767. Beware Red Flags — Part 3

Her Highness Sara prompted this series asking about identifying Mr. Right. I twisted her question so that we look for identifying Mr. Wrong before a woman goes too far.

A man’s potential for husbanding/fathering can be estimated by objectively and unemotionally evaluating red flags before your eyes. This post cites red flags regarding in-laws. Some flags are raised by marriage whether invited or not.

·        Beware if your candidate’s character, religion, and ambitions were formed significantly different from your parents. If he’s from ‘another world’ or culture, think twice, thrice, or more. (Young couples are very unqualified for evaluating in-law interactions many years in the future. Romantic love may also delay recognizing early problems, but a couple’s life suffers greatly when she finds she later has to take sides.) 

·        The thought of him as son-in-law revolts your parents. Beware if one or both can’t stand him personally. (Don’t think for a moment you can reverse their opinions; they’ll always look for the worst in him. They also will forever suspect your judgments for having brought him permanently into their lives. Anecdotes always cite exceptions, but the odds are small.)

Other red flags are raised as the result of your curiosity and questioning:

·        Have him describe his parents. After meeting them, do you agree?

·        Can you love and do more than just get along with his parents after you’ve spent some time with them? Your intentions don’t count. Especially regarding his mother?

·        He will likely treat you much the same as his father treats his mother. Observe closely. Okay with you?

·        Is his mother overly protective of him? Does she tamper with his intentions or question his decisions? Beware if yes.

·        Has he fully cut mom’s apron strings? Does he have to consult her before making decisions? Double beware if yes.

·        Does his mother show a deep and intrusive interest in HOW you will build your nest, his castle, your relationship? (Don’t expect him to tell her to back off, early or later. Better for you to do it before marriage, and let her reaction raise or lower the red flag.)

·        If he’s not close to his family, he probably doesn’t highly value family connectedness and closeness. It will likely carry over into the family you build with him. Okay with you?

More tips tomorrow.

531. He Never Measures Up

Many relationship ills arise, when he doesn’t measure up to her independent values, standards, and expectations. It prompts:

N  Her to develop, expand, and fine tune her critical spirit.

N  Her to forgive him but not forget it.

N  Him to forget her with no thought of forgiving.

N  Other female arms to open to him.

N  Him to cheat.

If he doesn’t measure up, their courtship was stigmatized with one or more of the following that push her toward the recycle bin:

M Courtship was too short for full and mutual exposure of characters beneath their personalities.

M She expected to change him after marriage. First, an insult signifying he’s not respected, which he takes as challenge to his significance. Second, an affront that his male nature instinctively finds unacceptable.

M Conquerors consider their selves ‘perfect’ for the conquered, or she would not have yielded. Telling him otherwise does not compute, especially after marriage that also confirms his ‘perfection’ for her. 

M She hid her true character; she played it phony. She then changed after the altar, and he faced a woman different from the one he married. He never signed on to her surprise catalog of post-marital values, standards, and expectations. Consequently, he has little interest in measuring up.

M Because he bought into her courtship phoniness, she confirmed or lost principle-based respect for him as a man. Her emotion-based conditional respect substituted until marriage. After that he began to not measure up, and then her conditional respect faded more and more with his ‘mistakes’ and ‘shortcomings’ and expansion of her critical spirit.

NOTE: The last set of causes and effects is complex but worth a re-read and some study with these thoughts in mind:

·        Principle-based respect works much like unconditional love; it is an independent function of what the giver sees as eternally worthwhile and respectable about men, women, or their genders.

·        Emotion-based respect works much like conditional love; it depends on how the receiver makes himself worthy as identified and appraised by the giver’s judgment system.

If he doesn’t measure up, he’s much less likely to stay loyal, faithful, or even around.

530. Response to Viewer — Item 06

Princess Easybreezy prompted this article.

Respect and disrespect are very personal and subjective judgments. Her character determines everything, because her values, beliefs, and expectations provide the backdrop against which she measures every man of interest.

She perceives his character traits and flaws and judges him as eligible for her respect, disrespect, or acceptance anyway. She makes the choice based on her self-interest, and respect is not always top of mind.

Some women withdraw their respect of a man based on single issues they consider vital, such as dishonesty, abuse of others, and deviousness that you mention. Other women don’t draw the same distinctions. Consequently, neither a list of flaws nor rules for handling them are appropriate, because women have a bigger chicken and egg dilemma. It calls for individual reason, logic, and judgment. (Paraphrasing Dennis Prager: A woman’s happiness is proportional to her putting reason and logic over emotional decision making.)

The Chicken: To judge and select a man with the best potential, women should have high standards and strong-willed expectations, more hard-headedness and less soft-heartedness. Her nature and character measure the value of his character to her. The more critical her values, the better her screening ability and the better the man she selects.

The Egg: The more critical her screening process, the fewer men qualify. In an age of many men with less than admirable traits, high standards and expectations work against her interests. However, lots of screening experience helps her.

Searching for Mr. Right brings up emotional issues that weaken her screening ability. But there’s a way out: Mr. Good Enoughs flood the marketplace. One of them can far more easily fulfill her emotional needs than the apparent Mr. Right can survive hard-headed and well-reasoned screening.

464. Boob language — Part 16

♦       Men are not into new fashions. Except for possible conquest, they merely avoid styles older or beneath their individual standard.

♦       Except for heels rounded for easy conquests, female grooming and packaging works best to capture and hold a new man’s attention.

♦       Modest, unsexy, but classy apparel reflects self-respect. Appearance stimulates a man’s curiosity, but her self-respect makes him unsure and cautious. This ignites his imagination to discover her possible value to him.

♦       Habitually well-groomed, neatly attired, and highly attractive females generate more opportunities to pick and choose. They also avoid many guys’ first impression turn offs.

♦       The well-dressed and meticulously groomed woman makes her boyfriend or husband look good.

♦       When thin ain’t in. Before Feminism all females had a better chance of landing a husband. Customs dominated by Womanhood made physical features far less important than marriage. Women emphasized femininity by dressing modestly and attractively 24/7, which males just happened to view regularly. The custom deemphasized body shape and other features. Outer appearance hid or disguised distinguishing features so as to emphasize inner character. Marriage was in, divorce was not.    

448. VIRTUE—Magnet for Males —SECTION II

We know that men judge women mainly by their outer appearance. So, women focus on the males’ habits.

Women give men no credit for reading the inner woman, and, admittedly, men don’t do it well. But, men perceive subliminal messages that feed their self-interest, however weak, wrong, or garbled the signals.

Conquering thoughts fill a man’s mind. Simultaneously, his subconscious registers many messages that women either send by design, ignorance, or chance. The messages accumulate and synthesize into his interpretation of her virtues, from which he intuitively predicts her value to his present, future, or both.

Virtue ‘credits’ accumulate from her attire, grooming, attitude, and behaviors that emphasize:

©     Modesty rather than sex.

©     Persona rather than a specific shape.

©     Self-sufficiency rather than need-for-attention.

©     Self-respect rather than easytoget.

©     Hardtoget rather than low self-esteem.

©     Respect for other women rather than trying to steal their man.

©     Self-confidence rather than worry.

©     Avoiding shame and guilt rather than recovering from it.

©     Enjoyable femaleness rather than sense of inferiority.

©     Inner strength rather than emotional weakness.

©     Open pleasantness rather than anger.

©     Prettiness rather than comfort.

©     Neatness rather than sloppiness.

©     Hits as compliment rather than taking offense.

©     Morality imposed over the immoral.

©     Authority rather than vulnerability.

©     Character rather than uncertainty.

©     Standards rather than wishy-washiness.

©     Mystery rather than disclosure.

©     Need for respect rather than popularity.

©     Unmarried sex as taboo rather than okay.

©     Female pride rather than faked masculinity.

The value that men place on these and other factors varies by individual. But the accumulation and synthesis of messages determines her virtuous character, her value to his present and future.

The next post describes learning about virtue.

303. Weans, tweens, and teens, #11 — Immature kids

Immature adults emerge from this background: Kids enter puberty with empty minds primed to vacuum up adolescent values that produce these characteristics in adulthood:

·        Action comes before responsibility.

·        Self-centeredness overpowers ‘us’.

·                   Good intentions explain away lack of results.

·        Taking risks overrides common sense.

·        Others must earn my respect.

·        Popularity is more important than character.

·        Symbols are as good as substance.

·        Sex outweighs fidelity.

·        Parental supervision offends.

·        Wisdom resides in my peers.

They get that way from poor parenting in the weans and tweens. The following point to impending immaturity when present at puberty.

They lack:

o   A good work ethic and strong sense of personal responsibility.

o   Religious beliefs and moral convictions that guide them toward living up to something bigger than themselves.

o   Dependence upon parents for wisdom, guidance, support, back up.

o   Respect for authority and authority figures.

o   A foundation of unconditional respect for all people.

o   Ambitions (underdeveloped) for their own adult life. Not necessarily what they want to do, but expectations and preferably dreams of living in the adult world of responsibility, work, mature fun, family building.

They have:

o   Dreams of becoming a teen instead of an adult. They focus on peers, popularity, fashions, outside-the-family activities, and earlier duplication of older kids.  

o   Respect others only for what they can do for the child.

o   Self-centeredness. Selfishness comes easily to them. Their heart is soft for peers, but hard for most others.

o   A mother that did not nurture the child well in the weans, a father that did not lead well in the tweens, or both.

They exit adolescence with convicted beliefs that values learned in the teens are right and proper for adult life. This happens for one reason: They entered puberty with a mind empty of mature adult, albeit underdeveloped, values into which they expected to grow.  

[More about childhood mental growth appears in posts 268, 239, 223, 208, 197, 193, 192, 187, 178, and 177. Scroll down or search by the number with a dot and space following it.]

291. Sex and the fickle girl — Part 13

♀  She can’t fix her love life, if she can’t call it broke because of her misapprehensions, miscues, and mistakes dealing with her man. Blaming him takes her eye off her relationship expertise. (She chose him, her decision prevailed.)

♀  Women look for love in all the wrong places. His love never blossoms or seldom lasts, when she places his showing affection ahead of her showing respect, his fashion-plate image ahead of his rugged individualism, his hunkiness ahead of his character.

♀  Women expect men to hear what was never said. Men cannot, will not, or do not follow a woman’s verbal meanderings and impreciseness as other women can, will, and do.

♀  People miss a major point about teaching abstinence for teens. Girls firm up their confidence, expand interpersonal skills, and boost their relationship expertise by repeatedly saying ‘No’. Boys learn what’s permissible, acceptable, and valuable in the female world.

♀  Pretty women are treated better, and any woman can be prettier. Clothes and grooming impress both men and women.

♀  It’s rhetorical, but why do women try so hard to please men with sex but not please them with feminine charm, beauty, and strength of character that men admire? Men admire beauty, but they use sex.

♀  Shack up as substitute for or step toward marriage puts a couple’s destiny in the man’s hands. (Also, eighty percent of marriages fail after escalation from cohabiting.)

[More about sex and fickle females appears in posts 259, 246, 229, 216, 201, 184, 170, 160, 148, 137, 93, and 34. Scroll down or search by the number followed by a dot and space.]

269. Dirge follows urge to merge

Women are in charge of relationships, but do they know what, how, and why to do it?

♀ Persistently rejecting boys’ offers for first-time sex teaches girls to ‘read’ and evaluate things more important than looks and love—his conscience, values, and attitudes.

♀ Ignore or pardon his character traits to enter a relationship, and girls enter an unknown world sans map and compass.

♀ By age 21 she should score 100% on this test: Distinguish a man’s devotion for her as a person from another man’s commitment to join her in a relationship.

♀ Virtue makes a person shine relative to others. Conscience is virtue honored by strength of character. Virtuous character outshines physical attractiveness.  

♀ Proving a man’s good character takes time, and virtual virginity works best. Marry a man of good character, and her future brightens with permanence.

♀ The TV in the bedroom adds more straying power than staying power for both sexes. Late night shows program the mind for what’s bigger, better, and more appealing outside the home. The body’s relaxed, the mind’s vulnerable.

Men get the urge. Women agree to merge. Children hear the dirge.