2171. Mid-life Dating — C6: Internal Burnout aka Bowel Distress

Surprise, ladies. I can’t hazard a guess of how many, but some of you may not be healthy enough for uninterrupted dates. So, I hereby stick my neck into an arena for which I’m unqualified by normal standards. I admit the chivalry articles partially inspired this opinion piece.

Disclosures:

• You’ll think I’m crazy, but stick around for a highly unusual and perhaps controversial or perhaps worthless example of What Women Never Hear.
• I’m neither a medical doctor nor other medical professional. However, I’ve studied human nature and motivation for 64 years. The following describes my analysis of bad habits of thought and emotion that lead to poor body functioning, specifically that which leads to frequent bowel disturbances.
• I neither understand nor describe the process that happens. I just identify likely causes of adverse bowel functioning that plague some men and women. I leave the details to medical professionals, while I focus on causes and the behavioral changes that can relieve discomfort.
• Let me know what you think. Those of you or who know someone with continual bowel distress, see if I am pretty close to identifying your or their causal habits. Everything is relative and nothing is precise.

Our physical condition is a function of what we eat. Our body functions are impacted, sometimes severely, by the result of how we feel and think about emotional matters. The following causes ‘internal burnout’, the result of special kinds of anxiety, to which I attribute bowel disturbances.

I choose self-image as the concept around which to explain causes. Self-image, the picture we each have of ourselves, governs our lives. We assiduously live within that picture of who we are and what we do, can do, and expect to do. We are motivated to pursue our self-interest, and our self-image contains our guiding beliefs and juggles our emotions to match our pursuit. If we fall out of line with it, or in effect contradict our self-image, we correct or rationalize deviations. We see normal functioning in this truism: If you think you can, you can, and you act accordingly. If you think you can’t, you’re right, and so you choose to do something else.

While it can’t be called faulty, some people’s self-image interferes with the proper functioning of their bodies. That’s where this is headed. What might the causes be of the symptoms that adversely disturb bowel functions?

Let’s look at it under four headings.

1. Internalizing. We should all know about this factor that plagues both introverts and extroverts. Many people focus too much on themselves. Their thoughts turn inward with personal concerns. They focus mostly on negative functions; they worry, agonize, and find faults in relationships, jobs, and their body. Thoughts such as, this ain’t right, that doesn’t work right, that hurts a little, it could be serious, and what am I to do? And worst of all, they focus far too much on things and about people they can do nothing about. Such as, how do I make someone like me? How do I impress them? How do I hide my bad side? How can I help someone, when I have the same fault?

Some people are so vulnerable to internalizing that it consumes their spare time. It causes them to fall prey to stirred-up emotions and hormones, enzymes, and digestive juices in excessive doses that act almost as if foreign to one’s GI tract and connected functions. It’s not what they internalize so much as too much of it. Not good, but then most of us have learned about the repercussions of too much worry, and so nothing new in all that. It’s just my recap of what too much internalizing leads to.

2. Guilt. Women live continually with guilt. Much of it reminds of their bad side, which stirs certain guilt to plague their spare time. Their focus on it intensifies by internalizing about their relationships.

Men are less prone. Their guilt swings mostly around their actions and independence. Guilt doesn’t make them bad, it stirs them to action. I’m not good enough, or I should do better; I have to try harder. Or, how do I handle that SOB or hide my cheating? A man’s sense of independence disconnects others from his guilt; he’s more a loner to relieve it. He can more easily than women take action that relieves guilt. Women have no such ‘easy release’ because their guilt is tied to someone else; they’re less independent.

3. Judging. This is new ground for readers. People don’t naturally talk along these lines. Too personal, too descriptive of our personal motivation, which is not usually a discussable subject. You may find yourself uncomfortable.

We judge and it takes place in two ways. Part of the shaping of our self-image is judging ourselves. It’s usually not much of a contribution to internal burnout, because natural pressures push us and sense of independence enables us to do something about it. (Example: I have to lose weight, dress more attractively, smile more, get a better job, give spouse more attention.) We are the only ones involved with fixing whatever we judge to need it. Action displaces disappointed emotions, and so we learn to either fix or accept and live with the rest. Internalizing about it usually does not make us sick.

But some people make themselves sick by ‘comparison shopping’. That is, judging themselves relative to others.

We are always in the process of judging others; it’s required for our own safety. For some, it gets out of hand. It’s an irresistible urge for all of us. But those vulnerable to internal burnout find themselves excessively wanting or lacking. It self-demeans their worth and belittles their picture of themselves.

Such people fuss with themselves. Not to work on recovery, but to stew about comparative shortcomings that can’t be fixed. Stewing takes less courage and steadfastness than to change habits, create different beliefs, develop new behaviors, or just take actions that keep one busy enough to divert attention from internal stewing.

They find themselves unhappy with what they do, want to do, or can do. Their self-image shrinks relative to others, while their self-interest urges them to do better. Confusion exacerbates anxiety, which invites more stewing.

4. Image Projection. There are two kinds to be covered, do it for yourself or for others.

a) Imagine one’s abilities and qualities to be different for the sole purpose of pleasing oneself. (I suggest the book The Magic of Thinking Big.) You can become a much better, powerful, influential person without inducing illness. The difference is this. You have to do it for no one but yourself.

b) Do it for others and you can too easily induce illness. Some people develop their behaviors and habits in order to generate an image to others that just isn’t what’s in their hearts. They don’t have to be phony or out to fool people so much as to convince themselves of who they are or want to be relative to others. They worry constantly even if they are being successful. They just want to be better instead of somebody definite, so there is no end to their internalizing about it.

Essentially, they are wannabes, such as women to be prettier or more important, guys to be more respected or admirable, alphas to be easily recognized as such, or who they really are as person to be hidden. Their internal problems come from this phenomenon; they set an objective, which is a process without an end, and so they manage progress, which induces internalizing, which impacts their gut.

Too much internalizing of emotional issues, excessive guilt, unproductive judging, and convincing others of one’s qualities cause internal burnout. Deliberately change your actions and you change your feelings. Deliberately change your feelings and you change your thinking and vice versa. Deliberately change your behaviors and you change your habits. Deliberately change them all and you can calm if not end bowel disturbances and malfunctioning. Then, you’re healthier for mid-life dating.

Deliberately changing oneself is very difficult for men. Not so for women, whom I advise this way. Change first to quit thinking in parallel with or emulating man-think and masculine values, standards, and expectations. If you return to specialize in your feminine nature, you can more easily and deliberately change the makeup of your beliefs and emotions in ways that are healthier.

Finally, there’s even a simpler way. When believers sin they can take it to the Lord and be forgiven. When people disappoint others, they seek forgiveness from the disappointed or offended. However, too many people can’t forgive themselves; they don’t think they deserve it. It intensifies their internalizing, which almost automatically stops with true forgiveness of oneself. Whether through the Lord or self, forgiveness generates better health.

 

2166. Dating in Mid-life — Part C4: Fail to Plan and You Plan to Fail

Dating success follows certain principles that govern the interaction for a developing relationship. Many functions are key.

You’re the tick, he’s the tock. You specialize in showing interest in him and then listening. You respect and enable him to communicate directly and you respond as indirectly as polite. He’s selling himself, so let him. If necessary, you show interest in him and he responds. You enable him to lead and make your spirit of cooperation to shine in his favor.

Howsomeever, as I used to hear country folk declare an upcoming contrary thought, you compete directly and even get in his face if necessary to 1) defend your sexual standards and expectations against his insistence and persistence, or 2) terminate what’s happening and put an end to the date or relationship.

Forget these two things that mean so much to you.

1. You can’t make him like you, especially if you try. Trying alone makes you do the wrong things. Example: Relying on three little words may help but it’s really insignificant; men judge on actions primarily and seldom on words. Be yourself. Make him win your affection, make himself worthy of you; he doesn’t appreciate unearned gifts.
2. Don’t try to impress him and don’t even disclose whatever affection you may have for him, except to say you like him—somewhat, starting to, perhaps even teasingly, but never a helluva lot. Mystery, remember? To like him some and respect him a lot are enough for him. He believes it better anyway if he figures for himself that your actions signify your affection to be real.

Instead of affection, express your admiration. That’s what he’s after. The masculine counterpoint to the female’s determined affection for sharing affection is earning self-admiration and yours is appreciated. Admiration simply registers with men more deeply than affection.

He either likes you as you are—virtues and shortcomings—and wants to keep you by his side. Or he doesn’t. When you’re being your true self, you can’t do much more to keep him alongside. If he quits selling himself to you, it’s all over. If you try to sell yourself to him, you act like a pushover, and his objective shifts to sex, which makes you booty or disposable after conquest.

Don’t be phony. A marriage likely won’t succeed very long if the wife shows up as different from the bride he married. So, phoniness is destructive long-range although you may gain some benefits in the near term.

Be quick to defend yourself instinctively and intuitively against any offense to your sense of good order and self-discipline, his displeasing you, embarrassing you, and especially his disrespecting you. Those things you don’t want to live with need to be disclosed when they first appear. The more you stand up for yourself pleasantly but uncompromisingly, the more respect you will earn and a man’s love is based on respect for women generally and you specifically.

Two things hold a man’s attention long enough to impress him with your respectability: refusing sex and standing up strongly for your dignity, values, and standards as both person and woman. Your objections not only earn his respect but make him uncomfortable, and discomfort changes a man’s behavior to favor you.

Out of all the above, you focus, perhaps re-learn some things and unlearn others, and use your superior relationship expertise to guide and shape dates into progressive steps of relationship development. It’s easy for me to spout it on screen, but you get both the fun and anxiety.

 

697. Wife’s Dependency — Section 2

This subject grows in complexity and contradictions, and confusion about terms prevents mutual understanding. Only one true dependency exists, and everything else is something else.

Mutual understanding comes from mutual acceptance of well-defined terms. The following four definitions help to understand a marriage and shape the outcome of courtship:

1.     Depends/dependence/dependency: These terms mean that one person provides physical comfort and protection and psychological support to another. Men provide the physical from which women extract the psychological benefits.

Men don’t need these factors from another person, and so husband doesn’t depend on wife. (She should be aware, however, he probably wants some measure of comfort and feedback that affirms his psyche also known to women as ego.)

2.     Deference: Honors and courtesies that reflect credit and value on another person.

Opening doors for her, seating her at table, washing her car, etc. If a particular deference can be connected to his role, and he accepts it as a responsibility or duty, he will do it as if his idea and make it habitual.

3.     Expectations: What one person wants to see in another, usually the second somehow recognizing or pleasing the first.

4.     4P: My shorthand for producing, providing, protecting, and problem solving. This natural role of a husband fills one side of the only dependency.

Tomorrow we review some natural basics with love removed.

472. What Moms Never Hear — D: Source Code

Values, standards, and expectations add to a person’s belief system. Children too, and they mostly come in that order.

J Children naturally look for and primarily absorb values from parents in the weans, heroes in the tweens, and peers in the teens.

J Values absorbed in the weans and tweens determine vulnerability of teens to peer pressure. The more that parents and mature heroes are copied and duplicated, the less that immature teen values, customs, and expectations will be attractive and adopted.  

J Not implanting a moral foundation weakens a child’s belief system with doubts, uncertainties, and lack of guidance. Combined with puberty’s hormones, it endangers the pubescent years with low self-esteem, negative self-image, and doubtful self-interest. Teen extremes will follow.

J Mom is best qualified to teach good and evil and other moral standards in babyhood and toddlerhood.

J Mother is best qualified to inculcate—and father to enforce—obedience to things higher than the child—e.g., God, duty, religious standards, dad, mom, teachers, authority figures, laws, customs, family loyalty, parental expectations, sibling respect.

J Filled with moral, religious, and mature adult-like values and aspirations, a child is well armored against teen pressures, values, and vicissitudes. The mind empty of such things is vulnerable.

Adult thinking and mature feelings enable the adolescent to recognize immature values for what they are and judge whether appropriate for him or her.

Parents also need development. See post 474.

222. Female dominance: Gone! —Part 6

Females succumb to male expectations and standards, which lower their value as mates. They accept commitment instead of taking time to generate a man’s devotion.

⌂ Commitment promises togetherness with her. ♥ Devotion delivers his dedication to her.

⌂ Commitment only promises to rule out other women. ♥ Devotion delivers it, because she’s worth not losing.

⌂ Commitment signals she’s worthy enough for him. ♥ Devotion signals she’s more than worthy for him.

⌂ Commitment’s promise of togetherness may last or not, because only time and future tell. ♥ Devotion to her lasts even though living together may not happen.

⌂ Commitment dies easily under daily pressures that eat away at promises and togetherness. ♥ Devotion of self to one person triggers a man’s nature to provide and protect against life’s pressures.  

⌂ Promises require no work at the present. ♥ Devotion exhibits personal sacrifices today.

⌂ Commitment is a two-way, negotiated exchange of obligations. ♥ Devotion is one-way verbal and physical communication aimed at inspiring two-way dedication.

⌂ Commitment leaves room to blame her for togetherness problems. ♥ Devotion bonds him more tightly and inspires him to blame everything else before her.

⌂ Commitment has no obligation to excuse a mate’s mistakes. ♥ Devotion finds excuses to protect one’s mate.

⌂ Promises make only vague and risky commitment, as females see it. ♥ Women crave someone’s devotion.

Commitment is infatuation, lust, love, or maybe empty words. The only proof lies in the absence of breaking up.

Devotion is observable. He courts her delicately and doesn’t push too hard for conquest, because he’s afraid of losing her.

NOTE: She did it again. The nice lady that inspired post 219 also inspired this one.

[More on the shattering of female dominance appears at posts 209, 194, 173, 159, and 151.]

135. Do women know jack about Jack? —Part 6

A man’s love is founded on respect. And men respect women that persistently uphold values and standards that uplift women relative to men but not at the expense of men. It includes what men would not initiate on their own.

Femininity builds such respect, but Feminism discourages it.

One woman describes one way that men respond to feminine infusions: “Men need femininity. They call it ‘color in a black and white world.’ It heals their wounds, soothes their spirits and recharges their batteries. It is one of the things men look for in their wives; someone who makes them more powerful by feeding them with their femininity.” [‘Claudia’ as quoted in Keys to the Kingdom by Alison A. Armstrong, PAX Programs, Inc., p. 151]

Femininity reflects intense femaleness. It includes values, standards, and expectations on feminine mystique, female modesty, religious morality, faithful monogamy, female-defined manners, female-friendly social standards, holy matrimony, and with emphasis against offense to a woman’s sensibilities. It generates personal power dealing with men. Such individual, social, and cultural values weaken the hormone hurricane winds of male dominance into either submission or toleration.

When the female gender institutionalizes the options just cited, men learn to respect females more than males. Such unconditional respect for women generally undergirds the conditional respect for one woman that eventually transmutes into enduring love after romantic love fades.

Our old school mothers made it work, and our forefathers tamed Nature and built American greatness out of wifely inspirations, expectations, encouragements, gratefulness, and appropriate ‘color’.

Our foremothers did two things very differently than modern women. First, they competed with other women for a man with sex removed from the equation. Second, they cooperated with their husband and returned sex to the relationship. They knew male dominance has to be outsmarted and outmaneuvered and not blatantly squelched.

Further, they exploited their femaleness to clarify two very different and cooperative roles as a couple—separate responsibilities for each. With such purposely built personal advantages, our foremothers balanced relationship power themselves.

Ask your grandmother!

[More jack about Jack appear at posts 129, 114, 97, 91, and 7.]

133. Woman as Boss — #1 — Introduction

The male and female ego go head-to-head when a woman is the boss. Many men can’t handle it, but of course the problem is each man’s. Her best practice at all times rests with dodging disrespect. Using or avoiding the following practices accumulate benefits over time.

1.      Leadership means to inspire people to do what they may not particularly care to do and do it well. Over-supervision squelches inspiration and trust, which weakens belief in the leader, which reduces respect.

2.      Management means arranging things, shaping events, and coordinating outcomes. Micromanaging squelches initiative, signals distrust, and undercuts the authority of others. Each of these results earns disrespect, and men are particularly sensitive to loss of authority.

3.      The female nature easily leads to miscalculations and misjudgments in the workplace. For example, some women pay too much attention to emotional disturbances that men expect to resolve or live with on their own. Interference can breed disrespect.

4.      Some women imitate the way they think men lead, manage, and emphatically boss. They duplicate what they see, have seen, or deduce that men do. Acting outside her female character earns disrespect, and getting bossier from frustration earns more.

5.      Some women focus more on the process of working than producing results. They seek to integrate relationships and manage emotions. By taking their eye off what workers are producing, they lose respect.  

6.      Their child-raising instincts push women into bad habits dealing with subordinates. The male nature cringes at orders from an authority figure female. Men can adjust to women telling them WHAT to do but not HOW to do it. When told HOW, men lose interest in doing it, and she loses respect. (Women can test this first hand with their Honey-do list.)

7.      Don’t complain and don’t explain. When the boss does either, she empowers others to judge her—and they will. Their respect for her declines with each judgment that they or someone else could do better.

8.      Whatever policies, practices, and rules she formulates or follows need no explanation when they have been violated. If she explains to the violator, she gives up her authority as discriminator about violations and will be judged weak. Either her or her rules will be found wanting and disrespected. 

9.      Women focus on relationships in the workplace. Men deal with principles that smooth and level out emotions. For example: Men work best under these leadership principles. Assign responsibility to each person such that everyone is aware of who does what. Delegate authority to each person sufficient to fulfill their responsibility. Hold everyone accountable for a job well done or not done satisfactorily. Bosses that do this well earn greater respect.

10.  Praise and chastise individuals ONLY in private for reasons explained next below.

11.  Praise and chastise teams as a whole and don’t cite individuals for special recognition, good or bad. Other team members will disagree when they are not included. This far too easily breeds envy, jealousy, and whining that fertilizes disrespect for the boss. Those not recognized in front of others do not have access to the boss’ agenda. So, they can’t be expected to understand how ‘heroic’ is someone else. Also, they feel they contributed at least as much and maybe more. That is, “The boss just doesn’t know what all goes on where I work.”

12.  The female nature automatically earns less respect and less enthusiasm from people in a structured organization. So, a woman boss’ strength lies with femininity. Why? Because men greatly respect women strong on feminine mystique, female modesty, religious loyalty, and moral standards that men would not choose for or by themselves, and female-defined and -friendly manners, expectations, and social standards. Any effective leader needs respect above all else.

All this is not to say a woman can’t be a good boss, but she has a much tougher assignment than men. See CONTENTS page at blog top for more about Woman as Boss.

132. Do women know jack about Jack? —Part 5

♂ Men delight in easy conquest. It adds temporary value to her, but devalues her as keeper.

♂ Few things expose a man’s character more readily than being repeatedly denied sex by a woman on whom he has set his sights for conquest.

♂ Boys raised with little affection before puberty neither provide nor respond well to affection later in life. [More about displays of affection at post 3.]

♂ Conquerors can be grateful and possess good intentions, but their drive to conquer another woman never completely dies. It’s the male nature, and only devotion earned by one woman holds it in check.

♂ A woman’s refusal for unmarried sex builds virtue that earns a man’s respect and signifies that she will probably be faithful to him.

♂ Courtship without sexual relations teaches boys and men to suppress their aggression and honor a female’s standards and expectations. The process also exposes males to the female’s non-sexual qualities.

♂ Easily available, unobligated, and unmarried sex aids the conquerors’ pursuit. On the other hand, men must work harder to impress and ‘sell’ themselves as guardians of female interests when women abstain outside marriage.

♂ Enduring love for men is based on respect earned earlier about her virtue, self-respect, likeability as mate, but overwhelmingly about her gratitude for who he is and what he does.

♂ Fathers may acquiesce, but they don’t take kindly to mothers accepting and supporting the inevitability of a daughter’s unmarried sexual activity.  

♂ Failure of a man to honor a woman’s standards and expectations means more of the same will follow after conquest regardless of what he says before that monumental event.

[More jack about Jack appear at posts 114, 97, 91, and 7.]