Ladies - be your Guys Number One Fan

[flyingfish]

Not sure I understand that one.

The infant mortality rate was so high that on average only 2 would survive, that is why human population stayed relatively stable (it grew very, very, very slowly) for a very long time.

Same as today.

Oh? I guess that’s why people are constantly fighting over resources and why, given current technology, we’d need several planets to provide every person alive today with a Western lifestyle?

Without farming, for example, it was impossible to have cities. A hunter gatherer lifestyle can only support a certain population density. Once human population reached a certain density, this drove the development of new ways of getting food and allowed human beings to live in large settlements.

Before that, “wars” (in so far as you can have wars between tiny groups of people) wouldn’t have made sense and been very unlikely. There is no reason to expend all that energy and possibly give your life when you can simply move to a new area. Can’t do that anymore with a high population density.

How is this relevant to the discussion? War is one way for men to be overvalued and women undervalued in a society. When you have frequent war you also need a constant supply of warriors, so there is motivation to force women to produce many children for the war. Case in point is Egypt, which was far more egalitarian when it was peaceful and isolated from others by the desert. Things changed when armies started crossing the desert and attacking it.

That’s not to say physical strength isn’t generally useful. But it’s questionable whether you can say that hunting is more important to a society than gathering, and presumably childless women, or women whose children were old enough to be left behind, or women who could have left children behind with others would have been just as capable of most forms of hunting, and definitely fishing. The average man is not that much stronger than the average woman anyway.

If we’re talking about why a society might marginalize women, war is a good explanation for that.

Careful there. That sounded wrong. Ambitions and desires aren’t wrong of themselves but when we start talking about how ambitions and desires change the world, it starts giving a wrong vibe.

You misread me, I didn’t say change the world, I said how those desires changed in the Western world.

Oh, and those books are more reliable than those that tell what a woman wants or needs or likes? I wholeheartedly commend you for the effort and it’s a pity most people won’t go to such lengths as you did, but at the same time, are you prepared to listen to what the individual person’s needs or desires are?

Haha, well you got me there. Of course I would be willing to listen.

Emotions aren’t or shouldn’t be the beginning and end of it. The marital consent is to giving and receiving each other in totality and forever and that’s not quite what people do when they get tired of each other after several years instead of sticking with the commitment. I don’t want to come down hard on anyone, but doing so is not an answer. The answer is working on the marriage which is, not thinking of ways out.

It’s probably really hard to stay with someone after the feeling of love is gone though. I’ve never been married, but I’ve been in relationships where I’ve fallen out of love. There is very little motivation for staying in the relationship at that point, and other men start seeming very attractive.

I wonder to be honest if I’ll be able to spend my whole life with one man. The desire to be with a man doesn’t seem to last for me.

 

[John21652]

It’s probably really hard to stay with someone after the feeling of love is gone though. I’ve never been married, but I’ve been in relationships where I’ve fallen out of love. There is very little motivation for staying in the relationship at that point, and other men start seeming very attractive.

I wonder to be honest if I’ll be able to spend my whole life with one man. The desire to be with a man doesn’t seem to last for me.

I will put it to you that if “it” is gone, it wasn’t love in the first place.

Shakespeare wrote a Sonnett on this very subject and it goes thus -

**Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Line two and nine are very defining.
**

**
**

 

[JRPO]

Maybe people just fall out of love and get tired of each other, and that’s why marriages fail. I don’t know.

Well sadly flyingfish you certainly don’t know at the moment.

I can only repeat what John21652 is saying. **True love never ends **and if you “fall out of Love” then yes you were never really in love in the first place.

I pray that one day you come to know what love is.

 

[flyingfish]

How many couples who’ve been together for 10+ years do you know who are still “in love”? Not just good friends, not just good roommates, but passionately, “butterflies”, can’t keep their hands off each other kind of love?

I’m really not interested in the “love is a choice, not a feeling” point of view. That kind of neighborly love isn’t enough to want to stay with the same person.

 

[Kindness]

Love matures and changes. I have been married for 13.5 yrs and known my dh for 14.5. I love him more now than when we first married. Everyday he tells me he loves me and how beautiful I am, everyday I have to fight him off because he’s so crazy about me. Right now he’s having a bath and tried to pull me in with him!

Having “butterflies” is only one indicator of one kind of love. Will that same guy you have butterflies for be willing to forgive you making mistakes FOR YEARS. Will he care for you if you’re sick, your changing, your aging? Will he be a loving and responsible father? Those are the kind of qualities that make a marriage happy and last.

I used to also wonder if I could ever get married and not just 'fall out of love" and not want to be with that person any more. I converted to Catholicism and over time grew to understand what marriage really means and how it is truly a vocation and commitment. I am grateful that God blessed me with such a loving husband and I thank God every day and try my best never to take him for granted.

I am assuming you would be OK with your future husband walking out if he “fell out of love”? You wouldn’t want him to attempt to stay and “choose” to love you again?

 

[flyingfish]

Love matures and changes. I have been married for 13.5 yrs and known my dh for 14.5. I love him more now than when we first married. Everyday he tells me he loves me and how beautiful I am, everyday I have to fight him off because he’s so crazy about me. Right now he’s having a bath and tried to pull me in with him!

Those kinds of stories are good to hear I hope I can find someone I would have that with for life.

I am assuming you would be OK with your future husband walking out if he “fell out of love”? You wouldn’t want him to attempt to stay and “choose” to love you again?

I’d want to try to get the feeling back, but I don’t know to what extent it’s possible. If we tried to get it back and it didn’t, I would want to move on myself. Obviously within reason, if I was 60 years old or something by then, and my primary interest was having a friend around things would be different.

 

[rayne89]

How many couples who’ve been together for 10+ years do you know who are still “in love”? Not just good friends, not just good roommates, but passionately, “butterflies”, can’t keep their hands off each other kind of love?

I’m really not interested in the “love is a choice, not a feeling” point of view. That kind of neighborly love isn’t enough to want to stay with the same person.

:wave:Me, me, me!

But we also nearly ended up divorced at one point about 12 years ago. It was about as bad as it could get. But we had a two year old daughter and decided we owed it to her to do everything in our power to make it work. We started with a Retrouvaille weekend. It was work, a lot of work over a couple of years before we were back on solid ground. And now we are more in love than ever. I married young, shortly after high school and not for logical reasons but because I truly, madly and deeply in love with my husband. We had no money then and we still don’t really. We have a fire that just holds us together but fires don’t burn without fuel and marriage takes sacrifice, work, putting others before your self. Selfishness, self centeredness will be the fastest way to put it out.

 

[Kindness]

Beautiful post Rayne 89. And I didn’t mean to imply that we have a perfect relationship but it’s true we are very happy. Just the nature of love does grow and change and when you are committed to each other you do your best (decide, choose) to find a way to embrace those changes and circumstances. Is love real if it has not overcome obstacles and challenges? None of us know what the future holds and that is why it is comforting to know God is with us and wants to help hold us together at times of stress and challenge.

 

[ac_claire]

But we also nearly ended up divorced at one point about 12 years ago. It was about as bad as it could get. But we had a two year old daughter and decided we owed it to her to do everything in our power to make it work.

You had a small child at the time your marriage went through the rough patch. Were things better before the baby? Don’t know if that’s true in your case, but it’s just that things like this seem to happen a lot. I wonder why that is? I always assumed that having a baby (as long as having children is what both people wanted, of course) would bring a couple together even more. Because now you have a bond that only the two of you share and it’s forever. So is that generally true or generally is it harder once the baby arrives?

 

[rayne89]

You had a small child at the time your marriage went through the rough patch. Were things better before the baby? Don’t know if that’s true in your case, but it’s just that things like this seem to happen a lot. I wonder why that is? I always assumed that having a baby (as long as having children is what both people wanted, of course) would bring a couple together even more. Because now you have a bond that only the two of you share and it’s forever. So is that generally true or generally is it harder once the baby arrives?

There was a lot that brought us to where we were. I changed a lot after our daughter was born. I was in full mom mode, completely devoted to being a mom and honestly neglected my husband. I’ve found this happens often with women.

I changed a lot. I was returning to the faith I grew up in with fervor - something my husband wasn’t used to, I had been away from the church when we married. Things that I found acceptable before in our marriage no longer were -pornography for instance. I turned things up-side-down on my husband -listening to mostly Catholic music, leaving EWTN on most of the day, changing my style of dress, reading religious books etc.

Also my husband was in the midst of working a 12 step program for alcoholism. Our marriage had sustained a lot of damage from the roller coaster of his drinking problem that was on an off again through out our marriage.

Our daughter did save our marriage though, my husband stayed for her not for me and I wouldn’t have fought to convince him to stay if she was not in the picture. I loved him but I was worn down from the addiction and would have let him go otherwise. I didn’t want her to grow up in a divorced home.

My husband actually did convert on his own when I stopped “beating him over the head” with religion and I learned my vocation was to be a wife and a mother -and that I couldn’t be the best mother to my daughter without being the best wife to my husband first. My husband has been clean and sober for over a decade and we are very happily married. By the grace of God and a lot of hard work. I still get butterflies when I look at husband. He is the love of my life.

 

[flyingfish]

Ladies who find your husbands still attractive, and get butterflies ( and I hope that they don’t read this forum so you can be truthful ). Are they “objectively” attractive? As in in great shape, generally good looking? Are any of you feeling butterflies and excitement about a man who’s let himself go?

 

[Kindness]

I don’t get butterflies it goes deeper than that, I love my husband and because I love him I find him attractive, because I like his looks I love him it goes around in a circle. We married at 27 and he’ll be 41 next week. I don’t expect him to look like a 27 yr old, but he’s healthy and I like his salt and pepper hair. Sometimes I see him out of the corner of my eye at the gas station or somewhere and I think "wow he’s cute!’ and then I realize Oh that’s my husband . Weirdly it is so, so rare that I experience that with anyone else so the connection between us is alive and strong.

But putting too much emphasis on appearance is unrealistic as you age and change. I’ve had three children and four pregnancies since we’ve been married and I definitely do not look like a 27 yr old, but my husband still loves me and finds me attractive. The romance in marriage deepens and changes. We laugh at our private jokes and funny memories and just enjoy sharing our lives - two become one. We’ve seen each other vulnerable and broken and it helped us learn to love each other more.

 

[ac_claire]

Ladies who find your husbands still attractive, and get butterflies ( and I hope that they don’t read this forum so you can be truthful ). Are they “objectively” attractive? As in in great shape, generally good looking? Are any of you feeling butterflies and excitement about a man who’s let himself go?

I’m a newlywed, but I can relate to this concept a bit. I wouldn’t in any way say that my husband has let himself go, he’s actually really attractive, but I do know it’s hard in general to be objective about how he looks because I do love him. I think he’s the most handsome guy ever.

At my wedding, at least two friends who’d never met him before told me “he’s really cute!” and I was like, “really?” LOL not because I didn’t believe them or agree, but because it’s such a foregone conclusion to me, that to even hear it mentioned like it’s a revelation or something, I have to take a minute and struggle to try and see him objectively, the way they are. And it’s hard to be objective because of the feelings I have for him. With us women, the feelings color our perceptions a lot more than they do with men…I think they find it easier to be totally objective about appearances.