It all boils down to this....

All the dating gurus and advice that promises control, power over others, or ways you can manipulate your way into the opposite sexes life is worthless if you are following the way of the positive polarity of serving others.   However, if you are into self serving and increasing your negative polarity then these methods are for you.

Wanting control is for those who feel as if they do not have it but want it.

Manipulation is clear self serving and for those who have little to no confidence in their own worth.

Power same as control.......is for those who feel as if they do not have it but want it.

Those who want an great match for them are ok with rejection because they know it brings them one step closer to their goal.  Each one that does not work out is recognition of what does not work.

Be careful of those selling techniques.  There are many promises the prey on your temporal desires.

When your goal is to grow rather than get something.  Then every experience becomes opportunity to learn about your self.

If the dating gurus are talking about possession or being possessed this is the path of the negative polarity (service to self).  The opposite path is the one of guaranteeing free will.

surrender

There is a hidden arch of spiritual learning that has been consistent in my life.

The learning of surrender.
co-learning of valuing being a well as doing

My childhood was blessed with an extremely smart and controlling father. (At least 4 college degrees and enough academic credits for 4 more,... combined with growing up during the depression)  I'm not complaining but explaining how there was no choice for me as a child but to surrender to the brilliance of my father.  He was right.  Following him lead to good outcomes for the family.

My elder brothers did not surrender and it led to great disharmony.  Something I was unwilling to do. I valued peace and harmony more than doing it my way.  My brothers did not.

While I learned to surrender in the work place to authority.  When ever I could I still did it my way.

Where I failed the most, was in my own relationships.  I had not learned to compromise, say it was good enough or promote win win situations.

It took my stroke, to teach me greater surrender.  This deeper learning of surrender did finally translate into my relationships.  Learning when to surrender versus when to do it my way. Im not saying i was perfect and have mastered it.  But I was so much greatly improved it sometimes seemed so.

Strong Women Make the sME MISTAKES AS STRONG MEN

There is nothing wrong with being a strong women but it can have some consequences in your relationships.

Not making room for another in your life.

Sometime literally, like encouraging your man to throw out/get rid of his stuff because it does not match your sense of beauty.  This is a failure to accept the other person as they are.  This can translate I'm reject some of your stuff thus I'm rejecting part of you.  Men to this to, not appreciating her stuff because it is not functional? efficient? in some way not measuring up to his standards.

Wanting it to be all your way.

A variation of the first. Compromise, good enough, and win win are all examples of different ways to accomplish togetherness without driving the other away.

Micro managing rather micro goal setting.

Telling the other exactly this happens because it is way easier to tell someone to do it like you do it than to figure out what are the absolutely essential goals versus merely important goals.

Choosing Work over partner too many times.

If you are regularly choosing work over your partner then you are communicating what is most important to you.  Sure work makes life go around because of the money and thus security it provides.  And you have to work.  But if you keep making that choice over and over it cam undermine the connection between you.

These are the same mistakes strong men make.

From perfect to perfection

I copied this because during my 7-8 years of online dating I read the same thing time after time in women's profiles.  1) That women wanted chemistry, they wanted to feel something. 2) women wanted to believe romantic relationship was all easy, that the right relationship was not work.

https://blog.beirresistible.com/the-5-stages-of-a-relationship/

I copied this to preserve the wisdom while escaping the adds.  Still credit goes to.... James Bauer at https://beirresistible.com/ where there is some great wisdom for women.

I copied this because during my 7-8 years of online dating I read the same thing time after time in women's profiles.  1) That women wanted chemistry, they wanted to feel something. 2) women wanted to believe romantic relationship was all easy, that the right relationship was not work.

When experience showed chemistry is only the first part of a relationship and that all relationships eventually require work because men's and women's values and needs are different and sometime diametrically opposed.  That means exactly opposite. 

Navigating the stages past the honeymoon phase takes skills and awareness must do not take time to acquire.  None of these skills are taught in our schools.  So unless the parents learn them and model them for their children.  Children have unrealistic expectations about relationships especially romantic ones. 

-Crm

The 5 Stages of a Relationship

It happened every time.

Angelika would meet a man with potential. Someone she really, REALLY liked.

She’d feel so full of hope. She’d see signs they were meant to be.

Then she’d find out he wasn’t the man she thought he was.

He had issues he hadn’t told her about.

He was no longer as attentive as before.

Angelika realized he wasn’t so extraordinary after all. He was just a guy, like every other guy who’d let her down.

When Angelika came to me, she wanted to nip this pattern in the bud. She wanted to know how to spot an amazing man who would STAY amazing, rather than disappoint her.

I admired Angelika’s determination. I appreciated the fact that she’d taken time to reflect on her past. But the answer I gave her was one she wasn’t expecting to hear.

“What makes a man special is how you see him,” I told her. “So if you want to meet an amazing man, it’s up to you to see what’s amazing about him.”

“But I do!” she said. “I always look for the best in everybody. What I get mad at is when a guy presents himself one way and then turns out to be totally different.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I can see how you would feel misled. But let me ask you a question. When you go out on a date with someone new, do you immediately tell him everything that’s wrong with you?”

Angelika shook her head. “Of course not!”

“Do you think men feel the same way?”

She bit her lip. “Well, probably.”

I explained that everyone—men and women alike—put their best foot forward in the beginning of a relationship. They’re on their best behavior. They want to be liked.

It’s easy to fall in love with someone who’s trying their best to win you over. You feel liked, admired, appreciated. You feel as if this person gets you on a very deep level.

But you don’t actually know each other very well yet.

You’re in the beginning stages of intimacy, where the amount of time you’re spending together gives you the illusion of having known one another forever.

This is known as the honeymoon phase, and it’s one of the 5 stages of relationships.

Understand how relationships evolve, and you won’t be surprised when your relationship starts to shift in a new direction.

So what are the stages of a relationship?

They can go by different names, but taken together they describe the journey your relationship will take from the initial euphoria of infatuation to the grounded contentment of real love.

1. Honeymoon phase
2. Reality check
3. Power struggle
4. Reconciliation
5. Real love 

For many people, the honeymoon phase is the best part of a relationship. All of the fun with none of the work!

Angelika was getting stuck in the second stage of relationships, the reality check.

This is when the rose-colored glasses come off. Your guy feels safe with you, so he starts to show you more of his real self.

Instead of feeling misled, I told Angelika, feel encouraged. He’s letting his guard down. He’s starting to trust you. You may not like what you see, but real imperfection is better than a perfect illusion.

Even if you persevere through the reality check, you’re not home free. You have another major obstacle ahead:

The power struggle.

The power struggle strikes every couple. It can hit right away, or it can lie in wait for several years.

This is when you realize that the two of you don’t always want the same things. He wants things his way, and you want them your way.

Instead of negotiating, you battle for control of the relationship. Who will make the decisions? Who will win? Who’s in charge?

If a couple doesn’t know this stage is coming, they can split up over it. The relationship becomes a source of stress. You’re always fighting. It’s too much work.

But committed couples turn the power struggle around. They realize the enemy is their lack of relationship skills, rather than each other. They commit to finding a mutually respectful way to navigate and even honor their differences.

Their reward is reconciliation, that feeling of peace that comes when you know you can get through anything together.

Couples can go back and forth between the power struggle and reconciliation many times in the course of a relationship.

Ultimately, if they persevere, they begin to see that love is nothing like what they thought it was. It’s not a feeling. It’s a partnership. It’s something they choose, rather than something they have.

You can tell couples who’ve achieved real love by the way they see each other through rose-colored glasses.

It’s not like before. Now they know each other’s flaws. But they choose to see the best in each other, despite knowing the worst.

And that, I told Angelika, is a relationship worth enduring a few disappointments for.

Finding the living boundary between freedom and security

living between freedom and security

Women measure men by his heart.  But maybe they should be measuring men by the quality of his logical choices.  To measure him by his heart is to expect him to be like her.

Men measure women by her head.  But maybe they should be measuring women by the quality of her emotional choices. To measure her by her head is to expect her to be like him.

Women feel betrayed when men seek freedom.

Yet freedom feeds men's energy.

Men think they are unloved when women share their love with another.

Yet sharing love feeds women's energy.

Both seek freedom from their restrictions.

managing our core needs is important.

All this leads me to.....

Men's freedom that leads to abandonment does not a healthy relationship make.

Women's love sharing that leads to broken verbal promises does not a healthy relationship make.

Can we then say....

Men seek freedom from their burden of not being able to express wanderlust and adventure.

Women seek freedom from their burden of not being able to express love.

When security is placed as a more important quality than adventure men feel restricted.

When adventure is placed as a more important quality than security women feel insecure.

Be careful to not always placed such rigid rules on the boundaries between freedom and security.  

Thus I'm thinking that...

our ability to manage balance security & restriction is emotional maturity. If you can learn to find in each moment of now the ever changing and healthy boundary between freedom and security you are living an emotionally more mature and aware life.

When we maintain these ideas of relationships as fixed entities and fix rules.  They then become the traps of growth.  How do we create relationships models that are allowed to change?  How do we create relationship expectations that foster personal growth?  How do we create space for each person to change not just year to year but day to day?

by ....

1) allowing the boundaries between our needs and attractions to be discovered new daily

2) by learning to discern what needs and attractions are pulling us

3) by learning to discern what needs and attractions are healthy for us and our partner.

4) by not generalizing popular gender memes into our partnerships.

5) by educating ourselves to the landscape of relationship topics needing to be addressed. 

6-10) by involving ourselves in personal growth (6 mental/7 spiritual/8 emotional/ 9 psychological/ 10 financial).

Bonus guides

10) by standing for freewill in our partners

11) by being responsible for our own self-care

12) by balancing our own self-care with that of others.

==========Extended commentary===========

Here is an example of my own mother and father playing out the scenario above.

While my father was dedicated to mom and did everything to ensure their healthy life. Mom tried every thing she could to get dad to stop cutting down trees on the property because she was afraid something would happen to him while using the chainsaw.  This is her love imposing a restriction on his freedom. regardless of the validity of her logic she was communicating a restriction on his freedom.

There were plenty of logical justified reasons for why h should not be doing this anymore.  And there were plenty of logical justified reasons for him to continue.  But at the core, this part of a loving adventure became my father’s restriction due to my mom’s insecurity.  Dad eventually did stop but by then he only had 1-2 years left in his life.   As their son, living with them I could see both sides.  And fault neither!

Dad loved being in nature and caring for his property.  Mom was dependent on dad and never developed life skills to live without him.  These two things collided to create this dynamic of gender conflict.

I did not fault my father for ignoring mothers wishes. I could not fault my mother for worrying so.  Neither was going to change.  Mother could no more change her emotions than my father could change is need to be physical and be doing something.  This example showed me just how many different ways the boundary of freedom and security manifest as conflict between genders because we ARE different.

====feedback====

A female friend was amazed that love was not seen as an adventure for the masculine.

My reply was Love is definitely an adventure as an emotional journey.  And the feminine seems to like that while what the Masculine often desires is a physical adventure.  And the masculine does not find the emotional adventures interesting.  

======important parting thoughts======
Think about how many men like action adventure movies that feature physical danger while so many women like movies with an emotional romantic story.

I am definitely generalizing. Over generalization is a danger to all relationships.  If you can not see and relate to your parter as a unique individual first, generalizations are not going to help.  However, generalizations are helpful when we are first learning a new viewpoint and awareness.  But once you get enough experience you MUST abandon your generalizations.

Attraction Roots: BioGENETIC OR bioSPIRIT

There is a transition going on involving what governs attraction.

Much of what you read about gender attraction (bioGENETIC) buys into the belief that our prehistoric biological roots govern our attractions today.  This system of beliefs how's the man being the hunter and it says that behavior still governs what causes a man to feel like a man.  It also sees the woman as the gatherer and her behavior is also biologically coded into her genes for what makes her feel like a woman.

There's some excellent healthy & healing info that uses this bioGENETIC paradigm to celebrate men & women.   But there's also a lot of manipulative unhealthy ideas being promoted.  The old way focuses on unequal relationships and is devoid of spiritual considerations in it's core energies.  The new way focuses on bring spiritual concerns into the core and co-creating a higher vibrational platform for sharing a purpose larger than just the relationship.

The promoters of this paradigm say we therefore grew up in a world where men went out into the world and made a place for their mate.  While women stayed at home and took care of the home and children.  Some would oversimplify and say women nurture and men kill.

For a number reasons I think this paradigm and governed attraction is shifting.  But mostly I think this is shifting out in the world because I see it shifting in me.  And some of the other open-minded people I read.

What is the new paradigm that will govern the attraction?  And will completely overwrite me erase the old one?

The new paradigm (BioSPIRIT) seems to be based on a complex interaction between spiritual awareness, spiritual connection and the spiritual wholeness.  What does that mean?  As I see it the overriding principle is like attracts like instead of opposites attract.  We are experiencing a shift from chemistry to compassion.

1) spiritual awareness: what type of spiritual truths are you aware of?  What type of spiritual truths have you experienced and value?  aware of and has healed the triggers caused by past trauma?

2)  spiritual connection: this can be directly related to number one, or can be a value placed on another person because you appreciate the demonstrated connection to spirit they have.

3) spiritual wholeness: balanced integration of your inner masculine and feminine energies, respond in most situations with a balanced appropriate reaction instead of one out of the emotional triggers from your past relationships with the masculine feminine.

The new paradigm is based on spirituality.  And is centered in the heart instead of the genes.  Compassion becomes the centerpiece of an intimate relationship not magnetism. No longer is oneness governed by the underlying energies push/pull magnetics.   Instead intimacy begins to be about inclusion, integration and emptiness.

Your loving kindness is driving him away

Let's start with examples.

I'm in the kitchen, My friend Ruth and I are rustling up something to eat.  I leave both sauce pans on the stove with the handles sticking out where they can be bumped.  Ruth gives me a warning about the handles sticking out.  She means it as a care taking response. I take it as a interference, as if what I'm doing is not good enough.  Ok, Here I was not actually aware of the potential problem but with my physical handicap neither was I interested in the extra effort required to to set myself up to turn the pan handles.

I'm at a group meditation, I start closing a door by grabbing the back end where the hinges are and twisting.  A nearby lady, immediately jumps in and tells me to be careful I'll smash my fingers.  This is meant as a caretaking response.  In me, sets off a trigger, I respond forcefully.  Please stop trying to mother me.  With my physical handicap I was saving a few steps and consciously aware of what I was doing.

I'm at home, I'm replacing a shade with a blanket to see if it blocks out the sun better.  All my mom sees is me taking down the shade and she tells me if I leave the shade down that room will get hotter.  This is probably genuine caretaker concern. But I notice that it is her impatience that causes her to inject her concerns into the process before she understands the whole process.

And then I noticed this is what's common on all three experiences.  A projection of fears of what might happen causes each of these three women to engage me without first understanding what I'm doing I am doing, or what I am doing it, or waiting patiently to see what will happen.

In all three cases I end up feeling, like they think I'm incompetent and still a child that needs monitoring. Worse is the fact in all three cases I do not feel a sense of connection in fact what I feel is the opposite disconnection.  In each case I feel like I want to get farther away from the other person.

As I step back from these experiences I wonder what's the cause of my responses.  I wonder if my mother's inability to let me go and be a grown-up has set a pattern of reaction that I now carry forward to interpreting the responses of all women.

I remember all the times watching mothers with children on the playground.  They hover and call out constant warnings to the children to be careful about this and careful about that.  I compare that to the men on the playground who say nothing but are physically present and will engage as soon as something does happen.  Women seem unwilling to let any injury come to pass.  The men seem to see injury as something normal not something to prevent.  I see what I considered to be inpatients in the mothers.

From my point of view, I see the mothers as people who don't wait to see if the child is actually capable of doing it by themselves.

I see this response as a mother's inability to let go of her child's old way of being.  As if she constantly sees the limited abilities that her child had yesterday.  I wish I could wave a magic wand and create for her a new perspective where instead she would imagine all the confident new abilities her child was learning to be successful at.

Sure as I look at the dad's, (including me) many of them were too hands off and too un-observant to help their children avoid the biggest risks and worse injuries.  They're almost, devil may care attitudes were an opposite extreme got also seems unhealthy to child-rearing.  These fathers seem to be too disengaged, too uninvolved, too unattached to be an appropriate playground presence.

Is the feminine so preoccupied by safety and security that she is overly protective of everybody else's safety and security?  Is the masculine so preoccupied with freedom and free will that he is overly protective of everyone else's freedom and free will?

Both sides of this equation have a purpose and useful place in child-rearing and our culture at large.

I'm becoming more aware of my own preoccupation with freedom and free will.  And I see that I could nurture more of an awareness for safety and security.

I have tried to change my deep ingrained respond to the Feminine's attempts to caretake.  I have not had much luck care.  I have had much better luck restraining my own attempts make free will and freedom an important issue the others need to learn.

Admission, my mother was not good at letting go,.... not good at letting her 4 boys grow up and be independent from her.  In fact, the last example with my mom is this week (3-24-2017) she is 90 and I'm 55, so neither of us is "growing" out of it.  If yours was you may not have this issue like I do.

Looking inside is your path to spiritual development.  If what I found in me assists you in seeing yourself more clearly, Great.  If not.  Be well, Be happy and make new friends.