Recognizing Your Allies

There are two kinds of heterosexual men: those who are turned on by themselves, and those who are turned on by women.

There are men who are turned on by self-aggrandizement, who use the compliance of women to their will as evidence to others that their self-importance is not a delusion. By default, they are habitually unmindful of their woman’s feelings and injure her pride often. This kind of man can be nice, and he can tell a woman what she wants to hear, but he does so only on the condition that he gets extra-credit from her for it. He then reverts to the minimum level of compliance necessary to keep her from looking for someone else.

Then, there are men who get turned on by women who seem more important than themselves, who outsmart them, win out over them, achieve professional success ahead of them -women whose will they want to comply with. Such men will always find opportunity to point out to a woman where she is more brilliant than themselves and others, where she outperforms themselves and others, and their passion for her, plutonic or romantic, is ignited by all the times she displays her self-contentment and social independence from them. In essence, they are infatuated with her for her leadership qualities, which inspire them and others to follow.

One noticeable distinction between them is that self-infatuated men rarely see themselves as being self-absorbed. Women-infatuated men, by contrast, are usually hyper-aware of their potential to be self-absorbed and fault themselves for missing or not noticing the preferences of the woman they are with. Men are either essentially one or the other, it seems. This is most likely due to their tendency to be hierarchal-minded, assuming leader-follower relationships, rather than community-minded, assuming egalitarian relationships, when not under the consistent influence of female thinking.

With men who love women, their attraction to a particular woman
has more to do with her success at getting what she wants rather than
any particular set of bodily features. That is because they don’t
perceive women as a form of entertainment, in contrast to the former
kind of man who seems to believe he is conducting casting calls for
a Broadway musical about his life. A man who loves women sees a woman as his inspiration, a role model, and seeks to be included in her perceived social popularity and success by entertaining her, and by responding frequently to her will in a needed vacation from his own.

A woman will know this kind of man by his conversational habits such as frequent attribution of credit to her, acknowledgement of her insight, and tunnel vision of her successes in competitive situations. This is the kind of man who women wish they were with when they are involved with the other kind. But for a woman to enjoy and maintain that kind of admiration and support, she has to understand what this kind of man is responding to in her and receive what he is offering.

False modesty and expressing self-doubt are of no use here, despite their usefulness in wielding the will of self-absorbed men by baiting their ego. The habits developed in the company of less desirable people must be broken, because they mask the very strengths and genius of a woman that these men value her for.

By agreeing with a man’s bragging over her accomplishments, talent, cleverness, social popularity, beauty, and most of all complete independence from him for success, a woman allows this kind of man to have a place in her life, one of a follower or loyal ally; but most importantly she confesses the previously censored truth about her to herself and others. It is the truth about her because a person’s true social identity comes from what potential they have to be important to others, not unimportant to others.

When a woman emerges from the shadows to own up to all the ways she impresses the men who actually see her, she is claiming her right to enjoy herself and receive overdue credit for her skills and achievements. She is also rewarding a man for his righteous attitude and attentiveness towards her with her approval and acknowledgement of his success at pleasing her. This reinforces his behavior and makes other men question theirs.

This way of interacting with men is worth making a habit out of, one likely to be self-reinforcing and socially contagious.