Eh Steve

My family also wasn't what I would have liked them to be. I'd need to ask some older people from before the western world was diversified, but I wonder what it is like being surrounded with ethnic homogeneity. Faces may not have meaning or virtue, but I believe at least for me similar genetics brings me a greater sense of empathy / bonding / and comfort with people. I'm a bit of an oddball anyways, we might as well look similar I haven't looked too far into the subject, I am familiar with the statistics on racial mixing "diversity" being garbage chaos for society but haven't looked into ethno-homogeneity vs. racial-homogeneity. http://www.livescience.com/45674-genetic-match-marriage.html I can't cite much at the moment outside of relationship stuff and a tiny bit about friendships. But I do wonder what it is like to be a town full of genetic cousins. I think genetically similar tribalism is likely still our most comfortable state of living on some levels.

You might like this website from an INTJ: http://www.systemsthinker.com/interests/mind/intj.shtml He's been at FDR and on the forums before to my knowledge, cool dude

INFP 80-90% on each of them. Even though my introvert comes up really strongly I'm not completely sold on it, I think with introvert extrovert you need to factor in a lot of potential social anxieties etc. I had the same deal when I was younger, I would score INTP. Later I switched strongly to an F and suspect the strong T was some sort of reaction for me at the time. INFP might explain why I come off as a little bit different around here, I suspect a lot of INTPs and INTJs would be the norm here. The feels people! What about the feels! - constant eh_steve

Thanks dude, I totally forgot you were a geneticist or I would have gotten your attention for this thread earlier With my ancestry I know there is some Scot-Irish, normal Irish, and then some pinches of German and French tossed in. The advice I've seen when looking around mirrors yours, go with y-37 and then only get y-67 if necessary. I'm planning on looking into it. My family has some family trees mapped out I'm planning on hunting down, I'd like to know specifically if the clan was from Belfast etc. or if they kind of bounced around. It'd be cool to find a town full of people who looked like me, but I figure I've got enough admixtures going on that isn't going happen I've wondered if I went to Belfast or something I'd immediately feel like "I'm home" I heard with the Welsh there is really cool stuff in terms of how specific their profiles can be along with the Cornish. Very distinctive from what I recall reading about.

Yeah I'd second dsayers here. You certainly might have a problem in being open with people. Buuuut that doesn't mean other people don't also have problems. I didn't mean to imply this was all your problem but I did focus heavily on what I felt you could control. Relationships work in a dynamic, and she has been with you for quite some time while you've had this problem. So in some ways there is tacit approval going on. A change in your behavior will effect her and will effect the relationship. Changing your own behavior is really all you have control over, so I focused primarily on that, but she has been tolerating this for quite some time and likely has issues of her own (as we all do). In relationships a single person is never the lone issue unless it is a hostage situation. But in your situation I would focus on opening up with her and practicing speaking your thoughts and feelings honestly. That will clarify things and is the most obvious thing under your control.

For what it is worth I've had girlfriends who shared all of my ideological beliefs. But I was unwilling to be open with them about my feelings and thoughts. My relationships suffered and ended because of this issue and they were not made better simply because we shared beliefs about politics, philosophy, or even peaceful parenting. Even sharing ideological beliefs on how a relationship should work does not matter if you do not actually follow your values in that area. The fundamental most important beliefs are the ones about honesty and communication within a relationship. Those are then extrapolated into larger abstractions about politics etc, but you need to have the basics for the politics to make any sense. But you need to actually live your values, and ideology without integrity is a hell of a problem I'd recommend against having based on my own personal experiences. Sharing ideological beliefs will not help you stay together with someone if you are unwilling to be open and honest about your feelings. Ideology is not the basis of a relationship.

Don't worry about the english too much, you are doing fine. If we had to talk in any other language I'd be using google translate and it would be much worse Maybe just be yourself and see what happens. What if you found yourself being vulnerable, telling her what you think and feel, and seeing what happens? If the relationship ends, at least you would be open and gave it your best try, and not because you were afraid to open your heart to what might have been a wonderful woman and a great life. Talk honestly with her. Figure out what you both want from the relationship. Tell her about your concerns about the ideological differences. Figure out how those ideological differences relate to your relationship, or whether they are abstract and unimportant to the relationship. Some differences in ideology can be gender related. It isn't unusual for a woman to be less comfortable with ostracism and treating other people harshly / unempathetically. So over time as long as she supports your decisions and is loyal to you, I don't see that ideological difference as being very important. And she may be more willing to change her opinions if she feels you are committed to her. If you want a woman who holds the same ideologies as you, you need to make that clear to her. And you two can either work on that more and figure it out, or you will need to break up. Or you will come to find you do not care about the ideological differences and you can stay with her. But there is a time limit on relationships and you need to figure out quickly what you want to do with this woman you care about. She wants a family. Figure out if you want a family with her or not as quickly as you can. I think the best way to do that is to talk honestly with her, consider that as something you could try. The worst that could happen is you two break up, but it sounds like if you do nothing at all and don't open up to her, you are going to break up anyways. The rest of this may be less relevant but I already typed it out. I hope it is of some help but if it isn't feel free to skip right over it I would need to know exactly what she believes in terms of feminism. But, I imagine her beliefs in feminism are going to reflect more accurately in your relationship with her. If she is trusting and respectful of your beliefs, she's not exactly a ballbusting man hating feminist. If she wants babies, she's not exactly a lesbian all men are evil and children are evil woman anchors type of feminist. So feminism can have a lot of different meanings. As long as you and her and the family are more important than anyone else. Then her political beliefs aren't that important. Her gender beliefs, if she wants to be a mom, respects you and your individuality, aren't that important. It really depends on how you define anarchy...but it makes sense that women who want a family can veer towards socialist and even communist beliefs. Babies aren't really economically productive and have a lot of needs. If she respects your anarchism and is willing to commit to you, I would consider the possibility that her views on geo-politics aren't particularly important. And especially with socialism...you may just have a woman who wants to take care of her babies and treat them well, and then is abstracting that into a universal for society. It's not the biggest deal in the world IMO. But it is something you should be willing to comfortably discuss. Men often get better with time and women age and lose their fertility and youth. So you can be in a real bind when to commit. We see this with doctors all the time breaking up with their girlfriends when they get their new job looking for a better younger woman. It used to be if you dated a woman three times and didn't commit but kept her around you were a bad man. People didn't even have sex before marriage in those days. Particularly from a females perspective they require a lot more commitment and the man is much more hesitant to give it out. The exchange used to be commitment for sex, but the sex is being given away much more freely these days. Decisiveness and knowing what you want are attractive qualities. And it can be insulting to be with a woman too long but not willing to commit. She is aging, she is losing fertility, she wants a family, she wants to be committed to you, and she has other options if you aren't willing to be that. Women can only wait so long and are put into an awkward position moreso than men when it comes to time limits. Figure out what you want and go for it. Don't make a woman you might love wait for you because you are too afraid to open your heart. Set the standard that you should feel comfortable being yourself and being open with the people you love. Start with her and see if it works and try your hardest to be that way.

She is a wonderful person, kind and caring. and gentle as can be. the one to have kids with and make a future with. And i really trust her. The problem is that she is left leaning, and a feminist coming from a university environment. And myself, i have been working in the private sector all my life and is not political, but i agree with allot of Stefan's views If she is wonderful, kind and caring, gentle, and you trust her, I'm not sure why you are afraid to speak your mind with her. Your relationship with her is going to be more important than your differing ideologies. From what you have said so far the current situation you are in does not really make sense. It doesn't sound like she is talking about the ideological differences in this "we need to be closer or break up" sort of situation, and I do find the ultimatum in it a bit confusing from what you have said. I think there are issues going on you haven't mentioned here. I'm not entirely sure what those would be. But I would say be honest and work on your communication and closeness with your girlfriend and yourself. I don't know how long you two have been dating but at a certain point there is a "commit or we need to move on" thing in relationships. This sounds pretty stressful to me considering you both live together and it came down to a timeline + a potential breakup, that sounds pretty bad to me. Generically I'd say, be honest with the people you are having intimate relationships with. Figure out what you want. And figure out how to make the relationships you choose to be in as satisfying for everyone involved as possible.

Purpose is a misnomer that implies a weird sort of metaphysics, I think we all get that In a looser definition or a different word entirely we could say that people have things they like doing, things they are naturally good at, things that fulfill them, things that make them really happy and things that are important to them. This can be different for each individual person I'm not sure what word we would use for those things. Self-knowledge is often kind of vague as a definition. I think at the heart of the question is figuring out how to be happy. And understanding that while there are some objective limitations in terms of morality, the rest is often personal to each of us and can require some insight and life experience to figure out As a side note. I really like your posts Drew. I'm glad you've found self worth and have found a way to get satisfaction in your desire to heal others.

Thanks for the link Robert I didn't see the 20 point metric, so I can't say for sure how much IQ varies from that study. Dunno if its behind the paywall or not. But that's pretty neat, I thought IQ was basically set in stone from a pretty young age. I think your line of thought is pretty interesting. I don't personally have a great answer to it, there is a podcast out there where Stef gives his review of EQ you might like. Since you found a link for me I'll give one for you https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/43349-lacking-empathy-what-now/?hl=%2Bemotional+%2Bintelligence#entry435872 www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/3228/why-emotional-intelligence-is-nonsense-call-in-show-march-11th-2016 I did some looking into IQ tests online for a while, there was a really nice one from the high IQ society but it got paywalled a few years ago. This is the best one I am familiar with at the moment: http://www.iqtest.dk It is a standard ravens progressive matricies test. The last time I talked about IQ with a good friend of mine he brought up Miller's Aptitude Tests. http://www.pearsonassessments.com/postsecondaryeducation/graduate_admissions/mat.html He was of the same impression that IQ tests, particularly Ravens Progressive, only really give responses for spatial reasoning and pattern recognition. And that creativity and even virtues may be more important to a personality and may not correlate directly with IQ. I have the same issue as you with IQ to some extent. I'm wary of anything that frees up the ability to feel vain or spray contempt at people. It doesn't mean the studies of IQ aren't accurate or relevant for people, buuuuuut I wouldn't want IQ to become a reason to despise other people. Coming up with a good answer for what is worth hating people / feeling contempt over can be pretty tricky. And division lines like intelligence, social status, race, whatever, can be pretty tempting to be used as an excuse for self-aggrandizement and hatred of people who are different. Intelligence might have very little to do with how much you like someone and may not be a factor in someone being a good person. So I may understand your reservations around IQ if has to do with this sort of vanity/hatred dynamic that can come up.

Outside the box thought: I'd make sure you aren't emotionally resistant to passion. Passion can lead to a lot of social criticisms and ostracism etc. etc. so it could be you may have an emotional block around it. Being nipped at by cynical or mean people can really damage passion, particularly if you're a people pleaser. So I'd almost ask the question instead "What does passion feel like?" "What does enthusiasm and commitment feel like"? I think to me passion can be very different from "interested". I'm much more familiar with interested but it feels much more sorta compulsive and not really that fulfilling from what I would expect passion to mean. I'm pretty unfamiliar with passion, I think the closest I come to that is righteous outrage. With happiness, enthusiasm, passion etc. If you're a people pleaser you're gonna need to lookout for the emotional blocks around attack from others that these feelings can bring is my guess. The current theory I'm working with psychologically is that people just don't know what feelings feel like. Like I genuinely couldn't tell you what a lot of different feelings are from an experiential standpoint. I don't really know passion, pride, joy, relaxation, contentment, profound despair, deep belonging etc. So one of my theories for this would be you just don't know what passion feels like. And it may be an emotional block to it, it may be "not finding the right thing", it may be the people around you, it may be your connection to yourself, I'm not 100% sure. But I have found it is really odd we intellectually know the definitions of all these feelings but have virtually no idea what they actually feel like. From what I can tell from my various studies I'd try finding some way to generate that feeling. I've only been able to do it within the context of romantic relationships to generate those new feelings, other people seem able to do so with therapists or even by themselves. I had a lot of "what the hell is this feeling?" going on when it was happening for me, the same may be true for you in terms of passion Usually I toss out this exercise, I can't speak to its validity but I'd plug being passionate into this and see what you get: https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/47567-want-to-generate-an-emotional-insight-try-this/ There can also be quite a difference between passion and enjoyment. Things I like doing versus things I feel are very very important. It may be people pleasing will continue to be your default mode, I can't really say. I'm an odd kind of people pleaser myself and quite familiar with the burnout/resentment stuff. It could end up being your passion is helping / pleasing the other person who is passionate about their goal. It might not even be passion which is the issue but the burnout/resentment stuff, it could be more generic "baseline happiness / how you feel about your day" kinda stuff. I wish I was captain inspiration and had better answers for ya I'm pretty lost in on it myself. I was asking myself this same "purpose" question about a week ago and I actually got back a really strong answer which surprised me. "My purpose is to not die". So now I'm back into cryonics and consider that my end game strategy which has brought me some guidance as to what I'm aiming for. Buuuut that doesn't exactly answer a lot of questions as to what to do in the meantime. For what its worth I think purpose and passion might end up with different answers. And even on top of that there might be all kinds of different answers for things like "what do I enjoy, how do I want to relate, how is this relationship XYZ, etc." I hope this helps, I know its a bit rambly I'll be happy to read any more thoughts you have on this or chat with ya about it sometime if you like

Could you link that for me? That would be a pretty big deal and unexpected from everything I've read before.

My sympathies dude, this is a tricky thing to deal with and not really a fun place to be :/ This statement in particular jumped out to me : I can't have anyone who has my address, face, and phone number know my secrets. Your girlfriend already has all this. Maybe you aren't telling her your secrets. And a best man will have all these things as well potentially. Making friends in your 30's can be tough, but it sounds like you may not be comfortable with the vulnerability / honesty necessary to develop a best man sort of relationship. This one also jumped out to me: I just feel as if I ooze this aura of repulsiveness, or however you would call it. That is certainly one possible answer as to what is happening. But there are also other answers which might be true for you. With the recommendation of a therapist there is a bit of nuance and reasoning to it that may need some explaining to help you out. People giving you advice is often extremely limited in changing anything or actually helping. When you are dealing with issues around building close connections and feeling as if you ooze an aura of repulsiveness, those are issues talking with a therapist would help significantly with. Primarily a therapist is someone you build that sort of connection and closeness with you are looking for with friends and your girlfriend to some extent. They are sort of a guide / introductor to the way you want to relate to people. A therapist isn't about criticizing you or you giving away secrets you don't want to give away. Basically imagine to yourself that with a therapist, every concern you have there is a way to deal with that. And the issues you navigate with the therapist will directly relate to your marriage and building better friendships. A therapist can just a guide to help you dealing with other people and yourself. And to me, I'd consider as just an imagination exercise, that what if every concern you have about it may be completely completely valid, but there will be some way to have things go your way. That it isn't about telling your fears they are wrong, they might be totally correct, but that there might be some way to work with a therapist that doesn't violate those fears. It can be hard looking to build close relationships later in life. And it would be nice if the people we grew up with ended up being that in an ideal world. We're a tribal species, I personally don't think it makes a ton of sense evolutionarily to be bonding with strangers in that way. So we're in a bit of "all of the people I should be close with I'm not, the tribe has collapsed" sort of situation. So it makes sense to me for this to be a bit stressful and difficult to figure out. Building an alliance out of nothing can be tricky, and if you feel you are oozing repulsiveness and don't want people to know who you are it is going to be even harder. To me, I'd like it if I was close to my neighbors and my workmates. I have arranged that to some extent but I'd like to push it pretty far. My plan for my family is to try and arrange it so we are close with our neighbors, they are also peaceful / attachment parents etc, and we build a nice little community out of it. I sorta envy the Amish except for the luditism and religiosity. It can be tough living in a world of strangers. I don't think it is especially natural and can be pretty stressful for some people. I think to me you have some universal issues going on that can be examined in how you relate to people and yourself that will help both your marriage and in building more meaningful friendships. I'd consider the possibility that you could make great strides in these areas fairly rapidly by examining some core emotional stuff. You could do this on your own, but I've found that simply doesn't work well for everyone.

I grew up in the Dayton area but I'm in California now. If I'm back in town for whatever reason I'll letcha know. What kind of groups are you looking for? I can wrack my brain a bit to help you find what you're looking for if ya like.

It's a common dream. Being chased dreams were very common for me for a long time. So I'm very familiar with this one, I'm actually a bit surprised your friends seemed to relate to the other ones but not this one. Also it is interesting that they seem more alarmed with the fact you fight back and less so with the part where someone is trying to kill you. Usually with dreams there are I think with two approaches, depth and practical. If you want to figure out what the dream meant you can look for a depth interpretation with something like "what are you running from / do you feel like you are being chased/attacked" ? And then also just looking back to the previous day and seeing if anything was bothering you or if anyone was bothering you. So for the specifics of why you had this dream.. Is there anything chasing you right now? And what happened the day before? I'd examine your feelings, see if anything is nagging you internally, and then examine your social life as well.