Okay, ba'ulzonim, svanpanim, and bonbonim, the three new categories of students.
And yes, for those of you who are lucky enough to not be my students, my students are labeled Ba'al Vazon, Svanpan, Chmadmad, Bonbon. That way, I'm propagating the knowledge of Biblical Hebrew around the world. Am I a holy man or what? Yes, sirree.
And today we are going to discuss online nonsense. What else?
Stupid, moronic, counterproductive, self-defeating, idiotic, and counterfactual, not true, advice given by self-help gurus and other savory characters.
And we're going to focus today on two of these tips.
And actually, I'm thinking of making this into a series because there are so many wrong tips, wrong pieces of advice that lead you astray all the time.
As I said, today I'm going to focus on two of them.
And the first one is finding the right partner.
Yes, everyone and his dog or his cat will tell you that you need to find the right partner or that you keep selecting the wrong partners, the wrong mates. They will tell you that something is wrong with your mate selection.
Here's breaking news for you. There is no such thing as a wrong partner. Your mate selection is always on point, always on target, always right for you. Every single partner you've ever had was the right partner for you.
Yes, yes, I know, I know. How can it be? I had been abused. I had been molested. I've been raped. I've been attacked. I've been smear campaigned. I had been through hell and back. And you're telling me that this guy was the right guy for me?
Yes, honey, I am. Let's try to understand what I'm saying.
When we select a mate, we usually select the right partner for us. And there's a simple reason for that.
Mate selection is a skill that had been honed over millions of years. It's the outcome of an evolutionary process that took millions of years to mature among human beings.
So it's very unlikely to be wrong. It's very, very unlikely to go awry. Things that evolution processes that evolution had perfected over millions of years rarely go wrong, rarely go awry.
And if you say that your mate selection is wrong, something's wrong with you, not with your mate selection, because evolution is always right. You are probably wrong.
For example, if you are a self-loathing and self-trashing masochist, you hate yourself. You are self-destructive. You're sexually self-trashing or otherwise self-trashing. You're an alcoholic, for example.
What is the right partner for you? What is the right mate for you?
An abusive narcissist. If you're this kind of person, an abusive narcissist is the right partner for you. And he's the right partner for a one night stand, or he could be the right partner for decades to come. But he's the right partner for you because you crave pain. You want to destroy yourself. You self-loathe. You hate yourself. You disgust yourself. You want to punish yourself. You are your own worst enemy.
And so you select the right partner to accomplish this unconscious goals of self-destruction and self-defeat. It's the right partner for you.
Something is wrong with you because you are a self-defeating, self-trashing masochist. You need help.
But as long as you are like that, your choice of an abuser as your partner is the right choice for you because this is the way you become self-efficacious.
By choosing this kind of partner, you guarantee that you will be abused, molested, mistreated, maltreated, denigrated, degraded, humiliated, rejected, etc. Which is exactly what you want. It's a form of self-efficacy and your mate's selection is perfect.
Take another case. Imagine that you are a loner, a schizoid at heart. You dread intimacy. You hate being vulnerable. You're afraid of it because you anticipate heartbreak. You know that love goes with pain. That the flip coin of attachment is hurt. And you don't want this.
So you have something which is called avoidant dismissive attachment style. You approach and then you avoid.
And so if you have an avoidant dismissive attachment style, an avoidant dismissive mate, an avoidant dismissive intimate partner, an avoidant dismissive boyfriend, an avoidant dismissive husband, that's a match made in heaven. That's exactly the kind of man or woman you need. If you're avoidant dismissive, that's what you need. Another avoidant dismissive.
Having a true intimate partner, someone who really loves you, someone who wants to be with you all the time, someone who seeks intimacy would only enhance your anxiety. It would make you feel bad and depressed. It will amplify your insecurities to the point of paranoia.
You don't need this. You need someone who is aloof, someone who is detached, someone who wants to see you minimally. You need a long distance relationship. You need to meet each other once or twice a week and have the equivalent of casual sex. You don't need to go deep. You don't need to talk too much. You don't need intimacy. Intimacy is bad for you.
So if you're avoidant dismissive, avoidant dismissive is the right partner for you.
What about if you are thrill seeking, reckless and defiant?
Well, then the right partner for you is a psychopath. You're going to gravitate towards psychopathic intimate partners, psychopathic mates. And that would be a perfect match.
Because if you are thrill seeking, the psychopath would provide you with thrills. If you're reckless, the psychopath is risk taking. And if you're defiant in your face, the psychopath is going to reciprocate.
That's what you like. That's what you want. That's what you need. That's the right partner for you.
Your attachment style is who you are. It's lifelong. It's immutable. It could never be changed.
Don't misunderstand me. Your life goals can and do change. They can be modified. Choices can and do change. You can make choices. You can alter your behaviors in relationships. You can change all these things. You can play with all these things. One year you can be needy. The other year you can be avoidant. You can make choices of who to be with or who to not be with. You can set life goals, which will dictate certain kinds of behaviors and certain kinds of things to avoid.
So your attachment style is set in stone, but everything else is pretty fluid. But your attachment style makes sure that whoever you may end up with is always the right partner for you.
I want you to listen to this very carefully.
You're making reasoned and rational choices in accordance with your attachment style.
You may end up being in a lot of pain. You may end up being in a lot of hurt. You may end up having one heartbreak, heartbreaker for another, but that's precisely what you want. That's what you seek.
You home onto the kind of partners who will cater to your emotional needs. And if your emotional needs are self-defeating, self-destructive and reckless and crazy making and what have you, you're going to find a partner. You're going to find a partner to provide you with the kind of input and the kind of support for these kinds of behaviors.
Now, these kinds of behaviors may be, of course, self-destructive. They may be pathological. Actually, they are pathological, but that's who you are. That's who you are.
Your childhood had shaped you irrevocably, irretrievably. There's nothing you can do about it. We are all shaped by our early years. That's why they are called formative years because they form you.
Now, all the nonsense online and in self-help books and this whole industry, this whole industry is con artistry. These are con artists. They are not updated with psychological research. They just spew out utter nonsense. I don't know where they're getting this from, but be careful, be careful because they're telling you what you want to hear. They're fostering self malignant, pernicious hope, malignant optimism in you.
Having false hope, in my view, is worse than having no hope at all.
Choosing partners by prescription is worse than choosing partners the right way and the only right way is to find someone who resonates with your pathologies, with your insecurities, with your psychological makeup, and above all, with your attachment style.
Don't shit on yourself. Don't force yourself into a box because some idiot guru told you so or because some YouTuber with no qualifications had convinced you to behave in a certain way. Don't do this to yourself.
Here's another piece of moronic advice. One of the most moronic correctness bits of politically correct advice online is the following.
Your partner's sexual, social, and psychological histories, your partner's past, they're not relevant. What do you care to know about your partner's past? You have no right to inquire about the sexual history of your partner, the relationship history of your partner, your partner's predilections and proclivities, your partner's propensities and choices. You have no right to go into all this.
If you do this, you are being patronizing and condescending and onerous and even intrusive and stockish. I mean, you shouldn't do this.
Only present choices, decisions and behaviors matter. Don't be retroactively jealous, for example. It's wrong to inquire about your partner's past. You should be concerned with the present and the future.
This is, by far, the most stupid advice anyone could give you. I mean, you need to be a chimpanzee to give this advice. And yet, there are many chimpanzees online, with or without fur.
By far, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. I'm going to repeat this for your edification and benefit. Listen well.
By far, the best predictor of the future behavior of your partner is the past behavior of your partner. Recidivism, defaulting to past misconduct, is rife and rampant and prevalent.
If your partner had behaved in a certain way in the past, he's extremely likely to repeat this behavior pattern.
More than 80% of alcoholics restart drinking, restart to drink again. Within a year, a year from rehab, almost 70% of criminals repopulate their erstwhile sales. Criminals commit crimes.
Why? Because that's what criminals do. Alcoholics drink. Why? Because that's what alcoholics do.
Having cheated once, you are three times as likely to cheat again. It's a fact. Unpleasant, unpalatable, politically incorrect. You're supposed to say that everyone can change and anyone can change, you know. You can reform yourself.
Poppycock, utter blood, blood dash. Total nonsense. You cannot change yourself fundamentally after age 21. End of story.
Neuroplasticity, my dear. You can change some fundamental issues after age 21.
I repeat this. If you had cheated once, you're much more likely, hundreds of percents more likely to cheat again.
Promiscuous women, for example, slip around, extra diatically outside the couple. Much more often than the regulated boundary sort.
If you had been a promiscuous woman in your past, you are extremely likely to be a promiscuous woman again. You may have a period or even a long period without promiscuity, but it's going to happen again. There's nothing you can do about it. It's a form of addiction.
By all means, interrogate your new potential intimate partner. And I'm using the word interrogate judiciously. Interrogate your new potential intimate partner. To the greatest possible extent. Be intrusive and insistent and persistent. Do not take obfuscation for an answer. Do not allow your partner to get away with some fuzzy generalization, insist on details and data. It is your only protection against future nasty surprises.
I mean, the proliferation of wannabe psychologists, armchair psychologists, online YouTubers with and without academic degrees, which are not relevant to the field they are talking about. I mean, it's a miasma. It's a swamp. We need a proverbial Donald Trump to drain this swamp. I just don't know. Don't know how to do it. Now that he's gone. Oh, the heartbreak.
Ok, Shoshanim. It's not been too long, has it?
Have fun with your intimate partners because they're the right ones. They're always the right ones for you. But make sure to know everything about them before you render them intimate partners, before you grant them access to your world. Be safe in every possible way.