Selfishness In (or Versus) Relationships

I think that what you have written here. Is the best stuff about relationships i have ever seen. In these few lines you have written, is the key to a healthy and wealthy life.
If everyone had understood, that every bad situation, feelings, wars, religion and so on, and so on. It all comes because people don’t love themself.

I see you now Randy, in a whole new perspective. You have found wisdom that very few know they posess. It makes me smile! :)

All the best
fredrik. :)

Great stuff…thanks! Left a comment on Twitter regarding this, basically saying that it’s like the illustration of letting your bucket fill up with running water and overflow vs. spooning out every drop as soon as it hits bottom.

You can give the SAME amount from a full bucket as you can from a nearly empty one. If you can give from a place of abundance and fulfillment, why give from a place of self-sacrifice?

Bullseye!

So true, we have to be our best to be the best with others.

Wow Randy,

My sentiments entirely. I used to work in a newspaper (for my sins) and one day it struck me that all the reports of people dying of the same thing (the big C) were all self-sacrificing, giving their lives, literally, to other people instead if putting their own welfare first. What kind of message does that give the Universe? Unworthy-ness.

Randy,

As usual, I consider you to be spot on…

I would take Jesse’s analogy a little further -
I believe that you can comfortably give much more, and gain more happiness from it, when your bucket is overflowing, than when you are spooning out a few drops from the bottom of a near-empty bucket.

It seems to me to be insanity to try to give, when there is nothing coming in, to give from…

You say: “they bring happiness to your life. Or in other words, you love them for purely selfish and personal reasons!”

But does it mean that you are looking for a happy experience with a person, looking to suck the joy, life and energy from that person, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t it contradicts the perspective you described in this post?
Do most of the people look for the same feeling of happiness when falling in love with someone?
They usually (herd?) look for a hapiness in relationships, not for damn misery to get for the rest of their lives.
Doesn’t it make sense?

You gave an example of that woman who looked after cripples… But does it really insane from the MOST people point of view, doesn’t it? I am sure most of people will agree that it is not really sane. Don’t you think so?

And as a man, will you want to make your love woman happy, or you sit in the chair while expecting her to bring you flowers, coffee in the bed, invitation for a date, a dinner and other stuff that usually man does for her woman? If you don’t want to be like herd then will you Randy choose the second one to be really selfish? :)
Don’t you think that a man should do whatever to make her lady happy, simply because it makes him extremely happy? Then how does it fit with your selfish theory?

Looking for coming posts to find out answers for these questions…

That was the most factually valid article I’ve read in quite a while, Randy. Spot-on again.

If we were going to love selflessly, it would mean that we are out to make blind, rightoues self-sacrifice with no means of self-satisfaction (not so, say those locked away in this position of relationships) and possibly the prospect of giving away our time, energy and resources for nothing.

Now don’t get me wrong. As far as I know and have been aware, love IS for a selfish reason first. You want that person ‘cos he/she makes you feel good about yourself (hint: what’s in it for me…) Then, care & consideration for the other comes later as the relationship begins to develop and needs nurturing.

You gotta be happy inside Before you can reach out to others in this way. It starts with you…

They say love is like a magnet, which is so untrue. For two magnets to connect you need the negative and positve sides to attract each other.
On the other hand, to make a positive relationship, you need two positive energies to make greather positive energy.
Which comes to Mathematics. If you multiple a positive number to a negative number, the answer will be negative. And two positive makes positive.
It’s all about energies.
Carole
I wish that post would have come into my life 13 years ago.

Great article. It takes time to attain the perfect relationship. First one has to learn to be selfish and understand the good that it means….One has to learn to know oneself to know the ‘I’ so when you say I love you, I is the important word and it is the needs of I that are to be fulfilled. The smart thing is to be sure that the person you say I love you to is also a person who is selfish and understands ‘I’……..

Happy New Year….Angie

When people are truly themselves they ultimately attract the right person…

Hi Randy

Im loving the blog and totally agree with loving someone for selfish reasons.

You talk about the lady with serious worthiness issues trying to make herself worthy:

how do you recommend that someone with such issues and low self-esteem, someone who does not value themselves much, go about resolving such issues?

Best wishes

Randy,

Ayn Rand wrote “The Virtue of Selfishness” which I had the pleasure of reading some months ago. You and your readers may be interested in that collection of essays as it closely parallels your comments, above.

From Wikipedia.com: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism is a 1964 collection of essays and papers by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden. Most of the essays originally appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter, except for “The Objectivist Ethics”, which was a paper Rand delivered at the University of Wisconsin during a symposium on “Ethics in Our Time”. The book covers several issues of the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. Some of its themes include the identification and validation of egoism as a rational code of ethics, the destructiveness of altruism, and the nature of a proper government.

Best regards,

Mark

absolutely too incredibly fabulously spot on

So… I’ve spent a few hours responding… not only because I feel you are worthy and deserving of my time… but mainly because I’m a completely selfish bitch – and have wanted to write about this. And while you’ll see it’s not complete – there’s more fleshing to be done… I have to feed my children! If you infuriate me enough another day I may flesh it out further – the joys of Integral Theory :-) When is enough enough?

And what pisses me off – is that I can write this and it sits here. On this masculine heady blog. Dead, empty, unseen, unnoticed at the end of a day – unmet. And the feminine wants to dance in an erotica of everything, fleshy and full. Joyously appreciated and surrendering to meeting in the depth of giving and unadulterated loving. She hates to not have interaction, or engagement… a depth of conversation and witnessing… and according to your view point here, Randy – this craving and desperation… would it be needy? Unhealthy??? It is the deliciousness of feminine… And to be honest and true to the essence of femininity – it is an aspect of dangerous and fulfilling love… That can only be found after you remove the judgment that it’s wrong… Nothing can be 100% wrong or 100% right (not even you … you God you, Randy Gage!). For truly there are aspects of this that can be devoured, opened, treasured and cherished… and that does arise in healthy self esteem when we own and accept our unworthiness and live with it as a sick joke! And we can LOVE through this, and as this… rather than repress it, suppress it… or split off from our own weakness and unworthiness. It is all part of this delicious human existence… all wanting to be enjoyed for the sycophantic juiciness it contains :-) So there!

While I agree Randy with many points you make, and you know that I love and like you… there are a few of things I’d love for you to ponder … Though, I’m sure you know all of this already – so maybe this is just for others who haven’t considered it…

The feminine/Masculine difference, levels of adult development and the complexity of individuality!

So, Firstly men and women ARE wired differently…

In HEALTH – this looks like:

The feminine = focus on connection, love, relationship, flowing, care, compassion, intuitive, loving-kindness, radiance, beauty, essence, feeling

The masculine = independence, freedom, autonomy, strength, power, drive, linear thought, critical thinking, precision, boundaries

You are looking at this through a masculine lens. Which naturally filters your framing.

Obviously you’d take the stance of the feminine being wrong :-) tee hee :-)

You are speaking to a feminine pathology – of selfless/self-depreciating altruism… Yes – it’s a real and valid point. That I have got myself into in ways – though mine is healthy men… who I believe with my awesome coaching and therapy skills could get the man to live his awesome potential. NO MORE – Enough already. Now – only guys who are transforming their lives awesomely without me! :-) Enough about me – this is about you and yours :-)

The other perspective is the masculine pathology which is the opposite of the feminine (as unhealthy, just differently so!) – which either is a passive or aggressive form of the masculine… There’s more to this – though for simplification I’ve kind of lumped Static and Dynamic Masculine essences into One… though they each have passive and aggressive tendencies… would could be fleshed out :-)

Passive: alienation, rejection that borders of cruelty, neglect, lack of response-ability, morbid fear of relationship and commitment, narcissism (not like your ego-ic deliciousness that I adore – that the blinkered self-reference that cuts off all others), cut off and shut down, rigid- stilted apathy, sucha lack of interest that it causes energetic anxiety

Aggressive: domination, control, force, abuse, use of fear to over-power, drive to destroy, blazing forth without consideration of others where it brings harm

Likewise there are the feminine passive and aggressive forms:

Passive: Lost in relationship, dominated by the relationship, fusion, meltdown, a cut-off of self, dead in a way, life-less, dull, doormat -like, mousy, afraid, cowering, needy, co-dependent,

Aggressive: smothering, over-involved, chaos, challenging, abusive, demanding to be seen, Other seen as self (rather than the relationship), over-bearing, controlling, nagging…

And just because we’re in a mans or womans body it doesn’t mean that we’ll be feminine or masculine… that’s our hormonal construction.. which differs person to person.

For me, the biggest challenge here is that the feminine naturally identifies herself AS relationship. While the masculine sees himself as alone, independent and complete. For example – Carol Gilligan in her research found that women see themselves AS the relationship (physiologically!) – so if the relationship is bad… she feels bad. This is a natural effect – hormonally, whereas masculine wired being can more easily walk away because he can compartmentalize things. The challenge for the feminine (and masculine – albeit a different shift) comes in in dealing with this in a healthy way. At various stages of development a woman can not comprehend leaving an unhealthy relationship – because her egoic development isn’t strong enough, and she literally can not think critically. It’s like telling a baby to walk when it can only crawl. So how can we work with this stage? We have to hold hands, and show them and walk with them to get them to grow into themselves and stand of their own two feet for this stage of development (stage 1 as I have it here).

So – what are these stages? Let me just label it as 4 stages (there are so many models of adult development – I’ll just summarise them here)

1.Role/rule mind = living as the community tells you, and being for example “a good sweet, Christian wife, living as your husband tells you to, or as the church does – caring selflessly tot he end). This is where I hear you speaking to in your blog post. People at this stage can only do that! The complexity of their brain is not wired enough yet to think creativity. They can only do what has been taught to them. The majority of the world never grow beyond this place. And it’s through the stuff that you do here and the whole personal development industry that gets them to wake up to themselves.

2.Driver/striver/achiever – there’s a waking up to potential, the possibility of life becomes know, a shift into seeing that you can create who you want to be, and that you can grow in fullness and strive to achieve your best in anything. The feminine often becomes more masculine – and loves to be known for her intelligence (rather than a great home-keeper, or beautiful, or a great earth mama – I recall shaving all my hair off so that men would love me for who I am – more than lovely hair! I got frustrated with men wanting me for my body – I wanted them to know my loving wisdom, my wit, and mind).

3.Balancing in care/compassion/Earth-lover – the masculine often goes into the New Age, feminine, touchy-feely, hippie stuff – laze around, live of the state, and et to know themselves :-) This is kind of a rebalancing process to come to know all faces of themselves… And HERE a huge challenges come in – if the masculine is being feminine – waiting, receptive, receiving… It literally caused an energetic anxiety in the feminine… which causes them physiologically to grasp and pull the masculine in. When the masculine is not initiating, leading, guiding, directing… the feminine is lost, confused… and it creates an unhealthy situation where the feminine goes out of bounds so to speak to reach out. When she tells the masculine what to do… it kills his drive, causes resentment, and the relationship looses passion because there’s no tension of opposites. Both parties have merged in the middle so to speak – and there’s no space to create. This often happens with two really interesting intellectual hard working yuppies – both going for it full out, so both playing both masculine and feminine – so there’s no space for the energetic build up of orgasm. So yes – you can both be really selfish, independent, and free – yet there’s not enough pull in the sexy feminine deliciousness to gel the relationship in passion. So calling the feminine in your article to wake up to their masculine independence and critical thinking is great- AND they also need to live embodied, juicy lives for the relationship to thrive sexually. Unless you prefer brother/sister compatibility without embracing explosions of sexual bliss. That’s the price you pay having two critical thinkers without the gel of the feminine spirit.

4.Integral and beyond (I’m mixing all the higher stages here). Living life with intensity (not linear drive of the striver/achiever) – It’s more playing full out in our Unique expression of self – with awareness of the whole Kosmos. There’s a transparency – so anything can be put on the table… a willingness to be clear, share openly. There’s an ownership of our shadow elements, and an ability to live as love and love through all that arises. Here the masculine can own and be feminine – loving, caring, compassionate – while standing in his strength and kindness. When the feminine goes into pathology (needy, dependent, sucking him in) – he uses his humour jesting her out of her mood; or deepens his love to to open her, penetrates her with a playful spirit to awaken her to herself… Through his irritation, he loves her anyway… and opens her to the greatness in non-attachment and letting go of her mood. The feminine of the other hand… enchants the masculine out of his drive to emptiness and egoic greatness through her senses and feelings. Like when you’re standing by your cars – unless you were completely present, the feminine would give a damn about how great you think you are. She wants to know if you can love her and make her happy. Then she can enjoy the car too – otherwise she’d just have to crash it to make you present and get the fullness of your attention! :-) They’ve gone beyond having to play nice, or be good… and truly want to live that is powerful, present, purposeful, loving awesome… etc and will use whatever tricks, tools, tips possible to do this!

Hmmm – I’d like to break down the passive, health, an aggressive expression of each stage as this differs – but you get a sense of what it looks like…

With you holding your masculine lens – it may be challenging to fully grasp the severity of how the feminine is impacted by her loving, care hormones in a real and profound way because your whole focus (physiologically, and this effects your brain and critical thinking) is on autonomy and independence. So it’s easy for you to say this interconnection thing is bad and wrong – and in the feminine its normal – and yes… from your stage of development and masculine perspective it looks unhealthy…

Women , on the other hand, are designed to hold things together, to keep them meshed, the connection strong – the survival of the fittest depends on this. Hormonally we are designed to connect, to love, to hold, to GEL everything together.

AND there is health in this somewhere…

And everyone will judge each other… Some will look at you and judge things to be unhealthy with you! Each from our own little boxed perspective… Just like my little one here in these words ;-)

And so the game continues, as you play out so well here:

The masculine attempts to make the feminine more strong and independent and autonomous…

And the feminine plays tricks to get the man to love, connect and gel together… like this:

Last night a man calls to confirm that my direct debit is set up and money is about to come out. It’s all fine. And I say “aren’t you going to say I LOVE YOU and HAPPY NEW YEAR?”

He cracks up laughing, and asks me what I do… I say “Orgasm Coach!”

He says: “Well, I have no need for that now because i’m not in relationship.”

I laugh and say: “Maybe that’s because you don’t say I LOVE YOU enough! You can practice now on me!”

He just laughs and says: “I wish all my customers were like you!”

And I guess – so do I – maybe he’d learn to say I LOVE YOU then ;-)

Our Individual Complexity

I’ll end just saying for now – that it’s totally complicated… because you could be awesomely healthy in how you feel about yourself, and how you live your career… and then in relationships flounder in unhealth. While Randy you speak of unhealth in the feminine (seeing themselves as the relationship) – the masculine has the same in their over identification in “work as themselves” – they see themselves as their work – and find it hard to connect with relationships.

Others may look at the feminine and say she’s unhealthy because she makes no money – yet just LOVES – this is the natural healthy essence of the feminine. She can only be a success in the world financially if she adopts masculine ways – and in doing so she has to reduce her feminine essence, which kills off desire, connection and affinity in couples. Could this be a reason behind marriage break-ups? As more women wake up their masculine it kills of that feminine gel of connection that bonds things together… So you can create or plant seeds of both feminine and masculine being critical thinkers and independent – and in so doing you loose the juiciness of devotion, worship and unadulterated passionate love…

So my challenge to everyone… is asking where are you passive or aggressive, disconnected or over-identified…
First person: Is it with yourself? Your own ego?
Second person: Is it with others – specifically in intimate relationships, or with friends?
Third person: It is with your career, or service to the world?
Fourth person: Is it your inability to understand how others perceive all of those aspects in you or do you obsess over them… I think I’ll stop at fourth person!

Love to you Randy… and I so appreciate you!

I promise to one day write the passive healthy, and aggressive in dynamic and static masculine and feminine essences… until… Go have more hot dates that zizzle!

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
Oscar Wilde

You write some great stuff and I’d could spend hours amplifying and agreeing or disagreeing. BUT best of all you make your readers Think and question.
Now – if you were an only parent with one child who needed a little above average care – that makes the selfishness thing a little tricky – n’est-ce pas?

Heey! The babes are here! This is my best site to visit. I make sure I am alone in case I get too hot. Post your favorite link here.