This is like watching someone ask which brand of muffins they can stuff their face with to help them lose weight: you're just not quite getting the self fulfilling prophecy that is your life.

Trust, what risk? What? Trust the wrong person and you may have to tell them to go away? Woe is you.

Open yourself to others, what vulnerability? What? You might shed a tear over someone else's concerns instead of wholly your own intellectual environment?

Military journalist? You still sound like a wallflower to me. This military journalism didn't happen to be entirely based at a desk with a typewriter did it?

I tender you have to be somewhat detached from reality to foster the ignorant sociological cultivation that some men among all men have tried to simply get in your pants elicits there must be a pot of gold between your legs and thus, something of value is something which can be stolen. But it's a delusion. You actually lose nothing with these oh-so-gigantic risks of diving headlong into whatever circumstantial relationships take your fancy.

A kitten trembling over the boogeyman amongst adults isn't cute anymore, it's disturbing. You should've grown out of it. The "drama" you find many men mentioning they prefer to avoid in relationships is what it is. This is just your theatre, a drama show.

There is no risk. There is no vulnerability. They're both completely in your head.
What you've concisely outlined by any other terms, is simply electing to be afraid to cry over others, and afraid to enjoy yourself with others, unless it's on your terms and has no utterly independent interactivity from them.
It suggests a relationship with you consists of dancing for the puppet master. Now that is no fun. It's a lot like hanging around a vicious child.

And honour would be a pattern of behaviour illustrating moral code of conduct, eg. about the third time you've routinely defended another in whatever fashion you might be thus described.
Bravery would be a willingness to readily enter an apparently untenable circumstance where prudent, eg. one of those situations defending another required you to get within striking distance of a neurotoxic snake to get between it and a toddler, with no time to think or be tremendously tactical, just all ape and hope for the best (of course you might be tactically proficient enough generally to have had previous evasion training and some familiarity with most dangerous species, either way you're more likely to survive a bite than a toddler so there's really no question as to objective obligation as a member of the human community).

Just as potentially offending strangers in the occasional wake up call might be considered brave if one notes being an inherently social species, it's hardly as survivalistic as sucking up to everybody you meet. But then, since any associate fear would be all in my head, what is there to risk but the chance of common enlightenment?
Look at that, an example of proficiency in relationships. Handle my words or don't, up to you. Like everything else in your world.

Like the relationship you're in or don't really doesn't have anything to do with the other person. Asking yourself how to trust when you find trust difficult is like asking how to safely put your arm in a lion's mouth, it's a lion, you don't put your arm in its mouth. Finding a particular person difficult to trust is the parts of yourself you're not listening to saying this is the wrong person. Since there's nothing to lose among adults by trusting anyone at all with anything at all (because adults make insurances regarding anything important), that means it's just a statement that you don't really like that person for this relationship. That's all. It's distaste, not mistrust.
See how it's all on you?

Trust comes automatically when it's actually about trust. There is quite simply no risk to it.

I'd give foot rubs and clean your gutters if you dated me, Storm. And I'm very amiable, I always answer yes when you've got one hand on your hip, and no when you've got both hands on your hips.

It might not be vanity however. Spiders could have nested on her face and cosmetic surgery was simply a legitimate part of the medical treatment for spiders nesting on your face.

Did you know North Carolina seems rather attractive when Storm posts.

For a simple example of Americentricity by cultivation,

I purviewed military history masters degrees at various universities internationally, interested in obtaining this for authorship purposes.
Unfortunately Prussia no longer exists so most of the most dedicated and therefore widely recognized courses are in US military universities. More expensive than British or local ones, but Commonwealth universities don't have a big industry in military history degrees, it's not a particularly usable qualification since Parliamentary advisors must be more manipulable than qualified for the job, it's actually in the job description, I read it when I worked at local Parliament. Primary requisite is a willingness to "answer directly to the office of the MP and subject all conclusions for review" and that "any associated tertiary degree is acceptable", reading between the lines: you don't need to have any subject specific qualification for position of military advisor to Parliament, just a degree that sounds okay on paper but mostly you have to write down what the MP tells you to write on reports and put your signature on it.
So a masters in an internationally recognized military history qualification is virtually meaningless for employment here, so there are very few universities that even offer that course. You might be too independent in your ideas to fall in line with national policies if you were too qualified. One of our only famous independent military speculators is definitely the subject of terrific defamation for suggesting RAAF purchasing of Flankers rather than SuperHornets and F35s, even though some notable high ranked RAAF officers publicly agreed with him.

So I looked elsewhere to do a course online with a reputable university offering an internationally recognized qualification in the field. The US is one of the only places there's much of it.
A lot actually, hitting US universities goes from a barren wasteland of hard to find this course, to suddenly everyone offers a masters degree in this field. Must have a lot of military universities, we've got like one nationwide and it's exclusive to military personnel.

Anyhoo, to cut a long story short, I had a look over the curriculum, done in blocks of course. For each semester you submit a paper with majority contribution to overall marks. Each one of these papers is terribly Americentric.
To get your qualification in military history with an American university, you must submit papers with foregone conclusions, ie. "Show how the United States has the most superior military tactics in the world."
"Give a historical example of how the United States military helped evolve military cultures throughout the world."

etc.

I'm just not sure I can do that. I wanted a degree because I function objectively in academia and a qualification gives weight.
I don't function particularly well when I have to lie about being objective and render subjective or ethnocentric papers. I stand out academically with a free hand, I really don't towing somebody else's boat.
I won't score well trying on that basis, and I'll fail the course if I actually level my academic mind.
If I'm forced to write a paper on US military forces in the last half century, I'll objectively show its mistakes and how it got schooled big time by German military culture, not the other way around. I'm guessing that won't get me a pass.

There's an example of American ethnocentricity. I suggest it's in much of education curriculums.

Well...the most common Americentric assertion I see at a variety of site forums is the stoic belief the domestic policies of the US represent a high average standard of living and that most people in other nations throughout the world would either like to move to the US or would prefer to move to the US.

Where I'd say the opposite is true, firstly the US doesn't rank particularly high in average standard of living compared to other developed nations (including not just cost of living versus demographic income but also violent crime rates and mental disturbance pro rata). You'd have to go to an extremist muslim nation to get a more punitive criminal justice system, a third world nation to find more political corruption, and the old world monarchies of europe to seek out greater cultural ethnocentricity (the belief of being the centre of the civilised world and judging all foreign cultures by your own standards).

But that said the sheer population weight of the US means you've got social departure to these memes on the scale of small nations within your nation. So it doesn't circumstantially hold.

Where it does tend to get displayed however is in foreign policy. But it's the politicians in charge of that.

On a one to one basis, there's good and bad people relative to anyone in every country. And most nations use flagrant propaganda as part of their standard education curriculums, which by definition is ethnocentric. French are taught they invented democracy, Greeks are taught they did, Americans are taught they did, India teaches kids they invented civilisation itself, and all of them paint their own selection of other nations, cultures and national/cultural histories with white and black hats, with different versions of what good and bad, right and wrong consist of.
Intelligent individuals self educate and decide for themselves, and that can happen anywhere...moreso with modern social media technologies.

I find it an excellent illustration of what pretentious means.

I also find pretentious people tedious at best.

In all seriousness, the culturing of developed nations leaves a lot to be desired as to the development rates of youths and young adults. I believe governing policies are to stunt maturity as much as possible for more authoritarian legislative bodies with less public review.

With this in mind, I'd say mid-30s, minimum before you're even really out of intellectual nappies, unless you've an atypical upbringing.

In many third world nations however people are quite ready to marry with lifelong commitment by early twenties, but the bar on ambition is lower so I'm not sure if there's some relationship there.

Ergo, even being this generalized, it appears largely circumstantial.

$160 only because we get cash bonuses on top of e-credit wages and it was payday yesterday, so minus alcohol between then and now...

Typically 20-50 is normal with a couple of grand worth of cards. I think that's pretty average/common working class wallet stocks these days throughout the developed nations, in relative currency.

Not to you. But nobody ever finds themselves irrational.
If your thoughts speed up and you get a step or two ahead of someone else, they don't see you progress through point A-B-C, they just see you go straight to C and when they're still at A that looks irrational to them. Hence, difficult to deal with.

In an actual survival situation the very same biomechanics make you irrational, skittish and very hard to deal with, and that's the idea. It's harder to defeat someone that is generally hard to deal with and irrational, freaking out as if you just killed their mom when you pinch them on the arm. It's just that left over animal thing we've all got inside.

Might as well use it to benefit in positive ways. But I get anxious by women doing things like teasing me much more than arguing with me, so it depends on the partnership for what is going to work to heighten sensations.

Yes. Anxiety, which can be associated with argumentation heightens sensation to promote fight or flight survival instinct, so you tend to feel sensations more acutely when anxious. Redirecting this into sexual context consentually has obvious benefits, however it is also the psychology behind such challenging and controversial phenomenae as rape orgasm.

Its real purpose as a biomechanic is to make you feel pain more acutely so that you shift into survival gear with immediacy as you become injured. An argument can simulate the prelude to injury in psychological terms.

So erogenous zones will fill with blood and your senses will be heightened, etc. It is good for sex, or bad if sex is unwanted and forced.

Keeping calm when an argument turns serious has obvious benefits too. It isn't foreplay.

According to my rather extensive security protocols, this site is currently beset with malware upon loading pages. Specifically a tkblue malware page load warning.

Normally when I visit I get no warnings, the site is usually pretty clean. Perhaps this malware attack has something to do with the time stamp issue?

Is an introverted extrovert someone who runs up to you and forgets what they were going to say?

ask them what colour panties they're wearing.

I'm a simple man when it comes to what makes me happy. Just now the sn "smartwithsparks" made me picture a woman who's really smart and has sparklies floating around her head, and that made me happy.

*shrug* Like I said, I'm a simple man lol.

I would be such an empty carapace of a human being if I referred to my genitals as my heart.

lol traceye's pic is a hot bikini girl getting drunk and asking what attracts men?

this is a joke question right, I'm being punked? *looks left/looks right*

To add,

I do realize one looks like "controlling behaviour", it isn't but it looks like it to experience.
And the other looks like insecurity in your partner to experience, again it isn't but it looks like it.

They won't understand your problem solving efforts if you approach one like controlling behaviour and the other like insecurity, because those aren't what they are from their point of view and that's the secret to problem solving.

One is very caught up in their emotions, a very long way from being even slightly insecure about it.
The other is so entirely dismissive of your humanity the very suggestion they actually want to control you is laughable to them.

One is just all up in their head, the other really doesn't care what you think and honestly can't help not caring about it.
Striking at those foundations, that's where you problem solve it.

And worst of luck, people can be both towards you at the same time.

Insecurity is literally the sensation of lacking control. Six of one and half dozen of the other described like this.

The root of both possessive and jealous behaviour is an inability to self govern, but they do depart by nomenclature in form.
To be possessive you must objectify your partner (they literally become a possession, not unlike accessorising with a handbag). To act jealously of a partner's other relationships you must be subjective to the point of pretentious (where your feelings are more important than other people's feelings).
You can be both at the same time, in which case there is little difference.

But you can also be one and not the other. People with little empathy can be jealous without being possessive and simply characterised as very emotional, perhaps a little neurotic, eg. "Why am I not enough for you to have relationships with the girls at work?"

Or you could be possessive without feeling at all jealous, other relationships are irrelevent so long as yours is the most important one, more important than your partner's own well being in fact, eg. "You finished work two hours ago and it's an hour drive, where have you been for the other hour?"