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The lies we've been getting fed are manufactured by Hollywood and Disney (real-life counterparts to the Ministry of Truth in "1984"). You know, the old "just be a good man, and a woman will fall in love with you", something or other. When in reality, that's far, far from the truth.
Yes, society has never, ever produced lies and overly-romantic visions of how relationships are "supposed" to be.
That's brand-new.
By cave paintings and archaeological finds in general, moving along to canvas paintings, sculpture and recorded history, songs, plays, and literature, including ridiculous, unachievable codes of conduct that obviously people gave a lick and a promise while really just doing their own thing and attracting people more realistically, we can discern that nobody has ever painted and promoted an impossible ideal of love.
As far as "be a good man and a woman will fall in love with you," look around you at couples walking around hand-in-hand anywhere, any time and you can see that that's so untrue!!! Gotta agree with you there! Every single one of those guys has licking flames shooting from his eyes and leaves a tap-tap from his hooves when he walks across the floor.
Oh, and is tall and rich.
Thank God the cat is finally out of the bag, though. We shall be fooled no more.
Yes, society has never, ever produced lies and overly-romantic visions of how relationships are "supposed" to be.
That's brand-new.
By cave paintings and archaeological finds in general, moving along to canvas paintings, sculpture and recorded history, songs, and literature, including ridiculous, achievable codes of conduct that obviously people gave a lick and a promise while really just doing their own thing and attracting people more realistically, we can discern that nobody has ever painted and promoted an impossible ideal of love..
For much of history, the Western civilization had a society where such a romanticized version of love was sustainable. It had its pluses and minuses for both genders, no doubt. In the last 50 years, our society changed. But Hollywood and Disney continue to push the antiquated message, because it brings them massive profits. Which people keep buying into and shooting themselves in the foot.
For much of history, the Western civilization had a society where such a romanticized version of love was sustainable.
Absolutely not. For much of history, the aching songs of undying love with the ever-beautiful, fresh as springtime pink-cheeked lady wasn't achievable, much less sustainable. Most people have been way harder-working throughout history than we are - even our poor, who used to be the hardest-worked of any group excluding slaves - with the wealthy proportion being tiny, and most people had agreements and arrangements that depended upon the culture may have started with love, or may not have. It may not even have started with like, much less love.
Yes, including in Western civilization. Alliances for the rich based on cementing or achieving ties or avoiding war, even to someone you couldn't stand, were common; among the lower classes, getting some girl pregnant might be your magic ticket to that sustainable forever happiness (???), or choosing the girl who seemed the strongest to do the housework plus giggled a lot and danced, so maybe she'd love sex (some husbands were surely surprised at how little a human workhorse who's given birth three times in four years feels like sex, and she'd be equally surprised that her Romeo stopped giving her picked poseys after the first week or so of marriage - and you couldn't blame either, as there was work to be done, people would literally have died if not for the sweat of their own brow every single day).
When love "cooled" (fast, under hardworking conditions) people just accepted that because for many cultures (not all), divorce was either an extremely unsavory, culturally damning choice, or was simply...not a choice. Period.
Even chivalry, in its many evolving forms, was started because you weren't expected to be able, or allowed, to have actual love in your outward, legally-binding life. The male-female interactions portion of chivalry had a huge focus on non-sexual, romantic "gestures" on the part of men who weren't married to their intended and never had a chance of this. It was designed as an ideal and a process, not a destination.
The ideals you dream of - and we all know this is the 50s, you speak of that often enough - were also false as we look back on them. Sure, couples giggled and danced and felt burning love. Until reality set in. Just like today. Your "dream time" is just a dream too...it's just that until the late 60s-early 70s, people didn't have options to jump ship. When they did, who was the FIRST, biggest group to do so? Those people marrying in the 50s and 60s, go figure. What was all that about "sustainable" again?
What you "see" is that Hollywood version you claim is bogus. And it is...and was. You claim to have had your eyes opened, meanwhile subscribing to your own fairytale. Endlessly.
The problem isn't society. The problem is that you believe in a self-contradictory set of Disney images of your own, and it's not possible (which most healthy people know and are fine with, and base their romantic decisions on something more real and do get dates), and you won't accept anything less. And your anger at this and your disdain for "other" couples who don't subscribe to your Disney POV puts people off and loses you not only romantic interests but even your friends. Yet still you cling. While accusing others of not being realistic.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MillennialUrbanist
For much of history, the Western civilization had a society where such a romanticized version of love was sustainable. It had its pluses and minuses for both genders, no doubt. In the last 50 years, our society changed. But Hollywood and Disney continue to push the antiquated message, because it brings them massive profits. Which people keep buying into and shooting themselves in the foot.
What history are you reading? For a tiny tiny tiny tiny portion of recorded history (never much MUCH of history) has romanticized love been sustainable. It's more sustainable now than probably for ever, because women have been (more) empowered to be self sufficient and therefore more free to have equal footing in accepting or not accepting the potential partners available.
For much of history, the Western civilization had a society where such a romanticized version of love was sustainable. It had its pluses and minuses for both genders, no doubt. In the last 50 years, our society changed. But Hollywood and Disney continue to push the antiquated message, because it brings them massive profits. Which people keep buying into and shooting themselves in the foot.
Are you aware that marrying for love is a pretty recent concept? People used to marry for anything BUT love: to solidify inter-familial alliances, to add territory to empires, for economic expediency, to gain (or recover lost-) status (worked for males as well as females), or simply because they were expected to, and it was the only respectable thing, for women, unless they were independently wealthy. Oh, and how could I forget: to have an attractive status symbol to dangle on one's arm, as an indication of a high level of status/wealth/achievement/attractiveness for men. (The proverbial trophy wife.)
I'm not sure when marrying for love was "invented", but I think it was in the early 20th Century, sometime. And it didn't really work out for a lot of people, because as Timberline points out, too many women married because they had to; they had no other avenues of supporting themselves available to them.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,936 posts, read 36,974,024 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
I'm not sure when marrying for love was "invented", but I think it was in the early 20th Century, sometime. And it didn't really work out for a lot of people, because as Timberline points out, too many women married because they had to; they had no other avenues of supporting themselves available to them.
Oh no, conceptually it has been around a long time, but it was a story (See Romeo and Juliet, etc) and an idea. It wasn't attainable to the VAST majority of people. It was this fantasy thing.
The reality of marrying for romantic love is very recent.
Are you aware that marrying for love is a pretty recent concept? People used to marry for anything BUT love: to solidify inter-familial alliances, to add territory to empires, for economic expediency, to gain (or recover lost-) status (worked for males as well as females), or simply because they were expected to, and it was the only respectable thing, for women, unless they were independently wealthy. Oh, and how could I forget: to have an attractive status symbol to dangle on one's arm, as an indication of a high level of status/wealth/achievement/attractiveness for men. (The proverbial trophy wife.)
I'm not sure when marrying for love was "invented", but I think it was in the early 20th Century, sometime. And it didn't really work out for a lot of people, because as Timberline points out, too many women married because they had to; they had no other avenues of supporting themselves available to them.
Indeed.
I love the Bard so I am not disrespecting the man but here is a truth: William Shakespeare, THE poet not only of his own but quite possibly all subsequent ages, and still our ideal of all aspects of human nature including the absolute epitome of highest human nature (and even a romanticized view of the lowest forms of it, to the point of aching hearts and tears) and the intricacies of romance...
...married a woman he shkrewed and got pregnant.
She was eight years older, they didn't like eachother very much, and the romantic, idealistic Bard left her and the twins off at Stratford (he did pop back in once in a while, as evidenced by the coming of their third child) to live in London in order to...ahem, write. Well, and quite possibly (this is still up for debate) contract Cupid's Fire.
And to like, just never have to actually see this chick.
In fact, he snubbed her to the very end. He didn't even leave his bed to her in his will. He left that to his daughter. But she was a rarity - she had her own money - and his family fortune had tanked on the heels of his father's several arrests for bad business practices. His family name was failing. He poinked the right girl, cemented things neatly, then wandered away, able to write in relative comfort without having to scrabble for crumbs in order to survive. Smart move.
Again, no disrespect to one of my very favorite writers (sue me, I know it's no longer cool to appreciate Shakespeare). But it's a fact. Even one of the most utterly romantic (on all levels...love, tragedy, suspense, beauty...all) individuals in all of Western history lived a very very unromnatic life.
Just wake up...for heaven's sake. Or else be unhappy forever, I guess....but the people yelling at others for believing in Hollywood seem to be the ones MOST taken with false cultural images of things that probably never happened. It is odd...and it's sad because such people aren't happy. MGTOW guys are just never happy. They're miserable. And for the most part they don't need to be...if they changed their own mindset and false ideals and strictures things could change for them...it's sad.
Oh no, conceptually it has been around a long time, but it was a story (See Romeo and Juliet, etc) and an idea. It wasn't attainable to the VAST majority of people. It was this fantasy thing.
The reality of marrying for romantic love is very recent.
Yes, and even then it was a cautionary tale, not a contemporary, agreed-upon ideal. The romantic Bard killed his characters in order to prove a point. Well, two points. One, to please the people: Does it have to come to children dying in order to mend fences? And two, to appeal to what would have been thought of as common sense: You can have that ultimate love of all loves...but then it's got to burn itself out. The very passion they had for one another ultimately, when you think about it, was what caused the angst, the self-poisoning and the stabbing. Their refusal to face the reality of their families' positions was the fire that made the tragedy happen rather than the two just giving it up and marrying an appropriate person, just like their two very unhappy sets of parents did. When you pick it apart there are so many layers to this story...and Shakespeare was so very clever at writing to every single person of every single viewpoint.
Anyway...
In R&J, Shakespeare was trying (sort of, at least on the surface...because that was a real crowd-pleaser too) to change overriding beliefs and practices...not espousing that they could and should easily be achieved in everyday life. Shakespeare was ahead of his time, dreaming that perhaps one day people really could marry for love and not money and/or family alliances (or at least, not against family feuds), but even he didn't fully believe it because he didn't bother to try to live it in the least. He made a smart "oopsie" marriage for himself which saved him from debt.
Romantic songs and stories of true love at this and other times were very, very, very often about a surprise, trick ending where it was actually "okay" for the couple to be in love anyway. Like the haggard girl falling in love with a prince...but that's okay, you eventually found out she had been a princess, but had been snatched away. So it all worked out because it was, at the base level, culturally sanctioned.
Meanwhile, more "country"-style songs and stories were often of the poor lad wooing his poor maiden, and the beauty and joys of the shepherd and the shepherdess. Same station. Achievable. Culturally. But the song rarely got past the wedding day, if it even got there in the first place, because that was where the ideal ended and everybody knew this, LOL. Real life was real life. Songwriters might even (pretty commonly) just kill off one of the two heroes of the story in order to avoid having to sing about what was obvious, that reality would set in. Life would be full of hard work, not endlessly gazing into one another's eyes.
Many, many, many historic illustrations of romantic love that went "against the grain" ended in literal tragedy. It was not expected that "true love" no matter what was sustainable. It was achievable for several strains of the song...until the rich beauty pining on her bed for the poor stableboy dropped dead of The Consumption or whatever. Or until you realized it would all have been okay anyway, without ANY romance at all, as both were royalty or both were actually poor or they actually had the same heritage but one had been snatched away, or whatever.
I actually just got on Tinder a week ago. I only got one match so far. I tried to initiate some conversation and then she "unmatched" me
Of course I'm going after women that are probably out of my league, that is hot female professionals in their 40's.
Other than that I haven't gotten any matches yet. I have some "likes", but I'd have to upgrade Tinder in order to see them.
Regarding the MGTOW's, I can understand where they're coming from, but it's a dark road that I won't let myself go down. I mean you're born with looks that you had no control over, but you still have refined taste for beauty and aesthetics. What's a man to do? I'm certainly not ugly, I wore braces and all but I don't have classic masculine looks, one girlfriend of mine once said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're very pretty". I didn't know what to say.
This talk about women wanting this dominant neanderthal who takes charge, that's just not my style.
I was getting a little bummed out yesterday, thinking I'm just a weak submissive pretty boy who will never appeal to a woman's primal interests. I seem to get better vibes from women in real life though. It's so uplifting when a sexy milf looks right at you and smiles. I think I need to man up and learn to approach them in real life.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,936 posts, read 36,974,024 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by New Horizons
I actually just got on Tinder a week ago. I only got one match so far. I tried to initiate some conversation and then she "unmatched" me
Of course I'm going after women that are probably out of my league, that is hot female professionals in their 40's.
Other than that I haven't gotten any matches yet. I have some "likes", but I'd have to upgrade Tinder in order to see them.
Regarding the MGTOW's, I can understand where they're coming from, but it's a dark road that I won't let myself go down. I mean you're born with looks that you had no control over, but you still have refined taste for beauty and aesthetics. What's a man to do? I'm certainly not ugly, I wore braces and all but I don't have classic masculine looks, one girlfriend of mine once said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're very pretty". I didn't know what to say.
This talk about women wanting this dominant neanderthal who takes charge, that's just not my style.
I was getting a little bummed out yesterday, thinking I'm just a weak submissive pretty boy who will never appeal to a woman's primal interests. I seem to get better vibes from women in real life though. It's so uplifting when a sexy milf looks right at you and smiles. I think I need to man up and learn to approach them in real life.
What do you do? You embrace who and what you are. There are loads of women that like "pretty" looking guys. Loads of women that don't like the caveman type guy (in or out of the bedroom). Lots of those women are both good looking, and attractive people. If you really like who you are, then things can work.
Also, it's better to stop looking at people as "sexy milfs" and other such gunk but as individual humans, like you are.
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