Learning some PUA skills is never helpful

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i don't know about books, but this site is the first that came up when i googled "nice guys tm": Geek Feminism

I read through several similar sites not that long ago.

While they seem helpful there is uaually a catch to them if you have behaved in one way all of your life.

First thing on the list for example:
Would I do this to a man?
Earlier me would have done the same and probably beyond that for a man(men usuallly rewarded whatever I did for them more with help imrpoving my social status/whatever)



Why did I find PUA helpful?

Simple.
The explanation I was given was that being nice^tm was the easy way out, the way to avoid confrontantion from most people... and in order to get out of it you had to start confronting people on a reasonable manner.

Would disagreements often cause you dispair? probably but not half as much as the despair you get when nice guy^tm actions go unrewarded for a long period.

It made quite a lot of sense at the time and everything changed.

Believe it or not 2 years ago I couldnt keep a new friend of any gender for any longer than 3 months. Eventually I realized that the relationship was too one-sided and I stopped contacting them.

A year ago I started going out to meet as many people as I could. Things were a mess, I sucked at approaching people...
Right now I am still meeting the same people but the whole thing has improved greatly once I read about why nice guys have the wrong approach to any sort of relationship.

I have several male friends, several female friends, I can interact with new people without being wary about their intentions... it is a whole new world out there just because someone was very clear on what I was doing wrong

i see--so good behaviour has no value except what it can get you from other people?

funny, because when i behave like a decent human being i'm not doing it to see what people will DO FOR ME. i'm doing it so i can look at my own face in the mirror every morning and not see an a**hole.

guess we differ in that respect.

Good behaviour has a lot of value whatever the outcome.

Earlier me just put too much emphasis on doing things for others and forgot about himself. That was why most of my relationships were one-sided.

I will still help anyone out should I need to but I can put a limit .

This means for example that 2 years ago a local political party kept calling me giving me with false expectations (it is not a several day thing you just need to come here once, you go there and they make you say that you will be there several times the following weeks...)and I kept going there. Right now I have gone once this year and whenever they call I can calmly point them out that I just cant deal with the false expectations, I agree with their party but the way they currently do things is not for me.

As stupid as it may sound putting some limit can improve most relationships because you treat others as equals.
Earlier me treated everyone as better than him

I believe most people do whatever they do in life because they expect certain things to happen as a result. If you think about it more carefully, you will have to admit that you not thinking of yourself as an as*hole is contingent of other things happening or not happening and some of those things may even be other people's attitudes towards you which at the end of the day makes you no different than any PUA.

I gave all this a LOT of thought over a LONG LONG period of time and in great detail. There is no such thing as an unquestionable universal morality, therefore being or not being an as*hole is completely arbitrary.

actually, no. personally, if i did things that i knew to be wrong say for personal gain, when i looked at myself in the mirror i would see an a**hole. as it is, when i work hard at constructing and maintaining my own idea of personal responsibility and morality, and i make all my choices based on what that code tells me is the right thing to do, then i feel good about myself and can sleep at night untroubled by my conscience. when it comes to my sense of morality, it matters nothing what OTHERS think of my actions--only that my actions live up to my own (carefully honed and continuously re-examined and questioned) standards of what is moral.

Last edited by starvingartist on 27 Mar 2014, 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^ that's great and all, but morality only makes sense in social sense. You cannot have morality without it being relevant within a social setting, without it being about person A relating to person B. And as soon as you have that scenario, you cannot escape from the possibility that person A will perceive things differently to person B and that therefore their individual morality bias will lead them to actions that may cause injury to the other party. All the while believing that they were behaving in the strictest moral sense. Except, you cannot have a moral sense without it implying avoidance of causing injury to others. It's one of those social paradoxes that we all live with because it's just the least of all available evils.

if i behave according to my own code, and someone else somehow gets hurt by it, i will not torture myself with guilt over it. i may regret that it happened, and hopefully learn something from it so that next time i am faced with a similar choice i don`t make the same kind of mistake that leads to someone getting hurt--but i won`t think of myself as an immoral person for hurting them. i would feel i made an honest and well-intentioned mistake, which is not at all the same as making a choice that i know beforehand would hurt someone else. if i did THAT, then i would definitely feel like an immoral a**hole. otherwise, nope.

Thank you for sharing your perspective but I fail to see how that is relevant to anyone not in your life unless you are implying that everyone should uphold the same standards as yourself or are you saying that the way you have chosen to think about morality is something that other should adopt for their benefit?

(I am not being awkward on purpose, it really just isn't clear)

For contrast, I feel guilty when people are hurt by my unintentional actions whereas I don't feel guilty if I have caused someone harm on purpose.

I am not sure what we can learn from this collectively other than what we already know from before - i.e. that there are socially endorsed behaviours that are acceptable and not acceptable.

if you fail to see how it`s relevant then feel free to not pay any attention to it. i was just stating what morality means to me.

Even if we are all just walking talking chemical reactions and everything is we do is some kind of trade, it's not possible for some people to see things that way in practice. Not without falling in the darkest unholy pit of despair. I have to choose to believe there's good. I have to believe there's such a thing as love, that transcends some kind of mutual transaction. I don't care if it's just a feeling. I need a reason to go on living. It would be so easy to be an analytical robot and just not care, but I can't. It's so much easier for people who don't have to feel. I see it all the time.

i question this bit--it may sometimes appear easier, from the outside, but i lived with someone who was like that for 20 years and trust me....it's a howling emptiness, not peace.

i'm glad you choose not to give in to despair, and feel it's important to believe in goodness. i feel the same way, and it keeps me going. i hope it continues to do the same for you.

^ are you two implying that I am a cold, heartless, analytical robot?

Then I am hollow too.

We can all be hollow together

I will show myself out dont worry

i'm not sure who marshall was talking about, but i was talking about my father.