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MrMind comments on What information has surprised you most recently? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Disclaimer: this post contains personal informations and (very mild) generalizations about gender behaviour. If you think you cannot handle it properly, please avoid it.
Unfortunately, the most surprising information I had recently has been my February break-up: this girl I was dating and was madly in love with exhibited all behaviours of being in love with me too... There were some problems that prevented us getting together, but I thought they weren't so determining. It turned out I was deadly wrong: she started dating a guy that was nearer to her home and had more free time, and after two weeks I was dumped. A month later they were engaged. I have thus increased the probability of correlation between behaviours signalling love (signs of affection, sex, gifts, etc.) and predatory behavious (securing a mate for resources). Which is another way to say that now I'm less trustful towards women :/
Well, that's interesting...unless you are bisexual, you don't and won't ever have such bad experiences with men.
So from a rationalist perspective, does it make sense to use this evidence to update your beliefs about the trustworthiness of women, but not your beliefs about the trustworthiness of men? (This is a real, not rhetorical question)
That's correct (I'm not bisexual).
Positing that I cared about the trustworthiness of men in relationships (which I don't), I think it stil makes sense, as long as there isn't a uniformity between male and female behaviour which, in my experience, is not warranted at all.
Men have fewer easy opportunities to upgrade partners than women. That's why we can appear to have the moral high ground.
Can you imagine how you would behave, if you had the constant opportunity that some good looking women do? Think about how some men change, when they learn about PUA or become high status.
Really? Do they have this ready ability to upgrade because:
I wouldn't have said males stereotypically claim this particular high ground to a greater extent than females do---at least in the overall population---nor would that explanation seem the most plausible reason for why it would be so.
In your previous comment you speculated:
Resources and social status tend to be more easy to 'upgrade' than core physical attributes.
Wow, it didn't feel nearly that sloppy when I wrote it, I swear! Thanks for debugging me. Now for the politically incorrect explanation of my thought process...
I think when constructing the argument my brain actually substituted "women I sexually care about" with "women". How horrible is that... For (hopefully obvious) reasons females who sexually interest males are far fewer that males who sexually interest females. Does this seem acceptable to you? As you stated, it's easier for men to upgrade their attractiveness, and this can be true for men well in their fifties and older.
If you check closely I didn't say that men typically claim the moral high ground more often that women do, just that they can appear to have it for the (ridiculously flawed) reason I originally stated.
I wonder if my thought process highlights some mind killing aspects of this topic, and honestly I'm not sure anymore if the improved argument is much more plausible.
Yes, after a while I was all righteous "She dumped me, I'm a better person than her, etc", but when the emotional turmoil subsided, I found that I couldn't care less about who was more moral. If her istincts told her so, then all the better for her, I just want another partner for good.
While it's obvious that with the same set of istincts I would behave in the same way, I don't know how I would become if I had so much success with women. My brain cannot really compute the long term ramification, it's stuck on imagining all the sex I would get...
Well, I'm not sure if the implication could not be reversed, but I guess that whenever you have more success, you naturally become more picky, and that if you're not able to discern right away the good from the bad, or you find someone who's really good at faking, you become a much more frequent dumper.
The fact that you were deeply in love with her suggests that you aren't in a position where you can see the facts of the situation clearly.
Do you think it's a good idea to update based on that understanding of the situation?
Well, I've asked myself this for a long time. Sure I was deeply in love, but for what I could see all my behaviours were reciprocated. Also other people (besides her friends, apparently) were surprised (ranging from very surprised to downright furious) for her 'change'. I still don't know how much I could have foreseen this in advance, but this doesn't change the fact that I must be a lot more aware the next time.
I've found that paying attention to how much "signs of love" and "access to me for resources" correlate is useful in my relationships. But I'm also polyamorous so distance tends not to be nearly as big an obstacle as it seems to be for monogamy (coincidentally, if you're not aware, distance? Is a HUGE factor for a lot of people)
Yeah...
How do you implement that? You just simply tell a girl you like that you have multiple relationships?
I usually say I'm polyamorous, because most polyamorous people know the term, but otherwise yeah. I also live in Portland, and hang out with crowds where this is more common than normal. I did end up dating one monogamous girl, but she was completely okay with it - work occupied 90% of her life, and having a partner that didn't mind seeing her once or twice a month worked out very nicely for her.
I generally bring this up well before asking someone out, so that I can get a good feel for their reaction (often first or second meeting - just talking about my life makes it pretty clear I date multiple people. "Oh, today I hung out with girlfriend A and watched Farscape, then got a haircut with girlfriend B")
I also tend to emphasize my particular style of polyamory, which centers on honesty and the idea "It's not cheating if everyone involved has agreed to play by different rules". I've found signalling "I'm poly, NOT someone cheating on their spouse" is important :)
Have I ever mentioned how envious I am of people who live in Portland...
Ahah, yeah... Please realize that in Italian the word "polyamory" doesn't even exist...
I don't think your update follows from the information you provided. I think someonewrongonthenet asks a legit question.
I think observing how fast the "signs of love" develop is a useful heuristic in determining how fast they could dump you. If a person falls in love with you even before you have demonstrated your worth, something is wrong, assuming you're looking for a longer relationship. I personally think this works the other way too, I don't think falling in love is a useful heuristic for finding a suitable partner. Some people are just addicted to falling in love, and when it starts to fade, will look for their next rush.
(Edited to be sex-neutral and added explanation. Men fall in love too, and I'm not saying you or her didn't have good reasons to.)
Ehm... ok! Nobody said s/he didn't...?
In my case the 'courtship' phase, let's call it this way, lasted about two months. In your experience this is too fast or the correct time for assessing correctly someone's interest?
That's a new perspective... In my case I liked everything about her (at least, about what she was displaying), and I still think we had compatible lifestyles. I don't know if this is a good heuristic for being together, but from my point of view it doesn't get better than this. For her I cannot say, of course, but I don't think it was the 'falling in love' addiction: I was her second partner at all, but mainly it's at least suspicious that her 'rush' for me ended just about when a competitor showed up...
I could have been less blunt. I know it sucks to be dumped. I don't know your situation better than you do, just trying to provide helpful perspective.
Some people change their genuine love interest quickly, especially if they fall in love easily. Some people take different kinds of emotions more seriously than others. Many of these people are not predatory at all. If she's young, and you're her second partner, maybe she's just emotionally immature.
Don't get me wrong, with "predatory" I didn't mean to indicate some form of conscious behaviour targeting my money, nor do I think that she is faking her current engagement. I guess that in the end we are just giving different names to the same phoenomenon: feeling of love and attraction that adapts very quickly to better circumstances. All in all, it's a very effective survival mechanism for her (and for a fair number of women I happened to know/study), it's just emotionally wrecking for those on the other side... But now that I'm (very painfully) aware of this possibility, I just need to calibrate for that and go on with my life.
Ah, I see what you mean. You're right that I misunderstood you.
On an overly cynical side note, men adapt this way to more suitable partners too. It's just that we usually don't fall in love with resources and social status, but boobs and pretty faces.
Yesterday I was asking the same thing: if women see us as a bag of resources, and we could postulate that us males do the same thing, what kind of resources are we looking for in the other sex?
Meh, it's not that easy: yes, if I see a pretty face I'm attracted, but I don't know if cultural or not, I have fallen in love in the past with women that were not so beautiful but were for example fun to hang around, adventurous, caring, etc. In my opinion the statement that men search only for visual cues it's extremely simplicistic and just plainly wrong.