The Girls Who Broke Your Heart Thread

Dumar_sl said:

This is the crucial part that I think many don't understand. Every single society that has ever existed thinkstheirnorms, their values, reflect 'human nature'. A serf in the middle ages, a caveman (if he had active thought), a cowboy, a worker in the 21st century, you - all of them - thought and think their particular society best reflects or wholly expresses human nature as it is.

We think of a market structure best expressing some idea of nature's competition, natural selection, but that's just a perception, one that is applied going backwards after the market structure is instilled.

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Just how far back do we need to go to see this human nature uncorrupted by market structure? Shit man, the farther back we go themorewomen were treated as commodities. Far enough back into widespread hereditary monarchy and you see females literally being property. If anything this concept of romantic love in man/woman relationships is incredibly modern. The serf, the caveman, the cowboy, the feudal lord, the king, the president, the exploited workers of world history...all of them were assessing their options dynamically and approaching with a mind for investment and returns. For most of history marriage was largely a property transaction. At what point did the mean old market worm its way into our minds and convince us that we don't want to settle for less than the best deal we can get in life?

Trollface_sl said:

i think everybody was treated like commodities.

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They still are. Dumar and his romantic bros in the philosophical humanism world just refuse to understand that itIShuman nature to treat everyone and everything like a commodity or a liability. We wouldn't be here without that capacity. Its pretty cold and unromantic but we are animals at the base. If anything the modern world allows us to be farmorehuman than societies predating our capitalist market zeitgeist.

Famm_sl said:

Just how far back do we need to go to see this human nature uncorrupted by market structure? Shit man, the farther back we go themorewomen were treated as commodities. Far enough back into widespread hereditary monarchy and you see females literally being property. If anything this concept of romantic love in man/woman relationships is incredibly modern. The serf, the caveman, the cowboy, the feudal lord, the king, the president, the exploited workers of world history...all of them were assessing their options dynamically and approaching with a mind for investment and returns. For most of history marriage was largely a property transaction. At what point did the mean old market worm its way into our minds and convince us that we don't want to settle for less than the best deal we can get in life?

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I never said those systems were better or more represented human nature. Using these words sounds abstract, nonsensical, and much like philosophizing, but it's really as material and real as you can get.

What way do we organize ourselves, each other, to have the best and most genuine relationships with each other?

The answer is not a market system, neither is it some static class system ruled by divine right like feudalism. What do you think love was back then? I'm sure it wasn't conceived of as a 'game' or market.

All of these systems are very much flawed in not just economics, but the thought patterns it produces in all of us too. None are any good for genuine human relationships to foster.

How do you define a genuine relationship?

Famm_sl said:

How do you define a genuine relationship?

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This is a very difficult question, and I don't know if I can answer it fully here. We should certainly discuss it, as it's MUCH more important than who Bob or Sally slept with last night and the night previous. It's similar to asking something like the meaning of life, and I believe it will have a similar answer.

I don't want to answer in philosophic or psychologic language, as you'll probably brush it aside as a humanistic bro-ism. But before I answer, let me first answer the negation: what a genuine relationship is not.

A genuine relationship is not based on 'exchange' or 'investment' or 'reciprocity'. It's not based on a compromise, a 'give-and-take', or any such words derived from economic transaction, and certainly not a 'game'. Fromm gets into this in detail, but these concepts are in fact derived from the mode of life, the economic system, in which we live.

A genuine relationship then is one where you 'walk in love'. That is in precise language, all of those words that we say we want but never do, we are: caring, attentive, understanding, committed in the sense of developing and growing together, and more importantly, realizing each other as an individual - realizing those potentialities in each, together. You walk in this mode of thought everyday alongside with your significant other, without thoughts of egoism or control (and this includes attachment). However, you cannot love someone unless you love everyone. Your love, by its very definition, extends to every single person, not just an object of your affectation. It's a free association of genuine activity. So goes the genuine activity together, so goes the genuine relationship.

A relationship based on 'sexual market value' or 'investing' or 'attraction ratios' is not a human to human relationship but a business to business transaction.

And again, true, real love in life is a very rare thing, as it requires a breaking down of two egoisms and a breakaway from the normal patterns of thought of a society - to break away from the commodification of every aspect of life. To do this, not only do you have to first realize it, but you have to actively practice it everyday amongst... well... a society of millions of mentally sick people.

Have you read HG Wells'The Country of the Blind? It's the same idea.

It's like Zen in a way. Almost impossible to describe and probably literally impossible to quantify. Almost a state of being in flux. And it could be called a state of self-delusion. It very often is called that, and rightly so because sometimes it is a state of self-delusion. You could reduce it to seratonin levels if you wanted to but I think that rather misses the crux of the phenomena.

There is a mode of social interaction which exists, which while rare is not so uncommon that you should think of it as a myth, that if you could quantify it you would make an awful lot of money and do an awful lot of good in the world. Philosophers, Poets, Preachers, and Rom-com screenwriters all have been trying. That thing that they're all so bad at talking about, that thing is a real thing.

So Dumar's right. It's very hard to talk about without resorting to philosphical language and excessively abstract notions. It's very specific and you can talk about it in specifics. But everyone had to have a common point of reference for that. Probably why those "50 years of marriage and they're still madly in love" sorts of stories are so pervasive throughout... well, most periods of literature really in some form or another.

Dumar_sl said:

This is a very difficult question [...]

Have you read HG Wells'The Country of the Blind? It's the same idea.

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I haven't read it but I know of it and understand how it relates as an allegory for what you're saying about our society shaping our surroundings and perceptions.

Your post affirms for me what I was saying about the nature of love. The only places we really see this is parent/child and some other relatives. To drop your ego in a relationship is equivalent to the old cliche about being willing to lay down your life for that person. For most of us we never really understand that feeling until we have a child. Many people claim it with their partners, but I doubt its as common as we portray. But realistically that's ok because we are very rarely placed in a position to make that ultimate ego sacrifice. For children we are, even if it is only in terms of superficial sacrifices but raising a child requires a different protectiveness. For our partners, simply investing in them is good enough. That investment ensures our continued ego involvement and willingness to sublimate some of our desires for the needs of a partner and offspring.

The thing is, the only time you can forge such a genuine relationship with another man/woman is by having a child. Most of the people I recognize in good marriages have truly taken an attitude of putting the relationship and their investment in life and child rearing ahead of their ego investments. So you're right, in a sense. But we still display a proclivity for investment and commodification. When you strip away the romantic trappings, that's all our relationships amount to at the heart.

What gets lost in the modern age is that our interpersonal relationshipsshouldbe an equivalent investment to bearing and raising children. Those who can actually stay together for the children understand this and form strong bonds. And I don't mean like the bitter "staying together for the kids" cliche, but rather putting the family unit (mother/father/children) as a collective in front of any individual in that system for the good of them all. We have a hard time doing this with a simple dating or hook-up relationship because it lacks true investment. Sex itself is an investment of the highest biological order because it involves a co-mingling of our greatest resource, our genes. That same reason we will die for our offspringshouldbe a reason to invest in relationships. We sublimate it, hidden subconscious biology melds with conscious front brain ego rationalizations and gets expressed as a form of investments, resources, risks, rewards, transactions and territorial pissings.

I suppose its a problem of chicken and egg. I'd say its more likely that all of society and economy has formed itself in the image of the biological imperatives for survival and reproduction that our brains shuffle from hind to front every moment. You say that society has affected how we approach our biological side, but what is society if not an extension of our own thoughts and desires? It seems the height of intellectual hubris to me to assume that we have devised these inhuman systems that are so inherently powerful as to override and influence our most basic biology.

No, I would say our society is fully formed by how we approach ourselves, our environment, our lineage, and reproduction itself. We focus on transactional ratios because that's always how we know if we are wasting our resources. In biology genes are money. Sperm is cheap and eggs are expensive. You have to accept your place in that to understand how to best leverage your self for relational success, which equals reproductive success, which is the imperative driving every one of us as mammals. The problems we run into are largely based on a culture that technologically doesn't need to to reproduce any more. Thus there is no investment, your currency is without backing and standard, yet you are still driven subconsciously by the value of you and your mate's potential contributions to the gene pool despite consciously opting out of the system driving your desires.

You're correct, true loving relationships are pretty rare. There's little reason remaining now to invest that heavily in only one other human. You can do it for a time, but eventually your returns will be more optimized with another investment vehicle. Failing to recognize that reality leaves one or both partners feeling ripped off because they didn't adjust their expectations for long term performance and rearrange their assets appropriately.

Iannis_sl said:

It's like Zen in a way. Almost impossible to describe and probably literally impossible to quantify. Almost a state of being in flux. And it could be called a state of self-delusion. It very often is called that, and rightly so because sometimes it is a state of self-delusion. You could reduce it to seratonin levels if you wanted to but I think that rather misses the crux of the phenomena.

There is a mode of social interaction which exists, which while rare is not so uncommon that you should think of it as a myth, that if you could quantify it you would make an awful lot of money and do an awful lot of good in the world. Philosophers, Poets, Preachers, and Rom-com screenwriters all have been trying. That thing that they're all so bad at talking about, that thing is a real thing.

So Dumar's right. It's very hard to talk about without resorting to philosphical language and excessively abstract notions.

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It's almost, but not quite yet, scientific. That is, many things in the sciences, for example, could be observed or very vaguely explained centuries before, but not fully understood or precisely put to words in a theory until much, much later. As Zen, it's similar.

We have a notion of human to human activity and relationships, but we can't describe it fully in language... yet. But as human thought (hopefully...) advances, so too will how we relate to each other.

I think that eventually, if free association of work or activity ever becomes truly possible, that's when true human relationships will too, as words such as 'value' or 'investment' will hold no meaning anywhere, in economics or in relationships.

Iannis_sl said:

It's very specific and you can talk about it in specifics. But everyone had to have a common point of reference for that. Probably why those "50 years of marriage and they're still madly in love" sorts of stories are so pervasive throughout... well, most periods of literature really in some form or another.

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If anyone believes that shit I challenge them to live a few months with any couple who's been married multiple decades. The varnish of romantic idealism will be stripped away entirely.

That's why you need the specific instance and why generalities are not useful.

Cause I've met couples who after 50 years are still madly in love. And it's a state in flux. Are they like horny teenagers all the time? Of course not. Are they filled with the everlasting spirit of God himself every moment of every day? Of course not. That doesn't make the mode any less genuine. In fact I'd say it makes it more genuine (unless you just happen to be a horny teenager every day for your entire life).

And of course i've met a lot MORE couples who after 6 months of marriage want to kill each other.

Edit: It really takes specifics. I could give you the names of one couple (but that would be meaningless) who it seems have a genuine relationship -- in this sense of non-market based. At least for now they seem to. 5 years from now, I'm not a wizard -- I have no fucking idea. Maybe the system will crash and it will fall apart on them. And it's not binary either. Their relationship basically did start through your market interaction. Almost every decent relationship does start that way (stupid people and crazy people have their own rules about this shit), and many of them proceed that way. Not all of them -stay- that way, though.

And that's why I don't think you'll really ever be able to quantify this sort "genuine reciprocicity" past the individual level. For the societal level maybe market interactions is the best you can do. And that's not so bad if one allows for the other. They're not exclusionary ideas.

So, I totally fell for this girl. She had a dude, but there was some amazing raw chemical thing between us, she broke up with him and we had quite a fling. Well, drama started creeping in, and she decides I'm not mature enough for her or some shit. The dude she had been seeing moved away. She breaks up with me, telling me I needed to be ready for her. Starts talking to her dude again. Dude asks her to marry him and move to where he moved to. She asked me if I had anything to say about the situation today. I told her I had a bunch to say, but she would not want to hear it. She said that I really need to say it soon, or I may never have the chance.

I just don't know what to actually tell her. I mean, I know exactly what feelings I have for her, but overall I really want her to have a good life. If she was worried about me already, then it probably would not get better. But I do not see her settling for this other dude being good for her either. I can totally see her talking herself into it, though.

Composter_sl said:

So, I totally fell for this girl. She had a dude, but there was some amazing raw chemical thing between us, she broke up with him and we had quite a fling. Well, drama started creeping in, and she decides I'm not mature enough for her or some shit. The dude she had been seeing moved away. She breaks up with me, telling me I needed to be ready for her. Starts talking to her dude again. Dude asks her to marry him and move to where he moved to. She asked me if I had anything to say about the situation today. I told her I had a bunch to say, but she would not want to hear it. She said that I really need to say it soon, or I may never have the chance.

I just don't know what to actually tell her. I mean, I know exactly what feelings I have for her, but overall I really want her to have a good life. If she was worried about me already, then it probably would not get better. But I do not see her settling for this other dude being good for her either. I can totally see her talking herself into it, though.

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Serious question...your age?

"Tell me how much you want me or I'll marry this other guy" is really the situation you're in? Bro.

Famm_sl said:

If anyone believes that shit I challenge them to live a few months with any couple who's been married multiple decades. The varnish of romantic idealism will be stripped away entirely.

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They can stay with me. Been married for 23 years, and for the vast majority of it, happily. Even sometimes romantical and stuff. I don't know if the varnish is gone, but it's fairly faded. But that's not a bad thing either.

Let her sleep in the bed of shit she's preparing for herself and take no part in her manipulative mind games. That's the mature thing to do.

I'm not being snide, that's seriously the mature thing to do. Respect that she is the one making the choice here and she sure as fuck didn't choose you.

You can even tell her that she gets to have her cake and eat it too. You grew up, she doesn't have to worry about you, and she can go marry the other guy.

The bonus here for you is that the next girl you fall for (and there will be a next girl) won't do this shit to you.

Science question: When not using a condom and successfully puling out, what are the chances of becoming a very upset daddy? How potent is precum and the like?

Science answer: the chances at being an upset baby daddy when not using a condom are better than the chances of becoming an upset baby daddy when using a condom but still less than the chances of being an upset baby daddy if you bust up in her guts.

It depends on a lot of factors. A lot of factors.

tl;dr: it's just straight up rolling the dice. It could range anywhere from impossible to somewhat unlikely. Is "somewhat unlikely" comfortable territory?

dangler_sl said:

Science question: When not using a condom and successfully puling out, what are the chances of becoming a very upset daddy? How potent is precum and the like?

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start picking out names