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The Agony of Eros: Dating

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Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#61

Post by fxtentacle »

soco wrote: post #41
fxtentacle wrote: post #9

I believe this very nicely ties in with "No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31143279 We have turned sexual partners into an affluent commodity, thanks to apps. With a bit of paid boosting, you can show your profile to 1000+ potential partners and surely a few of them will have a favorable first impression. We've also successfully refr…

If only you had left out the pheromones part I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. That's a lesson I should learn as well: do not pivot in the message, rather write a new one.

But I really do see it as a huge issue with apps. In the "old" dating world, people would smell each other when they agreed to meet on a date, meaning before they invested time and effort. In the "new" dating world, people spend effort chatting and setting up the date but then it can still fail due to mis-matched pheromones.

On the other hand, I just learned that with pill-based birth control the effect nowadays is weaker than it used to be. So maybe you're correct and my perception is just outdated.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#62

Post by antihero »

immigrantheart wrote: post #56

Looks like the commoditization of love/dating apps and social media begins to show its ugly tail. Stories from my circle of friends/families: - Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones. - People who are married just shy over 2-3 years are thinking on divorce, or have girlfriends/boyfriends. - People having open relationships. - Girls randomly make out in club with some…

What exactly is “messed up” about open relationships and making out with strangers?

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#63

Post by Zababa »

MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #15

Is it just me, or does this article really overthink way too much? IMO, dating is ultimately not a subject that could be analyzed by logic. At least not on on the personal / self-help level (of course sociology / statistics still work). Trying to find some kind of generally applicable "rules of the game" that would work for everyone (or even most) people seems somewhat "not even wrong". It's simply trying to use the…

I think the first paragraph of the article gives enough justification on why you would want to analyze this subject with logic:

> I’ve been in a relationship for a while, but before that I dated for several years and experienced it both as 1) really fun and 2) terrible psychological torment. Lately dating videos on TikTok, Rethinking Sex by Christine Emba, this post by Oliver Traldi, The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han, and Why Love Hurts by Eva Illouz have made me think about why people seem to find the modern dating market so unsatisfying.

If dating is both "terrible psychological torment" and "so unsatisfying", which describes a situation that is worse than "really fun" is good, it might be a good idea to think about why. Maybe that's how dating has always been and will always be, maybe not and we can improve the situation. What's certain is that not thinking about it won't change anything, it is accepting the status quo. The author seems not okay with that.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#64

Post by xupybd »

I skipped all this being religious. I knew my wife for years. Over a year we started to hit it off and got to know each other as good friends. I asked her out and proposed one week later. Four months later we were married.

It's old fashioned but our emotional and physical involvement was proportional to our level of commitment at every stage.

It won't be the way most people want to go but it seems to have saved much of the heart ache modern dating appears to cause.

Just one data point from someone that did it a little different.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#65

Post by chromanoid »

ge96 wrote: post #18
mrfinn wrote: post #2

Terrible agony: Wait for when you have kids.

I wonder about this. It's a crazy commitment/years to deal with. I just look back to my own childhood/what my parents dealt with. On the other hand part of me feels sad thinking I will be the "last me". Maybe get genome sequenced/publish books of my face and put it sealed in a landfill somewhere for preservation. Actually rocks last a long time so probably a statue made with a rock.

It feels like having your heart outside of your body and it's running around recklessly.

Having children changed my outlook on the future quite a bit. First, I feel much more repsonsible and interested in the ecological future, because I intensely love people who will have to deal with the consequences in the future. Second, I hope I will be able to have a natural look into the problems of future generations, when I am old - there is a "strong bond into the future" for me. Third, while I don't feel it's a "future me" that I talk into sleep every evening, it feels like my human legacy. Considering my current reality, my children are probably the biggest impact I can have on the future.

BTW I guess all this is true regardless of genetic bonds.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#66

Post by Brian_K_White »

nickpeterson wrote: post #42
Brian_K_White wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ignorance is never the superior tactic

Sometimes people are not aware of limits that even cursory research would have shown them. They then produce the impossible, because they didn’t know it was impossible. Technical Example: I remember reading awhile back about a demoscene contributor who used to watch amazing 3d scenes and never understood they were not rendered in real time, so he worked at it until he figured out how to render 3d scenes as quickly as…

That is gambling which does produce the occasional miracle, but that is only a superior tactic in the aggregate. Sow 100 dandelion seeds so that 5 of them actually germinate somewhere.

To consider that the superior tactic you have to be willing to accept the failure rate and treat your one and only entire life as just one of those hapless shots in the dark.

Besides this is isn't a valid analogy anyway because we're only talking about self-awareness not engineering a partner.

And the comment you just wrote yourself, about self-inflicted limits, was an example of advice and learning, and every reader is better for having read it and become less ignorant about that.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#67

Post by benrapscallion »

fxtentacle wrote: post #9

I believe this very nicely ties in with "No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31143279 We have turned sexual partners into an affluent commodity, thanks to apps. With a bit of paid boosting, you can show your profile to 1000+ potential partners and surely a few of them will have a favorable first impression. We've also successfully refr…

Humans don’t have a functional vomeronasal organ to sense pheromones, only a nose. And hence no functional pheromone signaling. This is abjectly incorrect information.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#68

Post by mikevm »

antihero wrote: post #62
immigrantheart wrote: post #56

Looks like the commoditization of love/dating apps and social media begins to show its ugly tail. Stories from my circle of friends/families: - Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones. - People who are married just shy over 2-3 years are thinking on divorce, or have girlfriends/boyfriends. - People having open relationships. - Girls randomly make out in club with some…

What exactly is “messed up” about open relationships and making out with strangers?

An open relationship is an abusive relationship, even if on the surface it doesn't look like one. You cannot love a partner without fearing of losing them - there has to be some kind of an investment. If you let your partner be intimate sexually with other people then that is definitely bound to happen. And if that doesn't scare you, then you don't really care about him/her.

In most cases this is pretty much cuckoldry under a neutral or "hip" label, as women can get laid without effort and men have to work pretty hard for sex, so the woman has her fun with the myriad of choice she has on dating apps (she doesn't even have to pay for dinner), while the guy is barely getting any.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#69

Post by xyzzy4747 »

antihero wrote: post #62
immigrantheart wrote: post #56

Looks like the commoditization of love/dating apps and social media begins to show its ugly tail. Stories from my circle of friends/families: - Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones. - People who are married just shy over 2-3 years are thinking on divorce, or have girlfriends/boyfriends. - People having open relationships. - Girls randomly make out in club with some…

What exactly is “messed up” about open relationships and making out with strangers?

Making out with strangers is a fast way to get sick with something. Same with open relationships. You’re getting exposed to every germ, virus, STD, etc. that they have.

Plus traditionally when you have a partner it’s like a form of property. An open relationship is like sharing your house or car with everyone but probably even worse.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#70

Post by NeutralForest »

mikevm wrote: post #68
antihero wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is “messed up” about open relationships and making out with strangers?

An open relationship is an abusive relationship, even if on the surface it doesn't look like one. You cannot love a partner without fearing of losing them - there has to be some kind of an investment. If you let your partner be intimate sexually with other people then that is definitely bound to happen. And if that doesn't scare you, then you don't really care about him/her. In most cases this is pretty much cuckoldr…

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