Emotions

Fights and resentment in a relationship can resolve... but not without the right communication. The Olive Rule gives you the ultimate tool to bust relationship roadblocks.

Jesus of Nazareth taught his followers one Golden Rule by which to live their lives, if they wanted to live harmonious, heavenly lives: do unto others as you'd have others do unto you.

It is a rule that appears in many of the world's great religions.

The dhama of Hinduism and Buddhism instructs not to do to others that which you would not want done to you.

Confucius instructs that what you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.

Among the Yoruba, a Nigerian tribe, there is a proverb that says, "One who is going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts."

While the Golden Rule governs actions toward another individual, there is a Rule like this that governs relationship communication, too.

This rule permits those who follow it to have happier, healthier, less stressful, more productive, closer, better relationships.

It removes the worst obstacles out of the way of relationship happiness between any two people.

And it makes both parties of a relationship view each other with a far more caring, understanding light.

It is a rule I've taken to calling the Olive Rule, and following it will change how you run your relationships.

Are you worried about what might happen if you start to talk to women or date? These 'what ifs' are common – but also immobilizing.

Lately we've had a spate of guys in the comments or on the forums worried about this or that potential, hypothetical situation.

Typically these guys are not actually in the field. i.e., they are not actively approaching women and getting live experience with the opposite sex. Or, if they are, their activity levels are minimal.

Thus, these hypothetical situations are really more of a series of thought experiments for them.

And while it is good to try to get yourself some answers in advance, when you go too far into hypotheticals all you are really doing is tying yourself up.

The stuff guys get caught up worrying about when they're not active in the field tends to be stuff that they will almost never run into once they ARE active... or stuff that, if they run into it once they are active, they'll easily handle.

Or will discover is not actually that big of a deal.

Yet, because they aren't active, and are just imagining these things in their head, just like with the One Special Girl Problem™, and the Amazing Connection With A Girl You've Just Met Problem™, it is all too easy to blow things way out of proportion in their imaginations, and start fixating on stuff that is not as significant as they think -- or may not even be there at all.

Friends who are needy with women become bad friends to you when women get involved. Best solution? Keep them away from woman stuff.

A couple months back, a member of our forums named Fluxcapacitor shared this tale:

Dudes! I went out with a couple of mates this week an I noticed this girl that I was interested in, my mate apparently seen her a week or so before. He went on to tell me he talked to her (which was surprising because he doesn't approach) and he got her number. She ignored 2 text messages, then he found her on social media (stalker alert...) an she didn't accept the "friend" or respond to his message. I don't think this is going anywhere fast for him.....

I felt like I couldn't approach this girl while he was about (he doesn't have abundance mentality an I wouldn't be surprised if he's already name their future children already :') ) an that it would look like I was stepping on his toes. I also thought to myself she'd have seen me with him so would possibly turn me down or ghost me to so it wasn't awkward but maybe she isn't that considerate......

I decided not to approach due to him cause I felt it would have looked like a dick move, but I don't think he's getting anywhere with it an so there's no harm in it.

Any thoughts dudes?

My response was this:

This Yuletide season, at a time of family, let's talk about maintaining a firm, guiding hand on your own relationships, so they do not slip away from you.

Because that is more difficult to do in our day than it has been at many points in history.

First off, let's address this: being 'controlling' in any sort of direct, overt way is completely forbidden in the modern West.

You aren't allowed to be controlling with friends. You aren't allowed to be controlling with employees. You aren't allowed to be controlling with children. And you especially are not allowed to be controlling with women.

Controlling women in any way is viewed at a societal level as the turf of weak, jealous, insecure men, who are unable to inspire devotion, and instead must use coercion.

Being 'controlling' is the domain of uneducated roughnecks, red necks, and ghetto hoods who lack the ability to communicate or empathize, who don't respect women, and who are, or inevitably will be, 'abusers'.

This article is not really about that kind of jealous, insecure attempt to control. Instead, it is about how to manage your girlfriend or wife in a way she benefits from and responds to, that makes your relationship healthier, and that meanwhile attracts as little social opprobrium as possible.

I've been meditating since I was 18 years old.

That's half a lifetime ago for me now.

I didn't get into meditation as part of any kind of spiritual belief system.

I prayed as a child when I was a Christian. But by the time I started meditating, I was an atheist.

I'm more spiritual again now, happily (atheism was always an angry, dissonant, lonely belief system for me; I've never liked nihilism, but it's difficult to resist it when your foundation is rejection of the immaterial). That's led my meditation practice to become much deeper, and both more rewarding and also more useful.

However, the kind of meditation I'll talk about with you today is the kind I was doing when I believed in nothing other than the material. It was useful to me then, and I still use it today.

This may not be anything too new if you're a long-time meditator yourself.

But I know many folks aren't.

So today I'd like to introduce you to how to do a 10-minute meditation that clears away toxic thoughts, large pressures, and unhappy feelings.

I had a chat the other day with a friend who'd caught his long-time girlfriend in a big lie.

She had promised him before she would not lie to him about the thing.

Well, she did lie.

And my friend wasn't sure how to deal with it.

He's an easygoing guy. And his natural inclination was to be understanding, and not make it a huge deal.

Even though it was, in essence, a pretty important deal.

On the other hand, he also realized if he let his girlfriend's lie slide, it'd be the wrong call... and he'd only be kicking the can down the road to deal with later (possibly in a worse way).

When we talked, he'd made his mind up to angrily confront her. He'd confront her, summon up some fiery anger, tell her caught her lying, and put the fear of God in her. That was the plan. She had to feel she'd done wrong.

He knew he had to enforce some kind of stricture here, or else his girlfriend would run wild.

And yet... he felt the plan was off.

He just didn't know what else to do.

If you go out to flirt and talk with women, and you set up dates, and have sex, does that mean what you’re really after is female approval? Well, yes and no.

There is this argument that resurfaces every so often from the MGTOW/MRA/incel crowd. The argument is that by approaching women, flirting with them, asking them out, and sleeping with them, you are engaged in approval-seeking behavior. A seducer is the ultimate 'approval seeker', by this logic, because he devotes even more time to seeking out women to date and bed than an ordinary guy.

It's an interesting argument.

At its core, there is truth. There's a fair bit of approval seeking among some chunks of dating men. And in general, any public activity you engage in to any extent involves at least a little approval seeking.

Speaking to another human is always going to be a form of approval speaking: you want this other human to acknowledge (and approve of) your thoughts, perspectives, point of view. (If you don't think that's the case, then find me one person who has no reaction when his thoughts or perspectives are rejected and mocked by another individual. Such a man is very rare.)

You want to feel (in the language of today's progressives) validated (approved of) by others.