Purpose of Long-term Relationships

[Oskar]

Besides the obvious biological purpose of child rearing, what are your long-term relationships for? To improve your relationship skills so you'll be better at rearing children in the future, or is there more to it for you? Perhaps to support you when, for whatever reason, you don't have access to a lot of attractive women but still want to be sexual and have someone to protect and create a social narrative with? Or perhaps there are some situational benefits to it, like staying with her gives you access to some coveted resource, like a social circle?

Edit: This is in regards to our logical purposes. Unavoidably there will be emotional purposes as well, but for the sake of discussion lets focus on our conscious decisions.

 

[The Tool]

a long term relationship is good for many reasons. Many of which you listed.
a ltr has nothing to do with not having acess to other women. i didnt settle. im T Vaunswa


2 people are joined togeather.

You can pool resources and funds.

You can reproduce and love and care for and rear the child in your likeness.

In essence you can LEAVE A LEGACY.

I saw you "edit on emotional stuff but I need to add this"

You can have all the random sex with 10/10 girls from all over the world every day. sure. It would be fun. It would feel good.

BUT NOTHING!! is better than the feeling that you are loved by someone. That someone cares for you and is looking forward to seeing you.

Sex and casual relationships have absolutely nothing on laying in bed with your girlfriend when suddenly your arm feels wet. You look up at her and notice she is crying. You ask her "what is wrong?" she looks at you smiles and says "I am crying because I love you so much. You make me so happy"

NOT EVEN SEX WITH THE HOTTEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD CAN BE BETTER THAN THAT FEEL RIGHT THERE. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!

 

[Thedoctor]

Oskar,

I think it just has to do with one little fact: no one likes being alone.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you will pursue a long term relationship with the opposite sex, though this is often how most people address the issue. As I get older, I've seen a trend that I'm sure most people in their mid-twenties start to notice. Many of their friends settle down in long-term relationships, get married, and start having kids. Some, I'm sure really want to. Others, seem to just settle for the next thing to come along for fear of being the only one alone in their circle of friends.

I've noticed another thing that some people do in order to combat the "conventional" life. Some guys (girls too) have a pretty close relationship with a friend. It doesn't matter if it's of the same sex or opposite sex. They essentially replace the need or desire of a relationship with a close friend or two, while taking care of their primal desires with one-night-stands, quick flings, etc.

So, if I were to logically answer the question of the purpose of LTR it would be this: A long term relationship makes a convenient package to allow for both your sexual desires and emotional needs to be met by one person.

I realize this may generate some controversy, but I really do think that is the logical reason why.

-Doc

 

[Just_Dave]

I
"Til death do us part, or at least until I get bored."

Not a chance.

@DrexelScott,
Lol, sad but true for quite a number of people. You raised a series of good points, one of which being that long term relationships aren't for everybody.

a ltr has nothing to do with not having acess to other women. i didnt settle. im T Vaunswa

@Tool, good for you mate, I'm glad you found the right girl.

My own comments: From a science perspective
A lot of men and women settle and end up in these awful divorce battles, and t's unfortunate and it's life for a lot of people. According to anthropology marriage was created so that men and women could come together and raise their families. Falling in love is a biological effect to make you produce babies as soon as possible, marriage was designed so women wouldn't have to do it on their own.

Now even with that said, I don't believe people should just date just because they feel "lonely". If you genuinely want to be with somebody good! Be with that person and make it work to the best of your ability. The thing about if you can't love yourself how are you going to love someone else and make that work. Let alone raise a family that's fully functional and can contribute something meaningful to society. People have to know who they are before the engage in relationships, and the right expectations have to be set as well.

 

[PinotNoir]

From the perspective of a guy that is good with women (and I think that's the key to what you're asking), I'd say the guy grows older and tired, and the feelings of "newness" wear off.

The thing is that everyone is more different than you think. Some people were amazing with women all throughout high school and college, and perhaps they hit this "wall" faster. People have different life experiences that alter their perceptions on marriage, etc.

To me, going on dates is still fun and fresh and new. It's fun to kiss new women and try and figure them out. But, I'm only in my mid-20s. When I'm older, perhaps the fun parts of it will be boring -- been there, done that. I will probably want something different, or get tired of playing the "game."

However, if I'm going to be an open book here, I do desire relationships. I'm still not amazing with women, so sometimes, I think that's it... but relationships are just something I like. Even though dates are still fun to me, I like having a "partner." I enjoy being in a relationship just fine, but I also desire to be good with women so that I don't "feel" trapped with a woman that I don't like. Maybe in the future, I will laugh at this idea, or maybe I will be married. I don't know.

There's also a lot of women For example, let's consider the movie the Four Christmases -- just the beginning. If you haven't seen it, it basically starts out with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon being in this hot/fun relationship where they both do not desire children or marriage....

Imagine if you meet a woman that is just like you. In DS's case, it would be woman that loves freedom, so an open relationship. She too wouldn't desire kids or marriage. And of course, they can spend hours in conversation and just generally enjoy each other. I should also mention that she's got one fucking hot body. This is a crazy hypothetical, but that's what philosophy is all about In any case, could you be with this woman as an open relationship? Wonder if you enjoy her so much that you 2 stay together until death (even though you both continue to have different sexual partners since it's open). Of course, we're pretending there's no drama, which is hard to do haha. In any case, it's possible that such a woman exists, and then you may decide to have a LTR.

 

[Chase]

Edit: This is in regards to our logical purposes. Unavoidably there will be emotional purposes as well, but for the sake of discussion lets focus on our conscious decisions.

Probably the most important thing to bear in mind here is that people's logical reasons for why they want things are the window dressing to their true emotional motivations. That is, you want what you want, and you won't typically fully understand why you want it, but you will come up with logical-sounding reasons why what you want is "correct" (and often why what other people want is "incorrect").

Pretty much everyone is convinced that his reasons for wanting whatever he wants out of long-term relationships are the most rational, and everyone else's are emotional, foolish, and misguided. But if you sit down and really probe a guy on where his ideas about relationships come from, you'll find all sorts of clues in his previous experiences with relationships, his general levels of trust/paranoia, his experiences with women, his childhood growing up, the model of relationships he learned from observing his family, and what makes him feel most powerful. Once you understand those things, you can pretty reliably tell what a guy's relationship goals will be, no matter how many convincing-sounding arguments he has constructed to argue that his relationship goals are "the rational choice."

As such, personally, I'm at a place now where I just don't even bother listening to people's rational reasons for why they want what they want, and instead focus on what they want and what their background and underlying emotional motivations are that shape those desires.

Chase

 

[JackofHearts]

Long time occasional lurker here, just joined. Hello.

I actually joined because I was perusing all the relationship/sex forums I lurk/am a member of and decided that this thread kind of captured what I've been thinking about the past few days.

I guess I'm at a point in my life where I don't see the value in relationships anymore. I have decided that money is the answer, and is far more valuable than any relationship could be. I also have come to believe, deep down, that all women are evil and potentially cheaters, and I have a hard time finding reasons why a woman would want to be loyal to me. So, I engage in more and more one night stands, and I also lead a lot of girls on, wanting nothing more than to get in their pants. The minute I start developing emotions for a girl, I find a Plan B and a Plan C girl so I can replace those emotions for Girl A with sexual desire for girls B and C and hopefully forget about the feelings I was developing for Girl A.

I've been in several relationships over the past few years‚ occasionally even stooping to the level of claiming I was in "love"—which I don't think actually exists, being that love is nothing more than the right ratio of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. Yet, in each of these relationships, regular sex was the underlying motivator for me sticking around. In fact, I've never, EVER in my life CHASED a girl and successfully entered a relationship. Every single girl I've ever had a relationship with has chased me. Ironically, I wish I could be the chaser, and still be successful. Because I always end up breaking hearts, because the girls who chase me, I automatically devalue. Well, I guess I'm doing things right, since I'm at girlschase.com, right? haha

The problem is, I've become really lonely, and I have forgotten how to connect with women as human beings rather than sex objects. I feel totally incapable of a relationship, and I'm wondering how to work back to a point where I am. I have almost zero respect for women, I think they are conniving, mindless, selfish, emotion-driven bitches.

I guess I feel really depressed because I think I'm destined to be a lonely playboy for the rest of my life. I don't know how to love another woman, and I have a hard time loving myself, because I place all of my value on external validations. Blah blah blah, right.

Any thoughts on this? How can I change my mindset? Or is the place I'm at a good place to be!?

 

[Chase]

Jack-

Welcome. Comments:

I guess I'm at a point in my life where I don't see the value in relationships anymore. I have decided that money is the answer, and is far more valuable than any relationship could be. I also have come to believe, deep down, that all women are evil and potentially cheaters, and I have a hard time finding reasons why a woman would want to be loyal to me. So, I engage in more and more one night stands, and I also lead a lot of girls on, wanting nothing more than to get in their pants. The minute I start developing emotions for a girl, I find a Plan B and a Plan C girl so I can replace those emotions for Girl A with sexual desire for girls B and C and hopefully forget about the feelings I was developing for Girl A.

Sounds like you've had some bad experiences with women, or consumed too much online material from guys who have. The research on how many women (and men) cheat is all over the map; estimates range from something like 5% to 40% of women, and 15% to 70% of men, at some point somewhere in their lives. I'd guess something it's something like 25% for women (and not too much higher for men - 30% or 35%?); more in cities, less in suburbs, and much less in rural areas. Partner count is a major determiner of predisposition to infidelity; I talked about that here (and general cheating prevention here).

"Evil" is black-and-white thinking (splitting); it's an ego defense mechanism the mind adopts to protect itself from a perceived threat it has difficulty understanding. Empathy shuts down and othering occurs. It's useful in battle, but not so useful in mating (although arguably useful in learning to get better at picking girls up - if you're constantly replacing them because you think they're evil incarnate, you get good at finding replacements pretty quickly). I'd suggest a few articles more on self-focus than understanding women, per se:

• Most Important Thing to Becoming a Lover of Women? Don't Be Bitter.
• How Victim Mentality Can Stifle Your Life – and Luck with Women

I've been in several relationships over the past few years‚ occasionally even stooping to the level of claiming I was in "love"—which I don't think actually exists, being that love is nothing more than the right ratio of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin.

Yes, that's what it is, although the long-term and short-term versions of it are rather different. See How to Make Her Love You: Passionate Love, and Old Love.

That said, the computer or smart phone you're reading this on right now is just molecules that are being turned into electrical signals by the light reflecting off of it into your eyes, pressure in your fingers, and sound in your ears, then mapped into some understanding of the thing inside your brain. It's level of "realness" is every bit as subjective (and is radically different for a blind person, or even a color blind person, say).

Realness is one of those things that seems profound when you first realize it... but then as you come to understand it more, you realize it extends to EVERYTHING, and EVERYTHING is equally "not real" if you think about it right, and then it becomes kind of moot to think about and you go back to taking things as they are. How real is love... or your computer... or your thoughts about love... or this post you've typed up... or the response I've given... or the thoughts you're thinking about it right now? Are they relevant or not relevant? At some point, you've kind of got to take them as they are and accept that natural selection's picked out these responses to your environment for you probably for a good reason, and shrug and get on with things.

Yet, in each of these relationships, regular sex was the underlying motivator for me sticking around. In fact, I've never, EVER in my life CHASED a girl and successfully entered a relationship. Every single girl I've ever had a relationship with has chased me. Ironically, I wish I could be the chaser, and still be successful. Because I always end up breaking hearts, because the girls who chase me, I automatically devalue. Well, I guess I'm doing things right, since I'm at girlschase.com, right? haha

That's pretty normal. The women you feel the strongest emotions for will usually be the ones you put the most work into to bed (just how the brain works). The women who chase you hard are typically unsatisfying relationship partners on a psychological level... they just don't feel very "special" (even if you objectively know that they ought to be; the pair-bonding parts of the brain place great emphasis on investment prior to sex for determining emotions even deep into a relationship).

If you're not getting girls you're pursuing yourself, that just means your approach needs tweaking. There are plenty of ways to walk the middle path of going after and getting the girls you want, while engaging them enough that they do some of the chasing / some of the work. The end result is that you're still doing enough of the selection, setup, and seduction that you're generally still putting in work beforehand, and developing emotional connection (if not as much as it'd have been if, say, you pined for some girl for 3 years and finally one day ended up with her - it's all about how much anticipation there is prior to the two of you becoming lovers).

The problem is, I've become really lonely, and I have forgotten how to connect with women as human beings rather than sex objects. I feel totally incapable of a relationship, and I'm wondering how to work back to a point where I am. I have almost zero respect for women, I think they are conniving, mindless, selfish, emotion-driven bitches.

Have you sat down to isolate why you think this? The most common causes I see are:

• Dating the wrong kinds of girls
• Too much time on "manosphere" sites (mirrors of feminist sites - both have deep mistrust of the opposite sex / extremist views from bitter people)
• Low levels of empathy for women / women's differences from men
• No female friends that you've really gotten to know very well
• No substantial long-term relationships where you really got to know a girl and connected with her and understood her

You'd probably benefit most from doing visualizations around empathizing with women and feeling warmth toward them and caring about them as people to de-ice yourself a bit before you start trying to bring women into your life you can connect with more actively - it'll make things go more smoothly and easily.

I guess I feel really depressed because I think I'm destined to be a lonely playboy for the rest of my life. I don't know how to love another woman, and I have a hard time loving myself, because I place all of my value on external validations. Blah blah blah, right.

Any thoughts on this? How can I change my mindset? Or is the place I'm at a good place to be!?

I'm guessing you're probably fairly young?

I had a friend and mentee who was around 19 or 20 a few years back and who was similar to what you describe here. He was wonderful at picking girls up and having all kinds of crazy fast sex in bathrooms and park benches, but he felt cold and detached from women and didn't care for them as people. We talked about connecting, and having empathy, and caring for women, and he got fed up with being detached and focused more and more on empathizing with women, and finally ended up in a committed relationship for about a year, before leaving it because he wasn't ready for that much commitment yet. After that, he spent a year or two of not being able to come close to what he used to do with girls (I think he had a dry spell where he slept with a new girl after his break up, and then no more sex for a year or something silly like that), because now he suddenly cared about them too much and got attached very quickly and chased and did things wrong and got emotional. It was kind of funny to watch, considering how cold and unemotional he was about women before. Anyway, he straightened himself out and returned to his former glory, but with a newfound love and respect of women - he was finally able to have his cake and eat it too.

That might be the kind of journey you need to undergo - it's the lowering of the shield, followed by a buffeting of emotion, followed in turn by learning to work with and accept that emotion without either being overwhelmed by it or closing off to it entirely and pushing it away. The end result makes you ultimately more effective with women, and able to enjoy your relationships (and sex, additionally) a lot more, although you go through a bit of a gauntlet and some troughs on the way there.

Chase

 

[JackofHearts]

Jack-

Welcome. Comments:

Before I respond to you, I gotta give it to you man: this reply of yours is the single most insightful and helpful response I have received in literally years. Thanks for your reply. Continuing...

I guess I'm at a point in my life where I don't see the value in relationships anymore. I have decided that money is the answer, and is far more valuable than any relationship could be. I also have come to believe, deep down, that all women are evil and potentially cheaters, and I have a hard time finding reasons why a woman would want to be loyal to me. So, I engage in more and more one night stands, and I also lead a lot of girls on, wanting nothing more than to get in their pants. The minute I start developing emotions for a girl, I find a Plan B and a Plan C girl so I can replace those emotions for Girl A with sexual desire for girls B and C and hopefully forget about the feelings I was developing for Girl A.

Sounds like you've had some bad experiences with women, or consumed too much online material from guys who have. The research on how many women (and men) cheat is all over the map; estimates range from something like 5% to 40% of women, and 15% to 70% of men, at some point somewhere in their lives. I'd guess something it's something like 25% for women (and not too much higher for men - 30% or 35%?); more in cities, less in suburbs, and much less in rural areas. Partner count is a major determiner of predisposition to infidelity; I talked about that here (and general cheating prevention here).

Thinking about it, you're totally right. There was a point in my life where I actually cut off all my female friends, because I thought it was silly to have them. I realize now that in doing so, I reassociated women more strongly with nothing but sexuality and my appreciation for them as fellow human beings took a few steps down. A big part of it, though, began long ago when my ex-fiancee cheated on me. She was my first everything—first kiss, first sex, first love. I was naive, and didn't see that she was actually a manipulative and selfish bitch. When our relationship fell apart, I swore never to love again and I put all of my time and effort into Game theory and all that. Thanks for the links, reading them after this reply.

"Evil" is black-and-white thinking (splitting); it's an ego defense mechanism the mind adopts to protect itself from a perceived threat it has difficulty understanding. Empathy shuts down and othering occurs. It's useful in battle, but not so useful in mating (although arguably useful in learning to get better at picking girls up - if you're constantly replacing them because you think they're evil incarnate, you get good at finding replacements pretty quickly). I'd suggest a few articles more on self-focus than understanding women, per se:

• Most Important Thing to Becoming a Lover of Women? Don't Be Bitter.
• How Victim Mentality Can Stifle Your Life – and Luck with Women

I've had more than a few friends accuse me of black-and-white thinking, and indeed it's true, I am constantly falling into this pattern of thought. I think a lot of it is the result of a really "black and white" upbringing in a morbidly strict religious household—something that really delayed the development of my critical thinking skills and I think even instilled a bit of bipolar/borderline personality traits in me, that I'm still struggling with. I'm an adult now, and even to this day, I can't talk to my family. In fact, I moved to the other side of the world because I have no real connection with them and their lifestyle.

I've been in several relationships over the past few years‚ occasionally even stooping to the level of claiming I was in "love"—which I don't think actually exists, being that love is nothing more than the right ratio of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin.

Yes, that's what it is, although the long-term and short-term versions of it are rather different. See How to Make Her Love You: Passionate Love, and Old Love.

That said, the computer or smart phone you're reading this on right now is just molecules that are being turned into electrical signals by the light reflecting off of it into your eyes, pressure in your fingers, and sound in your ears, then mapped into some understanding of the thing inside your brain. It's level of "realness" is every bit as subjective (and is radically different for a blind person, or even a color blind person, say).

Realness is one of those things that seems profound when you first realize it... but then as you come to understand it more, you realize it extends to EVERYTHING, and EVERYTHING is equally "not real" if you think about it right, and then it becomes kind of moot to think about and you go back to taking things as they are. How real is love... or your computer... or your thoughts about love... or this post you've typed up... or the response I've given... or the thoughts you're thinking about it right now? Are they relevant or not relevant? At some point, you've kind of got to take them as they are and accept that natural selection's picked out these responses to your environment for you probably for a good reason, and shrug and get on with things.

This goes back to the whole black and white thinking perspective, and what a sound argument against it. You're totally right, if I can claim love doesn't exist, I can also claim that happiness, pain, hate, emotions, and even real, tangible things like the chair I'm sitting on don't exist. I need to focus more on experiential, pragmatic reality than on the destructive projection of reality as false and the rejection of love and human connection, which really just stems from bitterness.

Yet, in each of these relationships, regular sex was the underlying motivator for me sticking around. In fact, I've never, EVER in my life CHASED a girl and successfully entered a relationship. Every single girl I've ever had a relationship with has chased me. Ironically, I wish I could be the chaser, and still be successful. Because I always end up breaking hearts, because the girls who chase me, I automatically devalue. Well, I guess I'm doing things right, since I'm at girlschase.com, right? haha

That's pretty normal. The women you feel the strongest emotions for will usually be the ones you put the most work into to bed (just how the brain works). The women who chase you hard are typically unsatisfying relationship partners on a psychological level... they just don't feel very "special" (even if you objectively know that they ought to be; the pair-bonding parts of the brain place great emphasis on investment prior to sex for determining emotions even deep into a relationship).

If you're not getting girls you're pursuing yourself, that just means your approach needs tweaking. There are plenty of ways to walk the middle path of going after and getting the girls you want, while engaging them enough that they do some of the chasing / some of the work. The end result is that you're still doing enough of the selection, setup, and seduction that you're generally still putting in work beforehand, and developing emotional connection (if not as much as it'd have been if, say, you pined for some girl for 3 years and finally one day ended up with her - it's all about how much anticipation there is prior to the two of you becoming lovers).

It's all about fear of rejection. I guess my approach is wrong a lot of the time. When I said that the girls I was successful with chased me, usually it was because I MADE them chase me, because I wanted them. However, they were the ones who initially approached/contacted me, and of course, when things start that way, it's much easier to make them chase you because they started within that paradigm in the first place. I guess what I need to do is make the first approach, and then convert the paradigm so that they are the ones chasing me. Time to start reading more of the articles here... My problem is that, deep down, I think the only things I have going for me is that I'm decently attractive, and I'm a "good guy" deep down. The problem is, being a "good guy" is NOT a selling point when it comes to attracting women. Do you have any advice about how to reassociate the idea of being a "good guy" with being something that I DON'T want? I'll continue about this a little bit in response to one of your other points, below.

The problem is, I've become really lonely, and I have forgotten how to connect with women as human beings rather than sex objects. I feel totally incapable of a relationship, and I'm wondering how to work back to a point where I am. I have almost zero respect for women, I think they are conniving, mindless, selfish, emotion-driven bitches.

Have you sat down to isolate why you think this? The most common causes I see are:

• Dating the wrong kinds of girls
• Too much time on "manosphere" sites (mirrors of feminist sites - both have deep mistrust of the opposite sex / extremist views from bitter people)
• Low levels of empathy for women / women's differences from men
• No female friends that you've really gotten to know very well
• No substantial long-term relationships where you really got to know a girl and connected with her and understood her

You'd probably benefit most from doing visualizations around empathizing with women and feeling warmth toward them and caring about them as people to de-ice yourself a bit before you start trying to bring women into your life you can connect with more actively - it'll make things go more smoothly and easily.

I guess I feel really depressed because I think I'm destined to be a lonely playboy for the rest of my life. I don't know how to love another woman, and I have a hard time loving myself, because I place all of my value on external validations. Blah blah blah, right.

Any thoughts on this? How can I change my mindset? Or is the place I'm at a good place to be!?

I'm guessing you're probably fairly young?

I had a friend and mentee who was around 19 or 20 a few years back and who was similar to what you describe here. He was wonderful at picking girls up and having all kinds of crazy fast sex in bathrooms and park benches, but he felt cold and detached from women and didn't care for them as people. We talked about connecting, and having empathy, and caring for women, and he got fed up with being detached and focused more and more on empathizing with women, and finally ended up in a committed relationship for about a year, before leaving it because he wasn't ready for that much commitment yet. After that, he spent a year or two of not being able to come close to what he used to do with girls (I think he had a dry spell where he slept with a new girl after his break up, and then no more sex for a year or something silly like that), because now he suddenly cared about them too much and got attached very quickly and chased and did things wrong and got emotional. It was kind of funny to watch, considering how cold and unemotional he was about women before. Anyway, he straightened himself out and returned to his former glory, but with a newfound love and respect of women - he was finally able to have his cake and eat it too.

That might be the kind of journey you need to undergo - it's the lowering of the shield, followed by a buffeting of emotion, followed in turn by learning to work with and accept that emotion without either being overwhelmed by it or closing off to it entirely and pushing it away. The end result makes you ultimately more effective with women, and able to enjoy your relationships (and sex, additionally) a lot more, although you go through a bit of a gauntlet and some troughs on the way there.

Chase

[/quote]

Shit, is my writing that bad? I actually just turned 27, and over the past several years, I sort of took the same trajectory as your friend. After the breakup with my fiancee, I was 22 years old. I know, what the hell was I thinking to get engaged that early. It goes back to my really traditional religious social circle, which is now but a distant recollection. Anyway, after the breakup, I started just casually dating and having one nighters. Now, I'm not a real, dyed in the wool playboy, I've only been with 30 or so women, but hey, I think that's decently successful for the amount of effort I've put into it. The only reason I haven't been with many more is that, like your mentee, I kind of reached a point where I decided to stop playing women and start to treat them better, and eventually I just got to a point where I wasn't really willing to bed them unless there was that emotional connection. I became a "nice guy".

So, I went from being a "nice guy", to being a player, back to being a "nice guy" again, and now, I've become a player again. I never expected my dating persona to be so cyclical. I thought I would go through phases, and everything would simmer down and I would find a good middle path, but that never seems to happen. Perhaps I can owe that to my "black and white" thinking, and also to a fear of rejection and abandonment (I'll reiterate that I have almost zero relationship with my family, not to mention that I'm living alone in Bangkok, Thailand, so I don't have a lot of supportive relationships to fall back on).

I guess I'll ride out this gauntlet...

 

[Chase]

Jack-

Time to start reading more of the articles here... My problem is that, deep down, I think the only things I have going for me is that I'm decently attractive, and I'm a "good guy" deep down. The problem is, being a "good guy" is NOT a selling point when it comes to attracting women. Do you have any advice about how to reassociate the idea of being a "good guy" with being something that I DON'T want? I'll continue about this a little bit in response to one of your other points, below.

Check out these on being the "good guy boyfriend" candidate:

• How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need
• The Early Boyfriend: Why It's a Bad Idea
• Secrets to Getting Girls: Move Faster
• Does She Want You as a Boyfriend... or Something Else?
• What’s the Difference Between a Lover and a Loser?
• How to Be an Asshole – and Become Adored by Women

The most advantageous way to treat being a "good guy" is to think of it as and make it such that you are a SECRET good guy... unscrupulous bad boy on the outside, with a heart of gold she won't even realize you've got until she's been with you for months.

I like to think I'm a pretty good guy, but most of my girlfriends haven't realized it until months into a relationship, after they've spent all their time harping to their friends about what a terrible human I am. Then they start telling everyone I'm a really great guy, mixed in with occasional bouts of still telling them I'm a terrible human - this seems like the right mix between attraction ("He's AWFUL!!!" = awfully sexy) and security ("Wow, what a great guy!").

Think of "good guy" as "safe guy", which you don't want to be at all until you're in a committed relationship, unless you don't want much of a chance to ever get a girl in bed (and, thus, much of a chance to ever get in that committed relationship in the first place).

That doesn't mean be a complete dick; but do tone down any excessive good guy stuff before sleeping with a girl. You can still take pleasure in being a "good guy", just put your pride into having it more be like "I'm a good guy, and NOBODY knows it except those who really dig and discover it!" where you're treating your goodness more like a buried, valuable treasure that must be unearthed only by a select few (and they'll tend to value it more highly, too, because people appreciate more the things they have to work for than the things they do not).

So, I went from being a "nice guy", to being a player, back to being a "nice guy" again, and now, I've become a player again. I never expected my dating persona to be so cyclical. I thought I would go through phases, and everything would simmer down and I would find a good middle path, but that never seems to happen. Perhaps I can owe that to my "black and white" thinking, and also to a fear of rejection and abandonment (I'll reiterate that I have almost zero relationship with my family, not to mention that I'm living alone in Bangkok, Thailand, so I don't have a lot of supportive relationships to fall back on).

I guess I'll ride out this gauntlet...

I don't know what part of Thailand you're in, but from what I've seen of friends who've stayed there longer than a couple of weeks, it's the #1 worldwide capital for breeding cynicism in men. There are just tons of things about the environment there that distort your views... it's like one of those twisted fun house mirrors, reflecting a warped version of reality back to you, but you spend too long there and you start to think that what you're getting back is a vision of how the world (and the women within it) are everywhere, when it's not remotely the case.

I can't spend more than a week or two in Thailand myself, personally. I can just feel the jadedness setting in the moment I step off the plane there. Everyone talks about it like it's some kind of paradise, but it's just a wilder Las Vegas (minus the gambling): somewhere to go for a short while to party up and get away from it, but then to clear out of ASAP if you want to keep your head screwed on straight.

Chase