Show weakness and she is gone?

ArcadianCognition · 2017-10-25T01:36:57+00:00

Honestly, if I've learned one thing about dating is that women are attracted to happy people. Someone who's honest with others and themselves about the shit that can happen in life and still does his or her best to have a blast. Pretending that you never feel anxious, sad, angry, depressed is fake as hell and people can smell it off you. True strength comes from being honest about our own humanity and being proud and thankful each time you overcome challenges in life. There's a reason why no good success story is about people who never faulter. Confidence isn't knowing everything will work out, it's trusting yourself to deal with any problems you couldn't predict or prevent, and whether we like it or not heavy emotions are a part of that package.

My signature move is literally letting a girl know I like her, but it's cool if she's not interested. It takes the pressure off, and showed that while I don't need to date that particular person to be happy, I would enjoy her company for the sake of itself.

When I was younger I was pretty red pill, believing everything needed a strategy. I realized I'm gonna be old one day and hit a point where I can't go around hitting on girls. But my happiness as it was depended on being able to get someone. I don't plan to stop being happy when I'm old, so spent my time learning how to be happy. Learned how to balance being myself, warts and all, not worrying so much and achieving my goals in life, and relationships started to form on their own, with people I used to consider well above my league.

AnarchyshitpostBOT · 2017-10-25T20:16:05+00:00

So a few things.

First, anecdotally, I've experienced both. I've been with women wherein being vulnerable was no problem and I could openly talk about my insecurities, problems, struggles etc and receive useful feedback without it hindering our relationship or damage our sex life (often it improved it). I've also been with women wherein opening up in that way quickly killed it. So at first glance I think given that TRP assumes all it's talking points are universally true (AWALT), this one must be false because otherwise I wouldn't have had those relationships.

But that's probably not going to be good enough for you (because after all who am I? Some random, disembodied text post in the ether. What good is my word?) so lets jump into the inherent problem of this perspective.

The TRP position is begging the question. TRP tells you that women only find men who don't show weakness attractive. As a result, you end up dating women who find weakness unattractive. This works because the women you date find you attractive based on what you advertise; if you never show weakness, and a woman finds that attractive, then logically she will be repulsed if you do show weakness. Or written simpler, I date women who don't find weakness attractive -> I can't show weakness to my SO. You've set up your conclusion in the premise. If your desire is to show weakness, assuming you can't is setting yourself up to fail.

This works in the larger TRP framework because TRP assumes AWALT. They assume that the limited field of women their method appeals to is all there is. But this is demonstrably false; one of they key premises of TRP is try as many times as possible until you strike; if you make 500 approaches and one woman finds you attractive, that still counts as "proof" of TRP. To me, what seems more likely is that 499 women didn't find you attractive. In that 499 is probably the women who find the "I never show weakness" attitude boring or repulsive.

What I'm getting at is this approach sets you up to fail. Women aren't mysteries; depending on what attitude you put on, you will attract some and repel others. Adopting a strategy of hyper-masculinity that openly belittles emotional men and sees fortitude as a virtue, attracting women that find that appealing, and then complaining that this is "proof" that women don't like weak men, to me seems like a case of putting the carriage before the horse. You have discovered a universal truth, you've discovered a mechanism for attracting a specific type of person.

So why does this myth perpetuate? After all there seems to be a lot of men that do feel this way, and not just in TRP. Really I see a few plausible explanations.

First, if we're being fully honest with ourselves, a lot of men that turn to the internet for dating advice are pretty emotionally damaged. I see plenty of guys on men-oriented pages who claim to want a girlfriend, when to me it's clear what they really want is a therapist. They don't have any healthy avenues to express their anxieties, so they funnel it through romantic relationships. Especially younger men, like teenagers, seem to conflate the role of girlfriend, savior, and therapist into one role. What this looks like functionally is you have a young man with no real outlets, bottling up a laundry list of bad emotions. When a girl shows him even * a little* love, the doors blow open and he starts dumping it all, which spooks the girl and kills the dynamic. Then comes the salt.

This all comes from two places. First, young men don't really know how to process negative experiences. Nobody teaches them, and often those who do teach typically promote crass compartmentalization and nothing more. Second, young men don't really have any useful life experience and don't know how to separate out various emotions (such as love, infatuation, passion, and lust) nor do they know what a realistic timeline is for a functional interpersonal relationship to develop is. As a result, they enter the dating world with a lot of unrealistic expectations, fail, and then get upset because they don't know how to process the feelings generated by said failure. This is where TRP comes in. A healthy response to failure is to re-evaluate the event and then adjust your direction accordingly; sometimes this means trying again somewhere else, sometimes this means new strategies, sometimes this means changing your stated goal altogether. An unhealthy response is the one provided by TRP, wherein the failure is offloaded onto women at large; the issue isn't that you came on too strong, it's that women just don't like guys who show emotion! Just kill your emotions (i.e. more compartmentalization) and you'll succeed. This is accented by the fact that a lot of men are totally oblivious and need to be told basic cues such as "people find healthy people attractive" and "doormats get taken advantage of in our society", the "no-duh" parts of TRP that serves to legitimate the stuff like OP, which are the true snares that poison the well and make growth impossible. IMO, a solid 95% of people that are drawn to TRP could be widely more successful if they expanded their range of experiences, practiced basic empathy ("how would I want somebody to try and date me?") and tried to cultivate a more mature understanding of human relationships.

For example, I remember a few months ago on this forum a user came asking for advice somewhat along these lines. He was complaining that he would meet women, and start dating, and getting serious, but then they would suddenly pull away. He didn't understand why his "relationships" all kept failing like this. As I investigated a bit, what I discovered was that the timeline for these things to happen was about a month; over the course of 30 days or so he would go from first encounter-> dates -> "committed relationship" -> breakup. This user said he was 20. I told him that his problem was that he was moving way too fast; getting into a committed relationship (i.e. one where this is clearly defined obligations for both parties) in under 30 days, unless sparks truly fly and it's a Shakespeare-esque star-crossed lovers situation, is just not possible. It takes time to build up trust, especially in the adult world, where people have complicated networks of obligations, responsibilities, relationships and past-times that are absorbing most of their time. In 30 days, you can what, go on maybe a handful of dates? Like I've had vacations that lasted longer than buddies "relationships", how real could they be? How much trust could possibly have developed in that period of time?

This user's response was to tell me that I'm the weirdo for suggesting a relationship can't just come out of space and that he needs to slow it down. And that is the crux of the problem with how a lot of dudes (that I've encountered) view this topic. Building up a the level of trust necessary to truly "let the guard down" can take months. It's not going to happen in the first week, or even the first month, or even the first quarter; especially at the start, relationships are more about putting your best foot forward. If you're on date 2 and start with a mental breakdown, most people will be put off, because an unfortunate part of adult life is that there are unspoken rules around when and how authentic expression can occur. It's not a perfect system but if you're looking for a pragmatic explanation of this phenomenon, there it is.

So what can you do about it as a guy? Really I don't know. What works for me is I try to establish an honest dialogue right from the start; if I don't like something, I don't like it, and if I like something, I like it. The idea is that I want to establish early on that I'm neither a doormat, nor a 'grin-and-bear it" type dude; I have my opinions and my principles and I stick to them, regardless of who or what is happening. While this isn't foolproof, what it does do is drives off people that expect you to "be" a certain way; even the strongest people, we know, have moments of weakness. If somebody is not okay with you expressing that, what they're really saying is they're not okay with you expressing that around them. Around them, they expect a certain image of you, and they'll enforce it by adding or subtracting attention based on how you conform to that image. You want to keep those people away and the best way to do that is to establish your own identity early on.

Coincidentally, this is the opposite of TRP's solution, which is "get used to fitting into women's expectations and eating shit". That method can work, but your life is going to suck.

raziphel · 2017-10-25T15:16:42+00:00

A lot of people don't know how to emotionally communicate, or how to handle someone who's in emotional turmoil. You have to learn to do it right (no, this doesn't mean just bottle it up) but also find partners who know how to do it right too. It gets easier as people get older and more experienced at self-management.

Displaying emotions isn't a weakness. Bottling it up and exploding is. Learn to deal with things when they're small and manageable. Find balance and a calm heart.

Remember, unshakable oaks break in the strong storms, while reeds bend and survive. Jesus bled and is deified for doing so. Even Odin suffered on the world tree. So how about this: don't put stock in pithy quips.

"How you want to be loved" is also something that needs to be unpacked and understood. It should also be compared to "how others are able to love." Sometimes there are mismatches, and either you communicate and work through it, so both of you grow and are more able to support each other, or you find someone else.

KelinciHutan · 2017-10-25T01:37:57+00:00

First off, you're not God. No man is. No human is. Face reality and walk on the ground like the rest of us.

Now, as far as "you can never show weakness around women" of course that isn't true. It's absolutely 1000% false. I would never, ever date someone who was always superior and perfect and had everything together all the time. That isn't real, I'd know it isn't real, I'd know he was lying, and I'd leave. Maybe not at first, but I'd get around to it sooner or later.

However, I also wouldn't date someone I had to be constantly propping up all the time. And I think this is where a lot of TRP guys miss an important point.

A good relationship means balance, and that means both partners bring something to the table. Nobody has to be perfect, but both people need to contribute. So the relationship can't be him always rescuing me and making all the decisions all the time, but it can't be me doing those things either. It doesn't have to be all one person or all the other. So, yeah, I would expect anyone I dated to have off days, days where he was down, hurt, angry, whatever. That's normal. But if those are the only kind of days he has, then he doesn't need a girlfriend, he needs a therapist. And therapists do not date their clients. Those are two very different relationships.

It's also worth pointing out: I want to bring positive things to my partner. To make his life better and not worse. So, if I see him being reasonably okay with everyone but me, and with me he is always miserable and unhappy and down, I'm not going to assume he's putting on a front for everyone else and only being honest with me. I'm going to assume I'm doing something to bring out that misery and unhappiness. If that situation persists and can't be resolved, I'll eventually conclude that I am negatively impacting his life and remove myself from the equation in the hopes of taking that negative impact away. This doesn't mean that you should lie to women you date. But any girl with half-a-brain is not going to want to be the thing that makes you sad.

(There's a pretty weighty disclaimer that goes somewhere in here about this still applying but taking on somewhat of a different shape when someone has a chronic condition or major injury. I can't quite figure out how I want to word it, but I don't want people to think I'm just pretending that doesn't exist.)

tiposk · 2017-10-25T01:08:39+00:00

How exactly did you show weakness and what kind of women do you pursue? We can't answer your question if we don't know how you act around women.

The TRP poster was going through a very difficult situation. Stress and depression can manifest themselves in behaviors that harm our relationships whether we open up to our partners or not. There's nothing in the post to suggest that she dumped him because of his weaknesses.

izi_ningishzidda · 2017-10-24T19:14:21+00:00

It's a facet of the patriarchy, where it is true, it's because of programming. I can tell you from experience it isn't true at all. The millions of family caring for aging spouses and parents are a testament to that. This is why the patriarchy is bullshit and why it harms both men and women, and why feminism was always about male and female rights. None of the male relatives who were dying or my late husband were viewed as anything less than what they were at their greatest moment of strength. If anything, I was glad I could show them that they were able to be vulnerable safely with me.

Now, there are sociopaths who do actually feel this way, but they are the exception not the rule, and their love was never real anyways.

beckoning_cat · 2017-10-25T16:06:03+00:00

Women have emotional hangups just like men do. There is a lot of confusion and miscommunication. Everyone, regardless of gender, is going to disappoint you at some point. You have to learn that everyone is human and imperfect.

NoOnesAnonymous · 2017-10-25T01:23:14+00:00

Hard to say. What were the things you let slip?

SchrodingersCatGIFs · 2017-11-08T20:38:22+00:00

I don't think most people are looking for a relationship partner to worship like a god, dude.

[deleted] · 2017-11-14T02:45:57+00:00

Intimacy is about slow, escalating vulnerability. Don't open up to a woman you just met. That comes off as weird, clingy or creepy. Establish rappor, spend some time together, and slowly open up over time. Don't just let it all hang out straight out of the gate. That turns people off. I mean, would you date a woman who immediately starts talking about her daddy issues on the first date?

BasicExpression · 2018-02-12T23:15:27+00:00

Well, you shouldn't just dump all your feelings and insecurities on her all at once, or too soon. You have to test the water, tell her few things at a time. But if you don't show her anything, your relationship will just stay shallow. She'll love a version of you, but not the real you. The day my SO first showed me real emotion, is the day I knew I truly loved him.

Harkian · 2017-11-07T13:00:03+00:00

Show weakness and she is gone?

No, it's be the best version of yourself and see what happens. If the best version of yourself happens to show weakness and she leaves, I think you'd be dodging a bullet anyway.

I'm a former Red-Piller, and it took me a very long time to spit out this pill. Find someone who appreciates you despite your weakness.

Don't pretend to be something just to please someone who doesn't care about you. Yes, some people will leave you if you show weakness, but it's in your best interest if you don't pursue a relationship with that kind of person.

Title	Show weakness and she is gone?
Author	resoredo
Upvotes	16
Comments	43
Date	October 24, 2017 6:57 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/78hxp8/show_weakness_and_she_is_gone/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/show-weakness-and-she-is-gone.300166 https://theredarchive.com/post/300166

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