Terracotta
6hr ago
I did have a ‘duty’ frame in mind, but what I was really trying to get at in my post was- different people have different duties.
Part of the problem is that underneath those surface differences, those varied daily duties were (and were explicitly claimed to be) the exact same set of primary duties: work as hard as you can, deny yourself, give up your life for those weaker than you, obey those set by God in authority over you. People forget that this cosmic hierarchy used to entail quite a lot of frictional social-class-based and age-based role rigidity, as well, so everybody had the daily experience of both authority and submission. In European trad systems, for example, the working man needs to obey both his lady and his lord and doff his cap to his betters of both sexes, everybody needs to obey the priest, who in turn needs to obey the bishop who needs to obey the Pope, etc. Sons and daughters need to obey both their mothers and their fathers, even as they reach uppity young adulthood. Of course, few humans are good at either authority or submission, so there are endless quarrels about boundaries for all this. But it's really clear how all of the role systems are upheld by the same explicitly analogical thinking and grounded in presumptions of not just difference but also similarity across stations.
The interesting corollary to this is that the dismantling of various family roles flows directly from the (economically-driven) political movement to dismantle class, legal and religious hierarchies, and is driven by exactly the same appeals to natural self-ownership, liberty of conscience and inborn equality before God. Although the US does pass through a couple of decades where class/political/religious hierarchy is gone but some limited gender hierarchy still holds, I don't think it's a stable equilibrium. For the middling sort, the system inevitably gets torn apart by the inherent contradictions in believing strongly in class mobility and spiritual self-determination but not in gender mobility or family self-determination.
Once you're committed to a class ethos of "you are not born to any fixed (economic) station, you can be anything you want to be! You should use your talents to try to rise in the world, in accord with your individual desires," then it's pretty hard to maintain the exact opposite line as regards genitalia. Even for yourself, I wonder if you'd get behind a system where a wife's natural duty to [whatever] implied that you also had a natural duty to obey your parents and go to college as they wished?
Terracotta
7hr ago
Nobody cares if the groom is not a virgin, least of all the bride.
But as @Clementine points out, in older systems the duty wasn't grounded in the preferences of the relationship partner. If you start with "your bodies doesn't belong to you as fun toys to fuck around with, and your lives doesn't belong to you as a fun game to score as much worldly status as you can; both of you are given this for a higher purpose," then you get rather easily to all the natural-law thinking about the high status of sexual continence and faithful marriage and self-sacrifice and family formation, for both men and women.
I don't think you can get there from quid-pro-quo negotiations between two rational actors with no common commitment to a higher moral purpose, because prisoner's-dilemma thinking kicks in immediately, as in fact you can see in responses below. Yeah, but what if s/he defects and I get exploited? Sure, I'll [maybe]cooperate eventually, but s/he needs to go first.
Terracotta
4d ago
It could be just be part of a general tendency toward avoidant behavior and low resilience to stress. I'm sure "attachment style" is a useful handle for certain patterns of learned social behavior in intimate relationships, but getting anxious and ghosting after a mildly stressful text interaction doesn't seem meaningfully different from other kinds of maladaptive avoidance, like procrastinating studying with videogames or avoiding opening your bills.
All the literature I've read shows increasing screen use associated with impaired emotional regulation, increased irritability, anxiety and impulsivity, decreased long-term planning and persistence. Any one of those effects could handily account for people becoming less able to weather any stress in a relationship.
Terracotta
17d ago
Like many impulses, they're fundamentally immune to examination by reason (knowing that the donut is unhealthy for you doesn't stop it from tasting good).
Impulse control follows a bell curve. Most men are able to rein in their sexual impulses and live perfectly normal lives in accordance with social expectations.
The everyday impulse/akrasia thing you're describing matches female sexuality just fine, I think: certainly pure horniness does impel women sometimes to make choices they later regret. But I quoted your passage upthread, re: male sexual desire conferring an aura of importance and seriousness on its object, because that seems interestingly different. Normal appetitive impulses like eating junk food are hard not to act on, but they don't really involve a sense that "this is serious, this is not a joke," do they? I've gobbled a donut in a weak moment, but I would never say that the donut felt serious at the time, nor would I be annoyed if somebody joked about eating. In fact, I was very aware of the ridiculousness of it, even as I was eating. If somebody offered me donuts in exchange for state secrets, no part of me would think it was the right thing to do. I don't think I would have willingly hurt someone to get at the donuts. If somebody took the donuts away mid-binge, I would be relieved; I wouldn't have laid deep plots to get some more.
Whereas, the passage you quoted seems to be getting at a kind of a weird transvaluation-of-values field that testosterone creates around the object of desire, where whatever the penis wants seems worthwhile and important in itself: not just having a moment of weakness and regretting it, but having one's whole will redirected, such that old values or priorities just aren't relevant anymore. That's probably a stretch based on just the one statement in your comment, but I can think of various other examples that this makes sense of. I've heard people remark on the cold, unapologetic demeanor of men who have midlife-crisis affairs or come out as gay, etc.: maybe they cared about their wife and kids before, but now absolutely nothing feels as important as pursuing that hot secretary or that succession of Grindr hookups, whatever. Fetishists have laid incredibly complex, years-long plans in starry-eyed pursuit of goals that violate basic self-preservation logic, like freezing off their hands to replace them with paws or recruiting another man who will cut off, fry and eat their own balls. That value-revision power gets deployed for good in the whole manic pixie dream girl trope, where just the experience of sexually desiring a fetishized girl (usually a cypher, not a person: normally the guy lusts at first sight after noticing her 1-2 incredibly attractive physical features) supposedly revitalizes the hero's whole life, changes his priorities and makes him a permanently better man.
I obviously have no firsthand experience of male sexuality, but sexual desire that can change your sense of what's important, your affections, and your character, making you permanently callous to loved ones or calmly indifferent to the loss of your limbs, feels qualitatively different from donut-binge genital impulses. The only other thing I know of with that eerie character-rewriting effect is substance addiction.
The fundamental point you're gesturing at is correct: men are insane!
I'm absolutely not saying that men are crazy, because I don't know what it would mean to be "sane" at the level of basic motivational wiring. It just is what it is. Obviously the process can work for good if young men lust after wholesome people in wholesome ways. I was just saying that it would feel very strange to have a constantly-on hormonal system that could fully rewrite one's conscious sense of reality itself like that, because aside from having a baby, I don't know of any female hormonal dynamics that can accomplish anything similar. But I'd also be curious if this resonates, if testosterone-based sexual desire feels to most men as it does to the hand-freezing-off guy, or if there's something fundamentally missing from my outsider's impressions of how the whole thing works.
Terracotta
17d ago
She looked at her friends laughing and thought, "why are you laughing? This isn't a joke. Stop laughing." And I just thought... yes, this is it! This is the difference between male and female sexuality! You couldn't ask for a more perfect illustration, it's amazing.
I fully believe that this is the testosterone experience, because it matches observed behaviors. But I've always wondered how people on testosterone from birth reconcile that hormone-induced aura of intense seriousness and urgency around whatever their sexual desire of the moment is, with the fact that if you look at it objectively the sexual impulse is pretty ridiculous.
Like, rub your penis on her foot. Rub it. On her foot. Or on that corpse. Go on, DO IT. Rub your penis on that unconscious person. Rub your penis on that toddler. Look at that girl's nipple. It's very important that you look at it! Go on, make visual contact with the external part of our mammalian glands designed for feeding young. You need to see it! You do! Look at it!
In service to this feeling of seriousness, men have betrayed their friends, their families, their country, they've lied, stolen, squandered fortunes, murdered and courted their own deaths because it was so deadly important to rub their penis against this specific thing in this specific way. I mean, I totally get why the evolutionary programming would exist, and ours isn't even that extreme in a world where some spiders' mating instincts get them slowly eaten alive. It just seems as though it would be weird to be a self-aware, reasoning person who's nonetheless in the grip of that kind of perceptual distortion. Women also do dumb things for biology, and women also have plenty of our own weird animal instincts, but for the most part we don't have anything quite so trippy as "this specific flap of somebody else's flesh is now the literal most important thing in the whole world."
Terracotta
19d ago
Some things aren't worth taking risks on, especially when the payoff is low, the risks are enormous, and my disposition is the catalyst for those risks
Well, it's not like you're signing the marriage license by asking a woman out; you could just enjoy learning about her and having a fun time together, day by day. I totally get the masochistic appeal of shutting oneself away in proud, bitterly high-minded self-isolation. But in the meantime you do miss out on the opportunity to share some potentially good (or at least interesting) company, to appreciate somebody's good points and be appreciated by them in turn.
As for overweight women, well, that is just prejudice. I'm in the USA. Our fat is a special kind of fat, and the fatter that fat gets the more viscerally I am repulsed by it.
You doubtless know that this means being viscerally repulsed by like 80% of adult men and 75% of adult women in the country, and as a smart guy you probably realize that such big feelings must be coming from a bunch of your own and your parents' stuff, not just from the bodies in front of you. Sometimes I look at old photos of working people, and those people are also tragically less beautiful than they should have been, through a similar combination of too little sleep, poor-quality food, shitty jobs, contaminated surroundings, illness, sorrow, sin and old trauma. I'm not sure any of us is all that beautiful, inside or out, but it would be hard to feel this stressed by it, and I'm sorry you're dealing with this.
I've really appreciated how reflective and fair-minded your responses are here; thank you! Hope better days are ahead for you.
why is it unreasonable for me to set as conditions my own characteristics (not with children, not overweight/obese)?
Well, both of those features are much, much more important to men than they are to women. Some women may care, don't get me wrong - but numbers of women irl don't mind a potbelly if the guy is kind/confident/funny, and could cheerfully learn to love somebody else's cute kid in the right circumstances. So in saying "She shouldn't have 25BMI, because after all I don't have 25 BMI, and no kids because I don't have kids," you're trying to buy two things that are somewhat rare and highly valued, with two things that are nice but not especially highly valued. By contrast, charisma and good social skills do matter a lot for women's attraction, so your challenges there also align you at a somewhat lower percentile on the global scale, where to match properly you might have to make corresponding concessions in some domain of male attraction.
But surely that's just self-awareness, not despair? You're saying "My 1010 SATs/2.8 GPA didn't get me into Duke, guess it's miserable NEETdom and food stamps for me," but millions of people are living happy, fulfilled lives with community-college degrees. You're a good writer, you seem intelligent; you worry about long-term prospects with a "low-value" woman, but many of those plump ladies and single moms are very nice, smart and kind people who would at minimum be fun to get to know. Is it really better that you and all the plump/ slightly older/ kid-having ladies in your vicinity should be lonely and celibate, rather than compromise your standards to connect with each other?
Terracotta
21d ago
certainly not relations on the terms I'd have once looked for (not overweight, not a single mother, not a drug addict, not older than me, not prodigal).
So you haven't had much response from younger women who are 75th+-percentile slender and wholly unencumbered. Out of curiosity, what happened when you reached out to women who were slightly plump, slightly older than you, or divorced/had a kid in tow?
Terracotta
24d ago
Hard to say much without specific examples. But if this is an AFAB person and she's saying she feels cared for but not romanced, or seems appreciative but also a little disappointed, then possible issues could be
- The care feels dispassionate, needs more personal attention (when you do nice things, do they match her needs/ do they show you've been listening? do you confidently express delight in things you find attractive in her face or body, mind or mannerisms specifically? Is it clear you're a man in love with a high-quality lady, not just some milquetoast people-pleaser who would do this for anyone?)
- The care feels low-value because you're so grateful, so there's no challenge or chase involved for her (obviously don't play hard-to-get like a '90s romcom, but if you clearly have various joyful, prosocial pursuits you're invested in in addition to her, it will establish that your time is valuable, and she'll be more appreciative when you choose her over those other options. Don't neglect the great stuff elsewhere in your life, is what I'm saying.)
- Maybe you're actually doing fine but the long-distance is killing the momentum, so she's poking around at random to try to reignite things
- Maybe you're doing fine and she's just kind of an unstable person as people said below, or things have just run their course without either of you realizing it
Terracotta
25d ago
Girl here. @kky makes a great point about starting fights (especially with big reconciliations) sometimes being an unconscious bid to restore emotional intimacy when the relationship feels stuck.
Note that although Words of Affection or whatever are the official Love Language, the actual underlying currency is attention, intimacy and low-key daily consideration. There's solid evolutionary reason that many women respond to this, because if a partner is fundamentally not interested in a woman as a person, if he gets no great positive utility from caring for her and knowing she's happy day-to-day, if he's not the kind of guy who can notice and spontaneously help if she or a kid are struggling, then that's a very dangerous partner to risk a potentially difficult pregnancy plus years of infant caregiving with.
If paying mechanical compliments feels too weird, with many women you can also maintain feelings of relational care and intimacy in other ways:
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Asking more questions, especially about her emotional state or other intimate topics as a follow-up to superficial life updates ("how did you feel about that?" "wow, was that really hard on you, given [past trend]?" "what are you really excited about this week?"). There's a list of random intimate questions called The 36 Questions to Fall In Love circulating somewhere, with some good possibilities if you need ideas.
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If you ask a question about feelings, not offering pushback or disagreement about the feelings themselves, just affectionately validating. If you think she's 100% wrong and crazy in a situation, you can express generic care like "you are trying so hard, wish I could be there to give you a hug."
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Remembering her answers to past questions and actively following up in a supportive way ("what happened with that big work project, anyway? were you happy with how it turned out? what is Sharon scheming about these days?"). If you can, try to compliment any admirable things about her approach and validate that her negative feelings are OK to feel.
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Sharing little intimate details about your own feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, vulnerabilities as a way of requesting care from her (nothing actually icky/humiliating unless it's in the past). This is the Ben Franklin Effect for emotional labor and it works really well: just look at how many romance heroes have tragic backstories requiring the heroine's sympathy.
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Engineering any little acts of care so that they also express low-key attention- so don't just send an article link, send an article relevant to something she mentioned, with a note "your mentioning __ got me thinking about __ and I thought I'd send this. I love that we can explore this together!"
Terracotta
25d ago
If this is a TikTok/ Twitter/ Insta thing, have you considered that the algorithmic video influencer mechanic is also what brought us mukbang, cinnamon challenges, contour makeup, Lil Tay, faking your own death for clout, etc. etc.?
The bad guy in a pro wrestling match is not actually trying to kill anybody with a folding chair, the monster truck with the teeth decals is not actually trying to eat the cars. The crazy infuriating shit influencers say (or their followers parrot) is not actually representative of what sane people act on in their personal lives.
Fair, but that delicate interaction happened in a deeply individualistic society where you had the leverage of both parties knowing it was your right to choose. Tilt the conventional balance back toward hierarchy, connection, fixed roles and knowing your place, and now the peremptory or even tyrannical father comes back into the Overton window - the sort of father who is empowered to command rather than negotiate, who can refuse consent to a minor child's marriage or force an apprenticeship and back that up with physical discipline, and who has the right to make those decisions as he pleases without necessarily consulting his son.
Also back in the Overton window would be the full weight of social and political censure against rebellious subjects, disobedient sons, disorderly commoners, runaway 'prentices, religious heretics (I hope you're not Protestant?), innovators and entrepreneurs, misers and profiteers, and various other social groups who our present-day society lauds to the skies precisely for not accepting their customary role and place in the order of things.
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