Thanks jophil, I've skimmed the threads from time to time while away and you've been giving excellent advice at every turn!
I wanted to take a break from SS as my wife and I were having our first baby. As I watched her go through being pregnant and having our mega-cute daughter it was like watching "machine code". No one thing (from my POV) seems to have made my wife feel more "secure' than having our daughter and caring for her. Just the other day I asked her a question "If women could have just one, which would make them feel more secure - to be in a healthy relationship with no child or to have a child with no relationship." As hard as she tried to give the programmed safe answer she couldn't help but pick the later. And then she sort of laughed as she listed off friends and co-workers who were in their 30's and early 40's who were (or are) in this exact same position. Women will provision their own security if needed. And they will go to great lengths to do it.
As I skimmed the threads over the past year I observed a common theme which I hadn't noticeed when immersed in SS more daily. It's how AFC's and even DJ's label women. As AFC's we tend to call them cowards, devious, cunning, strategizing, manipulators, liars, etc, etc, etc. Then as DJ's we both observe and learn to deal with the fact that women are covert, indirect and emotional. A lot of guys stop there (which is fine). But for me I kept hearing "a woman's primary need is security" only to have the conversation or thread move on in another direction.
Now, when my wife is acting or speaking indirectly (which she always will), I just quickly chalk it up to it's source - a woman's need to constantly feel a healthy amount of security which in turn places her in a frame where she feels the need to be indirect and covert. And when she gets emotional, it's probably just the outwardly observable affects of the security/insecurity equation being imbalanced.
When it comes to attraction it's interesting to apply the security theory. Why exactly is a woman seemingly more attracted to a guy who has other women around him? Sure, we often want what others have. But there must be more to it than that.
For guys it doesn't matter if 20 million guys think Marissa Miller is hot or just me - she's just plain hot in my opinion. You can even take this a step further. A guy could be told directly in no uncertain terms that the hotty across the bar with 10 chumps in orbit is the DSM Case Book example of the Cluster-B wack job AW and the guy would still find her desireable and want to close. Or reverse it. Surround a HB5 with a bunch of guys and even an AFC isn't going to show interest.
Yet for women it appears to be a lot different. I think when they see a guy with other women they need to know that they are as desireable as the other women he appears to have selected. That rings of a sense of underlying insecurity (w/r to physical appearance and the ultimate ability to bear her own child) which needs to be balanced. And a woman knows that if the guy can't provide at least some of the type of security that a woman needs he wouldn't be surrounded by all these women thus there must be something there (even if he's just a PUA he's provisioning some of the healthy type of security that all women need - validating their desireablity).
I could go on and on. And perhaps these are too broad of strokes being applied to too many situations and categories. Yet, there seems to be a lot more to the statement "a women's primary need is security" than one might think.