My problem in interacting with women is definitely that I'm too much of a nice guy. I'm not sure I could be manipulative, not to mention liking to be that way.

Reid, please take this the worst possible way you can: You are a goddamn terrible human being. You do not even remotely have to be manipulative to get laid all the time, or be in a stable relationship. The reason you cannot get laid or have a stable relationship without manipulation is because you are a terrible person.

At the end of the day the conventional wisdom of "be yourself" is the most successful way to find a stable relationship. You should not have to alter your personality in any way.

As far as getting laid all the time is concerned, I can also shed some light on that. In my early 20s I got laid constantly, and pretty much without any kind of real effort. How did I do this? I'm a relatively handsome guy, I have a fairly large degree of self confidence without crossing into an overly inflated sense of self worth, and I'm funny and charismatic. Basically, the way to get laid all the time without being an emotionally manipulative ******** is to be the type of person that is generally considered to be sexually desirable. I'm sorry if you aren't those things, and you have to resort to manipulation to get sex. Not everyone has those attributes, just like not everyone is capable of remarkable feats of athleticism. Some guys are naturally athletically gifted, and some guys take steroids, and the third group of guys put in years of hard work to become good at those things. You are the kind of guy who takes steroids. Instead of actually isolating the issues which need improvement and working on them to accomplish your end goal, you take the easy (read: harmful) way.

Coincidentally, steroids can also make your balls shrink to the point that you barely have the defining characteristics of being a man, other than a Y chromosome. Read into that what you will.

Really, people like you are the reason why we have a high rate of depression and suicide over relationships. You completely fail to understand that the women you are dealing with are human beings, and your emotional manipulation could have serious long term mental health effects on them.

It might be time to consider that the reason you are unable to find a successful healthy relationship is because you're an incredibly selfish and narcissistic douchebag.

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Everything you post further demonstrates your complete inability to remotely understand the human condition.

No bull****. The world would be a better place without you.

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Because the fact that cortisol levels drop off after 1-2 years without children somehow isn't an argument.

Not touching the psychopathy thing. Suggest psychiatry.

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Well, no matter the avenue taken, whatever stops you from emotionally raping other human beings is the right thing to do.

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Are you suggesting that testosterone overrides a man's ability to behave rationally?

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Being manipulative is not an addiction. It's a symptom of mental illness. As stated before, you should probably seek help from a professional.

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Also, the behavioral effects of higher testosterone levels are not really scientifically proven. Some studies suggest high testosterone leads to aggression and sexual desire, some studies suggest it has no behavioral effects. The most common fallacy on the subject is that steroid users have much higher testosterone levels than non-users, and people on gear are often predisposed to aggressive behavior known as "roid rage". Now, while I'm sure you already knew all of that, there is no conclusive proof that the aggressive behavior stems from the higher testosterone levels. The more likely scenario is that when someone does a cycle of steroids they are generally injecting substantial amounts into their bloodstream, and steroids are highly addictive, leading to being incredibly temperamental during withdrawal phases, which can set in on a daily basis between injections.

On the other hand, there is a clear link between steroid use and various types of organ cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, severe acne, etc... Those things also are not actively caused by higher levels of testosterone (aside from the acne) either.

You know, correlation and causation and all that.

http://www.thedirtynormal.com/2011/11/23/the-monkey-and-the-mind/

And hey, there's Dormouse who can probably help us out with some anecdotal evidence of changes (or lack thereof) that take place under dramatic hormone differences. Take it away, Dor.

Tell us... Did you find recently that you had become an emotionally dependent masochistic moron?

wait...











































what

I too could chime in with such anecdotal evidence. It all started when I was about thirteen...

You are oversimplifying the issue. It's not like males have testosterone and females have estrogen, both sexes have both hormones (as well as others) in varying degrees. Also much of the effect hormones have a cumulative developmental effect. If you gave a young child superdoses of either hormone, you probably would observe aberrant behavior. And that's part of the reason there's some missing data about hormones and behavior, many such experiments would be unethical. The most interesting reading about testosterone and estrogen effects would be probably come from individual case studies, or you could look at animal experiments and try to make some simplistic correlation to humans.

N.B. those studies that did suggest a causal relationship used terrible reasoning (literally accepting "men think more about sex" as an unqualified truth and then working toward it from "men make more testosterone, therefore") and also compared extreme polar opposites, men who naturally produce extremely little testosterone and men who abuse anabolics. In the former case it usually indicates an underlying health condition such as hypocholesterolemia, the unpleasant side effects of which would also maybe make you think about sex less often. In the latter case, um, well, I assume people who abuse steroids are pretty fixated on becoming more sexually attractive, but I don't really have any evidence to back that up.

Animal studies made similar mistakes, totally eliminating testosterone to see if the males still desired sex. Guess what? They didn't. Also when you totally eliminate gasoline from a car, they no longer desire motion.

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I only skimmed the last 90% of what this thread turned into but for the record she never cheated on me.....

Reid: I don't know, but this idea of you being some kind of a psychopath doesn't quite click. You're willing to seek out professional help for some problems that you recognize, and you admit to being "a terrible person". I mean, what you described about manipulating people and all that, the lengths that you take it according to yourself, a healthy person doesn't do that, but you also don't seem to be entirely nonchalant about it.

My "wait what" reaction was to how absurd I thought what you said was. I just read it quickly and actually misinterpreted what you said, for some reason thinking you started out feeling uncomfortable around gay people so you had to desensitize yourself to that by getting some young women to engage you in some kinda gay-man-abuses-you ritual. Yeah, I'm not sure why it made sense to me for you to have said that, at first...

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Reid, I don't think anybody here is qualified to help you.

Aside from those parts of your posts which implicate you as rather anti-social and malevolent, you seem to be intelligent and introspective enough to become a more "normal" individual. My only question would be, do you want to become ethical? You seem to have a very romantic idea about continuing to carry this emotional baggage.

One thing I don't quite understand is the correlation between people who've been abused and people who abuse. Perhaps what you need is a purifying and cathartic release, in which you are able to channel your positive qualities in a way that overcome your negative thoughts?

Pete Townshend was abused as a very young child, but he overcame it by creating Tommy. It was at a time in his life when the negative forces of drugs and self-indulgence were eating away his soul. He became inspired by this Indian guru called Meher Baba, and began to think positive and cleansing thoughts.

I don't think you can move beyond the effects of your negative past by continuing to think negative thoughts. You should NOT be okay with "not being an ethical person".

Everything you wrote in your last post makes a ton a sense. It pretty much erases everything in your other posts that make you look like an antisocial psychopath.

I've heard similar stories about small towns, where rumors spread quickly to damage a person's reputation. I wonder if you've considered taking a job some place else, just to have a fresh start, if only for a while. It must be hell to continuously deal with a stigma.

At least it didn't get posted on the internet? You can't move away from that. Like the Star Wars kid.

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If you abandoned Christianity because you think Jesus is supposed to fix your life, well, you're highly unlikely going to fix it on your own because you already aren't taking responsibility.

What in the.. how did you possibly come to that conclusion? Reading comprehension.
Your sardonic-detector is broken.

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Oh I'm sorry. I wasn't able to discern that from all of the inflection present in plain text, not to mention the fact that we are dealing with someone who is obviously mentally ill, and seems delusional enough to think Jesus can fix his problems.

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ITT: A person who makes obtuse assumptions about the geographical upbringing of other people.

This thread gets more depressing as it goes. Worst yet, I can't figure out as to what is the main contributor to this feeling.

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