Emerald

What is it about beauty and eroticism that's characteristic of Stage Green? I honestly don't see the connection. But this response is just reflective of paradigm lock in the scientific reductionism that's characteristic of Stage Orange because you can't see beyond this mono-perspectival reductive point of view, where you keep trying to boil everything down to "the one ultimate scientific truth to describe all human behavior." And that is the bias of Stage Orange as it tries to reduce things down to fundamental scientific truths. That's what happens when one polarizes into the Yang perspective and rejects the Yin perspective entirely... and sees the Yin perspective as more false. It's similar to how someone in Stage Orange scientific reductionism paradigm lock might have a tendency to dismiss things like love between family members or lover or friends as being merely a mixture of different hormones and biological processes... and to negate the validity of the actual relationships as 'those are just the illusions created by hormones flying around in the body.' And perhaps that is your point of view. But if it is, you should know that you're not being holistic in your way of thinking... as scientific reductionism is the opposite of being multi-perspectival. Survival is only one angle to look at it as it comes to human relationships and sexuality. And yes, it's a valid perspective. But it isn't the end all be all of perspectives. And if you treat it as though it is, you're going to strip the meaning from your life... and you'll be a bland lover and a bland liver.

Men may be in that situation now because of how atomized society is. But if you were social and interacting with women on a consistent basis in everyday platonic ways, human connection alone would work amazingly. So, you may need to develop the courage to initiate social interactions and create community around yourself. But you don't need to do anything else other than to become the best version of yourself.

That's too utilitarian. It's not about a guy's frame. It's about his personality, gestures, and mannerisms... and the way it makes you feel as a woman. (aka chemistry) And I find it to be a turn off if a man is trying to be attractive or Masculine. I need him as he is... not as he tries to be.

Yes, that's true. And that's why women tend to prefer guys who are a mixture of hard and soft qualities and who come across as better longterm partners.

I already mentioned in my previous reply. You can look from the perspectives of beauty, eroticism, and the sublime... which are fundamentally the opposite polar perspective of brass tacks utilitarianism and survivalism. Think of beauty as being the opposite polarity to utilitarianism... and it's the distinction between living and surviving. And those who are polarized into utilitarianism will automatically negate the existence and validity of more erotic perspectives and will close themselves off to more deeper erotic experiences... and will strip the art from their life. Similarly if someone conducted their life as purely survival whilst trying to get away from other perspectives, that person would sap the colors from their lives... while being deluded enough to think they live more aligned to what's true. Like a person who reads a bunch of books about music, but never really listens to it. And the issue with most people on this thread is that, with the desire to reduce human dynamics down to pure transactional utilitarianism, there is a distorted perspective on how humans operate that's presenting itself as the "one real truth" of human motivation. And it's causing them to get bitter and to repel the Feminine from themselves because deep-down they want to be valued in the way women actually do value them. They just don't believe it's true or possible. And you can't tell them anything because their cup is too full with the bitter juice of Social Darwinism and fundamental utilitarianism as the sole driver of all human action. That's the problem with paradigm lock.

It was very straight-forward and obvious what you were saying. You were saying that a dick doesn't respond to greater levels of chemistry with a woman. And that's very true for men. A penis will respond to any body that it finds physically attractive. It's very straightforward with male sexuality as it's just visual. But women and men are not the same... so while men can be attracted to a woman he haas no chemistry with, most women cannot be attracted to a guy she has no chemistry with. For most women, if the heart isn't activated, the loins are asleep. For most men, if there's an attractive body there, he'll get hard. Doesn't matter that much how he feels about the owner of the body. Don't make the mistake of assuming that women are just small men. We are different in this way.

The survival element is just one perspective to look at human sexuality through. And it's an important perspective, but it is by no means the end all be all. The issue with Social Darwinism, is that it's reductive to the point of distortion to boil everything down to pure survival as the sole reductive mono-perspective through which to view human sexual and romantic preferences. And this is why Social Darwinism tends to be recognized as pseudoscience in the consensus of the scientific community. That's the real issue with why men misunderstand female sexuality so much and end up with such skewed perspectives on female sexuality... as it tries to "utilitize" human drivers towards beauty and eroticism and strip them of all meaning. It's like trying to reduce a human driver towards the appreciation of art... or nature... or a beautiful sunset by framing it as cold transactional utilitarianism and Darwinism. And that's what happens when people get polarized into Yang/Masculinity to the exclusion of Yin/Femininity... as it seeks to find neat little categories to tuck human instincts into. There's just a desire to pretend that the Yin perspective is inferior or more deluded than the Yang perspective... whilst swimming in tons of delusion due to looking at human sexual dynamics through such a reductive lens. But even from the survival angle, most women are geared towards long-term rather than short-term partnering... which is likely why we're wired to respond to stability and fatherliness. And even from a survival angle, that is why women tend to prefer average guys that they happen to make the acquaintance of as they live their life.

Yes, definitely. That has to be a factor. But the attraction itself is also more emotional.

Of course most women aren't attracted to that... because most women (and people in general) can't relate to that. It's just not compatible with them. Very few people are into discipline, consciousness, and development. These are very niche interests, that only very specific women with the same niche interests will be attracted to. It's really about asking yourself how you want to market yourself... and even what's in the cards for you. Think of it as mass marketing versus niche marketing. Most men and women try to figure out how to mass market themselves... like Coca Cola or Walmart to cast the net as wide as possible. And the trick with mass marketing is to develop the lowest common denominator of attractive qualities that will be attractive to the largest number of people. And mass marketing means that you have to remove a lot of personality qualities and be pretty bland... where no one prefers you in a strong way. But most will consider you attractive. And you can't be too conscious or developed or it won't appeal to the masses. Think of how most people like Coca Cola in a medium way... but few are crazy about it. And if Coca Cola tried to give off more sophisticated vibes, it would lose its mass appeal. And mass marketing is good for hooking up with people you don't have much connection with. But it's really ineffective for deeper relationships or more passionate erotic flings. You also have to be relatively conventionally attractive to pull this off as well. Other men and women might niche market themselves... like through different subcultures or niche interests and leaning into what makes them different. And with niche marketing, you get a narrower cross-section of the world that's interested in you... because you're polarizing. You'll drive away 95% of people... and 5% of people will be extremely magnetized to you and will prefer you above all others. So, the people who are into you, are REALLY into you. Think of it as like some cult classic movies like Rocky Horror Picture Show and the rabid fanbase of something like that. About 15 years ago, there used to be a dollar theatre in Saint Augustine, where I live. And they'd play Rocky Horror a couple times a month. And people went out and got dressed up as the characters EVERY SINGLE TIME the movie showed. This is what happens when you niche market yourself. This is also a great setting for a meeting of minds and a deeper, more intimate, and more erotic sexual experiences... or a deepening relationship.

Again, women are not "settling" of the "betas". They prefer them. That's what's difficult for average men to realize. Average men can't fathom of what's attractive about themselves. That's why they feel like they have to become someone else for women to prefer them. And that's why all these guys are running away from themselves at 100 miles per hour. And intelligence doesn't tend to be an "alpha" trait that women seek out for short term partnership, in my view. I tend to be most attracted to very intelligent introverted guys who are more mature and down to Earth who have psychological and spiritual interests... and who have a mixture of hard and soft qualities. And I also need him to be a little bit strange to keep in interesting. To me, that is the sexiest kind of guy.... no settling involved. They're my PREFERENCE. And for me personally (and I'd imagine most women), I'm not motivated by short term sexual encounters. They're pretty boring because of the lack of emotional stimulation. Women get the most emotional stimulation through intimacy and deeper levels of eroticism. And those types of "alpha" guys are just about impossible to have a real deep connection with. And you can't surrender to them, so you can't really feel those deeper subtle erotic feelings in their presence.

Eroticism is more heart-centered than it is genitalia-centered. And women are more motivated by eroticism than they are towards fucking.

You can share your perspective with me if you'd like. But if not, that's okay too.

That's the entire point I've been making. Women respond the most to who they have chemistry with... which is usually with regular average guys that they encounter in their daily lives. Honestly, if there isn't a significant amount of human-to-human chemistry, I wouldn't feel compelled towards anything sexual. And I think most women are the exact same way. It's honestly an uncommon kind of woman who goes out there seeking some short term hook-ups with hyper-Masculine "alpha" guys. I guess they exist. But that's a pretty abstract notion to me in terms of understanding the sexual appeal of it, as sexual appeal is so fundamentally intertwined with deeper feelings of intimacy, for me. And I find that men who have no softness to them are just about impossible to have chemistry with because a man needs to be a bit vulnerable for it to be possible to feel intimate with him.

Another video on the topic from my previous post, regarding what women find attractive vs what men think women find attractive.

You understand so little about the value of Femininity and creative expression.

He's saying that the thing that makes women bitter are not just the types of guys that abuse their power... but also the types of insecure guys that aspire to be the types of guys who abuse their power. And there's A LOT of men now-a-days who repel women because of all the internet propaganda that men are subjected to regarding male/female relationships and notions of what an attractive man is... as it's all about training a guy to be a low quality guy who appeals to the least discerning women. So, lots of women are choosing to be single to avoid dealing with brainwashed guys. Or they're getting bitter, because everything about all of this man-cult stuff is just annoying and desperate and causes harm to them. It's like the opposite of appealing and sexy. Just a bunch of guys in victims narrative because it's not fair that they aren't able to be Andrew Tate... and pissed off that women want Andrew Tate and not them. And then when women go "Ew! That guy looks like a rat." men are like... "Stop lying!" You can even observe, that most of the men on this forum are regular guys who aspire to be the type of anti-nutrient men who abuse and extract power. And that makes them even more repellent to most women than the guys who actually have power and abuse it... because it's the worst of both worlds. At least status-seeking or gold-digging women will tolerate the misogyny the powerful guy, as that's what's necessary to get the money and the status. But no average self-respecting woman will tolerate an average guy who's operating through these narratives because these men become impossible to experience intimacy with. Average men get brainwashed to not listen to women, so there is no intimacy where you can't be heard or seen. And men who operate through these propaganda narratives lose the ability to hear, see, and understand women. Hence, why I get so much pushback in this context, as I am pushing back on the brainwashing as the exact type of person that the brainwashers told you all not to listen to (a woman). Also, it's false to call these guys in these positions of power "high value" because they actually extract a lot more value than they provide. So, they have more power... but they have a net negative value-wise. That's why I think of them as anti-nutrient men.

I can certainly relate to what you've written. I'm in my mid-thirties as well, and there's a lot of things that change goals-wise and identity-wise during this time. This is true for me too despite the fact that I had marriage and family and all that other stuff since my early 20s. You can just conceptualize of the life-cycle because you're almost right in the middle. And that's very different as things feel much more time-bounded. And since you're considering embarking upon marriage and family and other more adult concerns for the first time, you probably feel like you're losing the meaningful narratives you were living before that were more geared towards the exploration of an expansive range of possibilities in terms of life paths and sexual paths. From reading your other post, your main resistance seems to relate to the loss of possibilities and narrowing down. There seems to be some fear around the trade-off of devoting yourself to one trajectory. And it also seems that the way you're used to conceptualizing of male attractiveness is something very tied to youth and expansion. And you're aging out of that phase of life and going into a more mature and contracted phase of life, where the paths get narrower but deeper and richer. And you don't yet know of the boons of the unfamiliar depths that can only be realized through maturing and aging. And those boons whisper rather than shout... which will take you some years to feel. What I would say on the swagger element of things is to explore what's attractive about being a mature stable 30-something man. Honestly, a mature stable man between the ages of 30 and 40 is probably considered the most attractive kind of guy. So, it's not like your swagger goes away. It just changes to a more mature form, which women are wired to respond better to anyway. But if there's a sense of fear of missing out on the ability to have hook--ups with lots of women, you want to actually explore the individual psychology of that... as opposed to just writing it off as male biology. There is a reason why you feel that way beyond just being turned on by sexual variety. And you should do your best to understand yourself and what emotional and psychological factors that make the loss of sexual variety and variety in general feel like such a hard death to die.

Do you have some issue with women wearing make-up? You seem to be getting very judgmental about it and really focusing on the idea that make-up covers things up. Even if hypothetically "covering things up" was the primary reason why women wear make-up and it weren't about self-expression at all, what would be so bad about that from your perspective?

The guy I responded to already said that, in his relationships, he was just settling for them and waiting until someone better comes along. And I was trying to figure out what he was getting out of them. Maybe sex. Maybe a salve for loneliness. Maybe a roommate to pay bills with. Maybe to show his parents that he's not single. Whatever was the boon for him, it just seems like it would be less of a hassle to just stay single until you find someone that you genuinely care about.

It doesn't contradict with what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that most women prefer men who aren't hyper-Masculine and who have a more average level of Masculinity. And most women are attracted to regular everyday guys that they happen to meet and have some chemistry with. And I'm also saying that most women aren't geared towards short-term hook-ups. So, while the minority of women who value short-term hook-ups might statistically go for these hyper-Masculine guys, that is abstract to me and most other women like me who don't even value or get much out of short term hook-ups. Also, it's not that women are interested in men who "chase" them. Chasing is desperate and needy, which is the opposite of the type of energy that women are looking for. So, that is a strawman of what I was communicating before. It's that I've observed that the most stable and fulfilling male/female relationship dynamic is one where both partners are highly invested in one another, but the man invests slightly more. Honestly, just look at this thread and you'll see TONS of low-investment men telling on themselves that they only settle in relationships until someone better comes along. So, women are wise to to avoid low investment guys who are settling out of convenience until someone better comes along... and to raise the bar a bit so that a man who's really interested has space to show her his level of investment.

I don't think you understand how make-up works. Make-up has coverage, sure. Like foundation can cover over an uneven skin tone or small blemishes. But unless the make-up is extreme... it is just an enhancement of what is already there, which is what she called it. Like, my daily make-up routine is just throwing on some reddish pink lipstick, filling in the sparse areas of my brows, and darkening my upper lash line a bit. I might put a bit of blush on if I'm feeling it. It's not really covering a whole lot... just enhancing what's already there. And even a full make-up look tends to just be an enhancement of what's there for most women. But painting on a canvas is a different type of expression compared to make-up and fashion, as the latter is about the embodiment of a certain persona.

Sure, identity is wrapped up in survival... and fashion choices are part of that. But for me, it's more about clearing the channel to express whatever happens to be there. Like, before I started dressing in the goth style when I was a teenager, I had a lot of blockages when it came to self-expression and confidence. I was just a nervous wreck. Then, when I started dressing that way, the style was so full of archetypes and art and music, that I could find outlets for expression and confidence that I didn't know before. And I felt so much more confident because I liked the way I looked. And it was through the conduit of my personal style at the time, that I found a lot of my untapped potential. And I was able to use that identity to develop my artistic skills when I was a teenager, as that also got woven into my identity. So, I wouldn't trivialize the importance of identity and personal style as it pertains to self-growth and self-discovery. Of course, when I was 20, I had my first experiences of ego transcendence. And I misunderstood them and tried to destroy my sense of identity all-together by resisting any identity drivers. But that just put me in a disempowered state, and I became really small and fell into a very narrow conception of myself where I tried to become a non-entity. And I abided in that identity-resistant state for about 5 or 6 years, feeling like I was painted into a corner, as I extracted the wrong lessons from those experiences. And after that I decided to tentatively re-integrate identity back into my life. And my relationship with life has been a lot better since then. So, I see a lot of potentials for channeling "harder-to-reach" parts of the self through creative expressions... including make-up and fashion. Like, in my most recent medicine journey, I encountered this really soft part of myself that has never had the right environmental and identity-based conduits to be integrated into my conscious expressions. So, I'd like to experiment a bit with exploring that softness through fashion and make-up and other forms of creative expression.

Yes, I did think that being goth made me more attractive. And I am motivated to dress for beauty. I mentioned as much in the posts above. And I was attracted to guys who had a similar style back then. And I knew my clothing style would attract a compatible man. That's one of the benefits of dressing in a niche style. What's your point? I never said that these weren't components of my drive to dress in a gothy way. I already said that I like to use dressing up to feel beautiful and more empowered.... as it makes the libidinal energy flow. And certainly there are both sexual and social components that factor into that. But the identity went beyond something relational and had to do more with how I feel and see myself when I have a certain appearance. It's just that, if I look a certain way, I feel like the best version of myself and that I'm really expressing myself fully. Still not sure what you're getting at here.

Because that was the case for you, it makes sense that you'd project that other people are doing the same thing as well. But I don't even see what a person could possibly get out of a relationship beyond just sex if they were just settling. And that seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to get sex.

Yes, many times with goth make-up. That used to be the way I dressed up every day for like 5+ years of my life. My go to was to do black lipstick and winged eye-liner with harlequin details... and to wear long flowing black skirts with a black and white patterned shirt with a vest or blazer over it. Or I'd dress more like the goth lolita fashion with lots of frills and puffy skirts. So, every day was dress-up. I wasn't casual about it. It was quite ornate.