Emerald

Yeah, I agree on all counts. I just don't get the impression that many of the guys on the forum (including Leo) are capable of understanding perspectives beyond this one reductive mono-perspective on dating and relationships. They're really in a state of paradigm lock with it, but are under the impression that they're only locked on it because it is "the one truth" about dating and relationships. I think they fear that letting go of that one reductive perspective where they "know everything" will diminish their power... when it would actually do the very opposite. It would actually open them up to a state of not-knowing where they could have a real connection with another human being as opposed to projecting all these reductive narratives onto women. Like, maybe that works if the guy doesn't have any social anxieties... and the only goal that they'll ever have in their lives is to try to have sex with as many women as possible. But otherwise, they're really crippling themselves with these points of view.

I don't argue these things for my health. Leo's advice in these matters is like trying to cure Malaria with Tylenol because it misdiagnoses the actual problem. And the paradigms he believes relative to relationships and sexuality (other than, "just approach") will dig you all further into the internet propaganda hole you're already stuck down in. That's the problem when you confuse the antidote for the poison... and the poison for the antidote. My perspective is the antidote because I am telling you an actual real female perspective on what it's like to be attracted to a man in the most thorough and articulate way I can muster, so as to dispel the misconceptions that are causing you so much grief. But you see my perspective as the poison because you don't recognize the practicality of seeing how a real woman thinks and feels.... and you've been brainwashed to believe that only men can tell you valuable things about women. All these internet man-cult perspectives are the poison, but you see them as the antidote because they give you all sorts of "knowledge" about women and relationships... and their narratives give you the illusion of more control. But it just ensnares you into a delusional dating paradigm like a fly caught in a spider's web. And my advice is very practical if you can actually drop resistance to it, understand it, and internalize it... as it is only the truth that will set you free. It's just frustrating because you guys are on the struggle bus with this topic (Leo included)... yet you are so confidently wrong. And with these distorted reductive paradigms, you're making yourselves utterly un-coupleable and not suited towards long-term pair-bonding because you can't even hear or see a woman. And that's what's so frustrating about it. But I just need to stop trying to help you and let life teach you its lessons.

I guess it depends on how you define success. Perhaps one could argue that (evolutionarily) a guy who has children with 5 different women and 10 women on the side is the most successful with women. It could be argued from an evolutionary perspective because he's sewing his seed the most widely and passing on his genes more than other men. But that's a very myopic way of thinking about dating success. And these kinds of guys aren't exactly catches. They're usually pretty grody, tbh. Or you could define success as a guy who has a moderate amount of women interested in him and doesn't feel any scarcity with regard to female interest and who has the occasional hook-up, but who is actually capable of a real human connection with a woman and wants to add to the social fabric. That's how I define an attractive and successful man... even if he's not swimming in pussy like the grody guy. And that's the issue of framing human relationship as a purely transactional survival game without regard to the our softer communal nature as a species. Plus, most of these men (including Leo) will just use the evolutionary biology perspective to continue to be reductive about human relationships and to think of things ONLY as a survival game... and strip even more meaning from human connection... and lead them further into disconnection, loneliness, shame, and coldness.

It doesn't poke a hole in that argument at all. To have a human connection, you have to get to know that person in person. On a dating app, it's purely visual and informational. So, people have to choose based off of that in terms of who they're going to give it a try with. And men are very visual... but women are not. So, it's not the way that women actually develop feelings. In real life, there can be actual chemistry and human-to-human connection. And only then do women really see the beauty of a particular man.

Yes, there are lots of men only want the top 10% of women and just want to have a bunch of sex. Then they bitterly settle for beta gals that they don't really care about when they fail. Sounds familiar, no? Edit: I just got the God part of the joke. But what I said still stands.

Thank you. But I'm not an edge case in these ways, at all. And I don't like it when people assume that my wisdom makes me somehow not human-like. I'm a very ordinary human when it comes to my relationship with other humans. There is nothing special or different about me in any kind of meaningful way, when it comes to my relationship with humanity. And I find many average men quite intriguing and beautiful. But only when they're not trying. I suppose, the only things extraordinary about me in this regard is that I value ordinariness and have a hobby for wisdom-seeking. And you can only become wise when you stop trying to be some super-human and recognize that there's nothing so special about you. Memento Mori.

Yes! And community is truly the ultimate reproduction and survival game for the human being in general... as all other reproductive and survival needs are met through community. So, what happens when men are learning how to "reproduce" through narratives that make them more socially repellent and work at cross-purposes to their ability to socially connect within a human community? Social degeneration... of course.

Because dating apps aren't where real social interactions happen. That's just shopping for dates the way you would anything else.

The ways you guys try to solve your dating problems just make you lonelier and more disconnected. If you could really internalize what I'm telling you, then you would actually feel better and be able to connect with a romantic partner... rather than just engaging in this weird hierarchical transactional game. Propaganda is one hell of a drug.

What about women who are past menopause?

Have fun with your loneliness epidemic, I guess. I hope you all find a more fulfilling and less transactional way to relate to other people.

Consider that you have some issues with disconnection and avoidance... and that these rationalizations are just a way for you to increase your cynicism about human relationships and push other people away. You think you're a truth teller. But these are just anti-social protection strategies to keep yourself from feeling vulnerable parading themselves as "harsh truths that most people aren't willing to face. But I am so different from others that I am willing to face them."

This just reflects your own romantic immaturity and lack of real relationship experience. And it's sad that you see things in such a transactional disconnected way, where everyone is just settling for their partner instead of actually preferring their partner. The male loneliness epidemic strikes again, I fear.

True. It's honestly just carbon-copy projection of their own tendencies onto women. Literally every accusation is a confession. They are like, "All the women that I like are sleeping with the top 10% of guys." Meanwhile, it's like the top 10% of women looks-wise that they want. So, of course these women are with the top 10% of guys because those guys are their match attractiveness-wise. And because they want the top 10% of women, but they can't get them. They might settle for a more average-looking girl who they are with begrudgingly because the top 10% of women won't have anything to do with them. Then they're like, "Women only like the top 10% of men. And then they just settle for the average guys when the top guys won't have them." And then they're like, "I wish I could be promiscuous and screw all the hottest girls!" Meanwhile they're like, "Damn these women! They're so promiscuous and screwing all the hottest guys! How dare they!?!?!?" And then they're like, "I want to find a way to over-inflate my value in the eyes of women, so that I can get more women!" And then they're like, "Hoe-flation! How dare these women over-inflate their value in the eyes of men!" It's projection 101. They're really just mad at themselves for being shallow and blocking themselves from real connection.

That's just not an accurate reflection of how average men and women actually relate together in real life, at all. And you should be more responsible and let young men know that those statistics are false. You're just making all these young nerdy guys lose hope that a woman will ever prefer and love them, when the reality of male/female relationships is actually much kinder to average men... as long as they don't make themselves anti-social through all this man-cult propaganda brainwashing. And these men only become un-dateable only because their mind has been "ran-through" with internet propaganda. You need to go into a Walmart sometime. Then, you'll see how people really operate if you can look past your filters. Look around at all the husbands in the world. Do you really think they're the top 10% of men?

Exactly my point. Men often have this notion that they have to max out their level of Masculinity to be attractive to women and become some stoic machine of a guy. But women are attracted to more subtle expressions of Masculinity than they are overt ones. The same is true for men... but even though men tend to be most attracted to softer and more subtle Feminine expressions, men can also enjoy hyper-Feminine expressions like the lady with the big boobs and lips. Men are more responsive to hyper-normal visual stimuli than women are, so this is probably why. So, while women might be put off by the image of the bodybuilder above as hyper-Masculinity is unattractive.... most men might be able to find some level of attractiveness in hyper-Feminine expressions like huge lips, fake breasts, BBLs, etc. Now, of course Sydney Sweeney and Brad Pitt are ideals.... they are Hollywood's beautiful people. But everyday men who are attractive tend to have this mixture of hard and soft qualities... and that's what makes them attractive as you can see their personality more coming through in their gestures and expressions.

What women think of as very Masculine is more subtle and is a mixture of hard and soft qualities... like the image of Brad Pitt above. (Of course, Brad Pitt is a more ideal expression of this... but most men have this mixture. And if they have confidence, there will be women who find it attractive.) And it's very different than what men tend to think of as Masculine... where they might image body-builders or MMA fighters as very Masculine and as the standard to match up to. But women aren't as attracted to that, generally speaking. But men often think women are interested in hyper-Masculine guys with no softness to them whatsoever. And they often fall into the trap of thinking they have to be as hyper-Masculine (though usually not quite as extreme as the body-builder guy from the pic). Men think they need to be King Leonidas from 300... when Tyler Durden is actually a lot more popular with women.

An hourglass is just Femininity... not hyper-Femininity. Hyper-Femininity is an exaggeration of Femininity... just like Hyper-Masculinity is an exaggeration of Masculinity. It would be like if every woman were trying to model themselves after women with too much lip filler and gigantic breast implants... and believing they had to look like that to be attractive to men. Here are some images that show the contrasts that I mean in starker terms in terms of whether a person presents in a more moderate or more exaggerated was relative to the Masculine/Feminine expressions.

It's exactly like that. And it's really sad and frustrating because I can see how these online echo chambers fool young men into "improving" themselves in ways that are actually counter-productive to them developing into high quality men. It's like if women were all being brainwashed that women are only attracted to bald women... and that the men will deny it because "Don't ask a fish how to catch it!". So, these women are constantly shaving their heads because they are convinced that men will be repulsed to see hair growing on their head. Then, when men try to tell them that they don't actually prefer bald women and like a woman with longer hair... the women are like, "Look at this deluded man. Never listen to a man about what he likes because he lies about it. Scientifically, men are wired to respond more to bald women because in nomadic times... blah blah blah. And you can tell because men like it when women shave their legs... so men are repulsed by women with hair on their heads." And because it has that cult-like dynamic, you just can't even communicate to them or get through as they relate it to "secrets" of self-improvement that "women won't tell you they respond to." And it feels like 2 steps forward... on a treadmill that's constantly pulling them backwards into worse versions of themselves. They need to do a study where they have a bunch of guys who are exposed to a lot of Masculinity echo-chamber self-improvement content AND a bunch of guys who seek out more neutral self-improvement solutions. Then, see how well each group does when it comes to both how well each group does with long-term relationships and the percentage of men in each group who never have sex with women. And I'm quite confident that the latter will have a lot more success with women.

Well said.

Number one, these things have been studied. And the studies do reflect what I've experienced in my subjective experience relative to how women respond to male attractiveness... both generally and towards a particular man. Number two, if there was a uniquely minded man who was more mature and spiritually aware than most men, would he find women with Feminine features and an hourglass figure unattractive? If not, consider that my perspective is one that's quite average for women to have as it comes to what women find attractive about men. I am perhaps just able to communicate it more thoroughly than most women who might not tend to analyze their instinctual and emotional responses as much as I do. I wish I could turn you all into heterosexual women for like a year... and then you'd organically develop really intense romantic and sexual feelings for some regular guy you happen to work with who's more subtly Masculine, and you'd be like, "Ohh!!! We've been being so stupid about this topic. We're sorry Emerald."

Yes, Cavill and Hemsworth are attractive men. And Brad Pitt is handsome in this as well.... but he's more attractive with more a more subtly muscular body. It's just that these body types don't tend to be the most highly rated body types among women as a whole group. That said, a handsome guy is a handsome guy. These guys are all Hollywood heartthrobs, mind you. So, even if his body type isn't the one most women consider to be ideal, they will likely still respond positively to it because they are just such handsome guys. That said, most women would probably find this leaner and subtly muscular version of Brad Pitt more attractive than the one above where he looks totally jacked...

Yes, I have worked with clients who have had some of these patterns. Really, it comes from an obligation to meet some arbitrary standard of Masculinity and feeling inadequate relative to that expectation as the expectation is unrealistic... and then trying to push all signs of Femininity and softness away from one's self in order to be "the kind of guy that women want." And then, because the man disconnects with the Feminine in himself, he develops both an obsession and an aversion towards women who he wants to have fill the hole that was left where his Feminine side should be. And it creates a dynamic where women feel all-powerful and that women's opinion carries this external validation currency in this projection. And this creates a simultaneous pedestalization and goddess worship towards women... coupled with a jealousy, hatred, and bitterness towards women who he likes better than he likes himself. And men who are in these patterns will police each others' level of Masculinity... and these same men will project the Masculinity policing that men do onto women as a whole group and assume that women are similarly policing men and prefer the standards that men expect other men to reach up to. These are common patterns... and come from shame at its core associated with being saddled with arbitrary and unrealistic standards of Masculinity to match up to. And this shame dynamic leads through to Anima issues. But with my sessions, I ask a lot more questions and make a lot fewer statements... as it's far more effective to help someone get to the core of where certain beliefs come from. It's an unfortunate drawback of the context of the forum, as it's people sharing statements... instead of questions. But I also would not be interested in interacting on the forum if it were to only be me asking a lot of questions. It's more interested to share perspectives in this context. And I keep hammering away at this, because I have a front-row seat to what women really like about men. They tend to go "Yeah, but you're an unusual woman." But I am genuinely not unusual in this way. Men just have a hard time believing that women will like them for who they are as people. Really, all a guy has to do to have some women attracted to them is to generally develop themselves as people, learn to socialize in a variety of contexts, and get more comfortable being themselves. None of the shenanigans that these online echo chambers are espousing is necessary.

This is exactly the reason why I'm making posts like this, as there's just so much internet male brainwashing going on relative to what women like. And they're trying to use it to get better with women and trust in it so much that they don't realize how much less attractive it makes them. You can't even connect with a guy who thinks this way. He just gets so swallowed up in his insecurity narratives from internet echo chambers that he makes himself repellent in the eyes of most women. But he has learned things like, "Never listen to women about what they want." And so, he gets locked into these narratives that make him less and less and less attractive to women that would otherwise like him. When men buy into these narratives, they become like petty porcupines that barb women and Feminine whenever they get too close. So, it drives women away. And then, when women don't like them, they go... "She would like me if I were more hyper-Masculine. Let me double down on these narratives." That's the problem of mistaking the antidote as the poison... and the poison as the antidote.

Who is a specific example of a woman that you know personally who overvalues what they have to offer and demands too much? And who is a specific woman that you know personally who has gone through the process of being "ran through" and then sour graping about having to settle for a "beta man"? And it can't just be "there was a woman on the internet who was saying it" because it's very lucrative for women to feed into these male insecurity narratives. I literally can't think of ANY woman that this describes. I've only heard men who are sour-graping about women being able to get easy sex espouse this narrative. And I have known plenty of women... with some of them being very promiscuous women. Mind you, hyper-promiscuity doesn't tend to lead to good places. But the promiscuous player guys that promiscuous women go for early on are similar to the promiscuous player guys that promiscuous women go for later on. But it doesn't really change with her body count. It's more of a character compatibility thing. But if you personally know a woman this describes, do share. Or are you just watching too much red pill content?