Emerald

Well said. When we have had past dynamics that make us feel like we only deserve scraps, it can set us up for relationships where we give and give to the other person who only takes and siphons from us. And in this dynamic, it's that common pattern of sacrificing herself and her boundaries just to avoid losing the relationship. And of course, any narrative that explains away the pain would feel quite relieving, which is likely why she's going along with Aubrey's narrative that he's woven. And I'm hoping that the public reaction to this has validated her feelings a bit more... as she seems to have bought into the perspective that her feelings of aversion and her boundaries are something to transcend... as opposed to something to be honored. If she leaves, I believe that hindsight will be 20/20 on this situation.

It is definitely a good lesson for her to learn how to choose herself over maintaining a relationship with an incompatible person. She can definitely use this as a growth experience after she gets out of it and unpacks the situation from a distance. But it's a very hard lesson, and it makes it far more difficult when your partner is framing regular polyamory in a totally different way and calling it "radical monogamy" and framing it as some higher conscious relationship evolution that's better than monogamy. Like, if he was like "Hey, I want for us to be a polyamorous couple and to bring another woman into the relationship. How do you feel about that?" that would put her in a much better position to make a sovereign decision. It would still be difficult, but at least he'd be being straight-forward. It's still crappy to spring that on someone. But at least it's being up-front about it. Instead, he's framing this polyamorous throuple situation as an "evolution" and a more spiritual way of having a relationship.... which frames monogamy as a less evolved choice. And in framing it that way, he's influencing her into a mindset where her resistance to being in a non-monogamous situation is something less spiritual evolved to be transcend, and it's causing her to see her boundaries as an impediment to her spiritual evolution. And it's also calling polyamory monogamy... thus muddying the waters further. Plus, he's weaving together narratives to God told him to go on Tinder... and that God told him to impregnate both women. I saw that you said you have no issue with what he's doing and that they seem to be in a higher consciousness situation. But if this doesn't scream RED FLAG, I don't know what does.

People need challenge, meaning, and direction in life to develop themselves. And improving one's self is fine, as long as there isn't a shame narrative attached to it and it's helping you have the experiences you want to have. And the idea that there's some standard of Masculinity to match up to is what creates neuroses and problems because men start feeling anxious that they're not Masculine enough. You can look everywhere and see evidence of this. If you want to grow yourself, forget about "trying to be a man" and accept that you already are one. And just be yourself and tap into your own personal sovereignty and tap into whichever energetic signature that you naturally have.

I prefer not to respond to dishonest arguments. But I'll humor you. My response to the substance of your argument: The existence of Vegans and Veganism doesn't cause harm to culture. My honest reaction to your post: My perception is that you don't really care about the actual argument itself. Like, you don't seem to care about preserving culture in any other context. In fact, a lot of your posts are direct critiques of your own religious/cultural background. And there are certain posts where you try to go radically contrarian against cultural standards with hypotheticals around "What if we questioned social norms and dropped taboos around (fill-in-the-blank extremely taboo thing)?" So, I don't buy for a second that you're pearl clutching about Veganism undermining culture... nor do I believe you genuinely believe that it does cause harm to culture. It's pretty clear to me that you're just looking for a way to defend your own actions in your own eyes because you're uncomfortable with your own actions.

Exactly my point. People come up with these elaborate defenses to assuage their own guilt... because deep down, they know that they're not eating meat for health or to preserve culture or whatever the content of the justification is. It's all because they don't agree with their own actions. And they are shadow boxing with imaginary Vegans in their mind... that represent the way they really feel.

There's definitely a lot of delusion and self-deception happening with Aubrey. He's really creating a lot of magical thinking narratives and religious narratives to justify his own actions to himself... and then pulling others into the narratives that he's woven to deceive himself. I can see it staring with him having a problem with checking dating apps as an addiction... and wanting to stray from the relationship to get sexual validation from new partners. And instead of framing it accurately as an addiction and a boundary breech to his relationship and an unhealed part of himself, he finds a way to reframe it all and make his actions seem to him as a reflection of "greater consciousness and integrity" compared to the average person. And it allows him to bypass his own addictions and deeper seated issues that cause him to look outside of himself for validation of his worth... AND also to feed those addictions. What's a shame is that he has quite a lot of power. So, his self-deceptions have a bigger negative impact than those who don't have as much power.

And you're blaming the boringness, lack of initiative, lack of drive, lack of charm, and laziness (which are negative qualities that many men have had throughout the entirety of human history) on the fact that a percentage of contemporary men aren't consciously striving to match up to some Masculine standard? I believe that's your argument because you said, "The vikings are gone because they don't want to grow pussies" and "Nowadays it's all soy boys!" or something crazy like that. If that's your argument... rest assured, TONS of men are trying to be the same kind of hyper-Masculine guy. And it doesn't help them transcend these issues one little bit. And women are NOT interested in that hyper-Masculine guy that all these men are aspiring to be. And I've noticed that men who are the most obsessed with Masculinity tend to have these problems a lot more than the average guy who just doesn't think too much about being a manly man. The most functional men that I've come across are unapologetically themselves and don't give a rip about what's Masculine or not. And they're certainly not pearl clutching about how "There are no manly men anymore!"

100% All this obsession with Masculinity and the idea that "men aren't Masculine anymore" is just rooted in insecurity and a rejection of the value of "Be yourself" as they feel that that is not good enough. And that on its own is human and wouldn't be so bad if it weren't causing so many problems in society.... and actively exacerbating the very issues with women that these guys are having. And PsychHacks is definitely a hug box for insecure men. But anyone who takes that guy's perspectives seriously is just going to stay stuck in the same issues. I've watched a few of his videos and his formula is basically, "Here's some advice for men to show them how empowered they are compared to women. And here's some advice for women to show them how disempowered they are compared to men and how everything is their fault and how they should settle for what they can get quickly before they lose out entirely because 'high quality guys won't settle for you'." But of course, the intended target audience for the latter advice is not ACTUALLY for women at all. It's just to make men feel validated, vindicated, empowered, and right so that they get to scapegoat women and avoid facing personal responsibility for their own romantic and social issues. It's really well-encapsulated in the sentiment of blaming women's 'unreasonable standards' for the male loneliness epidemic. All blame and no personal responsibility.

@Alexop I wasn't talking about the difference between toxic Masculinity and healthy Masculinity. I was speaking to your notion of men not being Masculine enough... and how women's complaint is that men are not Masculine enough. And I was saying that "lack of Masculinity" doesn't tend to be what women complain about with regards to men's behaviors, as women don't tend to value hyper-Masculinity in men in the way that men do.

You're saying that you don't consider this video to relate to our conversation? You were saying that women are complaining about men not being Masculine enough in an earlier post. And I said that women don't tend to complain about men's level of Masculinity, but about being brainwashed into terrible perspectives on Masculinity. Then, I had made a point about how men tend to value hyper-Masculinity in men... but women don't value hyper-Masculinity that much. And I gave the example of the picture of the manly man vs the picture of Ryan Gosling to show a dimension to where the male perception of what women like and what women actually like are often quite different. Then, I got recommended a video on the same topic. Point being... it's only men that are complaining that men aren't Masculine enough. Men are sufficiently Masculine in the eyes of most women. But women can have other complaints about men en masse... like being brainwashed into all the Manosphere stuff.

The algorithms must have been listening to my post earlier, as I was just recommended a video about what men appreciate about men and what women appreciate about men, appearance-wise and Masculinity-wise. And our conversation is exactly a reflection of this dissonance between what women like... and what men think that women like.

Most of the complaints that I hear women making about men are that men are being brainwashed by garbage perspectives about what Masculinity is, en masse. And it's the guys who are the most obsessed with "being Masculine", that tend to have the problem behaviors that you've described. I haven't even seen gaggles of "woke guys" having the issues you describe. In fact, I haven't seen gaggles of "woke guys" even identifying as such and banding together. You just have relatively secure guys that don't think about Masculinity very much who are just being themselves.... and then you have a bunch of guys who are all trying to be the "Manly Man" to secure the approval of other "Manly Men." And the guys in the latter group are either able to be proximal to the standard of Masculinity or are not able to do so. And the guys who are not able to do so, come across as insecure. But even guys who can ape Masculinity well enough to pass in the eyes of other men, are still operating from a place of insecurity and not being enough as they are. Even the notion of the "soy boy" is just a talking point to keep men chained to immature and unrealistic definitions of Masculinity... so as to avoid being seen as Feminine or weak in the eyes of other men. But the things that men value about men are very different from the things that women value about men. If you ask a man to point out who he thinks is the most attractive man in women's eyes, he'll pick out a guy like the top image. If you ask a woman what they find attractive, answers will vary because women's taste in men vary. But if we're going purely off of physical features and level of Masculinity, a plurality of women will probably go for a guy that looks like the average Hollywood guy, like Ryan Gosling or others who have a similar face and body structure to him, where there's a mixture between Masculine features and softer features.

For me, I need to have a deeper connection to feel an attraction that's intense enough to want to pursue. So, I'm not the best person to ask, as every guy is pretty neutral to me until deeper feelings set in. But what I would say is that I'm attracted to a guy's personality. And it is through the appreciation of his personality that I come to appreciate his Masculine energy... not the other way around. And the subtle innate Masculinity that's there isn't something that needs to be learned. It's just there in the form that it takes. The main thing is to work on yourself to subtract the barriers. But Masculinity cannot be added nor taken away, as is a core subtle essences of one's personality. But it can either be embraced or suppressed... and if suppressed, it creates lots of neuroses and insecurities. And it tends to be when guys feel like they need to match up to some kind of standard of Masculinity that they suppress their natural Masculinity because they see it as insufficient. And that creates a dynamic where the guy gets really up in his head and ideological and neurotic in his attempts to be Masculine.

Men in every era on back and back for thousands of years have said the same thing you're saying now about the current generation of men being uniquely un-Masculine. I was once reading some quotes from centuries and millennia ago that had the same sentiments as you're sharing now. But it's not true. It's just like how old people always think the young people are uniquely immature and ill-equipped to handle the world. It's a perennial human pattern. The same is true for the Masculinity crisis. It's a perennial feature of the human species. Men are often conditioned to believe in an exaggerated sense of "what Masculinity is supposed to be". And none of those expectations are realistic. So, of course "Masculinity is in crisis" because the vast majority of men can't come anywhere close to meeting such unrealistic expectations. It would be the same as every woman believing that she is required to be a super model in order to call herself a "true woman". And then, she'd look at the world and lament, "Back in the olden days, all women used to be super models with a perfect face and hourglass figure." and "Femininity is in crisis because women are uglier than the women in their great grandma's generation... and women keep getting uglier and uglier." And then, they point out some random trans man or lesbian woman and blame the problem on them for making the Femininity crisis happen. That's how unrealistic the Masculinity crisis guys sound to me. People are always thinking things are going to Hell in a hand basket in general. And one of the biggest pearl-clutches is "Oh heavens! Masculinity is under attack! Why can't we go back to a time when men were men?"

That's just your insecurity talking. There are plenty of big burly guys out there, if you like them so much.

You have TERRIBLE gaydar! These guys probably are "the vikings" on every other day but Halloween. They're just secure enough in their Masculinity to have a good laugh. Clearly, this is two men being funny and dressing up like Red Hat Ladies. And I would bet money that they're probably straight guys. If you didn't know, Red Hat Ladies are groups of older ladies that galavant around the town together in groups wearing purple outfits and red hats (or red outfits with purple hats). If I had to guess, they're just a couple guys dressing up like that to be funny. I can't imagine that ACTUAL drag queens would dress up like a bunch of old Red Hat Ladies... especially noting the lack of cosmetics. Here's some pictures of what these two are dressed up as...

Hamas is considered a terrorist organization because it does terror attacks on behalf of a non-sovereign group of people and not as an extension of an official military of a sovereign state. The IDF isn't considered a terrorist organization because the atrocities the IDF commits are supported by an official military of a sovereign state. That's really the main real distinction between a group classed as a terrorist group and an official state-sanctioned group that's committing atrocities. So, it's not about the degree of ruthlessness that makes a group a terrorist group... it's the fact that it's not associated with a sovereign state's official military. That's why terrorist groups tend to spring up in power vacuums as the "Shadow military that comes in when a people doesn't have an actual military". The oppression of a sovereign state over a non-sovereign people is the perfect breeding ground for terrorist groups to form. And these groups tend to be quite violent, ruthless, and extreme.

I've seen this pattern really often that children who feel like they need to be responsible at such a young age can tend to develop a few main patterns (sometimes all of them and sometimes just a few of them)... Taking on responsibility for things outside of the scope of their control/responsibility Avoiding responsibilities that are inside of the scope of their control/responsibility Self-rebellion and self-sabotage when setting goals and routines Hyper-independence Submissive sexual fantasies as a means of seeking release from responsibility and the ability to soften Not reaching out for help with things as an extension of the hyper-independence God Complex (a sense that one is responsible for everything) Feeling chronically drained and exhausted Having periods of intense hard work and then period of extreme laziness Lack of trust in self and others Difficulty delegating tasks to others and a sense that "If it's going to get done right, I have to do it myself." @Nemra If you don't mind my asking, do you relate strongly to many of these patterns?

Not necessarily so, as the neural pathways would still be there. So, you'll likely always be able to enjoy that... even if you totally resolved that need. But getting that need met sexually may shift in terms of importance, if you were able to meet that need through other outlets as well. There's a person I met at an Ayahuasca ceremony who was sharing about some shifts that he made with plant medicine. He said used to have a strong fetish since he was a small child. But after he participated in an earlier Ayahuasca ceremony and experienced some shifts... he still enjoyed that kink. But it doesn't feel as important to him as it was prior to that in his life. And this particular fetish was one that was making him feel both wanted and also like he was harmless due to incapacitation of certain abilities... which related back to certain insecurities he had from childhood around feeling disconnected and fearing that he was harmful in some way. So, he could still enjoy that... but it became less necessary and less of a focus for him intimately.

@AION @SwiftQuill It's unwise to succumb to victim's mentality. And the narrative in this video just takes men's insecurities and feeds them right into a victim's mentality narrative, where these insecurities can never be properly resolved. With victim's mentality, a person scapegoats and villainizes an individual or group (in this case, the scapegoated group is women) and blames them for their problems. This enables the person in victim's mentality to avoid taking personal responsibility for their own issues by giving them a person or group to blame and shovel off responsibility onto. But it also enables them to engage in the "drama triangle story" (of victim, hero, villain), where they play the role of victim and cast the scapegoat (in this case women) as the villain. And then, they crusade as the hero by doing villainous things to try to harm or defeat the scapegoat/villain. And people who don't like engaging in drama will notice this going on and will be intuitively repelled from the person who's engaging in the victim narrative.

I'm a woman, and that was my response to it. And I don't necessarily buy that Audrey Marcus or his wife are more conscious than the average person who's into spirituality. They are just a bit insightful, attractive, and well-branded to fit a certain model of it. But regardless of how insightful a person might be, it doesn't mean that they can't consciously or unconsciously manipulate their partner into an open relationship by reframing it in a spiritual rationale. Personally, I'm fine with people being polyamorous, if they're really upfront about it and every partner they're with is truly on board. Just don't reframe it as something else to trick your partner and the world into thinking it's something totally different.

The difference is that you were making claims that weren't backed by evidence and stating them as the truth. And I was pushing back on you for doing that because there is no evidence for them. There is scientific evidence that plant-based diets are associated with lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality compared to omnivorous diets. And that is why I personally believe the Vegan diet is the healthiest, because I define health in terms of longevity and the minimization of the risk of the biggest killers. So, my extrapolation based in my personal definition of "healthy" (which is not itself a scientific claim) directly relates back to the evidence that exists. But there is no scientific evidence that suggests that there's significant degrees of dietary diversity, such that a sizable percentage of the population can't go Vegan without compromising their health (which is your extrapolation). That is just a guess that is based in your own ideas that you came up with in your mind. It isn't extrapolated from actual evidence... but from anecdotes and hypotheses you hold about the topic of dietary diversity. Actual evidence that would support this claim would be like if a sizable percentage of people were shown in studies and meta-analyses to not be able to extract nutrients from plants... or there was evidence in studies and meta-analyses that supplementation with B12 didn't work in a sizable percentage of people. But no such evidence exists. The best evidence you gave for your claim is that a sizable percentages of Vegans were deficient in a particular nutrient in certain studies. But that only supports the claim that "A sizable percentage of people approach the Vegan diet improperly." It doesn't support the claim that, "A sizable percentage of people can't go Vegan without compromising their health because of dietary diversity." And that's why I'm pushing back and giving counter-arguments on what you've been claiming... as your extrapolations about dietary diversity preventing a large percentage of people from going Vegan aren't based in any evidence.

Again, I'm not making any sweeping claims about Veganism other than what's represented in the current scientific literature... which associates lower risk of heart disease and stroke with plant-based diets. But I'm sure that processed Vegan food causes health problems in the same way that processed food does in other contexts. Either way, I'm not making health claims... just debunking health claims that have no evidence.

Coming back to my 4 claims... I made no such extrapolation jump. So, you are arguing against a strawman of my position, which you keep doing. Stick to arguing against my ACTUAL claims. My claims are... People lie to themselves to justify their choices when those choices are out of integrity with their values. Anecdotes aren't scientific evidence. A diet that minimizes animal product intake is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality. There is no evidence that "40% of people can't go Vegan without compromising their health." And if that were true, it would be represented in the evidence that exists... and the WHO and ADA would not deem well-planned Vegan diets as nutritionally adequate without. You have to actually argue against the points that I'm making... as opposed to assuming my point and arguing with that. Keep in mind, I have engaged in this argument, not to make my own claims of truth... but to push back on you making wide-sweeping evidence-less claims about Vegan diets like "40% of people can't go Vegan without compromising their health" or "Vegan diets are nutrient deficient." But you keep arguing with me as though I'm making claims about something I am not... as though I am the one that began making claims like "Vegan diets are the superior diet," which I do personally believe is true because of its association with longevity, but never claimed or argued as that would also be a wides-sweeping claim about a diet that doesn't involve real scientific statistics. Instead the reality is that Vegan diets are associated with lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, lowers risk of heart disease and stroke, and lower risk of all-cause mortality. And this is why I personally believe that Veganism is the superior diet. But I would never claim "Veganism is the superior diet" because that is just an extrapolation from the evidence about heart disease and stroke. So, in this context, I have never claimed that Veganism is the best diet or anything like that. I was just pushing back on your claims, which are evidence-less. I was not making a health claims about Veganism beyond the fact that it is associated with greater longevity compared to animal-product-based diets... but I was pushing back on your lack of evidence as you were saying things that aren't true about Veganism. My main point is and has always been that, "Non-Vegans who have Vegan values who eat animals for pleasure and convenience tend to go into cognitive dissonance to hide their true motives from themselves and to avoid facing with the reality that their actions don't match their values." And unsubstantiated health claims like "Veganism is a nutrient deficient diet" is one of the defenses that non-Vegans with Vegan values tend to use to explain away their own actions to themselves to assuage that cognitive dissonance. That's why I'm simply making counter-claims to your arguments... as I do operate from the assumption that you personally need to believe that Vegan diets are nutrient deficient to explain to yourself why you're currently eating meat and dairy when you (if you're not dealing with food scarcity) don't need to in order to survive. But of course, that's just an assumption based on what I know about human nature. And people who have been Vegan before tend to hold the tightest to their defenses because they have become aware of their values enough to make a big change earlier on.

The issue is that these kinds of "be more masculine" types of advice and alarmist "society is going to hell in a hand-basket because men aren't men anymore!" narratives, tend to add to men's difficulty with adjusting socially... as it is a bunch of neurotic guys trying to intellectualize what it is to be Masculine... as opposed to simply operating from their own sense of sovereignty. It's like so many men are trying to compete to be the same exact guy as opposed to just being themselves. And it scares women away because a lot of these guys start adopting narratives that over-emphasize the gender difference in their own minds and treating women like mysterious aliens from another planet.... which adds more to the neuroticism. I notice over the past 10 years since all these narratives have gone online is that young women generally have soured more and more on men because of the proliferation of all the Manosphere nonsense. And interacting with a guy who isn't brainwashed by it is refreshing. Even I, as a woman in my mid-thirties, can feel a bit put off... despite having tons of friendships with plenty of normal guys and having had relationships with guys who are normal with regard to their relationship to their Masculinity. Like honestly, what kind of woman do you think would be interested in a guy who believes he should "treat her like a child?" And whether that is spoken or not, there are always tells. And they betray the immaturity of the guy in question. If I look at the most socially adjusted guys who have the healthiest relationships with women, it's men who don't over-focus on trying to be Masculine. But the loneliest and least socially well-adjusted guys tend to over-focus on it. And you'd be wise to avoid taking advice from men who don't have the type of relationship with women that you want to have. Like, Leo has learned a lot about the attraction phase to get over the challenges of being a late bloomer (which makes him relatable to men who struggle with initiating attraction with women)... but he doesn't have much relationship experience and doesn't have many insights about how to interact with woman on a human-to-human level. And the frameworks he operates off of will likely prevent him from being able to sustain a longterm relationship because of how he views the relationship between men and women.