How do you reconcile traditional love and contemporary PUA? They're so contradictory

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1

This topic goes off on a tangent from another topic here: Help to make girlfriend submissive. I’m creating this thread to avoid derailing the original one.

We’ve had the traditional notion of love since the Bible. Adam and Eve loved each other. Even Cain, who murdered his own bother Abel, loved his wife (who apparently was his sister, but I digress). Jacob loved Rachel enough to tough out marrying Leah first. And let’s not forget Song of Songs; it’s as sexually explicit as the Bible gets! Later, came Shakespeare, with his play “Romeo and Juliet” being rehashed ad nauseam as the ultimate example of a couple on love. Then came its contemporary derivative “West Side Story”, where even something heinous like gang rivalry was overcome by romantic love. More recently still, we have live theater plays and cinema that rehashes yet again, the same topic: romantic love between a man and a woman.

We also have PUA literature. It talks about women selecting men with the calculating precision of a Swiss watchmaker and the fierceness of a US Marine. David DeAngelo talks about being “cocky and funny” and be-all-and-end-all. If you’re not “cocky and funny”, women will want nothign to do with you. Other authors use the terms “alpha male” and “beta male”, and no need to repeat which one women prefer. The book “How to Succeed with Women” takes a somewhat contradictory approach, and teaches men to be “romantic” and “generative”, which still doesn’t really come across as alpha. Bluntly put, according to PUA, women use beta males as fuel for their fireplaces, where they let a hot alpha male have sex with them on a bear skin rug.

Well… how the hell do you reconcile the two? Obviously, the centuries-old notion of romantic love, which even made its way into holy scripture, isn’t completely groundless. It had to establish itself in human society somehow. Its only weakness is that it puts women on a pedestal. We also have modern PUA literature, that makes women looks like Naz… that German political party, who delight in destroying all beta males. It has the opposite weakness: it makes women look like pure evil.

Again, how the hell do you reconcile the two? The floor is open!

2

There are over 7 billion people on earth. Trying to apply very specific cultural ideas (e.g., desert tribes’ values from 2000?4000 years ago wrt Abrahamic/bible stories; PUA from European Americas mostly) onto that many people and diverse cultures isn’t going to make a whole lot of sense.

With that said, a common theme of both is that they’re both Abrahamic beliefs and PUA about women were/are developed predominantly by men projecting their fantasies, fears, and neuroses onto women. And the “somehow” you allude to, which men had and continue to use to “establish” their beliefs in human society, is physical domination.

When you put it all together (men from particular cultural groups using their physical power to establish their views on society), the two actually make more sense. Powerful men can control the women on the pedestal, AND they can control the “evil” women who prey on beta males. It’s really late, so I hope I made some sense.

3

I think this notion of ‘romantic love’ stems from the fact that our brains are wired to release a flood of various feel-good chemicals when we first encounter a mate with a ‘matching set’ of genes, in order to ensure we pair bond long enough to procreate.

Mother Nature doesn’t care about ‘forever after’. She only cares about ensuring maximum variety in mating as this yields the highest chance of viable offspring.

Then we poor humans build these elaborate social and cultural constructions up to try and justify why we cling to the fleeting whims of our own brain chemistry.

If you want the ‘forever after’ you should make an iron clad legally binding contract with one of your girlfriends who treats you with respect about not ever sharing any assets or finances which also allows the both of you to discreetly have sex with other people who actually turn you on…

Romantic love have a shelf life of about 3 years since this is the time it takes a human baby to grow enough to be viable with only a mother for a parent..

4

Maybe the constant rejections in my teen years altered my brain chemistry somehow, but I don’t get a lot of “feel good” stuff from romance/dating. I do get it plenty from ONS’s and flings, though. While I understand the importance of standing my ground alpha-wise, it gets really tedious over time. Not to mention that after reading PUA material, I became vigilant about any woman I’m seeing “testing” me and “beta-izing” me, which makes it hard to relax and enjoy her company. I have no problem doing so with female friends, who, in fact, respect me more than my past girlfriend ever did.

5

I see it more as sifting through all the crap to find the nuggets of truth/value in their thinking.

With reference to the individual woman as well of course. Some fully justify every bit of PUA stereotyping whilst others substantially do not.

6

Ideally, you should “stand your ground” you-wise, not alpha-wise or any other stereotype you’ve been instructed to perform. If you are being true to yourself, you should not feel it’s “tedious”, since it’s who you are (unless you just don’t like yourself, lol).

Yes, many people of all genders play games, read all kinds of self-help/PUA/play-the-game books and behave in ways that I would say are rather psychopathic towards their potential mates. Dealing with them is no fun. If you’re interested in a relationship, the best you can do it have OBSCENE amounts of patience to weed through those kinds of people until you eventually find someone else who is being true to themselves and not performing a stereotype.

7

Ditto what Zedster said. Forget the PUA crap. I’ve had that stuff thrown at me, and I can spot it a mile away because it’s always about the other guy, never about me.

First and foremost, know yourself. Know the qualities you want in a partner. Know which qualities are non-negotiable and which ones are icing on the cake. Keep this mental check list in mind whenever you meet someone. Also know what your boundaries are. Know what actions are unacceptable from your point of view. With this information about yourself, you will have an easier time weeding out inappropriate people to date.

I only date someone who meets a minimum of 80% of my checklist (and all of the non-negotiables). That doesn’t mean they end up as long-term relationships, but I do have a much enjoyable time getting to know them.

Also give P86 a try. You can read about my experience with it in my journal. It’s one of those mones that makes me interested in other people. I become deeply inquisitive about people’s likes and dislikes, their experiences in life, their motivations for certain decisions. People like to be asked questions about themselves. Even when I’m chatting with someone on a dating app, I’ve been told that I’m very kind. Why? It’s not because I load them with compliments and flattery, but because I ask questions about them, about who they are, about their day, about things that are meaningful to them. For someone reason, the guys I chat with think this is being kind, even when I don’t at all talk about romantic things and such. While this was a learned behavior for me, I became more aware of it while wearing P86.

So forget about PUA, alpha, beta, etc. A guy who is cocky and funny will only go so far with me. He might make a good one-night stand, but he sure isn’t the kind of guy that I could trust my feelings with. (Been there, done that.)

Isn’t that what you want? Trust? You want to trust your feelings with another woman, but you’re still on your guard just in case she’s going to beta-ize you. No one can beta-ize you without your permission. This is why you need to know who you are. Know what you want. Know what you don’t want. Know your boundaries with people. When you are steadfast in your values and principles, you will naturally project a calm-alpha image, a guy who is like the wind and will quickly move around obstacles to get to where you want to go.

And for goodness sakes, stop thinking about yourself and learn how to ask questions about other people. Get interested in the person you’re with. Find out what makes them tick. If you want someone to model, watch Charlie Rose interview someone. He knows how to make people feel comfortable by asking the right questions about that person.

8

I realize you wanted to be supportive and encouraging, but you negated 99.9% of that with this statement alone. I find ONS’s boosting my self-esteem more than LTR’s ever could. That is, if a girl wants me for a ONS, it raises my confidence exponentially more than if a girl wants an LTR with me. It was the case with my lady friend who lives in that sketchy gentrifying neighborhood, who I hooked up with twice (see my P122 report). I remember hitting a karaoke bar after spending time with her; I felt like a beast, and people acted weird around me. But if she were my girlfriend, I’d imagine the happy feelings from sex to be more subdued; it’s been the case with my past LTR’s. If it’s “not normal”, I don’t care. It is what it is.

I read somewhere that good girls will give up sex faster than usual for guys that really like, because their feelings override their principles. But bad girls will artificially stall and delay sex with guys they really like, “to make it more special”. The latter is not only discouraging, but downright insulting! It means some prick before me got sex effortlessly, while I have to wait. Which ties in with the above paragraph.

OK, off my soapbox now.

9

It can’t be reconciled. The two belongs to a very different level of relationship building.

10

Can you elaborate how?

Because correct me if I’m wrong, but many PUA authors make all women look like they have Borderline Personality Disorder; that is, incapable of seeing their male SO’s as human beings, only as alpha/beta dichotomies: one for sex, the other for personal gain. And they make getting along in LTR’s look like surviving prison: acting super-tough or becoming someone’s b_tch. Then there’s the whole “20% of men have sex with 80% of women” thing.

Literature, from the Bible (Song of Songs in particular) to Danielle Steel novels, does the opposite: it paints LTR’s as the greatest thing ever. It talks about how people are eternally bound to each other, in a “two become one” sense. It also talks about devotion and commitment through think and thin, with no trace of references to alpha/beta. Wedding wows are the same way, implying 1:1 matching for all couples, regardless of the man’s genetic status.

So how did our society turn the classic notion of love into the notion of alpha/beta male?

11

I think HankBuddy was speaking about his own experience and that one night stands aren’t for him. I don’t think he was saying that they are not desirable (in fact, he even said he enjoys them from time to time), but that the game-playing you discussed in the OP isn’t conducive to LTRs for him.

If you only want/seek ONS, then by all means, you should continue to play into PUA if it works for you. The original question of the post was how do you reconcile the game playing with the “traditional love” and I think you’ve got your answer from many different people: you don’t because you’re either trying to “score” points (PUA) against an opponent or you’re trying to find someone to work together with as a partner.

12

I don’t know what bible you’re referring to, but the stuff Christians read is all about an alpha male who sells daughters into slavery and takes on multiple subservient wives/concubines:

"1 Timothy 2:11-15 ESV
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing?if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

1 Corinthians 11:3-16 ESV
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

13

Now that I thought about it, I really do find ONS’s more flattering than my past LTR’s ever were. Perhaps because of the platitude that women have hot wild sex with jerks but settle down with nice guys. And by extension, having acquired enough “jerk skills” to pull off a ONS once in a while.

I remember my ONS from earlier this year. I was inside the train station next morning, waiting to catch my train, which wasn’t due for 45 minutes. I was sitting on the floor against the wall, fiddling with my phone, with wrinkled clothes, tousled hair, and a BIG smile, surrounded by forlorn, stuffy suits heading to work. I think one of them shot me dirty looks. I haven’t smiled like that in years :smiley:. By contrast, the morning after LTR sex, while driving home, all I usually felt is mild peppiness. (Oh, and the ONS girl blocked my number a day later, for reasons I don’t really care to know; she was kind of an oddball, in both good and bad way.)

That said, you’re right for the most part. The majority of PUA literature focuses on ONS’s. But a few authors talk at length about continuing to use PUA even in LTR’s and marriages. The consequences they present for not doing so are pretty disastrous: the wife starts verbally abusing her husband, she starts withholding sex, she cheats on him and refuses a paternity test, or she divorces him and takes 50% of what he’s got and then some. Then there was that thread about women beta-izing their boyfriend/husband, only to lose respect for him shortly thereafter; pretty much, shooting herself in the foot. All in all, pretty damn disconcerting. So I’m sure there’s more to it than “it’s mutually exclusive”.

14

Well… Let’s put it simply this way…

The traditional love has a particular direction towards community building = family building, whether one can bear a child or not, that is the direction of the traditional love. The traditional love employ a very slow-dance type of game involving a very serious “knowing each other” stage. It looks for compatibility, unity best suited for a long distance, long-term journey. Sex is but only an integral part of this relationship.

PUA meanwhile, employs speed, with an aim to bedazzle one’s target so that in that moment of delirious fun and enjoyment, the PUA practitioner can carry out it’s one-sided aim: to fuck and enjoy, and fly away afterwards. No responsibility, no continuity. Sex is the only important part of this one-sided relationship. This is a “love” that treats the practitioner as predator and their target as “prey”. And yeah, every successful hunt is indeed exhilarating.

So any attempt to reconcile the two would always result only to a one night stand and a heartbreak. :slight_smile:

15

It also strikes me that a lot of PUA techniques are largely filtering tactics aimed at rapidly screening-out women who might be wanting more out of a man or are unwilling to put-out quickly and then to focus on the ones who are are most likely to go to bed soonest.

There can be a lot of reasons for this - Not only because she knows what she wants and that’s fine but often issues of self esteem and control/power dynamics are mercilessly played-on and that’s often where I start having extreme difficulties with the concept.

In a relationship, yes a different dynamic is involved but some PUA thinking does hold true - IMO you both need to preserve at least some aspects of your own independence/personal space and indeed “mystery” for a substantial period rather than becoming completely interdependent too quickly that way attraction flourishes and gives time for your relationship/lifestyle to grow together naturally instead of quickly becoming a co-dependant mess that is in most cases bound to fail.

16

This!^^^

That’s the issue I have with my friends’ relationships. They grew too strong too fast, in my opinion, although they do seem happy. The book “Be Your Own Dating Service” by Nina Atwood calls this the “skyrocket relationship”, and doesn’t speak highly of it. Inviting my friends to hang out has become a lesson in frustration, although it’s gotten a little bit better recently. I have my sports group and my karaoke group to socialize with (and test my pheromones on), but I want to have the company of long-time friends too. It’s one of the factors that’s deterring me from having my own LTR.

David DeAngelo (“Double Your Dating” author), whose material I’d say is 30% good, 70% crap, has something to say about this too. He talked about the 8 personality types that women like for LTR’s, but willingly give sex to only 4 of them. I only remember one: Adventurer, men who do crazy things for fun, regardless of their age. That’s the one I’m in the process of adopting for myself. Hence, me taking dangerous flying lessons (and keeping photos of them on my cell phone) and going to fetish clubs in sketchy industrial neighborhoods (no photos, obviously). Also not giving a rat’s ass, like when catching the morning train after that ONS.

17

I think this is the direct result of PUA’s dogged adherence to the principles of Evolutionary Biology. In fact the first time I heard the 20/80% thing was years ago in relation to Evobiol and it was not human sex they were talking about.

And that’s another thing that makes me question aspects of PUA - Much of the foundation principles of Evobiol were based on work with and observation of captive populations, which did tend to display a rather different and artificial set of attributes/social dynamic compared to true wild pops. Now I suppose you can say some of a PUA’s spheres of interaction/happy hunting grounds are the human equivalent of a captive pop - eg High schools/colleges, clubs/bar scene, fashion/sporting groups etc but many more spheres of adult interaction are a lot more diffuse and won’t fit the mould so well.