Tom's Views

Let’s illustrate the greater power of   perfect 10’s   by considering a group of one thousand males from all walks of life, all gathered together to judge females. The ladies under consideration walk on a model’s runway before all the men.  The men then vote whether or not they’d take each woman out. In this scenario, we’d expect that a hundred of the thousand men would say they’d want to go out with a woman rated at a one. For fives, five-hundred men would date her, and for our most able-bodied female, since she has a nine point five rating, 950 men would date her. The higher her position in the pecking orders (as indicated by her attractiveness rating), the more men would wish to date her.  So she’d get to pick (peck) the man she wants   before   women of lower attractiveness ratings.

It’s a short stretch then to infer that for a given stranger, the perfect 10 produces the highest degree of romantic gratification in a lover, while the 1 produces just one tenth as much. The 10 generates way more of the pleasing, animal sensations (love lust) in a lover than does the 1, and this phenomenon has pronounced positive effects.  Obviously then, the perfect 10 enjoys mostly the high side of any romantic   power struggles   and power imbalances she might encounter.

Studies suggest 10’s to be better gratified in love (as well as better able to gratify another) than those rated lower. The more attractive the person, the more likely he or she is to be fulfilled in love.  Thus, assuming that these tens mate with other tens, their relationships are healthier over all – less infidelity, less abuse, more willingness to cooperate with and tolerate one another, more lasting and stronger passion, and so on.

People (including other 10’s) value 10’s more as a result.  Thus, they disrespect and dismiss them less. The 10’s therefore generally wield more power than the 1’s, 5’s, and 6’s.  So people are less likely to cross them. Life over all is certainly easier in love for a perfect 10 as she’s likely to rarely if ever be on the losing end of a power imbalance in a romantic relationship, and probably wins most power struggles she comes upon.

The 10 would thus have more prospective lovers from which to choose. Obviously, the woman with 950 men wanting her has more choices available to her, than the one with just 100 suitors. So, the perfect 10 need compromise less. Because she’s   more desirable to more men, her ability to attract highly desirable males is greater than that of less striking females, as   more choices available   generally implies   better choices made. There’s more cream at the top of a bigger vat of milk, just as more top-notch ladies would be found floating in the group of 950, than in the group of just 100. The perfect 10 female thus, has greater access to the best men than those not so perfect, and this gives her a decided advantage in most any power struggle with a lover.

Studies also suggest that relationships work best when power is balanced or when the man has slightly more control; that is, when the lovers respect each other with near equality and with minimal subordination. Ideally, neither one dominates very much in ability or knowledge or good looks for that matter.  Certainly, neither participant could be said to completely rule in a healthy union. Power struggles would thus occur with both less frequency and less severity.  The healthiest relationships are true partnerships, where each person has near equal influence in matters of significance.

We might expect therefore, that the near-perfect 10 would tend to date other near-perfect 10’s (those in her own league, so to speak).  Why?  Because not only would more perfect 10 males want her, but also only other perfect 10’s would generate in her the same level of desire and respect for them that she does in them for her, and this would equalize the power imbalance that results from attractiveness deficits, and curb any incidental power struggles as well.  Only with other 10′s would such debilitating power imbalances not exist.

With less attractive men (the 6’s, 4’s, and of course, the 1’s), this perfect 10 would quickly become the ruling party, primarily because she has more choices of desirable men.  So there’s less reason for her to put up with low pleasure levels from those men less attractive than she is herself.

Any lower-rated man with more than rocks in his head would sense this implied superiority.  As such, if he truly wishes to keep dating the perfect 10, he’ll put her wishes before his own; sometimes at the expense of his self-esteem, sanity, and even his life. He’ll be relegated to an oppressive serving role as opposed to the healthier equal-partner role, because if he makes too many waves, his lady will, with ease, simply leave him and find another.  He’ll capitulate in more power struggles with her as well.  Not only does this self-imposed silence erode his self-respect. She will also soon grow bored with him as the push-over that he’s become; the push-over that he must be in order to avoid challenging her so much that she becomes irritated and leaves him.  So while avoiding power struggles may keep her in his life a bit longer, the far more lasting solution would be for him to somehow become more attractive.  Only then could he truly remove her edge, and enjoy true equality in their relationship.

It’s no wonder then that power imbalance spells doom in most any union. The less attractive man will leave because his healthy self-esteem prevents his enjoyment of being dominated. Or if he hasn’t sufficient self-esteem for that, he’ll lash out against his perfect 10 girlfriend due to his pent up anger of her pushing him around. Even if he stays without noticeable symptoms of frustration,   she   will likely leave simply because as stated above, she can do better.

In either case, when two lovers have sufficiently different attractiveness ratings, the more attractive one commands too much greater power in the association than the less attractive one.  This power imbalance spells doom for their relationship, because she’ll win all the power struggles except those that she doesn’t really care to win.  Indeed, perfect 10′s do indeed win more power struggles.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Asking For Help
• Blind Hardships
• Help From Sighted Lovers
• More Help For The Blind, Please!
• Power Imbalance: Blind Man Dating Sighted Woman

Indeed, I   support NPR funding   and believe that the government should do this to minimize news bias, just as it supports to other public educational sources. Because of the NPR funding, all sides can enter the discussion to ensure that bias is discouraged. This makes NPR is more than JUST a news outlet; it’s a sort of forum for all sides to meet and be heard with equality, uncolored by profiteering. Thus, NPR a place where people can get the least biased news around because all sides have an interest in the reporting. So keep funding NPR.

I support NPR funding because I doubt that any other news services offer   less bias  than NPR. We’ve acknowledged that all news services appear biased to somebody. But I’ve listened to thousands of hours of news, and perhaps a couple hundred hours of NPR’s broadcasts over the years. NPR at least, has processes in place to minimize bias, and I find that comforting.

NPR in its entirety does more than just news, yes. But they broadcast numerous shows that would indeed qualify them as (among other things) a very high-quality news service: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, On Point, and Talk to the Nation to mention a few.  For the minimal amount the government pays to NPR, this rich and diverse news information makes supporting government funding of National Public Radio money well spent.

Indeed, NPR does have biases; it would be impossible for any human-run news gathering service not to. But they don’t slant their reporting for profit or increased audience sizes. That is what makes them a unique and (in my opinion) essential part of the complete news media picture here in the US.  So I fervently support continued NPR funding. 

But in spite of all of this, thethe house just voted to move forward with the defunding of NPR. However, this will probably not survive the senate much less the president’s pen.  Thanks goodness that supporting NPR funding will continue, at least for the next couple years.

So let’s see. The government funds NPR at a rate of roughly five million dollars per year. Seems like small change compared to the savings that could be realized if the republicans focused more on what they promised they would in November, 2010, and worked with the democrats to devise a significant deficit reduction plan; one that cuts   hundreds of billions   instead of the mere millions that NPR funding costs.

Why did they spend so much house floor time debating the NPR issue? Do they just not like the content on NPR?   Apparently, they didn’t like someone speaking out against them, even though they taped the “foul” mouthed fellow without his knowledge. Pretty shady I’d say. Definitely a witch hunt, and certainly this does not justfy voting against support for NPR funding.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• NPR Funding Debate
• Paying Too Much Tax?

References

• NPR Funding Sources   description on Wikipedia

From audio journal episode   AJE-2010-05-07-19-30.

Not all   love rejection   is pointless.  Some rejection is even good, and highly   useful   in fact.  Love rejection can show us which paths to avoid in our love quests.  Rejection can actually guide us in the right direction, toward that ultimate goal of the love quest: sustained happiness and fulfillment in love.  Here are some ways how.

So if we’re going to keep the love quest going, we should not seek to avoid   all   rejection.  True.  Love rejection makes the love quest painful.  But a love quest, like any other quest, would not be a quest without some rejection to thwart progress.  Quests are bitter-sweet, being full of both pleasure and pain; often more pain than pleasure.  So we must endure some potent losses in order to reach the wins.   To give up in the face of rejection means that we forfeit the love quest.  Rejection is the dirt, mud, and jagged branches and vines in the jungle that we must get through to reach the prize.  So rejection supplies a sort of map for the quest.  Rejection is like the walls in a maze that we bump and feel our way through.  You can’t get through a respectable maze without bumping into a few walls along the way.  Likewise, you’ll never win the love quest without having to   deal with rejection   frequently.

Compassionate love rejection   happens when a person rejects, but does so with sensitivity and gentleness.  It may not mean forever, no.   In fact, she may be leaving the door open a crack, encouraging us to try again in the future; just not now.  She may have declined a date request, not because she dislikes us, but rather due to circumstances in her life beyond her control.  Maybe she already has a boyfriend, is busy with children or career, or she’s dealing with judgmental siblings who don’t like us.  Rejections like this hurt less, and may not hurt at all, and we should follow up on this sort; asking again every so often.  Sometimes in the love quest, persistence pays off.  Just don’t be persistent where it’s not welcome.  Don’t be a pain.  In fact, a compassionate rejection can save us much pain if we regard it properly.

Seasons change, yes, and so do people sometimes.  Even when someone rejects with obvious displeasure at our having asked them out, they could change their minds.  It’s possible yes.  But don’t count on it.  Don’t keep hounding them on the off-chance that they will change their minds.  Just be comforted that they   could   decide differently sometime later.

Sometimes, a rejection of love may mean the opposite.  That is, the rejecter may be rejecting us for reasons other than that she feels no attraction.  She may fear what her family and friend would say if she said yes, or any number of other reasons.  So, when rejections like these attempt to conceal (but nonetheless betray) a strong desire to say yes, it’s good to try again, now and then.  She may in fact say yes the next time.  As long as she never calls me a reject, I may try again though with a history of rejection now established, I’d probably be more afraid of rejection in the future.  So I might not try again.  So to the ladies: Be careful to whom and how you say no. This no-means-yes sort of rejection can be uplifting.  But again, do not assume that no means yes until she   actually says   she means yes.  Indeed, people reject in spite of their desires to embrace, because they sense their vulnerability to the person that they, underneath it all, actually desire.  Though they like him, their affection may spur them to reject him!  They reject to avoid getting hurt while denying themselves what they intensely yearn for.  Life’s full of these crazy ironies, isn’t it?

Rejection in love, both the pain of receiving it as well as the exaggerated enthusiasm that is often dispensed with it, are at times covers for highly positive feelings for the rejected one as well.  Perhaps the women from whom we’re most afraid of love rejection, are the ones we most long for.  Thus, these are the ones we’d have the most fun with if they’d only accept us.  So, whom we fear rejection from the most, is likely whom we desire the most.  So how we regard the threat of rejection can supply important clues as to whom we are the most intensely attracted.

Though rejection generates much sadness, we can learn from these experiences who we truly desire, and whom we do not.  We can also figure out who truly desires us, not only by the absence of rejection, but also in spite of the presence of it.  A great way to deal with rejection therefore, is to   find the positive   in it.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Get Over Love Rejection By Finding New Love
• More Rejection Means More Fear, Not Less
• Risk Management Reduces Rejection Fears
• Romantic Rebuff Hurts Deeply

Many women seem to resist the temptations posed by   love-at-first-sight   more than men, because they do not   trust   as readily as men.  As a single man, I’ve found this to be disconcerting because nearly always, I   fall in love   with women way faster than they fall in love with me.  I don’t like the power imbalance that results.  So I wanted to understand better why many women are so stand-offish in love in the hopes of minimizing such power imbalances in future relationships.  My research has led me to the following ideas.

Women would seem to risk more when falling in   love at first sight  with men, than men risk by falling in love with women. So women must trust less, at least at first, in order to stay safe.  Due to smaller body sizes, less developed muscles, less aggression, and less physical strength on the whole, ladies are more easily and brutally dominated by men.  Thus, women are hurt and killed more often by men than are men by women. So, to assure that she’ll be around long enough to give birth, the woman must ensure that the men she picks won’t destroy her, at least not until she has her children.  So women tend to be more cautious.  Since trust and caution are essentially opposites, It makes sense that women trust men less as they must be more cautious of them.  Understandably then,   trust   is sited more by women therefore, as a desirable quality in a man than vice versa.

Through the eons, trust has become intimately bound with passion in females. The women who select the most trustworthy males are generally the most likely to pass on their values of caution to the next generation. Those who do not select cautiously couldn’t as readily pass on the value that love lust unsubstantiated by trust is an acceptable and sufficient cause to roll in the hay. Many women thus, are not interested in exchanging any physical affection until they implicitly trust their mate to be a gentle, controlled, and harmlessly loving man. Since well-founded trust takes much longer to develop than sheer physical attraction, so too then, do women’s feelings of passionate love take longer to appear. In women therefore, evolutionary forces would seem to discourage if not prevent love-at-first-sight.

But with men, it’s different. Since traditionally, women kill fewer men than the other way around, men are understandably less fearful about potential harm a woman might do to them. It’s a foregone conclusion that men will be safe with virtually all women he dates. Now this may be changing as women are adopting more ambitious and aggressive stands to negotiate life in the post feminism era. Indeed women are committing more violent crimes against males than at any time past.

But even today, violent crimes against men by women still happen far, far less often than those against women by men. So the man needn’t take as much time developing trust in her to determine her safeness.  The element of trust is not nearly as crucial to   his   safety as it is to   hers.

Of course, the trust issue is the first of many complications that more gravely affect women than men. Women bear a bigger share of the cost of having children, because men can just screw and be done. But women must carry the baby for nine months, and they’re the ones who have the equipment to sustain the baby once it arrives (breasts for milk). Babies are inexorably more bound therefore, to the mother than the father.  For more about this sort of trust, please see my   Why Resist Love At First Sight?   piece.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Power Imbalance: Blind Man Dating Sighted Woman
• Why Believe In Love At First Sight?
• Why Resist Love At First Sight?

References

• Love-At-First-Sight   definition on Wikipedia

Indeed there are good reasons to consider seeking pity love, as discussed in my   Tom’s Views –> There Is A Place For Pity Love   piece.  But there are also numerous  pitfalls of pity love  which I’ll discuss further below.

Unfortunately, when anyone appears pitiable in much degree at all, this can effectively discourage falling in   love at first sight   or over any longer a period of time in fact. Since  I feel that love-at-first-sight is necessary for laying the groundwork and providing the motivation for falling deeply in love over the long term (discussed here), I recognize that seeking pity love is not a good long-term solution for attaining and sustaining romantic gratification with a lady. But pity love can help get us through those short-term periods of extreme longing for intimacy.  See my   Tom’s Views –> Why Believe In Love At First Sight?   piece for details on why I consider love at first sight the basis for long-term bliss in love.

When pity love is present, love at first sight   is probably not. I know I’m proposing quite the long shot because, sadly, I’ve never known love-at-first-sight to accompany pity, nor pity love to inspire love-at-first-sight; at least, not in my own heart and loins. Any woman I ever felt sorry for, I most decidedly could not love passionately. I could care for her, yes. Want her? Definitely. Need her? For sure. But I could not fall in love with her.

Love-at-first-sight and pity love do not easily coexist in my heart for the same woman because, in a powerfully canceling way, they contradict one another in meaning. Pity love is selfless and noble. But love-at-first-sight is selfish. As I’ve come to understand its workings in my life, LAFS forms based on our immediate assessment of how   perfect to us   the beloved appears to be.

However, when a person needs help above the usual and customary levels, that impression of flawlessness (or   illusion   is destroyed. I call it   an illusion   because of course, no one is perfect though   they may seem perfect   when our perceptions are colored by love-at-first-sight. Given that the truest love is truly blind, I believe that retaining some of this illusion is so necessary to keeping that true love true.  However, the need for pity love indeed destroys the illusions implied by love-at-first-sightin most people.  So pity love will fail to work way more often than not, in securing true love.  Pity love is not true love though it can sometimes lead into it.

It’s Easy To Think Pity Love Means True Love.  When pity love is the motivation for a woman to act loving, then the person she’s loving would soon start to sense that it’s pity, and not love, that binds her to him.  Then, accepting her affection would become quite difficult I think.

The need for pity love is a blemish. An apparent need for extra help constitutes such a blemish to many. This need for pity love tends to repel love-at-first-sight and subsequent true love as well, because in order to pity to the degree that we think they need, we must also perceive this higher-than-normal wanting in them for kindness (read that neediness). This makes it hard to be attracted unconsciously to those we pity, because in so distinguishing their greater-than-customary needs, we’re also affirming the graveness of their imperfections, or, put another way,   the height of their neediness.   We recognize the implied hardships. Then, we estimate (fair or not) that these are far greater than those implied by loving someone normal. Since people today seek as much as they can for the least effort, it’s no wonder that so many bolt when confronted with the implied extra effort of loving a handicapped person.  People want perfection in their mates.  In fact, a near-perfect person (at least as perceived by them) is what I believe triggers love-at-first sight.  See my   Love At First Sight, Not Perfect, But Perfect To Me   piece for more on that.

Neediness Makes Pity Love The Kiss Of Death.  Dr. Joy Brown in her   Dating For Dummies   book suggests that an illusion of   needlessness   is key to a man’s attractiveness to women. Ladies must sense early on that he doesn’t really need them, and doesn’t start needing them until they’re ready. Neediness she says, especially at the debut meeting, withers a man’s strong, independent image. Now he need not   remain   completely self-sufficient to be lovable, so long as he consistently conveys that he can be until    after   she’s fallen in love. When there’s any implied or overt need before this, the romantic flames go dark fast, because just or not, many see pitiful people as grossly repellent. No wonder folks aggressively avoid appearing to need pity, and why newly impaired people struggle against seeking help. Whatever fed their aversion to giving compassion in their hale and hearty years seems also to weaken their ability to seek it once impairment makes them the needy themselves. If we can’t give help when we’re young, then we may not be equipped to receive it when we’re old. What goes around therefore really does come around.

Love at first sight is a selfish passion that cannot typically be reconciled with pity love. Now it can often evolve to more altruistic desires as the relationship matures. That is, when the level three needs [as described in Maslow's book,  Motivation and Personality] are well satiated (read, when those strong initial passions are satisfied), the subject can then love the beloved more selflessly through pursuing his level five needs. But LAFS is that spark at the beginning that gets everything else going. It’s a right of passage if you will, to the more highly esteemed levels of love. Eventually, so many other emotions come to fruition that the initial LAFS is no longer as immediate, and often disappears.

Still, it’s difficult to reach the deeper emotional realms of selfless love unless you first experience love-at-first-sight. I believe that what drives love-at-first-sight is how completely, in our best guess, keeping company with a beloved will supply what we want. While a few ladies might be turned on at the wonder of how they could help a man, generally speaking, people aren’t thinking of what they can do for the beloved when caught in the throes of pleasurable love lust. No, they usually think first about what the company of the beloved will do for them. It’s only after their needs have been met that they can fully extend themselves to the beloved, unless of course, one of their basic needs is to serve others in meaningful ways.

The Problem Of  One Lover Needing More Than The Other. When one partner needs the other more than the other needs the one, an irreconsilable power imbalance can result.  See   here   for more discussion on this difficulty that can happen when blind men date sighted women.

The Problem of Mutual Pity Love.  Mutual pity love (where both partners pity each other and remain together due pretty much entirely to that pity love) could result in codependency, where the couple depends on each other for reasons other than the fulfillment of the sheer desire to be together.

The Crowd Enforces The Pecking Order. For a discussion of this difficulty, see my   Tom’s Views –> Society Dictates Pecking Order Without Pity   piece.  Basically, when people see a guy with a woman who is much more attractive than they think the guy deserves, they sabotage their relationship. They discourage her from being with him for the exact reasons that she would pity-love him.  Society therefore, discourages pity love.

Then, there’s the worry that at any time, a more attractive man could whisk her away; especially if the only source of her motivation to stay with the handicapped man is pity love. Clearly, finding a beauty to love marks the start of but another battle in the war for sustained fulfillment, and by no means signifies victory. Love born from pity would seem to raise doubts So believe me. I know that finding my dream girl by no means implies happiness ever after.

So, given the way pity love discourages love-at-first-sight, how seeking it can make a man (especially) appear too needy, and how society at large generally discourages it, the pitfalls of pity love are indeed numerous and usually spell romantic failure. So, avoid pity love unless you have no other alternatives for receiving the romantic affection that you crave.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Asking For Help
• Help From Sighted Lovers
• Love At First Sight, Not Perfect, But Perfect To Me
• Society Dictates Pecking Order Without Pity
• There Is A Place For Pity Love

References

• Love-At-First-Sight   definition on Wikipedia