Successful relationships and their progression can be divided into two conceptual categories:
A Temperate Relationship
A Tempestuous Relationship
In the beginning of a relationship, there is phase 1: interest. There will be a base level of attraction based largely on looks, for men. On the other hand, it is more complicated and multi-factorial with women. It is based on a mixture of superficial psychosocial cues, including symbols of status combined with looks and body language. Then, there is phase 2: escalation. Phase 2 is usually slower in a relationship that is more temperate in nature. This attraction grows, as gradually more intimate actions are taken based on the feelings they have; they discover more about the holistic person (how they kiss, do they complement your personality and beliefs?) and fall in love — or love as they define it for themselves — based on this.
Feelings elicited through phase 2 and falling in love can be incredibly addictive to some. These types, amazingly, go through serial relationships, abandoning a relationship when it falls below the ‘love’ threshold. Avoid these types at all costs.
There is evidence to indicate love in itself is a primary motivator of human behaviour. For a lucky 10% of couples, MRI studies have shown that their relationship stays above the ‘love’ line, perhaps at the very same levels of the peak reached. I don’t show any skepticism about this as I’ve seen anecdotal evidence in many couples. It seems more likely in relationships that are more temperate in basic nature, although it is more complicated than that.
The GirlGraphs above can be deceptive. ‘Relationship’ seems to imply that both are experiencing the same thing. However, a relationship is the sum of its parts. There can be a partner who has a more tempestuous predisposition and a partner who has a temperate one.
Men are more likely to be predisposed to temperate models. This is not because they do not become very passionate: they can and do. The problem is that it is much more damaging if a man loses control: to put it in evolutionary terms, his anger wreaks unnecessary and costly damage and his fear or vulnerability makes him lose any battles he is challenged to. An uncontrolled emotion compromises his judgment. The emotions are there but they are more likely to be under control, and whether they become translated to actions is dependent on processes and deliberation.
As well as this, attraction to a woman by a man is much more likely to be influenced by long-term factors such as her looks and the general image of her general personality. There is less variation based on her actual behaviour; men in general seem to take a long time to react when a woman’s behaviour toward them deteriorates.
Women, conversely, are more likely to be predisposed to tempestuous models. She responds to social settings and his behaviour and her immediate surroundings: she analyses, deeply, short-term situations. Her hormone levels are prone to more fluctuation, influencing this further. She is more likely to feel reliant on him or dependent in some way. So she may be reacting strongly to his behaviour: whether he is being supplicating, a jerk, sexy or loving. Her feeling — which she may or may not be consciously aware of — that his behaviour determines the happiness of her destiny makes her much more likely to reward, enthusiastically return his gestures, analyse, abruptly withdraw, criticise or punish him.
This results in mood swings that can be found utterly confusing by a clueless male. On the other hand, even if he is clued up, he can view them as childish or not to be tolerated.
A man who has good Game exploits and induces these mood swings in a high-risk*, high-return strategy.
*(subject to argument: it feels high risk. A woman has to believe he is a valuable person who has some legitimate claim of superiority over her in order for this to work. Therefore an educated risk if you understand the social situation.)
A woman who has good Game uses and redirects her feelings positively in the relationship. She uses them to build it up: to connect with her partner through being vulnerable to him. As well as this, she embraces high emotional states even when they are negative to connect with her partner physically, as well. Her glass is half-full. She recognises that her emotional state is usually complicated and that she has a degree of choice over which emotion can dominate her reactions and actions.
At more subtle and intricate levels beyond the general gender predispositions are the complexities of different personalities and the wider cultural, legal and spiritual context that birthed them. Compounding the difficulty of analysing this via observation is that relationships can appear superficially different from the way they actually are due to these. Behaviour including language and gender conventions of any given couple can make them appear tempestuous when they are in fact temperate and vice versa.
However what can be said is that those who are more influenced by thoughts that are cereberal in nature and whom have good impulse control are more likely to strike a balance that errs on the side of temperate.
Now let us examine how wrong these relationship concepts can go:
Temperate Winter
It is rare for those in temperate relationships to reach a point where they reach their threshold of tolerance without breaking up. It can happen in those who feel strongly duty bound or socially forced to remain together. The risk in this situation is that there is a constant underlying desire of getting rid of the other half, manifesting in many passive manouvres against each other. The worst case scenario may manifest itself in homicide or suicide: extreme and irrational ways of escaping an intolerable situation due to recurrent fantasies of escape.
Although there is a general allergy to divorce, it — or at least the state of separation — is indeed needed in enough cases. People are people: they make mistakes about who they’re with or how they treat them, they change their minds, they change themselves and they stop getting along completely. This is all especially true in a climate that increases the threshold at which tolerance is placed; people lose their ability to be content with what they have or make it work and believe they can move on easily enough. On the one hand, divorce especially when children are involved should not be encouraged. On the other hand, remaining in the company of an incompatible person beyond the threshold of tolerance can be very pathological. Therefore, the ideal situation is that divorces are rarely occurring but occur on a fair basis without real acrimony if they do; a man keeps what he has earned himself and so does a woman. They have equal rights over their children and bad parenting should be corrected and discouraged in either gender. This places shared parenting as the point from which custody is approached; not the default as the mother. If there was a priority list of what to change, then unfair and gender-biased expensive divorce procedures would be at the top of it.
Raging Tempests
There is so much fluctuation in tempestuous relationships. This can be incompatible with sanity and stability, leading to a more bipolar pattern in contrast to the gradual, hopeless and inevitable decline in which a temperate relationship breaks down. If tempestuousness when pathological is correlated with poor impulse control, then it is more likely a partner committing an act such as — for example, cheating — which would warrant a response that can be reactively dramatic. These relationships are those that are ‘on’ again, ‘off’ again and involve many oscillations between heartbreak and euphoria. The course of action any individual in it can take is sudden and unexpected.
Conclusions
Those who are predisposed to being temperate can dismiss a tempestuous model as not valid.
Those with tempestuous natures can dismiss a temperate novel as invalid: ‘where is the passion?’ is the cry you hear.
It is a matter of personalities: different people love differently and either way they do, there is no guarantee of it lasting successfully.
A woman who has good Game understands when she is not ready for a relationship. She understands and reads her own emotions and what they mean. She has self-awareness. She knows where her limits are: when her feelings are too weak to make a success out of a relationship or too unstable to enjoy one without subjecting herself to dangerous lows and highs: both states in which she has not sufficiently schooled herself and her emotions. She could do anything, anything at all, then.
Most relationships require some combination of temperate sunshine and fiery tempests. Make sure you have a healthy, appropriate helping of each. Imagery of mother nature is effective in describing a woman: you are a river. You offer him the rapids he feels alive knowing how to navigate. When he completes his journey, you offer him sanctuary and a home, hidden exclusively for him behind waterfalls. He feels no man has found this place, nor could any man find it after him.
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