A few years ago, I was reading in depth about lottery winners. Not just multi-million jackpot ones, either, but, more modest amounts like $400,000. Since then I've viewed winning lottery tickets as an outright curse. (And that's assuming the person IS good about handling money. Hell really can be other people.)
loved this one. the bit about *why* some people shift their focus is something i have never understood and was very clarifying. i'm not around those types of people anymore, but when my circumstances began to improve/i started to get better, i didn't understand why past people would try to sabotage or start smear campaigns, etc, so it's actually quite helpful to have what seems like an accurate explanation for why that may have been.
rhetoricals, probably: i can't get my head around the 'why', i think is where i am stuck. why would you care if someone is succeeding? isn't that good, for them? i would think to congratulate them and then go back to work myself. is it a threat to them? do they not like themselves? what does it matter? though maybe figuring out why doesn't matter either, LOL.
Mentally healthy people often are confused by the behavior of people who are not mentally healthy. I know that prior to getting professional mental help, I struggled with jealousy. I knew logically that I should celebrate other people’s successes and that their win didn’t make me a loser, but knowing and feeling are two different things for some people. It’s also baked into our nature, the idea of scarcity of resources leading us to hoard them and be jealous of others’ successes. I wish I could find the article I read about robots being programmed to find resources; the robots ended up actively sabotaging other robots and lying to them about locations of resources in order to get an advantage! It was a cool article that really illustrates how our primitive brain is hardwired to see life as a competition. It takes active effort to overcome that instinct to get ahead of others and resent others’ successes.
omg thank you for this! it gave a lot of insight. i know i shouldn't get hung up on the 'why' as often as i do (on trying to understand past people, a friend told me "indie, you don't bother finding where you picked up the nail in your tire; you just fix your damn tire!"), but i still want to know where people come from when i don't 'get it', so explanations like yours (and the article, that was fascinating!) are really helpful.
What you said made me think about how people from abusive relationships had a previous abusive environment when growing up. They were raised to think that was normal, so they couldn't see the red flags.
I like to think that having a healthy relationship is like being awake and when you are stuck in a crappy relationship is like sleeping.
When you are awake, you are a hundred percent sure you are not sleeping, but when you sleeps, you are not sure if you are dreaming or awake (with very few exceptions).
I'm referring to how good on is when discerning reality and healthy relationships help us to see quickly the red flags
Oh that birth control pill thing, I had that flipped on me. Dating a girl, going to get married, she got on the pill and 4 months later she broke off the engagement. She went from a fun girl I really liked to a suspicious demanding harpy and according to her I went from a gorgeous hunk to a womanizing sneak. The difference wasn’t anything I had done though.
I saw that lottery thing happen to a guy I know. Everyone hated him and said he changed but the only thing I saw that changed was that everyone suddenly hates him.
The pill actually changes women's personalities on a fundamental level. Extreme shifts like that are common, and interestingly, the fact that she went away from you after going on the pill indicates that you were likely a good genetic match for her. The pill locks a woman into the luteal phase of the menstruation cycle. You were selected in the mate seeking hormonal phase which means that you were genetically diverse from her.
The pill shifts a woman from seeking genetic diversity to seeking caregivers and nesters instead of a good genetic match for her. You were a good mate, but not a good nester, so you were discarded. If she went back off the pill, the luteal phase would pass and you would become a good mate to her again. This is something that is so significant, but people are not aware of it. Both men and women should know this so they can make the necessary adjustments.
That sucks about the lottery for that guy. It unfortunately happens a lot.
Good nesters aren’t necessarily bad mates, but I see that point. Unfortunately for me I was on birth control long before I was even sexually active, due to terrible menstrual bleeding. All the men I dated only knew me on birth control. My children don’t have any genetic problems and are in good health, so I think my husband and I are at least genetically diverse enough. But after 2 kids I had my tubes tied and an endometrial ablation to rectify the horrific bleeding issue. So, from an anecdotal standpoint, there seems to be some exceptions. I’m still thoroughly attracted to and in love with my husband. Of course, I also had a neighbor who had married her first cousin, and they are still happily married. Unfortunately, two of their four children, a pair of twins, did experience significant health issues. Our hormones may not always be right, or wrong. Just one of many factors!
Thanks Athena for still doing this. I have gone from being super active on this forum to entirely absent, and missing out on the wonderful insights and conversation with the people this attracts. Just haven't had the headspace, life's like that. I have lots of catching up to do!. Anyway, just saying, still a fan, it still matters, glad you are here.
Yes, but it's not lack of interest at all, but rather being mentally compromised, which is infuriating when one very much has an interest. Anyway, here we are, and it's good.
This offered some helpful insight into some people’s behavior. My whole life I have been hyper-aware of things in a way others aren’t. I also have been willing to listen to other people, interested in their perspective, and eager to learn from others. But beyond wanting to learn about, and from, other people, I don’t usually think of people in terms of what they can do for me; rather, in terms of what I can do for them. One of my brothers is significantly wealthier than I am. I am not wealthy at all, in fact. But I never even consider asking him for things. Why would I? He’s not responsible for me. If my friend, or family member, won the lottery, I think I would share your perspective, Athena- I would be worried for them. I would probably also feel protective towards them and offer help if they need it. That much money is a liability and it leaves you extremely vulnerable. But also, my priorities are not, and never have been, money. Money is a tool in appropriate amounts, that turns into a liability in large quantities. It is a means to an end, not an end in of itself. I also will never win a lottery because I don’t participate in lotteries. If someone bought me a lottery ticket as a gift or gesture, and it happened to win, I would choose the lump sum, even though it’s significantly less money, and I would hire a lawyer to help me use it as seed money to found the school I have always dreamed of creating. That money would be spent in its entirety (after setting aside what’s needed for taxes, unless that’s taken out upfront, which it ought to be) as soon as humanly possible. I would also be sure to publicize the fact that it’s all spent so nobody gets any ideas about me being rich. I wouldn’t want to be a target, nor my family. But thankfully, nobody has ever gifted me lottery tickets, and hopefully nobody ever will! I intend to fund my dream through hard work and investors, after I’ve raised my children and can focus my full attention on it.
Quite a few actually, and there are built in red flags that usually prevent negative pairing such as smell. An interesting experiment that was performed with woman was to take the sweat covered shirts from various men to see which she would prefer in smell, and which she would be repelled by. Keep in mind this is not sweat covered like a shirt that has been sitting around for days not getting washed, but rather fresh, there is a significant difference.
I believe the results were universal that the sweat the young women were most repelled by was that of their own brother. I don't know if they had any idea that their brothers were in the experiment, but even if they did, they would have no idea which one would be their relatives.
The problem with the pill is that it takes a woman out of the phase where they hormonally are mate seeking, but rather it holds them in the nesting phase where they want to gather people around them that would be supportive and nurturing, which may be similar to her genetically in a negative way. The science around this is absolutely fascinating. The pill also fundamentally shifts a woman's personality as well. It is super interesting stuff.
So fascinating! I wonder how those findings would compare with other birth control methods, like an IUD. I had a Mirena when I met my husband. Two years after marriage, I had it removed so we could conceive. My attraction to him hasn’t really changed. I still love how he smells. I also heard about a thing done where a bunch of women all had to sort through a bunch of different shirts to find the one belonging to their husbands and that none of them were stumped, they all found their husband’s by smell. I hadn’t heard about the sibling angle, though. I think my dad and brothers smell horrible when they sweat haha. But I especially love how my hubby smells when he has been running outside or biking or hiking outdoors. Good old pheromones.
As a woman in the same situation- using Mirena and being married - I find this reassuring haha I got worried I would lose sexual attraction to my husband if I ever stop using Mirena but now I see this is not necessarily true
If what Athena said is true then solution is to never stop using Mirena or only pausing to conceive
I tried the Mirena again after our first child was born and it didn’t work as well for controlling the out-of-control bleeding the second time (it actually caused me to bleed nonstop); so we just used a condom until we were ready for our second child. After our second, I had my tubes tied (again, because of out-of-control bleeding issues during my period). So I haven’t been using hormone-affecting medication for the majority of my marriage and it hasn’t impacted my attraction to my husband even a little bit. We’ve both put on weight and lost muscle tone due to many life stressors, and that hasn’t lessened the physical attraction either. I would guess that it also helps that we make active efforts to nurture and cultivate our romance and relationship and to make time for each other (we still have a weekly date night!). Hopefully that offers more hope for the future of your own relationship, Fabiana! LOL :)
A few years ago, I was reading in depth about lottery winners. Not just multi-million jackpot ones, either, but, more modest amounts like $400,000. Since then I've viewed winning lottery tickets as an outright curse. (And that's assuming the person IS good about handling money. Hell really can be other people.)
There is a guy on reddit that won few hundred millions and lost friends and family members after he told them he wasn't going to give them money
He went through depression but a few friends stayed with him and the most he did for them was paying their college tuition (which is already a lot!).
I hardly see why he was required to give them anything at all. An amazing reason to disown your own family member. He is better off without them.
Hell to the Yes
Oh so very true
loved this one. the bit about *why* some people shift their focus is something i have never understood and was very clarifying. i'm not around those types of people anymore, but when my circumstances began to improve/i started to get better, i didn't understand why past people would try to sabotage or start smear campaigns, etc, so it's actually quite helpful to have what seems like an accurate explanation for why that may have been.
Jealousy and not wanting the other person to succeed has often been the driving force of such things.
rhetoricals, probably: i can't get my head around the 'why', i think is where i am stuck. why would you care if someone is succeeding? isn't that good, for them? i would think to congratulate them and then go back to work myself. is it a threat to them? do they not like themselves? what does it matter? though maybe figuring out why doesn't matter either, LOL.
I think Nicole's answer is really an excellent explanation.
Mentally healthy people often are confused by the behavior of people who are not mentally healthy. I know that prior to getting professional mental help, I struggled with jealousy. I knew logically that I should celebrate other people’s successes and that their win didn’t make me a loser, but knowing and feeling are two different things for some people. It’s also baked into our nature, the idea of scarcity of resources leading us to hoard them and be jealous of others’ successes. I wish I could find the article I read about robots being programmed to find resources; the robots ended up actively sabotaging other robots and lying to them about locations of resources in order to get an advantage! It was a cool article that really illustrates how our primitive brain is hardwired to see life as a competition. It takes active effort to overcome that instinct to get ahead of others and resent others’ successes.
Now that is fascinating. Also, excellent comment. It explains things very well.
I found the article! https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/evolving-robots-learn-lie-hide-resources-each-other/
Very cool, thank you
"After 500 generations, 60 percent of the robots had evolved to keep their light off when they found the good resource"
Hey, that's exactly the guy wearing a costume to get his lottery prize did!
omg thank you for this! it gave a lot of insight. i know i shouldn't get hung up on the 'why' as often as i do (on trying to understand past people, a friend told me "indie, you don't bother finding where you picked up the nail in your tire; you just fix your damn tire!"), but i still want to know where people come from when i don't 'get it', so explanations like yours (and the article, that was fascinating!) are really helpful.
Great explanation. It certainly rings true for me.
Nailed it, as always!
I'm waiting for pharma industries to make a "reality" pill so bad. There's so many people who need to be woken up from their illusions and dreams.
What you said made me think about how people from abusive relationships had a previous abusive environment when growing up. They were raised to think that was normal, so they couldn't see the red flags.
I like to think that having a healthy relationship is like being awake and when you are stuck in a crappy relationship is like sleeping.
When you are awake, you are a hundred percent sure you are not sleeping, but when you sleeps, you are not sure if you are dreaming or awake (with very few exceptions).
I'm referring to how good on is when discerning reality and healthy relationships help us to see quickly the red flags
That is an interesting analogy.
Eye opening as usual on many counts!
I'm glad you enjoyed it, Patience
Oh that birth control pill thing, I had that flipped on me. Dating a girl, going to get married, she got on the pill and 4 months later she broke off the engagement. She went from a fun girl I really liked to a suspicious demanding harpy and according to her I went from a gorgeous hunk to a womanizing sneak. The difference wasn’t anything I had done though.
I saw that lottery thing happen to a guy I know. Everyone hated him and said he changed but the only thing I saw that changed was that everyone suddenly hates him.
The pill actually changes women's personalities on a fundamental level. Extreme shifts like that are common, and interestingly, the fact that she went away from you after going on the pill indicates that you were likely a good genetic match for her. The pill locks a woman into the luteal phase of the menstruation cycle. You were selected in the mate seeking hormonal phase which means that you were genetically diverse from her.
The pill shifts a woman from seeking genetic diversity to seeking caregivers and nesters instead of a good genetic match for her. You were a good mate, but not a good nester, so you were discarded. If she went back off the pill, the luteal phase would pass and you would become a good mate to her again. This is something that is so significant, but people are not aware of it. Both men and women should know this so they can make the necessary adjustments.
That sucks about the lottery for that guy. It unfortunately happens a lot.
Good nesters aren’t necessarily bad mates, but I see that point. Unfortunately for me I was on birth control long before I was even sexually active, due to terrible menstrual bleeding. All the men I dated only knew me on birth control. My children don’t have any genetic problems and are in good health, so I think my husband and I are at least genetically diverse enough. But after 2 kids I had my tubes tied and an endometrial ablation to rectify the horrific bleeding issue. So, from an anecdotal standpoint, there seems to be some exceptions. I’m still thoroughly attracted to and in love with my husband. Of course, I also had a neighbor who had married her first cousin, and they are still happily married. Unfortunately, two of their four children, a pair of twins, did experience significant health issues. Our hormones may not always be right, or wrong. Just one of many factors!
Indeed true
Good grief, I had never heard of this. I never noticed any difference with myself, but will have to look it up.
It is really interesting
Wow, I am Flabbergasted. Amazing.
This is positively brilliant. I love it.
Thank You
Thank you for reading and the kind words, Marla
Thank you
Nailed it, as always!
Thank you
Thanks Athena for still doing this. I have gone from being super active on this forum to entirely absent, and missing out on the wonderful insights and conversation with the people this attracts. Just haven't had the headspace, life's like that. I have lots of catching up to do!. Anyway, just saying, still a fan, it still matters, glad you are here.
It's normal to wax and wane in interest
Yes, but it's not lack of interest at all, but rather being mentally compromised, which is infuriating when one very much has an interest. Anyway, here we are, and it's good.
Welcome back
This offered some helpful insight into some people’s behavior. My whole life I have been hyper-aware of things in a way others aren’t. I also have been willing to listen to other people, interested in their perspective, and eager to learn from others. But beyond wanting to learn about, and from, other people, I don’t usually think of people in terms of what they can do for me; rather, in terms of what I can do for them. One of my brothers is significantly wealthier than I am. I am not wealthy at all, in fact. But I never even consider asking him for things. Why would I? He’s not responsible for me. If my friend, or family member, won the lottery, I think I would share your perspective, Athena- I would be worried for them. I would probably also feel protective towards them and offer help if they need it. That much money is a liability and it leaves you extremely vulnerable. But also, my priorities are not, and never have been, money. Money is a tool in appropriate amounts, that turns into a liability in large quantities. It is a means to an end, not an end in of itself. I also will never win a lottery because I don’t participate in lotteries. If someone bought me a lottery ticket as a gift or gesture, and it happened to win, I would choose the lump sum, even though it’s significantly less money, and I would hire a lawyer to help me use it as seed money to found the school I have always dreamed of creating. That money would be spent in its entirety (after setting aside what’s needed for taxes, unless that’s taken out upfront, which it ought to be) as soon as humanly possible. I would also be sure to publicize the fact that it’s all spent so nobody gets any ideas about me being rich. I wouldn’t want to be a target, nor my family. But thankfully, nobody has ever gifted me lottery tickets, and hopefully nobody ever will! I intend to fund my dream through hard work and investors, after I’ve raised my children and can focus my full attention on it.
There was a line from the show, House.
"Miserable stays miserable. Happy doesn't buy lottery tickets in the first place."
I think that it has merit.
That’s a good one! It goes along the lines, too, that happiness comes from within, not from without.
Exactly, and I have noticed that it is very true based on who I know that plays the lotto, and those that don't.
Good analogy. Well done.
Thank you, Gareth
Quite a few actually, and there are built in red flags that usually prevent negative pairing such as smell. An interesting experiment that was performed with woman was to take the sweat covered shirts from various men to see which she would prefer in smell, and which she would be repelled by. Keep in mind this is not sweat covered like a shirt that has been sitting around for days not getting washed, but rather fresh, there is a significant difference.
I believe the results were universal that the sweat the young women were most repelled by was that of their own brother. I don't know if they had any idea that their brothers were in the experiment, but even if they did, they would have no idea which one would be their relatives.
The problem with the pill is that it takes a woman out of the phase where they hormonally are mate seeking, but rather it holds them in the nesting phase where they want to gather people around them that would be supportive and nurturing, which may be similar to her genetically in a negative way. The science around this is absolutely fascinating. The pill also fundamentally shifts a woman's personality as well. It is super interesting stuff.
So fascinating! I wonder how those findings would compare with other birth control methods, like an IUD. I had a Mirena when I met my husband. Two years after marriage, I had it removed so we could conceive. My attraction to him hasn’t really changed. I still love how he smells. I also heard about a thing done where a bunch of women all had to sort through a bunch of different shirts to find the one belonging to their husbands and that none of them were stumped, they all found their husband’s by smell. I hadn’t heard about the sibling angle, though. I think my dad and brothers smell horrible when they sweat haha. But I especially love how my hubby smells when he has been running outside or biking or hiking outdoors. Good old pheromones.
As a woman in the same situation- using Mirena and being married - I find this reassuring haha I got worried I would lose sexual attraction to my husband if I ever stop using Mirena but now I see this is not necessarily true
If what Athena said is true then solution is to never stop using Mirena or only pausing to conceive
I tried the Mirena again after our first child was born and it didn’t work as well for controlling the out-of-control bleeding the second time (it actually caused me to bleed nonstop); so we just used a condom until we were ready for our second child. After our second, I had my tubes tied (again, because of out-of-control bleeding issues during my period). So I haven’t been using hormone-affecting medication for the majority of my marriage and it hasn’t impacted my attraction to my husband even a little bit. We’ve both put on weight and lost muscle tone due to many life stressors, and that hasn’t lessened the physical attraction either. I would guess that it also helps that we make active efforts to nurture and cultivate our romance and relationship and to make time for each other (we still have a weekly date night!). Hopefully that offers more hope for the future of your own relationship, Fabiana! LOL :)
Thank you! That's very informative. Good to see you both are still attracted to each other.
Glad to hear that. I wish you that it lasts for you.
Yup, and it sounds like yours are firing perfectly.
It can be