61–70 of 140 posts
I spent my teens and 20s working hard on my uniqueness out of a feeling that I was different. I forced myself to like anything that was out of the ordinary (this manifested itself in attaching myself to any concepts, interests, and preferences that were non-American). I allowed my search to be different to overtake me, making me a bit of a vagabond, more interested in exploration than in work (discovery-oriented rath…
When I was still young and at least somewhat cute, I remarked to a friend how depressing it was that women always go for rich and arrogant men. My friend's reply absolutely changed my perspective on this: by choosing socially well-accepted and successful men they actually place a lot more emphasis on the inner values than males do. In a very real sense, women love you for who you are (=rich and successful) as opposed to what you look like (=a characteristic you can't do much about).
Contrast that with male perception, if you think a girl is attractive, everything she says suddenly sounds meaningful and important. Of course the article is correct, once you actually get to know people, this changes. But for getting the foot in the door so to speak, attractiveness and an aura of importance respectively are probably still the most important vectors.
I just want to mention for completeness' sake, and only because it would be taboo to express this in a magazine article: if you're really unhappy with the dating rat race, and it's genuinely not realistic for you to improve your chances by optimizing these superficials, it is possible to just opt out of everything. I know it's controversial and for some reason it upsets a lot of people when I tell them that I just stopped. Contrary to popular belief, this mating thing is not something which you absolutely must accomplish. I've crossed to this other side, and it's really really peaceful here. ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
now that you mentioned it.. I remember a psychology course I took in college just a while ago mentioned that, female's evaluation of attractiveness is greatly affected by knowing the person's financial state/personality/social status etc. While male's evaluation of attractiveness is less affected by other factors. Not sure how true this theory is..
It's even more complex with women. Their perception of male attractiveness is also tied into where they are in their menstrual cycle. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141
>In a related study of approximately 350 heterosexual individuals, we collected these same measures in networks of opposite-sex friends, acquaintances and partners. Among these well-acquainted individuals, consensus on measures of mate value was nearly zero. These are the people who know what authors you like, what you wore for Halloween six years ago and what obscure movie you will quote the next time you all get to…
http://deepfriedcalamari.tumblr.com/post/10839417292/homosoc...
In particular:
> Homosocial bonding is different between men and women, and this causes a lot of confusion and why it’s assumed that men and women cannot be friends.
> Men see their friendships as camaraderie, hanging out, occasional complaining, and chilling. There’s plenty of support mechanisms in place, but they’re not intimate, per se.
> Women on the other hand are intimate, affectionate, they talk more about how they feel than how things happened. The support mechanisms are explicitly intimate.
> So, men who are not used to intimate physical contact and discourse have to translate a person of the opposite sex being physically and emotionally intimate beyond the boundaries of relationships he is used to.
Again, I don't want to generalize the linked text, but it was very accurate when I reflected on my own 'friend zone' experiences, and those my male friends have had.
I remember during my first year at college looking through a friend's high school yearbook remarking on some of the girls I thought were cute but he didn't. He made comments that didn't have to do with their physical appearance - like "she was mean" or "she was rude". When he looked through my yearbook the same thing happened, we just switched sides. I thought it was interesting how knowing the person actually change…
now that you mentioned it.. I remember a psychology course I took in college just a while ago mentioned that, female's evaluation of attractiveness is greatly affected by knowing the person's financial state/personality/social status etc. While male's evaluation of attractiveness is less affected by other factors. Not sure how true this theory is..
When people have sex, the woman is in a much more dangerous place than a man.
Having a baby for a woman is very costly. She needs someone to protect her while it happens and to help raise the child.
The cost for a man is very low. He only needs a couple minutes to do his part in making a baby, then he can leave at any time.
So with that in mind, lets say the scenario is like this:
If a man impregnates a woman and he stays, the chance the baby survives to reproduction is 90%.
If a man impregnates a woman and he leaves, the chance the baby survives to reproduction is 10%.
So with those statistics, the man is actually in a very advantageous position.
As long as he impregnates 10 or more women in his lifetime, he is ahead than if he had stayed with the same woman for all his life.
Of course, the more healthy the woman, the more likely the baby is to survive even if he leaves. Beauty = healthy in evolutionary terms. If the woman is pretty, maybe she can even get another guy to raise his kids for him! So men seek beauty primarily.
So for a man it is genetically superior to impregnate multiple women (which generally means not staying too close to any of them).
A female on the other hand, can only have children a few times in her life. And she only gets a few shots at it.
If the man leaves, her shot is very likely to end up in failure.
So the woman needs to be very picky about who she has children with. She needs to judge his character, to see if he will stay with her and raise the child. And defend her, fight off aggression, etc..
So to a woman, character is more important than beauty, because that's what determines if her genes survive or not.
Erotic fiction is a billion dollar industry and the vast majority of buyers are women. Manly man stories = porn for women.
The article makes a good case for "when they get to know you, some of them will fall for you." When I was still young and at least somewhat cute, I remarked to a friend how depressing it was that women always go for rich and arrogant men. My friend's reply absolutely changed my perspective on this: by choosing socially well-accepted and successful men they actually place a lot more emphasis on the inner values than m…
One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are (how is how you look not part of "who you are"?) and not for auxiliary things that have nothing to do with you as a person, such as money'. It's all just semantic quibbling, anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's even more complex with women. Their perception of male attractiveness is also tied into where they are in their menstrual cycle. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141
Always good to keep in mind when this kinda "evo-psych" stuff is brought up: http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/06/30/mr-10-09/
The article makes a good case for "when they get to know you, some of them will fall for you." When I was still young and at least somewhat cute, I remarked to a friend how depressing it was that women always go for rich and arrogant men. My friend's reply absolutely changed my perspective on this: by choosing socially well-accepted and successful men they actually place a lot more emphasis on the inner values than m…
Being rich is an inner value? I have the impression that how much being rich has to do with your own will is still not decided. If anything, social mobility has been shown to be very overrated in recent years. And then one can ask, how much did that one person striking millions have to do with ingenuity, and how much was it just being at the right place and time (lucking out)? One could say that, 'in a very real sens…
Being successful is, and being rich is one of the markers for success. I had problems with this view as well until it was explained to me from a woman's perspective. The operating assumption being, as I said earlier, that men and women use different heuristics to do preliminary mate filtering. By and large, you get through the filter by being beautiful as a woman, and by projecting success as a man. The argument goes that beauty has absolutely nothing to do with inner values, while success does (false positives not withstanding).
Then again, there might be a huge cultural component to this. I come from Germany, which has the most unapologetically darwinistic dating scene I ever experienced. German girls are by and large no-nonsense, goal-oriented, and not prone to poetic whimsy.
> One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are (how is how you look not part of "who you are"?)
Hey, the darker part of my epiphany story is actually up to that conversation I had believed finding a mate was about finding a partner that matches your inner essence, finding someone who recognizes the "real you". So I had dismissed both success and beauty as meaningless, because they tell you nothing about that essence. Again, I was very young at that point and had a lot of misconceptions.
>In a related study of approximately 350 heterosexual individuals, we collected these same measures in networks of opposite-sex friends, acquaintances and partners. Among these well-acquainted individuals, consensus on measures of mate value was nearly zero. These are the people who know what authors you like, what you wore for Halloween six years ago and what obscure movie you will quote the next time you all get to…
What's wrong with the friend zone? See: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2615 (This is a snarky way of saying that friendship is its own reward.)
Ironically, it is when men aren't one-dimensional (which I think is must of us) that leads to these kind of situations, which leads to people thinking that they were just out after sex to begin with.