2633. Universal Motivators: Compatible Love and Sex Drives

Many major motivators come out of our biological history; all provided to ensure that our species doesn’t die off. They shape our lives more dramatically than women realize or men care. Our amazing design inheritance that began at post 2631 continues here. I describe different but compatible motivations that arise from the genders.

Men are what they do; they compete independently to dominate the what of living life together. Women are who they are; they dependently cooperate to dominate the how of living life together. He focuses on the present, as he can handle what’s coming tomorrow. She focuses on the future, to make it easier for what he faces tomorrow.

• Competition vs. Cooperation. Everyone wants to get his way. Women need and prefer peace in both their relationships and raising offspring. Intuitively, relationship peace comes easier when women persuade men to honor the female way of life instead of women trying directly to get their way with men. Cooperate as will husbands and wives to live together amicably, they continually compete. Each with opposed motivational intent to get their way with the other, he mostly in the present, she mostly for their future. It matters considerably who dominates the present and their future together, but two complimentary genders manage to work it out amidst eight different mixtures of love and sex drives.
• Dominant Gender. Men can get their way by force—physical, emotional, trickery—or the willingness of a woman to yield to a man’s persona. Men have little else to work with associating with the same woman over time. Consequently, relationships are the work of woman, at least the wives.
• Superior Gender. Women sense it but instinctively do not disclose that female is the superior gender. Men are dominant. However, unclaimed and unadvertised superiority can render male dominance peaceful. Apparently the weaker of the two sexes, women are endowed with expertise capable of resisting and even overcoming male dominance. They are able to persuade men to give up their independent lives for the sake of helping fulfill female hopes and dreams. It’s mostly done in the arena of love and sex.
• Female Love. The female nature is flooded with two kinds of love. One is mind- and heart-driven but subject to change or termination, conditional and not permanent. The other is more powerfully and permanently energized by specially designed hormones energized by pregnancy and giving birth; we call it mother-love. It motivates women to influence men to join up as couples for life. Being so unique and unchangeable, it has a hormone-driven counterpart in the male nature. Women understand mother love, but they can’t fathom its male counterpart.
• Male Love. Men are what they do. Born with two different versions of love, men find love as they fulfill their sense of responsibility and duty. It shapes who they are and what they do to sustain that love. As an offshoot, they can find under the proper relationship conditions that they can and do love a woman. Love of children is a function of the masculine sense of being responsible for them and what goes with them.
• Female Sex Drives. As men do, women have two sex drives. Physiological desire to conceive and psychological desire to confirm her importance in life and value to her man.
• Male Sex Drives. The male nature is flooded with two very different sex drives. Both are hormone driven, but one is more so and is unique and unchangeable. As intense and unchanging as the female counterpart of mother-love, the primary version motivates men to endlessly chase attractive women, conquest only on their mind.

It boils down to this. Mother-love and a man’s primal drive to initiate first time sex with attractive women are virtual equivalents in terms of their importance in life and propagation of the species. Men spread their seed; mothers keep children close to more effectively raise them, and we keep multiplying just as God figured we would.

I don’t know if God planned or handled it, but women perceived millennia ago that they were disadvantaged. Men got the most pleasure, while women got the heaviest burden.

It was a raw environment, however, so God also made us compatible, gave us free-will, enabled us to grow a self-image, let us aim at getting our way, motivated us through self-interest, and taught that competition produced the best results for everyone, but women were specially designed to exploit cooperation to better get their way in life.

Out of that scramble, the superior sex led the dominant gender into both lifetime commitment as couples and dedicated to marriage as relationship glue. Who said she’s the weaker sex?

2631. Universal Motivators (Revised)

Being the superior gender, women have ability, but not all know enough to satisfy a man or themselves with a man. Most need more knowledge, and the following universal motivators  may help. I present motivational forces common to both sexes here and motivational differences in the next article. It’s also background for other articles.

God must have designed both sexes this way, because it’s the way we act and interact.

• Compatible. Both sexes are designed such that each man and woman can be a compatible mate. However, it may be harder to be one than find or keep one.
• Self-image. Since childhood, each of us carries and maintains a picture of who we are, what we can do, and how well we like ourselves in our various roles in life. The picture continually and subconsciously updates out of the life we live.
• Self-interest. We are all motivated by self-interest. It’s who we are in terms of what we do and think. Plus, we are all endowed with free will that provides the independence needed to live and guide self-interest to our advantage.
• Get My Way. Life is shaped by intention and ability to get our way with things, in events, and among people we encounter. Self-interest is the governor that guides us and by which we don’t overdo it. Also, we try competitively to at least not lose in matters that directly affect self-interest.
• Competition. All four motivators above come together to energize us to compete with other members of both sexes. In that way, endless competition determines what happens on earth. Whether peaceful or not, it’s the most dynamic, balancing, and productive method by which everyone pursues self-interest. Having the ability and sensing opportunity to compete, we are inspired to do the best we can for ourselves. Others doing the same generates the balance.

Summary. Compatibility with a mate is life’s objective, and we are all invited. Self-image enables us to vary the speed of life. Self-interest gets us into and out of trouble, enabled by free-will that provides essential and independent thought. To get my way enables us to shape life as we desire it. Competition keeps us together and yet enables us to produce an independent and worthwhile life.

As necessity is mother of invention and frustration is the father. So, hope is the mother of competition and progress is the father.

In short, human design turns us loose to do the best we can serving ourselves in the hope that we can someday share our good fortune with a mate of choice. Pardon the hubris, but God must have also intended for us to multiply successfully enough that we would not become extinct. It’s next.

2612. Why Love is Never Enough — Rule 2: Don’t Complain

There is no such thing as motivation, there is only self-motivation. The more or harder you try to get someone to do what you want, the more likely you fail. Even if you succeed, extended or final results may contradict the worth of your efforts. (It’s the same with child-raising, too.)

Everyone is guided and makes decisions according to their self-interest. Often called the universal motivator, it enables every individual to guide their way through dealings with others. Knowing full well their own interest, they can stick to it, trade off separate interests in favor of more mutual interests, or they can relinquish getting their way by allowing the other person to get their way.

By following Rule 2, wives can avoid many kinds of minor ill-effects that compound over time and rub raw the self-interest of hubby and with repercussions for her. Minor disturbances in self-interest can cause major resentment in husband without wife noticing it or becoming fully aware.

A man’s reactions to a woman’s complaints have far reaching results that women can’t anticipate to protect their self-interest. In that regard more than any other I can think of, men are strange ducks. They lack understanding suitable for wives to predict outcomes, perceive what comes next, or keep their relationship or marriage evenly balanced. Consequently, I promote the use of Rule 2 as critical to wife-think in the matrimonial arena.

Rule 2: Don’t complain. When you complain, he is automatically not okay until he proves to himself that he can do nothing about it, which reduces it to guilt and men avoid, fix, or forget guilt. Fixing your download of guilt is not satisfying, although what and how he fixes it may provide some satisfaction.

Wives use complaints four ways, as they try to directly motivate husbands or shape manly self-interest to agree more closely with woman-think.

1) By unloading wifely problems as complaints to husband, she expects hubby to be motivated to relieve the pressures if not solve her problems. Because of her love, it’s a privilege for him. It’s a price he feels burdened to pay for liking her and her living with him.

2) Wives expect husbands to appreciate them more if they report about matters they used their personal ability to resolve before hubby had to get involved. In short, she may just be reporting what happened to her today. Such reports, however, can register with husband as complaints. Especially if anguish surrounds her report of what happened and what she did or couldn’t do about it.

3) She seeks to impress him with her acuity, aptitude, discernment, or usefulness. She’s as effective as he believes in her abilities.

4) She’s a constant complainer. Nothing is ever right in her eyes, and she proves it to herself by continually reporting how accurately she can distinguish right from wrong, what is and what should be, and especially about her lack of respect of faith in other people. It’s the worst expression of the female ego with several debilitating effects on her life as wife, mother, friend. It weakens the spirits of those around her. It makes her less effective as the indirect leader, the heart and soul of the home. It elicits sympathy but little else—especially not manly admiration— for her inability to find relief and solace within herself.

Hearing her complaints, hubby may consider himself better qualified but ignored, figure out a better solution was available, or conclude she didn’t trust him to help. In that event, she upstages him with too much emphasis on what she believes and contradicts what he perceives and may believe. It amounts to short-circuiting her personality and making her unlikeable to husband and probably any man.

Man-think differs from woman-think.

She likes to talk about happenings in her life. Men don’t want to hear about troublesome things about which they can do nothing. If unable to do anything, whether routine disclosure or complaint, hubby takes it personally. Why is she telling me this? What does she expect me to do? After many such incidences, husband’s resentment sets in.

Women know how guilt motivates them and presume it works the same way with men. NOT! Men either fix what they can or they ignore any guilt she may be flinging. If he presumes that he is or should be guilty of malfeasance in her eyes, he absorbs it prepared to take action. However, if unfixable or no options are available, men forget it; they neither harbor nor are self-motivated by guilt imposed on them by women. Oh, a loving husband may do it for awhile out of his sense of duty, but the negative sense of it eventually boils into resistance, resentment, and can end in retaliation.

The main point is this: Negative reports of what happened to her today can carry messages that husband isn’t doing a good job of supporting her. He should do better, but he’s unable to read her mind or know what to do about what she expects.

Even her innocent complaints can be received different from what she intends. Wives are good at reading their husbands, at perceiving the effects of wifely speech. However, husbands who love their wives become virtually unreadable when faced with a woman’s complaints.

Such men are often caught between the rock of uncertainty of what to do and the hard place of doing their duty. Both issues have a demoralizing effect. Inability to take action when it’s needed, and how to satisfy himself doing the right thing.

Example: Wife says, “The lawn is so ugly; can you mow it today?” He forgot. It hits him as guilt that he had to be reminded. He resents it and can find no satisfaction in doing what she expects. Once he finishes mowing, he finds satisfaction in his achievement. Whether or not it outweighs his earlier resentment is moot. Too much resentment piled up from poorly worded complaints can stifle a husband’s ambitions to continue as wife expects. (Example of a better and indirect way for her: “Do you still intend to buy a new lawn mower next year?” and his mind clicks over to this: Durn, almost forgot, and he heads for the old mower with good expectations for next year. She’s more likeable for having reminded him of his future expectations and satisfactions.)

Wifely complaints are usually heard as surprises and neither men, leaders, nor husbands like surprises. Surprises inform negatively that husband has a duty to do something. It’s not his to figure out; your complaining directly advises him to listen to you, and it doesn’t put your best foot forward.

Wifely complaints register that she’s unhappy. But men seek to neutralize complaints rather than make someone happy. Wives often follow husband’s satisfying actions to resolve their complaints with further complaints until wives are happy with the solution, which is usually more than how or what he fixed. They aren’t really happy about the results he produced. He’s satisfied, but she’s not happy with it.

It’s the beastly side of the female nature. When wives identify what they want done, it’s to make her happy with the finished ‘fix’ that she envisioned or expected. When he fixes what she wants done, he satisfies himself. Her ‘happy’ and his satisfaction are very different, often conflict, and too easily keep her on offense and him on defense. Just the way simple complaints are worded and expected to be ‘fixed’ to please her can create an unfriendly environment for husbands.

Example: The dryer doesn’t work. He replaces the belt and notices that it squeaks a little and plans to buy some lubricant for the new belt. He says nothing but she hears the squeak and, frustrated at hubby’s obvious incompetence, calls the repairman who adds lubricant. Husband explodes when he learns of it.

Complaints are not innocent. They stimulate adverse effects for you. Any complaint implies husband may be guilty, which men don’t live with and must shed or forget, which causes husband to pry into your thinking, which can confirm his guilt if he detects that you complain about him, which means he has to do something to ‘fix’ your complaint, which may or may not solve your problem. After many complaints, out of frustration—or to shed too much guilt flung at him—he may just flee to some other thing of interest or distraction. Maybe work longer hours, work his secretary overtime for more closeness, just get away, go get a drink, or chase a gal.

It’s an unfriendly position for a man and even harder to accept very much of it. So, your frequent complaints tend to corrupt his marital spirit. Continual complaints pressure him to think of separation, independence, freedom, another kind of woman. Doesn’t mean he will proceed along that line of thought, but marital solidarity weakens from your endless complaining.

And you say, but how do I handle something that doesn’t work or needs attention? First, don’t presume to know and don’t tell him what or how to fix it. If you need help, don’t pass on your opinions until he asks. Gently mention that something needs attention and you depend on him to fix it. Let him prioritize his schedule, investigate, and then get more details from you, so he can figure out what he should do. He likes to figure out the details under his own ambition to satisfy himself. Making you happy is secondary.

Second, use that innocent approach until you learn what husband is like and how and what he appreciates from you when you need help or to fix something. If you need help, he expects to fix whatever it is without your help until he asks you. If you know what he should do, you can do it yourself. Why ping on him? He’s busy with more important things.

You will probably read that and think that I alibi for men. Nope! I am just telling you how the male mind works when women complain or try to tell them what to do or how to do it. With husbands, either she can fix it or not. If not, then let him do it until he asks for info or help.

A wife’s constant complaining prevents a man finding satisfaction in his marriage. OTOH, when a husband figures out that he should do certain things to be a good man, he earns satisfaction with himself, which makes his marriage satisfying. Seldom, however, does it originate with complaints by someone else, especially his woman.

When he figures out that someone of interest to him needs his attention or help, he tends to follow his conscience to do his duty. When he accepts the responsibility of marriage, his duty becomes that of satisfying those for whom he’s responsible. Not making them happy necessarily but satisfying himself that they should be satisfied by whatever he does on their behalf.

A wife’s complaints interfere with that process. Oh, she knows what their marriage needs. But complaints about ordinary things and daily events show her to be incapable of handling the necessities of living together. And that degrades her from superior to something less as a satisfying mate.

Consequently, the constant complaining of wives—which is a popular habit according to modern men— tend to drive a couple apart more than together. (Example: Many divorced men say, “I just got tired of her s***!”)

Example: Wife and husband disagree and face off to decide who gets their way. Husband says my way or the highway or some other threat. Wife suddenly finds that her self-interest values their relationship over his announced threat. Whatever caused their disagreement in the first place is now displaced to other parts of their self-interest. They now compete, which wives should avoid because it brings more complaints to light.

Reserving the privilege of naming ‘what’s right’ is an integral part of the husband’s self-interest. Smart husbands don’t motivate the wife to accept the husband’s way, they depend on her self-interest to know what their relationship needs at any particular moment. It works that way from his presumption that he’s the boss because she married him.

It’s a fine line. When wife tries to motivate husband to match her self-interest, he releases signals that he doesn’t respect the wife enough to let her make decisions on the matter at issue. OTOH, leaving the decision up to others and their self-interest and self-motivation displays respect of initiator for the decision-maker. But that’s an ideal that is hard to come by for many couples.

This is another fine line. Some claim that the husband motivates the wife. It’s technically incorrect, because the wife has free will and the freedom to decide to agree or disagree with the boss. IOW, she gets to rely on her self-interest as she adjusted it when they married. Specifically, to cooperate rather than compete with him and to not be caught trying to lead him.

Wife’s smiles tell husband that she is okay. Lack of her complaints tells husband that he is okay. Another okay awaits the conscientious wife who can live by Rule 3, next.

 

2338. Suggestions for Raising Children — Part XII

Tactical Parenting: Encouraging Sexual Restraint

Part XI posited that if mom knows more about how to succeed as wife, she is better prepared to teach daughters how to avoid the pitfalls of teen sex. It also cited some thoughts husbands expect and that make them happier in their homes.

Now for the other side of the coin. How did she get to be a wife? (Numbers are only for easy reference.)

1. A suitable suitor finds in her qualities that he admires and that make her attractive and likeable enough to strongly desire to spend much time with her. She’s the scenic view for him to observe and take all in.
2. Immediately if it’s love at first sight or later if not, he finds her far more likeable than others. Time spent with her morphs slowly or comes on quickly that she’s the only one for him. Out of that masculine conviction emerges his willingness to be exclusively loyal to her. He’s born that way: When things go according to his sense of integrity and what’s right, he’ll keep his part of whatever deal develops.
3. She can screw it up if she tries to convince him of her value or promise that she reserves for him alone. He doesn’t actually care much for who she thinks she is, or her promises of what she can be to him. His self-interest is tied to how and what he figures out she can be to and for him. Sex plays but a minor role once he becomes totally interested in the promise he imagines.
4. He quits examining her after conquest. He proved himself good enough for her. Consequently, he has little else to earn, learn, accomplish in order to keep her if he wants her.
5. The longer she delays conquest, the more time he’s exposed to and discovers qualities he can admire, each of which becomes a virtues to him, and which over sufficient time compound into what men seek to marry, a virtuous woman. Their extended and chaste togetherness soon promotes her as unique among women and his judgment working in background causes unique to grow into fascination. A fascinating woman captures and holds a man’s intentions to go further with her.
6. All of which merge into the promise he sees in her to add success to his present way of life and pursuit of his ambitions. After figuring the odds and guaranteeing himself of not making a mistake, courage encourages, and he takes the leap and proposes.
7. Presuming she accepts, his job is done. He turns arrangements over to his fiancée and her mother, shows up at the altar on time, and begins marriage as if nothing else happens or matters. It’s a new life and he can handle it. Let’s get this living together underway, and he expects it will be the same forever after.
8. Yes, I ignore the popular notion that marriage isn’t forever. Many terminations are the result of common practice to follow popular opinion rather than trusting one’s judgment; to blame rather than get along; to fault rather than work together; to demand rather than compromise; to ignore rather than follow the leader; to devalue compatibility rather than strengthen marriage; to cheat rather than respect; to fight rather than smooch; to grudge rather than pet; to sleep rather than make love.
9. Both sexes are born to be compatible with a mate. The basic requirements are that marriage proceed under the indirect influence of wife trying to fulfill her childhood hopes and dreams, which requires that husband has indisputable and highly welcomed access to sex, which enables him to go along to get along, which promotes wife as very likeable and loyal to husband, which confirms his love of her.

How does she get to remain a wife?

10. By matching, merging, and morphing his and her self-interests into the music of loving one another first and raising children as add-ons.
11. Sorry, mothers, to be so blunt. But look at it closely. What happens when kids in the process of ever changing self-development are made more important than the husband-wife combination? Without preeminence in being right, how do parents breathe constancy and stability into their family? How do they generate loving survival with all the unpredictable and surprising changes that occur as kids move from inevitable immaturity and to hopeful maturity? Without husband-wife glue, marital instability follows, which means that teen immaturity continues, which means that daughters’ hopes and dreams go unachieved from lack of nurturing, teaching, leading, and coaching mostly by mom.
12. She prepares daughter for a life that father expects to see. Peer pressure and mom not teaching her best often plow this female instinct under the dirt of daily life: Maturity is essential for the fulfillment of female hopes and dreams, so are boys and men, and so is the female’s ability to handle both to her advantage. Well-prepared teen girls fight to reach maturity rather than enjoy the immaturity fashioned by and upheld by boys intent on conquests and learning to be players.
13. When wife isn’t loved sufficiently well by husband, what does she do? Often out of spite, she aims herself to more deliberately and expressively love her kids. It amplifies her self-importance and satisfaction and compensates for attention and appreciation so lacking from her husband. (I don’t alibi for men; some can be terrible mates until the females in their lives train them better.)
14. More pronounced expressions of her love toward children weaken her expressions of love of husband. Kids become most important, which makes mothering more important than wifeing, which makes husband secondary, which makes wife a different woman than he married, which makes her less dependent on him for her self-importance, which makes her less valuable to help pursue his ambitions, which makes her less willing to accommodate his sexual interests in the home, which make her unnecessary if not expendable, which makes him venture into sexual thought outside, which inevitably leads to his cheating if they’re not already separated for other reasons.
15. The self-fulfilling prophecy of marital separation—or living separate lives under the same roof—begins when wife finds fault in husband, blames him for insufficient attention and love, and compensates by turning to her kids to make herself feel better about herself.
16. WADWMUFGAO, which energizes her to intensify expressions of love of kids at the expense of husband. It’s a pretty normal reaction, but by lessening her expressions of love of husband, she weakens that love and marital decay begins. IOW, marital success comes from only one combination of womanly love. The expressions of motherly love never cause the expressions of wifely love to deteriorate. In her heart, they are all loved equally but husband comes first in matters where he and kids are in competition for her attention, affection, or support. She’s the judge in the middle and always rules for what’s best for her future and lets the kids develop their own.
17. Otherwise, when mother-love outweighs wife-love, her expressions become biased against husband, which makes him play second fiddle, which makes him jealous of offspring, which makes him want more of the kind of sex she no longer wants to give, which opens his eyes outside the home, which initiates thoughts followed by actual cheating, which opens the door to emotional infidelity, which kills the already squelched spirit of her marriage.
18. Marriage comes before family and family before individuals. It’s what husband expects and is willing to devote his self-interest. If wife thinks otherwise, she’s more loyal to herself or kids or both. Thus, her likeability dissolves in husband’s eyes.

Mothers have the burden whether they accept it or not. They are responsible to teach daughters how to fulfill female hopes and dreams and thus amplify their own dreams.

The process in modern times means to bypass teen sex in favor of more permanent relationships. To do so, moms do best when they know and use their own experience in the successful handling of boys, men, and husbands.

This post covered how women get to be wives and how they sustain the respect of that lofty position. Tomorrow continues with a mixture of principles and conditions that provide more fodder for teaching girls.

2256. Interface of Natural Love: Compatibility and Mutual-interest

To describe a couple’s love requires that it be examined in three stages: foundation, two personalities, and individual self-interests.

1. The foundation is how they are born differently and then come together. That natural interface is described in the previous article (2255).
2. Rising above that foundation, two personalities must be compatible at the start or made so as their relationship develops. “Made so” implies that someone has to change in order to adjust enough to mix masculine competition and feminine cooperation into a workable solution. Men will change before conquest in order to capture a woman if she is more important to him than just for sex.

After conquest, however, instinctive male nature prevents conquerors from changing to please the conquered. So, each woman faces the frustrations of managing her sexual assets in such a way that enables her to integrate two diverse personalities into compatibility.

Moreover, women are blessed with sufficient ability. At birth they inherit an adjustable ability that enables them to achieve what they are after. Management traits of patience and flexibility that men lack (for dealing with women, that is) enable decisions wiser than his when she’s choosing a mate.

Simply by managing how competition about conquest morphs into cooperation without conquest, women can bring forth the blossoms of love in relationship development. The only requirement is that he pursues her for sex and she refuses until he meets her expectations for sufficient devotion to her above others. Without her love of him and his devotion to her, there’s not enough meat to share on the compatibility platter.

If she doesn’t ensure before conquest that he obligates himself to fulfill her expectations, then he assumes no responsibility toward or for her well-being. It torpedoes her ship, because the character, strength, and dependability of men is founded on personal obligation to fulfill whatever they consider their responsibility. IOW, making herself his responsibility is the essence of marital love, compatibility, and—up next—mutual-interest.

3. Self-interest motivates everyone. Unless forced, people don’t violate it. Unless charmed by a good woman, men don’t yield their self-interest to hers. Unless passionate about marrying a particular man, women don’t yield theirs either.

Integrating two very diverse self-interests into mutual-interest is the work of woman. Only she has the interest, traits, and ability to merge such opposing and tremendously personal ‘belongings’. The ingredients that drive self-interest—e.g., tightwad, promiscuous, responsible, fearful, integrity, passionate, ungrateful, selfish, courageous, stubborn, irresponsible—are owned and difficult to part with in order to accommodate someone else’s ingredients that might destroy or infringe on yours.

Integrating two individual self-interests into one synergistic mutual-interest requires monumental and continuous effort. It’s a—and perhaps the—major reason women are so well prepared for it. And men are not.

God designs, Nature endows, and hormones energize man and women differently and they face love at the interface described at 2255. After they meet, just about everything else that has to be done is accomplished by the woman. She integrates their personalities into compatibility and self-interests into mutual-interest. Thus, she earns her man’s respect by achieving marital success, which solidifies his love because respect is the foundation of it.

2243. FEMININE

Surfercajun at 2239 inquired about feminine. Here’s my response.

We’re talking about men, so surprise, surprise. Feminine is not who or what she is, it’s who and what men perceive her to be. Which means she is whoever and whatever his curiosity, imagination, and conscious thought make her out to be. It makes sense but why do I mention it talking to women?

To make this point: Whoever and whatever you think you are, however beautiful, great, and praise-worthy you may be to yourself and those who know you, you’re still just a sexually available female to all men until you prove otherwise to each and every man who wants to bed you. Insensitive and tactless, perhaps I am, so forgive me. I’m on track to make a connected point.

Feminine is the totality of the female creature that serves to hold a man permanently. Not beauty, not sexual attractiveness, not career greatness, not laudable behavior. Feminine is most important because it includes the others in the male mind. Too simplified, perhaps, but I continue on track to the next point.

Feminine is complex to females but simple to males who visualize it in mind and heart; of course every man is different. Consequently, there are no perfect attributes that make a woman feminine. There are only attributes aimed at turning on masculine curiosity, imagination, and conscious thought that most likely generate the maximum interest in you out of every man. The more men attracted to you, then the merrier for you. It provides you with the greatest number of opportunities to find AND KEEP the man of your dreams. The more feminine you appear to each man, the more likely the man of your dreams will crave to spend his life with you. Men compete; the more one man wants you the more the next one does too. It’s up to women to make that last sentence mean HER more than sex.

Three main characteristics appeal to men. Feminine mystique, female modesty, and monogamous spirit. When her other features, traits, and behaviors emphasize those three, she shows up as very feminine to the greatest number of men. Examples follow of what each characteristic consists of in the eyes of men.

Feminine mystique. She’s so short of being totally understandable it’s not worth his effort to try; she’s acceptable as is. (Exaggerated, yes, but men don’t have to understand their woman nearly as much as women have to understand their man).

She’s an enigma, not the least bit of a male thinker. Unpredictable about even the smallest things. Composed when she should be upset. Upset when composure is called for. Independent on matters about which she should be dependent and vice versa. Curious when uncalled for because whatever was the matter is now resolved. Dumb about the simplest and surprisingly knowledgeable about the complicated. Surprisingly adroit when she needs to be, but not afraid to admit being uninformed.

Expresses her pride through mothering and nurturing and not through trying to outdo him. Doesn’t show off even when she deserves to do so. Can love even those whom she doesn’t respect. Can admire a man’s strength and learn to support or rely on it even after it fails him. Can forgive easily (he forgets to ask or notice if she can forget).

Can out-compete the toughest people but chooses to outwit and outsmart rather than out-fight. No one’s too big for her. She’s feisty but it’s a rare occasion when she shows it, because she’s so well respected even by fairly important people.

She isn’t hesitant; in fact she’s pleased to inspire him with a new hint of mystery. It prompts him to think. Why is a woman so willing to do what this wise woman recommends as part of being feminine. Superslaviswife suggests that women exhibit “An openness to new experiences and places that tells him she can accommodate him in her life. And an eagerness to share those experiences with him and be a part of his life.”

Female modesty. Under the guise of modesty, she controls her life according to her best interest. She looks and acts modestly, which means attractively with minimal attention to sexual features and the absence of sexually suggestive behavior. Fashionable and classy attractiveness signify that she’s unique, which is a logical step toward fascination.

Modesty is her most significant weapon of defense against masculine intrusions in her life. Such as, time to ponder elsewhere (powder room), break away from excess passion, turn a blind eye to offensive behavior, flee or slap someone when her sensibilities are threatened, and justify not explaining herself or complaining about others.

Modesty enables her to evade having to defend or protect her values, standards, and expectations. Thus, she can leave men thinking they have won whatever mental battle just transpired; she defers to him when he wouldn’t defer to her, which effectively steals his victory and adds further mystery to her. She’d rather retreat now and gain advantage for next time.

Monogamous spirit. His woman’s physical infidelity is the greatest assault on a man’s dignity, self-respect, respect of other men, and sense of significance. Every evaluation of a marriage candidate’s character, features, and behaviors is done with this thought top of mind: Will she be faithful to me? Until he proves YES to himself, he is unlikely to propose.

Consequently, a boyfriend’s interests and interrogations spotlight everything connected with her future faithfulness. Her appearance, emotion, behavior, and sexual history hold clues for his detection. When he’s not working on the subject directly, his subconscious mind is alert to things that might even hint at future unfaithfulness. Notice this, he’s not looking for signs of fidelity but infidelity. He accepts faithful based on lack of evidence to suggest unfaithful.

The feminine woman’s attitude includes support and clear thinking about monogamy, marriage, trust, respect, commitment, and devotion. It can easily shape his thinking to her advantage. Her support and promise of love means little for his assessing her for being faithful to him. It’s too easy for her to fall in love with someone else or have one still lingering in her heart. Men are not all that trusting of love and its promises.

Feminine. The truly feminine woman—if men were so inclined but they’re not—would regularly receive from every man she encounters compliments about subjects other than sex. Because men are so disinclined to compliment a woman unless they want something, women have to compliment themselves about their femininity (mirror time, anyone?), belief in themselves, and confidence they are doing right for themselves. With that foundation, women can much more easily attract good men and then weed out those who act in ways contrary to their self-interest. The Marrying Man likes to lurk until he spots the likeliest of candidates for his taste. I submit to you that femininity is his greatest magnet.

2190. Anorexics, Suicides, et al. — Part 5: Self-image

Outside of adult supervision that interferes, self-image governs a child’s life just as it does with each of us older kids. It guides us to do what we can do, avoid what we can’t do, and makes sense of everything else on our own behalf.

However, the heart of this series promotes and encourages moms to help children to like themselves better.

Deeply embedded but floating on the foundation of self-esteem, a child’s self-image also contains the personally identified conviction of what and who he is and how well or unwell he likes himself. It ranges high, low, or in between. He’s not conscious about it that way. He just feels wanted and worthy about himself, terribly unwanted and unworthy, or somewhere in between. His attitude most of the time reflects his conviction.

A constant attitude of unworthiness suggests a child is headed toward self-destructive behavior. A significantly and constantly enjoyable sense of ample worthiness suggests the opposite.

Mom’s job: Make her child have an even greater sense of worthiness as he perceives it. How?

Short of scolding, provide guidance through loving, educating, training, leading, coaching, advising, preaching, suggesting, and hinting that encourages him to try harder, plunge deeper, and in his own way overcome obstacles. The more he does it his way and without direct help, the more meaningful, admirable, and enhancing to his sense of worthiness as he perceives himself.

This series aims to encourage mothers to drop the ineffective help concocted under the label of self-esteem and show kids how to take care of themselves at a maturity level that moves upward slightly ahead of current age. I provide some ideas and tips.

Don’t demand, guide. Don’t condemn, abide. Enable children to learn to accomplish more. Boys thus learn to habitually work; girls thus learn to habitually add to their importance. Both are born to love learning when they get to do it their way aka self-development. Motherly sensitivity enables moms to make adjustments for individuals, while also using peaceful methods to teach kids to follow family values and standards. Kids want to be flexible when well guided.

They can anticipate before they participate, please self first while respecting others, please others as appropriate, respect everyone, accept responsibility as right thing to do, boldly answer for mistakes, hold self accountable (ill feelings) for not fulfilling responsibility, depend on self-praise to uplift spirits, know temper flare-ups as unacceptable, accept greater responsibility as maturity grows, earn respect instead of seeking to be liked, learn difference between selfish and self-centered, and solve their own problems until they absolutely need help.

Success handling each incident above is an accomplishment doing what parents like to witness, which makes them like themselves too.

Children can accept new responsibility and stand ready to be held accountable. For example, toddler boys can be taught to make their bed and keep their rooms up to mom’s expectations under this process. Assign him the responsibility, teach the rudiments, and let him set the standards of his performance for the first few months or even years.Mom, don’t complain while you gently guide his habit and standard to grow alongside his maturing. Someday he will meet your expectation.

To please mom from first day, is to earn some admiration, which he can at a young age transmute into self-admiration. It means that pleasing mom earns her admiration and he likes himself better. Not from what she says but what he does.

It’s how men come to love their work; they learn early the habit to please themselves by fulfilling their responsibility, their duty. It helps build the best of masculine habits. As the saying goes, the man who loves his job never has to go to work. It all arises out of manly motivation of seeking self-admiration until satisfaction sets in. It can work in a boy’s bedroom, but perhaps not up to his love of doing it. But duty has the same effect, men like and often love to do their duty to the point they often do it without notice.

If you desire more detail about self-image, almost a dozen articles are scattered with that term in the title.

Children have ambitions to be liked. Also embedded in self-image are factors surrounding ambitions but by another name, self-interest. It’s next.

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.