Dear geovane:

I am impressed by the depth and thoroughness of your analysis and am sure it is true to reality although there are other factors that need to be factored in, factors you didn’t mention.

Let me see if I understand the core of your analysis. I will paraphrase and summarize your analysis, in effort to further processing it. I will use “boy” and “girl” to mean boys and men, and girls and women. I will use “bad girl” to mean one who becomes sexually involved with multiple bad boys over time. A “bad boy” is one who has no concern for the women he gets involved with, intends no commitment, and is motivated by sexual pleasures alone, acquiring variety and quantity of women. A good boy cares for the girl’s well being, is interested in a committed relationship:

Girls are attracted to be bad boys, get involved with the bad boys and reject the good boys. The good boys feel humiliated for having been rejected. As a result of such repetitive experience, the good boys are motivated to be bad boys in order to be as- or more successful then the bad boys. They aim to have more sex with more girls.

But inside, the good boys turned bad still care about a girl’s feelings and well being, and still want to love a girl for who she is and to be loved by her for who they are, good guys. So they choose to commit to a good girl only. Committing to a bad girl means re-experiencing the humiliation of being rejected and the fear of still being rejected by her.

With the good woman, a good man feels safe- she will not reject him, not in real life and not in her mind (thinking of him as ‘second best’). With a bad woman, a good man feels threatened, still in competition with the bad guys, be it in her mind and/ or in real life.

Am I correct?

anita

Dear geovane:

You are welcome and thank you for posting something as profound and insightful as this. I hope more people read this and respond.

Did you post this to share only or are you looking for any specific input? And I wonder if there is more that you will be sharing on the topic.

anita

Dear geovane:

This is such a complex topic as many factors play into it: societal gender/ sexual role conventions passed on from the beginning of time, the women’s liberation movement of the sixties, the complexity of the meaning of goo vs bad man/ woman, the biological mating behaviors passed on to us, humans, mental health and dating, the traditional objectifying of women as sex objects in the marketing and sex industry,y and so much more.

Your competition explanation, the race you mentioned is true. One saying: “Nice guys finish last” – a well known saying is about the race you wrote about.

I have so many thoughts about this but will stop here, hoping other members will comment on your posts here. Will be back later.

anita

Great insight, Geovane! I see you have spent some time thinking about this.
Honestly, I think your theory is true to a point.

First, I agree with you, a real mature man must value himself and realize that life is not a competition. We are simply here to love. Unfortunately, many many people live out their lives as a competition or race. All that brings is pain, weird behavior, jealousy and lack of real relationships. For example, as you have written, you can find people who are preoccupied with competIng against all the people who a spouse/gf/bad might have been with in the past. Very sad.

I find that in general, the “good” guy is usually one who has refused to accept certain realities. In nature, it usually is the job of the male to attract the female and somehow persuade her to mate – as in humans. Typically, The female part is to have beauty and able to mate+reproduce. That subtle game of persuasion is what all men must have.

I maybe be wrong, but many “good” guys seem to be guys who feel/are attractive inside, they have a light, but they kind of want to keep their light hidden, and wait for the magic girl who will come to them, recognize their goodness, pry the door open and embrace their value. Unfortunately, most women will never do that. So that attitude may not work well for romantic relationships with women.

When I was much younger, I used to judge women partly by the kind of men they were attracted to. That is, if I saw a woman was attracted to/pursuing/in relationship with a guy I knew to be dishonest or bad, I would kind of write her off. Tbh, this was not due to any humiliation as you wrote above but I simply felt that she had shown poor judgement. At first it seemed I would have to write everyone off, even family members! After a while, I saw that there were actually many women who showed good judgement and could see a bad guy and avoid him. These women are able to analyze a man’s character on one hand and her feelings due to his persuasion game on the other, in order to make a decision.
In my experience, the unfortunate thing is that the overwhelming majority of women tend to make this important analysis only from their late twenties/thirties onwards. In the teens to early twenties, it seems the majority of women only see their feelings produced by the persuasion game of a man and are quite blind to character when making relationship decisions.

It just so happens that more so called “bad” guys than “good guys are committed to that game of persuasion and that is actually what drew the women in. The women are actually not attracted to their bad side (except of course a small minority). This is why I was wrong to write all those women off.
For some crazy reason, “good” guys are either oblivious to the persuasion game, or they know of it but don’t want to engage.

Funny enough, in the reverse case, where men must hold a woman’s character on one hand and her beauty/attractiveness on the other to make relationship decisions, I believe that the majority of men are unable to see past beauty and this continues all though their lives! – if beauty is present, a lot of men will pick beauty and seem blind to bad character, over and over and over. So men cannot hold any moral ground over women in terms of judgement in this lol
All women have already embraced the fact that beauty has that ridiculously strong effect on men – thus the billions spent every year on makeup, plastic surgery etc.

If the persuasion game is that strong, the solution for relationships is simply that the good guys just need to embrace it very early. It works out better for everyone that way. Don’t just hold your light near the ground. Shine your light. Make ittwinkle.
I don’t claim to be an expert in the persuasion at all but maybe a simple hint is: love is playful.

Ever since I was a teen, I can spot a bad guy a mile away. I’ve never been attracted to them no matter what they looked like. I’ll pick a “good guy” over a “bad guy” every time. Does that make me an exception to the rule? I don’t think so. I think the problem is just that some men play the “competition game” so well that a lot of women can’t distinguish the difference between arrogance and confidence. One of which is attractive.

A young man or woman will this way as you pointed out. Thinking back to when I was in hs and growing up I do remember that was the mentality of the way things where . I included women because certain bad Girls had there view of guys as well, such as dating guys who were a certain “size” , or if he came from money. I see some of that in older men and women now, the ones who did not mature or break free from the past. This is why girls lie about their number and why a guy lies about his size or the need to pop pills to increase size or how long he last in bed. Such a vain world we live in, so it seems. So sad that is how people live their lives, when actually true beauty is what is a person’s heart and how they live. Some people are considered poor because they don’t livable a materialistic life ,or not a trophy because they are over weight, dose that make them less of a human. From what I read it would if you live so vainly in that kind of thinking. Such a different world would be if you can see someone soul and not the outside appearance.
Rather than looking at girls number, see and feel what is in her heart .

Geovane –
Thanks for the great discussion.
Growing up, I was a Good Guy. My wife was a Bad Girl (her own words). She had many sexual partners, while she has been my only partner. Here are a few things to consider that I have found illuminating and VERY helpful:

1. “Blooming” Early vs Late
My wife started having sex with guys at age 15. When I was 15, I could not even imagine doing such a thing. I was still into comic books, hanging with my buddies, etc. My point: People mature at different times. I was a very “late bloomer” when it came to desiring sex. Oh, mind you, I do like it now! And her, not so much. Been there, done that – many times. This very sharp contrast in our “timing” has caused us anxiety. But knowing that this stress comes from our contrasting pasts helps us isolate and deal with it. Of course, this leads to:
2. Contrasting “Numbers”
Since she started very early, her number grew – and grew. I started very late (late 20’s) and, like I said, she has been my only partner. To better make my point, if I had, say, 27 partners and she had 30, I’m sure the anxiety wouldn’t be there – we’d have our own “war stories” (and wounds) to share. Not us. Our backgrounds are lop-sided. No one’s fault – and I realize that my past helps create this as much as hers.
3. Now vs Then: People can change
When we were first together, my wife said, “If you knew me a few years ago, you wouldn’t have liked me – and I wouldn’t have liked you!” What she meant was this: she was a Bad Girl who liked only Bad Guys. To her, Good Guys were boring losers. Of course, the Bad Guys would mistreat her, and she would also be the aggressor at times. And like so many younger women, she needed to feel accepted and validated by men. But the emotional “high” she would gain by waking up naked next to a guy she just met hours before (her “win/trophy”) was only followed by an even larger “low.” Eventually, after a few years of therapy, she broke this cycle – and met me. Sadly, she no longer desires sex as it reminds her of a darker time before me. This creates anxiety as I feel she “gave herself away” before me. We’re currently working through this.

I do believe that a “Lower Number” person brings a certain degree of naivety, ignorance and expectation to the relationship. And, while a “Higher Number” person brings experience, they also bring baggage in the form of wounds, shame, guilt and pain. I am very sensitive to not “slut shaming” my wife for her past as she has told me that she’d like to forget most of it. I also realize that while she started having sex at a very early age, she needed to feel accepted and validated – I did not. She didn’t have sex out of desire (although enjoying it may have been a side bonus for her). I’m sure that if she could attain acceptance from men without sex, she would have chosen that instead.

Overall, we cannot be too general and categorize people. We’re all different, mature at various times (or never at all), in different ways – and have the option of actually changing for the worse or better. If you find someone special (as I have), don’t treat them as a sexual trophy. Treat them as a whole person. And put their life and well being before yours. Grow old with them. And after the “parts” no longer work that well, discover the joy of holding their hand.
Peace.