Valach

I feel like this is the problem with our discussion, yes. And obviously it is impossible to identify what an "average" woman or man is.

Perhaps. Doens't change that we are less sensitive on average at the moment. Doesn't make our emotions underneath less real or less intense.

We migth have the capacity to feel as much as woman do. It is just suppressed. You are basically saying that it is impossible to become more sensitive which is not true. Becoming more sensitive means becoming more in touch with your emotions and feeling them. And men are worse in that regard than woman. And large part of it is social conditioning, yes.

Which makes you less sensitive. Men dissassociate from their own emotions way more often.

I understand what you're saying, and I actually agree that sensitivity is probably the foundation of this whole thing. When I said earlier that I've become much better at reading people, most of that ability didn't really come from simply socializing more or intellectually learning what certain behaviors mean. A huge part of it came from becoming much more sensitive and in touch with my own emotions while also becoming more grounded. There are things I pick up from people now that I wouldn't have even registered years ago. Sometimes it's incredibly subtle and difficult to put into words. I just feel something, and only later can I crystallize what exactly I was picking up on. So on that part, I think we're actually very much in agreement. Where I just can't follow you is the jump from "women tend to be more sensitive" to "therefore the average woman is pretty good at accurately reading these vibes." That's just not my experience at all. I absolutely agree that women are generally more emotionally sensitive than men and tend to be more in touch with their feelings. But sensitivity and accurate perception of another person still seem like two different things to me. I've met plenty of women who were incredibly sensitive, emotional, intuitive, feminine and in touch with their feelings, who nevertheless seemed remarkably bad at reading people. And I'm not talking about random women I've met in clubs or anything like that. I'm talking about friends, coworkers and women I've known reasonably well throughout my life. Some of them were extremely sensitive people. Yet they could completely misread someone's character, repeatedly get involved with people whose motivations seemed fairly transparent from the outside, project heavily onto others, or simply not want to see something about another person that was quite obvious. And there's another thing that makes it very difficult for me to accept your claim. I've known quite a few men who were extremely successful with women. Some were explicitly involved in pickup, but plenty weren't the kind of guys pickup people would call "naturals." And very rarely did I come away thinking, "Wow, this guy has an exceptionally good character." Quite often it was almost the opposite. Some were manipulative. Some were deeply insecure underneath the charisma. Some viewed women in incredibly transactional ways. Some were narcissistic or dishonest. Some were simply very good at producing attraction. And women absolutely loved some of these guys. Now, obviously attraction and moral character aren't the same thing. A woman can accurately perceive that a guy has certain flaws and still be attracted to him. So I'm not saying "bad man gets women = women can't read men." But if the average woman's embodied intuition is actually quite good at detecting socially toxic motivations and producing disgust toward them, I would expect men with shitty motivations and character to have considerably more difficulty becoming extremely popular with women. Yet that just doesn't seem to be what happens. And this isn't even particularly specific to women. Most people are deeply wounded. Our nervous systems aren't these perfectly calibrated truth-detection machines. They're shaped by childhood, attachment, previous relationships, trauma, culture, unmet needs, insecurities, desire, etc. Sometimes those wounds make us incredibly perceptive about certain things. And sometimes they make us almost blind. Sometimes the very thing that is unhealthy for us feels incredibly attractive. Which is basically something you acknowledged yourself with the "crossed wires" example. So I think sensitivity gives you access to an enormous amount of information, but something still has to happen between receiving the signal and understanding what the signal means. And that's where I think self-awareness, groundedness, experience, emotional intelligence and working through your own shit become incredibly important. You can have an extremely sensitive instrument and still interpret its readings incorrectly. In fact, sometimes greater sensitivity might even give you more material to project onto if you aren't sufficiently aware of yourself. So if your claim is that women on average pick up on more subtle emotional/interpersonal information than men, I'm pretty much with you. If your claim is that the average woman can therefore reliably sense what is motivating a man, that's where I strongly disagree. And interestingly, my own experience of developing this sensitivity has made me appreciate both sides of this more. I trust my feelings around people more than I used to because I'm much more capable of noticing subtle signals. But I trust my immediate explanation for why I'm feeling something less than I used to. The signal might be real while my interpretation of the signal is wrong. For me, that's where the skill component—and all the inner work—comes back in.

Yes, people are readable. I agree with you there. Where I think I interpreted your argument differently is that I thought you were presenting this as something women in general are naturally quite good at—picking up on these subtle behaviors and intuitively understanding the motivation behind them. And that is definitely not my experience. I think being genuinely good at reading people requires quite a lot of development. Emotional intelligence, empathy, intuition, experience with people, self-awareness, and probably most importantly, dealing with your own projections and shadows. Because the less aware I am of my own shit, the harder it is to distinguish: "I'm sensing something about this person" from "This person triggered something in me and now I'm projecting a story onto them." I actually think I've become pretty good at reading people at this point, but I certainly wasn't always like that. It's something that developed over years of interacting with people and doing a lot of inner work. And I still wouldn't assume that my intuition is always correct. And I don't think the average person—woman or man—has this ability developed to a particularly high degree. In fact, if women en masse were exceptionally good at intuitively seeing through men's motivations, I have a hard time explaining phenomena like players, fuckboys, manipulative pickup, abusive relationships, etc. I criticize pickup quite a lot on this forum, but one uncomfortable thing from my own experience is that a lot of it actually works. You can take fairly calculated behaviors, learn how to convey certain qualities, and produce attraction in a surprisingly large percentage of women. And if the average woman could reliably sense the motivation underneath the behavior, I don't think that would work nearly as well as it does. She would just go, "Oh, I see exactly what you're doing and where it's coming from." But very often she doesn't. And this actually connects back to my original criticism. My criticism wasn't really directed at someone like you specifically. From reading your posts over the years, I can absolutely believe that you're good at reading these dynamics and that "he didn't buy me coffee" would just be one tiny data point inside a much larger intuitive picture. What I'm more skeptical of is when people can't read the larger picture particularly well and therefore rely heavily on simplified proxies: "He paid = generous." "He didn't pay = stingy." "He texts quickly = needy." "He doesn't text quickly = high value." "She slept with me quickly = not relationship material." "He planned an expensive date = serious about me." etc. That's almost the opposite of genuinely reading someone. You're using easily observable behaviors as symbols for complex internal qualities because you can't actually see the person clearly enough yet. And ironically, someone who understands those symbols can manipulate them very easily. That's basically a huge part of what pickup is. So yes, I agree that people are readable. I just think genuinely reading people is a skill, and a pretty advanced one at that. And the more developed that skill becomes, the less I think you need rigid heuristics about what paying for a coffee, texting frequency, who initiated what, etc. supposedly means. You can just meet the person, stay curious, notice what you're sensing, talk to them, observe them over time, and gradually see what's actually there.

mistake

@Emerald I actually agree with you that these kinds of impressions happen automatically. I don't think we can or necessarily should stop ourselves from picking up signals from people's behavior and forming intuitions about what they might mean. So if a guy refuses to pay for a $5 coffee and your immediate reaction is "Hmm, maybe he's stingy" or "Maybe he has some weird issues around money/women," I'm not saying you should somehow prevent that thought from appearing. What I'm questioning is what happens after that intuition appears and how much weight we give to the story our mind constructs around it. Because you actually demonstrate the problem yourself when you say something like: "Is he an ardent feminist OR is he just stingy with his resources?" Those are two radically different explanations for exactly the same observable behavior. And we could probably come up with another ten explanations. Maybe he's broke. Maybe he has had bad experiences with women using him. Maybe he strongly believes in splitting things equally. Maybe he goes on too many dates and has created this rule for himself. Maybe he's just cheap. Maybe he doesn't attach any significance whatsoever to buying someone a coffee. The behavior is observable. The motivation behind it isn't. And that's where I think curiosity becomes important. To use your fart analogy , I'm not saying "just stop hearing the fart." Obviously you hear it. I'm saying: don't immediately construct an elaborate theory about the person's digestive health based on one fart. You can notice your reaction and then go, "Interesting. I wonder what that's about." That's also what I was getting at with all my "Why don't you ask?" comments. Not necessarily literally interrogating the guy: "So, why didn't you buy me a coffee? Are you financially insecure? Do you have trust issues with women?" But actually getting to know him.

Why?

If that is how it is for you, be my guest, sure. I know there are cultures (eg. arabic) where that is common. But often times this trope of whoever invites pays is only applied to dating in western cultures and basically aimed at man paying, which I find deeply sexist.

I am not debating whether this dynamic exist or not, I know it does. But I am concerned if it is healthy at its core. And if I am willing to play this game.

Funnily enough, I kind of want to disagree with both @Zenterus and @Emerald here, despite the fact that they themselves are disagreeing with each other. With Zentarus, this whole approach to dating feels very transactional to me. It almost sounds like you are going on a date and expecting the person sitting in front of you to prove that they are worth your time, attention, money, investment, whatever. I don't think that's a particularly healthy way to approach dating. If you are dating from a relatively fulfilled and grounded place, I think there is much more curiosity involved. You meet somebody because you are genuinely curious about them. Who is this person? What are they like? How do they see the world? And at the same time, you are allowing them to see who you are. Then you gradually figure out whether there is actually some alignment between you—in personality, values, attraction, what you're looking for, etc. Of course, there is a lot of nuance here. Plenty of people don't know themselves particularly well and therefore can't really show you who they are. And obviously you shouldn't ignore incompatibilities or red flags in the name of being "open-minded." But I think that is quite different from constantly calculating who is investing more or less. Invest as much as you genuinely want to invest. If you want to buy someone a coffee, buy them a coffee. If you don't, don't. But once you start worrying that paying for a coffee makes you look low-value, that you're being "used" for money or attention, or that a "high-value man" wouldn't invest too much too early, I think you've already entered a pretty unhealthy frame. In fact, there is something almost paradoxical about trying to convey high value. From what position does the need to prove that you're high-value arise in the first place? And then with Emerald's post, I notice something similar from the opposite direction. There are all these interpretations: Does he have money issues? Why? Can he hold down a job? Is he extremely cheap and would a relationship with him be financially restrictive? Does he think women are trying to use him? Is he overly suspicious of other people? Does he have trust issues? Does he go on tons of dates and penny-pinch because of that? Is he just a closed-off person who doesn't want to give anything of himself? Maybe any of those things are true. But... why don't you ask him? That's the person sitting in front of you. Be curious about him. Instead of constructing an entire psychological profile from whether somebody paid for a coffee, you can actually get to know the person and find out what his relationship with money is, what he thinks about gender roles, whether he's generous, whether he has trust issues, what he's looking for in dating, etc. The one that particularly stood out to me was: "Does he not value the fact that I took time out of my day to go on a date with him?" This feels like a strange frame to approach a first date from, because presumably both people took time out of their day to be there. There is almost an implicit hierarchy in the idea that the other person should demonstrate appreciation for the fact that you gave them your time. It turns the date into a situation where you are looking for evidence that the other person values you enough. And I think this dynamic is actually pretty common in dating, especially when people have a strong need to feel chosen or valued by the other person. But to me, that's precisely where dating can become quite codependent. Of course I want my eventual partner to value me. That's incredibly important in a relationship. But on a first date? This person barely knows me. I'm not there to extract validation from them or have them prove how much they value my presence. I'm there to meet another human being, show them something of who I am, discover something about who they are, and see what happens between us. And I also think there is an interesting gender-role assumption underneath some of this. If a man doesn't pay, one possible interpretation becomes "maybe he's just a dick." But if the woman doesn't pay, that's apparently completely normal. Why? I'm not saying nobody should follow traditional gender roles. If a man enjoys paying and a woman enjoys that dynamic, great. But then let's at least acknowledge that we're operating from a traditional gender expectation rather than turning adherence to that expectation into evidence of someone's character. To me, both perspectives ultimately seem to suffer from a similar problem: too much interpretation and evaluation, and not enough curiosity. Instead of asking: "Is this person demonstrating enough value?" "Are they investing enough?" "Are they treating me like I'm valuable enough?" "Am I accidentally giving too much?" I'd rather approach it as: "Who is this person?" "Who am I when I'm around them?" "Can we actually connect?" "Do I enjoy giving to this person?" "Do they seem to enjoy giving to me?" "And is there something here worth exploring further?" That seems much healthier to me than trying to determine somebody's value—or your own—through who bought the coffee.

But traumas also run in families. You can easily observe similiar type of wounding in parents and their children. This topic is very hard to decipher really.

I disagree. I talk about sex with woman often on first dates. Not sure what sexual humor is meant by here though.

No, I don't think I'm taking the analogy too literally. I think you've now stated the actual point I disagree with much more clearly. I agree that repressing or denying your sexuality, loneliness, desire for connection, etc. can absolutely produce unhealthy coping mechanisms. Someone failing at dating and then convincing himself that relationships are beneath him would be an obvious example. But that's different from saying that not satisfying a biological or psychological drive will "ruin your mental health." We have all sorts of drives and desires that we can acknowledge without necessarily organizing our lives around satisfying them. And I think you're still grouping several different things together. The drive for sex, the need for intimacy/connection, and the desire for a romantic relationship are related, but they aren't the same thing. You can have enormous amounts of sex and still be lonely and disconnected, or have deep intimacy and connection without sex. So my disagreement isn't that these drives exist. It's with the jump from "this is a fundamental human drive" to "you need to satisfy it in this particular way or you'll become psychologically unhealthy."