Years ago dating red flags used to be all the rage. It seemed as though everyone collectively came to the conclusion that if we all compiled lists of qualities we found undesirable in the opposite sex it would somehow magically make dating a lot easier. Sadly, I think it has done the opposite. I wasn’t going to write a “What I Forgot To Mention” post for this particular video because I think I did a pretty decent job this time. However, an unsettling thought occurred to me just now. What if making lists of red flags was itself a red flag? It fits perfectly with my video about the ultimate red flag, because what could be more entitled than having a list of red flags to look out for in a partner.
I was reading a thread on Reddit today about “I like this guy, but he doesn’t look attractive to me, should I keep dating him or just stop now?” The thread was full of happily married men and women all saying they felt the same way about their spouse in the first few dates after meeting each other, but later when they got to know their partner said they discovered he/she was actually incredibly attractive they just hadn’t noticed it when they didn’t know him/her. Could it be that the people making lists of things they want in a sexual partner, namely “must look attractive” are just declaring their entitlement? Almost certainly that is the case.
This is a bit of a tragic thought to finish on, but take a moment to think about how many beautiful couples never got married because of entitlement. How many children were never born because “I could do better” or “I deserve everything I want”. The perfect is the enemy of good. It’s time this culture of entitlement came to an end. Please help end it by sharing my video anywhere you think it should go and helping to point out to other people the dangers of unrealistic expectations from life and other people.
Have you heard people complain about dating websites lately? Sometimes it comes from the men saying that the women are rude, snarky, and just not women anymore. Sometimes it is the women saying that the men are crude, desperate, and verbally abusive. After having read a few messages to and from people on dating websites I can see a lot of problems with people’s approach to dating. Namely, it appears to me that neither men nor women have a clue what qualities to look for in each other and what qualities in themselves they should be working on. The women are typically making dating profiles that look like auditions for porn movies, while the men are crafting unbelievable tales of their wealth, fitness, and charisma. In other words; they have become skilful at creating attractive profiles, but not skilful in recognising what elements are needed to build and sustain a successful romantic relationship. There is a lot of conflict on dating website because of this both sexes are reporting harassment by the opposite sex through verbally abusive messages demanding to know what the other person’s true intentions are.
The word hypergamy is being used more frequently, so much so that my spell checker now recognises it as a word. Hypergamy is a term borrowed from biology that refers to one sex’s preference for a mate who is smarter, stronger, taller, more mature, and wealthier than they are. It has been appropriated from biology by some groups in the manosphere and is now frequently used to describe human females and their preferential mating strategy for a man smarter, taller, stronger, wiser, and especially wealthier than she is. However, the opposite mating preference, hypogamy, is still not recognised by my spellcheck and I haven’t read it outside of academic essays relating to biology. Hypogamy is a preference for a mate dimmer, weaker, shorter, less mature, and poorer than oneself. While I have read and heard a lot of discussion about women and hypergamy, I don’t think that there’s nearly enough attention to men and their tendency for pursuing a lower quality mate. Indeed, it is a common complaint from women that they have to play dumb with men, play down their virtues, or even hide their wealth, so as to avoiding intimidating men who shy away from women they don’t feel they are good enough for. Men who date women taller or smarter than them usually get some mockery for this from other men, implying the ideal is to have a weaker dumber girlfriend. An obvious exception is physical beauty. This is possibly the only aspect of hypergamy that men display, except even with this most men are still more willing to sleep with a low quality woman than a woman is to sleep with a low quality man. It often surprises men when they find out that 
Agency is a philosophical term that refers to one’s ability to act in a given situation. When discussing the nature of free will and responsibility, it is important to be mindful of how much agency a person has. If there’s an electrical fault in your house and you’re alone, there might not be anything you can do about it. If you’re a trained electrician, there might be a great deal you could do to fix the problem. However, being knowledgeable about electronics might not be enough if your tools are at your workplace. Thus, agency depends on both having the knowledge and having the means. A person with electrical training and tools has full agency over the problem of the electrical fault, whereas a person with no training and no tools has no direct agency over their electrical problems. They will have to pay someone who does have agency in this situation to fix it. Despite sounding so simple, problems with agency account for a lot of drama in relationships. This article will discuss a healthy sense of agency and then compare it to unhealthy perceptions of agency such as hyper-agency and hypo-agency. 
Alice is angry with her husband Greg. She asked him to mow the lawn before the weekend when the rest of the family will come over, but he hasn’t done it all week. Greg keeps saying he will, but it’s Friday now and their guests arrive tomorrow morning. Greg meanwhile is angry with his wife for complaining about him spending too much time out with his friends last week. Both Greg and Alice know the other person is angry, and both of them know that this implies they’re hurting. But neither Alice nor Greg want to make the first move towards listening to the other person’s hurt. They are locked into a struggle to see who gives in first. Neither is willing to talk to the other about this, and more importantly neither is prepared to listen. 
Growing up I used to watch Star Trek. Both the original 1960s series and the 1980s Next Generation series feature main characters who supposedly have no emotions: Mr Spock and Mr Data. Spock considers emotions to be a weakness and actively suppresses them so as to be more logical; meanwhile Data has an apparent desire to fulfil his creator’s wish to build an android that is as human-like as possible, so Data seeks to have emotions. While as entertaining as these characters are, the series never actually explored emotions, what they are, why we have them, and what their meaning is in any depth. Rather, one gets the impression at times that the sole purpose of emotions, as far as the creators of Star Trek are concerned, is for personal amusement; they make life interesting but we don’t really need them. However, emotions are far more important than just mere novel reactions of our nervous systems to particular stimuli; they are what makes life alive beyond the organic/material level. Consider that each individual cell in your body is a living organism in its own right, additionally, the collective activity of the billions of cells that make up your entirely body is a secondary level of life, and finally the thoughts and feelings that make up what we call, for lack of a better term, “our mind” is a third tier of life built on top of the previous two tiers. But why do we have feelings at all? 
Philosophical Therapist 