Post: #1

Interesting article on pair-bonding.

Some quotes:

"But unlike some of the other positive emotions, like joy or happiness, love cannot be kindled individually—it only exists in the physical connection between two people. Specifically, there are three players in the biological love system—mirror neurons, oxytocin, and vagal tone. Each involves connection and each contributes to those micro-moment of positivity resonance that Fredrickson calls love. "

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"The final player is the vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your heart and subtly but sophisticatedly allows you to meaningfully experience love. As Fredrickson explains in her book, "Your vagus nerve stimulates tiny facial muscles that better enable you to make eye contact and synchronize your facial expressions with another person. It even adjusts the miniscule muscles of your middle ear so you can better track her voice against any background noise."

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"Jonathan Haidt, another psychologist, calls these unrealistic expectations "the love myth" in his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis:

True love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person, you will have true love forever. You might not believe this myth yourself, particularly if you are older than thirty; but many young people in Western nations are raised on it, and it acts as an ideal that they unconsciously carry with them even if they scoff at it... But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible.""

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And this quote explains why, even if you are looking for oneitis, you should be gaming in the meantime:

"Lonely people who are looking for love are making a mistake if they are sitting around and waiting for love in the form of the "love myth" to take hold of them. If they instead sought out love in little moments of connection that we all experience many times a day, perhaps their loneliness would begin to subside."

Post: #2

The problem with love is the difference in gender. Men love unconditionally, women love conditionally.

Post: #3

(01-29-2013 11:21 AM)bojangles Wrote:  The problem with love is the difference in gender. Men love unconditionally, women love conditionally.

I would argue that love is conditional for both sides.

Just a girl would fall out of love with her boyfriend for losing a job/status/that quality x which makes her tingle, a man would fall out of love with a girl for getting really fat.

I think the reason why guys stay in relationships longer is that they have a lack of options or are married. In case of the latter, you may be fucked.

I also think guys take longer to fall out of love - even when your girlfriend gets fat, you can still see that sexy slim thing that caught your eye. Whereas when you lose your job/etc, a girl has already jumped off the boat emotionally and is waiting for the next good dick to come along.

The only time I can see a guy falling out of love is if he is lacking reciprocation with his main girl and finds what he seeks in another.

Wald

Post: #4

(01-29-2013 11:39 AM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  

(01-29-2013 11:21 AM)bojangles Wrote:  The problem with love is the difference in gender. Men love unconditionally, women love conditionally.

I think the reason why guys stay in relationships longer is that they have a lack of options or are married. In case of the latter, you may be fucked.

There is truth in that I believe. One of the only good quotes to come from Sex in The City: “A man is only as faithful as his options.” Came across that quote in this article about "the girl code"

Post: #5

Anecdote: An ex of mine once told me she was at the point in her life where she would not date anyone who had significant debt or issues because she wanted to start a family soon. I asked her what she would do if she fell in love with someone who had those problems. She looked at me and said she would not "allow" herself to fall in love with such a person. Probing deeper, I asked what if I now turned out to have debt or make less than she thought I had. She said she would lose respect for me and be mad for having misled her.... this is a good indicator of what women really value. All the romantic cutsiness goes out the door when hard money comes into play.
Postscript: This "ready for a family" woman had no savings, lived with her mom, had an old car and an "HR career". At 29 she is now hittign the wall hard... but her date was supposed to live independently, have money, status and then be romantic/loving/"cute" on top. I am curious to see how it turns out.

Post: #6

Marriage is a political, social partnership.

Love is not political or social (at least not in the same way), and in my eyes the question shouldn't be whether it's permanent. The question should be whether it exists.

As for the article, psychology and neuroscience are yet-unsolved areas of human understanding. It seems simplistic to think that either field has progressed to a level where complex aspects of the human experience (love is probably one of the most complex) have been mapped out physically and understood.

Post: #7

Yeah, but the point of the article is that love is not some great mystery. And they do back it up with science here.

Post: #8

(01-29-2013 01:04 PM)polymath Wrote:  Marriage is a political, social partnership. Love is not political or social

I like how Ernst Jünger put it:

Quote:Everyone is anarchic; this is precisely what is normal about us. Of course, the anarch is hemmed in from the first day by father and mother, by state and society. Those are prunings, tappings of the primordial strength, and nobody escapes them. One has to resign oneself. But the anarchic remains, at the very bottom, as a mystery, usually unknown even to its bearer. It can erupt from him as lava, can destroy him, liberate him. Distinctions must be made here: love is anarchic, marriage is not.

Post: #9

(01-29-2013 12:11 PM)Asaxon Wrote:  Anecdote: An ex of mine once told me she was at the point in her life where she would not date anyone who had significant debt or issues because she wanted to start a family soon. I asked her what she would do if she fell in love with someone who had those problems. She looked at me and said she would not "allow" herself to fall in love with such a person. Probing deeper, I asked what if I now turned out to have debt or make less than she thought I had. She said she would lose respect for me and be mad for having misled her.... this is a good indicator of what women really value. All the romantic cutsiness goes out the door when hard money comes into play.
Postscript: This "ready for a family" woman had no savings, lived with her mom, had an old car and an "HR career". At 29 she is now hittign the wall hard... but her date was supposed to live independently, have money, status and then be romantic/loving/"cute" on top. I am curious to see how it turns out.

She's very smart. No one wants to live with a loser who can't pay their bills. That is one of the first things I look for in a girl. Is she responsible with her money because I don't want to take on her shit.

Post: #10

Jammer, how is she smart? She wastes all her money. She has saved nothing, lives off of family and spends her money on consumer goods, expecting her future husband to bring in the nestegg and provide for her. Not a very "romantic" notion but let us say it is her plan to leech. If she were smart she would make herself attractive and feminine instead of a loud, overweight liability which she is by now. If that is what you look for, the west is your paradise....
I bowed out of this one when the Tiffiny catalogues started showing up on my kitchen table and she talked about the "next step". I was not even red pill yet but knew that what she offered was a bad deal and that I was probably just a potential paycheck and beta provider in her mind...

Post: #11

(01-29-2013 04:04 PM)Asaxon Wrote:  Jammer, how is she smart? She wastes all her money. She has saved nothing, lives off of family and spends her money on consumer goods, expecting her future husband to bring in the nestegg and provide for her. Not a very "romantic" notion but let us say it is her plan to leech. If she were smart she would make herself attractive and feminine instead of a loud, overweight liability which she is by now. If that is what you look for, the west is your paradise....

That has nothing to do with the fact that she is smart for not wanting a dude who can't pay his bills. Her situation is irrelevant in this because money is a very important factor for marriage and the #1 reason for divorces. People think love will overcome money issues but they are sadly mistaken. Those money issues will crop up so you are better off marrying someone fiscally responsible even if it means you might have to sacrifice some looks.

Post: #12

Jammer, true but the hypocrisy is astounding... Women often have debt or nothing in savings yet expect the guy to be financially sound. I have barely ever met a western girl who was thrifty or just reasonable in the finance department. Might be me but every girl I date seems to spend whatever they make, be it 15k or 150k a year.

Post: #13

(01-29-2013 04:11 PM)Asaxon Wrote:  Jammer, true but the hypocrisy is astounding... Women often have debt or nothing in savings yet expect the guy to be financially sound. I have barely ever met a western girl who was thrifty or just reasonable in the finance department. Might be me but every girl I date seems to spend whatever they make, be it 15k or 150k a year.

Yeah - it is especially ironic considering women can pay for themselves nowadays since they have 'penetrated' the workforce en masse and people are actively working to eliminate the "glass ceiling" and "wage gap" as we speak.

They forget that we're all 'equal now'!

Wald

Post: #14

(01-29-2013 11:53 AM)soup Wrote:  There is truth in that I believe. One of the only good quotes to come from Sex in The City: “A man is only as faithful as his options.” Came across that quote in this article about "the girl code"

Oh how females exploit the ones who are oblivious or incapable of exploring those other options though...

Post: #15

Since reading Devlin's "Sexual Utopia" paper there hasn't been a single doubt in my mind that love does not exist. That biologically induced infatuation fades over time and then "love" suddenly becomes something that you have to work at, a conscious decision to devote yourself to another.

Post: #16

(01-29-2013 11:39 AM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  

(01-29-2013 11:21 AM)bojangles Wrote:  The problem with love is the difference in gender. Men love unconditionally, women love conditionally.

I would argue that love is conditional for both sides.

Just a girl would fall out of love with her boyfriend for losing a job/status/that quality x which makes her tingle, a man would fall out of love with a girl for getting really fat.

I think the reason why guys stay in relationships longer is that they have a lack of options or are married. In case of the latter, you may be fucked.

I also think guys take longer to fall out of love - even when your girlfriend gets fat, you can still see that sexy slim thing that caught your eye. Whereas when you lose your job/etc, a girl has already jumped off the boat emotionally and is waiting for the next good dick to come along.

The only time I can see a guy falling out of love is if he is lacking reciprocation with his main girl and finds what he seeks in another.

Wald

I'm inclined to disagree even though part of what you are saying is correct.

Men believe that love matters for the sake of it. Women love opportunistically.

I can only point to Rollo who did 3 magnificent posts in a row on 'Love'

Post: #17

(01-30-2013 04:13 AM)bojangles Wrote:  

(01-29-2013 11:39 AM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  

(01-29-2013 11:21 AM)bojangles Wrote:  The problem with love is the difference in gender. Men love unconditionally, women love conditionally.

I would argue that love is conditional for both sides.

Just a girl would fall out of love with her boyfriend for losing a job/status/that quality x which makes her tingle, a man would fall out of love with a girl for getting really fat.

I think the reason why guys stay in relationships longer is that they have a lack of options or are married. In case of the latter, you may be fucked.

I also think guys take longer to fall out of love - even when your girlfriend gets fat, you can still see that sexy slim thing that caught your eye. Whereas when you lose your job/etc, a girl has already jumped off the boat emotionally and is waiting for the next good dick to come along.

The only time I can see a guy falling out of love is if he is lacking reciprocation with his main girl and finds what he seeks in another.

Wald

I'm inclined to disagree even though part of what you are saying is correct.

Men believe that love matters for the sake of it. Women love opportunistically.

I can only point to Rollo who did 3 magnificent posts in a row on 'Love'

I cannot fully decide on what love is. I have read both Rollo's magnificent posts, read Heartiste's posts (back when he was Roissy, also), talked to red pill friends, looked at my own experiences and I still can't decide.

I posited my above points because they make objective sense and I have seen them in person.

I can also agree with what Rollo and Xsplat say, going from my own experiences with oneitis, but I am not sure how to fully interpret my experiences.

I guess at the moment, I try to distance myself from those failures because I'm still developing and recovering on that front and subconsciously define love as something that would make my past experiences easier to get over.

I'm not sure if what I said makes complete sense, but that's the best way I can explain it at the moment.

Wald

Post: #18

(01-30-2013 06:47 AM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  

(01-30-2013 04:13 AM)bojangles Wrote:  

(01-29-2013 11:39 AM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  

(01-29-2013 11:21 AM)bojangles Wrote:  The problem with love is the difference in gender. Men love unconditionally, women love conditionally.

I would argue that love is conditional for both sides.

Just a girl would fall out of love with her boyfriend for losing a job/status/that quality x which makes her tingle, a man would fall out of love with a girl for getting really fat.

I think the reason why guys stay in relationships longer is that they have a lack of options or are married. In case of the latter, you may be fucked.

I also think guys take longer to fall out of love - even when your girlfriend gets fat, you can still see that sexy slim thing that caught your eye. Whereas when you lose your job/etc, a girl has already jumped off the boat emotionally and is waiting for the next good dick to come along.

The only time I can see a guy falling out of love is if he is lacking reciprocation with his main girl and finds what he seeks in another.

Wald

I'm inclined to disagree even though part of what you are saying is correct.

Men believe that love matters for the sake of it. Women love opportunistically.

I can only point to Rollo who did 3 magnificent posts in a row on 'Love'

I cannot fully decide on what love is. I have read both Rollo's magnificent posts, read Heartiste's posts (back when he was Roissy, also), talked to red pill friends, looked at my own experiences and I still can't decide.

I posited my above points because they make objective sense and I have seen them in person.

I can also agree with what Rollo and Xsplat say, going from my own experiences with oneitis, but I am not sure how to fully interpret my experiences.

I guess at the moment, I try to distance myself from those failures because I'm still developing and recovering on that front and subconsciously define love as something that would make my past experiences easier to get over.

I'm not sure if what I said makes complete sense, but that's the best way I can explain it at the moment.

Wald

Maybe 'real love' should be left to the affection (non sexual) that one feels for one's family - grandparents/father/mother/siblings/spawn/cousins/nephews/nieces/grandchildren.