Today was a bad day.
I am not a morning person (there is actually some evidence that suggests some people are genetically wired to be nocturnal). I am also not the most punctual person. But I work at a standard corporate morning job so for me most every morning is a stress and anxiety inducing event. It becomes even more anxiety-ridden when I have a meeting first thing in the morning (like today) that I have to attend because then I lose any leeway time in getting ready and out the door.
In my rush to get out the door this morning to get to the meeting on time, I had a serious physical accident that resulted in some serious trauma to my head and face. In that moment, the combination of anxiety, stress, extreme physical pain, and the thought of perhaps how badly my facial appearance would be permanently altered served as the breaking point for a meltdown. My fiancee was standing a few feet from me as this event unfolded.
I think at one point in my life I could have actually carried on in that state for awhile, but at some point and I don’t think it was very long at all (10 to 20 seconds, maybe a minute max), something kicked in and said “Pull it together and get your composure, she can’t see you carrying on like this”. No doubt, it was a Display of Weakness, but I had the presence of mind to intellectually realize I absolutely had to override the emotions I was feeling in that moment.
One of the biggest blue-pill lies is that a man can be open and transparent about his feelings and emotions with his significant other anytime he wants. That what a women really wants is a “sensitive” man who wears his emotions on his sleeve, and is eager to talk about them. This is complete and total horseshit. The truth is most all women want to believe their man is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, and get very disturbed at any hint that a man has lost emotional control. I’ve actually read comments from multiple women on various sites remarking on just how disturbing and unsettling it is for a man to display the emotion of being upset or distraught.
When we were boys and something traumatic happened, we could always run to Mom and she would kiss and make it better. She was that source of comfort and reassurance that everything was gonna be alright. Well, generally speaking, it is a huge mistake to expect your significant other or wife to step into that role of comforting and reassurance, except perhaps in very limited circumstances (close family member death) and very limited frequency. Because there is no way around the fact that in doing so you expose weakness and vulnerability, and now in her subconscious she is wondering if you are her Rock of Gibraltar or if you are a straw house that will get blown away in the winds. In contrast, you as the guy do in fact have to provide that for her when she needs it because that is her expectation.
This is perhaps one of the most bitter of all the components of the Red Pill. You’d like to think there is this one person…your mate/spouse that you can reveal ALL to in terms of your personal emotions and feelings and get comfort from, but if you go down that path excessively you are attacking the foundation of respect a woman has to have to love you.
Now I don’t think this means a man has to go through life with his mate/spouse as a stoic fortress that never shows an ounce of sadness, disappointment, being upset, but it does mean you have to be judicious about how much, when, and the reasons why for communicating those emotions.
I think this is the reason men usually have one or two really close male friends that often go back to childhood. Very often, that is the one person you can tell all to without fear of being perceived as weak. In contrast, I do think part of a woman’s love is based on a man’s strength and it will be increasingly difficult to love a man perceived as weak.
The bottom line is I believe you have to stay mindful when it comes to displays of weakness. If you’ve chosen wisely, you should have some slack, but if it becomes a too frequent occurrence don’t be surprised if the relationship ends up as wreckage on the rocks.
You can shed a tear when your Father dies and when your dog dies, other than those occasions, grit your teeth.
From the 16 Commandments of Poon:
Hope you’re alright, Morpheus. And look on the bright side: a scar will just make you look more rugged.
The idea in your post is very important for men to realize. I think it’s important to pick and choose when to be vulnerable and to certainly not be a whiny gamma around your woman. lol But it does kind of fuck with the romantic notions we have that you’d love to be able to completely open up.
The flipside is that if a woman can sincerely be supportive and not lose attraction to a man if he opens up that that man will appreciate it. He will realize he can trust the woman and I think most good-hearted men remember and reward such behavior. There’s a bit of girl game in that right there.
More than a few times, different girls at different stages of the relationships asked me to be more open and explicitly let me know that I could count on them if I ever was having a bad time / was vulnerable / was feeling down / worried / weak.
I think they imagined themselves taking care of a weaker version of me and that image was appealing. I dont think they imagined it to be possible.
So next time I would be worried, stressed, feeling weak, ambivalent, or even if I just had a bad day, I’d open up and say it like it was – just like I were talking to a male friend.
Every time I got a mix of indifference, contempt, disdain – plus an uphill battle if I insisted on cashing on their promise.
Then I understood it. It’s like a parent and their kid. The parent can deal with the turmoils of the kid. The kid is ill prepared to deal with the turmoils of the parent. Putting up with the turmoils of the parents will effectively fuck up the kid.
So. I think women / girls can be receptive and take on the drama and weakness and be supportive – of their friends, male and female, and family.
They are just unable to do that kind of stuff for men they are attracted to / look up to / desire. It’s one or the other.
Now if I need to wind out about stuff that stresses me, I do it to the air, in her presence. I can complain and spite shit about stuff, and get bothered, and be “myself”. As long as Im not asking for support of any kind, and I dont really need any kind of help there. Pain sans weakness.
Hope you’re doing alright man.
Good post. As you said, it doesn’t knock you out in one fell swoop (as long as she’s a halfway decent human being), but every little bit starts to chip away at the foundation of respect. The key is to find a girl with the capability to have a strong foundation. Definitely something I wish I would’ve learned at a young age.
Thanks guys….I’m doing alright. They ran a few tests and no sign of a concussion. I actually had a plastic surgeon stitch me up to hopefully minimize the scarring but only time will tell how it ends up looking.
Jimmy, my inclination is to view all these things we talk about on spectrums like knobs with 1 to 10 settings rather than extreme categories or binary 0s and 1s.
That’s why I think it is beyond silly to lump men into “restricted” and “unrestricted” and then present the restricted as “true romantics” while the “unrestricted’ just lie about feelings to get the bang and move on to the next target. It is such a ridiculously, oversimplified, cartoonish look at the world of how men and women get together.
I think different women are going to have different tolerance levels for men displaying emotions, especially emotions that relate to sadness, being upset, being disappointed, feeling lost….as you put it anything that “chips away” at the perception of being the strong man in control of himself and his environment. I think you were the one who on the alpha/beta issue pointed out if you are going to err, err on the side of too much alpha. That’s easier to fix. Similarly, here I think a guy has to err on the side of less emotion when it comes to those that reveal some weakness and vulnerability.
Tonight I was trying to gauge any serious negative hit, and I couldn’t pick anything up. Now if I had crawled up in the fetal position on the floor this morning for 5-10 minutes, I probably would have had a lot more to recover from. She was looking at the stitching and said “even if you have a big scar, you’ll still be handsome”. I figured that was a good open door for some cocky funny so I just said with a smirk “I know”.
Yohami,
LOL. There should be a T-shirt that says “I am a girl, don’t listen to me, I don’t know what I really want”.
I like the analogy, and I think it spot on.
Han,
Yeah, I think it goes back to a woman being able to see a man as a “protector”.
The flipside is that if a woman can sincerely be supportive and not lose attraction to a man if he opens up that that man will appreciate it. He will realize he can trust the woman and I think most good-hearted men remember and reward such behavior. There’s a bit of girl game in that right there.
I really like your model of the Ps, I forget which P it might tie into, but I think the one quality that really will just get a man is a woman who is nurturing, and I don’t just mean from the perspective of future kids.
There is a time and a place to show a smidgen of vulnerability. But it can only be in moments when the man’s strength is not necessary and even then, such displays should be rare. She has to know when the chips are down her man is a rock, he is not going to come apart, not going to assume the fetal position.
That would fall into the Personality P, I guess.
The advice to men is to pick and choose when and how to be “vulnerable” and not go overboard in too much whining and neediness. Sharing emotional things is totally fine if it’s the right kind of emotion. In fact, you want to be the-right-kind-of emotional with her. But the weak and needy types of emotional displays need to be kept to a minimum or eliminated altogether if possible. I think Yohami hit on a good point of not making her feel like she has to support you suddenly.
But few men are never going to show signs of weakness or distress and so from a woman’s POV, if she can show support and nurturing for her man (assuming he’s not a dick, and that he loves her), her standing by him and not freaking out will definitely play into a bit of the male fantasy of being accepted and loved by her in thick and thin.
I know when I’ve felt that a woman stands by me that that really boosts my opinion of her and makes me think that she won’t be looking for excuses to abandon me when things get rough.
So, there really is good advice for both men and women out of this.
[…] Today was a bad day. I am not a morning person (there is actually some evidence that suggests some people are genetically wired to be nocturnal). I am also not the most punctual person. […]
Hope you get better quickly.
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/woman-cry-more-than-men
There are several biological reasons why women cry and have more emotional lability more than men.
But I don’t think mixing the terms “vulnerability” and “weakness” is a good idea.
Think about this. Lust and anger are emotions. Do you beg your girlfriend to quench your lust? Do you lose control every time you’re angry? You still show them (vulnerability), but you show them from a place of inner power (non-neediness)
Simply put, you have to match your vulnerability with strength (badboy with a golden heart, per say) otherwise it comes off as needy.
I like what former PUA Mark Manson (Entropy) says about the topic:
http://markmanson.net/vulnerability
Here’s an easy rule of thumb: whatever feminists (and women dating jerks and making excessive status updates on Facebook about it) say they want, be the opposite of that.
Feminism is just a way to make the least desirable women in society more desirable by 1) normalizing indicators of low-value in women and 2) encouraging men to be as unattractive as possible. So take their advice as a “what not to do” and you’ll be good to go.
Yeah the open part of me was always a downside with women in my blue pill days.
Here’s a list of people that will hear the worst of my weaknesses when I need to vent:
My priest
My dad
My mom
My brother
My friend who has known me since I was 7
So as you can see…my mother is the only woman that hears when I’m having a rough go around. Because she is the only woman who won’t hold it against me.
Just a girl, but….
I think Shadow Nirvana nails it.
“Think about this. Lust and anger are emotions. Do you beg your girlfriend to quench your lust? Do you lose control every time you’re angry? You still show them (vulnerability), but you show them from a place of inner power (non-neediness)
Simply put, you have to match your vulnerability with strength (badboy with a golden heart, per say) otherwise it comes off as needy.
Candidly, I wouldn’t think I had much of a marriage if my husband had to call a friend or mother instead of confiding in me. I’ve seen my husband cry quite a few times. I’ve also seen him explosively angry (though this doesn’t happen much, and I’m glad, it’s quite impressive). Cubans in general are very emotional, passionate people. For them, vulnerability works…because they are also really strong in a pinch, and there’s no way anyone would confuse a vulnerable moment with personal weakness. Just my .01 cents.
Forgot to add: I’m sorry to hear about your ordeal, Morpheus.
Watch out for dizzy spells. Sometimes a good knock to the head can bring on low-grade labrynthitis. It’s just an inner ear problem, but it can last a while. It’s most noticeable getting up in the morning due to fluid shifts in the inner ear. ((hugs from a nurse))
Good points.
Problem is where these points stand in the more general conversation(s).
For example, what would HUS’ proprietor say? Her commenters? What proportion of the general conversation do they represent?
Great post and I agree that this can be a truly bitter pill for men to swallow. When terms like “emotional needs” and “intimacy” are used by women, men may think that they refer to a symmetrical dialogue in which both parties are able to openly share weakness, doubts, psychological torments, etc. After all, that sounds fair. Then these guys feel ambushed when they go ahead and open up and then have these little confessionals used against them later.
The reality is that in many/most situations the woman defines “intimacy” from the perspective of her being able to be emotionally expressive to the man and to have the man serve as a nonjudgmental stability anchor, sounding board, or positive psychotherapy source. The man is not meant to do the same; requests for him to open up are a kind of perverse reverse-incentives test in which the man “wins” by failing to comply with the stated wish. The guy is meant to display sprezzatura, swag, and grace under pressure at almost all times, with the allowable exceptions being the deaths of loved ones.
I do know a number of women who, to their great credit, have realized that this is not fair, at least in a post-feminist environment. Rather than trying to force themselves to appreciate an emotionally volatile man, which they just cannot bring themselves to do, they are going the other way and trying to adopt positions of psychological self-sufficiency themselves.
Several women who have gone this route have told me that what they used to hate most about casual dating was the exhausting need to continually display a super-positive, fun, easygoing “guy-like” personality; they know that in the initial stages of a relationship the failure to do this may make men run away referencing The Crazy. But these women are finding that they have a tremendous edge in the SMP if they can in fact maintain these personas and attain the rating of “Cool Chick” or “Badass” from a social circle of alpha males.
The cost of this *may* be a gradual dissolution of female friendships. Back on Susan’s board I chronicled the progress of a female attorney friend who went on a Nietzschean “will to power” kick and combined 800cc breast augmentation with very stylish and girly clothes (Louboutin, Zac Posen) and a deep-dive into quintessentially male interests including the UFC, graphic novels, steakhouses, single-malts, porn, football, and violent shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Strike Back”. Perhaps most importantly, she started adopting a very emotionally consistent, low-maintenance persona. The results have been absolutely spectacular for her in terms of both quality and quantity of dating choices, but the unexpected side effect of this extended foray into the male mind has been that she has gone native and developed less and less tolerance for drama and emotional sharing among her female friends. They are starting to act like she has violated cartel pricing rules, has betrayed her peers, and is now too dangerous to ever have around their own husbands and boyfriends. This of course makes her only more attractive to men.
“Then these guys feel ambushed when they go ahead and open up and then have these little confessionals used against them later.”
That is one of the benefits of being Catholic. I can dump my weaknesses to a priest in the confessional and let God forgive me and strengthen me…and know that the weaknesses won’t be used against me later on.
Now if I open my mouth to others about it…they surely can be.
Confession to me is free therapy.
Sorry to hear about your accident, hope you don’t end up with any scarring. In recent years I have had to try and deal with my temper better. I have guys working for me now and can’t afford to fly into a rage at work like I used to. Getting a handle on your emotional state is one of the best things a guy can do for his own happiness, irrespective of whether it helps with women or not.
Jenna Marbles rants on this general topic:
#15 Bastiat: “Back on Susan’s board I chronicled the progress of a female attorney friend who went on a Nietzschean “will to power” kick and combined 800cc breast augmentation with very stylish and girly clothes (Louboutin, Zac Posen) and a deep-dive into quintessentially male interests including the UFC, graphic novels, steakhouses, single-malts, porn, football, and violent shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Strike Back”. Perhaps most importantly, she started adopting a very emotionally consistent, low-maintenance persona.”
But isn’t that what those in “the business” would call the Chameleon Syndrome?
I. Expressing vulnerability in one’s personal affairs.
I always had an exaggerated need for this emotional validation, I think. Largely owing to my believing the “real men share their feelings” shibboleth, but also because I skipped the stage of life where I ran to my mother with pain or confusion; she was predatory and ill, so that just never happened; I’ve had one conversation with her in my life. I burdened my ex- with the expectations of periodic emotional venting — say a few times a year — in part because I simply had never confided emotions or emotional subjects to a woman before. Being a good ideologue, she affirmed the practice while at the same time, I know now, it diminished me in her eyes. Today I think it might be justified once every ten years. Particularly older women with children know what a little boy looks like. Little boys only attract some very strange women, and not very many of them.
In the best instance, when I encountered an apex female who actually embodied ideas of fairness and partnership, as expressed by Jenna Marbles (man, is she funny and brilliant; thanks BB), she also expected me to be emotionally transparent. But only to the degree that I could identify a troubling issue, not manifest it. Her take was that men are allowed vulnerability, but they ceased being attractive once they expressed that vulnerability instead of simply managing it. Nobody wants to go flying with a pilot who’s whining about this or that. Appeals to Mommie are of no use when you have to shut an engine down.
Last year, I think I probably compromised and lost an important relationship, because I made manifest this need for emotional equivalence. Or, to be more precise, I friendzoned myself. It was too threatening to me, being pre-enlightened, to simply assert leadership and a solution to a couple problems we had, in that relationship. For just as we are told by the magazines that “emotional transparency” is the sign of an evolved man, so we are told that imposing or directing any solution to an emotionally-rich problem set is abusive and sexist. Unilateral action to solve the emotional problem = unilateral disrespect. Of course, the opposite is true. The woman in question would have welcomed my solving the problem and loved me more for doing so. I’m in the friendzone because my opposite reaction lowered, rather than elevated me.
II. Business Application.
I think this is true in business, as well. I know that in my case I have had extremely stable senior staff groups and that one reason is that I have always sought personal validation from them as well as professional kinship. Attrition in my small companies (typically 20-100 people; highly educated, and scientific sorts who have high market value) has been a small fraction of industry average. But this can be unhelpful, and it can be indicative of an unhealthy emotional need for validation. I’m sure I have made things *too* personal over the years. I’m reversing that, now.
This year I have been managing a distracting personal issue that has been, off and on, very destabilizing. I went through a phase where I resented my staff and investor group’s disinterest in “what it is like”: what it is like emotionally, to be managing something like this. I pouted a bit, in private, snapped at my partner once or twice. I went to Iowa and shut off the phone for a week. I haven’t done this in 25 years, so people were surprised.
The fact is: people care about what we find traumatic — for five minutes. After that, if one occupies a position of leadership, they actually don’t care. They want, in the most sympathetic cases, the guy to manage his emotional situation (per the apex female’s need to see that her man had his shit together). They don’t want to share it. Our utility is in our functional occupation: father, husband, ceo, pilot, coach, doctor. Even in the most intimate of loving relationships, I think we should seek acknowledgement only, awareness only. A good woman will observe accurately the situation and admire us more for being steadfast. No good woman will ever reward a man for pouting, whining, running, or simply venting. It’s tough, but on the other hand, it’s liberating as well to be able to say, “I’m not talking about that, too dark.” That’s it: “I’m not talking about that.” I prefer it to “Okay, here’s what’s going on and how it makes me feel” prior to losing control of myself. Live and learn.
This is such a great post and so important. Morpheus, really hope you’re doing well and that today will be a better one. I am married to a night owl myself and he doesn’t hit his stride until 2 or 3pm. It has been a blessing and a curse for our marriage as I am a morning person.
#17 BB Nailed it. These are the type of girls you need to be looking for when mate selecting. But, these girls are also emotionally strong and will need you to be stronger then them. I left this quote over at Girls Being Girls, it’s by Robert Jordan and has hung on the refrigerator in most of the homes we’ve lived.
“If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or of making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though, she can be as strong as she is , as strong as she can grow to be.”
It is important that you honestly know yourself and pick your mate accordingly. If any one wants feedback from a woman who has been married for 27yrs and has been with him at his highs and lows just ask, otherwise I’ll be here soaking up the wisdom.
#23: 27 years of marriage? That’s awesome!
Very rarely run into someone in these spheres who has been married longer than I have.
Liz
These spheres–lol–you’re very witty today.
Liz, re: Chameleon Syndrome. Can you elaborate on this…? Is this a kind of femme fatale-type trick in which a woman pretends to be a beer commercial dream girl in order to lure a guy into marriage, and then springs the brutal truth on him in a violent, spring-loaded-trap-kind of way?
Breaking news…Agent Orange (I’m guessing) seems to have uncovered documentation on how Feminism works
http://i.imgur.com/eB9I7yD.png
I have my doubts about the applicability of ev psych. Some, yes. Sometimes. Many times not.
However, Back in the day, a dozen hunters surrounding (Ardrey, “the slow, silent closing of the hunting ring, deadly, perhaps, for somebody”) some big dangerous prey animal had to function perfectly. If not, you lost the prey and possibly a hunter.
There was no room for a guy to be distracted because of some other issue. THERE IS NO OTHER ISSUE.
So, I suppose, you could presume there were evolutionary advantages to not being susceptible to reverses of one kind or another, and to being able to compartmentalize them.
The gathering part of hunting and gathering didn’t require so much focus.
Consequently, a guy who can’t keep it together isn’t a good prospect for protect/provide.
PP2 – love Robert Jordan (rip).
I think I need to print that quote out and hang it somewhere myself. A little extra motivation never hurts, and that quote is certainly motivating.
#26, Bastiat: It’s from the Predatory Female! A classic (well, pilot circles are small and a friend of a friend wrote this book). Excerpt:
Q. What is the chameleon syndrome?
A. A quasi-supernatural transformation, the chameleon syndrome is the predatory female’s unholy ability to become whatever the script calls for in “hooking” a man. She will adopt his viewpoints, his attitudes, his hobbies, and his dislikes. Her personality will change to suit his. She will enroll in classes, become a gourmet cook, stop smoking, switch religions, accept his friends, humor his jealousies, develop a relationship with his relatives, or whatever else is called for. She will change colors in the rocks like a chameleon! Of all the traits exhibited by predatory females, this chameleon syndrome is one of the most lethal.
Q. Why?
A. Because, amazingly, the predatory female is completely sincere about her new behavior. She isn’t consciously aware of any deception. She transforms involuntarily. She could take a lie detector test and pass. There is nothing crooked in her mind. Consequently the male detects nothing amiss because there is nothing amiss. Everything is normal and natural. The predatory female has matched herself with the surrounding landscape; she adapted to her environment for mating and survival. The male innocently concludes he has met the “right” woman.
Liz @15
Thks…looking better I think…the gash was about 2 inches long by 7-8 mm wide. The plastic surgeon pretty much guaranteed there will be a scar just a question of how noticeable. I’ve got tons of scars on my arms and legs that I never gave a second thought to, but the face is a bit different.
And here is the converse of how you have to react to female weakness:
#32
That is hilarious!
Thanks Liz. How long have you been married?
@TedD Not a fan of his writing, found the books tedious, but love and live by this quote.
I do have a question for you gentlemen. How important is it for you to have male friends? How do those friendships help you stay strong? Can you trust these men?
PP2, #33:
The only male friendships I have that are fraught are a) family members; and b) professional “friendships” that cycle between true friendship and situational friendship owing to professional circumstances. I consider my male friendships lifelong, very stable, and it is not unusual to go several years without seeing one of them. Even a decade could pass without contact, and the relationship continues.
In general, confiding one’s frustrations or difficulties to one’s male friends is a good way to end the friendship. I think there’s a budget of one or two occasions where getting drunk and ranting or weeping is acceptable. With my friends, if I have difficulty they sincerely reach out and ask me to detail the issue. They cut me off if I bring it up again. Lately I’ve decided not to do the first unloading, either. Everybody’s an adult, they know what the impact of this or that is. Also, by the time people are middle aged, as am I, everyone has a portfolio of difficulties in the closet. So it’s solipsistic to dump issues on others.
Sometimes, difficulty is such that one must ask one’s friends for practical help, such as being a witness. I put this in a different category. All friends ride like the cavalry at that point.
Heal well Morpheus.
The story of the sword and the shield. A man can hold both in the relationship, in fact he must show that he can and will. And in certain times he can hand her the shield. But he can never, under any circumstance put down his sword or hand it to her. As noted above, women with children are even more attuned to this because they spend a lot more time with the shield – one step closer to the sword. And the closer they get to holding the sword, the less of a man he becomes. Apex women have their own daggers. Tread carefully.
So it really is old world. He goes out with no shield (he left it with her and the kids) and comes back with a severed arm.
“Oh! my love!” she gasps, “It’s nothing. Just a flesh wound.” His wince gives way to a lifted chin as he takes her in his remaining arm and lays a kiss upon her head.
“Let me see to that, I’ve got some salve.” She says, insistent.
“Ok, but I will be fine, don’t worry” he says, leaning his sword at the door, stained with blood, his – and theirs, “But do hurry, the men are heading back out.”
“Must you go? The bleeding has barely stopped” she whispers at his ear as she tenderly holds the jagged stump, wrapping it in the cloth she had meant for a new dress. She knows full well he must, though can’t see that she also wants him to go, needs him to go.
“You heal me well my love” He says, the searing pain of his phantom limb clawing at the fragile facade of his smile. She smiles back, concerned yet reassured. He is a good man, a strong man she thinks to herself; an upwelling of pride rises up in her. Pride in her healing, pride in him, in choosing him among so many others.
As he walks toward the other men, he turns back toward his home, just enough to show her the determination in his face. Such a good woman, a strong woman he thinks to himself, but as he turns back toward the field of battle his stomach sinks. He knows all too well the fate that falls upon the one-armed warrior. He is afraid. He is in great pain. He longs for a reprieve, a time to heal, to just lay in her arms, to allow dust to settle upon that sword. He aches to tell her the fight in him wanes; that the blood he has spilled rips at his soul; that he cries for his fallen brethren; that his sleep is broken with sounds he wants her to know, to understand, with visions that he wants to paint for her so his eyes might be relieved of the burden, if even for a fleeting moment; to tell her that if the world would let him, he would place that dusty sword atop the anvil and pound it into a plowshare with all his might; that he would fight no more.
But those dark corners of his heart, those desires to become something else, to live a life cut from the earth by other men, are only his fears, his pain rearing up like some tempest that leaves nothing in its wake but more darkness. Those things cannot exist in her world. No matter how strong she is, how much her touch can heal he can’t reveal those things to her any more than she can take up his sword and enter those fields of men. If he was to allow her such a quest, the burden of his sword, if even for a day, she may return in body but her heart will no longer rise up for him as it did before. She will know too much; she may see him as “good” but the strong is gone and without the strong, she has no pride in him, only pity. She has held both sword and shield.
So he goes out to battle again. When he returns he will tell her the stories of sorrow and victory, of loss and spoils. But he will keep her from knowing those certain dark truths, he will keep the victory and spoils, however small, at the center of those tales. By doing so he will protect her – and keep her at his side. That is his gift. His duty. He knows deep down that if he does not, cannot hold his sword, he must take his place among the children and the old. Some men know these things to be true, others must first experience the sorrow, the loneliness of losing her, of being placed among the children before they can can find the strength to take up that sword again. Of course, many never do.
It is a hard thing, for a man, to accept that for many things that tug at the depths of his heart, he is indeed alone. That for all of the good and beauty women can bring, it still falls upon him to give of himself even in times of his greatest need; that he must show great restraint in what he takes from her in those times or risk losing her.
Essentially, the opposing forces of his strengths and weaknesses, his power and his vulnerability, is in the form of an ouroboros. He must always kindle his strengths and face his weaknesses, for his perpetual rebirth requires proving his strength through the consumption of his fears, fears that must be his alone, to be continually chased down and devoured. His true vulnerability must be kept in that portion of him, the place only he can know, that slender tail placed in the jaws of his strengths. He must do this on his own. The true weakness and vulnerability can exist, but only in that place. There really is no way out for him, thus there is really no way in [for her]. He can share some of this with her, but he can never give it to her, ask her to take it from him. If he stops the process of his rebirth, forces his fears upon her or allows her to feed upon them with her strength, he will starve, cease to exist. Its a real bitch.
Liz, that’s very interesting. I actually know of someone like this; one of my mother’s former friends. She was like a villain out of fiction: she researched specific target men, would study their hobbies and interests, and staged elaborate productions in order to get close to them. Sex was repeatedly dangled in front of them in “bait and switch” agentic fashion in order to secure commitment. She has been married at least four, probably five times, the chain forming a kind of social ladder in which the men tended to have A) more and more money and B) worse and worse looks and physical health.
In one case she even converted to Judaism to get through a man’s “gold-digger” filters, which is apparently quite an involved process. She seems like a sociopath.
My attorney friend with the huge cybernetic rack might be a bit different in that she has come to actually enjoy the stereotypical guy interests. She didn’t get into this stuff to land a particular guy; it was more to be able to infiltrate Guyworld generally, if that makes sense. But now she will go do this stuff on her own; it’s genuine.
Liz, The Predatory Female stuff:
I’ve read pretty widely in the literature of sociopathic personalities, which your example represents in all but two qualities: the apparent lack of self-awareness in the ‘chameleon’ figure, and perhaps (your note is unclear) her development of empathy (whereas a sociopathic personality has none). I’m very skeptical such women as an unthinking chameleon exist. We all know quite well that sociopathic, talented, ruthless women exist.
In general, a sociopathic woman targeting a man will mimic many of the behaviors you describe, but only be able to sustain those behaviors for 6-9 months. Sociopaths move forward constantly from job to job, target-person to target-person. Otherwise their self-constructions become known and the gig is up.
It sounded to me like BB’s lawyer-warrior woman inhabited her new skin first, and encountered her men second. It also sounded, as described, that she enjoyed the process of ‘going native’ and leaving some of the frenemy activity and arbitrary drama behind her. I would describe such a woman, were I to meet her, as a tomboy with better underwear, and I would be in line, though I’m no fan of boob jobs.
Yeah, so while I was typing BB mentioned in #36 that the chameleon figure is consciously assembling traits, not merely mirroring an environment chameleon-fashion.
@Buena Vista,
Each of us are really alone in this world. And I see how important it is that I let my husband share with me and try harder not to let it cloud my thinking of him.
@Tasmin, very insightful thanks. I’ll be reading that again.
I highly recommend the novels *Mr. Bridge* and *Mrs. Bridge*, by Evan Connell. (If you are interested in literary fiction, Connell is a writer’s writer, on the order of James Salter.) As well, the Newman-Woodward movie that is their consolidation, “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge”, is quite good.
Books have a way of revealing our changing maturity. When I was a good post-feminist liberal male, the Mr. Bridge figure made me absolutely laugh out loud, and I even committed the error of forcing a girlfriend to watch the movie. The reason I would laugh is that the text, and the movie (in Newman’s portrayal), mimicked remarkably the style and character of my grandfather. (Mr. Bridge is a Kansas City attorney in pre-WWII Kansas City. My grandfather was a banker in rural Iowa, same period. Both were stout haut-bourgeois figures, one of the five men or so who ran the affairs of their towns.) My grandfather was the opposite of the feelings-sharing modern man. He worked at his bank for 65 years, walked home for lunch, had a nap for 20 minutes with the Des Moines Register under his shoes on the sofa, walked back to work. He retired and died within six months. He and my grandmother were a nonromantic match, marrying when both were considered out of the market at 30 and 35. I was extremely close to him, but I don’t remember a single thing he ever said to me — probably because he didn’t say much, other than, “I’m cutting up that carp for the roses” or “here” when he would simply install a second steak on my plate, and things like that.
So his reticence was an object of humor to me, later as a modern man of feelings and expressivity.
Now his reticence and that of Mr. Bridge make more sense.
My grandmother was always a difficult person, very frustrating in life, and his silences must have made her dizzy with frustration. He did have feelings; all men do. Some of them were perhaps summarized by the Marilyn Monroe nudes I found in the attic when I was cleaning out the house after his death.
Anyway, Connell: they are good novels. Essential American literature. Connell also wrote a wonderful book on Custer, Son of the Morning Star, among many other books.
Swithers, sadly, there’s too much truth to that chart.
@Liz 30
The chameleon syndrome sounds quite similar to Rollo’s war brides (where women that were conquered by different tribes or nations would sooner or later adapt to the new setting and mate with and even love their new man), mentioned in Morpheus post on The Rational Male book.
@BV 22
Part of my fantasy woman is a desire and ability to deeply understand me, the good and the bad, and love me all the more because of that understanding. I used to share too much of my angst and doubts and fears with women and it did often/usually kill the attraction, eventually. On the flip side, sharing experiences where I faced danger and did really feel fear of dying (me almost drowning stupidly trying to swim across the narrow part of a cold mountain lake), if done in the right setting, where she’s yearning for some greater emotional connection, can really make her feel closer and want to make out or have sex–have experienced that too.
I have learned, by unpleasant experience, that emoting too much of the doubt and angst side of one’s inner workings is not good and so I keep that more in check now. But sharing personally profound and meaningful experiences (even if not necessarily fully self-aggrandizing and devoid of negativity) is very beneficial.
Though I don’t expect too much, any woman who does show a desire and ability to understand me and not lose attraction in doing so gains massive points in my eyes.
@Richard 28
I think that there are many examples of other kinds of stoic endurance and bravery that men would have needed to perform in prehistoric days. Roaming far afield, alone, to find food, game or fruit, while the woman (or women) stayed behind with babies, could be an example. Fighting off beast and foe, in spite of lacerations and incisions, was likely required at times.
Yes, these are a few of the privileges that befall the male sex.
Tasmin, that was poetic.
BV: very well put, my friend. The attorney set out to study men and ended up developing very real empathy for them and compatible hobbies. Guys may have been suspicious that this was a sociopathic Chameleon running deceptive Girl Game at first, but now realize that this female presents them with an enormous range of win-win lifestyle potential—she’s very hot, smart, funny, makes a lot of money, and shares their interests. Pairing with her just does not involve a lot of compromise or negotiation—the “everyone wins” area of the Venn diagram is very large.
You can see this by asking her a simple question: “What do men *really* want from relationships?” Attorney will spend hours holding court at the table and giving you precise, penetrating, deeply insightful answers. Try it for yourself on a random female and I think that you may get one of three basic responses:
1) Awkward silence, some fumbling, a few platitudes here and there, vague answers (“men want to be happy”).
2) Solipsistic reaction: men very conveniently want the same things that women want. Example: “I essentially want a reliable beta-provisioner workhorse male, therefore I assume that men *really* want to be reliable beta-provisioner workhorse males. See how tidy that is? We all want the same things.”
3) Solipsistic reaction + Shaming language: here there is acknowledgment that some men may want other things, perhaps things that women tend to find unpleasant or unattractive, but these men are quarantined via the imposition of a bimodal distribution of some type (typically a variation of the “Cad vs. Dad” taxonomic schema is used).
Thus this woman can use a sub-speciation process to derive a subpop of men who have motivation/goal systems that are not in alignment with the Solipsistic reaction, but thankfully these undesirables can be separated from the rest of the gender herd and then, perhaps, a normative, value-laden label can even be applied. The “good men” are separately identified and clearly marked; they are those helpful fellows that fit within the mold of Reaction #2 and who want to provide what women want to have.
It appears that market incentives and local conditions matter little in #2 and #3 because men are considered 2-dimensional, uni-strategic beings with fixed character/alignment classes of the type found in Dungeons & Dragons (good guy=Paladin of Lawful good alignment; bad guy=Chaotic evil Anticleric/Assassin). Under these assumptions, the Paladin’s dating behavior would be the same in, say, Latvia as it would be in Bangladesh.
BB @ 17
Thanks, and I agree this can be a truly bitter pill because the ultimate implication is that as a MAN at the end of the day you are ALONE with your deepest fears, concerns…the bogeyman in your mind.
When terms like “emotional needs” and “intimacy” are used by women, men may think that they refer to a symmetrical dialogue in which both parties are able to openly share weakness, doubts, psychological torments, etc. After all, that sounds fair. Then these guys feel ambushed when they go ahead and open up and then have these little confessionals used against them later. The reality is that in many/most situations the woman defines “intimacy” from the perspective of her being able to be emotionally expressive to the man and to have the man serve as a nonjudgmental stability anchor, sounding board, or positive psychotherapy source. The man is not meant to do the same; requests for him to open up are a kind of perverse reverse-incentives test in which the man “wins” by failing to comply with the stated wish. The guy is meant to display sprezzatura, swag, and grace under pressure at almost all times, with the allowable exceptions being the deaths of loved ones.
I started to type something, and then realized you’d already said it here 10x better. I think you’ve captured perfectly the different perceptions, expectations, and obligations with what constitutes “emotional intimacy”
The cost of this *may* be a gradual dissolution of female friendships. Back on Susan’s board I chronicled the progress of a female attorney friend who went on a Nietzschean “will to power” kick and combined 800cc breast augmentation with very stylish and girly clothes (Louboutin, Zac Posen) and a deep-dive into quintessentially male interests including the UFC, graphic novels, steakhouses, single-malts, porn, football, and violent shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Strike Back”. Perhaps most importantly, she started adopting a very emotionally consistent, low-maintenance persona. The results have been absolutely spectacular for her in terms of both quality and quantity of dating choices, but the unexpected side effect of this extended foray into the male mind has been that she has gone native and developed less and less tolerance for drama and emotional sharing among her female friends. They are starting to act like she has violated cartel pricing rules, has betrayed her peers, and is now too dangerous to ever have around their own husbands and boyfriends. This of course makes her only more attractive to men.
If you recall one of the recurring debates/discussions we would have at HUS was the notion that women simply recognized and selected from the results of male hierarchical competition. Women selected the “winners” of male competition. Of course, the empirical evidence that disproved this specious argument was the existence of the “charismatic emo dandy” type of man who often was very attractive to a large number of women, yet garnered the respect and/or admiration of basically no men. They are attractive to women outside the boundaries of any kind of way that men measure other men. My guess is the type of woman you describe is the parallel to that for women. She is attractive to men in way that garners no respect or admiration from other women. The choice to maximize her physical appearance and directly appeal to “male interests” is seen as “cheating”. Very recently, I’ve read some comments showing how some women have disdain for women who choose cosmetic surgery to enhance their physical appearance. On the one hand, a woman will say physical appearance isn’t that important to her, but in the next breath appears to have a strong reaction to the woman who decides to prioritize it.
Han Solo,
Yeah, there are other things men have/had to do. But the guy wandering around looking for a new water hole can zone out–a bit, not often–and so forth. But the hunting ring is not a matter of bravery. That’s a given. It’s a matter of absolute, undiverted, concentrated, undiluted by a bad hair day, attention. It’s the focus without interruption by one’s feelings that’s the point of the ev psych example. So a built-in level of equable temperament–not a lot bothers you–and an ability to ignore what does would both have an evolutionary advantage. There would be less evolutionary pressure in those fields among women who did the nurturing and gathering. So the more emotionally vulnerable among the women were not as likely to get killed by whatever was out there when their attention lapsed briefly. Nor would they be at fault for getting somebody else killed if their actions in the hunting ring–or war band, or something else–failed.
It’s the focus without reference to ANYFREAKINGELSE.
Over at Good Men Project, they run occasional articles about guys who can absolutely focus–and that’s usually a bad thing on account of it means you’re not sufficiently evolved or something. You have to be vulnerable and if you can control it, you’re not actually vulnerable.
I kind of recall that’s what HUS claims to want but maybe we should take that with a grain of salt.
Possibly it’s a shit test. Show vulnerability as requested and…you lose.
@Tasmin 35
Excellent and moving imagery.
Han Solo: 45:
I really think I’ve imposed on people over the years, seeking such validation and understanding. Now I assign it to the immaturity that accompanies a life without childhood (childhood in the sense of experiencing the protective love of a stable home, while one’s brain develops and body expands; not so unusual a thing in many demographic cohorts, of course, though unusual behind the veil of a seemingly upper middle class existence). I think I’ve improved as a father now that I am simply a father; for many years I found kinship in my children, which is a plus in many ways, but reduces my utility as a stable, solid rock on which they might stand. Nobody needs a closet adolescent for a dad. With the two of the three children these days, when they ask how things are, I give them the weather report, so to speak; I don’t describe the weather. They’re happier, I’m happier. I may have higher value to them.
And then we have today’s “flying is the best metaphor for life” moment. In regard to “But sharing personally profound and meaningful experiences (even if not necessarily fully self-aggrandizing and devoid of negativity) is very beneficial”:
Well, it depends. In extremis, in the cockpit, thought is subordinated to checklists and habit (“flows” in the argot). I’ve been in extremis a handful of times. Emoting, sharing, expressing: not always helpful, sometimes . So I go to bed at night, if concerned about something, with my morning checklist on the desk.
How to process the experience of shutting down your only engine on the ILS with a G-IV on your ass? Well, if you try to explain it to regular people, you sound like a Walter Mitty asshole (probably like I do right now). I have two or three pros with whom I fly, and there the emotional renderings are unnecessary. A look — awareness, recognition — is sufficient. We might discuss what could have been differently. But that’s it. I assume this is the burden of the professional soldier. Same process seems to apply to a business reversal, losing one’s children, etc. Talking about it, in retrospect, has never made anything better nor me any more attractive. Usually it makes things worse.
The deal I’ve been managing this year is a parental kidnapping, among other niceties. Haven’t seen son #2 since February. A friend of 30 years called me up two nights ago. “BV, I just haven’t heard from you since blah blah blah.” I just said, “No change.” In the past I’ve gone around the bend with inordinate detail. “Oh, man,” he said. We moved on immediately, discussing subjects of sincere interest. That conversation lightened the load, and I didn’t feel like a twerp afterward for punishing him — he called me out of the blue, after all, we’re 1000 miles apart at present and the call was a friend’s kindness — and resulted as well in an invitation to his second harvest at his riesling vineyard. I’m pleased with this outcome.
No man is an island, entire of himself, Donne instructs. However, the man in the poem is not a welter of feelings: he is a compass, an instrument of navigation and reckoning. It is the tension between our utility and private emotional realities that is the tension most difficult to balance.
@Richard 47
Two thoughts on the amount of vulnerability men can display:
1) The image of the Taijitu (yin and yang) symbol where the man is mostly strength and stability with a small dot of vulnerability, of the right kind.
2) And that right kind of vulnerability is the kind that allows them to feel emotionally closer and bonded–thus a win for her since it keeps him around, assuming he’s of sufficient status to have other good options–but not excessive or the wrong kind of vulnerability or weakness that would crack or shatter her faith in him as the protector and provider or ruffle the feathers of her hypergamy to fear that he’s not good enough anymore.
@BV
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I am trying to imagine (and think I’m succeeding to some extent) what not having that childhood with the “protective love of a stable home” would feel like. I think for me, one of my biggest fears that has always been there since my earliest memories, and in spite of a loving home, is the fear of being abandoned by someone I love deeply. And this would, and still does to some extent, reveal itself whenever in a situation where I was in love or infatuation with a woman and would come on too strong because I didn’t want to lose her, I didn’t want to be abandoned. And that very desire, that very need, that very clutching, would sadly and ironically (though not unexpectedly in hindsight) drive her away. This need and desire has to be kept in check or it leads to inner feelings of and outer displays of neediness. I can usually keep the outer displays in check and the inner feelings less poignant than they would if I just gave free rein to my fears and my desires.
I think that not sharing profound experiences is the default mode to adopt but I think that men also need to recognize when the woman is starting to get attracted enough to him that she wants to have a deeper emotional connection with him and in such moments where she’s hungry for intimacy he can share some appropriate experiences, thoughts or feelings, all the while keeping such sharing from devolving into promiscuous and glutonous bragging or searching for sympathy.
BB, #45:
As I mentioned last month, I’m not dating these days but I am sampling every woman I do know or meet, if the subject of my bachelorhood comes up and things are sufficiently light-hearted:
“What do women think men want, anyway?”
The best such conversation was with my neighbors a few weeks ago; the wife thinks I need to get set up, the husband is strategic in his observations of these exchanges. They’re very thoughtful about such matters, really. He’s a Ph.D psychology who runs a hospital-prison for clinically insane sex offenders; she’s a M.S. psychology. She’s stay-at-home with four lovely, happy children. Their house even has columns on the front. Their lives could be at the Clark in Williamstown, with all the Norman Rockwells there.
Well. As you note, she (and none of the others) has no idea — and their marriage is ideal, as far as I can tell. Her responses began with #1, transitioned to #2, while her husband smiled broadly (being that he is a #2). I was a #2 for 25 years, incidentally, I’m not on any high horse here, and I was glad to be a #2 until the clock struck midnight. She’s decided I can’t be a #3 Cad, so fortunately I don’t get shit-tested by her in that department.
Basically, there’s a generation of educated women who have absolutely no idea what men (a priori) want, nor are they comfortable at all if the question is raised. The question itself appears to be incendiary. Lots of blushing, nervous laughter, hair pulling, arm touching.
It becomes even more interesting when I follow up. I ask them what women want, and they often launch on a checklist of some feminism-approved laundry list of features and behaviors — and I say, “That will never make you happy. That’s not what you want either. How many of your married girlfriends speak well of their beta husbands?” When I was still dating, with all this new information, this contradictory information appeared to drive my attractiveness through the roof. “Would you rather be with a man who is good at being a man, or a Good Man?” Female brainlock ensues.
I’m doing my best these days to send a few smoke signals to son#1, so that his learning curve is shorter.
This is all dangerous information if misused. Last night another neighbor was out walking with her two children and we talked while the sun set over the lake. She’s a desperately restless married professor, educated in Moscow, married to a Good Man of unremarkable tastes (perhaps to get her visa ten years ago). His hobby is fixing up old bicycles and selling them at yard sales. He got a campus security job when she got her appointment at this rural college. She’s attended a theatre in Moscow (Vakhtangov) where my sister has directed. A year ago, when I did not understand the meaning of “hypergamy”, I would have found her numerous interrogatories about NYC and DC, where I have other lives, flattering — nothing more. Now I see a flashing red light signalling DOMESTIC MELTDOWN NIGH END THIS CONVERSATION AND GO HOME NOW. So many contradictions, so little time. The good news, for the masculine man, is that he perhaps has a better chance of recognizing good fortune (i.e., in the form of a good woman) in real time should he encounter it.
Han Solo
Sharing experiences is one thing. Explaining how one or another made you a useless puddle of angst–I exaggerate, slightly–is probably not.
Back in the day, I had to notify Next of Kin a couple of times. “Pardon me, sir or madam, but your husband, son, or brother, pick one or more of the above, has been killed in action in Viet Nam, Republic of.”
I haven’t discussed how it made me feel, or when the neighbors wanted me to leave the wife’s place and talk to the parents about the guy.
“Was it quick?” They all ask that.
But about all I’ve said about my feelings about the thing is that it’s the only way I know to prepare to consume an entire bottle of liquor while remaining entirely sober.
She can guess, but the idea that I might have–didn’t–become useless if something else had shown up about then is not something I want her to think.
Fractured some ribs in February. I was bitching about how useless I was going to be and I guess the doc was alarmed, because in addition to the pain pills, he prescribed Ambien to reduce my ambition. Didn’t take it.
First thing I did in the ER was ask if I was the worst one. He said no, I said I could wait. It’s what a man does. He said he had me scheduled, so off we went. I didn’t complain enough, I guess, because it got so bad the next day that I went back and he was concerned about bone ends poking various viscera. Turned out that wasn’t the issue but the complaining level, appropriate to “cracked” misled him. I should have complained more, so he’d have had me get an MRI first thing so as to find “fractured”.
Couple of weeks later, we put up half a dozen of a touring college choir. I hauled their luggage around without swearing audibly. Got to keep in practice. ’cause you never know.
You want your SO to think you might become absolutely useless when SHTF, randomly and without warning?
Han Solo, #51: abandonment is permanent, and colors entire lives. Abandonment destroys innocence. A selfish divorce is abandonment on a profound scale. The Eat Pray Love ethic of personal ambitions trumping the emotional necessities of children, or the rationalization of abuse (abandonment of care, betrayal of trust, and an enforced loyalty to that which is destructive) within an intact family that is governed by depthless pathologies — these things are not good. I dislike histrionic religious rhetoric but I do believe these impulses are evil.
I appreciate this blog very much and its patience with my occasional torrents of text. I believe it’s time to check out and go watch the Iowa State-Texas game. Also, for a good time, I recommend Templeton Rye to all I know.
BV @ 49,
Damn man…I can’t even fathom that…my physical injury seems trivial in comparison. I don’t have kids so I don’t know what you are going through, but I know a son needs a good Dad. I hope you get it worked out. Good luck.
Richard, I’m with you on that one all the way, and not just because I once found myself with a pneumothorax, one functioning lung, and six fractured ribs, while on a mountain with son#1. I was 50 miles from the nearest hospital, he was watching me gray out and suck for air. Told him, “I think I knocked my wind out.” Dilaudid was winning, for a solid 10 days. Meltdowns are best practiced in private. They are of zero utility to any other human.
This used to be a bitter pill. Now it’s just….the way things are.
It’s actually better this way, I think
Hope you get better soon, Morpheus.
Tasmin, awesome language
As an aside, recently had my performance review. Asked my manager for some strengths upon which I can build.
She said “ADBG, you don’t panic, which I think is great, because most of the people around do.”
Goooood times.
Other thought, from a different blog. Men need to be strong, because we are expected to go AT LEAST a few rounds with Lucifer before going down. She needs to know that you can do that and not bawl because you got a little brimstone in your eyes and are the Morning Star is getting ready to disembowel you.
BB @ 20, I really enjoyed that video….she rocks.
BV
Meltdowns are best practiced in private. They are of zero utility to any other human
Absolutely. Even if somebody says they want to see one.
As an aside, recently had my performance review. Asked my manager for some strengths upon which I can build.
She said “ADBG, you don’t panic, which I think is great, because most of the people around do.”
Congrats!
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8445295-If….-by-Rudyard_Kipling
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And which is more; you’ll be a Man, my son!
My father died last month. Just before the trouble jumped off, I had to put the dog down. The wife took the kids to the car and I stayed with the dog to the end. My father was on life support and when they talked about cutting off his leg I had to make a stand and tell them that was not going to happen. Could have heard a pin drop in that room. Then I told them to get out because I had to tell my father goodbye. I hugged him and cried and told him I was sorry. But when I stood up, I was not crying anymore.
I also had to perform the eulogy. That was the hardest thing I have ever done – and I will tell you, I choked through the whole thing. But when it was done, it was done.
During the worst of it, my wife says, “Honey, you don’t have to be so strong.”
Well, princess, you just admitted you thought it was strong of me to no break-down, even though you also expressed you would understand it if I did. Not happening. For the rest of my life I would hear about how I balled like a baby. Nope.
Though, when I was alone in a parking lot, I cried like a little boy who – well, a little boy who just lost his father. But that is between me and the upholstery.
Gentlemen, you have taught me much today. I had sent this post to my husband during the day, he read it but not the comments. We had been arguing the night before and in my mind I was angry at him because I am the only one he feels he can tell his problems to. I’ve always resented this and perceived it as him being weak and whining. He picked me up and on the way home from work I was relating to him Tasmin’s tale. When I got to the point about never putting down or giving up the sword my husband who had never heard this before finished it in his own words. In that moment with all that I had read during the day and when he said we (men) can never show weakness, it became sadly clear to me.
This is one wife who will endeavor to be more careful and mindful of what her husband needs. Sincerely, Thank you.
practically
Good for you. Sounds like things will go better.
Do you have any idea why you didn’t know this before? Generally in the atmosphere? Taught by somebody you know?
It’s good when people get it right, but it’s useful to know how they got it wrong previously.
#58 and #63 win the interwebz today. The interwebz are now closed until tomorrow.
Just want to throw out a completely off topic thought:
I would like to submit that the bikers involved in the recent NYC incident were likely alphas. In contrast, the driver of the SUV was probably a beta. Agree or disagree?
Sir.
Pack animals aren’t generally considered alphas.
The driver of the SUV was probably constrained by a lifetime’s conditioning. It is probably very hard for most people to run over somebody either on purpose or because there is no other way to escape something. Not sure if you’d call that beta. I don’t know that a guy who would assess the situation instantly and run over the bastards without hesitation is necessarily an alpha. Consider the WW II veterans. Many of them killed most prodigiously but did not come home to be all alphas. Ditto other wars.
Or if you define alpha as having that capability irrespective of the rest of the way he relates to the world….
Nem, alphas are the leaders of social hierarchies. So, yeah, maybe a few of those bikers were leaders of the gang and could be considered alpha but most were simply bike gang betas, though perhaps not society betas if they are criminals or thugs (no idea if they are). Just because someone rebels against society doesn’t make them an alpha and it doesn’t make them a sigma either. Most of these guys are probably betas or zetas themselves, with maybe some rebelious wanna be alpha in them. But wanna-be alpha is NOT alpha. Only success grants the title of alpha.
@PP
thanks for getting it. Waiting for the dawn here, but already it’s a promising day.
@BV
Gotta love Texas 12, er, Big 12 officiating…
The Sword and Shield story brings to mind Broadsword by Jethro Tull. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu-RFt-3zg8 ). A man seeing in incoming Viking raiding party, sending his family to shelter and preparing to die to defend them.
Pussy Willow (dreams of a young woman) and Clasp (true friendship) are my other favourites.
There was a post on the GiMP where a guy asked the assembled manginas and femtards what women brought to the table regarding relationships. It was a goddamned long time before he got a single answer from a woman (a foreigner to you and me). It was really sad how the crowd tried to ignore the question. I linked to it on this site, somewhere&when.
And finally, I hope. Just starting to listen to an AVFM radio. Seducing men to self sacrifice.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avoiceformen/2013/10/04/honey-badger-radio-femservatives-oh-my
Honey badgers being the name given to female MHRAs (Male Human Rights Activists). Contrary to what you may have heard on youtube, honey badgers do give a shit.
Karen is aka GirlWritesWhat (on the JFG blogroll)
Alison is TyphonBlue ( http://www.genderratic.com/typhonblue/ )
Della is a more recent find for AVFM.
AVFM recently made progress in Toronto, things are changing.
#74: St Swithunus, I only listened for the first eight minutes of that.
I’d say that if a marriage has any value at all, each partner’s identity is going to be “tied up in the other’s approval”. If one wants to live only for oneself and not give a snail’s fart in a hurricane what his/her sigoth thinks about him/her or his/her decisions, one shouldn’t have a sigoth. That type of “connection” wouldn’t even suffice for a limited liability corporate partnership, and family is far more encompassing and important than a series of business transactions.
More topic related point. I’ll tell a personal anecdote about my father in law. He is a retired airline captain, but back when he was flying he had a lot of free time so he was also a realtor, insurance salesman, carpenter, plumber, electrician, software developer, aerobatics pilot, airplane builder (aerobatic planes), and finally cop.
He decided to become a police officer when he arrived home from a trip to find a pool of blood with a trail and a broken chair in an empty home. He had no idea what happened (no cells back then). He called all the hospitals and finally found where his family was. My husband was about two years old, and had fallen with a major crack to the head (he still has the scar, Morpheus…I LOVE it, take heart facial scars are attractive on men, imo). His mother gathered him up in a blanket and rushed him to the emergency room. When my father in law got to the ER, my husband was still waiting to be seen with his mom holding a bloody towel to his head. People with earaches were going ahead of him. A cop came in who had been shot in the shoulder. He looked at my husband, and said…let the little guy go first, this is no big deal. My father in law saw that, and became a cop. Saved quite a few lives until he had to quit after a very dangerous altercation in Liberty City Miami…wanting to live to see my husband grow up, and all that.
@Liz
The quality of each episode varies, but it is nice to hear three women talking about men’s rights. GirlWritesWhat’s website has the transcripts of most of her youtube stuff. The site is on the JFG links page, but this is one of my favourites;
Men not marrying? How deep does “the problem” go?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlvMAS_20K4
or
http://owningyourshit.blogspot.com/2012/03/transcript-of-men-not-marrying-how-deep.html
(that’s a excerpt of the post BTW not the whole thing)
Morpheus, hope you feel better soon!
A man should be able to display some weakness in front of a girlfriend / wife without being judged for it as by being able to confide in her it shows you trust her deeply and such vulnerability, I feel, deepens / strengthens the connection between two parties. I loved it when my ex shared something intimately personal – especially, if it was something no one knew about.
Though, as some mentioned before I do agree showing some weakness shouldn’t stem from ‘neediness’.
Big differences from culture to culture about men showing emotion..and even within the same culture over different periods of time.
#80 Good point about culture.
My relatively “bad ass” father in law (I’ve seen this man drag disrespectful younger men out by their collars, pissing themselves) I’ve seen cry several times, over somewhat trivial matters. It’s high and low for Latino cultures. Throw stuff off the walls and kick the table and shout when you’re angry, crawl into a ball and your wife/lover pats your back while you sob at other times. I’m half Italian, and accustomed to this. It isn’t emasculating when my husband is sad, it’s actually bonding. But he’s really a strong personality at all times.
#77: I might listen to it more, Swithinus. I’m not very familiar with the Honey badgers and they seem to value what I value.
The beginning kind of put me off. I’m very traditional, and get my hackles raised easily when I hear arguments against (I’m pretty protective of my husband, both as a soldier and father). And of the opinion that each and everything defines us…so what better than your life partner. I’d rather have the identity of mother than the other things I’ve been: science teacher, medical lab technologist, nurse. If those things defined me, my life would be comparatively empty (and those paths are more fulfilling than most others).
Here’s my quandary:
I’m supposed to go a few rounds with Lucifer to protect my family if necessary. Fine, I signed up for it, I’ll handle it if/when it occurs. But what I don’t understand is WHY a woman would somehow come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t even try simply because I got emotional when my dog died. I get that a woman that doesn’t know me might find that scary, but once I’ve spent time with her, I’d expect that she would know me well enough to understand that my emotional state is almost irrelevant if/when the shit hits the fan.
Just because I show emotional weakness from time to time does NOT mean I don’t have the capacity to squash it down when necessary. In fact, allowing those smaller emotional bursts out from time to time actually HELPS me remain cool and in control in an emergency, because I go into it without any pent of emotion and only have to deal with the fear of the current situation.
Put another way: just because a guy cries when his dog dies does NOT mean he won’t fight to protect you to his death. It means the man has feelings, and just like everyone else in the world he has to deal with them somehow. I don’t cry often, but when I do its usually a culmination of weeks or months of pent up shit that comes to a head from something occurring.
Absolutely NONE of that in any way changes how I would behave if someone broke into our house and threatened my family.
Is it really so hard to understand that men ARE human, and like all humans they must express and process emotion? Sure, I can see that a man showing emotional weakness may appear to be weak overall to someone that doesn’t know him. However, if you have been with a man for some time, and him crying STILL scares you, he’s either not the right one for you, OR you are putting too much importance on the current moment, and not nearly enough on how he behaves over time. I might blubber like a fool the day my mother passes, but that won’t stop me from grabbing whatever is handy to take on an intruder, even while I’m scared shitless doing it. I fully expect my wife to KNOW this and have faith in my ability to do what needs done. If she doesn’t have that faith in me, we have no business being together. And I don’t believe there is anything healthy about hiding emotions to create the impression that I’m “strong”. What makes a man a “man” is doing what he must EVEN when he fears it.
I would think a woman would be MORE secure knowing that her man has emotions, and expresses them when necessary. Isn’t that really better than being with a man that is truly emotionless? Being with a man that has emotion, can express emotion, and yet still has the strength to overcome it when necessary? At least then you can better gauge how he will react, and how you should react in an emergency. If your guy never shows emotion at all, how will you know what will happen if he’s ever called to actually protect you and your family?
This is starting to trip my “the ‘sphere claims all women are like children” alarms. Children get scared when they see their parents in emotional distress, because they aren’t mature enough to understand that someone expressing emotion isn’t the same as someone who can’t handle emotion. I’d suspect a full grown adult would have a bit more understanding, instead of instantly deciding it is a total and complete weakness to ever display sadness. People that never have emotions are generally called sociopaths. I don’t think most people want to be married to one…
@Richard #65
Do I know why I didn’t know this before? Right now my answer would have to be because it is something so innately gender specific to men that I or any woman can not comprehend unless they are searching for understanding and all the right elements come together for a moment of clarity. The emotion in his voice, every single comment I read with intentionality, that fact this topic was driving my actions the previous night, Morpheus’ fall, Tasmin’s story, BV’s insights,a slow day at work. All came together for personal moment of zeitgeist.
Can all women get it? Probably not they have to want to understand and be willing to set their preconceived notions aside to see life from another’s perspective. As someone said earlier in the thread this is to men what childbirth is to women.
@St. Swithunus, Good morning to you and thanks.
Have a good day all.
Jimmy, #71: true, the zebes seemed again to be working for Mack, which is what even the A&M former AD tweeted last night. Also, it was pretty disgusting watching Davis throw at the back of the ISU DBs knees after the play was dead. Whether or not Texas fumbled (supposedly, they didn’t blow a whistle until the ISU guy was 10 yards downfield running the other direction, so which is it, Ref? A live play or down by contact? It can’t be both) I couldn’t tell.
But ISU wins that game if they’re competent on the hail mary and catch the other two interceptions that they dropped. Bad game by the ISU DBs. They lost their matchup. Or if ISU doesn’t get stuffed on 1st and goal at the three at the end of the game (all the stud linemen are in Iowa City; Iowa has more Olineman in the NFL than anyone, and is tied with Alabama.) So, being an Iowa fan instead of a Cyclone, I’m letting my farming cousins suffer the loss.
However, if Davis isn’t suspended for nearly crippling that kid, the Big 12 has just proved again that its run by hacks. I haven’t seen anything like that in 30 years. Georgia Tech and Navy are known for throwing at your legs, but they at least do it from the front before the whistle blows. Great discipline by the ISU player for not decking Davis. If he’s not a senior, he’d best not run across the middle next year. I don’t think he plays next week. Bowlsby (Big 12 commissioner) is a class guy: ex-Northern Iowa, ex-Iowa, ex-Stanford. I don’t think he wants to be known as DeLoss Dodd’s mistress.
@Starlight
Agree. And I think this happens in healthy relationships, but being each other’s confidante and the sharing of intimate thoughts can be done without a whole lot of real vulnerability or weakness – at least the damaging kind. You say yourself it shouldn’t “…stem from neediness.” So it is ok, as long as it isn’t a need or indicative of weakness in the field of other men. It is conditional and has limits, has protocols that he must be aware of or else slip into dreaded territory.
I think a lot of men get this; it is still conditional and thus slippery when dealing with dynamic situations. Which is why women often have to extract this information. They want him to “open up”. The men resist because it can be tricky to manage this disclosure process once the gates are open. It is often easier to bury it whole-hog as opposed to going through the process of carving out the tender loins so she can feel closer to him or do a bit of fixing or prop him up all while avoiding the rotten stench of an inside out pig.
That is part of the challenge with these kinds of displays/disclosures. The women always think they want to know it all, hear it all, go deep. But the majority of the time, what they really want is to see that he has what it takes to face these things and overcome/solve/resolve them. Sure, he is vulnerable – because he is being tested by the world and that can hurt or expose weaknesses, but as men we can’t let that devolve into being needy or actually need/accept anything from her that diminishes our power, our self-reliance.
Anecdotes, conversations about the past, expressing concern or fear about a situation is all fine and good, but it must be done as I say above, which is, certain feelings, thoughts, fears of his will not be disclosed, parts will be “spun” a bit, and parts will be laid out for you to acknowledge or fix/heal. We are social animals, we get something out of just disclosing/sharing and knowing that our partner is a bit closer to understanding what is in our heads, but it is not quite the same as what men are expected to give a woman; it is not truly reciprocal.
This kind of sharing can be bonding and I agree it is important. The challenge for men is that women want to believe that their image of their man can survive all, that she should be able to know his fears, weaknesses, and “be there” when he is hurt and vulnerable, but like a lot of red pill truths, they fail to see that even if that desire comes from a good place, one that does indeed provide for bonding and deeper intimacy, the fact remains that there are limits, that for a man these can be dangerous waters; her good intentions can lead to bad outcomes. This falls on him to manage. It is unromantic, but its the truth.
ok people. guys.
How would you feel if your girlfriend would NOT cry when the dog dies? she WONT cry nor need support when her father dies. she DOESNT get all worked up when there’s a big problem at the office. She might be experiencing hard emotions but you cant really tell. It’s like nothing is a big deal. Gradmother dies, yeah, shes somewhat affected, but not really.
Is that disturbing, unsettling – does that change your perception about her in general?
Explore that kind of stuff then reverse it. My point is that how people react or dont react on extreme circumstances alter your perception of them, and then that perception pampers how you treat them the rest of the time.
If the girl doesnt cry and is not upset under extreme circumstances – what does that mean? she probably doesnt have feelings etc. Can you trust her to nurture you?
If she’s emotional and exposed and cries and responds to smaller circumstances, what does that evoque in you? do you want to protect her / do you want to be protected by her? what’s the context telling you, how do you relate to it?
The expectation is that the woman is emotionally attached to the world and she conducts emotional energy. If she fails to do this, you cant trust her.
But the expectation is reversed for a man – a man is expected to be attached to the world from a practical, usable, power-know-how side of things and to conduct stregth and foundational energy. Cry and show a weak foundation at any point, and you cannot help but wonder where / how else / which other circumstances are going to make you break.
You might have a beautiful relationship with your girlfriend. Then something big happens like the death of a relative and she doesnt cry. Something is fucked up. Do you really know this person?
She has a beautiful relationship with you, then something big happens like a death of a loved one, getting laid off work, you name it, and you break. Something is fucked up. Does she really know you?
Plant that doubt in a woman and she’ll be planting bombs and issues and breaking points to see where your real boundaries are.
Insist on your “right to break” from time to time and she cannot longer
trust you as her foundation – unless she can predict it and control it as in, being on charge of it.
Which you dont want to happen for other reasons.
Practically. Thanks for your response. As with blue pill, I’d like to know the origins of various ways of thinking or of POV.
Ted. You’re right. Doesn’t matter.
Theory is, and I am inclined to believe it, that the danger in showing weakness–which could include more than breaking up at a loved one’s death–is the visceral, non-rational perception on the part of the woman.
Merely showing emotion is one thing. Allowing the perception that it might keep you from acting when necessary is a separate issue. Sure, your wife should know. Theory is…doesn’t matter.
I’m too small a sample to be worth asking, and I’m not sure I’d know, anyway.
About twenty years ago, there was a terrible accident near here and my wife called me from out back to go, “because I knew you’d do something”. So I guess I have that part taken care of.
However, for my experimental sample I have any number of guys posting various anecdotes about showing some kind of weakness or other having nothing to do with whether and how they’d act when necessary and discovering their girlfriends lost respect. No idea of the control group.
Remember how strongly HUS pushed the instinctive side of women’s reactions to one thing or another. I’m sure she’s partly right; that’s a given in behavioral science for any of us. No reason it shouldn’t apply to the subject at hand.
So if you weep uncontrollably when a loved one dies, your SO should be confident it won’t be while entering an expressway at rush hour in a blizzard. IOW, control. Not lack of emotion; nobody’s saying that. It’s control. Other people get to lose it. Not you. Not me.
It has often been suggested that reading fiction is a good way to develop empathy, especially empathy for those quite different from oneself…indeed, a professor who studies this subject (and has gotten some interesting quantitative results) refers to fiction as “the mind’s flight simulator.”
Real flight simulators, of course, are helpful rather than harmful only when they reproduce the characteristics of the actual airplane with reasonable fidelity (and issues have been raised about this fidelity in some recent cases)…in the case of fiction, it would be interesting to systematically compare the internality of male and female characters as developed by authors of the same sex vs the opposite sex. It would also be interesting to know how much of the total novel-reading that goes on involves readers of the same sex as the author vs the opposite.
Blogs such as this one may also be a useful way of improving this kind of empathy.
“Can all women get it? Probably not they have to want to understand and be willing to set their preconceived notions aside to see life from another’s perspective.”
And the truth is modern society does NOT encourage women to even attempt that kind of understanding. They are already pretty well provided for, and as long as their needs are being met they don’t have any reason to care.
Truth be told, I think the primary reason women don’t already know this to some extent is that they’ve been protected in one way or another since the dawn of humanity. Men of course have been doing the protecting, so they’ve understood this concept through most of human history. Its only in modern times that women are finding themselves solely responsible for their own protection (and not even then if you consider how safe the West is in general) and perhaps some of them are starting to realize just what a huge responsibility it is.
I sometimes get the impression that throughout history women have looked at men “doing” and somehow came to the conclusion that they enjoyed it. Sure, sometimes work is enjoyable. But overall, it isn’t joy that drives men to work, it is responsibility. Responsibility to self, to family, to friends, to country, to society. And now that women have been part of the “doing” for awhile, I think they are starting to understand that most of it simply sucks. I don’t go to work for fun, or to “get away” from my family. I go because I am responsible for them, and need make money to provide for them.
You know why wives don’t like being captain most of the time? Because frankly the job sucks. There is little glory to be had, but you get all of the blame when something goes wrong. People don’t appreciate the effort that goes into making life appear to be smooth sailing, because they aren’t the ones steering the damn ship to avoid the icebergs. Women forced into that role quickly start resenting it, yet men have been traditionally expected to simply suck it up and get it done.
Some days it literally feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, even though logically I know that isn’t the case. But, when that feeling hits me, I can’t DO the job without somehow letting it out. If that means on occasion I need to break down and cry, so be it! And yes, I will more than likely “break down” over something rather unimportant. Why? Because I damn well don’t want to break down in a moment of crises. If I’m expected to fight the devil, well, I need a little leeway on how exactly I’m supposed to prepare for it. All I expect from my wife is faith in my ability to do it when the time comes, and a bit of understanding that to do so, I need other means of venting the worries and concerns of life. I don’t think that’s asking too much considering I’m offering my life and physical well being in exchange.
Liz, #66: great story.
I was thinking last night about appropriate paternal behavior in front of children, and since I was watching a game involving my cousin’s alma mater, I thought of this:
My cousin was pulling his son Lars out of a ditch; Lars was about 12 so he was running one tractor and Ole, my cousin, another. It was spring field prep so you’re out disking and chiseling prior to planting, and it’s a race to get it all done and get the fields planted. It was damp and Lars had made a wide turn, caught a tire on a ditch-slope, and slid into the ditch. So Ole gets the chains and begins hauling out Lars, who remains on his tractor trying to power it out.
Rollovers and augers: this is how you get killed farming cash grains.
Ole guns it and his tractor, slowly, inevitably, wheelies and rotates backward. A mass of metal now follows it’s own inertial moment. Ole is flipped off the back of the tractor onto his back in the mud, and he watches a few tons of red IH point to the sky, and then (inverted) fall straight at his head. He rolls a bit and the tractor only crushes one of his legs. His son, whose error caused this event, watches the whole thing. Now Ole has a smashed right femur (compound etc. once he’s dug out) and is pinned into the mud by an upside-down tractor. He’s head down on the slope of the ditch, which probably saved his life. Lars is hysterical. Ole has to calm him down and send him running for his grandfather, on the other side of the field. Vernon drives home and arrives 30 minutes later with a front-end loader and they can’t budge the upended machinery. Ole is in and out of consciousness. There are no cell phones in this era. Ole’s wife is a nurse and doesn’t know what’s happened yet. Lars runs to the nearest house and calls the sheriff. A few other guys show up with more equipment and they get Ole out and off to the hospital.
Now. What happens if at first Ole screams at his son, melts down because he’s quite possibly going to die because his son screwed up and ditched his machine? Who wouldn’t be afraid, and angry, and pumping adrenaline, and furious at his own stupid death in a ditch on a spring morning?
Lars told me this story when we were hunting a few years ago. He’s now, like his dad, collected his two degrees from Iowa State and exudes confidence and happiness. He’s an international sales manager in his mid-20’s for an ag implement manufacturer; he jumps out of airplanes and climbs and sits in the cold to kill deer. Ole walks with a limp yet, but ran a couple marathons post-accident. I spend as many holidays with them as I can for they are the happiest family I know.
Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
In this moment of truth, Ole did not save himself, he saved his family through his self-discipline and care for his son. Had he not — had he not coached an hysterical boy to do what needed doing, had he screamed at him in rage and fear — he likely would have died, and the family broken. They would have found their unique unhappiness. Broken families are not reassembled with “grief counselors” or cheery platitudes and second husbands and psychotropics. They’re just broken. Lars would be walking alone, a self-convicted killer of his dad.
For decades I knew only a brief outline of this story. When I mentioned it to my cousin last summer, asked him if it had really been that bad, he just smiled. I press him for details because I wanted to steal them for a story. Ole, of course, is not sui generis. His father was a Norwegian-accented rifleman in Korea. This is a family where the men just seem to know what to do, and have done it. Eventually, something like this always happens. Sharing one’s feelings can be a very bad habit. I have never seen Lars raise his voice, and the only thing his father ever yelled about were Republicans and bank loans.
Sixteen years of marriage today.
I’ve had my share of weak points, maybe once every few years. I’m lucky that my wife falls more towards the sympathetic end, and has always been on my side when it comes to stuff like this. You’re damn right I cried when they laid the American flag on my father-in-law’s casket. He was war vet and died in a car accident a few years back.
But, I’m naturally a fairly stoic person and keep my mouth shut most of the time.
Ted D, re the job of being Captain…there’s a great passage in Nicholas Monsarrat’s WWII novel The Cruel Sea, which is about the crew of a British anti-submarine vessel. Compass Rose is escorting a convoy in the North Atlantic, at night, and ships are being torpedoed left and right. A tanker has just been hit and is on fire.
“…the oil, cascading and spouting from the tanker’s open side, took fire and spread over the surface of the water like a flaming carpet in a pitch-black room. Silhouetted against this roaring backcloth, which soon rose to fifty feet in the air, Compass Rose must have been visible for miles around; even in swift movement she made a perfect target, and Ericson, trying to decide whether to stop to pick up survivors or whether the risk could not be justified, could visualize clearly what they would look like when stationary against this wall of flame. Compass Rose, with her crew and her painfully collected shipload of survivors, would be a sitting mark from two miles away. But they had been detailed as rescue ship; there were men in the water, there were boats from the tanker already lowered and pulling away from the tower of flame; there was a job to be done, a work of mercy, if the risk were acceptable–if it were worth hazarding two hundred lives in order to gain fifty more, if prudence could be stretched to include humanity.
It was Ericson’s decision alone. It was a captain’s moment, a pure test of nerve; it was, once again, the reality that lay behind the saluting and the graded discipline and the two-and-a-half stripes on the sleeve. While Ericson, silent on the bridge, considered the chances, there was not a man on the ship who would have changed places with him.”
Liz, what did your father-in-law build? A Pitts?
Ted. Right about being captain.
Again, the thing is not about showing emotion. It is about the implication that you don’t have it under control. You can do the first without doing the second, probably.
A guy with a detached retina told me the following: He hated the idea of being effectively one-eyed, and one eye away from blindness.
Bothered him greatly.
Trying to pour some wine, his lack of depth perception made him miss the glass at which point he swore most foully, unaware that the guests could hear. He wasn’t mad at the wine spill, much, anyway, as he was at the indication of how his life was going to go from then on.
I think you can get away with that sort of thing. He did, after all, get the wine poured after making an adjustment. But if he’d gone off to another room leaving the guests and the wine unpoured, that would be a big No No in the showing weakness thing. You don’t get to lose it.
David Foster.
Ref Ericsson:
My father was an Infantry officer fighting in the ETO. He said if he’d known about the responsibility, he’d never have gotten a commission. Who dies today? When I was at Benning, I figured I balanced it with the likelihood it would be me, too, so it was fair. Didn’t see combat, so I don’t know how I’d have felt about it.
RA – “So if you weep uncontrollably when a loved one dies, your SO should be confident it won’t be while entering an expressway at rush hour in a blizzard. IOW, control. Not lack of emotion; nobody’s saying that. It’s control. Other people get to lose it. Not you. Not me.”
OK that makes sense. But I’ll tell you, me turning into a blubbering fool in the safety of my home because a family member died IS control. That’s exactly my point. If I’m crying at all, it is a controlled expression of whatever I need to get out. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t just be a good cry, it would be an all on toddler level temper tantrum complete with no rational thought, whaling, and gnashing of teeth. And THAT is what I mean when I say women should “know” their men. I could be in the middle of a solid cry and still switch it off to do battle if necessary. No matter how much it may look like I’m out of control emotionally, I’ve never in my life been so overcome with emotion that I couldn’t pull it together.
Those scary outbursts ARE the controlled method. I promise the uncontrolled version would be far worse. In fact, I probably cry more from anger than sadness. Simply because my uncontrolled method of venting anger is to break stuff. It is out of sheer frustration AT controlling the anger that tears sometimes happen. But rest assured, if the situation actually calls for breaking shit, I’ve got it covered. All that frustration can be directed precisely at the cause, and since violence is in order, I can actually control it better than when I’m forced to just shove it all down. I’ve found that the few times I’ve been forced to vent anger in a physical way, I actually tend to focus better and think clearer than anytime I’ve had to stuff anger down to manage it. It is FAR more stressful for me to keep strong emotions under wraps than to express them in a controlled manner. I don’t necessarily expect my wife to like my methods, or even understand them. I simply want her to believe that no matter what, I am in control of my facilities. And that if at any time I believed I was losing that, she’d be the first to know.
I get that from an evolutionary perspective a negative reaction to strong emotional outbursts is in order. But we aren’t swinging from trees. And modern life has us dealing with MUCH more on a daily basis than we are biologically equipped for. When life was about survival, we spent most of our time concerned about things like shelter and food. Today, we spend countless hours worried about bills, car repairs, mortgage payments, insurance costs, braces for the kids, literally hundreds of issues at any given time. I’d wager that if my only real concerns were fighting off sabertooth tigers, hunting to feed my family, and scaring off invaders, I’d be much less emotionally stressed than I am on an average day. Because when that tiger attacks, you either live through it or die, and either way there aren’t many emotions left to deal with on the other side. You are either alive and happy, or you’re dead. But on any given day I may be presented with any number of challenges without such clear cut choices, and all those little things can add up to a HUGE stress bubble. And of course it isn’t socially acceptable to go around breaking stuff simply because you are stressed! But, that would be the quickest and least damaging method for me to vent it. If I could simply punch my sources of frustration, I don’t think I’d have that many bad days. I would get frustrated, I’d hit something, and I wouldn’t be frustrated anymore. It is controlling that instinct that causes the stress, and at some point that shit just has to come out. And usually, it is some minor incident that becomes the straw to break the camels back. Once I get that shit out, its back to business as usual. Within minutes I can be back to my normal state and functioning like nothing happened. And again, to me that’s the kind of info I’d think my wife would WANT to know. Is it attractive? Not in the least. Does it work? Fairly well. Does it get her the protector she needs? Yep.
I don’t expect women to like how men deal with things. Faith that it works is enough.
Ted.
Good explanation. Doesn’t matter. What matters is the woman’s visceral reaction and conclusion.
As I say, I have reservations about ev psych, but the fact that we’re, say, eighty years away from routine trouble and a lot of good luck being born where we are doesn’t negate what evolutionary issues there may be.
You make a good, rational case. Doesn’t matter. Theory is that the entire reaction on the part of the woman is not rational.
I’m reminded of my remarking at HUS about “women can’t be that dumb” when Susan was explaining one or another issue about women’s perception of men or men’s actions. Dumb or not, as may be characterized, the point was, according to Susan that the reactions were not from the rational part of the brain.
“should” and “ought” and similar concepts do not apply, according to the theory. Which, as we have had explained to us here and there, seems to hold at least some validity.
BV. Hell of a story, and exactly on point.
BTW, got a friend who grew up in western WI where the ground is not Iowa-flat. Said if his town had had the casualties in Viet Nam they did in farming,they’d have seceded.
Starlight, #79:
I applaud your desire to support your man’s emotional reality, but I do think there is another is/ought problem here. IOW, it depends *what* your man tells you in his moments of weakness. Most men will never know where the line that cannot be crossed is, or is on a given day, and when information becomes poison. Here’s an example:
In my marriage I had given up my literary career in NYC to start a software company and take care of my young wife, who had the aversion to labor inherent in a family that hadn’t worked since the Civil War. I was on planes all week, and at the office days and nights, if not. But I still wrote every Saturday morning. Plays were out because I was no longer in a theatre community so I started writing stories. I knew it was sort of pathetic — software guy presuming to still be a former self, practicing four hours a week of pretension — but that is what I did each Saturday morning before mowing the yard or going to some party or doing whatever mindless bullshit that happy couples pursue.
A core philosophy of mine is not to try to do something unless one wants to be the best in the world at something. It can be any activity. But the world doesn’t need a unique effort at being secondary. So, in further naivete, I started sending my stories to the then-best fiction magazine in the world, The New Yorker. For those still reading, the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts at TNY is about five feet high, per day. It really is. It’s like sending an invitation to a party to Queen Elizabeth. Likely, she’s busy that night.
To shorten up, Charles McGrath, then Shawn’s deputy editor, began writing me back. I had broken through the tons of waste paper that is their slush pile. The notes were short but they were good. “I want to see the next one.” “This one is very interesting but it breaks down on page seven. See my comments.” Finally, “You’re almost there. I know you can do this.”
This is like playing 8-man football in a consolidated high school in South Dakota, and getting scouted by Southern Cal.
I started weeping when I opened it, a small typewritten note, signed in blue, paper-clipped to a hand-typed 10 pp short story about a young couple in the Middleburg hunt country, and a party they had attended. I hadn’t shown that story to my wife. She hugged me and we yelled and probably had sex on the kitchen floor, a frequent pastime then. Later, she said, “Have I read it? I haven’t read this one. I knew you could do it!”
So she read it and came into my study, where I was pacing, electric with disbelief at my good fortune, the recognition, the end of my futility. I wasn’t yet 10 years out of college.
“You hate me! You hate me! This is disgusting! I never want to read another one!”
Being a Good Man, a draft horse, BB’s #2, having disclosed too much, and in the nonreality of fiction to boot, I stopped writing for 10 years. If I am ever with a woman again, I’ll not allow her to read my work, or if she must, pretend that she hasn’t. Or I’ll only write children’s books, histories, other nonfiction. My thoughts — stretched, manipulated, constructed to fit a story — had been over the line. The line’s always there, good luck, if you’re a man, and you pretend it’s not.
Ironical footnote: when she was doing the “we need marriage counseling” thing at year 18 of this marriage, I of course was handed by her and the feminist counselor she had selected a list of ways I needed to self-improve. One of them was, “He never writes anymore, it’s what he is best at.” I can’t remember if this item was above, or below, the requirement that I clean all the bathrooms and take more vacations.
The best living writer is James Salter, and he discusses something of this problem of disclosure and punishment. His most approachable and beautiful novel is _Light Years_. His marriage of 20 years ended on its publication.
First:
“Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.
And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.”
Then:
“But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires.”
And finally:
“The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life–it was not worth much–not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one–we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist.”
So, in imposing this requirement for a God-like acceptance on a woman, we ruin ourselves with her. I advise reticence in all cases. Tim Keller calls this the secular application of religious longing on temporal creatures. He calls it a fated desire for “apocalyptic love.” No such love exists, and it truly is better if we seek union with God (if this is possible for one) and a more reasonable love with a woman, one that imposes no such apocalyptic needs, and one that doesn’t inform her of things she prefers not to think about.
I recently told this story to Son#1, absent some of the lurid details, and with some of the happier moments of working with Shepard and Forest Whitaker. He lives in a basement in Montana and writes, when he’s not climbing mountains in the snow. He’s as beautiful as his mother and the waitresses, when we go out to eat, all know his name. He had no idea of this period of my life. My purpose was to implore him to give himself the next ten years of his life, as a man apart, and hold his deepest desires close and not forfeit them in drafthorse compliance. I do believe the interior life is for men, not their women, who simply have other needs. They can be satisfied in a subsequent maturity.
Anyway, read Salter. He’s the best in the world. His second wife loves him for she met him when everything had already been disclosed. I doubt they talk about his work much and they seem very happy after 30 years together. I had a brief correspondence with Salter a few years ago, but he ended it when I became personal.
#94: “Liz, what did your father-in-law build? A Pitts?”
Yes! Several of them, and at least one Christen Eagle that I know of (he still has that one, never sold it, it was the last plane he built).
That’s quite a story about Ole. Farmers are tough! (my dad was raised on a farm)
Ted, #83:
“I’m supposed to go a few rounds with Lucifer to protect my family if necessary. Fine, I signed up for it, I’ll handle it if/when it occurs. But what I don’t understand is WHY a woman would somehow come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t even try simply because I got emotional when my dog died. I get that a woman that doesn’t know me might find that scary, but once I’ve spent time with her, I’d expect that she would know me well enough to understand that my emotional state is almost irrelevant if/when the shit hits the fan.”
In the wisdom of the great philosopher Anheuser-Busch, “Why ask why?” It’s like wondering why it’s raining today. You’re going to get wet even if some weatherman predicted sunshine.
Liz, hope you get rides in that Eagle. (It’s a Pitts S-2A from a kit, basically.) One *flies* most airplanes, but one *wears* a PItts. And blind landings (you land them looking out the side, the runway is obscured at the flare) FTW!
@David
Youtube has a radio (BBC 1980) version of The Cruel Sea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDkgcSex9o
Just over 2 hours, perhaps ripe for listening to on a long drive. (Use a capture tool on the stream)
The trailer for the movie – a very fine movie (or rather, film)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSpaKCC6g2M
Other Great Films For Men (lozlolozol) in a similar vein would include
Yangste Incident (HMS Amethyst) hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I-m4CcwocQ
Battle for the River Plate. Three outsized cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter & HMNZ Achilles take on the Pocket Battleship The Graf Spee early in WWII.
Sink the Bismark.
Battle of Britain
633 Squadron
The Dambusters
Malta GC
Today’s movies lack the emotional impact, I think, of describing real situations where men knowingly sacrificed for their country. Sorry about the Brit-centric list, I know it wasn’t just a British phenomenon.
All of the films show the male attitude of ‘Stiff Upper Lip’ by ordinary men. i.e. Not showing weakness, even unto death. So…on topic?
BV – I ask why about everything. Doesn’t mean I’m not following common wisdom, or in this case Red Pill wisdom. I get how showing emotional weakness appears to my wife, so I minimize how much of it I show. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know exactly WHY I’m required to do so. And “because she doesn’t like it” isn’t an answer. :p
RA – I realize my logical analysis amounts to squat in the real world, but part of why I spend so much time on blogs is the conversations about why reality is what it is. I can and do act according to whatever observable customs work best in a situation, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to logically work out why that custom works best. I wouldn’t attempt to have this conversation with my wife, because in that environment it serves no purpose and would likely result in some negative feelings directed my way. Since I can’t figure out the WHY of it from the source, I go elsewhere to find those answers.
I can see that Game works. So, while I may be using Game principles to improve my marriage and life in general, it does NOT mean I won’t question WHY it is necessary and WHY it works. Don’t think for a moment I’m fighting the tide here, because on the surface it looks like I’m going with the flow. But I’ve never been the type to blindly accept something based on if it does or doesn’t “work” in the moment. There is nothing that is simply because it “is”. There is always a reason, a method, a driving principle. The sun rises because we spin around it, not because it just DOES. The sky is blue because of molecules in the air, not just because nature likes blue sky.
So, although I can see how women react to emotional vulnerability, it isn’t enough to simply say “it just is”, because that isn’t true. There are reasons, and by digging into those reasons we can better understand them, and perhaps even work around them. I continue to behave as I do in my marriage because I understand that it works, but I will continue to always question it, and will continue to modify it based on those answers. It really is what I do. I think and think often about everything and anything. In fact, sometimes it keeps me up at night…
@Liz
I’d recommend GirlWritesWhat / Karen as a starting place (as video or as transcript). In her own videos she can script the show, the AVFM radio shows not so much. By the time you factor in Skype connection issues, the shows are harder to get right.
@ Practically perfect:
Male friendships are extremely important to most men. But, our friendships are centered around mutual respect, not mutual affection. They are also centered around mutual interests and activities, not emotional affinity or sharing feelings.
When it becomes necessary to talk or emote or break down or feel something, there are unspoken ground rules, in my experience. The first rule is that confidentiality is strictly observed. What is said or happens is not spoken of to anyone else, ever – not even to wives, not even to other male friends.
The second rule is that the time for emoting will have a definite starting and ending point. We will talk about this now and perhaps one other time, and you can get it all off your chest. After that, we will feel, we’ll propose solutions if need be, and we’ll walk with you. We will not, however, stay in this one place and watch you emote emote emote feel feel feel for days, weeks or months on end. We will kick your ass or, if necessary, exclude you. If we think you’re going around in circles, we’ll stop you and point it out to you plainly, and tell you to STFU, we already covered that. There is a time to pick your ass up, stop talking, feel whatever you have to feel, move on from it, and start doing. And that time is after the first or second time you are emoting over this same issue/event/girl/ whatever. There is what mental health professionals and PR people call “closure”.
The third rule is similarly sacrosanct, and it was that once the feelings and emoting are concluded, and we’ve all moved on, the episode is never spoken of again. There is no navel gazing retrospective analysis There is no “we coulda/woulda/shoulda done that better.” There is no rubbing noses in it; no throwing the past back in your friend’s face. There is no “remember that time you cried your eyes out over Sally the bitchface and you were so in lurrrrvvve with her!” No. None of that. It’s done. It’s over. We’re moving on.
That, in my experience, is how men and male friends handle these things when necessary. And unfortunately, men who don’t follow these basic rules tend to get excluded from male groups.
Morpheus:
Great post. Very important information for men to know.
Let me riff off this for a minute.
1. In general, in a long term relationship, a man really can’t manifest extreme negative emotional responses like despair, being distraught, depression to the point of catatonia, or fear.
2. In the beginning of a relationship, for say, oh, the first 3 months or so, a man must never, ever express any negative emotions whatsoever, other than perhaps in the form of a neg like mild irritation in a teasing way. He must NEVER show frustration, fear, anger, rage, or despair. Even genuine confusion or indecisiveness could torpedo a budding relationship. He really needs to be on guard and appear completely in control.
My experience is that at the beginning, most women are pretty unforgiving about observing negative emotions or mental states in men they’re dating or relationshipping, because it makes them extremely uncomfortable. So she has to be really comfortable before she can really see this in you.
3. Most women will give their man a “grace period” for showing negative emotion. She’ll forgive a violent angry outburst once or twice. More than that, and you’ve got anger management issues or might be a wife beater in disguise. More concerning though is the man who suffers a major loss or trauma that really rocks him back on his heels. She’s OK with this for a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months. She’ll give you that time to recover.
The problems happen when he can’t bring himself out or he stays there situation unchanged for months, stretching into years. He’s depressed for years and can’t seem to shake it. He lost his job and can’t get another one. He can’t get past something that happened to him. She now has concluded you can’t handle it and this thing has broken you. Her hypergamy will start ramping up even if she doesn’t want it to. Whether she wants to or not, she’ll look for your replacement.
Another thing occurred to me.
Certainly most women are not attracted to a melancholy, pessimistic man with a dour personality who can never pull himself out of his shit.
But, by the same token, if he goes too far the other way and is exuberantly happy all the time, that can produce the weird, creepy, “what’s his deal?” vibe. You can’t be so effervescent and effusive that you bubble over and giggle like a giddy schoolgirl.
And it’s weird and creepy because it’s, well, feminine, and it comes off as artificial and inauthentic.
@Deti,
May I ask you how many men in leadership positions do you know that have close male friends? I want the best for my husband and this post has made me aware that I may not be his best confidant, but because of his occupation we really only have each other to confide in. There are no close friends, but we are surrounded by people who are well intentioned but we know better than to share.
Practically perfect:
“May I ask you how many men in leadership positions do you know that have close male friends?”
Sure you may.
All of the men I know in leadership positions have at least one close male friend. And one is all he needs. “Close” does not necessarily mean geographic proximity, either.
Most of the men I know like this had these friends before they ascended into leadership positions, so there is a lot of history there, and the relationship is firmly established.
That doesn’t mean your husband cannot find one good male confidant. Though it’s difficult because of his position and perhaps because of time constraints. It really just depends on him and what he wants and needs.
And there are some men who don’t seem to need a close male friend and do fine just handling it internally. In that case, for the religious like Earl, a good priest is essential.
@Buena
I didn’t know of your literary past, though it is no surprise. Your way with words is a treat to read. Your son is lucky to have those sit-downs with you, however infrequent; it is a cumulative thing, becoming a man. At times your comments seem to channel me. I started to clip from above, but felt no need to paint around what is already so vivid.
When my ex left me, in our initial exit interview, one of her bullet points was telling me that “I stopped painting” as if I was unaware of the death of that part of me, that part which had been mine alone since I picked up my first brush in 7th grade. The part that I shared with only her and my part-time stray cat, who I had to shoo off of my canvases. She liked the feel I guess. My work, however haphazardly I laid that acrylic down, had gone from an external expression of my internal world, my private life inside my head, to that of adornments in our home, something I ‘gave’ to her.
Something had to give. Working 60-80 hours a week. I had wanted out of the business for quite some time, but held course for other reasons, including that I’d lost my dad to cancer and the balance of my family had unstable financial means. I was becoming my dad. Provider. A Good Man. That career was not congruent in any way with my personality, but for the periodic intellectual oasis that feed my brain beast. Of course the reality was that all the ‘stuff’ that I got (had) to learn, was ultimately second or third order relative to the constant jockeying, internal and external competition, the selling, the self-promotion, and aggression.
So even the small part of my work that fed me, really did little to either advance my position or insulate me from the other distasteful aspects of the work. I had a boss that loved to tell me “don’t get to smart”, i.e. don’t do too much thinking, particularly for the other side – let them figure it out. This is in a field that recruits exclusively for the ‘smart’ and credentialed. My colleagues and subordinates loved me. I loved being the teacher, the sage, to the up-and-coming and my counterparts sought out my balanced and thoughtful input, but I had problems with blind confidence and disproportionate risk. Interestingly, in that world it was basically how you become the Good Man and friend-zone yourself with the chiefs. Not so different than with women really.
In any case, the psychic drain, the emotional toil of being in that self-imposed second skin was quite damaging. My needs were not being met. The death inside me was real. My painting, creating, was tucked away in the cellar because the two worlds became so opposed, so contradictory, that I found it too difficult to go from canvas to spreadsheet, from beautiful things to where you shill for men more devious or dead inside than you.
Daydreaming became my hobby. One late knight, on my long commute home I just kept thinking how great it would be if I got T-boned in one of those suicide lefts that LA has factored into their grid. Not so bad, but just enough to say, bruise my brain such that I could only do basic math. After watching my dad die and leave my mom nothing but 40 years of memories, I’d bought a healthy disability policy. Somehow brain damage seemed like a better/easier way out. No shit I had stopped painting.
She couldn’t understand how a man in my station could not be walking around with a swagger and raging erection all day. Why I couldn’t just suck it up? After all, the money was great. It would be “unfair” to her if I pulled the ripcord and made $40k strapping together some creative projects – even if that meant I would have a smile instead of scowl and that my studio would be spilling out work. I spent too much time trying to make her understand me, my pain, my dreams, the song inside me. She saw weakness, fear, apprehension, need. She was apex herself, so that tightrope of disclosure was very real. (See Deti #108)
So I’ve spent the last few years trying to rebirth that part of me that I let die off. I started writing too. The painting is a part of me again, but I found that I need language – if even my own obtuse musings, to set loose those things in me that have found no footing in the ‘real’ world.
I had a GF a while back that would mention on occasion, usually when she was feeling particularly emotional because I am ‘so closed off’, that I haven’t even shared my writing with her. It all just feels like some kind of twisted paradox. I’ve always been a bit of an island. Often absent, very loving father who never knew what to say and a batshit crazy (legit) mom who said too much. I have no doubt that I have spent too much time in that world inside my head. But I know better than to show them too much. Yet I ache to share my gifts with the world. And in all of that, there are days when I want to kill that song in me for good and just plug back in. Put the skin back on. Really, do women want to know the demons that visit their man in the quiet hours? I think not.
Oh and my ex, in her generosity, offered to take any paintings of mine I didn’t want to take with me. I told her the ones I painted for her were hers to keep. But the 20 or so pieces she found in the dumpster were not for her taking. Off to the unknown, just like me. The phoenix must burn.
@ Buena Vista
Your life story about attempting to be a writer is really interesting! Lots to ponder about. Hmm, I realised I see things the following way:
As a wife / partner it is in my best interest to support his passion even if we don’t see eye to eye. I have no right to judge him or tell him how to do his job. I would not want to be told by him how to do mine unless I actually asked for it and, most importantly, I’d like to be with someone who supports my passion.
Of course, I would not encourage someone who had absolutely no talent and was living of thin air.
I’ll look for James Salter next time I’m at the bookshop. What specific books do you recommend on him?
@ Tasmin
Nice to hear your perspective on the subject.
To me, stemming from neediness means in brief the following: a kid needing a mother because he is incapable of helping himself.
E.g. You are suffering from depression. Not to worry, we’ll get through this together. Even if it takes time, provided you are making an effort, I am here for you. But please realise that I am not your mother, thus spoon-feeding you is out of the question.
In all honestly, the above goes both ways.
I would rather be with a man who strengthens me and encourages me to accomplish things than someone who just does everything for me.
@ deti
“The third rule is similarly sacrosanct, and it was that once the feelings and emoting are concluded, and we’ve all moved on, the episode is never spoken of again.”
I honestly wish sometimes some females behaved as how you recently stated. Some women get upset over the tiniest of matters. It’s ridiculous. To err is human. Get over it.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/a-small-taste-of-the-fempocalypse
Your current fiscal state as a foretaste of MGTOW starting to bite? Le pockylips des herbivores arriverait…peut-etre?
@PP2
On friends.
I’ve got a handful of male friends, close – but as Deti says, rarely in geography. I trust them all, but don’t hold particularly rigid expectations of them. If there is true need, it will be met. Time passes gently between these bonds. A friend I had not seen in months was the one who dropped everything to co-pilot my moving van over the rockies when I had to leave my old life behind. Regardless of what has occupied the span since or the expanse going forward, I love him for that.
I’ve got one who is my true confidante. Since age 14. Even went through college together. We met through a sport in common, which led us down the same path – part fortune part will. As for the will part, he credits me with motivating him to take a chance on a rather circuitous route. Long story, but these credits flow easily between us.
When our last season came to an end and we were all celebrating a great season over a keg, the realization that those days in sport were over fell upon him, that body of experience that had made him so much of the man he had become, helped forged our friendship through competition and cooperation was heading out like some ghost ship into the sea of nostalgia, he broke down like I’d never seen before.
My eyes teared up too, but in that moment he needed me to be stronger than him. Just for a bit. He needed to show that part of him, his fear that so much of his identity and purpose was being hung up and that what lay ahead scared him. What could I really tell him? I held those same feelings. But it wasn’t about whatever I said. I don’t even remember. It was that he needed to show me that he was afraid, that he felt weak, sad, and a bit lost. We don’t speak of this moment, or others like it; we don’t dwell in those places, yet there is – and always will be, some kind of preserve we hold for each other. Where for a moment or three we can go to those depths as naked as we need.
Crying while cutting down the nets on national TV is accepted by all, it is, after all ‘emotional’ to win or achieve at such a level. Those are the kind of tears he could shed with his GF. That is the kind of ‘showing emotion’ that women admire: vulnerability bacon wrapped in strength. But still, only he really knows what is behind those tears. She assumes certain things and he can fill in selectively, take her down the path, but only to a point. Well, with my friend, he needed to go all the way down the path with me. I knew. I knew because I felt the same. A kind of death. A death with no funeral. And he knew that I knew what he was feeling. There is a safety in that shared space that exists nowhere else for a man. That is the bond that a man can share only with another man he holds dear.
If you want to break a man, you first break those sacred bonds he holds with other men. Its never about the golf, the bowling, the shooting, the fishing, the man cave; it is about the language, spoken and not. Its about riding that current, drifting back to October 1994 in an exchange of verbal shorthand, some secret handshake of a long past communion. To the outside observer, those journeys are something between quaint exchanges of boys being boys and “weird” or “awkward” rituals that cry out to be managed, deconstructed. To all women everywhere: let them be.
A different example.
When my brother came back from AfganIraq he was not the same. Nothing major – as in he had all his parts and he was lucky enough to not have to kick down too many doors doors or cut people in half with lead, but the wrecking ball swings softly, even gracefully, before it makes contact. He doesn’t have those male friends. His first wife made sure of that. Even if his wife desired to (which she didn’t) be the replacement best friend, she just doesn’t speak the language of men. So he retreated to the the tree-fort alone. That part of him, that little death inside of him began to rot and creep into his good parts; he has never been the same.
When his war buddies, those men who dug, sweat, and swore with him, who went delirious with heat and lack of sleep, those guys who stared down the absurd, who constructed elaborate ways to cope and to pass idle time beneath a blanket of fear and penetrating grime, when they came from the four corners to show up at his (now) second wedding he beamed. Not to diminish the glorious matrimonial affair, but for him it was probably the best and most memorable part of his wedding. A few stolen moments with these buddies lifted him in ways that no woman could – not even his lovely bride who had been fretting about the presentation of the cookie bar. He and his wife share love, bonds of their own that will grow to hold things sacred from his male friends. It should be no stretch to think a man could have such things with a man who has been at his side.
But even more, that there are some depths in us that find peace in the complimentary attributes of a woman, yet there are others that have no place, only the occasional solace provided by those men who bring their own dark parts to the porch for three fingers of Blantons and five minutes of silence.
Its tiring. Holding the gloves up high. 14 oz isn’t much, unless you are never allowed to put it down.
Long story I won’t tell, even metaphorically. Just that, in 1970, I missed an opportunity to perform a duty which never occurred to me until thirty years later. The person for whom I should have performed that duty went down some wrong paths and I thought maybe I could have prevented that. That was not me, not who I want to be, not the man I should be, to miss that sort of thing.
Explaining the situation to a friend–we go back to jump school at Benning in 1970–I was really, really in a funk and feeling very bad. Very bad. Lost appetite, interest in other things.
He said, “You can’t fix somebody over a beer,” which, when I thought about it, was about the only thing I had been in a position to do. I immediately felt better, knowing that, altough I missed the opportunity, it would have made no difference and I was not to blame.
Never spoke about it since. Don’t have to.
There are some extremely high-quality posts in this thread; the erudition, depth, and worldly experience on display are truly impressive.
Starlight,
Salter is not everyone’s idea of approachable, and his range of work is profound. He’s also an interesting case for this thread — cf. Tasmin’s secret life — because he began adulthood as a West Point-educated pilot, flew F-80s or F-86s in combat in Korea, and began writing secretly while on active duty. His first novel was a Korea air war novel, that he sold and that was then made into a movie: The Hunters. No one in the Air Force knew he was writing. He continued writing while a squadron commander in Europe and wrote what is now re-issued as Casada. These are his most traditional novels. He admired Irwin Shaw, Hemingway, the mid-century modernists of that sort.
He then made the decision to leave the Air Force, a decision he said felt like “dying” and immediately found himself with wife and children, broke, and selling swimming pools.
He wrote what many people say is the most under-recognized, best novel post-WWII: A Sport and A Pastime. It is sui generis. It is also erotic, was labeled pornographic by the NYTimes, has no evident forbears so is jarring and difficult to pick up cold. I suppose I have read it 20 or 30 times. I copy pages of it out by hand to try to understand it better. It sold a few thousand copies initially, which is more than the first edition of The Great Gatsby, but not enough to create a career.
You have probably seen a movie he wrote: Downhill Racer, with Redford. He bought a house in Aspen with the dough, a small house, before Aspen became an amusement park for the leisured wealthy.
He wrote Light Years, his most approachable novel in his mature voice, got divorced, as noted earlier today.
His next movie for Redford was modeled on the great rock climber/mountaineer John Harlin. Harlin was a Stanford grad and USAF pilot. He abandoned it all to live in poverty and climb. The book is a poetic exploration of the purity of dangerous sport (Harlin climbed the Eiger, a killer face); the integrity of men who would rather paint houses than sell swimming pools or farm a cubicle; the elegant rich women from Paris who would flock to these men who slept in tents outside of town because they were so poor, and watch them from their hotel telescopes while they fell off the north face and died; it is about the ruthlessness with which they protected their freedom and art. These men:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/1963_aiguille_du_fou.jpg
Harlin is the blonde-haired stud on the left. He died in full view of the hotel audience, his rope breaking, and his falling a few thousand feet like a dead bird.
Redford was a star by now; not for him the unromantic, hard life with no happy reconciliation with a blonde in Act III. He rejected the script, and Salter and he did not speak for 20 years. Salter rewrote the script as a novel — Solo Faces — and it is the novel I gave to my son as his ‘manual.’ (He has since read every piece of Salter fiction and memoir.) One can read the book as it is, or one can view the solo faces as solo pages, Salter’s morning confrontation with blank paper. Redford was a friend of a friend, and incidentally, his movie star self has always been at war with his original self. Perhaps he regrets his choices, if not the money. I had dinner with him once on Block Island, when I was very young, and I mentioned Salter and he just clammed up and frowned. Downhill Racer had been his breakthrough movie. The character was tough, skilled, uneducated, and attractive to the fancy women who follow World Cup skiing. His prepped-out teammates dislike him and his tendency to snarl at their customs while racing solely to win. His father, a poor rancher, doesn’t even know what he does for a living.
Salter has published the best literary memoir I’ve read in 20 years: Burning the Days. It is son #1’s favorite Salter.
I’m going to terminate the bio now, but he is still publishing at 87.
I would recommend to you, on a hunch:
Light Years (novel)
Burning the Days (memoir)
Last Night (stories)
For the guys here I would recommend those but insist on Solo Faces, for anyone who goes into the mountains or the arctic; A Sport and a Pastime for serious literatteurs (it’s in the American Library now); Casada for someone like BB or Richard who commanded men and know men who died in service.
In each of the more action-based novels themes of expression, leadership, emotional stoicism, and weakness at bad moments, are quietly, carefully detailed. It’s not a stretch to tie his work to this thread.
An eerie anecdote:
In the 90’s I was flying to Toronto (commercial). There was a folded magazine stuffed in the seatback. I began reading a gripping memoir of Korea by a pilot. I didn’t know who had written it because I began where it was folded, and only later started at the beginning. It is a piece Salter wrote for Smithsonian.
I arrived in Toronto, checked into the King Edward, a place you could still smoke a cigar, and flipped on the TV traveling businessman style. There was a gripping movie in mid-stream playing in late afternoon. Apparently it was one of those failed movies that went “straight to cable.” I sat on the edge of the bed half-dressed with eyes agog. It ended. Movie: Threshold. Screenplay: Salter.
I called my dad in Iowa City about another matter; it’s a university town that attracts high-value writers to teach a semester or two in the MFA program. I grew up with people like Vonnegut and Roth and Irving downstairs in the house at cocktail parties with the university crowd. This was normal in that world. I mentioned the coincidences of the afternoon. Dad said, “You know, he’s renting the Bennett house this semester. (That’s half-a-block away from my childhood home.) “He’s not very friendly, but he nods sometimes when I say hello. I told him how much you like his stuff, but he grunted.”
I wrote him after that, and we exchanged a few letters, but as I noted, he cut me off when I made a personal overture to come out to Aspen and do research or work on a bibliography on my vacation. I recommended to a friend that she have Karl Marlantes and Salter speak at the Aspen Writers Conference this year, as the topic was the literature of war, and liberal editors in Manhattan don’t read about men in war. She hadn’t heard of Marlantes, read him, and he came to the conference. Salter declined. He is an extremely reticent man.
In regard to the obligatory Act III reconciliation, so crucial to emotional porn, here is Salter and Redford reconciled in old age:
http://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/redfordsalter_blog2.jpg?w=300&h=202
I hope the links don’t kill this file.
Tasmin, you’ve been kind in your remarks. There is a revelatory moment in “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” when Mr. Bridge (in late middle age, early elder years) leaves their Paris hotel, and leaves his dowdy wife alone in their unspeaking, tired marriage for a few hours. He has previously disowned their daughter for moving to NY to be an actress, he is the Good Man and he will pull the goddamn cart until his heart fails. He buys a painting, a somewhat racy one, from a bohemian street seller, if I recall correctly. The painting is the secret life he’s never lived. He returns to the hotel. They embrace. It’s never over until it’s over.
PP2, #110: your comment puzzles me. I know very few executives who do not have a few close friends. They don’t see them every night for a beer, but they’re shooting birds in the Flyway or sailing to Bermuda or stuff like that, once or twice a year. One of my closest friends now I only see a few times a year at a football game (a mutual hobby is blogging on college football), but we’ve already exchanged several emails today. I would say most men of means have the opportunity for better, not poorer friendships and experiences.
In the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle I used to practice, male friendship was subordinated to couples friendship. I am not commenting on your situation about which I know nothing. I do know that I thought it was an obligation of mine, as a good husband, to keep my male friendships to those that included wives my wife liked. I didn’t think about it much. I think this is a common occurrence. I thought it was selfish of me to go flying with Steve, and I stopped doing it when she stopped encouraging me.
When I got divorced I made a checklist of things I hadn’t done but wished to restart or expand. I made a list of friends I had not seen or only seen on the sly.
(For example, a classmate was a roaring, profane drunk who would arrive at the house with a new floozy, or a new student practicing daddy erotica, each visit, terrifying my wife. I mean, he was impossible. He wasn’t domesticated. We never knew when he would leave. It eventually overwhelmed the fact that he has a Pulitzer for Poetry.) (In the context of this thread, let’s say he overshared. Inevitably, after the fifth bottle of whatever, he would be weeping, telling me to go outside and fight him, asking me for money, or trying to feel up my wife.) (In the context of the manosphere I note: I had some good married sex, paradoxically, when he visited. Could I put 2 and 2 together? Nah.)
So your guy needs his friends, he has them somewhere out there, he may just need assurance that it’s cool.
Deti #111 & BV #120
The insight again is appreciated. We went to college together & ran in the same circle but didn’t date until after we graduated. Ironically almost all of his close friends ended up going into the same profession which brings with it an inherited distance from your colleagues. We both moved around quite a bit as kids so he never formed long lasting friendships until college. His profession makes us both easily recognizable in public so we have to constantly watch what we say and do. Deti, you may be right and he is fine without close friends and if he’ not he will do something about it. I think I’ve made this my problem and it’s not.
BV, I’ve always encouraged him to go and do with the guys when the opportunity comes, because there is nothing sexier to me then seeing my husband coming home happy with tales of his adventure.
This is starting to sound whinny so let me say I will take your suggestions and words to heart. I am sure with time things will work out as they should.
Have a good weekend Gentlemen.
BB, I agree. It’s good to see the diaspora form certain blogs continue with high-quality discussion. While I can’t hold a candle to your pedigree and experience (I often feel like 1/100th the man of then likes of you or BV), I surely can learn.
Rewrite:
Tasmin, you’ve been kind in your remarks. There is a revelatory moment in “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” when Mr. Bridge (in late middle age, early elder years) leaves their Paris hotel, and leaves his dowdy wife alone in their unspeaking, tired, ill-defined marriage for a few hours. He walks about Paris alone: an upright man from Kansas City sampling the demi-monde. He is alone. He is in Paris to renew his 40 year marriage. It’s a struggle. So he walks the streets. His wife can’t keep up and it’s best she remain in the hotel.
He has previously disowned their daughter for moving to NY to be an actress, for that is impractical and she will likely wind up a waitress and sleeping with cads with fine Packards and a family place on the north shore that they promise to inherit. Out of hope, she will do this, not experience (Mr. Bridge thinks, and he is right) and she will lose her innocence to no one, of no value, for no reason. Still, this is what she wants so she does it. He walks the streets of Paris. (I used to walk Paris so long and so hard my feet broke. Vanity prevented me from wearing appropriate shoes.) Mr. Bridge is the ultimate Good Man. He’s the horse pulling the cart, he’s the lawyer the mayor turns to when he’s busted in the brothel listening to Lester Young and Charlie Parker, he serves on the Parks and Recreation Board. His wife has a 36″ waist by now. Her clothing better resembles packaging, for shipping, than anything designed to appeal to a man. They haven’t had sex in several years, now, which in the prior instance didn’t go well, and they do not speak of it.
Mr. Bridge walks the streets of Paris, alone, while Mrs. Bridge, fluttery, wishing she were home at bridge club, wishing Mr. Bridge were in the hotel reading the Herald Tribune and remarking on the profligacy of French politicians, who obviously can’t add or restrain themselves, while they drank that strong coffee from good china. Pont Neuf, the Tuileries, the racy section of the Troisieme. He encounters streetwalkers and is puzzled by their interest in him, and their confident teasing. Mr. Bridge is the Good Man and he will pull the goddamn cart until his heart fails, which it does, incidentally, soon: it explodes and he is gone, just not yet. Now he is on the streets of Paris, alone. He interrogates a street vendor of modest talent who touts a painting of immodest image, an illicit painting to anyone in Kansas City. He could never put that painting on the wall for his friends to see. He buys that painting, the racy one, from a bohemian street seller. There is no doubt. He’s buying it.
The painting is the secret life he’s never lived, Tasmin. It is the life he never lived. It is the secret life his disowned daughter wishes to seize after riding the Burlington Northern to NYC and checking into a hotel of small rooms limited to other single girls from the provinces who are there to throw the dice. He looked at that painting … and paid, following a respectable negotiation. A prudent man, he does not wish to be to be taken. He acquires it at a lower price. A lean, hard-walking older man in an unfashionable three-piece American suit and sporting a 50 cent haircut buys his portrait of physical love.
He returns to his hotel and his anxious wife. She is properly wrapped up and configured for the day. She trills at his arrival, she shudders when she sees the picture. The implication: who is this man? They embrace. They embrace. He will be dead soon, but neither know this. They embrace. She has never seen her husband in this manner. It seems nothing is broken. He is the young boy in law school and he is true. They embrace. He is 23, she is 18 again.
So it’s never over until it’s over. It will end when the rope breaks, John Harlin’s tired rope breaks on the Eiger, and he will fall like a broken small bird, a speck against rock, against sky, vanishing. But they lived in that moment. All moments count. This is a movie, and a pair of novels, in which Mr. Bridge complains — not once. Not a single time. No one would care if he did. Mrs. Bridge, in my extension, retains that picture in her dressing room. She remembers how he handled the rude man at customs in New York, who wished to punish them with duties for their little picture that happened to show a woman’s breast.
@ Buena Vista
Thanks for the recs! Will check them out. I’m sure they sell James Salter here; otherwise there is always Amazon. I love reading profound literature.
Just thinking of ‘On Tears’ by Kerouac. A male writer is able to express his innermost weaknesses via some form of writing – a safe haven to explore his deepest and darkest thoughts.
My husband is a good writer.
He did author one book, 600 pages, but it’s the Operations and Tactics manual to the F22. So it’s classified and only available to those with access to ‘the vault’. Also very dull reading, I’m sure.
I started a historical fiction several years back, and he read it and liked that idea and sort of picked it up and rewrote, added, made it better….but if the thing is ever finished (which seems unlikely at this pace) it will be about a thousand pages long, at least. In the meantime, he only seems to want to continue to write one particular story about a courtesan. I guess it’s a nice creative writing exercise, but the (ultimately wealthy and successful) courtesan with a heart of gold, smart-madam-who-helps-her, evil-uncle backstory is so common it’s a cliche. I think he just enjoys writing about sex. But (unlike your ex-wife apparently, BV) I always enjoy reading his work!
Kerouac overdid the ‘tears’ part. As Capote once said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
Liz, I wish I had access to his memos on the F-22’s oxygen issues (or non-issues). Or what he really thinks of the F-35 program, which I find completely alarming.
I was at Lockheed-Martin a few years ago and got the sales pitch for fun, as one of their presidents is a neighbor and I was then flying a Yak-50 (single seat aerobatic, 400 hp). The sim was fun, but the most remarkable thing I recall is that the entire F-35 can be addressed with a nine-piece tool kit. Supposedly it takes all of an hour or two to drop an engine. But I don’t understand pegging defense to an overweight, under-weaponed, short-range aircraft, just because the Marines want a Harrier replacement. The Russians and Chinese are going with long-range tactical designs that also will carry far more weaponry.
I’ll answer those, BV (and then I’ll stop and stick to the topic, apologies).
Per the F22’s oxygen issues…they had those way back before the F22 was considered fully operational. My husband was part of the initial cadre of pilots during the fielding and testing phase. He was one of the first to encounter a problem…one day before takeoff, he looked down into his oxygen mask before placing it on, and there was a fluid bubbling. Turns out, it was antifreeze. They said they’d fixed the problem, and then also told them that this type of antifreeze wasn’t particularly harmful to breath (haha!). Many f22 pilots have tested positive for traces of antifreeze in their blood. My husband, strangely and thankfully, never had any breathing problems (he had more hours than anyone by 2010, the year he stopped flying them). Antifreeze might not be the only problem, or the currently problem, but I’d bet money it’s probably part of it.
He hates the JSF, always has. Cost to gains, huge waste of taxpayer dollars. This would be a long post to provide the laundry list of reasons with backstory. We know quite a few people in that program. But it would help if the air force (and government in general I suppose) worked a little more like a business and learned from its mistakes in the interest of efficiency instead of continuing, covering, and compounding them. A business would keep the most experienced people in a job with that much of a resource investment…in the active duty military if you don’t move up you get out so some of the best people for that program are either out, commanding something unrelated, or doing contracting work as a fobbit in shitestan.
On the benefits of all-boys education and the war against it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-bizarre-misguided-campaign-to-get-rid-of-single-sex-classrooms/280262/
“The principal’s research taught him that boys will go to astonishing lengths to defend their team. So (inspired in part by his reading of Harry Potter), he divided the academy into four houses—Expedition, Justice, Decree, and Alliance—which compete against one another for points earned through good grades, community service, reading books, and athletics. Douglas and his colleagues have created a school where young men can’t help but flourish.”
“Boys and girls, taken as groups, have different interests, propensities, and needs. These academies can provide important lessons on how to educate our children more effectively.
What sensible person would call these programs and others like them morally and legally suspect? And yet the American Civil Liberties Union says they are. It has launched a major campaign called “Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes” to discredit and terminate gender-specific programs in American schools. For the ACLU, organizing by sex is analogous to organizing by race.”
And more nonsense from the ACLU on this:
“On its website and in countless brochures and reports, the ACLU mocks the idea that there could even be such a thing as girl or boy-friendly teaching methods. Principal Douglas’ system of organizing young men in his Dallas school into four competing houses may be effective—but for the ACLU it would count as constitutionally forbidden “educational programming based on stereotypes.” The ACLU is now demanding that the Department of Education issue guidelines to all schools “explaining that programs based on stereotypes are impermissible.””
@ Liz
Woah! That F-22 manual would be far from dull reading. I’ve read some of the F-16 manuals, including those relating to combat tactics. Very stimulating. As a side hobby, I’m learning Russian so I can read the Mig-29 export weapons control system manual which I found online.
#130: And that ties into what HS said above! The difference.
If there’s one female in fifty states who would truly find that stimulating reading, I’ll eat my pink feather boa.
I am currently reading Montgomery’s summary of Military History, in the tail end of Late Antiquity as the Romans are subsumed in waves of barbarians. It actually amazes how little the Romans innovated in military tactics, how inflexible they were, how much they disdained things like cavalry and ships.
So I think the F-22 operating manual would be fascinating!
Girls can perhaps tolerate this discussion, perhaps it is made funny
For instance, the fiance finds herself enamored with “Uncle Chuck,” Aka Emperor Charles V.
ADBG You might like J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of The Western World, from the earlies times to the Battle of Lepanto.
Three volumes.
Han Solo,
“Part of my fantasy woman is a desire and ability to deeply understand me, the good and the bad, and love me all the more because of that understanding. I used to share too much of my angst and doubts and fears with women and it did often/usually kill the attraction, eventually.”
Exactly the same story here. I tweeted this weekend that most of my failures with women came from one sticking issue: I wanted to be loved, and sought it out. I realize now, with a heap of good game under my belt, that if I had just been going for some sexual escalation instead of trying to get women to see and appreciate “The Real Me,” I would have gotten much more love and devotion in the exchange.
I riffed on a topic similar to this a long time ago: http://badgerhut.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/being-an-emotional-man-does-not-equal-talking-about-your-feelings/
My point being that a man can be very emotionally expressive and in touch (a plus with lots of women) without “talking about his feelings” (a decided negative). I’ve come to believe that being IN CONTROL of your emotions is a mark of alpha – men besieged by sadness, anger or anxiety are not in control of their situation. Women, quite simply, expect a “man” to fight through that, and probably subconsciously see a guy whose emotions dictate his actions as somewhat feminine in nature.
Good points Badger.
I think that when you hear women say they want a romantic man, or a more sensitive man, or this or that, what they really mean is they want a man who’s attractive and strong enough to them that then has romance and can be emotional. Kind of like the bit of yin in the much larger yang. But they rarely vocalize all the other stuff that’s just assumed and so many guys hear what women say they want and think that needs to be the main portion instead of the garnish.
And from your post,
“A significant skill in the gaming man’s toolbox is learning to be emotionally alive without making it about filling some emotional gap or need you have – you can be giving and evocative and intense and passionate without being needy and a sink of psychological resources. I concur with Xsplat that when done right it’s a more effective game strategy, if harder to pull off than straight aloofness.”
So….where do we get the “talking about feelings” nonsense that comes up all the time?
Could it be a shit test, conscious or not? Could it be women really don’t know what they want? Could it be that some or many women think they’re supposed to say that and don’t know any better?
If it’s such a bad deal, it still wouldn’t be around without some reinforcement. Where’s that coming from, and why?
It comes from women wanting the men to talk about HER feelings. Wanting the men LISTEN to HER. And by listen I really mean, do as he’s told.
Also be open about his LOVING feelings for HER. And any thing that takes his mind away, he should share / redirect it to her.
Its never been about the guy talking about stuff that concerns / interests him only. Never about feelings he has on his own, unless these relate to her, and while whatever is going on doesnt make her feel bad.
– – –
In short the feelings thing is about reassuring and comforting her. Its not about reassuring and comforting him.
You know how beta men cant stop talking about the feelings right?
I think the demanding for feelings etc came from women begging alpha jerks to be softer and more in tune with whatever the women were feeling. As in, be more considerate or something.
I cant imagine a woman telling a beta to be more open, soft, etc.
@Yohami, 138
Makes sense that she wants the man that may or may not be planning on keeping her around to open up about his feelings (hopefully positive) about her. She wants to see the dot of yin in his yang, and more particularly that he feels something for her.
So all the tough, attractive, hypergamy-satisfaction, whatever is already assumed when she says to open up. Then less attractive guys that she’s not yearning for hear that and think they need to smear that on, without any of the foundation. They end up creating a painting of themselves that is nearly all yin with only a little speck of yang. A total lady-tingle killer.
Could it be women really don’t know what they want? Could it be that some or many women think they’re supposed to say that and don’t know any better?
If it’s such a bad deal, it still wouldn’t be around without some reinforcement. Where’s that coming from, and why?
I think when it comes to many things women face enormous cognitive dissonance between what subconsious biologically evolved drives are telling them versus the prevailing current cultural zeitgeist of equalism which has at its core operating principle that men and women are absolutely identical except their genitalia is different.
So with “talking about feelings” if we are “equal” than men OUGHT to be able to discuss feelings just as much as women. After all, that is what Oprah tells them. On the other hand, most women will feel viscerally uncomfortable with a man who emotes his feelings like one of their girlfriends.
Morpheus
Not to pick a nit, and knowing you were using Oprah as a generic, it was this way–at least in the advice columns and whatnot–as far back as I remember, and I started reading grownup stuff about fifty years ago.
Don’t recall what any women said to me on the subject.
Yohami, #137:
“It comes from women wanting the men to talk about HER feelings. Wanting the men LISTEN to HER. And by listen I really mean, do as he’s told.”
If you recall the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts romcom Notting Hill, it’s a traditional emotional porn with the sexes partially reversed: Roberts plays both the vulnerable, emotionally complex female, but also the predatory, impetuous male role. She twice abuses Grant’s trust badly, demonstrates an unmanageable sexual promiscuity, and acts generally like a manslut — until Act III, when she goes to him and pleads for understanding and union.
Grant in turn rebuffs her, but the movie resolves itself with Grant “listening to her”, placing her feelings (“hope”) over his own integrity (“experience”), and thus the happy insanity of hope triumphing over experience is delivered. He marries and immediately impregnates her. She checks every box! Good boy, Grant! There is no basis whatsoever in Roberts’ character being capable of sustaining any sort of emotional, moral or sexual continuity with him going forward, but it’s irrelevant. Grant’s merely the canvas, like that of the Chagall he has on the wall (as a print) and she gives him (as the original oil); his job is to look good in a waistcoat, and only occasionally trip like a buffoon on the red carpet while his wife glides forward, a goddess for all women to emulate.
There are only two emotional arcs in this movie:
a. the progress of Roberts emotions, delivering her from the tawdry and lonely, to the elegant and noble;
b. the capitulation of Grant’s character as he get’s slammed about by Roberts’ capriciousness, prior to Manning Up, acknowledging her authority over him by virtue of her superior emotional depth, and giving her what she wants (devotion, marriage, sperm). In short, he does all the work required to fabricate the happy ending.
The one time Grant discusses her betrayals of him, and rejects her as a result, the movie demonstrates that it is the wrong choice, as well as an irrelevant diversion to the more important activity of Roberts fulfilling her destiny. And golly!, they live happily ever after.
A more mature conclusion would have had Roberts acknowledging her errors, admiring Grant for his steadfast defense of his own emotional reality, and committing herself to a quiet life in London while she promises to make amends and demonstrate to Grant that she can be a virtuous and loving partner. This would have required work on her part, instead of his part. Women wouldn’t have bought tickets to that movie in quite the same numbers. That’s because the core audience of this movie could give a shit about Grant’s feelings, and that of any man in Grant’s position.
One of Roberts’ betrayals of Grant is with Alec Baldwin being the bad boy Alec Baldwin represents. We’re to believe that Roberts is so transformed she will no longer pursue or screw such bad boys, once her baby is delivered and she’s back working on sets for $15mm per picture. Uh-huh.
Grant demonstrates compliance with Roberts’ it’s-all-about-me B.S. almost precisely as Deti/GreyWhiskers (What a Typical American Girl Faces) describe the average woman’s license:
” … and is not expected to put forth any particular effort to be respectful (either of the man himself or his obstacle course), intelligent, interesting, honest about her interest or intentions (how often do women stand up a man or merely flake with a text at the last minute after agreeing to a date?), nor is there any social requirement that she be polite at all when rejecting a man.”
Oh sure, Roberts cries, when she’s busy not slamming Grant’s privates in a storm door, when she’s not ignoring him on-set, or when she’s torturing him publicly during “interviews”. Grant correctly knows that, while Roberts has been four or five different women, most of them self-absorbed and unilateral, it’s the Roberts who cries and declares love that is the valid model.
It doesn’t merit mentioning that any man who behaved toward a woman as Roberts did to Grant would be disqualified if not also reviled. We generally get one mistake every 10 years or so, provided the penitence that follows is sufficiently demeaning. And I’m not talking about nuclear failures like running around with bimbos or going broke. I’m talking about losing our temper because we’re so frustrated at not being listened to, or refusing to go to the sister-in-law’s second marriage ceremony because we still love our original brother-in-law, or just quitting a stupid job because the boss is a tool, or quietly snickering at the wife’s aversion (as Mr. Bridge does) to all the discreetly placed mirrors in the Paris hotel. Once every ten years. The Roberts character in this movie drops these bombs on Grant once a week. So he marries her on command! Good boy! Your harness is hanging over there in the barn.