The Shadow Knows: Part III - Male Sexual Psychology

Guys learning game and in the pickup community tend to have a lot of sexual desires in their shadows. 

In Owning Your Own Shadow the author says that you can think of your shadow and your persona as being on opposite sides of a scale and that the two have to be in balance.  You can do that, either by actively finding ways to express your shadow, or by moving things over from your shadow into your persona(ie learning to make those things part of the character you portray to others).

I think that this is why guys who learn game, become waaaaay more balanced as people.  They find healthy ways(through relationships with women, short or long term) to express the sexual side that they've been repressing for lack of satisfactory outlets. 

In men I would say that one major part of the shadow side of their sexuality is the rapist.  In women, I'd say the shadow side is the whore/slut(which of course brings ust Pretty Woman and Titanic, but more on that later).

So, the rapist wants to have sex with a woman just because he finds her physically attractive.  The internal DNA instructions are saying, "IMPREGNATE HER!" which comes out in normal human language as, "Holy shit, I want to fuck that girl!" or some variation thereof.

Instead of slinking off into the corner and masterbating(though they may still do that too) is that guys can also indulge in their fantasies by walking up to the girl and actually opening up the possibility of having a relationship(sexual or otherwise) without vilolating any social rules.

This is a huge leap. 

I knew this guy who if a girl had sex with him, she was automatically a slut.  It was the weirdest thing and reminded me of the old Graucho Marx quote, "I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER."

But when you look at this behavior from the concept of the shadow it begins to make total sense.  If he's expressing aspects of himself that shouldn't be expressed(ie are not acceptable in society) then any woman who accepts that part of him undermines his persona and must be degraded and discarded(ie "sacrificed").

In some ways, the situation of women in the early nineteenth century
has become generalized in the early twenty-first. The outlets for male bad
behavior—war, dirty politics, the institution of mistresses and courtesans—
have faded away; today, not just women but men are supposed to be emi¬
nently civilized and reasonable. And many have a hard time living up to
this. As children we are able to vent the darker side of our characters, a side
that all of us have. But under pressure from society (at first in the form
of our parents), we slowly repress the naughty, rebellious, perverse streaks
in our characters. To get along, we learn to repress our dark sides, which
become a kind of lost self, a part of our psyche buried beneath our polite
appearance.

-The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene, p. 354

 Suggested Reading:



The Shadow Knows: Part I

This post has been a long time in coming...even though I've been talking about it for a long time, I can't seem to get it out in writing.  Weird, eh?  Even though I'm writing it out, I think I'll audio record it at some point and post that too.

So anyway, I was in Shanghai hanging out with Sexual Kimchi.  He suggested I read a book called, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche.  It's a pretty quick read and I started in the middle on the chapter called: Romantic Love as Shadow.

After reading that one chapter, I stayed up the rest of the night to finish the entire book.  Very interesting stuff.

First, I'll give the basic concept in my own words and then I'll direct you to the web page that I think best encapsulates the concept of The Shadow.

Your shadow is the opposite side of your persona.  Your persona is what you outwardly display to other people(your "face"), and your shadow includes those aspects of who you are that are buried within where no one(and often even yourself) can see them.

However, we must express those things that are in our shadow in some way whether we want to or not, and our choice is really whether we express them in helpful or harmful ways.  A typical example would be when you're in a bad mood and you snap at someone who doesn't deserve it...that's you're shadow talking.

Looking back at history, many cultures have had ways to allow humans to express their shadows in constructive(or at least not harmful) ways.  Catholic confession and Protestant prayer come to mind immediately.  Animal and human sacrifice are both manifestations of this too, as does mardi gras in more recent times.  They all give an outlet for those qualities that each society has seen as evil.

War is also a way that allowed men to express many of their shadow desires through murder, pillage, and rape. 

(And, I don't care who you are, if you're a man, you have definitely thought about rape.  If you say you haven't, you're a fucking liar.  Man up and admit.)

Violence is something that we have to teach children to restrain themselves from at an early age.  It's the most natural thing in the world really.  You want something, you take it.  Period.  That's straight forward "law of the jungle" right there.

However, as part of socialization we learn that that's not OK, and those desires are pushed into the shadow.  In modern culture though, sports takes the place of some of those drives.  Other men channel it into becoming a powerful lawyer or business person.

To be continued in Part II.

Comments welcome...

Are You Motivationally Challenged?

When something is scarce the price of it goes up. And price, is shorthand for "the amount of work and effort people are willing to put in to acquire something".

Now here's the odd thing about how this works.

A few months back, I was in Hyehwa, an area in Seoul known for stage performances like dance, plays and musicals, with BlueMystery, and two Korean guys--Joker and L. Because this is an artsy area there are lots of people, especially women strolling around.

Tons of coffee shops line the streets too.

(Coffee shops are ubiquitous around college campuses here in Korea. I suppose because people don't want to study in the library?)

Anyway, the 4 of us are roaming the streets, checking out some of the street performances and hoping we'll run into some interesting girls.

There are tons of different areas with different vibes and atmospheres you can go to in Seoul, and though Gangnam is much maligned for being uppity and snooty, no one can deny that when it comes to looks(though it's often surgically assisted), the women are top notch.

The reality is, is that finding amazing women is tough. It's a needle in the hay stack kind of thing. You can meet some fantastic women along the way and have some serious good times with the less than perfect women though--I'm all for that.

So when I was in Hyehwa I gradually found myself thinking things like, "Maybe I should go and talk to that girl...she does have a nice smile."

In my world, this is a flashing Chinese bicycle cop siren.

Because I know that if I were in Gangnam, I wouldn't be thinking any maybes. I wouldn't be using a nice smile as a reason to open. The way it should work is that you see a woman and it's like getting sucked into an approach vortex of glory.

Let's talk about motivation for a minute here.

I used to think I was the laziest guy there ever was. My father used to talk to my mother about how it was impossible to get me to do more than just the bare minimum to get by, and my mother would always respond by saying, "At least we don't have to worry about him dying of a hear attack, dear."

One year in 9th grade, I turned in a research paper on the poet Stevie Smith for my literature class over a month late! Another time, I had to hand deliver a paper to my teacher's house in Philidelphia, 1.5 hours away from where I was in Washington, DC because I didn't finish it on time to give it to her before she left and if I mailed it, it would have gotten there after she was already back in DC.

So here I am this lazy guy, who used to only work about 20-30 hours per month when I started PickUp Asia. Then I started thinking that I'm working awfully hard for a lazy guy.

And then it finally hit me.

All our lives we're trained to believe that we should be able to motivate ourselves to do things that we really don't want to do and have absolutely no interest in doing. Things like homework, and chores, and piano practice(unless of course you like piano practice).

And it messes us up in the head because we lose the ability to recognize real motivation, which is everything that you actually do do in life that is not on autopilot(ie like zipping your pants zipper is on autopilot, or SHOULD be).

So there I am in Hyewha, surrounded by women who I'm trying to be motivated to approach by looking at their best qualities(as seen from afar) and I contrast that with being in Gangnam where there's the constant tractor beam effect of true motivation.

So as I was saying...a lot of guys don't like to go to a place like Gangnam. The women there grade hard, but for me as exciting as the actual achievement of success is(however you define success), the pursuit of it alone is rewarding.

Especially in the world of dating and relationships because there are a lot of checkpoints along the way.