John Gottman is best-known for studying what causes marriages to break up. He hasn't said anything that hasn't been known for a few thousand years, but, these days, he's the one who's studied it the most. About 20 years, I think.
He found the biggest predictor of divorce is contempt. Actually there are four things: Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt and Stonewalling. If you want, you can call them the Four Horsemen.
Contempt is the opposite of respect, and respect is based on gratitude and appreciation. What contempt is really saying is, "You're not good enough."
And the reaction to that attitude is going to be resentment and defensiveness, including the phrase, "Nope, I'm not going to do that..." You can end that phrase with, "...anymore."
There is always going to be a reaction to contempt, never good ones. So it mystifies me that some people think they can show contempt and ingratitude and expect something good to come out of it. Do they honestly think they can change behavior like that?
I know a man who was a mercenary, and he killed a lot of people, all of whom, in my opinion, deserved it. After he retired from it he became head of security in a pretty bad area. Whores, pimps, drug dealers, that kind of thing. He told them, you do your dealings over there, not here, and there will be no trouble. This is my territory and that is yours. He specifically used the word "respect" in taking to me. And, he told me, he never had any trouble with them, ever.
I see three main trends in the Manosphere, which means there are three main trends in society: Men Going There Own Way and men not getting married and having children.
Each of those is Stonewalling and saying "no," which means they are reactions to contempt and ingratitude.
The Third Trend is the PUA (Pick-Up Artist). This is based on revenge and contempt for women, contrary to the protestations of some well-known commentators. Of all the PUAs I have known, not one liked women. And every one of them screwed up his life unless he quit was he was doing.
Not long ago I read some articles about how some women are trying to draw out the courtship process to get free entertainment and food. The extent to which this is true, I do not know. Most women couldn't pull it off successfully.
But whether it is a little successful or a lot successful, it's showing contempt and disrespect for men, and zero gratitude and appreciation.
I know a man who went away to college when he was 18, and come not make it home for Christmas, since his home was a few thousand miles away. A woman he had met told him she'd pick him up and he could spend Christmas with her and her family.
She never showed up, never called, never explained or apologized, and I don't think he was ever the same. He was 18, alone, away from home for the first time, and got a rude awakening to what lies and disrespect really were like.
As for Men Going Their Own Way and not getting married and having children, the best explanation is that they feel they getting a bad deal - being treated contemptuously, without respect or gratitude, feeling that they are the objects of attempts to humiliate them.
Contempt is the attempt to humiliate someone. And the attempt to humiliate someone leads to the attempt at revenge. That's a repeatable science, and has been for thousands of years.
5 comments:
Yeah, contempt can be a real dagger. But whatever comes about, a man must never lose his sense of self-respect or else the unwinding begins.
Herbie
The fourth trend is Athol Kay, Dal rock, et al.: the often semi-religious or ex-religious relationship game guys.
It's hard not to regard the great mass of american women with contempt, but you may be able to find a decent one and keep it together. Trouble is, there aren't necessarily enough to go around. You're old. You don't really get how bad it is for young people now.
I agree with Anonymous - both of 'em.
It used to be that feminism in our day was about equal pay for equal work, respect for women and equal rights for them.
Today it's about contempt and hatred for men. And - when you look at today's emasculated, pussified liberal male, one can hardly blame them.
The work part definitely resonates. Like the job, don't like the management. But that is pretty much the same everywhere.
I was stood up for dates - no show, no call, no explanation - several times in a row and by different women each time, over the course of about a year in the late 1990s. I never saw any of them again (except one, who was in the adjacent bay at an oil change shop a couple of years ago. She recognized me and spent the whole time cowering in her car as if she expected me to get out and punch her in the mouth).
It was ten years or so before I was prepared to deal with that kind of rejection again and ask a woman out. I was still social enough; I hung out with male friends, although I drank a lot (too much from time to time - although I could always recognize when it was getting out of hand and would lay low for a couple of weeks as I got my shit together). All of this manifested as a low opinion and deep distrust of women in general and I had sort of hunkered down into a dull hopelessness about the whole thing.
My outlook has improved quite a lot since discovering the 'sphere a couple of years ago, though. I share your distaste for PUAs, but I have never had as profound a paradigm shift as when I started reading about Game theory a la Rollo Tomassi.
My low opinion and distrust of women has improved greatly thanks to my new understanding, via Tomassi, of female psychology, and my relations with women and everybody else just keep getting better and better.
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