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I can be intimate. I can show gratitude. I can expect support in return. I can offer and I can demand. No enjoyment or thrill. I have a man in my life who is both a colleague and a friend. He is 22 years my senior. Now some of you may say get over the age difference but I cannot.
I have tried but I cannot. He is closer to my parents age than mine and it is too steep a hill for me to climb. Yeah, I feel like good advice is always given after the fact and sometimes runs counter in the moment before we can judge the impact.
He has his stuff but he maintains a normalcy with both good and bad results for me. He is a gentleman.
The kind that holds a chair out for me wherever we dine. He is quick to grab the tab although I throw down too as this is a friendship and should. He hates it because it goes against his sensibilities but he accepts with care and gratitude. He talks to me like a human being. He learns more and more good and bad about me over time as I do him. He can see and knows I am fragile. He treats me with care not brusque unfeeling.
He is in all respects a man I would set up with any woman in her 50s who lives in the SoCal area. He is intelligent, literate, knowledgeable without bravado and it is a mystery why he is still single although I think he gave up on the romance scene long ago. This is what men used to do! This is how men used to behave! This is how it used to be when men courted women not too long ago. He is a man of another time. He is nearing He allows me the privilege and it is as this man is a well-know established writer of import because he understands the nature of our relationship.
But still, he dotes and pays attentions and recalls the minutest details of me because: That is the difference between the men of today and the men from another generation. How to get a woman and landing on SoSuave or AskMen. And he is the sort of man I was used to back in my 20s dating both my peers and slightly older. His care and consideration is not a guise and is not alien to me as I dated men who behaved in like up until but certainly the tide changed in and every year the behavior is more gross, more shocking, more astonishing, etc.
I know good from bad. What has happened to my judgment over the past few years is that bad becomes relative. I might have suffered learned helplessness along the way. But I am not seeking it out. Nothing and I do mean there is nothing wrong with wanting that. I may wind up alone for the majority of my life by virtue of the fact that men have given over to the most basest and primal of urges with no approbation to keep such wantonness in check by our society and by men leading by example who are too few and far between.
Men want a pack mule. I remember when years ago, men used to lament how women could take advantage, be gold-diggers, etc.
You heard about on talk shows, radio, and whatnot. Do me that one little courtesy as I keep trying to Wayne Dyer up myself, keep working on me, and keep being open to unnecessary casualties of a gender war brewing right under our noses. I adore Natalie and she saved me. I thought I was losing my mind.
Too many of my girlfriends were willing to make excuses, justify and rationalize but are now starting to come around when the obviousness is too much to ignore. Natalie reaffirmed rather than re-taught. I truly intended this to my a quick reply and found my fingers typing like Mozart banging the keys.
For that, I apologize for taking up space and air time but I cannot sit silent and read almost daily these laments by women and not dive in and scream: Like it or not, men in many respects set the tone for all interactions and if we women continue to buffer, excuse, rationalize, tolerate the unacceptable then men will not roll their craptastic behavior back.
It will carry on for our daughters if it is already I believe it may be for the rest of us. We may be victims of a social decay and perversion infiltrating ourselves with every new gadget, technological shift, online access to dating, porn and all sorts of social connections conflating the real issue at hand. We can either choose to be mules or more. Perhaps the solution is as antiquated as the Greeks.
Sure, but not probable. Is this where women may be left with little recourse left to guide them? Women will get wise even if it takes us a century to get there. The men are currently holding all the cards and laughing in our faces as we keep trying to play a high-stakes game without any chips. There are those of us who will push away from the table and see the only way to win is not to play. We will survive but we are alone by virtue of our lack of stomaching such a high stakes game for which long-term there are only losers and no real winners.
When women stop and refuse to play, then and only then, can the terms be renegotiated. It will take I suppose the pendulum to swing so out of whack before women rise up in numbers and awareness to see with the clarity of having watched their mothers, sisters, aunts, neighbors and friends plow the field alone before they drop dead.
A Boxer I am not. I will allow this thought to disparage my aforementioned theses.
I meet and develop various relationships with men continually, and most not all are selfish, entitled and demanding of everything without any consideration to what they should offer in counterbalance. Professional, platonic, romantic, etc. Even as a child I never thought I would get married. What we believe is so important. I had relationships that lasted years but I did not think I was ready for the responsibilities that come with marriage.
I was also honest about this with any man who was and those that were I let go because it was the right things to do. The difference between then and now is the attitude most men have today. The selfishness was not so off the charts as it is now bordering on ridiculous.
I was for him merely an escort girl of sorts. And, you should not be involved in helping him break it off with her so that he can be with you. Methinks our society is headed in a very bad direction. I just wanted to say after reading your post, this person is definitely an EUM. Red flag, if he balks at that request. She assured me that I was her boyfriend in front of her friends. It's working, whether it's God or me, I don't know.
Men pursued, they courted and would even wait before we became intimate. I had mature breakups in my 20s compared to ending a relationship now when these men are acting so badly, I have to wonder if they just want us to end it. They whine and moan and then blame. I can be very happy in a long-term relationship without marriage so long as it is happy, healthy and supportive.
That about sums it up so the lights can be put out now!
I actually know someone whose youngest daughter was being wined and dined by a member of European Royalty.