Part of the reason why I’m so confused is because my dating history or “type” is usually the non threatening type, super cuddly and silly so this threw me for a loop 
With the help of @Kub933 I get it now!
So basically yes I am attracted to the confidence but it is also how before his transition to being sexy and dangerous he looks vulnerable and kinda dorky.
To me that means he is “safe” and also easier to control but at the same time he can also be exciting and dangerous.
Kuba explained that it’s kinda like guys liking girls who are sexy and cute!
Also it’s a generational thing, my generation are sick of super “alpha” guys and now the new thing is to be the opposite of that but at the same time still hold on to “masculine” qualities I guess? I see it all the time on social media. guys in skirts, wearing eyeliner and nails painted. Now we want safe which also means easy to manipulate but at the same time someone like Jason Momoa in game of thrones
Kinda like an experienced virgin for guys
This has been a fun 
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Yeah watching that video it is indeed a puzzle It’s no longer enough to have the looks of Brad Pitt and the bad boy vibes of Tom Hardy, there is a new ‘thing’ on the horizon and… no one is quite sure what it is
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This is really interesting!
I’m seeing it’s about vulnerability - many women have learned that those super ‘alpha’ guys are dangerous, so they’re not considered an option anymore. They’re blocked out, even if you did find yourself attracted to one, what would your friends think??
So then the ‘attractive’ option is the nerdy ‘soft’ guys, but the instinctive reactions to that ‘devouring’ vibe is still in place. Because the ‘alpha’ guys (who often embody that energy) aren’t an option, most of the time women (primarily more liberal women anyway) find themselves seeking those ‘soft’ guys… but most of those soft guys have had that ‘devouring’ aspect conditioned out of them. It’s considered off-limits.
So then when there’s a guy who’s considered acceptable/safe… “ok this guy checks out,” defenses are lowered (vulnerability), but then a split-second later he switches to ‘devourer’/badass, it’s game over.
What’s fascinating is that all these impressions can take place in a matter of seconds!
Incidentally, part of what makes guys like Jason Momoa and ‘The Rock’ acceptable as sex objects is that their energy is actually really soft, they become celebrated as people that are super-masculine in their appearance, but have chosen to represent the feminist angle.
Nice @henryyyyyyyyyy that is precisely how I was seeing it too! 
I’m sure this dude didn’t mean to get psychoanalysed by a bunch of actualists when he made this, Oopsie 
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Love a bit of Skater boy
Yes I completely agree! I’ve always gone for the “safe” option usually when dating, thus @Kub933 but I’ve always also been attracted to guys that also look “alpha”
So I get a little confused. It’s funny cause one of my favourite outfits Kuba wears is his cream fluffy knit jumper that makes him look like a lovely nice guy that I just want to cuddle but at the same time I equally love when he wears his leather jacket I want the best of both worlds. To feel safe and be excited at the same time!
The same thing with Jason Momoa, his energy and the vibes he gives off in interviews and social media is super soft and safe. But in his character in game of thrones he’s a murdering and raping Dothraki that I’m still equally as attracted to! Mad
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This reminds me of what Richard writes in the journal - the expectations created by the mystique can never be met. Both men and women are frustrated by the inability to live up to the fantasy. We see this all the time, let’s change the beauty standards here or the expectations there but at the same time we are driving the very values that support what are essentially fantasies, and they never fulfil because they are never genuine.
It seems a huge step to free sexuality from all this, I remember we talked a ton about this on zoom @henryyyyyyyyyy, why is it that ‘I’ am driven to pursue a fantasy over the genuine experience.
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The real world is like Achilles and the tortoise, it’s never possible to ‘catch up’ to it. Once you get there, it’s ‘over there’ again. And the allure just keeps being… alluring
Just in one’s imagination it almost works because you can dream about anything you want and then dream about something else as soon as your mood shifts, but in the real world it’s terribly confusing because you can feel opposite ways about the exact same thing in very short succession
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Hi @Sonyaxx, thanks for sharing this interesting insight.
My big sister had a big influence on my growing up, and I too really believed men were worse and put women up on a pedestal as superior to men. When I had really bad spots as a teenager which started at age 12, I then saw for myself how cruel and malicious females could be.
Growing up in a London suburb, I got to see women on women violence, young girls carrying knives, female drunken rages, female bullying, mother’s dismissing their own son’s violent behaviour and other forms of violent and malicious behaviour. Now, on average I would probably say that men are more violent and aggressive than women as a generalisation but that it is such denial to not acknowledge malicious and harmful behaviours in women too, yet this type of belief seems prevalent among women, at least in Western cultures. Or that men are to blame for women’s transgressions, their malice is a product of male influenced malice.
Even before I was exposed to AF, I had already had several big realisations:
Men (and women) didn’t create the types of behaviour that exists in them. Men didn’t create the aggression and violent behaviour that leads to so much harm. So, I had stopped blaming people for their behaviours, so held no grudges. Evolution had led to humans being this way, there was no instruction manual for being a man or woman. So, women are angry that men are a particular way which was never in a man’s control. It is like we believe people are responsible for that types of behaviour that arise in them.
At this point though, I didn’t ultimately believe we could change our nature, I thought increased awareness, insight and intelligence could help to a degree but I still had that belief that we can’t change human nature. That if pushed enough we could all do things we would regret, we were all just the wrong situation/condition away from deleterious behaviour. That is what I saw in myself, my environment but also from reading history and psychology, things like the Stanford Prison Experiment.
These insights had been gleamed from my mums deterioration with bipolar, which gave me a deeper insight into how a person could change behaviour completely and not be in control of their actions. Which led me I guess to question the nature of free will and choice. Evolution had led to humans being this way, yet we want to blame individual humans for the elements of their nature outside of their control. I had never encountered Richards often used phrase “blind nature” at this point, but the moment I read it, it resonated.
For some reason I assumed you and Kuba were early 30s but never actually asked. I was 20 when first encountering Topica forum for AF, so similar age of exposure. I never noticed the male to female ratio back then or on Yahoo, but I guess it really is a sausage factory lol. Hopefully we are not so intimidating anymore, more like kittens than lions.
What is interesting is that your view aligns with my anti-natalist friends. When I had kids it annoyed them that I hadn’t adopted instead and chided me for my selfishness. Do you think you will ever have biological children or adopt?
I have always found what women find attractive so contradictory or unattainable. I always get this weird reaction of just not wanting to hear what women like because I know it will be nothing I can attain. It is like painful to hear about lol. At my core I want to be attractive and desirable.
Yeah, very true. The core belief that made me realise this was that I wanted any person I wanted to only want me and never be interested or find attraction anywhere else…meanwhile everyday I see somebody I find desirable, attractive. It is all so dumb. The pain of being undesirable or perceived less attractive, really sucks though. The genetic lottery of attractiveness.
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Hi @son_of_bob 
I definitely don’t believe everyone who has had biological children are selfish I just noticed that the one of the main ways people convince you to have biological children is often through continuing a “legacy” or “family line” which I find to be a silly reason to have kids and I also really resent that reasoning as it’s what my mum does to try convince me that having children will somehow fulfill me. Also the fear or being lonely or unfulfilled without little versions of yourself running around.
As of right now and for the forseeable future I don’t plan to have any kids at all our dog poncho is enough
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Kuba just turned 29 so you are half right and yes of course now I’ve gotten past my fear I can clearly see that there is no actual reason to be intimidated anymore!
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So I’ve been lurking, reading some stuff on the forum and replying a little but mostly I find my self stuck in this “fiestyness” which seems to have replaced the sadness to some extent. For example in the past if Kuba were to be firm or “mean” to me my default would be to cry or be sad. Now, I’ve noticed I tend to bite back first and then cry when I feel overwhelmed by the anger
I’m finding it hard to shift because the anger almost feels productive? Like I’m standing up for myself. It feels like a more protective stance than being sad so I’m struggling see it as silly.
It almost feels like I’m transitioning from a sad little girl to an angry woman which I’d rather not be either Not to say I’m consistently verbally berating Kuba and enjoying it, but I’m finding my default feeling that comes up when it feels I’m under “attack” is anger.
Not sure if this is this female rage I keep seeing all over tiktok manifesting it’s self…
Poor Kuba 🫶🏼
Ah yes, the age-old dilemma: you can either be sad or be mad, with no in-between.
The key is to see the silliness of both, and then the 3rd alternative – being felicitous – is possible!
I would suggest in any situation where you feel the anger is productive, just consider what it is you actually wanted, whether it was sensible (which it may very well have been), and if it was sensible, would there not have been a different way to handle it, a felicitous way, where you still are firm, stand up for yourself, etc., but without getting angry about it?
Reading how Richard handled the various abuses hurled his way over his years of writing, might help – I can’t imagine anybody would call him a pushover for how he corresponded, yet he was able to do it all without a speck of anger or malice! Why not you, too?
Cheers,
Claudiu
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Yes and my suspicion is that emotion fills the gap that exists because there is no factual grounding for the drama one finds oneself in, at core it is all about feeling.
So a trigger takes place and ‘I’ find myself getting emotional, ‘I’ feel hurt and so ‘I’ feel my emotions (whichever they are) are warranted/justified/righteous etc.
BUT this is where it gets fun, for ‘my’ righteousness in this situation depends entirely on a feeling, let’s say anger in this case. So of course ‘I’ want to hang onto that anger, for if the anger drops there is nothing else to support the drama. It was never grounded in fact so ‘I’ have nothing else to point to, the whole thing will unravel and leave nothing but empty air.
Just like what I wrote here - The "Rift" - #4 by Kub933 :
Which brings me to the next bit - frustration. This whole thing of “come on man, stop being so pedantic” is no less than saying “come on man, simply believe me!”, the frustration is because I want to believe and to be believed and yet I know deep down that if I was to be meticulous then it would become clear that there is actually no substance there, that it is just belief.
The frustration I was experiencing was a cover up for the fact that no substance lay underneath. To let go of the frustration would be admitting to this.
The above isn’t to say that when a situation happens there isn’t some practical considerations blended into the mix, but at core it all happens along the lines of what I have described below, in short it is all about the emotion, about what one felt to be the case - Kub933's Journal - #1004 by Kub933 :
This is where it gets completely ridiculous though, it’s something I have been observing for a while now. Because at this point the structure becomes the absolute, it is the primary concern. When a friend is late to meet me and ‘my’ plans come crashing down, I do not give a shit about the actual events.
The emotions that I am experiencing are entirely because ‘my structure’ is under attack. Somewhere in there ‘I’ confuse the integrity of the structure for actual safety/danger.
This reminds me of when I would get moody as a child and my dad would do whatever to make me laugh, I resisted this so hard for I knew that if he managed to get a smile out of me, that this righteous drama would no longer exist. Without the emotion I would no longer have a reason, as there was never any actual reason.
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And this if anything is testament to the high standards that you end up picking up as an actualist. If only the worst it got (as an overall state of affairs) was a bit of fiestyness every now and then, that’s already above ‘normal’ expectations.
You’re right that anger is a more active emotion than sadness, with sadness you’re just stuck hiding where anger ‘gets things done,’ the problem is then you end up an angry woman as you say, and are causing quite the ruckus in the process! So not a good place to end up.
One option is to redirect that anger towards something more productive, for example being annoyed that we humans haven’t yet completed the mission of being as peaceful as you know we’re capable of (including @Kub933 !) and taking that energy into determination to do something about it. The energy is coming from the same place, but rather than wasting it lashing out at someone else, something might actually be accomplished.
Vineeto uses this approach at one stage to free herself from her past ties to spiritual groups she had been a part of, and I have used it to let go of groups that I had felt beholden to as well. You aren’t a helpless child, but you also don’t have to be a mean adult - you can be a peaceful, confident, and independent person.
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Yeah, maybe when expressing anger or even being assertive as a woman is frowned upon in the environment you grow up in, you learn to suppress it, and it turns to sadness, and you find that sadness and vulnerability are more socially acceptable (even ‘desirable’) reactions. Then when you start to examine yourself, you get closer to the bone and find the anger that was suppressed. It makes sense.
I’m finding it hard to shift because the anger almost feels productive? Like I’m standing up for myself. It feels like a more protective stance than being sad so I’m struggling see it as silly.
It almost feels like I’m transitioning from a sad little girl to an angry woman which I’d rather not be either
There you go, you already have a reason to see it as silly 
, and it’s not some fancy idea you’ve imported, it’s your own preference. Cool.
In my experience, it’s a good idea to keep sight of that and hold that above any elaborate reasons you might come up with for feeling angry or not feeling angry.
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So the snapping at Kuba and the general feeling of irritation has mostly disappeared I noticed this when my period came as a complete surprise. Usually the couple days before my period I get irritated easily and I tend to snap when Kuba “playfully?” 
interacts with me.
It’s such a cliche, getting moody right before your period starts 
But this time when it came without any prior “meanness” from me, it was a welcome surprise! I genuinely thought to myself “oh but I didn’t snap!” This also carried on throughout the week of my period which I usually will be relatively moody. So yeah, pretty cool!
I think I got to this stage by simply choosing not to be irritated or angry. It’s strange to me how simple it was. I just chose not to bite back. Recently when Kuba and I were having quite an emotional convo (for me at least) I did snap, and I noticed beforehand I made the choice to be mean and angry. It was a split second choice but I definitely noticed it. I wanted to be mean and snap so he felt hurt like I felt hurt in the moment. I know what to look for now and I know I can make the choice not to be that way.
Pretty cool 
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Yea! I noticed this at one point for myself too. It’s a choice, taken immediately before!
I found I could just choose not to instead. The result is much better! Any feeling of self-betrayal (as in not doing what ‘I’ felt I wanted to do) quickly vanishes upon seeing how much better choosing not to is.