Shyler,

Funny, being seduced has never been high on my list of priorities even when I was single. I prefer knowing that people actually like me as a person and aren't solely interested in sex.

Fin,

I think my point has been slightly misconstrued on this thread--something that is partly my fault. I have a slight tendancy to get diverted onto tangents that don't address my main point and then get locked into defending something that I don't necessarily agree with. I'm working on it.

Neither true nor false representations of oneself inherently imply a lack of censureship or behavioural modification. One can still censure or change one's own behaviour without presenting a false image of the self. (A common example--you have a coworker that you have to interact with and find that something you do annoys him/her. Changing that behaviour doesn't necessarily imply that you're presenting a false image of yourself, depending on what that behaviour is or on how deeply it is engrained in your character. If you're pretending to absolutely love Dancing with the Stars when you despise all forms of dancing, then you are presenting a false image of yourself. If, however, you realise that asking questions in a particular way, or explaining something from the getgo annoys her and you change the behaviour, I don't think that you're presenting a false image of yourself because, most of the time, it's purely a superficial matter. No one is a monolithic, who engages with all people in the exact same way--choosing to engage in one way rather than another so long as the only changes are superficial is irrelevant.)

Every person is complex, and inherently has multiple social beings. You act differently with some friends than others (often particularly noticeable when the groups themselves significantly diverge), typically act differently around your parents and family when compared to how you act around your friends, and so on. That doesn't neccesarily imply any manipulation or dishonesty. People bring out different personality traits in us, and different traits and modes of behaviour are appropriate in different settings.

Given that we are not monoliths, the distinction that I draw between an honest and false presentation of self can be a difficult one to make. The other important thing to note is that this definition is contingent upon how the individual in question sees him or herself, not how others see this person. Thus, if you are really terrible singer and believe that you're God's gift to the music world, presenting yourself as a wonderful singer is an honest presentation of self even though this honest presentation may be a bit misguided.

Honest and false presentations of self should also not be confused with the difference between honesty and full disclosure that I listed earlier. Since the honest presentation is based upon how the individual sees him/herself, you have to take that individual's own personal narrative into account. Everyone has a personal narrative running through their heads, and each one of them is inherently biased. So playing off of one's strengths and minimzing one's weaknesses is also not necessarily a false presentation of self, so long as it is line with one's own personal narrative.

As I understand false presentation of self, it involves presenting yourself in a way that you do not believe yourself to be in order to gain some advantage. In addition, this false presentation of self has to involve some feature or aspect of your deepest personality, your innermost self, if you will. Small dishonesties--ie. smiling at a joke you don't find funny, being polite but not overly friendly to some that you actually dislike--do not qualify as a misrepresentation of self unless they somehow speak to some deeper aspect of your personality. If you consider humour to be art form and view bad jokes as an absolute travesty against mankind, then you are presenting a false image of yourself by laughing at a bad joke. If you don't have any such hangups and value the commaderie that jokes provide, then it isn't a false presentation of self, because you value the joke not for what it is, but for what it represents.

Hopefully that helps clarify. I should mention, when I get into discussion like this, I do from a search-for-truth standpoint rather than a wrong-right/win-lose standpoint. Thus, my ideas are constantly evolving, something else that can make them difficult to pin down.

Edit: Realizing that the paradigm I have just constructed is self-defeating, I feel that I must add a further element. It also depends upon the depth of the deception/misrepresentation.

Realitically, society owes its relatively stable existence to the proliferation of small lies. These allow us to get through our daily lives without terribly offending everyone that we meet. These don't reach the level of honest vs. false representation because, in most cases, they don't misconstrue our core values strongly enough to matter. Unless, of course, you happen to value radical honesty in all situations, something that, depsite appreances, I do not endorse.

Apart from the accurate representation of values dimension of honest vs. dishonest presentations of self, there is a further element that deals with the effect that your representation has upon other people. As per my definition above, a false representation of self involves presenting yourself in a way that you do not believe yourself to be in order to gain some advantage. Is it always wrong? In an ideal world, yes. We, however, do not live in ideal world. False presentations of self are wrong in proportion to the extent of what you are hoping to gain from another--the more that you hope to exploit, the more loathsome that your behaviour becomes.

As per my definition above, a false representation of self involves presenting yourself in a way that you do not believe yourself to be in order to gain some advantage.

How can using different techniques to seduce women be RIGHT thing to do. I believe building a better personality which is also more attractive to women is good, but I have serious concerns about how different techniques used by majority of guys with intention to get laid is correct?

In my first post I described the situation about a girl which I really liked, I was looking for ways to take her although she had a boyfriend, because I thought that their relationship is not serious and she is right for me. I renewed contact, but now I can see that these two love each other, and even if I could, I would never hurt their relationship even if I liked the girl A LOT- so that I even can say that I fell for her. Now many guys out there really don't care about these girls. But they also have feelings and they deserve happiness. If we learn techniques to attract them, to make them happy for some time, because they think that we are the RIGHT guys, and then just break all relationships after some time. How can this be right. Sorry for such a long post but I'm really puzzled. I don't want my happiness to be based on other peoples' unhappiness. Peace.

Is trolling on this forum right? No its a PUA forum for chirst sake!