Ignore this like everything else

After the self-esteem issue has been established, the dating aspect of the
relationship can begin.
In the case of insecure individuals, sexuality always makes a premature
entrance. Since a woman of low self-esteem does not have any genuine
virtues to offer a man, such as courage, integrity, nobility and so on, she
must create value in some other manner.
Typically, the “value” that this type of woman brings to the early part of a
relationship is sexual availability.
In many cults, such as Christianity, potential recruits are subjected to
what is often called a “love bomb,” wherein massive amounts of artificial
affection are injected into a mostly-empty soul. This tends to wash away
any lingering sense of personal boundaries and judgment, triggering what psychologists call “fusion,” or the uncritical elevation of an
individual to a status of near-deific perfection.
The introduction of a highly-sexualized interaction produces a
biochemical form of euphoria, which typically lasts from three to six
months. During this time, ego boundaries tends to dissolve, there are few
if any difficult decisions to be made, there tends to be an isolation from
both friends and family – and the cycle of sexual tension, desire and
release tends to consume the mind and body.

At the highest point of this interaction, the couple tends to make
decisions about their long-term futures.
This is akin to deciding whether or not you can fly while high on PCP.
This is when couples decide to commit in some permanent manner, such
as moving in together, or getting engaged, or simply planning a
permanent future.
Shortly after the commitment is made, the couple begins to re-enter the
world, and the sexual euphoria begins to wear off. At the same time, they
begin to deal with the mundane practicalities of negotiating their living
arrangements and/or potential nuptials, as well as entering as a couple
into a more complex social world.
As they begin to re-enter the world, interactions with friends and family
begin to influence the couple. Bruce begins to see what Sheila is really
like around her mother. Sheila begins to notice that Bruce’s brother
drinks to excess, and Bruce says nothing. He sees how shrill she becomes
around her friends; she sees how susceptible he is to peer pressure.
As Sheila and Bruce begin to make decisions about their lives together,
they notice that their lack of boundaries is beginning to cause real friction in their negotiations. Also, since they have spent so much time
having sex instead of learning how to actually communicate with each
other, they find that their level of commitment is far ahead of their
ability to negotiate. They have bonded out of euphoria, neediness, relief
and hyper-sexuality, rather than mutual respect and regard for one
another.

yo shut the fuck up

nice dubs tho retard

Attached: 8ef.png (947x774, 755.32K)

At this point, the woman generally becomes less sexually available.
The reason for this is the underlying low self-esteem that caused the
hyper-sexuality in the first place.
Since she had little intrinsic value to offer Bruce initially, Sheila
substituted sex for self-worth.
As their relationship progresses, however, and the sexual euphoria
wears off, she begins to feel resentment towards sex.
One way to understand this transition is to picture a rich and insecure
man who dazzles his dates with extravagant outings. He flies them to
Paris, takes them out on his yacht, buys them jewellery, and drapes them
in fur. Naturally, they respond with “devotion” and “ardour.”
As the relationship develops, however, he begins to resent the need for
constant extravagance. “Would she really love me if I didn’t buy her
things?” he wonders. In order to find this out, he becomes increasingly
irritable towards her desire for gifts. When she suggests a weekend
away on the French Riviera, he rolls his eyes and snaps at her.
The same insecurity about his own intrinsic value that caused him to
lavish gifts on her now causes him to withdraw his “generosity.” The
same insecurity that prevented him from offering himself to her without
“extras” now causes him to withdraw those extras, in the mad hope that
she will find him valuable without gifts.
In other words, after buying her, he hopes that she is not in it for the
money.
This is how it works with female sexuality after the initial phase of
euphoria.
Lots of sex in the beginning means a whole lot less sex later on.

As negotiations about mutual living arrangements, sexuality and social
life become more and more difficult, it also becomes more and more
difficult for Sheila and Bruce to retrace their steps and figure out where
they went wrong at the beginning.
For instance, as Sheila’s resentment towards sex begins to rise, she will
tend to make up excuses as to why she doesn’t want sex – and those
excuses are not designed to fool Bruce, but rather to fool herself.
She will claim that she is tired, or that she has to get up early. She will
snap that he is only ever interested in “one thing,” or that she doesn’t feel
“close enough” to have sex, or that he is doing a million and one things
wrong, which is killing her sexual desire, and so on.
The truth of the matter is that she is making up stories – inventing
“sinners” – in order to avoid the truth about her own growing
repugnance towards sex.
If Sheila were to speak with total honesty, she would say something like
this:
“Bruce, I had a lot of sex with you early on because I don’t feel like I’m
worth much of anything. The fact that you were willing to have sex with
me despite the fact that I was manipulating you tells me everything that I
need to know about your level of integrity, and capacity to love. If you
really loved me, you would not pressure me to have sex when I feel
depressed. If I were really lovable, I would not have used sex to create
artificial value.”
The end result of this kind of conversation, of course, is the termination
of the relationship – which is why it is so studiously avoided, and a
million distractions are invented in order to avoid that core reality.

Potato. That is all.

As conflicts begin to rise, Bruce and Sheila enter the phase of “slow
entombment.”
In this phase, conflicts which cannot be resolved generally start to be
avoided. If Bruce does not like Sheila’s parents, and it upsets her when he talks about them, the “solution” becomes to simply not talk about her
parents.
Similarly, if Sheila dislikes Bruce’s drinking, and it upsets him when she
brings it up, they “solve” the problem either by her refraining from
bringing it up, or for him to drink in secret.
This process continues unabated. Bit by bit, unresolved conflicts create
localized minefields that prohibit free movement and spontaneity. “Don’t
go there” becomes a near-constant mantra.
Since the solution to anxiety is to control the other person’s behaviour
which “causes” the anxiety, the relationship turns into a kind of “soft
tyranny.” Since it is considered “wrong” to cause the other person
anxiety, any behaviour which results in anxiety must be banned as
immoral.
Over the next few months or years a creeping paralysis enters into the
relationship, as more and more topics become “off limits.”
As spontaneity and authenticity become less and less possible and the
endless regulations of behaviour pile up, inevitable resentments begin to
creep in. Both Sheila and Bruce feel over-controlled, and their
interactions become more and more rigid and empty. The cowardice that
lies at the root of controlling each other in order to manage their own
anxiety becomes more and more evident as time goes on.
Generally, there are two possibilities for this kind of endless increase in
the bureaucratic hyper-regulation of the relationship. If neither party
takes a “stand,” then the abusive “rules” continue to pile up until one or
both parties wake up one day completely unable to breathe. An
overwhelming rush of frustration – or perhaps a full-fledged panic attack
– takes hold, and there is a sudden and savage breakup.

The second possibility is for the “fronts” in this subterranean war to
harden. This is analogous to a guerrilla conflict turning into the frozen
hell of First World War trench warfare.
In this second scenario, each party picks one or a few fixed positions and
just continues to pound their partner on the basis of those. For Bruce, it
might be the lack of sex. For Sheila, it might be the lack of emotional
participation in the relationship, or help around the house, or some such
topic. Unconsciously, this represents a desperate attempt to stop the endless
proliferation of petty rules, since both Sheila and Bruce instinctively
understand the inevitable result of that process. Rather than moving on
from each prior conflict, thus generating new conflicts which must be
avoided by the creation of new “rules,” Sheila and Bruce start to
repetitively attack each other on the grounds of just a few particular
issues. This prevents the creation of new rules – thus staving off the end
of the relationship – at the price of remaining trapped in endless circling
conflicts.
In fact, Sheila and Bruce remain drawn to these few particular conflicts
and cannot leave them alone. An unconscious “contract” is created,
wherein any frustration about new problems is channeled into a replay
of some agreed-upon existing conflict. This is just another way of
avoiding the inevitable end of the relationship that would result from
“dealing” with new problems.
This second scenario is the route most often taken by couples with
children. Since the stakes of ending a relationship are far higher for
parents, they tend to revert to this “broken record” form of problem
avoidance rather than allow the escalation of new problems to destroy
their relationship.

Earlier, we talked about how the religious approach to “truth” is to make
predictions, and then invent “sinners” to take the blame when those
predictions fail to come true.
After Bruce and Sheila break up, they will invariably begin the process of
inventing scapegoats or “sinners” to take the blame for the failure of
their relationship.
This failure was not primarily the relationship itself, but rather their own
predictions about the relationship.
They entered into a relationship with each other based on the prediction
that they would stay together and be happy. Early on, they openly
praised each other to the skies, to themselves and their friends and
family. How, then, can they explain the dismal failure of the relationship and
eventual distaste for each other?
Well, there is really only one way to explain it – see if this seems familiar.
Sheila will say: “He just ended up being a real bastard – and there was no
way to predict that at the beginning.”
Bruce will say: “She seemed like a really nice girl, at first – but as it turns
out, she had some real issues that she wasn’t willing to address.”
This is the “one-two” punch that is designed to bring down the truth. “I
was correct when I praised her early on, and I am now also correct when
I condemn her at the end.”
This mythology provides relief from anxiety in the short-term (“How
could I have been so careless with my heart?”) while creating far greater
anxiety in the long-term.
If a group of villagers live at the base of a volcano, and they ascribe the
eruption of the volcano to the anger of the fire god, they will inevitably
end up performing various rituals to “appease” this anger. Since these
rituals have in fact nothing to do with the eruptions, the villagers end up
staying near the mountain, imagining that they are creating some form
of safety or predictability.
Imaginary answers create perpetual danger.

The moment that the villagers accept that they cannot predict or control
the eruption of the volcano, they will move, thus creating real safety and
predictability.
When our predictions fail to come true, we can either attempt to
determine why we made such a mistake, or we can make up an
imaginary answer – thus guaranteeing a repetition of the mistake.
When a relationship fails, we can either attempt to understand the
dangerous clues that were embedded in our interactions from the very
beginning – which doubtless existed – or we can just blame the other
person for mysteriously “changing.”
If we take the route of blaming the other person, we certainly let
ourselves off the hook – but we also guarantee that we will remain blind
to cues that we really need to see in the future. By blaming the other person, all we do essentially is say that there is no way to predict the
outcome of a relationship based on early interactions. In other words,
when it comes to relationships, all we can do is cross our fingers and
hope for the best.
This is why it keeps happening.

Why do these conflicts continually escalate in this manner?
One central tragedy of our lives is that we are so often raised in win/lose
relationships. If our parents get offended, we are punished. If our teacher
gets angry, we get detention. If we want something, someone else must
give up something.
This same pattern repeats itself in all of our adult relationships.
Most lovers only know how to “get their way” through either overt
aggression, or passive aggression (in general, the male and female tools,
respectively).
Men say: “If I don’t get what I want, I will be angry.”
Women say: “If I don’t get what I want, I will be sad.”
These strategies generally result from a fundamentally narcissistic
approach to the world. The possibility of a win-win negotiation is never
considered, because it has never been taught or demonstrated.
Let’s take a more concrete example.
My wife Christina really enjoys watching a television show called
“Dancing with the Stars.” I do like watching the dance routines, but have
a tough time making it through all the filler and commercials. Last night,
I went upstairs to get a DVD for us to watch and then when I came
downstairs saw that Christina had found the show on TV and was
settling in to watch it.
I would have preferred it if she had not found the show – so that we
could watch the DVD – but that was sort of out of my hands at this point.

Many couples would look upon this as a win/lose situation – that
Christina would watch the show and I would suffer through the filler and
commercials, or that Christina would not get to watch her show, and
watch the DVD I chose instead. Or, perhaps, that Christina would tape
the show and watch it on her own, or some other solution.
However, although I would have preferred to watch the DVD, I sat down
and happily watched the dancing show.
How is that possible?
Well, quite simply it is possible because I take an enormous amount of
pleasure in my wife’s pleasure. (Shoe shopping excepted, of course – I
am only a mortal man!)
I love watching the play of delight on my wife’s face and the intensity of
her enjoyment. To take pleasure in the pleasure of another human being
is foundational to a loving relationship. It certainly is true that I would
have received 100% pleasure from watching the DVD, and 90% pleasure
from watching my wife’s enjoyment of the dancing show, but I can
scarcely claim to be hard done by because I had to choose between
100% pleasure and 90% pleasure!
If you cannot take pleasure in your partner’s pleasure, then win-win
negotiations become impossible. If I got +100% pleasure from watching
my DVD, and -100% pleasure from watching the dancing show – and if
my wife faced the reverse proposition – then one of us would have to
win, and the other would have to lose.
This concept of the “minor sacrifice” is something that every couple
should openly discuss and work on. I very much want my wife to be
happy in our marriage, because if she is not happy then I cannot be
happy either. If I get exactly what I want every single time, no matter
what her preferences, then it is impossible – according to the principles
of Universally Preferable Behaviour – for her to remain happy.
Since my happiness depends on remaining married to her, my happiness
can never in general exceed hers in the long run.

Our resistance to this kind of openhearted generosity arises out of
our fear of exploitation.
We say to ourselves: “If I give her what she wants every single
time, I will never get what I want. She will take advantage of my
generosity, and I will end up a slave to her every whim, and never get my
needs met!”
My response to this is:
If that is true, then you should know it before you get involved!
When I was younger, I went out with a woman who openly said that she
expected me to pay for our outings. “A man’s generosity is financial; a
woman’s generosity is composed of... other things,” she said seductively.
I was somewhat alarmed by her perspective, but I decided to give it a
shot. I did pay for our outings, without complaint, and then waited for
reciprocity.
It never came, and the relationship ended. I was sad, but never looked
back.
To achieve true happiness and peace of mind, we must come to a
resolution about each relationship in our lives – what is commonly called
“closure.”
“Closure” is the achievement of self-trust in our own judgment.
Fundamentally, we never really trust others, but rather only ourselves. It
was not this woman that I needed to trust, but my own judgment about
her proposition.
When we doubt, generosity always provides certainty.

In my 20s, I was involved in a long-term relationship with a woman who
wanted to get into the filmmaking business. After watching her struggle
for some time, I decided to write and fund a movie for her. We did end
up making the movie, which did quite well.
A month or two after we had finished making the movie, I asked her to
reread an unpublished novel of mine that she had criticized, and give me
suggestions for improvements. She half-heartedly agreed to do so, but
week after week went by and she never picked up the manuscript.
Eventually I confronted her on this, and explained my hurt feelings and
mistrust of her capacity for reciprocity. She replied that the reason she
had not read my novel was because I had not “motivated” her to do so.
Naturally, I responded that she had not “motivated” me to spend a small
fortune making a film to further her career, but rather I had done so out
of a desire to help her!
This relationship also did not last for very long after this interaction.
I am by nature more cautious than generous, and I do find trusting
others a challenge. In the above cases, though, generosity was the most
liberating approach I could have conceivably taken. If I had hedged my
bets in either of these relationships, and given 1% more while waiting
for 1% more reciprocity, I would never have achieved certainty.
In relationships – particularly romantic relationships – generosity
creates certainty. Giving 150% of yourself – even beyond your own
“comfort zone” – quickly highlights any deficiencies in reciprocity from
your partner.
When I first met my wife Christina, her capacity for love and devotion far
outstripped my own. I had been somewhat scarred in the romantic
trenches of my youth, and it took some time for my own heart to open up
to match her generosity.

Bump

All for bait and bait for all

I did openly talk about my difficulties in this
area with her, however, which helped alleviate her concerns. “I am trying
to open my heart as quickly as possible,” I said, “because you certainly
deserve my full affections, but I am having trouble matching your
openness.”
In the same way, if I owe monetary debt, but am temporarily unable to
pay it, I am morally bound to inform my creditor of the situation,
reaffirm my commitment to pay, and work like hell to get hold of the
money. Couples get continually stuck in the tug-of-war of conditional reciprocity
– “I gave you a back rub, now you owe me sex!” – which always creates
more and more resentment. Not only is such “generosity” totally
undercut through the expectation of reciprocity (“I’ll take out the
garbage if you do the dishes”) but the degree of mistrust that is
communicated by this sort of “grudging giving” is overwhelmingly
insulting at its root.
If I told you that you were my best friend, and you asked me to lend you
$5,000, and I said to you: “Let’s just start with $5, and see where it goes
from there,” would you feel elevated by my response?
Of course not. You would be insulted. “How can you call me your best
friend, and not trust me with any sum larger than five dollars?”
“Well,” I might reply, “some people in my past never paid me back.”
Here we run into a fundamental problem, which is at the root of
countless relationship discords.

We all arrive with scars, and that is not a bad thing. A boxer
without scars has never fought an equal, and a lover without
baggage has never risked his heart. To some degree we do
learn through pain, and being on the receiving end of
falsehoods and betrayal can do wonders to sharpen our criteria for
trustworthiness.
However, we do run into a fundamental problem when we mistrust our
lover.
Either she really is untrustworthy – in which case we chose to enter into
an intimate and lengthy relationship with an untrustworthy woman – or,
she is trustworthy, but we have a hard time trusting because we have
been betrayed in the past.
If we have been betrayed in the past, though, we have either learned
who to trust or we have not. If we have learned who to trust – primarily ourselves – then we cannot reasonably call our current partner
untrustworthy.
If we have not learned to trust, then we cannot blame our current
partner for being untrustworthy.
To explain what I mean by this, let us return to our “loan” example.
First I tell you that you are my best friend, and then I refuse to lend you
any money because I have lent and lost money in the past.
“Well,” you say, “are you still ‘best friends’ with those who ran off with
your money?”
“Of course not!” I reply indignantly.
“Thus you find untrustworthiness to be a trait unworthy of someone you
call a best friend?”
“Yes.”
“Thus anyone you call your best friend must be the opposite of the
people who harmed you in the past.”
“Yes.”
“Thus if you tell me that you are afraid that I will not pay you back, then
you are telling me that I am untrustworthy. However, since you have
rejected those who failed to pay you back in the past because they were
untrustworthy, but you claim that I am your best friend, then you are in
the illogical position of claiming that I am both trustworthy and
untrustworthy at the same time. If I am trustworthy, then I surely have
earned the title ‘best friend,’ and you should lend the money to me.

If I
am untrustworthy, then it is unjust to call me your ‘best friend,’ since
you find untrustworthiness such a vile character trait.”
Thus keeping people in our lives who exhibit traits we call negative
utterly prohibits us from blaming them for exhibiting those traits. If we
act in opposition to our beliefs, we cannot reasonably blame other
people for the results.
In the same way, when the fateful words “I love you” escape our lips,
they cannot be reasonably construed as a recipe, but rather as a fully
digested meal. We cannot reasonably say, “I love you, but I do not trust you.” We cannot reasonably say, “I love you, but I expect you to think and
act completely differently in the future.”
But of course we use the words “I love you” for almost every purpose
except what they actually mean.
“Love” is a word that is subjected to such fantastical delusions that
reclaiming its right meaning seems a near-impossible task. The word is
flung around to mean anything from fetishistic attachment to co-
dependency to “loyalty” towards rabid delusions such as gods and
countries.
There are some things, however, that we must be able to agree on if we
are to come to some reasonable understanding about how to improve
the quality of our relationships.

First of all, love must be a state that has at least some objective qualities.
If love is a completely subjective state, then the concept of “quality” does
not exist at all – and thus neither does “improvement.”
Furthermore, saying to someone “I love you” is a meaningless statement
if the phrase merely represents purely internal or subjective
preferences. We can say “I love jazz,” but jazz is not a conscious entity
and can flow from a CD. To proclaim love for another human being,
however, is to say that our internal state is elicited by another person. In
other words, the “you” in “I love you” involves objectivity, since we
experience each other through the medium of empirical reality.
If another person elicits our internal state, then some objectivity must be
accepted.
Secondly, we must also accept that the word “love” represents
something other than a merely chosen preference. We cannot pick a
woman out of a crowd and command ourselves to love her. In other
words, love must be somehow related to the actions of another person, and not simply willed. None of us would feel particularly flattered if
someone told us they “loved” us while knowing nothing about us.
Thus “love” must be in its essence a reaction to the objective actions of
another human being.
Thirdly, the feelings of affection that are elicited by the actions of
another person cannot be entirely contradictory. My wife cannot tell me
that she loves me because I am honest, and that she also loves my
brother because he is dishonest. I cannot love a person because of his
loyalty, and then claim to love another person equally because of her
disloyalty.

One of the most fundamental questions in philosophy – and psychology –
is the question: “Compared to what?” When I say that a proposition is
“true,” then I mean that it is true compared to something else –
falsehood, or inconsistency with internal logic or empirical validation.
Similarly, when we look at the question of love, clearly love is an
expression of a preference. Naturally, we must then ask, “A preference –
compared to what?”
If I say that I love honesty, then clearly I love it compared to dishonesty.
If I say that I love virtue, then clearly I love virtue compared to vice or
corruption.
Now, since we can only determine the traits of another human being
through empirical observation, our experience of “love” must involve the
actions of another (said actions can include words, of course). Just as our
conception of “tall” is derived from the objective (i.e. measurable)
characteristics of a man – and “tall” is valid relative to the average height
of a human male – just so is our experience of “love” derived from the
objective characteristics (words and actions) of another human being.
Thus “love” must be valid relative to an objective and external standard,
which we shall work to define shortly.

The question then arises: to what degree is love valid relative to an
objective and external standard?
Love cannot be completely and utterly defined by an objective and
external standard, since that would mean that everyone must love the
one person in the world who most completely conforms to that standard,
which would be absurd. If we said that love was valid relative to height,
then everyone in the world must love the tallest person, which flies in
the face of the obvious variety of personal preferences the world over.
If I say that I like ice cream, then clearly I prefer ice cream to other foods
that I relatively dislike. This is a largely subjective matter.
On the other hand, if I say that I prefer good health, then clearly I am
expressing a desire for something that can be measured at least to some
degree objectively. I cannot reasonably say that I prefer good health, and
that I also prefer dying of cancer.
It is also important to differentiate between standards that can be
achieved, and standards that cannot be achieved. If I say that I love good
health, and then define “good health” as never getting a cold, sleeping
lightly or having a headache, then clearly what I love is unattainable, and
my “love” can only be measured relative to varying degrees of
disappointment.
It scarcely seems required, but it is worth noting that love must be
considered a pleasurable experience. This does not mean that love always
entails pleasure – any more than physical health means never
experiencing any pain at all – but it must be a positive experience in
general.
In other words, the positive aspects of “love” must vastly outweigh the
negative aspects, just as the positive aspects of “health” must vastly
outweigh the negative aspects, such as eating well and exercising.
A decent rule of thumb is to expect a positive relationship to be
composed of 9/10 good things, to 1/10 bad things.

To put this together, we can say that love has the following
characteristics:
1. It has elements of objectivity.
2. It is elicited by the behaviour of another person.
3. It is a favouring of certain characteristics relative to their
opposites, or deficiencies thereof.
4. It is pleasurable.
I’m going to put forward a tentative definition of love, which conforms to
the above requirements. We shall examine this proposition in more
detail below.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue.
Science has elements of objectivity, insofar as it relies to some degree on
personal inspiration, but must be validated through reason and
evidence.
Love also has elements of objectivity, insofar as it relies to some degree
on personal preferences, but must be validated through reason and
evidence.
Of course, the idea of “validating” love offends our sensibilities to some
degree, since love is so often considered to be a form of divine madness
or inspiration. What, then, is meant by “validating love”?
Well, in the realm of romantic relationships, we are motivated to a
considerable degree by biological attraction, or raw sexual desire. In the
same way, we may feel an irrational exuberance of greed when we see
an overturned Brinks truck spilling banknotes into the wind. We may
even seize some of these banknotes, before shaking our heads and
returning our ill-gotten gains.

Philosophy is required because our instincts can lead us astray, as in the
case of eating and certain phobias. We may be sexually attracted to
certain characteristics such as large breasts or bald heads, but those
desires lie squarely in the realm of animal reproduction, rather than
what would properly be called “love.” Teenagers may get a fairly
strenuous degree of sexual satisfaction from their hand, but this would
scarcely be called love.
The world looks flat, but in truth it is round. Some people are sexually
attractive, but that does not mean they are lovable.
Since love has elements of objectivity, the objective elements of love
must be tied to universal values, the existence of which I proved in my
previous book on Universally Preferable Behaviour.
Again, this does not mean that all love is identical. The concept of
“health” has elements of objectivity, but is also measurable relative to a
variety of standards. A “healthy” AIDS patient is quite different from a
healthy athlete. The “healthiest” person in a cancer ward is not healthy
relative to the majority of people.
In the same way, we can assume that there is one person in the world
who is the very best person for you to be with. Does that mean that you
could never be happy with anyone else?
Of course not.
As with all disciplines, we have to weigh the pros and cons of perfection
versus attainability. There is also only one “perfect” job in the world for
us as well, but we can quite easily starve to death looking for it.
If we look at something like “honesty” as a behavioural trait that elicits
admiration, it is true that everyone has differing degrees of commitment
to – and execution of – honesty, but there is still an objective difference
between honesty and dishonesty.

If I value honesty – and I am honest myself – then I will value somebody
who is honest 99% of the time more than somebody who is honest 90%
of the time. (100% honesty can be considered an unrealistic goal, like
100% health, or being “perfectly reasonable.”)
Naturally, I would prefer to be with someone who is as honest as
possible, but I will likely have to “settle” for the most honest person that
I can find. The fact that I am willing to compromise my standards with regards to honesty – partly borne of a reasonable humility regarding my
own capacity for honesty – does not mean that I will value a liar. If I am a
mathematician, some of my proofs will doubtless fail – but that does not
mean that failing to achieve perfect consistency is exactly the same as
starting out to commit a fraud. If I stand in front of a mirror weighing 300 pounds and smoking my 40th
cigarette of the morning and say “I am healthy,” have I affected my
health in any objective manner?
Of course not. I have merely chosen to say the words “I am healthy”
rather than achieve actual health through consistent actions. My words have not affected reality at all. I have merely put the cart
before the horse. If I lose weight and quit smoking, I can reasonably
stand in front of the mirror and say “I am healthy” (or at least “I am
healthier”). My words thus become an accurate identification of an
objective state – a state which has preceded my words and in a sense
provokes them.
My words are thus a response to my empirical behaviour, measured in
objective terms (weight loss, smoking cessation). Similarly, if I stand in front of you and say “I love you,” this statement
only has validity if it is a response to your behaviour. I can stand in front
of the most evil and hateful human being on the planet and also say the
words “I love you,” but my preference does not make that person any
more lovable – any more than telling myself that I am healthy unclogs
my arteries.

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As I talked about in my book “On Truth,” people in general prefer – or
find it far easier in the short term – to do whatever they please in the
moment, and then redefine their actions as “universally virtuous.”
It is equally true that people in general prefer – or find it far easier in the
short run – to date whomever they desire, and then redefine their
partner as “lovable.” Ask most young women what they are looking for in a man and you will
hear various variations on the theme of tall, dark and handsome – or, if
they are slightly younger, “cute and funny.”
I have asked this question of many people, and I have never heard the
word “virtue” mentioned once.
Does love have anything to do with virtue?
Yes, yes and yes!
It is impossible to imagine genuine love in the absence of honesty. For
love to be genuine, it must be an accurate assessment of particular traits
within another human being. If the person that we claim to “love”
constantly lies to us or falsifies his actions, then whatever perception we
have of that person that causes us to love him are incorrect.
Since that which causes us to love is incorrect, our “love” must thus be
invalid.
To analogize this, imagine that you work for me and I pay you in cash.
However, when you try to spend your earnings, you discover that I have
paid you with counterfeit bills. As a result, I have received value through
your work, but you have not received value through my payment. My
dishonesty has thus generated a false value for you, because if you knew
that I was going to pay you with counterfeit money, you would not have
worked for me to begin with.
Since the truth would have produced an opposite action in you – a
rejection of employment, rather than an acceptance of it – your diligent
behaviour was as unjustified as your interpretation of my honesty.

In the same way, if I tell you that I am courageous, and virtuous, yet hide
sordid aspects of my life from you, drink in secret and so on – and you
believe me – then you will feel more positive towards me than if I told
you the truth. Since our emotions are so directly dependent upon our perceptions and
are so foundational to our experience of the world, someone who lies to
us is fundamentally manipulating our experience of the world.
Since our emotions also alter our bodies biochemically, a liar who gets
close to us manipulates our biochemistry as surely as if he were
drugging us directly.
Thus our own emotional stability, which is a key part of a peaceful and
happy life, requires as a bare minimum general honesty from those
around us. Fundamentally, courage is not bravery with regards to another human
being, but rather with regards to moral ideals.
My wife, though wonderfully courageous in many areas, has a certain
weakness when it comes to social gatherings.
For instance, she has an ex-friend who is involved in a highly
dysfunctional relationship. Recently, when we were at a party, we were
told that this woman had gotten married to her boyfriend. Christina
exclaimed: “Oh, that’s great!”
I was somewhat surprised, to say the least, and really put my foot in it by
saying to her in front of everyone: “Really? I didn’t think you were such a
big fan of their relationship.”
(It’s always good to have something to talk about during the drive
home.)
Of course, I was not particularly concerned with Christina’s disavowal of
her true feelings in company – particularly since the woman in question
showed up at the party later on. I was more concerned with the fact that
she placed the perceptions of others above the truth of her own feelings
– feelings which were accurate and valid. I was most concerned,
however, with the fact that she did not seem conscious of her reversal of
values.

If she had expressed approval with her friend standing right
behind her, I would have understood her caution – however, there was
no compelling and immediate reason to express approval of something
she did not in fact approve of.
The reason that this troubled me, of course, was that I really didn’t like
the idea that Christina could betray her values – even in this minor
manner – for the sake of the possible disapproval of the people we were
talking to, who we see maybe once every year or two.
This also made me feel insecure, since Christina and I both hold trusting
our own feelings as a high value – as well as honesty of course. I really
disliked the idea that the virtues we believed in and practiced were sort
of a “private world” that had nothing to do with the “real world” of
everyone else.
You know that feeling you get if you are dating a woman who never
wants to introduce you to her friends? You get this uneasy sensation that
you are kind of “below the radar,” or something to be hidden relative to
her life as a whole. You are, in fact, a sort of embarrassment, in that she
obviously feels that she must be “slumming” in some manner. If she felt
that you would enhance her status with her friends, she would drag you
to see them against your will if she had to.
When I was 17, I worked in a day-care centre teaching a room full of
kids. I became friends with a woman who was slightly older, and was
just going through a divorce. Over dinner one evening, she told me about
her psychic abilities. Because I was 17, my hormones and I listened
attentively.
Over a departmental lunch the next day, I mentioned her psychic
abilities as part of a more general conversation. She became completely
red-faced, and chastised me afterwards for bringing that up.
So many of us have this kind of “private world” that we openly disavow,
scorn and reject when we are in the company of others.

This is a form of
cowardice, since we abandon what is precious to us for fear of the
disapproval or rejection of others.
In other words, we reject ourselves rather than be rejected by others.
This avoids the pain of humiliation, but also keeps us trapped in an
underworld of people we know will humiliate us if we are honest.
The reason that this habit is so hard to respect or love is because it
involves so many contradictions.
If a certain belief or habit is truly valuable, it does not lose its value in the
presence of others. Real money does not lose its value in the presence of
counterfeit currency – quite the opposite is true in fact.
Conversely, if the opinions of others is the best methodology for
determining our values, then those values cannot exist except through
the opinions of others – thus there should be nothing to hide in the
presence of others, since no values have been accepted or practised
without their prior approval.
It is hard to respect someone who wants to “have his cake and eat it too”
by holding private virtues that he consistently disavows in public. We
tend to shy away from these sorts of people not only because of their
hypocrisy, but also because these sorts of contradictory values make
raising children enormously difficult.
If you ask a woman to evaluate a particular situation and she openly
says, “Oh, I have no idea, I’ll have to check with all my friends,” then
there is no possibility of equality in her relationship with her friends. If
all her friends hold the same values, then they will be empty echoes of
endless cross-referencing, with no ideas or opinions being generated at
all.
At least one of her friends must be able to generate opinions, which
everyone else then references.

Thus she both prefers and dislikes opinions – she dislikes having her
own for fear of disapproval, and so she must prefer that other people
create her opinions for her.
Of course, you never do meet people who openly tell you that they have
no opinions, but must always ask their friends – and that is why these
cowardly evasions are so odious. People always claim that their opinions
are both virtuous and true, that they have integrity and are willing to
stand up for what they believe in, and then they generally fold at the
slightest sign of pressure or disapproval.
The fact that they fold – as we all do at times – does not warn them that
they are not actually living their values, and must more closely examine
their companions. Since everyone has a general access to the self-
medicating madness of instant mythology, all that people do when they
act in a cowardly manner is redefine their actions as virtuous in some
manner. Thus a woman may say: “I know that I said that, but I didn’t want to
offend people (I’m nice), and besides, people don’t change (I’m practical),
and we were enjoying their hospitality (I’m not ungrateful), and the
person in question was going to show up (I’m prudent) – and besides,
yesterday you said X, Y and Z (you’re hypocritical).”
This is why a lack of integrity tends to make us uneasy – because it
always ends up being an attack on truth in general and our integrity in
particular.
Not too relaxing...

We do not call a tire “good” if it ruptures right after being installed.
“Quality” has a lot to do with sustainability. A bridge is not of high
quality if it collapses six minutes after being built.
In many ways, virtue is fundamentally about sustainable behaviour.
Clearly, lying is not very sustainable behaviour – particularly in a long-
term relationship – because reality is always opposing the words of the
liar. As “intimacy” grows in a relationship and more and more people get
involved in the couple’s interactions, lies become less and less
sustainable.
Similarly, cowardice is also unsustainable in a relationship, since
cowardice is always supported by justifications (lies) which reframe
cowardice as “courage.” This creates an unstable situation where
cowardly behaviour is both condemned and praised, resulting in highly
inconsistent behaviour.
Integrity, of course, is all about sustainable behaviour – its opposite,
conformity, is all about seeking the approval of others, which produces
highly inconsistent behaviour. People inflict a need for conformity on us
as children by attacking us for independent thought and evaluation,
because any such thought reveals their hypocrisy. Thus conformist
habits always stem from the desire of those who hold power over us to
blind us to their inconsistent and hypocritical actions. This is why
conformity and integrity are so fundamentally opposed.
42
If we love certain characteristics or virtues, then clearly our love will
stabilize and increase to the degree to which those characteristics or
virtues are stable, and increase.

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Security is an essential ingredient for intimacy. Security results from a
feeling of predictability and safety, which in turn arises from consistent
benevolence on the part of others. If we are randomly attacked by our
lover, we can never feel safe or secure. If we have to use a rickety old
footbridge to cross a chasm, each wobbly step will be a fearful
nightmare.
Why do we stay in relationships where we do not feel safe and secure?
One central reason is that we have a habit of listening to people’s words,
rather than regarding their actions. The old adage “actions speak louder
than words” has fallen out of favour in our modern age, but it is essential
for evaluating potential relationships of any kind.
Abusive behaviour always results from a lack of integrity.
If, on a first date, a woman tells you openly that she will attack you
whenever she feels insecure, angry or vulnerable – and promises to
blame you when you get upset about being attacked – you would be very
unlikely to continue dating her.
No, people always tell you that they are acting virtuously, even if their
actions completely contradict their stated values. If a woman has a habit
of attacking others when she feels anxious, that behaviour can only be
maintained if she redefines her abuse as virtuous in some manner. She will
say that she is only defending herself, or that she has been patient for a
long time but “enough is enough,” or that the other party started the
conflict, and so on.
If her culpability can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, she then
reverts to the secondary defence of abusers, which is to say that it is
ignoble to point fingers and play “the blame game,” that “forgiveness is a
virtue,” and “we need to move on now.”
In other words, she will openly state that unjustly attacking others is
wrong, and then will unjustly attack others.

This lack of integrity ensures that no one around her will ever feel a
consistent sense of security or safety. (In fact, that is exactly what it is
designed to do, since destabilizing people is an essential prerequisite for
controlling them.)
If we accept that integrity to virtue creates security – and that security is
a necessary prerequisite for love – then we can understand why it is so
important to have values in a relationship that both parties can refer to.
If an agreement can be reached that raised voices and name-calling are
inappropriate to a loving relationship, then if one person yells or name-
calls, the other person can object to that behaviour based on values that
both parties have accepted.
It is impossible to have security – or integrity – without shared and
objective values.
If I hand you $1,000 and think it is a loan, but you see it as a gift, then I
will not perceive you to be acting with integrity if you never pay the
“loan” back – just as you will never perceive me to be acting with
integrity if I demand my “gift” back.
Similarly, if a woman holds “keeping others happy” as a core “value,”
then she will view any emotional confrontation or uncomfortable
honesty as “rude.”
On the other hand, if she holds “honesty” as a core value, then she will
view a consistent avoidance of necessary confrontations or honesty as
“cowardice.”
If a man believes that verbal abuse is “assertiveness,” then asking him to
refrain from verbal abuse is the same as asking him to be a coward –
which will never happen, since few if any people will ever voluntarily
pursue an action they define as immoral or ignoble.
If a woman believes that nagging is necessary to get what she wants,
then asking her to give up nagging would be like asking her to give up
having any needs or preferences, which will never happen.
Following our above methodology, when considering integrity, we must
next ask: “Integrity to what?”

Having integrity is acting in accordance with rational values. This
is an enormously hard thing to achieve, both because most of the
“values” we were given – or rather which were inflicted upon us
– are so ridiculously self-contradictory, and also because living
with integrity actively eliminates a goodly number of people from your
life.
Women often say that they dislike nagging, but don’t know any other
way to get their needs met.
This is a prime example of not living with integrity.
If my wife has to nag me to meet her needs, then she is basically telling
me that I do not care about her, and that I will never lift a finger to meet
her needs unless she constantly complains that I am not meeting her
needs.
In the movie “The Breakup,” Jennifer Aniston tells Vince Vaughn that she
wants him to want to do the dishes with her.
What she means by this is that she wants him to want to help her, to
make the job of entertaining easier, and to place her needs above his
own, at least temporarily.
The reason that this kind of behaviour is so corrupt is that it is so
fundamentally self-contradictory.
If Jennifer has to constantly nag Vince to meet her needs, then clearly she
believes that he does not voluntarily want to meet her needs in the first
place. He does not respect what she wants, or does not care that she
wants it – either way, he is treating her entirely disrespectfully.
She feels frustrated because she does not feel visible to him – as women
so often say: “If he only knew how important this was to me, he would
not hesitate to provide it.” Thus Jennifer gets stuck in a “broken record”
loop of attempting to become visible to Vince, so that he will give her
what she wants.
Fundamentally, then, she is nagging him because she feels invisible to
him – because she feels that he is rejecting who she really is.
This is entirely hypocritical.

Obviously, what Vince wants is to not be nagged. Over and over, he
complains that she keeps nagging him. He also does not seem to enjoy
entertaining – and Jennifer’s obsessive perfectionism appears
particularly odious to him.
It is thus ridiculous for Jennifer to chastise him for not meeting her
needs, when by that very chastisement she is failing to meet his need,
which is to not be chastised.
The tragic irony is that Jennifer feels rejected, and so rejects the man
that she chose because he is rejecting her.
This is exactly like saying: “I need a form of transportation,” then
spending years testing various makes of cars and researching all the
alternatives, and then finally purchasing a car – and then, when you get it
home, standing in front of it and exclaiming: “Excellent, now I’m going to
turn this thing into a boat!”
Men always resist being turned into “boats” – while women experience
men’s resistance at being transformed into something they are not as a
rejection of themselves. They will openly say to a man they have chosen:
“Change!” and then feel genuinely rejected when he does not change.
Of course, asking someone to change is rejecting him, at least as he is. To
choose a man, and then reject a man, and then complain that you feel
rejected, is quite mad.
If the innocent car in the woman’s garage could speak, surely it would
say: “If you wanted a boat, why on earth did you buy a car?”
The reason that couples so strenuously avoid this elemental
conversation is that if you have bought a car when you really
want a boat, the point is not to nag the car into becoming a boat,
but to take the car back and get a boat instead.
You cannot claim to love someone, and then want him to change.