterness, but rather to give credit where credit is due. Instinct obscures truth when it comes to the study of women, men are overridden by idealism, lust and paternalism and feel if they accept the darker nature of women then they have to hate women and won’t be able to enjoy them. Therefore a man is prone to retain the myth of the idealised women rather than accept nature, because he wrongly believes acceptance of nature is tantamount to an inability to enjoy women. This is not true at all, sometimes one has to accept reality is not what they want it to be, that women are not angelic as so many men were wrongly taught, but that in fact women are flawed just as men. It’s about a recalibration of expectations to complement reality, rather than continuing to worship the unicorn myth that society has so deeply ingrained. In spite of this realisation, you have to make a commitment to your happiness and make the best out of the flawed nature of human kind. If you can’t or won’t do that, you’re going to go your own way and prove nature right: you need illusions to see women as worthwhile. The inability to grasp and accept nature, instead choosing to reject nature, indicates the person in question has to deceive themselves about the nature of women in order to be capable of enjoying them. Such a person is not at the stage where they can enjoy women, whilst accepting how flawed nature can be, or their idealism of it. Salvation lies in accepting and working in accordance with nature, rather than in denying it. Where woman idealism may stem from Nature plays a cruel trick on the psychology of man. It gives him a very pure, high quality love in his childhood. It gives him a template for woman’s love that he comes to expect as standard of all women. He is taught by his mother’s love that unconditional loyalty, noble character, gentleness, sacrifice and trust are intrinsic of the feminine essence. And so as he grows from a boy into a man he comes to the rather logical conclusion that if he is “a good man,” he can expect to be loved by his lover in much the same way. His mother, well-meant but quite incorrectly likewise affirms this notion to him. This is a wicked lie, but a man whose heart is yet to be broken does not realise this. He thinks woman’s love is immutable. He knows not that her love for child is different from that of her love for him. Women are incapable of reciprocating man’s love. They love differently. There is a hierarchy of love that trickles down. Man sacrifices for woman, and woman, for child. Rarely does the river flow upward. As such, if man is to believe that women can love to the same extent as he, then he is doomed to disappointment and misery when she invariably acts within accordance of her nature rather than his idealisation. Men who had mothers that never endowed them with the maternal bond find it easier to swallow the truth and understand female behaviour as adults. It is a recurring observation of mine that men deprived of maternal love are better adapted for dealing with women as mates in adulthood. The man who grew up as a neglected boy never foolishly believed that a girlfriend would love him as his mother would, he believed she would love him exactly as his mother did; with extreme conditionality. Essentially man has to be stronger, for it is security she lacks being the more vulnerable sex, and seeks this in man. Children rely on women, women on man, man on himself and his strengths. If I could pin point / generalise the nature of women and men it would be this: women seek to secure strength, men seek to express strength. A lot of male/female behaviour can be explained with these two principles. Love women for what they are, not what you idealise them to be. ''

Generalisations are more useful than nuance in grasping reality, reality is nuanced but if you try to take in all of the nuance you get noise, unless your looking into a specific individual. We have to find ways to generalise all of the information we receive to be able to understand to an extent and then act, otherwise there will be paralysis by analysis. Every man and woman has a hardware (their biology) which is the same for all men and woman, then there is the software (their psychology, individual experiences etc) which is on top and interplays with it and makes everyone unique, but not so unique some fundamentals don't change. Everyone is the same, and yet everyone is the different. Woman's baseline experience of life is from fear, even man is fearful. But woman more so for the other half of the population want to in seminate her, are stronger than her, and this handicaps her for months for child rearing only instilling further fear for she can't fend for herself even more. Woman had to depend on man and tribe more than men, this is why their more sociable than men. Heres a video of teal swan going into this experience of life as a woman also:

I may not be fully correct but will give it a shot at my current level of understanding. Its not impossible, but more improbable. Due to evolution men have a greater ability to abstract/understand/use logic, its not that it doesn't exist in women, just less so. Women are more emotion centric than men, generally in conversation you hear women say I feel rather than men who say I think. Women survival was based on securing the strength of men, mens survival was based on securing the hostile environment. For men to control the environment they had to be more rational/logical and understand the environment, this evolved logic in men over Millenia. For women to control/secure men for survival they require emotionality, social bonding, sexual prowess, their survival relied heavily on their ability to socially bond to the tribe and man. Women are more likely to intuit something, whereas men are more likely to reason something. Women's love is focused more towards themselves and their children, this was a necessary result of a feminine survival instinct that’s helped preserve women and their offspring in a violent, chaotic and uncertain evolution. Mans love for conquering the environment was his survival instinct, he had no one else to rely on except his own strength and that of other men. In general, love flows downwards from men to women, women to children. That is why mans love is more sacrificial/idealistic and the male (even in the animal world) sacrifices for the female. (ie certain male species die after breeding or men go to war to protect women and children). Woman must be protected because they are the life givers and the only way to fulfil the biological instinct to propagate the species. Woman's love is more opportunistic/conditional as it had to be in order to survive, although her love for her children is idealistic/unconditional. This is why the hero's journey or the hero who dies for his family resonates so much. We can see mans sacrificial/unconditional love in animal species, to man going to war, to the conception of a child (sperm dying to reach the egg), to the heroic stories/narrative in culture / hollywood, to him giving up his instinct to sleep with multiple women for the sake and security of one woman and his family, and now to the court system where it is sided to the woman who has more to gain than lose in a divorce. This idealistic/unconditional love men envision and live through comes from their first experience of woman being their mother, men project that this is the love he will receive from all women or his wife only to realise the true nature / hierarchy of love, and that unconditional love flows down not up. This is of course a more biological love than a spiritual love which is unconditional.

Women seek to secure strength. This is the same strength that can be used against them and be a danger, so using their femininity they wish to wield that strength towards their own security and that of their children. This is the underlying theme/attraction towards vampires, beauty and the beast etc. The taming of the dangerous masculine for their own protection and provisioning. This is the continuous conflict and tension in women. The man their with is strong, yet is that strength available to them for their security and will it be there tomorrow. They wish their man to become better in health and wealth for it means security in the wild world they are vulnerable to, and yet at the same time they fear the mans higher status and attractiveness will have other women (more younger/beautiful/charming) compete for him or steal him away threatening their very security. This is why marriage/commitment means so much to women. The man they married in courtship, can end up becoming a shell of himself in the relationship and what is promised in courtship isn't always delivered in relationship. For the man love induced and getting his manhood validated can relax into a weaker version of himself. Biology has done its job of pro-creating and so the sexual instinct is no longer there to drive him to be stronger, he must find a higher instinct, the spiritual instinct to keep on going on in his betterment. Subconsciously, the woman can also herself weaken the man to ensure less competition from other women taking him and so giving her further re-assurance and security. On one level this gives the woman security other women won't compete for him but at the same time she loses the strength of her man which gave her a sense of security in the first place. She knows the one thing that wielded the man to her needs (her beauty) is declining and so wishes to secure the men as it fades. This is why women are extending their youthfulness now days ever more through botox etc as people aren't marrying/committing as young as they used, thus giving women the security the desire. Love and relationship is a constant flux. You can see this ambivalence more clearly in women with daddy issues. The don't trust what they need most, which is the masculine in their life. They need it most as they lacked it, and because they don't trust it to be there due to fear abandonment this makes them very possessive, controlling, jealous which ends up sabotaging their relationships. This dynamic is in women, just not as intense as in a woman who experienced an absent father.