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I'm not talking about paperback romance novels or the YA equivalents, like Twilight, because that makes sense to me -- those are written only with women readers in mind. I'm talking about examples like the Jim and Pam storyline in The Office. Watching something like that unfold can be so exciting for me, and I doubt that it's the same for guys. But maybe it is. But if not, why not?
I'm asking this question just as much to see if guys actually do enjoy a well-written love story as to understand why they don't, if that's the case.
To generalize for the purpose of an easy answer, let's think in stereotypically gendered terms. When it comes to love, men have an active role while women have a passive one.
What are the implications of this? It means that what a woman feels as the ups and downs, the mystery, the unknown, the excitement, etc., all things that define "blossoming" love, are things that happen to her. She is passive, she is the recipient. Her agency is contained in her response to these things.
But for a man, anything that makes "love" progress (or regress) pretty much directly stems from one of his actions. He does something or initiates and a woman responds/reciprocates. Because he does not have the gendered luxury of taking a backseat or passive role and watching things happen (if he does, nothing will; the woman will lose interest), he begins, by necessity, to view love as the cause and effect relationship that it more accurately is in reality (he does something, woman responds).
Seeing something like this takes a ton of the "magic" out of it. Compare it to seeing the sun rise every day. It becomes a lot less mystical, exciting, and dramatic when you know exactly why it happens and can simply see it for the cause and effect relationship that it truly is... you may even begin to take it for granted.
This is why romance eventually becomes well... unromantic for men. Romance is not a phenomenon, but instead a verb; it's a series of actions carried out by a man to earn a woman's affections... it's labor.
So when women or their SO makes romantic gestures to men, do they like it? Do men that were heavily pursued by women feel this way? What would be some good romantic gestures for men they would appreciate?
I wonder if this is true in same sex male couples too. Does one do the work over the other? Do they view romance the same or different?
Your answer is fantastic but it raises so many other questions
So when women or their SO makes romantic gestures to men, do they like it?
You're a little bit off the mark—you're actually describing an inversion of the gendered roles here (i.e. the woman is an active contributor while the man is a passive recipient or responder). While a man will appreciate such a gesture, it's not quite what composes the male romantic fantasy (more on this later).
Do men that were heavily pursued by women feel this way?
Men who aren't used to being pursued are usually confused or thrown off by the reversal of gendered roles. The result is the prevailing idea that men do not respond well to being approached first by women or even the autobiographical accounts from men describing instances where they couldn't respond well even if they were attracted to the woman approaching them. This is the men being shocked out of the traditional "script" of romance.
Secondly, when you talk about women pursuing men, that usually happens in a markedly different fashion than the way in which men pursue women (hint: it's more passive). A woman "aggressively" pursuing a man looks more like said woman going to extensive lengths to make it clear that she is available for pursuit rather than actively pursuing; the man is still usually leading things forward in some manner by handling the logistics of this romance. This is where you get those autobiographical stories from men about missing signals; "aggressive" pursuit from women is (usually) a set of passive signals that are clear to men who are experienced, but unclear to men not used to being "pursued."
I wonder if this is true in same sex male couples too.
I do too. I talk with a homosexual friend about stuff like this a lot, maybe I'll bring it up next time I see him.
The Male Romantic Fantasy
I'd say that men usually feel most loved when this normal state of affairs is negated; when they are made to believe that a woman's love is not conditional in the cause-and-effect manner described in the parent post. Love is work for men, but it can be rewarding work when things are going smoothly and the woman is happy as a result. But the male romantic fantasy is to be shown that the woman feels the same way and stands by him when he's down on his luck, when the money's not there, or when he's not feeling confident. He wants to know that the love he believes he's earned will stay even when the actions that feed it wane (however temporarily). A good woman can often lift a man up in his times of need and desperation and weather the storm even when things aren't going well. The male romantic fantasy is an enduring and unconditional love that seems to defy this relationship of labor and reward. A man wants to be loved for who he is, not for what he does in order to be loved.
An interesting way to examine this is to look at what women often call romantic entitlement. An entitled guy is a dude who maintains an unrealistic notion of men's typically active role in love. Before acknowledging reality, this boy uncompromisingly believes that he shouldn't have to do anything or change anything about himself to earn a woman's love; he wants to be loved for who he is, not what he does.
All men secretly want this, but there comes a day when they eventually compromise out of necessity. After that day, they may spend years honing themselves, working, shaping themselves into the men they believe women want to be chosen by. A massive part of what causes boys to "grow up" is the realization that being loved requires hard work. This impetus begins a journey where a boy grows into a man by gaining strength, knowledge, resources, and wisdom. The harsh realities of the world might harden and change him into a person his boyhood self wouldn't recognize. He might adopt viewpoints he doesn't agree with, transgress his personal boundaries, or commit acts he previously thought himself incapable of. But ultimately, the goal is to feel as if his work is done.
When he can finally let go of the crank he continually turns day after day in order to earn love and, even if only for a moment, it turns by itself to nourish him in return, that is when he will know he is loved.
Maintaining a free software project is spending years of your life to solve a problem that would have taken several hours or even days without the software.
Which is, joke aside, an incredible contribution to the common good.
The time saved is multiplied by the number of users and quickly compound. They are saving time without the need to exchange their own time.
Free software offers free time, free life extension to many human living now and maybe in the future.
Instead of contributing to the economy, free software developers contribute to humanity. To the global progress.
Free software is about making our short lifetimes a common good instead of an economical product.
- Est-ce vraiment nécessaire ?
- Quels sont les risques ?
- Est-ce qu'il existe d'autres options ?
- Que se passera-t-il si je ne fais rien ?
Pour réfléchir un peu sur notre place dans l'univers
On dirait que je suis libéral en lisant ça
Un article intéressant sur les étapes pour devenir un Maître.
So true
CLIMB THAT GODDAMN MOUNTAIN
Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn.
The best things in life aren't things
Tellement vrai. Il est temps de se séparer de certaines choses.
Inspirant. Tout n'est pas encore perdu :)
Collect moments. Not things.
Finalement ce poème n'est pas de Pablo Neruda mais de Martha Medeiros
Il meurt lentement
celui qui ne voyage pas,
celui qui ne lit pas,
celui qui n’écoute pas de musique,
celui qui ne sait pas trouver grâce à ses yeux.
Il meurt lentement
celui qui détruit son amour-propre,
celui qui ne se laisse jamais aider.
Il meurt lentement
celui qui devient esclave de l’habitude
refaisant tous les jours les mêmes chemins,
celui qui ne change jamais de repère,
Ne se risque jamais à changer la couleur de ses vêtements
Ou qui ne parle jamais à un inconnu.
Il meurt lentement
celui qui évite la passion et son tourbillon d’émotions
celles qui redonnent la lumière dans les yeux
et réparent les coeurs blessés
Il meurt lentement
celui qui ne change pas de cap
lorsqu’il est malheureux au travail ou en amour,
celui qui ne prend pas de risques pour réaliser ses rêves,
celui qui, pas une seule fois dans sa vie,
n’a fui les conseils sensés.
Vis maintenant !
Risque-toi aujourd’hui !
Agis tout de suite !
Ne te laisse pas mourir lentement !
Ne te prive pas d’être heureux !
Martha Medeiros
This weekend, I enjoyed reading Andrew Bisharat’s blog post called “The Games We Play.” Among other things, it talks about risk—in climbing, in more mundane activities like driving, and in life.
Andrew’s perspective on luck resonated with me. “It’s sometimes hard to know whether it’s working against you or actually on your side,” he writes, and then gives a series of examples to make his point. One in particular, about his alpinist friend’s knee injury potentially keeping him from a dangerous season in the mountains, read like a contemporary version of the old Chinese folk tale about a farmer and his horse…
One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’ A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills, and the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, ‘Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?’
Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought that was bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’
Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg, they let him off…
Which of these events was lucky and which was unlucky? It’s impossible to tell at the time and a waste of psychic energy to worry about it much. We create our own burdens when we curse and celebrate every event through which we pass.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try hard. Work is critical—hard work doubly so—but there’s no need to see it as a burden. Instead it’s a privilege that we might try to perfect ourselves and work through the challenges life presents us.
Another example: In the late 90s, a dedicated climber named Josh was injured and had to sit out a season bouldering in the Gunks. It was an important moment for climbing in the area, relatively speaking, and Josh wouldn’t get to be a part of it. Bad luck, of course! But then Josh picked up a camera and made a video about his friends bouldering in the Gunks. The video was called Big UP, and it was the first step in what has become a very accomplished career behind the lens.
“One dream may hide another,” wrote the poet Kenneth Koch. When he was in full health, Josh’s dream of climbing might well have hidden the dream of telling climbing stories through video—a related but very different dream. His pain and injury uncovered this other dream, which perhaps was the more significant of the two.
It’s something to keep in mind the next time your project is chewing you up and spitting you off. Forego the wailing wobbler and instead consider falling as a sign that the climb still has something valuable to teach you. Therefore, the most appropriate response is to smile—because you have this chance to improve, because you’re climbing, because you’re alive at all, damnit!
Without fail, life will throw the kitchen sink at every one of us—how we see this and respond is what creates the “good” and the “bad” of it. On the one hand, this means we have much less control over our lives than we might think. On the other, we have much more control over ourselves than we care to admit.
Now is this good luck or bad luck?
Consommation ou création : c'est votre choix
Comment manger selon un Maitre chinois
La vie est faite de choix. Il existe tellement de possibilités, pourquoi rester en terrain connu?