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The word ‘sensitive’ has lost it’s old meaning. It now means
something weak or womanly. But what it used to be was something so much
more.
I think we need to reclaim the word ‘sensitive’.
The word no longer means what it’s supposed to mean.
Somewhere along the line, it grew warped, twisted. Perverted. Now, if you call a man ‘sensitive’, it’s a backhanded compliment, at best. You’re calling him a motherly nurturer. At worst, you’re saying he overreacts, is too emotional, and too womanly.
But it hasn’t always meant this. And in fact, the concept it used
to describe – a concept we no longer have a perfect word for in English
anymore, if we yield ‘sensitive’ completely to too-soft men and guys
who think the friend zone
is the surest path to sexy times – is one every man who wants to do
well socially, romantically, or sexually must ultimately strive to make
use of, or perpetually struggle.
Comments
So easy to be lazy.
"Better to assume you’re to blame for the mood shift and see if you can figure out why (and later find out the real cause, if said cause wasn’t you, should you get to debrief her on it), than to assume it’s just women being women and learn nothing."
Sweet post.
Hello Chase,
Hello Chase,
props for another great piece. Being attuned to and aware of the social environment is possibly the single most important attraction trigger too.
The guy who is socially adept will most likely come out on top in the long run regarding a "good life". Others driven by neurosis might make more money or get more muscle, but their efforts will always become very futile at some point when they miss the clues of reality.
Also relatebility is an issue. When a girl is very invested in a skillset, she feels disconnected with people who operate on a very different level. This can be fashion, social awareness or anything. Most girls are very invested in social skills and those who aren`t, are not very desireable as a mate.
For me it`s a bit strange right now. At my current level of socializing I can be very perceptive when there is big opportunity/risk involved or just when I am very fit, but find myself being quite dense and in mule-mode on other occasions. Typically when my efforts are focused elsewhere or I am just very tired.
I think I have been quite annoying for not too few people this way, because I doubt that most understand the quite radical shifts in my level of perceptiveness. Small nuance in my talking one day means a lot and another it just means I am tired. One day I am very good at dealing with others feelings, which builds trust and makes people become more vulnerable towards me, another day I become quite dense and am likely to hurt the unexpecting.
Cheers and hope you have a good week
Shifts
Someguy-
Yes, that's pretty normal, particularly for men.
Sometimes perceptive, sometimes dense. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary there.
As you get more familiar with it, you can start isolating yourself away during dense times or warning people if you can't be isolated. e.g., the girlfriend's over and wants to talk but you're just too tired to be perceptive: "Hey babe, just a heads up, I am super tired right now, so what you're telling me is going in one ear and out the other. I'm still happy to listen if you need to talk, but fair warning that my retention and sensitivity right now is barrel bottom."
Once you say something like that, the other person knows what the deal is and can adjust accordingly and avoid feeling annoyed you aren't picking up on or responding to what she's saying the way she expects you to.
Chase
Hi Chase,
Hi Chase,
I know this is not directly related to the above article and it may clash with it, but hear me out.
I started thinking this recently: a woman can still have romantic or sexual feelings towards a man even if he is her friend; in other words, the man can be her friend but not in her friend zone. How can that be so?!! The man must keep acting like he wants and doing what he wants when he is with her. For instance, he must tease her, ignore her, or get angry with her if he wants. The man must not change his manners to stay in a good and friendly rapport with her. Now, that may not totally seem like a friendly relationship for some people, but it arguably is!
According to me, the above is how many guys befriend women, and date them and/or sleep with them later. The man can even do womanly things with the woman but she can still be attracted to him if she feels that he wants to do them and is not doing them to please her.
What is your opinion on that Chase?
Friends Without Friend Zone
Bombero-
Yes, that's roughly the whole picture.
Flitation / teasing / challenging, plus continuing to have her invest more in him than he does in her, plus not turning needy or begging, etc., is all it takes to stay on her sexual prospects radar without becoming a platonic pal.
A man can avoid the friend zone basically forever so long as he holds to these tenets with women. He doesn't enter the friend zone until he violates one or more of them.
Chase
Emotional Intelligence/Experience
Hi Chase,
Brilliant article. I've been wanting someone to explain how qualities such as 'sensitivity, empathy, being attuned, switched on' are all attractive qualities. I would like to add, from personal experience at least, a lot of it comes from your baseline 'state' and also general confidence/certainty levels.
What I mean is how attuned, switched on and perceptive you are depends on your state, if you're worried about something, feeling low on confidence, in a funk, your ability to be 'sensitive' is undermined by all the shit in your mind which affects your emotional state. Which results in you focusing on those things, as opposed to focusing on the woman in front of you. So it's about being recognizing that, doing the best to get out of that state and Into a more positive state that allows you to naturally be 'sensitive'
Furthermore from a more long-term perspective, your overall general confidence and certainty that you have in your life, your vibe, x-factor goes a long way towards being in a long term state of open 'sensitivity' because you are in general less focused on you and more focused on the women around you.
The key is continuing to get that long-term self development going, everything from improving fundamentals, having passion for things you do, having a strong sense of purpose etc as well as managing short-term funks which everybody goes through, so you remain open and focused.
It might've been implied within the article, but saw that as an important factor.
Cheers!
Jason
Baseline State
Great comment and observations, Jason.
Yes, other concerns can crowd out sensitivity and direct all your focus to a single issue.
This is true for a lot of things. Depressed people and people with victim mentality, for instance, are extremely self-focused. They think they're the biggest victims in the world, largely because they're so focused on themselves they are not able to appreciate any suffering anyone else goes through. And they're not able to appreciate when people try to reach out to them, much of the time.
Like David discussed in Wednesday's podcast, being mentally present there in the moment gives you a huge boost in sensitivity, understanding, and an entire host of attractive qualities. Shaking off your worries and other bugbears is somewhat necessary to get the most mileage out of something like perceptiveness/sensitivity.
Chase
Dealing with emotions
Hi Chase,
an interesting article again. It reminds me one thing – it is remarkable how many things is it possible to do completely wrong in spite of the fact that all the things around human reproduction should be from evolutionary reasons natural. But especially some people (including me) try to do their best according to what feels natural and right to them, but often it is the opposite of what really works. And because there are so many ways how to mess it up, I sometimes wonder how is it possible that most people more or less handle it.
Dealing with feelings of mine or other people can be very difficult. I grew up in a family where we have never discussed feelings, relationships and sexuality. My father is very masculine, strong, leading type, but he sometimes did not care much about feelings of the other people. When he argued with my mother, he used his strength and dominance, but not much sensitivity to her emotional realities. In some situations I could see his shame around expressing his feelings. That were patterns I learn from him, except I am significantly less masculine than he is.
Another factor that influenced me was that as a child I was victim of bullying which damaged my defense mechanisms. I was unable to handle any stronger pressure and in stressful situations my eyes filled with tears (it happened sometimes even in school in front of my class and teacher, the last time when I was 14 years old). I saw the only solution in repressing my feelings to avoid further embarrassment and not to be so easy target for mocking. While I developed more emotional control and stability, I became unable to express my feelings and still in most situations did not know how to react to feelings of other people (not mentioning sexuality). So my approach was like “I will not bother you with my feelings and you do not bother me with your feelings, everyone should handle it on his/her own”. Of course, it is not compatible with making connection with people which is based on emotional vulnerability with the other person, but I did not know that.
I developed myself much better in a intellectual way, but it contributed to my intellectualization and overanalyzing of many things. I am not spontaneous, expressive or adventurous, often I do not know how to react in emotional situations, because they are too chaotic and unstructured. I have both emotional and sexual shame and intellectual curiosity. Do you have some advice how to deal with emotions better and be more sensitive to woman’s emotions with this background?
The second question is: have you seen a French movie Amelie (with Audrey Tautou)? There is one moment where someone says that if you tell to a man and woman that the other loves him/her, they fall in love with each other. In the movie it actually happens. Do you think it could work in reality (assuming both of them believe you when you tell them)?
Thank you
Anonym
Anonym-
Anonym-
Sorry to hear about the bullying and emotional suppression. Sounds like a fairly rough childhood. I did a "I will suppress my emotions" thing when I was 13 or so too. I thought the Terminator was really cool and wanted to be an emotionless unstoppable robot. Ended up having to work on it hard 10 years later to bring my emotions back to the surface again. But still a good experience, and you get a lot of emotion control for the trouble.
To better deal with emotions, you need to take the time to learn the proper emotions to express, and to learn to express them. The blocker is fear; that you will look weak or silly for expressing an emotion (even a strong emotion, like anger). As you push yourself to express emotions more, the fear recedes, and you become more and more naturally expressive.
Takes some time to do. But it's kind of fun, and well worth doing.
As for Amelie, I have not seen it, no. But there is research showing that if you tell a person that a member of the opposite sex likes her, she will feel more attracted to him, too. So to an extent, this is a legitimate phenomenon.
Chase
Did we lose part of the article?
The section "Why Do Girls Dig Sensitivity?" abruptly ends with "Well, just like" and I don't think it's intentional. Did a part of the article get cut off by accident?
Missing Piece
M-
Whoops. Forgot to edit that out.
I started to add that section, then went and reviewed and realized I'd already covered it. Missed removing it.
Had the nastiest cold I've had in 2 years when I dashed this one off, so was kind of all over the place while writing it. Had to do a bit more editing than usual when I wrote it to clear up some of the tangled parts.
Anyway, thanks for the catch! I've taken that leftover bit back out again.
Chase
Girls always observant, tuned into emotions???
I've read a lot about emotional intelligence over the years and from my experience most women score low on all the emotional intelligence scales..it even says so in many books...people think that women have more emotional intelligence than men, but most of them still severely lack skills. Most girls do not have great emotional intelligence, but it seems as if they are socially calibrated...which is much easier than learning the nuisances of reading people and all of that. Just saying.
Either way, I'm going to listen to what you said in this article and apply it. I just don't think women are smart in this area especially now that I have developed my skillset.
Women's Emotional Intelligence
Saagy-
Right. Women have lower emotional intelligence in general.
They often don't understand what they're feeling or why they're feeling it, and will lash out or blame their emotions on unrelated people / objects. They're unaware of the shifts in their moods much of the time, and often don't realize they adopt completely opposite positions between one moment and the next. And by and large they have more limited capacities for emotional control compared to men.
Women are very comfortable expressing their emotions. So they have that on men. And in that way, they are more emotionally healthy than men are, too. And they have good instincts for picking up on the true emotions of others around them - they are sensitive. But they often aren't good at guessing what the cause of others' emotions are, or how to deal with them / assuage them / work with them.
It stands out to you more as you get better with people and girls. You begin to realize women are pretty dumb about handling or understanding their emotions, and it's almost impossible to teach them emotion regulation, even if they watch every TED Talk on the subject and read mountains of books about it. Not a strike against women; they're just wired different.
Chase
Chase, I need serious help. Internet Addiction
Hey Chase, I hope you are well :). I'm writing this because I need someone to help me combat this.
I have a slight internet addiction... I love being entertained on the internet wether it'd be articles or YouTube videos and I really hate it.
I got a taste for what life can be like without internet one summer where I broke my phone and for a whole month I went without looking at any screens.
At first I was literally having symptoms of withdrawal and I felt super lethargic and extremely bored. After that though... It was the happiest month of my life.
I started to love having conversations and in fact, seeked them out. I was absorbing everything around me. My fundamentals got better because everything in my movement started to slow down since I wasn't looking for a stimulus 24/7.
And best of all, I was giving it 150% in my sport and working out... Why? Cuss I literally had nothing else to do.
I felt a lot more grounded as a man, chase. And I want to go back to that. But this is the hardest addiction I've ever tried to beat.
Things like limiting my time and slowing taking it away don't work for me. I have an addictive personality and its either go hard or go home.
But right now I can't just brake my phone. I can't break my iPad. Because they are things that I didn't pay for.
So I'm humbly asking you... How can I break from these iron chains?
Internet Addiction
IB-
I've not dealt with this too much personally. But maybe I can help.
A handful of times I've found myself surfing the web too much habitually. Each of those times I simply forbid myself from whatever websites I was losing time in for one week. (if you try to do it 'forever', you rebel. But after 1 week away, you kind of don't care about whatever website you were obsessing over before)
I have friends who recommend focus.me very strongly. They swear this website saves them from losing time in time-wasting websites. One friend even has his email locked with focus.me so he doesn't check it earlier in the day and get sucked into admin too early.
I think I'd check that app out if you're having difficulty controlling your own web browsing. Link to it is here.
Another one that may help is a 'devices off' time. e.g., all your electronics go off at 10 PM. Phone goes on airplane mode. Have a couple of good books handy and read for an hour before bed. Will be hard the first few days, but once you've got a week under your belt, it becomes a habit, and at that point it's automatic.
Chase
Idea
I have an idea. What if I tell her early on that I have autism? Will that at least make her more understanding and supportive of me after I make a mistake?
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