How to Overcome One-itis
It’s time to tackle one of the most pernicious problems in modem dating life: Oneitis.
“Oneitis” is one of the most common “dating diseases” of the modern world (hence the “-itis”). It can strike either men or women, but is most commonly considered a problem in men given their unique psychological and biological imperative to impregnate more than one woman during their lifetime.
Diagnosis
Oneitis is what a man experiences when he becomes convinced, for one reason or another, that a woman is significantly more important than any of other attractive women that might come into his life.
NOTE: Oneitis does NOT include the case of a man who, rationally and clearly, with full foreknowledge of likely implications and repercussions, enters into a long-term monogamous relationship with one girl for one purpose (desire to be married, have children, raise a family, tax shelter, etc). We are not dealing here with men who make an informed choice to get married and settle down; so don’t even think about commenting or emailing to that effect. Thank you.
There are several stages of Oneitis, ranging in severity.
At early stages, Oneitis usually intrudes into an otherwise healthy dating life where a guy is seeing maybe 3 or 4 women socially, and 1 of those women begins taking up a greater and greater percentage of his thoughts. He may also talk about her significantly more than other women, giving his male friends a shot at an early diagnosis.
At advanced stages, Oneitis is the belief that a single woman is “perfect” of “The One” and all other women should be forsaken in order to try to please and win her.
NOTE: Notice how similar the above description of “Advanced Oneitis” is with typical Disneyfied perspectives on courtly romance? We will return to this strange fact in a moment.
Distinguishing Oneitis from Benign “Liking”
Oneitis should not be confused with “liking”. A healthy man will grow to like, have affection for, and form attachments to, any number of women over the course of his dating life, many of them at the same time.
Two major features differentiate Oneitis from a simple “preference” for a given women:
- Insufficient Rational for Liking: the Oneitis feelings usually predate any actual sexual encounter or serious interaction with the woman
- Strong Fantasy Component: the Oneitis feelings often have a very high “fantasy” component, that is, the afflicted man has many “imagined” conversations and “imagined” interactions with the women, in lieu of actual interactions.
To point #1: it is possible (and very likely) to develop Oneitis in the context of a relationship; in that situation, it is typically called “settling”, having “fallen” (for women) or being “pussy-whipped” (for men). In any case, it is marked by the relationship taking over an ever-increasing portion of the sufferer’s time, energy, and/or headspace, to the point that the afflicted stops seeing their friends, stops engaging in hobbies or activities they used to love, and basically focuses on two things: work, and their relationship partner — to the exclusion of all else.
To point #2: Fantasizing about women you will *never* meet (celebrities, actresses, etc) or women you are currently fucking, do not fall under the definition of Oneitis, so long as you are actively developing other sexual options at the same time.
Psychological Basis
The process of Oneitis is very much akin to other forms of hero-worship: celebrity obsession, “pedastaling” women, and idolization.
What all of these afflictions share in common is that the suffering person is not attracted by the actual substance or character of the idolized person; but rather by their own mental construction of what the idolized person must be like.
This links back to the “Fantasy” component of the disease: the sufferer essentially makes up a person to idolize towards during their long bouts of fantasizing. This made-up character may resemble the actual flesh-and-blood woman in only the most shallow and superficial of ways, but to the Oneitis sufferer, it does not matter — they are totally convinced by their own fantasy.
In this way Oneitis has a lot in common with the psychological concept of Projection. First identified by Freud in a psychoanalytic context, Projection is the process of “projecting” your own fears, insecurities, or hopes and dreams onto another person who in no way personally embodies them.
In a psychoanalytic or therapeutic context, Projection can be part of a healing process: in dating, Projecting your ideal of the “Perfect Woman” onto a random good-looking chick is totally counterproductive, and likely to lead to much pain and suffering (once the sufferer discovers just what a thoughtless bitch his “dream woman” actually is).
Symptoms
In general, Oneitis leads to the man placing unrealistic importance on a single woman; and this in turns leads to him placing inappropriate importance on his every action and word while around her, as well as unrealistic expectations on their interactions in general.
Ironically, this over-investment in a single woman is almost invariably totally counterproductive to a successful “seduction”. In short, it creeps women out. It’s very similar to “pedestaling”, as defined in What Makes Women Hot:
…because of perceived scarcity, the guy is boosting this random woman’s value very high, very quickly, simply because he thinks she is rare, and therefore valuable, and his fear of losing all her good qualities motivates him to see her as more valuable than she actually is…Of course, this “pedestaling” absolutely sabotages any chances this guy ever had of generating attraction with this girl, since he is boosting her value in his own eyes much faster than she could ever possibly boost his value in her eyes
A woman can tell when a guy is TOO into her; when he is placing unrealistic, fantasy-based expectations and desires on her. It’s a huge turn-off, because it subcommunicates neediness, scarcity (guy doesn’t get laid enough, therefore is not an Alpha male), and that Deadliest Label of All: desperation.
As mentioned above, other symptoms include:
- Increasing amounts of time spent thinking about object of desire (OoD)
- Lack of any actual plans to interact with OoD in a meaningful way
- Idealization of OoD
- Ignoring other women in favor of (absent) OoD
..The list could go on. Guys do all sorts of strange things when afflicted with a bad case of one-itis, including skipping out on boy’s night out in order to sit at home waiting for the OoD to call (and she never does); use your imagination, there are almost no limits to how fully this disease can seize and terrorize the mind.
Reasons for Oneitis
You may be wondering why Oneitis exists at all, and it’s a good question.
Based on what we know about evolutionary biology / sociology, men have a built-in wandering eye: they are unlikely to be satisfied with a single woman as time goes on, to the point of growing bored at the very sight of her.
Counteracting this evolutionary tendency is strong and social cultural programming. Western males have been trained specifically to develop One-itis in the context of “Romantic Love” in order to suppress their baser urges (mate with as many women as possible) in order to better produce the fundamentally American economic unit — the nuclear family (in which women do most of the purchasing, even if men hold the higher “purchasing power” due to larger salaries).
Thus, the canny advertising industry that powers American consumer culture, recognizing that women are more likely to spend more for retail (useless) goods by their very psychological (detail-oriented and gathering) nature, has set up a system that corrals men into relationships (via oneitis and modern “courtship” rules) where the majority of their economic output can be easily fed back into the system by willful wives.
Or, so I would conclude, were I paranoid and given to conspiracy theories ;)
Prognosis
Any stage of Oneitis can be dangerous to a man’s “dating health”. At lower levels, the preoccupation wastes valuable dating and socializing time. Advanced Oneitis, leading to marriage and children, can be fatal to a man’s fertile period. Marriage leads to “regular” but scheduled sex over a period of 6 months to 2 years (or however it takes for his wife to conceive) and thereafter a declining schedule of sex, or total celibacy (”celibacy by childbirth” as it is sometimes called).
Treatment Options
The first defense any given man can have against oneitis is experience.
The truth is, the more women one dates (and sleeps with), the more similarity is apparent between them. This is a sweet sorrow, however, since the truly rare and exceptional women become even more obvious and valuable for all the bland sameness in the gender.
So, having had upwards of 20 girlfriends (sexual partners) over the course of your life is probably the best defense against oneitis. The disease typically strikes early in the dating trajectory of a young man’s life, and the likelihood of developing it is reduced at a steady rate, approaching zero asymptotically as his number of past relations grows.
The second defense a man has, and the natural defense associated with younger men who have yet to experience all the variety the female specimen has to offer, is a council of one’s peers (”buddies”) who, being clearheaded, rational, and in combination much more experienced than the at-risk individual, can easily say,
“Dude, don’t get oneitis. Do you have any idea how many other women out there have pussies and mouths?”
Treatment
The preferred and most oft-recommended treatment option for most men with a legitimate case of Oneitis is to “Go Fuck Ten Other Women” (GFTOW).
Although most men won’t take this treatment literally, the implication is clear: there are plenty of fish in the sea, don’t get unnaturally hung up on this one, but instead go out into the world and explore all the myriad options available to you.
If applied swiftly and with encouragement and moral support from his buddies (who are willing to play the role of wingman), and before Oneitis can progress to more advanced stages, the “GFTOW” treatment has a very high success rate.
And, as an added bonus, if the afflicted takes a full course of the treatment (that is, ten women), Oneitis has a very low rate of recurrence.
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Questions? Comments? Comment below or email thirtyplus (at) realitymethod (dot) com. Links appreciated as always.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Actually, the “men want to impregnate as many women as possible” principle isn’t as holy as you make it out to be.
Monogamous men have an evolutionary edge over ‘players’ that is specific for humans in contrast to the other primates, except perhaps Orang-utans and Bonobos which have the same problems to a lesser degree.
The biggest difference between humans and other species, that has driven men to monogamy, is the difficulty human women have with childbirth. Mostly to blame is of course the baby’s large head. Death of the mother during childbirth is (was) much more prevalent in paleolithic humans than in any other species, and a woman who has survived childbirth before (translated into modern language: who has been in a relationship for an extended period of time) becomes more desirable, more attractive, particularly to her partner.
Thus men are more likely to develop one-itis after a longer period of commitment, at which point the woman really has to work hard to keep her interest alive (I’m talking 4+ years here), and one-itis is a survival instinct just like any other.
February 6th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
It’s true that babies with bigger and bigger brains (heads) have left the species with no option but to push the baby out earlier and earlier (the other option, to widen women’s hips further, would cripple them).
But I don’t believe this drives men to *monogamy*. It may encourage them to stick around longer than they otherwise would and help care for the child during the early years, but isn’t a single woman perfectly capable of raising her infant to adulthood by herself?
A male mate sticking around for 1-4 years is not monogamy. In fact, even monogamous relationships typically leave him plenty of time to go philandering.
A woman who has survived childhood becomes more desirable and attractive — particularly to her partner? I haven’t seen any evidence for this, either anecdotal or scientific. Please bring some to my attention! What about the fact that she has already used one of a finite number of eggs? What about the fact that she has spent significant time and resources (bodily and mental) on raising a child?
The “greater attractiveness to her partner” thing you refer to — are you referring to the “attachment” brain chemistry that works for long-term pair bonding? If so, that’s still not a guarantee of monogamy.
Here’s a few other posts on the topic that you might be interested in:
http://realitymethod.com/2007/02/why-women-cheat/
http://realitymethod.com/2007/01/the-red-queen-sex-the-evolution-of-human-nature/
Monogamous SOCIETIES may have an edge over POLYGAMOUS (or Polyandorus) societies in that there’s more genetic mixing going on; as a result of the fact that EVERYBODY gets to partner up 1 to 1 (instead of a few elites monopolizing the breeding resources). I haven’t seen any research that has extrapolated those principles to individuals. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, people that are able to mate with more than one partner, male OR female, do better in the long run. See the posts above for explanations of why this is.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Have to disagree here again -
the thing that gives monogamous men an edge is not staying with their woman per se, but all the work they do to get her to stay with them.
To understand human reproductive instincts, you have to think back further than just Victorian times or Middle Ages - any feelings that stem from those periods are cultural rather than natural (although it can be argued that cultured feelings are a natural phenomenon, this has to do with the human tendency to fit into a society rather than any kind of direct reproductive instinct).
Instead, go back to paleolithic times. Times were hard, death rates were high; among men, mostly because of malnutrition and hunting injuries, among women, malnutrition and complications of childbirth and/or child rearing.
Fact is that a woman needs a certain build to be able to carry, have, and raise children. The appeal of a thin woman over a fat woman is obvious: the thin one is quicker on her feet, looks younger, and fat women may have fertility problems. The appeal of a stocky woman, however, is that she will be better able to have and care for children. The stockiness of her body has had an effect on her bones (fat people, as physicians will tell you, really ARE big-boned as well: their bones have grown to support their bulk) that has made her pelvis wider, and she deals with blood loss from childbirth and subsequent nursing better than a woman with fewer reserves.
Fat women were rare if non-existent in paleolithic times. Many died of malnutrition or starvation, and a woman who could successfully rear multiple children was valuable. Hence the attraction of a man to a woman he already has a child with / has been in a long-term relationship with. He will help her raise HIS child, and the chance that she’ll carry and raise more of his children is bigger, as she is obviously equal to the task.
This attraction does not manifest in some kind of “second in-love feeling” from the man; instead, this is the “bond” you speak of. Why do you think this bonding phenomenon exists? It is to ensure that the couple works together to rear their children, and for the woman it means constant support and help when she is incapacitated, whereas for the man it means this valuable woman will bear only his children.
Male monogamy is one of the ways of men to ensure that the woman they perceive as valuable stays with them. Women want their man to stay with them for obvious reasons, and men who have the instinct to comply do so to ensure that their woman does not start wandering.
Have you never read how after about 4 years, it is more usually the woman breaking up the relationship than the man? This is because women are programmed to stay with their man for 4 years - after that (think paleolithic) their child is weaned and can walk and talk, and it is possible to ditch the first man and start looking for a new one, thereby diversifying the offspring - whereas men have usually developed a full-fledged Bond by then, and want to keep their woman. For reasons stated above.
The whole thing, men being monogamous, wanting to treat their woman right, etc, stems from an instinct to want to bind this woman to them. A man who plays around can expect his woman to do the same, increasing the risk of offspring by other men.
As for the finite number of eggs you mention, it is a myth that a woman runs out of eggs in her lifetime. Menopause occurs at a time when a woman, becoming older, is less likely to survive the ordeal of having a child, at which point her body forces her into “grandmother” position, not when she “runs out of eggs”.
Then again, I have no literature to back up my claims. It is all based on evidence presented to me in places like Discovery Channel, but obviously I cannot quote those. I will not expect you to just believe me; to me, the above makes sense, but it is often difficult to distinguish cultural preferences from natural ones - when I say that fuller, more mature women are attractive to some men, I can hear you think “but I like young, slim women better…” and I’ll say that this is a natural instinct to like young women, amplified by a cultural preference that values female virginity (and therefore youth) and undervalues a woman’s life experience, because these days, we have so many ways to ensure a woman lives through childbirth.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Your assertion that “big boned” (I would say overweight) women were better able to survive childbirth is pretty ridiculous, as is the idea that men just spontaneously started acting monogamous as an adaptive strategy that relied completely on hoping against hope that their mates will follow the good example. These theories make no sense in any logical way, when you think about the scientifically-accepted Red Queen and “selfish gene” model of reproduction and mating strategies.
While your arguments above may comfort you in your own personal situation, your knowledge of socio (evolutionary) biology needs a brush-up. It’s not a field of study you can just think your way through using your own internal states of logic and wishes, and a bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery channel, because some of the most “logical” structures or processes actually developed for very different (though no less logical) reasons.
To wit. You talk about pair boding. Pair bonding happens naturally in any couple after between 2-4 years as the neurochemicals that create the intense “lust/love” high are time-limited, and endorphins take over, settling them into a more long-lasting “attachment” phase that covers 7 years +. This is why you hear (and you talked about) a 2-year / 4-year / 7-year “itch”. These “windows” occur for a variety of reasons, but in no small part due to neurochemistry. Receptor sites can’t go on being bombarded with dopamine and phenylethylamine forever, something has to take over, and in successful marriages and relationships, endorphins do. But pair bonding, and the associated chemicals themselves, aren’t nearly strong enough to keep a man from leaving a woman (or vice versa) if they become convinced the Grass is Greener. In modern relationships, it’s not so much that men get attached, as it is the case that they get lazy (though women can be equally accused of this one).
Also, the attraction to “skinny” women you spoke of doesn’t actually exist — what men are actually attracted to, biologically speaking, is a ratio between the hips, waist, and bust. There is a specific ratio and specific evolutionary reasons having to do with health and childbearing ability, and evidence for that evolutionary reason is found in the fact that the “gynoid” fat deposit pattern adds fat on the hips, buttocks, and breasts PREFERENTIALLY, literally changing the “golden ratio” in a way that is set up to fool men into thinking breasts with more fat deposits are more milkful. But men certainly aren’t attracted physically to “big-boned” (again, I say fat) women on any physiological or evo psych grounds, and The Golden Ratio certainly doesn’t include that class of women.
Suffice it to say neither nature nor nurture (environment) by themselves shape desires or relationship patterns — nature and nurture are to people as height and width are to a field — you can’t have one without the other.
March 8th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Being blissfully infected by the One-itis bug I feel I can respond as a subject study. Knowing that the after-effects are much worse than the condition, I’ve been considering my exit from the situation. Not that I am looking forward to it while the flavor lasts, so-to-speak. I just don’t wish to suffer too much of the pain of separation that will eventually be a part of the total experience. I have always had plenty of access to sexual favors with other women but they seem so unimportant while I am infected with One-itis. It is funny how your perspective changes when you are not being exclusively led around by your penis. I say enjoy it while it is there. To me it is like fresh fragrant air blowing through my soul. It doesn’t happen too often and I feel that I should appreciate it when it does. I have too frequently settled for a woman only for her sexual body parts and what she can do with them. Now that I am older and once again experiencing One-itis, I realize that there seems to be a wonderful difference between mere sex and making love to a woman who has grabbed me by the libido.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Sounds like “The Actress” has been doing some “original research” there. Her opinions fly in the face of pretty must all socio-anthropology and evolutionary psychology findings.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
“Suffice it to say neither nature nor nurture (environment) by themselves shape desires or relationship patterns — nature and nurture are to people as height and width are to a field — you can’t have one without the other.”
Thank you! Goodness, I get so tired of ignorant people arguing about nature vs nurture. What is more important to human life, water or oxygen?
Anyway, one point of clarification is useful. You may have overlooked it or chosen not to mention it on account of actress not bringing it up. Either way, curvy women do appear to have one advantage from a childbearing evolutionary standpoint. They appear to give birth to smarter children. (Curvy, not fat!)
September 24th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I have experienced oneitis countless times - reason being is due to my lack of experience so the next chick to show some interest in me (whether it is by flirting or even coming out on the night of my birthday) leads me to this problem.
True Story
- I never considered this chick to be attractive nor show any interest in her, but we kept talking
- once in holidays, all of a sudden she made contact on my facebook page - “hey hows ur holidays etc etc..”
- that sparked my interest
then these symptoms mentioned above occurred:
1. Insufficient Rational for Liking: the Oneitis feelings usually predate any actual sexual encounter or serious interaction with the woman
2. Strong Fantasy Component: the Oneitis feelings often have a very high “fantasy” component, that is, the afflicted man has many “imagined” conversations and “imagined” interactions with the women, in lieu of actual interactions.
would always fantasies about her in bed, all the possibly scenarios etc..
and yes it does sabotage ur chances unfortunately
“everything is a learning experience” - my philosophy