This is a comment by Jon D on the post “It’s True That Men Have to Fall Harder For Women Than They Fall For Us“.
To certain extent this rings true when you consider that men overwhelmingly bear the brunt of having to “be romantic” for their women. You never hear a man complain that his wife never takes him anywhere or doesn’t bring him home special gifts or leave little love notes hidden for him to discover. It’s because we’re conditioned not to expect that stuff, whereas women are conditioned to expect it and when a man fails to deliver, it is further evidence that the man does not care for her much because he is not willing to make an effort.
I say it’s time for women to make more of an effort, especially in marriage, to keep romance alive. The next time a woman complains her boyfriend or husband is “boring” they need to ask themselves what fabulous fun ideas they have come up with in the last year.
Photo credit: Flickr / blair_25
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you keep score; you got a competition problem. you wait for the other person to act: you’re a blam-game guy. you point fingers; you don’t look in the mirror. someone says you’re boring; that is a wake-up call. if someone told me i was boring i would ask why they thought that, but also why they felt they had to part in it. everyone likes to be thought of, to think that another person puts them first. if you’re doing the best you can with that, no one can ask more. if you aren’t; no one should need to ask you, you should just do more.
I think this is more than just a personal thing. It’s a society-wide problem. So many times I hear my girlfriends whining and complaining about how their husbands never buy them flowers, or how they aren’t doing all those adorable things on those “100 Cute Things to Do on a Date” lists that are written by women (and FOR women), or how they never do that nice thing anymore.
I think there’s needs to be a recognition that relationships change over time, and for us women to stop being collectively naggy. I personally try to do this by making sure I give my husband gifts too on occasion, and while he doesn’t like flowers, he certainly does like the spur of the moment trip to Taco Bell or Fuddruckers and a video game night.
I think what he’s saying (and I agree with) is that women (sometimes including me) need to stop being all “OMG Y U NO LIKE DISNEY PRINCE CHARMING?”, to quit having unrealistic expectations of our spouses, and to simply try to do nice things for our husbands/boyfriends/men as well.
I wrote about this here because I had several friends at the time who had this same issue and were pushing their significant others without putting anything else in themselves:
http://provoketive.com/2012/02/18/when-you-know-its-romance/
So, I agree with both of you. I agree with OP and I agree with you, misty christy. We ALL need to stop whining, look in the mirror, and just love our significant others more and often.
“OMG Y U NO LIKE DISNEY PRINCE CHARMING?”
lolol that was funny.
Deanna, your ‘Comment of the day’ picks have been very good. You select them regardless of whether the commenter is a feminist or non-feminist
Heh, I use to think being thoughtful for your partner would mean not buying her roses from the shop, but putting in a garden for her so she has a garden full of roses available without needing to spend lots n lots of money. Would that work?:P
Didn’t prince charming want a very beautiful princess? Meaning most women wouldn’t be royalty and couldn’t date him?
Misty Christy you say : “if you’re doing the best you can with that, no one can ask more. if you aren’t; no one should need to ask you, you should just do more.”
What if you don’t know that your partner would like you to do more? Are you just supposed to know? Your analysis seems immature in that you should just be expected to continually lavish attention and romance on a partner regardless of their reciprocity or their perceived level of gratitude. Would you keep doing nice things for someone who didn’t appreciate it or do nice things for you in return? I do not keep score in my marriage. I do not point fingers or play the blame game, and frankly I have no idea where you were able to come to that conclusion based on my post.
I do recognize however, that marriage and any relationship is both give and take. You have to be happy together. If you don’t get the same level of engagement, of love and romance from your partner that you feel you give, it causes resentment. In these times its important to communicate your needs. My point from the original post is that men traditionally have been expected to make grand gestures, to be romantic and yada yada yada. When a man tries to do these things, because it is expected, it does not have the same value. Take Valentine’s day for example. Do men whine about it when their wives don’t get them a card or gift? No. But women would be irate if their husbands forgot or just plain didn’t bother to get flowers, a card, a dinner reservation and a gift.
My intent was to point out what I perceive as a gender gap in the expectations of the effort men vs women put into being romantic.
So true what you say…
My husband and I reached a crossroads a few years ago…he was stressed out about work, caring for his elderly mother, paying for our house (of course, I was going through the same thing!)….he started hanging out more and more with his controlling, drunken friend and ignoring my son and myself….I was reading every self-help book to try to remedy the situation constructively without blowing up at him….
Long story short…you do need to take a step back and see what you can do to remedy the situation…the drunken friend is finally gone…I make dinner reservations and order tickets to concerts and shows…I e-mail and call friends to go out as a group…Also, important for both wife and husband is one-on-one time with their own friends…you can’t expect to get all of your emotional and social needs from one person….
Hey, I’m totally on the same page that women should “romance” their men and men should “romance” their women. Relationships are joint efforts.I don’t think women always know how to romance their guys so if guys want to give any advice on how you like to be romanced, that might help. I know I would be interested in hearing those responses!
While you don’t hear men complain about never being taken anywhere or bought gifts, there are stereotypical things men do complain about usually regarding physical acts of love like sex, or the lack of sex in a relationship. How she isn’t “fun” enough, doesn’t want to try new stuff enough, isn’t horny enough, has let herself go, spends too much time with the children…… You’re less likely to hear women complain about those things although there are certainly women that encounter those problems too.
So I’m not sure it’s 100% fair to say that men aren’t conditioned to not expect stuff because I do think men are conditioned to expect stuff even if that stuff is different from what women may be conditioned to expect. I also find that it’s usually the woman, in my own experiences among my friends and family, that when there is a problem in the relationship, are trying to get the relationship back on track. Women will seek help and advice from a lot of resources to fix what they fear may be a drifting relationship. They will try different things that they hope help the relationship even if sometimes those things don’t work because they don’t always know what their partner wants being human themselves. I know when I’ve had issues in relationships, and I tried to fix it, I truly tried to do things that I thought would be really nice and special and I think it fell flat because it wasn’t necessarily the right way he wanted to be “romanced”. Then I would get frustrated and he would get frustrated at me and we both wouldn’t know what to do. I was trying but I didn’t feel like my efforts where appreciated and he didn’t understand that I was trying because I wasn’t speaking his language in that regard. Of course these are generalizations and I have no doubt there are individuals that buck the trend but this has just been my own experience.
So, I totally agree that women need to make more of an effort in their personal relationships. I just don’t think it’s fair to insinuate that women don’t already do this in their own ways and that just because men don’t complain about getting gifts or going to new places that means that there aren’t regular stereotypical things men do complain about that can put the pressure on women to perform too.
I also think men bear the brunt of the responsibility to ensure sex is pleasurable for their partners. When a man finds himself dissatisfied with sex it is often brushed off because men are supposedly never satisfied, or it is attributed to amount or frequency of sex as opposed to quality of sex. If a woman is not pleased sexually, it’s the man’s failure. If a man is not pleased sexually, it’s never the woman’s fault, nor is it looked upon as her responsibility to ensure sex is pleasurable. Women seem to think their presence alone is enough, that by virtue of consenting to have sex, most men will be satisfied simply with being granted access. My intent was simply to point out that I think men have more perceived responsibility to do things to make their partner happy, whereas women don’t have as much of a focus on what they do to make their men happy. It brings me back to the original article that suggests men have to fall harder for women than women do for men. Because men have greater expectations to provide for the happiness of women within a relationship, they must be more in love with the woman in order to sustain the motivation to continue that pattern of inequal romantic effort. If he’s not head over heels in love, he’s not going to go above and beyond to romance a woman, to sexually please her, to make her happy. Hence, men have to love women more.
Men in general are conditioned to fix stuff and asking for help is much harder so I think it may be harder for men to ask for help to fix a relationship, and that their ways of fixing it might not be very visible whereas a woman might go asking others for help and advice.