Men just don’t get it!
Women are made out to be big romantics. They love dinner dates, gifts and texts telling them sweet nothings while they are at work. They love a trip to Paris and the opportunity to shop in stores outside of their normal habitat (I live in Denmark, so it is rather doable and affordable at this distance).
As a man on the other hand, you just don’t get it. You just do not enjoy having to spend time at work breaking off from you task to send some romantic text to this woman who has sent three texts already. But you do it because she expects it. If you do not, the consequence might very well be her asking if you are mad or telling you that she is blowing off the planned date you had tonight because your incapability to respond in her head equals indifference or perhaps you are cheating on her with a female co-worker.
Men have to be cultivated by patient women to appreciate and exercise romance so that women can experience romance.
Which must make it hard for women to be so romantic…
Enter Romanticism
But what if we take a step back and look at the big picture.
What is romance?
In nature, the male has to court the female by showing off his qualities and ability to provide resources for her and her offspring. The peacock with the biggest and brightest feathers gets the female. The male adélie penguins build nests and present prospective females with the most beautiful pebble they can find. If a female is impressed she will lay her eggs in his nest. Male nursery spiders have to bring food to the female when initiating courtship, so that the female does not eat the male during breeding.
As humans we have cultivated the biological courtship of the male, showing his qualities and willingness to sacrifice himself for the female and her offspring, and placed it in a cultural courtship which serves the female narrative in modern society.
The modern cultural ideology of romance (“romanticism”) is an intellectual idealization of female selection in nature and the concept of male self-sacrifice which builds upon the medieval notions of male chivalry. Romanticism is – as previusly mentioned – mounted upon the biological mating ritual which is performed by the vast majority of animal species on this planet.
In the middle of the 18th century the ideology of romanticism appeared among poets, artists and philosphers and took hold among the upper class. The men and woman of the upper class did not have to work and women therefore had time to drop handkerchiefs and have men pick them up. They could then later walk around water fountains and sit holding each other’s hands while sighing over sunsets and devoting their time to idealizing the image of their special someone – their “soulmate”.
The life of the upper class was – and still is – a never ending source of entertainment and inspiration to the people on the lower steps on society’s ladder. Through the upper class, romanticism found a open door to the broad society.
Romanticism was, of course, great news for women, since romanticism revolves around the female. The earlier medieval notions of male chivalry spoke about knights and nobles protecting those who could not fight for themselves. The defenseless were meant to be ordinary people such as peasants, merchants the sick and the elderly – and of course women and children.
With romanticism women witnessed a completely new update to male chivalry and self-sacrifice, which solely catered to the female narrative through courtship, marriage and children.
So women liked this new ideology. It gave them attention and resources from men and left the woman free to follow or call it off. With romanticism the woman now has a gauge from which the frequency and intensity of a man’s pursuit gives the woman valuable indications about whether a man is willing to sacrifice himself for her, which again indicates to her if he is willing to commit his social status, his professional efforts and his resources exclusively to her – which is the ideal image of a romantic relationship.
Romanticism with a twist
Romanticism practically serves as a tool for the female narrative to capture the male and make him and his qualities serve the female agenda.
Being aware of the overall narrative makes you able to escape it or you can use it for your own agenda. One example of the latter took place in Britian during World War I. It was thought out by a fellow man – but practiced by women.
To get more soldiers, British admiral, Charles Fitzgerald, came up with the idea of shaming men into enlisting. He founded an organisation called the Order of the White Feather. The organisation consisted of women handing out white feathers as symbols of cowardice to British men not wearing a uniform). This was supported by a number of prominent Feminists and suffragettes – militant female activists who, among other things, demanded the right to vote.
White feathers were handed out to the extent where men actually had to wear some form of badge telling their surroundings that they were excused as war veteran who had been honorly discharged due to wounds or sickness, or they were working in the war industry and thus serving their country in other ways than direct combat.
Still, these shaming tactics made it difficult for men to preserve their honor if confronted with a white feather in public.
There is the story of a young boy who returned to London after having fought a number of battles in Belgium and France before he became sick with fever and was discharged. He was only 16 years old and actually too young to fight. He had lied about his age to serve his country. Back in London he was stopped by four girls who gave him white feathers. He was placed in an humiliating situation with people around him having fun at his expense. To preserve his honor he, went to enlist once again.
Why was this shaming tactic possible?
There is a twist to romanticism which women, men and society have not understood nor confronted.
We always think of women as the romantics. However, the WWI shaming tactics was only possible because men – not women – are the true romantics. Men believe that it is their duty to be the strong ones and sacrifice themselves. They believe in breaking their backs building skyscrapers or laying tracks at the railroad. They get black lung from inhaling dust in the coal mines. They get pierced by bullets on the battle field while fighting for their families and their country.
This is the reason why the white feather had an effect on men.
Women are mostly blind to the struggle of men. However, they keenly utilize romance to serve their wants and needs without actually understanding the narrative. Yet they instinctively understand that they can get men to sacrifice themselves. -And occassionally, for some of these women handing out white feathers, you can speculate that handing over a white feather could occassionaly quite possibly have been an act of vengeance on men whom they personally disliked.
And what power a woman possessed with a white feather in her hand – potentially shaming its new owner to his death in one of the bloodiest wars in human history.
As you get to study women, their romantic image begins to dwindle in areas where I personally used to believe that women would automatically support the man by their side.
I remember reading a biography of a bodybuilder who went through cancer treatment. He had a beautiful woman by his side. His girlfriend appreciated his masculine appearance as a contrast to her feminine appearance and nature.
Then one day, the man got diagnosed with cancer and was submitted to chemo therapy. During the treatment he witnessed his hair fall out and his strong body decaying. He found himself one evening lying on the floor screaming from pain.
At a time here he needed the support of his girlfriend the most, his girlfriend reacted to his struggles by leaving him. I remember how reading this book shattered the romantic (and, I admit, naive) image I had of women being the embodyment of nurture and empaty – that someone will stick by our side in good times and in bad times, when we need support. Whether she felt unable to handle his weakness or whether she felt that he stole her feminine role in the relationship is anybody’s guess. The key thing in my mind was that she left him when he needed her to be strong for him.
There are many personal psychological factors to explain why people do what they do. Yet the testimony from men telling about their failed relationships indicates that when a man loses his strength as he becomes sick or mentally ill or he loses his job and his income stops coming in, that is when a woman will start reconsidering her investment in the relationship. It is another female behavioral pattern- out of several – indicating that the man is the romantic, not the woman.
Men love for the sake of love, women love opportunistically.
I also find it difficult to call a person romantic if they expect – or downright demand – specific action or things from someone he or she claim to love. I am thinking flowers, jewellery, dinner at restaurants and trips to exotic places. Yet it is what men are expected to do on a regular basis.
“I want a gentleman who shows initiative and takes me out.”
“I want to be treated like a princess.”
“I want a man who can take me on adventures.”
Who expects it and who benefits the most?
I’ve concluded that the true romantic in a relationship is the one who gives, not the one who receives.
Men are the romantics because we try to deliver what women say they want and rarely expect the woman to reciprocate. Men hope that fulfilling a woman’s wants will make her happy (and if the woman is happy then the man will be happy in return). Men are the ones with a photo of the wife on their desk while she has chosen a photo of her kids. Men are the ones getting her broccoli shoved on their plate while she takes half of their French fries. Men are the ones standing in the rain outside her apartment. Men are the ones freezing to death in the sea so that his the woman can survive on the floating door. (Titanic really is a romantic movie – the male sacrifices himself, remember?) Not one Feminist can be found in the icy water among all the men – they are all huddled together underneath their blankets in the few life boats).
Romanticism has become redundant
Finally, there is the irony that Feminism (and the welfare state) has made romanticism redundant. Now all men need to do is to wake up and see the modern post-romantic context.
Romanticism played upon the differences between genders, yet with Feminism, women have rejected any expectations from men and society aimed towards the female gender. He cannot expect her to cook for him (she probably does not know how to), he cannot expect sex, he cannot expect her support and society cannot expect a family with a strong father figure as role model for the children.
Because welfare.
Women have voted in the welfare state, which still makes the man support the woman by proxy through taxation. Yet the modern woman, who understands nothing about male responsbility and honor, will call herself strong and independant despite receiving multiple welfare checks. How many men would do the same?
So why on earth should men care about satisfying the female narrative through outdated romanticism? This would mean that women still maintain their expectations to men, which would be pure hypocrisy.
Still, many men are dutifully playing along with this old romantic narrative – most likely because they do not see the bigger context and realize that they are being taken for a ride by women.
Until I started reflecting on men, women, dating, gender and romance, I thought that women were the romantics because they are portrayed as the romantics in movies and songs. I did not understand that the true romantic is the one who gives, not the one who waits to receive.
So, times have changed. This means that men have to change and adapt to these changes.
What men need to do is forget our cultural idealism about women and romanticism. We need to forget about what we think we know. What we need is to take on women with our own set of rules or put our minds to something else.
We also need to go tell our male friends about this paradigm shift and free them from serving romanticism and the female narrative. When there is nothing in it for men anymore.
Men need to go their own way, whatever way that may be.