Thursday, August 19, 2010

Toxic Love

One of the biggest problems with relationships in this society is that the context we approach them from is too small. We were taught that getting the relationship is the goal.

It starts in early childhood with Fairy Tales where the Prince and the Princess live happily-ever-after. It continues in movies and books where "boy meets girl" "boy loses girl" "boy gets girl back" - the music swells and the happy couple ride off into the sunset. The songs that say "I can't smile without you" "I can't live without you" "You are my everything" describe the type of love we learned about growing up - toxic love - an addiction with the other person as our drug of choice, as our Higher Power.

Any time we set another human being up to be our Higher Power we are going to experience failure in whatever we are trying to accomplish. We will end up feeling victimized by the other person or by our self - and even when we feel victimized by the other person we blame our self for the choices we made. We are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships because of the belief system we were taught in childhood and the messages we got from our society growing up.

There is no goal to reach that will bring us to happily-ever after. We are not incomplete until we find our soul mate. We are not halves that cannot be whole without a relationship.

True Love is not a painful obsession. It is not taking a hostage or being a hostage. It is not all-consuming, isolating, or constricting. Believing we can't be whole or happy without a relationship is unhealthy and leads us to accept deprivation and abuse, and to engage in manipulation, dishonesty, and power struggles. The type of love we learned about growing up is an addiction, a form of toxic love.

Here is a short list of the characteristics of Love vs. toxic love (compiled with the help of the work of Melody Beattie & Terence Gorski.)

1. Love - Development of self first priority.
Toxic love - Obsession with relationship.

2. Love - Room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow.
Toxic love - Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness)

3. Love - Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships.
Toxic love - Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests.

4. Love - Encouragement of each other's expanding; secure in own worth.
Toxic love - Preoccupation with other's behavior; fear of other changing.

5. Love - Appropriate Trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.)
Toxic love - Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects "supply."

6. Love - Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together.
Toxic love - Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.

7. Love - Embracing of each other's individuality.
Toxic love - Trying to change other to own image.

8. Love - Relationship deals with all aspects of reality.
Toxic love - Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.

9. Love - Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other's mood.
Toxic love - Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.

10. Love - Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.)
Toxic love - Fusion (being obsessed with each other's problems and feelings.)

11. Love - Sex is free choice growing out of caring & friendship.
Toxic love - Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.

12. Love - Ability to enjoy being alone.
Toxic love - Unable to endure separation; clinging.

13. Love - Cycle of comfort and contentment.
Toxic love - Cycle of pain and despair.

Love is not supposed to be painful. There is pain involved in any relationship but if it is painful most of the time then something is not working.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship - it is natural and healthy. There is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship that will last forever - expecting it to last forever is what is dysfunctional. Expectations set us up to be a victim - and cause to abandon ourselves in search of our goal.

If we can start seeing relationships not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a punishment - it is a lesson.

As long as our definition of a successful relationship is one that lasts forever - we are set up to fail. As long as we believe that we have to have the other in our life to be happy, we are really just an addict trying to protect our supply - using another person as our drug of choice. That is not True Love - nor is it Loving.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

How to Attract Sexy Women

Every man wants a sexy woman. The problem is that sexy women get hit on all the time and have a ton of options. To succeed with these hot babes, you have to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Here are 10 ways to attract sexy women that will get you going in the right direction and help you make a big impact on the hottie you want.

Practice being interesting, funny, challenging, and unpredictable in situations where you're seeing the same woman over and over, such as at your favorite coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. When you tease and bust on a woman whom you're not interested in, and continue to keep the sexual tension up, other women will pick up on your confident vibe and wonder why you’re not flirting with them.

Sexy women will never admit it, but they love it when you tease and bust on them like there’s no tomorrow. Why? Because you're activating powerful sexual drives and female emotions that most men will never trigger inside of her -- and she'll be grateful to you for it. Even though an outsider might look at an evening that you spend with her and say: "He didn't treat her very well; he was difficult, very challenging and not complimentary at all,” at the end of the evening the woman you're with will go home with a deep, profound feeling of inner satisfaction that she won't be able to describe. So take the time to learn.

Sexy women get 50 e-mails from guys every day. If you want to stand out, you need to make fun of them. Instead of writing the typical “You sound very interesting, we have a lot in common…” try something like “Hey, I don't think that this picture is really you. What, did you go to the mall and get one of those glamour shots done or something? Do you have a real picture? Like you at home on your Stairmaster or something? Or do you even work out? OK, stop trying to fool all of us guys and let's see what you really look like." Nice is boring, and it's never more boring than when it's online -- in a place where there are a million other "nice" guys who have zero personalities chasing after her.

Regardless of the situation, a sexy woman wants you to lead the way. You're going to have to take the next step in some way. Don't wait around and hope something happens. There's always a smooth, interesting way to take the ball and move forward with it. If you don't, you'll spend many of your evenings snuggling up to the TV.

Most guys miss the point entirely when a woman starts testing them. Instead of turning up the volume and hitting the ball right back over the net twice as fast, most guys just crumble and lose all the energy, sexual tension and chemistry that was in the situation. When a woman throws down the challenge, or starts to test you, instead of responding by saying: "OK, whatever you want," you need to create even more tension, turn it up and understand how to amplify the sexual tension and attraction in the situation. If you don’t understand tests, you'll just misinterpret everything that happens and miss all your opportunities.

Sexy women aren't attracted to Wussies. So how could you characterize a Wuss? A Wussy is a guy who is weak, indecisive and insecure. A Wussy isn't in control, and he doesn't make decisions. Women feel attraction for men who demonstrate the qualities of a leader. How could you characterize a leader? A leader is a man who is in control of the situation, and who makes decisions and follows through on them without needing approval from others. Be a leader -- sexy women will love you for it.

How do women know if a man is interested in them for a "long-term" relationship or if he's just interested in dating casually? The trigger for this is how often you see them and how often you call them. Of course, there's more to it, like whether or not you buy gifts, talk about how you feel, ask her to be your girlfriend, etc. But if you want to just see a woman casually and not have her become "hooked" on you, then don't call her more than a couple of times a week, and don't see her more than once a week -- maybe twice sometimes.

I can remember when I used to call women too often, and if they didn't show up, I'd get upset and try to set up another date with them, etc. Of course, they'd usually play hard to get, and wind up thinking that I was a Wussy because I just accepted their flaky behavior. Well, after I stopped calling back women who flaked and basically stopped chasing women, I had the strangest thing happen; I had women call me -- sometimes weeks later. When a woman flakes, don’t worry about it. Just move on. She'll probably start flirting with you again when the timing’s right.

Give her space, If a woman says: "I need time to get to know myself" or "I need to find myself" or any variation of this common theme, it usually means you were acting like a Wuss, being clingy and generally not a challenge anymore. If you become too predictable, too involved, too needy, too Wuss-ish, and too "head over heels" too early in the relationship, it will drive a woman away. Sexy women have guys chasing them far more than the average or below-average women. You need to do something different, while at the same time being attractive. Probably the best thing you can do when you finally meet a really great girl is call her half as much as you normally would, and give her twice the space. Think about it.

I get so many e-mails from guys who have met a great girl, but they screwed it up because they made her "too important" mentally. In other words, when things started to get difficult, instead of taking the attitude of "next," which creates all kinds of attraction, they cling and do exactly the things that cause the woman to hit the road for good.

It’s much better to have the mental attitude of "I'm going to enjoy this woman's company for as long as it stays a good thing. The moment that she becomes a strain or a pain I'm out of here. I don't need problems or drama in my life.” The first response to this is usually: "But this woman is special. She's not like other women. She's the one." If she's the one, then all the more reason to take this attitude. It’ll do a lot of good things for your success with women.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Homosexuality and the Moral Failure of Higher Education

Recently, Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor who worked for Newman Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, was told by his department chair that he could no longer teach there. His offense: explaining and clarifying the Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality while teaching a class on Catholicism.

A couple of students complained to the department chair with the usual charge: his moral reasoning is hate speech that creates a hostile environment for gays and lesbians.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Keeton, a student at Augusta State University in Georgia, was forced to undergo "sensitivity training." Her offense: believing Christian teaching on homosexuality. She was told that if she did not change her moral beliefs and affirm homosexuality, she could not graduate with a degree in counseling.

Note the difference. Ken Howell did not insist that students believe or affirm the reasoned Catholic arguments against the moral legitimacy of homosexual acts. Rather, he required students who had chosen to taken an elective course on Catholicism to know and engage those arguments.

But the faculty of the Counselor Education Program at Augusta State apparently requires their students to agree with them. Students must affirm—or at least learn how to appear to affirm—homosexual sex. And the faculty at Augusta State seems to think nothing of intimidating students to ensure that they comply.

The juxtaposition captures one of the most glaring moral failures of higher education in America today, a failure that should be evident to most of us, no matter what we think about the moral status of homosexual acts. When it comes to sexual liberation, a culture of intimidation has taken the place of reason, debate, and civility. The otherwise favored ideal of academic freedom suddenly disappears, to be replaced with other absolutes that seem to demand intellectual submission.

If, like Howell and Keeton, you make any suggestion that homosexual acts are immoral, you are censured and your career is threatened. If you're a pro-gay professor or department, you can censure and intimidate as much as you like.

This seems an impossibly simplistic generalization, but I can’t see how to avoid it. My experience is of course limited, but from what I’ve seen Augusta State is not unique. Professors like those in Augusta State’s counseling department think nothing of withholding credentials and destroying careers, and administrators support them in creating this culture of intimidation.

Advancing the cause of sexual liberation is not negotiable in most of American academia. Graduate students have told me that being labeled as “anti-gay” means getting blackballed when entering the job market. And not just at secular schools. A whisper campaign (“he’s anti-gay”) against a recent candidate for a job in the Notre Dame philosophy department apparently succeeded.

People can be very cruel when they imagine their beliefs to be self-evident, which happens when all dissent is silenced and censured. In a group-think atmosphere, those who disagree are seen as unthinking "fundamentalists" or hateful "bigots." Even the most highly qualified and nuanced moral statements about homosexuality will be denounced as “homophobic” if they fall short of a full and unqualified affirmation of homosexuality.

Sexual liberation seems to have become the great moral cause. It is true that American schools expect ideological homogeneity on all manner of topics, and being pro-life or a person of faith—or even a Republican—can get you in trouble. But homosexuality alone seems to call forth the full repressive power of educational institutions.

On the surface, the culture of intimidation would seem a case of moral passion fused with institutional power. The reasoning goes like this: Gays and lesbians have been an oppressed minority, as blacks have been, and as we resisted racism by banning it where we could, so we should use our positions to ban prejudice against gays and lesbians and to promote equality and inclusion.

However, I’m not convinced. Traditional moral judgments aren’t like the old racists theories. They concern behaviors—the usual focus of moral judgments—not the ontological status of persons as genetically inferior.

I do not dismiss the moral passion felt by many proponents of sexual liberation, misguided as it may be. But I look elsewhere to explain the culture of intimidation, which seems so out of proportion to the cause and so contradictory to their belief in academic freedom.

Perhaps the force of conscience plays a role. St. Paul wrote that the law is written on the gentile’s heart (Rom 2:15). We are in a certain sense hardwired to recognize certain moral truths, however dimly, and the immorality of homosexual activity is one. Our internal censor, our interior sense of shame and guilt, often limits, restrains, and disciplines us as we try to follow our desires, perhaps especially those for sexual liberation.

Thus the need to use a kind of intellectual Agent Orange to destroy even the slightest judgments of immorality, because they reinforce what the voice of conscience keeps telling us, and what we would like to avoid hearing. Those who say that homosexual acts are immoral are oppressors, because their words—however dispassionate, however well-reasoned, however subtly expressed, however concerned for others—agitate consciences and block the free flow of desire.

Indeed, even those who are diffident are under suspicion, because that voice of conscience needs complete support to be suppressed. In the cause of sexual liberation nothing is acceptable short of full affirmation, or at least a scrupulous silence that expresses no reservations.

Sexual liberation is a Gucci freedom. Upper middle class Americans possess the resources to get a great deal of what they want, and part of what they want is sexual liberation. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the modern institution most closely associated with elite culture—higher education—should devote a great deal of energy to removing those who believe in moral limitations.