8 year olds are underrated.
As Andrew said, it seems the relationship with your mother is the sticking point here, rather than the beauty standards. I’ve been musing on why I care so much about what certain people say while not caring at all about others. Two people could say the exact same thing to me and I would be offended by only one of them. This makes me think something silly is going on here. What hook does your mother have inside you? What do you want from her that you’re not getting? Can you accept not getting this thing? Moreover, can you be happy in spite of not receiving it?
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I experience this one a lot too
I think we’re kept ‘on the hook’ for it because it’s not possible for us to experience sustained/permanent love and affection - even if someone were able to give it (they can’t), we wouldn’t be able to ‘take it in.’ Sort of like when someone compliments you but it doesn’t land
So then we think some combination of the people around us ‘aren’t the right people,’ and ‘there’s something wrong with me’ because we still believe in love and affection as a mechanism.
But it’s built on remaining unsatisfied. So then I eternally feel that I have to ‘accomplish something.’
This is especially clear after successfully accomplishing something. You maybe feel great about it for .2 seconds, and then start pining after something else.
So with being a size 0 or a size 5, when you were a size 0 it’s “ok this isn’t working, I’m not experiencing the love and affection that I want to, my mother is wrong. I’m not going to do it her way.”
and then later you’ve successfully changed your body to how you want it, and you still can’t feel the love and affection (because it’s impossible to, permanently), so when your mother criticizes it has some weight because part of you is like “well, she’s right, I’m not happy, maybe I do need to change that…”
That’s how authorities remain in place - they’ve figured out what insecurities to pick at. Notice how all politicians make these vague promises, “I will give you…” always off in the future. We want to believe that they can give us those things, that they can finally make us feel good somehow.
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Some people are capable of creating the drama we want, some are not, depending on whether we perceive them to be that “thing” we yearn for.
I am learning that I crave the rejection. I reject, but want to be rejected.
At the risk of hijacking Sonya’s journal, it really struck home to me how powerful the “impossible” person has been for me.
Parents are the ultimate “impossible” person.
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It’s 3am and I just got home from being out with my indian friend, the social butterfly.
As the night went on, his resentment towards the situation in my city grew.
He wants to conquer the “impossible” situation. That women here see him as less.
The irony is he is a Chartered Accountant, from a very wealthy family. The women who reject him based on being “brown” are unknowingly rejecting a life a luxury, fun and an amazing person.
I saw him getting angrier as the night went on.
There is something about wanting the approval, the desire, the acceptance of the “impossible” people which is central to the void people feel.
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Desire depends on there being a ‘gap,’ so we’re mathematically likely to wind up desiring something impossible in time
Haha of course that’s the best way I can keep desiring, find that which is unattainable. Otherwise once I achieve that which I set out to, what happens now 
I observed this in myself a ton in the past, I would actually fuck up my own attempts so that I could remain in that place of wishing, desiring, fantasising. I was actually invested in failing, no joke. Failing would give me a good reason to feel like I am never good enough which in turn gave me a nice excuse to continue dreaming. What a lovely description of what ‘I’ am and how ‘I’ sustain ‘myself’.
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The worst thing that could ever happen is to accomplish all my great plans and discover that I’m still not lovable!
To ‘Me,’ it seems to be because there’s ‘something wrong with me’ that can never be remedied
But in fact it’s because the very system of love & loving was never set up for anyone to have success… beyond impregnation & child-rearing.
That’s why the only thing to do is give up the game
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Something quite interesting has just come up which confused me 
So currently there’s this guy on tiktok that has blown up and gone viral from his videos lip syncing to music. By my standards and to most women I would say he’s a very average looking man but the way he is lip syncing to these songs somehow has every single woman in a chokehold, turned on and confused including me
I decided to scroll through the comments and most of them are into his confidence which I understand so I asked myself why do I like this so much? He is looking at “‘me” like I’m a piece of meat he would like to devour, but I like it?!
Basically I think this man just exposed some instinctual drive in me which I never really noticed before
Here’s an example.
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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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