A Dating Exercise For Women – Amazing Follow Up
Almost a year ago, I posted an exercise (link below) for women that could open their eyes (and possibly hearts) to more men. Basically, the advice and exercise is this:
Every time you see and/or interact with a man, look for something good about him.
While the exercise is meant for single women, it could certainly be something quite positive for women in relationships. When I post advice, I can only hope that it will be followed. This exercise was indeed implemented. Blogging Bellita (link below) has been doing the exercise for a year! Here’s what she said regarding the results. The boldface is mine.
What I expected was that it would teach me to settle. I thought that focusing on virtue, character and other non-sexy but admirable traits would help me to rationalize happiness with a partner I wasn’t all that attracted to.
What I did not expect was that it would increase the number of men I felt genuinely attracted to.
I’m seriously amazed at how many more handsome men there are in my city than there were one year ago. But of course, it was not the city that changed; it was I.
The intent of the exercise was indeed to encourage women to look for other characteristics of men that go beyond the physical. The unintended consequence was that Bellita found physical elements of men to be more attractive to her. While I didn’t mention it in the original post, a huge part of the exercise is to get women simply to notice men, nothing more. Perhaps this is why Bellita is finding so many good-looking guys in her city.
The comments in Bellita’s blog post – sadly, her last – are interesting and point to the social expectation that women should always be bashing men, the culture of misandry. This is part of a comment from Zoe:
My female friends and family have responded quite negatively to my refusal to engage in the “let’s talk trash about the men in our lives” anymore, and are vocally alarmed by my interest in focusing on the positive things I see in any man I encounter these days.
The reaction to Red Pill wisdom, especially when espoused by a woman, is always going to be negative. Going against social expectations, as Zoe is doing, ruffles female feathers everywhere. This is the biggest hurdle to overcome when taking the Red Pill and seriously changing one’s world view of human behavior, especially reproductive behavior. Most people are too content to wallow in the “wisdom” of blue pill social expectations.
One Year Later – Part 2 (Blogging Bellita)
The Private Man 
My friends and family know that social expectation doesn’t motivate me, lol. And if they start in, I defend boundaries. The dynamic that’s popped up is with the men in my social circles. And this, I have a harder time with. I’ve deflected with humor or quiet direct statement. But it’s going to come to a head one of these days. Some of them can be rather arrogant, and if I can’t defend boundaries gracefully……
One down, 3 billion to go.
TPM; my (female) friends and I have been doing this too.
I don’t find the exercise difficult (I really like men!) but some of my friends still do. In any case it has worked… although none of us has landed a LTR in this past year, it has helped some of us to realise how shallow we were when we instantly rejected a man for wearing chinos.
A lot of the damage done by feminism is from its great negativity. I’ve seen perfectly contented and happy people, male and female, with sunny dispositions, turned into deeply unhappy, and most of all profoundly mistrustful and suspicious characters, looking for the worst in everyone in every situation. These horrible “consciousness raising” things that feminists did in the 70s, actually deformed people’s characters, creating a knee-jerk hostility that remained with them their whole lives. This was done to my mother, who stared life as quite a simple and innocent person, raised in the traditional way in the 1940s and 50s to be a wife and mother. Feminism got its hooks into her and told her that all that had been a lie, and that she was a failure if she didn’t try to live like a man. She died unhappy and alone, having alienated everyone around her with this hideous ideology. I grew up hating it and started working against it’s insidious poison early in life. I was helped once by a good man, a priest, actually, who bluntly pointed out to me that I had unconsciously picked up this suspicious habit of looking for the worst possible motives in everyone around me. He gave me a nearly identical piece of advice, simply, “look for at least one good thing in every person you talk to.”
I’m interested in the other examples you’ve got, apart from your mother. Can you provide more info?
Examples of what, particularly? Of the effects of feminist “consciousness raising” sessions? Or of feminism in general? I think there is pretty ample documentary evidence for both all around us and certainly no shortage of it online. But since I was only a child at the time, hers was the experience I was able to observe closely, first hand and over a period of many years. She would come home from these “workshops” and try out the weird, navel-gazing quasi-occult rubbish on me. By the time I was eight, I had learned to avoid it by making up plausible stuff to tell her about my inner life (dreams and what not) but she pestered me with it for years more, and spent the rest of her life applying these worthless and false politicised, pop-psych notions to everyone and everything she met. And of course, none of it ever made her happy.
If you are interested in what this kind of pop-psych/NewAge/lefty/femmy stuff did to people, and where it came from, you might find the effect it had on Catholic women religious (nuns) quite enlightening. There is a famous article on what was done as an experiment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. It was written by one of Carl Rogers’ followers who was involved in the experiment directly and who later denounced the whole thing as evil and deeply harmful. It’s a pretty ugly read, but it is quite a famous case, and the same experiment, in general terms, was repeated throughout the Catholic institutional establishment through the next three decades before the fad died out. It precipitated the total collapse of the active religious life for women in the US and throughout the English-speaking world, and from there infected the rest of the Catholic institution through the sisters’ educational programmes. Today the religious orders who adopted these notions are nearly extinct.
Hilary,
I’m sorry that you experienced with your mom, but feminism never made me feel negative towards men. It just made me feel empowered to do work that I love.
I’ve been doing this as well for the past six months or so. I thought it would be easy, since I like men, but after so much Feminism and working in a male-dominated field, the hardest part was replacing my gut-reaction to compete with male success with admiration for it. I’m finally getting the hang of it, and it’s honestly made my personal and work life so much better. Men need a little more appreciation these days.
And trust me, the woman who notices the extra effort her male coworker puts in on a project and acknowledges him for it is the girl who gets excellent peer reviews and help on an as needed basis.
Of course when I try the same kind of acknowledgement and appreciation on female coworkers they either talk themselves out of the compliment or accuse me of slacking.
I’ve been doing this for several months and think it’s worth doing. I’m also really skeptical when people generalize, so when I hear women bash men or men bash women (I hear more of the former because I’m female) I usually ask for details, counter examples, alternative explanations, and ask them if they think it is a good idea to generalize (ie, what do you get out of it?).
I do wonder how many of you guys do this (find at least one positive thing) about the women you see every day. I say this because I don’t think this is about gender, but is about just having a positive disposition towards life, which infinitely increases how good your life is.
Guys already do that. In fact, most would only see the positives in women and see no negative, as they’ve been trained all their life to see women as flawless and better beings. They would need to do the opposite of this dating exercise to keep themselves grounded around women.
As a matter of interest isn’t this what Game and the Red Pill paradigm do, knock women off their pedestal.
I never had a problem seeing positives in men, I work in a male-dominated field, and I love the guys I work with. I am also quite close to my dad and my brother, and my work mentor is a former lieutenant in my department.
But, I had problems finding and being attracted to GOOD men. My therapist advised me to look closely at the men in my life and identify the traits that my good male friends have that made them such good friends, and were traits I’d like to find in a future husband. It was really sort of a similar kind of exercise, because it forced me to look deeper at the men around me, think critically about the kinds of traits a good husband might have, and then learn to spot those traits in single men I went on dates with.
It totally changed my perspective on dating, and I was amazed at how many good men there were out there in my community…loads and loads.
Of course, I married the best of the bunch.
Translation: Very Bad Boys in Law Enforcement give me a strong gina tingle. But they are too amoral.
“But, I had problems finding and being attracted to GOOOOD men”
And you’re here because your taste in women is just so impeccable, right?
leopards,spots,change,pot,kettle,black, i wish you the best in your husband hunt.
Thanks. 🙂 I was married in March.
… some women would dismiss a man for wearing chinos ?????
I like chinos. My husband is wearing chinos right now.
… marry me … oh dear … you already are …
Shocked??
… yes … come and kiss me so that I may feel better …
😀
Original Trouble, I agree with you. In my experience a lot of women blame Feminism as an excuse for their own inner man-hating. They need to woman up and own their anger instead of playing the blame game.
Or inner woman hating
Over at Susan’s, the commenter PUA>MRA makes the statement that attraction isn’t a choice. This is common manospere wisdom. Attraction may not be a choice per se, but can it be changed? So ladies, what say you?
I don’t know. All I can is where I have initially found a man attractive, on closer inspection of his personality I’ve gone right off him and wondered what I ever found attractive about him. His horrible personality makes him less attractive. But I’ve never begun to find someone sexually attractive after getting to know him if I didn’t beforehand. I can like him more, but if the sexual attraction isn’t there it doesn’t appear. I suppose if I saw a man i hadn’t seen for say 10 years it could theoretically be possible that I might find myself attracted to him when we met up again, but that hasn’t happened in real life. When i meet up with men that i used to find attractive then provided that they haven’t got fat, I still find them just as attractive as when i was much younger. This does seem to suggest (for me anyway) that attraction is fixed.
I suppose I’m thinking in context of the Dating exercise. If any of the women over time found that a larger pool of men were attractive. I have to admit, that this has been the case for me. Though, the dating excersise was something that I’d always sort of done in every day life, I paid closer attention to it, along with a few other life changes. Overall, I’d be in agreement. If you are not feeling attraction to someone, it isn’t going to be forced.
But, did attraction itself become more encompassing?
JV. I don’t know to be honest. What it did do though was make me more aware of all men I met instead of only noticing the ones I already knew. So my awareness of them being around increased and it reminded me of how great they are.
That should read how great they CAN be.
Attraction is not a choice in your hormone bursting twenties. I think in your forties one can choose to be attracted (or not) to someone.
Sorry not me. I either do or I don’t. There’s no ‘choice’ about it. I don’t find someone sexually attractive because I like him as a person. 🙂
Attraction is a choice and can be changed. I also think that in the context of a longterm relationship, where you may both change physically over time, you have to continue to choose to find your spouse attractive, and it sometimes requires effort.
I guess that’s where I’m going wrong then. Better give myself a stern talking to so I can make myself have sex with those men I don’t want to. 🙂
I still have limits. But, I guess I shifted the value system inside my head and started seeing consistency, stability, kindness and a sense of humor as more rawr-worthy.
OT. I think these are essential qualities that I look for in a man. Does it make me want to tear his clothes off though? Er no, otherwise I’d fancy all my friends. The sense of humour would work, but only as long as he wasn’t a porker. It’s not looks either, it’s something else – hate to say it but it might be charisma to get me interested, topped off with intelligence and wit to keep me interested.
The exercise is merely to get women to notice men in a new light, nothing more. It works. What works even better is that women are noticing more men.
I don’t think attraction is a choice, personally. However, I think this exercise is an excellent one as it makes a woman take notice of more men. It gives her more chances to allow the attraction to take place.
Yes. Exactly. I’m not sure if I was clear enough about that. It’s not about meeting a man and rationalizing.
Thank you for the link, PM! But more importantly, thank you for the dating exercise! 😀
So, a question, TPM. Did you also encourage your male posters to do something similar?
I sure do!
I guess you haven’t seen this post yet:
https://theprivateman.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/outcome-independence-find-her-flaw/
That’s great for hot chicks that you want to bang, but what do you do to find women worth keeping in your life? The “find her flaw” test isn’t going to be particularly helpful in terms of determining longterm trustworthiness, value, or worth.
You’re asking women to be less superficial. When do you embrace the same concept?
Your comment bordered on ad hominem territory and then you used the lame “just sayin…” excuse So, by wielding some moderator privilege, I seriously edited your comment, something I’ve never done before.
Actually, the “Find Her Flaw” exercise is perfect for helping a man to determine a woman’s long-term trustworthiness, value, and worth. The exercise allows him to remove the physical attractiveness blinders to better determine if the woman is indeed worthy of a long-term relationship.
On my first day of college I scanned the room and found this one guy particularly cute. He was a foreign exchange student from the general area of the globe that has my preferred phenotype. Shortly after spotting him his name was called to go to the front of the room and my heart sank when I saw his physique. Sexual attraction was lost. However we later worked on a project together and became friends who regularly hung out. During that time I started to wish he would be sexually attracted to me, and I was flattered when I naively interpreted his friendliness as sexual attraction, however that didn’t change the fact that I was deeply disappointed that his physique did not match up to his face and still turned me off.
I guess you’d call that a “grey area”.
From your fundraising appeal:
here’s what led up this pride-busting state of affairs:
1. Emotional entanglement with a Latina of dubious mental health
I am not trying to personally attack you. But, I guess I come from the Sex and Moxie school of thought that ignoring the fact that “the emperor has no clothes” is not helpful to people in the longrun. I’m not trying to kick you while you’re down, but you blamed your financial problems on a woman, and saw no irony in doing so.
Where do you assume personal responsibility for your decision to make yourself financially vulnerable to said woman?
Aaaaaaand…of course you’re going to try an end-run around the ad hominem logical fallacy. Not happening here.
Your question will remain unanswered and the content of the comment will not be addressed. I’ll leave the comment up, however.
When the man is the message, your personal experiences become relevant.
Uh?
I want to add that women who use Feminism as an excuse for their current or past anger at men are usually angsty people by nature or nurture from childhood. If its not men, its Feminism that they will rant and rave against. If not Feminism then something else.
Some people are just not all that happy and seek to place the blame somewhere.
This is where our culture really needs to borrow from Asian philosophical traditions and go within.
I’m in agreement – to a point. But , there are other reasons too. The movement is filled with wack jobs. Then you’ve got women who are exactly as you describe. They get off on outrage, whether it’s men or feminism, or whatever. Depends on what gives them the most dopamine, and the most validation. There are those who come at it from a religious viewpoint. And then there are those who come at it from a cultural point of view. Or from a psychology point of view.
In other words, I’m a feminine-ist with a large helping of humanist.
“In other words, I’m a feminine-ist with a large helping of humanist.”
OK JV, I’ll do one better and say I’m a “womanist”. LOL. I probably am since Womanism is similar to but different than Feminism.
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