A Revised Essay on Romance Part 2

I have revised this part of the essay somewhat for a couple of reasons, mostly due to the personal nature of the people I was conversing with at the time. The ideas are still valid.

Romance,

• woo: make amorous advances towards
• have a love affair with
• the group of languages derived from Latin

One of the comments/questions contained within the original question was this: “I think laying next to someone, my head on his chest, running my nails down his body, kissing him gently and smiling should be enough?” [For a man to feel romanced].

Well for a woman to do that to a guy is probably too much. Odds are if a woman was to do that to a guy he would be tenting, drooling and groping, ready for sex finally. It is interesting to note all these romantic moves involve physical touching save for the smiling part. That is sure to send a guy overboard into sex mode and thus the opportunity to gain that wondrous flow of emotions is all but lost. That is probably why the most a guy should expect from a woman is a smile. Women crave that emotional flow from a guy and often will refrain from letting themselves go because they are waiting for the guy to do it. Odds are however that it won’t happen. They usually get it, but not from the guy they end up being intimate with.

That is because society does not allow men to allow feelings to flow through them. They are trained to keep that stiff upper lip at all cost and for the most part are emotionally unavailable to their partners. That is what gets them laid.

Since men are so trained to be unemotionally available both to themselves and others, women typically need only provide a couple of drops of romance, as it is enough to send a guy into overload. That is most likely why a women would consider those romantic gestures to be enough to send a guy head over heels and for the most part they are absolutely correct. I mean simply kissing a guy after making him wait a couple of years would probably send him into so much ecstasy that he would note it.

June 11th 2004 1:20 am: She kissed me.

Of course if she ever found out about how a kiss made him feel, she would make a typical cool down take two steps back and lose a turn manoeuver. After all, as we are starting to see, a woman wants romance, but most certainly not from the guy she is going to have sex with.

Lets look at your example but this time as a guy doing that to a woman. If a guy were to lay next to a woman, his head on her chest, running his nails down her body, kissing her gently he would have to put up with comments along the lines of him being too heavy, she can’t breathe, stop tickling her and questions about when he last shaved, what’s that smirk on his face, what does he think about Jaguars and what does he know about that cute guy at the grocery store.

So here we appear to have a potential impasse, the typical passive but craving emotion woman with an initiating but emotionally unavailable guy. How is this overcome? While there are a whole barrage of solutions I will group then into external, surrogate or balanced solutions.

External solutions are those that do not directly involve people. Movies are a great external solution. A male that takes a woman out to the theater might roll his eyes when she does not want to watch the latest super hero save what is left of the world after blowing it up movie. Yet, if he wants to get lucky he will agree to seeing the sensitive real life strife romance story. The movie does all the romantic work for him and all he has to do is agree that it was a good film before getting lucky. Alcohol is another excellent external solution, beer has been helping people have sex for a long time. It is basically stupefies both males and females long enough to drop their guard so that the panties and boxers can come off.

I have alluded to surrogate solutions during the first part of the essay. Since this involves a very intricate dynamic once again you have to look at the origins coming from very intelligent and sophisticated creatures such as whales. Simply put, male humpback whales require one or two buddies to turn them over to successfully mate with a female. Human society has evolve almost to this point and of course mimic this behavior.

Consider a population of guys where 95% of them are emotionally unavailable. Women will use the 5% of emotionally available (romantic) men as surrogates to satisfy their emotional needs. They will extract what they can from him, and if they are nice enough they will leave a drop of appreciation like a soft kiss on the cheek before handing him the “you are a nice guy and I want to be friends” line just before dropping them like a hot potato and then saying yes to one of the many males around asking to get laid. This leaves the romantic guy free for the next woman that needs him. Women essentially let the romantic one slip by to ensure that such a gem remains available for other women to use. It is also good for women on the rebound, then can spend 20 minutes with a romantic guy to get back on their feet and then succumb to the many vultures hanging around for such a rebound.

I can’t count the times I would pour out my heart and soul to a woman who wished she would met a guy who could pour out his heart and soul for her. Of course when she had her fill I would watch her return to an abusive relationship with an emotionally unavailable guy that happened to be nearby, the “you are such a nice guy” comment still echoing. I still laugh at the time I brought home an enchanting woman whom I had spent a magical day with with only to wonder where she went after I came back from the kitchen with a couple of glasses of water. My roommate thanked me later. He had just come out of his bedroom, saw her and said “do you want to screw?” and off she went. He had never met her before. Just one of a very long list of examples that clearly indicates a trend.

It is no wonder that most modern day males are not emotionally available, but rather take on a vulture posture. They follow the odd romantic, watch them do the work on a woman and move into position when she is ready to get laid.

I was fortunate enough at one point to actually gain some insight into this situation from a woman who felt so indebted to me that she shared a great insight into her perception. The situation was similar to what I have been describing, she left her husband who adored her for one of the most unemotional characters I have ever met and it happened at a party I was hosting. It only took this guy one sentence to get her hooked. She left the hubby and the party behind and went on this amazingly abusive relationship with a man who was nothing short of sleazy.

As this happened at my party, I decided to become friends with her, because I wanted to find out exactly why a woman would leave a man who thought the world of her for a guy who caused her to make repeated visits to the sexually transmitted disease clinic. One day, she told the story of her upbringing, notably her alcoholic emotionally unavailable father. She used the analogy of when she was s little and her room was clean, her homework done and her grades at school were good, her dad would come home and mutter something like that is good and head off to the bottle. At some point her room was a mess, her homework undone, her grades at school were bad. Her dad would come home and all hell would break lose, she would receive a long lecture and abusive language would be given to her. She was finally getting what she needed, attention.

That begins to point to an underlying aspect of romance, the intent of attention. Life requires attention, it is as essential to some creatures as food water clothing and shelter.

Some do not distinguish the flavors of attention, as long as they get it. (S)he beats me therefore (s)he loves me. Romantic fights as a prelude to make up sex.

Others seek one type of attention. Lets do that again.

Others will put forth strategies so that they can receive attention without having to give any back. They will attempt to make you feel guilty about receiving attention by calling you an attention slut. That way they can give you a drop of intention now and then while you provide waves of attention towards to compensate.

The surrogate solution I have been describing is to seek one type of attention from one person and another type of attention from another. Women will look for someone nice to give them the emotional attention they are needing. When they are ready for some physical attention, well they won’t have to look at all, just pick from the line up. Men do this as well although usually it develops after they are into the relationship. That is when they usually start having feelings for the woman they are with and it starts to affect their libido. I have seen it referred to as the Madonna/Whore complex. I am coining the term Knight/Nasty complex as the female version.

To reiterate, the short answer of the second question, a woman showing some physical touch and a smile towards a guy would probably be too much for him. On the other hand, it would not be enough for a guy to do that for a woman.

This of course only really applies to cultures that are non-romantic. Women from romantic cultures know a deeper value of romantics, if they get know how to get to the source, and I certainly won’t write about that here.

End of part 2.

• Past Blast Part 2 - CEX 07:43:33 03/03/2008 (0)