- Joined
- Jul 17, 2013
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- 1,554
This is a personal challenge that I face, which may not be relevant to many others, but I wanted to share in case anyone has successfully achieved this, or can offer pointers.
A lot is made of the “good-boy”/”bad-boy” distinction on this site—or at my age I guess it would be “good-guy”/”bad-guy”, in any case the implication seems to be that the “bad” variant is superior in terms of both quantity and quality of female partners amassed.
Now the difficulty I face is this. Deep inside, the “bad-guy” descriptor suits me well in many ways. I have always had a healthy skepticism for authority; I naturally reject arbitrary consensus and blind conformity. Where females are concerned, I’ve never granted exclusivity to anyone; I’ve overlapped my relationships extensively and taken an opportunistic attitude to romance regardless of existing ties. I still believe deep down that senseless rules are there to be ignored, just so long as you don’t get caught; from an early age I’ve had a tendency to challenge anything I perceived as tyrannical or unwarranted coercion—I recall specific instances of doing this at ages 5, 10, 15…
Yet, I was brought up “nice”. I attended a reputable all-boys’ “preparatory” school in 1980s Great Britain (not the same meaning as in the United States—this was elementary education) from age 6, and was taught such delights of etiquette as holding doors for adults, knocking before entering, and saying “please” when requesting an audience (e.g. on the phone: not “Is Jack there?” but “May I speak with Jack, please?”—I am conscious this will sound hilariously outdated to the American reader).
Later in life, having learned several languages and started traveling alone, I was actually corrected by locals for saying “thank you” too much, as if it were a point of language: they told me it sounded unnatural in their world. That opened my eyes a little!
Still, you can put the boy into England but you can’t put England into the boy: the rebellious nature has remained to this day, and I routinely ignore such niceties as working hours, occupational dress codes, volunteerism expectations, and the like. Social constraints is an interesting one… I will adhere closely to any social convention whose flouting would imply lack of character, decency, or social awareness; yet arbitrary rules that are there to provide intangible and questionable benefits for society as a whole, as opposed to protecting a individual’s liberties, mean little to me.
The point is that deep down I believe in kindness and respect for others, but I can’t accept regimentation and a hypocritical semblance of propriety as a substitute for that—so I’ll confront it head-on to see what’s really underneath.
In summary, then, as I have matured and increased in confidence I have chipped away at the “polite” exterior that was imposed upon me in my formative years as part of the socialization process. But my worry is that traces remain… I need to apply some kind of “paint-stripper” to get rid of those vestiges of superficial “niceness” that cause me to commit such heresies as pedestalizing, supplicating, and the like, on an individual basis. (The social element was never there, thank God—you won’t catch me friend-zoned or orbiting among other men, a habit I’ve always despised; and Girls Chase has taught me that I need not fear what I earlier termed “self-righteous” men, who instilled terror in me previously—I now recognize them for the ubiquitous “white knight”, annoying but ultimately harmless, and can ignore or taunt them accordingly.)
You could say: just develop the right habits in behavioral terms, then the mindset will follow. I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in that. But my chief worry is that I do not really have a “role model”. I don’t have an internalized image of what a seduction-appropriate “bad guy” actually looks like.
I’d hardly wish to take the path of the full-on villain, like Ernst Stavro Blofeld holding Tiffany Case incommunicado aboard his ocean rig. That doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t mind sacrificing a little in terms of quantity of female partners to be able to live in accordance with my own principles, which would mean attracting women to spend time with me of their own accord, and not “tricking” them into dates or bed or whatever else.
So can anyone suggest a clear destination, and a direction I might take to get there? ☺
A lot is made of the “good-boy”/”bad-boy” distinction on this site—or at my age I guess it would be “good-guy”/”bad-guy”, in any case the implication seems to be that the “bad” variant is superior in terms of both quantity and quality of female partners amassed.
Now the difficulty I face is this. Deep inside, the “bad-guy” descriptor suits me well in many ways. I have always had a healthy skepticism for authority; I naturally reject arbitrary consensus and blind conformity. Where females are concerned, I’ve never granted exclusivity to anyone; I’ve overlapped my relationships extensively and taken an opportunistic attitude to romance regardless of existing ties. I still believe deep down that senseless rules are there to be ignored, just so long as you don’t get caught; from an early age I’ve had a tendency to challenge anything I perceived as tyrannical or unwarranted coercion—I recall specific instances of doing this at ages 5, 10, 15…
Yet, I was brought up “nice”. I attended a reputable all-boys’ “preparatory” school in 1980s Great Britain (not the same meaning as in the United States—this was elementary education) from age 6, and was taught such delights of etiquette as holding doors for adults, knocking before entering, and saying “please” when requesting an audience (e.g. on the phone: not “Is Jack there?” but “May I speak with Jack, please?”—I am conscious this will sound hilariously outdated to the American reader).
Later in life, having learned several languages and started traveling alone, I was actually corrected by locals for saying “thank you” too much, as if it were a point of language: they told me it sounded unnatural in their world. That opened my eyes a little!
Still, you can put the boy into England but you can’t put England into the boy: the rebellious nature has remained to this day, and I routinely ignore such niceties as working hours, occupational dress codes, volunteerism expectations, and the like. Social constraints is an interesting one… I will adhere closely to any social convention whose flouting would imply lack of character, decency, or social awareness; yet arbitrary rules that are there to provide intangible and questionable benefits for society as a whole, as opposed to protecting a individual’s liberties, mean little to me.
The point is that deep down I believe in kindness and respect for others, but I can’t accept regimentation and a hypocritical semblance of propriety as a substitute for that—so I’ll confront it head-on to see what’s really underneath.
In summary, then, as I have matured and increased in confidence I have chipped away at the “polite” exterior that was imposed upon me in my formative years as part of the socialization process. But my worry is that traces remain… I need to apply some kind of “paint-stripper” to get rid of those vestiges of superficial “niceness” that cause me to commit such heresies as pedestalizing, supplicating, and the like, on an individual basis. (The social element was never there, thank God—you won’t catch me friend-zoned or orbiting among other men, a habit I’ve always despised; and Girls Chase has taught me that I need not fear what I earlier termed “self-righteous” men, who instilled terror in me previously—I now recognize them for the ubiquitous “white knight”, annoying but ultimately harmless, and can ignore or taunt them accordingly.)
You could say: just develop the right habits in behavioral terms, then the mindset will follow. I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in that. But my chief worry is that I do not really have a “role model”. I don’t have an internalized image of what a seduction-appropriate “bad guy” actually looks like.
I’d hardly wish to take the path of the full-on villain, like Ernst Stavro Blofeld holding Tiffany Case incommunicado aboard his ocean rig. That doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t mind sacrificing a little in terms of quantity of female partners to be able to live in accordance with my own principles, which would mean attracting women to spend time with me of their own accord, and not “tricking” them into dates or bed or whatever else.
So can anyone suggest a clear destination, and a direction I might take to get there? ☺
