THE STEPS OF INTELLECTUAL ATTRACTION

▪ In this program, we will divide this process of committed partnership, of Intellectual Attraction, into three large “steps” that couples naturally navigate their way through. And in the end, they will find themselves sure, not just of their sexual attraction or the friendship bond they share, but their ability to solve life’s problems as a team and the reason that they conduct themselves as mature partners together, not just in mutual desire or happiness, but in mutual success:

▪ 7. Who I Am: Mature Character

▪ 8. Who We Are: Character Compatibility

▪ 9. Where We Are Going: Achieving Life’s Goals Together

THE THREE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING PARTS OF

MATURE CHARACTER

* Observing Ego

* Personal Boundaries

* Constructive Decisions

▪ Have you ever felt that the person you’re with did not respect you? 

▪ Have you ever felt like the person you’re with was wasting your time, energy, money, or attention? 

▪ Have you ever felt as if the one you were with had a tendency to be overly agreeable to everything you suggest

▪ Have you ever had something about your relationship that troubled you yet was ill-defined

▪ Thinking About Commitment

▪ How will I find someone with whom I am satisfied and happy?

▪ Why do I keep finding myself with people who don’t work out or are bad for me in many ways?

▪ Why do I not seem to be that attracted to “nice” people or people who are good for me?

▪ And how can I stop choosing the “wrong people” repeatedly?

▪ We get “imprinted” upon by both parents, which is to say that we take in all their traits, both good and bad, in a process of “identification” with our same-sex parent and “attachment” to our opposite-sex parent. In return, both parents “bond” with us.

▪ At other times of life, we might pick and choose what to make our own about someone we encounter, but not in this case, at this time. The parents' traits are “seared” onto our basic social circuitry.

▪ It is indeed a kind of “learning,” but not some consciously learned behavior, as one learns to fit into the role of a restaurant waiter, an airplane pilot, or even a swimmer or marathon runner. It is beyond just unconscious learning as one takes on a good habit, bad habit, sport, or sociological role. Instead, like “imprinting,”

▪ it is literally becoming something different at the identity level. Unlike “social roles” or the oft-cited “gender roles,” it is as impossible to “unlearn” as it is to “unlearn” being male and masculine or female and feminine.

▪ This is how one may know that imprinting is real and impervious to “sociology,” with its fads, policies, and swaying of opinion. Opinions are just higher-brained beliefs, while imprinting is at the reptilian, bodily level, the identity level, and it is permanent.

▪ We “attach” to the opposite sex parent, which is to say that we depend on them, or someone just like them, for our sense of feeling well in the world. We “desire” them, and people just like them.

▪ We “identify” with the same-sex parent, which is similar to having “programmed” into ourselves that to obtain the benefits of the opposite-sex parent, we need to behave like, or “be” the same-sex parent.

▪ The parents “bond” with us in return, in the way they feel toward us. All three are forms of “imprinting.”

▪ Being a Whole Person

▪ The "legal definition of a person" is an "entity with rights and cognitive, emotional and volitional capacity." This means that a person has "boundaries"(rights) and intellectual, emotional, and decision-making functions.

▪ To be a complete person, we need to work on the mature psychology of these working parts of psychology:

▪ Personal Boundaries (with rights, ownership, duties, and responsibilities)

▪ Cognitive Style (right-brained vs. left-brained), which fill up on Education and Experience, with genius in the middle

▪ Emotional Style (maternal vs. paternal based), which is composed of either a dominance of Well-being or else of Confidence, composing a "whole Self-esteem" in the form of happiness.

▪ Decision-making style - composed of equal amounts of the facility at ethics (conscience) and intuition (shrewdness)

▪ These are the core skills out of which we may build and analyze any other feature of our psychology. Generally, these are all functioning at their best when THEY ARE IN BALANCE.

▪ THE MIDPOINT OF THE SPECTRUM OF ANY OF OUR FUNCTIONS IS ARISTOTLE'S "GOLDEN MEAN" - which is the place of highest character or VIRTUE.

▪ Assemble all those, and see the narrative story that develops, and you in the story of one's life, you see "the whole person."

▪ This is why Freud, quoting philosopher, Epictetus, says, "Character is Destiny."

▪ The Importance of Boundaries

▪ Mature, desirable, high-character partners do not commit to or attract mates who are “overwhelmed” or have weak personal boundaries.

▪ They don’t choose those who lack preferences in life or identity they stand up for.

▪ They don’t choose partners who are out of control of their own emotions or are unpredictable when they need to be relied on.

▪ They don’t commit to or attract potential mates who would choose “being right” over “being happy.”

▪ They don’t choose partners who choose their own happiness only over the mutual pursuit of happiness that is had as a couple.

▪ The personal boundary is an invisible marker of your personal space and your identity.

▪ It is a barrier against stress and an invisible psychological circle around you that marks what you control about life from what you don’t.

▪ The personal boundary is the center of what we call “strength.”

▪ It functions exactly like the border of your private country, blocking the wrong mate for you at the Passport Office and permitting the right mate to tour your world.

▪ When undeveloped or damaged, the personal boundary is the very cause of all codependence in the world, nearly all the abuse in the world, most miscommunication in the world, perfectionism, rudeness, prejudice, judgmentalism, ignorance, subjugation, imprisonment, joyless achievement, loneliness, and desperation.

▪ When traumatized, cold, arrogant, isolative, or scared, it is the very cause of all self-protective loneliness and starvation for love in the world.

▪ The damaged boundary blocks new ideas from entering the world.  The damaged boundary is the jail cell of boundaries – nothing gets in or out. There is no cultural exchange between two individuals and no chance of collaboration.

▪ Attachment, Bonding, Identification, and Initiation

▪ Thus, we are most romantically successful by holding onto our same-sex parents’ best virtues and minimal vices of theirs.

▪ Attachment - from infant to parent or lover to lover

▪ Bonding - from parent to infant or lover to lover

▪ Identification - learning to be like the same-sex parent

▪ Initiation - instruction and formal invitation to the world of adults

▪ The Importance of Observing Ego

▪ Spend meditative time with a present-moment mindset.  This gives you access.

▪ Use your five senses. They give you data on what is happening in and around you right now, and in a way that “just thinking” can’t grant you new information. (If you hear a loud noise in the next room, check out what’s causing it!)

▪ Take action. This “getting into your body” makes the present moment very real and lets you test the environment for what’s really happening, testing yourself for what you’re really capable of. (There needs to come to an end to mental practice eventually and a time for action on our lives and loves.)

▪ Make a decision. Even if you don’t take action, decisions lead to action eventually and give immediacy to the present moment. We use the present and the real circumstances around us to make decisions, and our decisions are often impacted by input from both of the other areas of the mind: the emotions of the mammalian brain and the instincts of the reptilian brain (essentially tend to take over our decisions with impulsive, thoughtless action.)

▪ However, when you have Observing Ego, you can turn your mammalian emotions and reptilian instincts into your friends who help you make decisions rather than letting them take over entirely. You “observe” these other areas of the mind, what they want, and can then, like a good parent, make the most mature, responsible, wise decision, which also may satisfy these “other brains” to some degree.

▪ Be intimate, which means eliminating distractions to connect with your loved one. Two of the most profound, multisensory ways of finding intimacy with another person are to a. ) share a meal and b.) have sex. When we make intimate acts, our conversation or physical contact can feel “timeless” because we are in the present moment, where we truly observe and pay attention to our love with Observing Ego.

▪ Go to a truly great film. You will see a potential version of yourself on the screen and receive a priceless gift: the ability to see what would happen in the future if you made certain decisions in certain circumstances.

▪ The "Currencies" of Intellectual Attraction

▪ Time - The currency of the intellect, whether Educational or Experiential

▪ Freedom - The currency of decision-making, whether ethics vs intuition

▪ Strength - The currency of personal boundaries

▪ Happiness - The currency of the emotions

▪ The Exchange: SUCCESS

▪ The Intellect

▪ Left-brained Education

▪ Right-brained Experience

▪ The Cost: Time

▪ The Reward: Success

▪ Decisions, Habits, and Momentum

▪ Ethics (win/win) - the "Golden Rule"

▪ Intuition (Shrewdness) - (Win/Lose) the "Iron Rule"

▪ Wisdom - the perfect balance

▪ Emotionally, the best decisions are both ethical and effective

▪ Intellectually, the best decisions are both educational and experiential

▪ "Volitionally"” the best decisions have equal amounts of intuition and shrewdness (wisdom), as measured not just in results, but according to the Game Theorists, in win/win results (constructive)

▪ This brings us to the "legal definition of a person" - which is "an entity with rights, and cognitive, emotional and volitional capacity."

▪ This is similar to saying that a "person" who has a "complete psyche" would have boundaries (rights), and cognitive (intellectual), emotional, and volitional (decision-making) features to their psychology.

▪ So we are covering "the whole you" as a "person" here, in step 7 of courtship: Who I Am.

▪ Boundaries

▪ The Definition of a Boundary and its Properties

▪ Like the border of a country

▪ Like a shield - of Ares, Perseus, Athena, Artemis, or Apollo

▪ Marks what we control from don't control

▪ Marks what we own from don't own

▪ Marks what we have responsibility from don't have responsibility over

▪ Works like a TANK of our resources

▪ Works like a budgeter or filter

▪ Works by your comfort with the word NO - also about control

▪ May drain you - SUFFERING

▪ Big part of narcissism

▪ Big part of codependence

▪ "Holes" in the Boundary - lies, trauma, weakness, and pathological narcissism

▪ Weak - can't say no or hear no with grace

▪ the real cause of all SUFFERING in the world

▪ cause of and the result of trauma

▪ Can be more pushy, intrusive, or more passive and victimy

▪ Cause of addiction along with anxiety

▪ narcissistic, immature, all about me

▪ and so are about win/lose destructiveness

▪ weak, low character, allowing the primitive instinctual animalistic to run things

▪ "Walls" in the Boundary - brittle protection, but isolation and starvation

▪ Protective but lonely and starving stress and trauma

▪ Another response to stress and trauma - scar tissue

▪ Brittle - may break again

▪ Isolative

▪ Independent, not very intimate

▪ "Doors" in the Boundary - strength, respect, efficiency, durability

▪ midpoint function between holes and walls

▪ Flexible and dynamic

▪ Allows filtering adaptation, budgeting, and balance of overflow

▪ Addiction

▪ holes in boundaries plus anxiety

▪ quick fix for things we can't control

▪ external locus of control rather than internal

▪ The Crucial Role of Boundaries in Maturity and Partnership

▪ The "Relationship" and shared psychological space

▪ The Mandorla shape and Phi

▪ Interdependendence and balance

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