In Part I, I dealt with the fundamental issue that most people consider the “problem” of love to be the problem of an object – of finding the right object to love, or to be loved by. Thus do people, Western women in particular, draw up long lists of the attributes that their preferred love object must have in order to qualify for them. Sadly for them, even if they get every last attribute on their list, there is still going to be a sense of something missing. And that “something” is the fact that they, themselves, can never feel love until they learn the action of loving.
Here is how a Western man perceives Western women -
“Question is, are modern Western women truly capable of heterosexual love? I get the distinct impression that most want to *be* loved, but are not so good at loving back.”
No, in fact they are not capable of love, and that fact by itself provides the answer to a whole host of questions.
Suppose I were to claim that I’m about to share old Uncle zed’s version of “The Secret”? And, unlike the O-cow, I’m not going to charge for it, I’m going to give it away for free. (yeah, Nada, I know. Well, if you can find a way to sell it and make money on it, then send me some royalties.;) )
The only thing it will cost you is your own illusions and bullshit. A dear price to pay, I know. But, I will offer the following guarantee – try it for one year, and if it does not work, then everything you didn’t pay for it and all your current misery will be cheerfully refunded. How’s that for a guarantee?
Western women are incapable of feeling love (or loved) because they are incapable of loving. They are still trapped in the problem of the object. By looking for love in an object, or in objects coming from an object (shoes, jewelry, cars, etc.) Western women cut themselves off and numb themselves to love. They experience love when they they experience loving feelings. Because they are unwilling to learn and master the Art of Loving, they choose to spend their entire lives devoid of love.
I learned the hard way that you can take a 5 gallon bucket of love and pour it over a woman’s head, and she still feels nothing inside but emptiness. And the biggest mistake men make is taking on the responsibility for her emptiness. They can work themselves to death (literally) trying to fill up the black hole, the bottomless pit, which exists inside her, and experience only frustration for all their efforts.
All this can be solved if men will do 2 things -
1) transcend the problem of the object and stop treating their own love like an object to be bartered with their love object for love in return, and
2) stop making their own happiness contingent on the happiness of another.
“Don’t worry, be happy” actually turns out to be pretty good advice and not the pop drivel that a lot of people think it is.
By perfecting the Art of Loving, a man can learn that happiness is a choice and if the woman in his life chooses not to be happy, that he can still go on being happy and let her poisonous mood poison only her and not him.
Feminism teaches women the Art of Unhappiness. No matter how much a woman has, “women still have a long way to go.” As long as the glass is even 1% empty, happiness will remain forever beyond their reach.
If you want a good look at the absolute void which is modern womanhood, check out these two sites. You will have to copy and paste, because I won’t give them the trackback of a direct link. No point in broadcasting troll-bait. A short stay on either of these sites will leave most men with absolutely no question why these women are divorced, and if anything will fill him with gratitude that he is not one of the ex-husbands who they so skillfully flay in the public eye.
firstwivesworld.com
divorcedwomenonline.com
This is the face of the modern woman after her feminist illusions have failed her and before she has formulated a “Plan B.” There are 3 essays in particular which illustrate the emptiness and shallowness of modern womanhood -
firstwivesworld.com/community/house-bloggers/do-i-really-have-it-bad/
firstwivesworld.com/community/house-bloggers/good-enough-not-ideal/
divorcedwomenonline.com/2009/08/my-regret-about-marrying-the-wrong-man/
The first two are the morose black hole into which everything falls and nothing comes back out. In the midst of luxury, one woman wonders “Do I really have it that bad?” It boggles the mind to think what a resident of a Calcutta slum, a refugee of the Dharfur, or one of the victims of a Middle Eastern suicide bombing would say in answer to that question. But, the real kicker is the 2nd bit – “Good enough is not ideal.” Nothing less than perfection will ever do.
The third post is the perfect illustration of the problem of ”the object” in the consideration of love – “I married the wrong man”, “I have a broken picker. If I had just picked the right object to love and be loved by, life would be groovy.” In the never-ending search for “Mr. Right” (or Miss Right), the problem is always boiled down to finding exactly the right object, and never on one’s own conduct in the relationship once that object is secured.
Kis has a “broken picker”, she picked the wrong “object.” Both her parents have Game – her father had “husband Game” and her mother had “wife Game”, and they are still married and loving each other after more than 50 years. They realized that there was more to a marriage than how well their “picker” worked – that a marriage, a relationship, must be nourished, fed, cared for, and tended.
If you want a quick guide to how a woman will be in a relationship, look at the condition of her houseplants – if she has them. Never even date a woman whose plants always die. Anyone who cannot nurture a plant can most likely not nurture any other living thing – such as a relationship.
It is interesting that almost all the responses to the original post on this topic immediately interpreted the word “love” purely to mean “romantic love” between a man and a woman (in most cases). Yet, the concept of actual “love” is much broader. In addtion to “eros”, romantic/sexual love, there is also “agape” – “divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love.” There is also “philia” – “dispassionate virtuous love. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity.” And then, there is always, and often under-rated, “gusto” – love of life itself.
When one is fully engaged in the Art of Loving, there is no time nor space for morosely reflecting on what one’s life does not have in it, because one’s attention is fully engaged with what is in it.
Obsidian has in several comments mentioned a very powerful and universal truth – you can only change yourself. You cannot change the rest of the world. Demanding that the rest of the world change to meet your specifications is the ultimate prescription for unhappiness.
And that leads us back to why men are happier today than men were 40 years ago, and why women, despite 40 years of feminism, are less happy. Fedrz said it perfectly – “Women wanted men’s curse along with their own.” Whoever in the world came up with the idea to sell them men’s curse and call it “empowerment” was an advertising genius.
A common synonym for “love” is “passion.” Once again, people usually always leap to thinking only of sexual passion. But people can have passion about many things – a passion for learning, a passion for social justice, even a passion for inventing things. I seriously doubt that anyone could accuse Nikola Tesla of not being a “passionate” man.
The bottom line is this – I believe that happiness lies within the reach of most western men if they are willing and able to reframe the situation within their own minds and become more focussed on mastery and practice of the Arts of Life than on acquiring and being objects. The fact that post-feminist Western women cannot reciprocate our love because they see love as an object to be acquired, and a man simply as an object to serve as the source of other objects, need not be our problem as much as it is theirs.
Let them try to fill their own emptiness through the perpetual quest for more objects (shopping) and the endless consumption of emotional roadkill in the form of television drama and the O-cow. They will fail, and they will always remain empty, because they are constantly looking outside themselves for answers. We may not be able to talk them out of or save them from their folly, but we need not allow ourselves to be dragged down into it along with them.
