Kitty Litter
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
The Dearth of Romance
(This is a LOOONG post, perhaps as penitence for the long no-posting period. Plus it's about feelings and relationships, so if that sounds icky to you try bored.com instead)
Some time ago, a friend I’ll call “Cynara” and I were in Eastwood, and she told me that her one frustration with her fiancé was that he was averse to romantic gestures, consigning them to that nether hell men term “chick flick gay shit.” “I don’t want that much,” she sighed. “I just want him to adore me every now and then…and maybe show up at one or two of the talks I give so often.”
She then turned to me and sadly said, “You know, you’ve been to more of my talks than he has.”
And I didn’t know what to say to that, because that was on my mind too.
“I know he loves you,” was my lame answer.
“I know,” she said. “I just wish I ‘knew’ it in some other way. You know what I mean?”
And if you know what she means, then you’re probably a woman.
Another friend, to whom I sent an MMS photo of a bouquet of roses on her birthday, sent back a very unhappy comment: “Buti ka pa, you know what a girl wants. My husband gave me insurance, for God’s sake. Maybe he wants me to die.” To lighten the mood, I responded, “Well, I know what a girl wants ‘cause I’m a girl too!”
A better response from me would have been that insurance is actually a thoughtful gesture, but I doubt it would’ve been appreciated. Sometimes friendship consists of knowing what not to say, after all.
I know another one woman, normally a rational soul, who actually considered breaking off her engagement a few years ago to a solid, dependable—if unimaginative—man. The reason? Her new boss, whose simple but thoughtful gestures, such as always making time for her when she needed to talk to him, constantly smiling gently at her, giving her small compliments on her work, texting to check if she’d gotten home all right, and never taking out his bad moods on her, made her think she was falling in love with him. See, her then-fiance was a very nice guy, but as is normal with most relationships, he was beginning to take her for granted and would sometimes bark rudely at her, or be mean when he’d had a bad day at work.
She later realized that her boss was kind to just about everyone who wasn’t an asshole, and that he had no romantic feelings towards her. In addition, I told her, “It’s easy to constantly show your good side to someone you have no emotional investment in.”
Her temporary insanity passed, but to this day, she still wishes her (now) husband would just, for once, tell her she’s ‘so beautiful it’s like the sun rises when you’re in a room,’ or stop walking out on her every time they fight. And if you thought the line about the sun was corny (which it is, really), chances are you’ve got a Y gene and are immune to the scene in ‘While You Were Sleeping’ in which Jack proposes to Lucy.
(Aside: That, incidentally, was how I discovered that my best friend was my best friend. Still in the first few months of friendship and a bit awkward with each other, we sat through that wonderfully silly movie and muffled our sobs when Lucy finally finds out she’s no longer “all alone in the world.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Goldie Golds attempting to sniffle discreetly while watching me out of the corner of her eye. That did it; we laughed, and she’s been one of the persons around whom my universe revolves since then.)
On one hand, I understand where guys are coming from. The average male is scared enough by the mere thought of saying “I love you,” let alone doing the kind of thing that would make him seem pussy-whipped or gay. Why buy a bouquet of flowers which will die anyway when the P 3,000 you’ll spend on it can be used to buy her a tool kit for her car or perhaps a good quality bag?
Only recently, Wynn and I were joking around about the gift of flowers. “You know what,” I told him, “isn’t giving flowers something along the lines of ‘Here’s a dead thing, I love you’”? I have some of the callousness of the Y gender, obviously, and I had to stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from laughing out loud at overly earnest romance sequences like that terrible “I’m beautiful because you love me” crap in Star Wars 3. Teenage boys dislike me because I always tell girls exactly what their favorite lines mean, and when I shattered the whole “if you love me prove it have sex with me” shitty myth in class, not a few boys protested.
(Aside: If you’re wondering what I said to that, I silenced them thus: “If you idiots really love the girl you’re trying to get into bed, then why does she have to prove she loves you? If the silliness of your logic escapes you boys, then I pity whoever is stupid enough to get into bed with you.” Then I rubbed salt into the wound by telling the girls, “Never choose a teenaged boy for your first lover. 95% of them come within 60 seconds—only half of which is spent inside you, have no idea how to please a woman, and will tell all their friends about it.” I stopped myself before I added, “When you turn 40, though, and want a teenaged boy, then all the better for you.”)
Thanks to my skepticism about romance, I am able to appreciate what Wynn does give me. Sure, he will probably never dance with me to “Stella by Starlight”, but he gives me verbal bouquets that I can savor over and over in my mind, things like, “Anywhere is home so long as you’re with me.” That kind of gift lasts and truly does keep on giving because he has made me feel very special without even trying. (Plus it gives him extra credit when we fight, ha!)
Sometimes I wonder if he'll ever kiss my hand, or give me an extravagant compliment. Sure, I can live without it. But I can live without chocolate too, if I had to. Things like those make everyday life a little sweeter...pun intended...and keep you going even on the worst of days.
Those things are the reason why the romance novel is so popular (aside from the sex, okay). In a romance novel, a woman can, if indirectly, live out her fantasies. Whereas a straight male fantasy often involves two women with dildoes and size 55 boobs servicing him and each other orally (go ahead and check out the most popular porn), a woman’s fantasy has many variations on the theme of her being the most important thing in a man’s life. The sex is secondary (but always good, mind you). There are a hundred thousand variations on this—the taming the bad boy motif, the princess rescued by either a white knight like Superman or a tortured dark knight like Batman, the ugly duckling whose inner beauty is seen only by that one special man—but in each one, she is special in some way.
Making a woman feel special—that’s what a lot of male “players” are good at, and even if they have reputations, women continue to fall for them because they enjoy how he treats them (like queens, or princesses, if only for a while) and harbors the secret hope that she will be the one to “reform” him, that she is that one special woman out of the many he’s thrown away.
The other component of romance that women need is a corollary to making her feel special, like the Only One. It’s those small gestures of kindness, the courtly manners that men lose as soon as they’ve landed the woman. Notice how you can almost always tell, when seeing couples in public places, who’s at the beginning of a relationship and who’s settled into bored domesticity?
Men tend to need someone to lord it over; one guy I know, who earns less than his executive girlfriend, “punishes” her by being ridiculously “strict” with her, controlling even what she eats! And she thinks it’s “proof” of her love to “allow” him to take out his insecurities that way on her. Puhleeze…he’s just a loser, but if she admits that to herself, then she, in her own mind and by extension, is a loser…and who wants that? So men take out bad moods on their wives or long-time girlfriends while being constantly polite to officemates or casual acquaintances. Or they cheat because ‘the woman can’t bring spice to the relationship anymore’.
I don’t see romantic gestures as a sign of a man handing over control of the relationship to a woman. Instead, I see them as his willingness to make compromises in order to make his partner happy…just as she does for him.
Not that I advocate the performance of extravagantly romantic gestures like bending a woman back for a romance-movie-take-your-breath-away kiss, filling a woman’s bed with roses (OUCH), or closing off the entire CCP and hiring the Philharmonic to serenade a woman all night. At least, not on a daily basis.
But what does it cost a guy to compliment his girlfriend every now and then, to notice something good about her? Or to give her “verbal bouquets”? Or to show that he cares in little ways? Not much, just a little pride when it comes to his rep with his friends. And guys, if you love your woman, isn’t a little pride a small price to pay?
And if you need help, listen to the song “One Hundred Ways” by James Ingram. Yes, it’s true that we women can reflect that we “owe you the sweetest of debts.” And we’re very nice when we’re grateful.
Trust me. I’m a woman!
Some time ago, a friend I’ll call “Cynara” and I were in Eastwood, and she told me that her one frustration with her fiancé was that he was averse to romantic gestures, consigning them to that nether hell men term “chick flick gay shit.” “I don’t want that much,” she sighed. “I just want him to adore me every now and then…and maybe show up at one or two of the talks I give so often.”
She then turned to me and sadly said, “You know, you’ve been to more of my talks than he has.”
And I didn’t know what to say to that, because that was on my mind too.
“I know he loves you,” was my lame answer.
“I know,” she said. “I just wish I ‘knew’ it in some other way. You know what I mean?”
And if you know what she means, then you’re probably a woman.
Another friend, to whom I sent an MMS photo of a bouquet of roses on her birthday, sent back a very unhappy comment: “Buti ka pa, you know what a girl wants. My husband gave me insurance, for God’s sake. Maybe he wants me to die.” To lighten the mood, I responded, “Well, I know what a girl wants ‘cause I’m a girl too!”
A better response from me would have been that insurance is actually a thoughtful gesture, but I doubt it would’ve been appreciated. Sometimes friendship consists of knowing what not to say, after all.
I know another one woman, normally a rational soul, who actually considered breaking off her engagement a few years ago to a solid, dependable—if unimaginative—man. The reason? Her new boss, whose simple but thoughtful gestures, such as always making time for her when she needed to talk to him, constantly smiling gently at her, giving her small compliments on her work, texting to check if she’d gotten home all right, and never taking out his bad moods on her, made her think she was falling in love with him. See, her then-fiance was a very nice guy, but as is normal with most relationships, he was beginning to take her for granted and would sometimes bark rudely at her, or be mean when he’d had a bad day at work.
She later realized that her boss was kind to just about everyone who wasn’t an asshole, and that he had no romantic feelings towards her. In addition, I told her, “It’s easy to constantly show your good side to someone you have no emotional investment in.”
Her temporary insanity passed, but to this day, she still wishes her (now) husband would just, for once, tell her she’s ‘so beautiful it’s like the sun rises when you’re in a room,’ or stop walking out on her every time they fight. And if you thought the line about the sun was corny (which it is, really), chances are you’ve got a Y gene and are immune to the scene in ‘While You Were Sleeping’ in which Jack proposes to Lucy.
(Aside: That, incidentally, was how I discovered that my best friend was my best friend. Still in the first few months of friendship and a bit awkward with each other, we sat through that wonderfully silly movie and muffled our sobs when Lucy finally finds out she’s no longer “all alone in the world.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Goldie Golds attempting to sniffle discreetly while watching me out of the corner of her eye. That did it; we laughed, and she’s been one of the persons around whom my universe revolves since then.)
On one hand, I understand where guys are coming from. The average male is scared enough by the mere thought of saying “I love you,” let alone doing the kind of thing that would make him seem pussy-whipped or gay. Why buy a bouquet of flowers which will die anyway when the P 3,000 you’ll spend on it can be used to buy her a tool kit for her car or perhaps a good quality bag?
Only recently, Wynn and I were joking around about the gift of flowers. “You know what,” I told him, “isn’t giving flowers something along the lines of ‘Here’s a dead thing, I love you’”? I have some of the callousness of the Y gender, obviously, and I had to stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from laughing out loud at overly earnest romance sequences like that terrible “I’m beautiful because you love me” crap in Star Wars 3. Teenage boys dislike me because I always tell girls exactly what their favorite lines mean, and when I shattered the whole “if you love me prove it have sex with me” shitty myth in class, not a few boys protested.
(Aside: If you’re wondering what I said to that, I silenced them thus: “If you idiots really love the girl you’re trying to get into bed, then why does she have to prove she loves you? If the silliness of your logic escapes you boys, then I pity whoever is stupid enough to get into bed with you.” Then I rubbed salt into the wound by telling the girls, “Never choose a teenaged boy for your first lover. 95% of them come within 60 seconds—only half of which is spent inside you, have no idea how to please a woman, and will tell all their friends about it.” I stopped myself before I added, “When you turn 40, though, and want a teenaged boy, then all the better for you.”)
Thanks to my skepticism about romance, I am able to appreciate what Wynn does give me. Sure, he will probably never dance with me to “Stella by Starlight”, but he gives me verbal bouquets that I can savor over and over in my mind, things like, “Anywhere is home so long as you’re with me.” That kind of gift lasts and truly does keep on giving because he has made me feel very special without even trying. (Plus it gives him extra credit when we fight, ha!)
Sometimes I wonder if he'll ever kiss my hand, or give me an extravagant compliment. Sure, I can live without it. But I can live without chocolate too, if I had to. Things like those make everyday life a little sweeter...pun intended...and keep you going even on the worst of days.
Those things are the reason why the romance novel is so popular (aside from the sex, okay). In a romance novel, a woman can, if indirectly, live out her fantasies. Whereas a straight male fantasy often involves two women with dildoes and size 55 boobs servicing him and each other orally (go ahead and check out the most popular porn), a woman’s fantasy has many variations on the theme of her being the most important thing in a man’s life. The sex is secondary (but always good, mind you). There are a hundred thousand variations on this—the taming the bad boy motif, the princess rescued by either a white knight like Superman or a tortured dark knight like Batman, the ugly duckling whose inner beauty is seen only by that one special man—but in each one, she is special in some way.
Making a woman feel special—that’s what a lot of male “players” are good at, and even if they have reputations, women continue to fall for them because they enjoy how he treats them (like queens, or princesses, if only for a while) and harbors the secret hope that she will be the one to “reform” him, that she is that one special woman out of the many he’s thrown away.
The other component of romance that women need is a corollary to making her feel special, like the Only One. It’s those small gestures of kindness, the courtly manners that men lose as soon as they’ve landed the woman. Notice how you can almost always tell, when seeing couples in public places, who’s at the beginning of a relationship and who’s settled into bored domesticity?
Men tend to need someone to lord it over; one guy I know, who earns less than his executive girlfriend, “punishes” her by being ridiculously “strict” with her, controlling even what she eats! And she thinks it’s “proof” of her love to “allow” him to take out his insecurities that way on her. Puhleeze…he’s just a loser, but if she admits that to herself, then she, in her own mind and by extension, is a loser…and who wants that? So men take out bad moods on their wives or long-time girlfriends while being constantly polite to officemates or casual acquaintances. Or they cheat because ‘the woman can’t bring spice to the relationship anymore’.
I don’t see romantic gestures as a sign of a man handing over control of the relationship to a woman. Instead, I see them as his willingness to make compromises in order to make his partner happy…just as she does for him.
Not that I advocate the performance of extravagantly romantic gestures like bending a woman back for a romance-movie-take-your-breath-away kiss, filling a woman’s bed with roses (OUCH), or closing off the entire CCP and hiring the Philharmonic to serenade a woman all night. At least, not on a daily basis.
But what does it cost a guy to compliment his girlfriend every now and then, to notice something good about her? Or to give her “verbal bouquets”? Or to show that he cares in little ways? Not much, just a little pride when it comes to his rep with his friends. And guys, if you love your woman, isn’t a little pride a small price to pay?
And if you need help, listen to the song “One Hundred Ways” by James Ingram. Yes, it’s true that we women can reflect that we “owe you the sweetest of debts.” And we’re very nice when we’re grateful.
Trust me. I’m a woman!
Labels: relationships
posted by Kitty Litter at 2:08 PM
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