11 Comments

I believe some John Lennon lyrics capture the spirit of this post:

"Love is wanting to be loved"

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I'd posit that dating is a process of bootstrapping yourself up the hierarchy. The first innate physical desire allows each party to bet small amounts of reputation on offering more desire in order to signal their desire slowly moving up the meta hierarchy you identified. Issues arise if both partners don't believe that the degree of their desires are not synced up in depth. This would also line up with women's emotional desires being held as better, since those desires are often associated with a later, more advanced form of a developing relationship.

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Yes, but her profession should select for male respondents with a particular position on this question.

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Aella is reproducing the poll with a different audience but higher volume: https://twitter.com/Aella_G...

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Wonder if your poll is picking up on something more fundamental about most relationships: most people don't love their partners more than they want to be loved by them. This to me explains why in a situation where you have a choice whether to make your partner happy immediately or do what's best for them long-term, most people choose the former. I suspect most people in long-term relationships see aspects of their partner's habits and personality that are fundamentally counterproductive to his/her goals, but do we say anything? No. God no. Of course not. We don't want the aggro. And most of all, we don't want them to hate us even if it is at the cost of not doing what is best for them.

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Being wanted is an ego boost it also gives you confidence of future success and that seems very important (after all otherwise self gratification would be sufficient). NOTE: This is why abstinence for religious reasons is not so bad, you can tell yourself, many want me but I choose abstain, it's not that no one wants me.

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Another way of putting my point is this:

If you ask someone what they most want in a partner they are very unlikely to answer: "someone who will be my partner" even though (absent an inclination to kidnapping) that's a requirement for being your partner

Questions of the form "what property do you most want a lover to have" just aren't soliciting from people the property that they would be least willing to tolerate in a partner. If you ask for that you'll get a bunch of fairly pedestrian and ick answers. Rather, it's soliciting something like, what property do you think about/look for most when selecting between partners or searching for a potential partner.

Since the property of actually wanting you tends to be a precondition of becoming someone's partner it's just not an appropriate answer to your question. OTOH, when you ask about what property When you meet someone you might think: ohh wow, they really seem impressed with my mind not my bank balance they seem like so I'll try to date them rather than this person over there. But, if they just don't like you at all, they aren't really within the space of options so it's not the kind of answer people give.

To turn this into a concrete prediction I predict that if you ask the question again as "Which of the following properties would most make you want to end a relationship: a) It doesn't matter to them how you look... d) They don't care if you want them." And I predict you'll get many more d answers.

Indeed, note that merely negating the "Attracted to you for your body" (which most people would see as a positive thing) to they don't care how you look totally changes the nature of the claim which illustrates just how sensitive these questions are to wording.

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I don't think those polls are really in tension the way you think. You asked "What do you most want your lover to like about you" not "Do you feel strongly that what your lover should *most* want about you is ..." They are perfectly compatible in that people have many wants and we may care that they want you for your mind to some degree quite strongly even if what they most want is some other factor.

I (and I suspect others) really want a lover who finds something special about us, i.e., wants us for a characteristic that not everyone has. Since virtually anyone could want them if that was *all* they wanted it would be disappointing. It's fine if that's the most important thing.

Besides, as you correctly point out how much of our behavior is mere signalling or otherwise mistaken about our true motivations, I think you are reading these surveys a bit literally. I suspect there is a fair amount of social desirability bias going on here.

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There's too many interpretations of what "had sex with you, but were not into it" means, from least to most charitable:

1) Rape2) Prostitution3) Pity sex4) Likes you but just wasn't in the mood for sex on that specific day.

Additionally the person having sex with you could show they're not into it or be secretly not into it, which makes a difference. So if you imagine "not into it" refers to rape, you're definitely voting B.

If you instead ask the question as "had sex with you with full consent, but were secretly not into it", I'd bet you'd get a completely different picture.

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>Note that we could in principle be wanted as a footstool, as a bottomless wallet, as an on-demand-chore-doer, or as an easy-butt-of-jokes. But few of us actually want to be wanted in these ways.

I disagree. I think people would still prefer to be wanted in those ways over not being wanted at all, as long as they have the option to turn down that want with no punishment. I think most people, if they have literally no social group or lost all access to their social group, would happily take being the butt of jokes and lowest member on the totem over being totally isolated. Being wanted in and of itself is a good thing, but its side effects like bullying that you're unable to stop is something people want to avoid. But I predict many people would willingly accept low-level bullying if that was their only option for being wanted.

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It's very hard for me to understand people who choose B. Ultimately I feel my success in life stems from wanting real things, not meta things. I get those things and am happy.

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