Reading for Scott’s post on Sigma, I was reminded of one of the common manosphere tropes is that men love idealistically and women love opportunistically.

This is false, but there are half truths to it.

Men can seem to love idealistically in a few different scenarios:

  • When they’re infatuated and believe a woman can do no wrong. Some men eventually fall out of this, but some men carry it with them straight to marriage and divorce. This is similar to the so-called blue pill culture and Church where men can be blindsided by a divorce because he (1) does not know how his wife or girlfriend is feeling and (2) he doesn’t understand women’s nature.
  • It is men who primarily initiate and pursue in the culture (if we look to Jesus we see that He initiates but does not pursue), men tend to get more girlfriends and wives that were maybe only half or partially interested in them rather than fully invested. Aside from some of the other forces in the culture, this also skews the breakups and divorces more toward the side of the women. In other words, men generally don’t ask out and pursue women that they are unhappy or not satisfied with, but women do accept dates, boyfriends, and even marriage sometimes with men who they aren’t satisfied completely with. Men can often assume that a woman is fully invested in him when she isn’t, and that leads to a disparity where he can get blindsided.
  • Men can choose to love idealistically in terms of Christ. Although this idealistic (agape) love is different than the above feelings/erotic based love.

There are also many men who do not love idealistically in either sense of the above examples, and they are very opportunistic in terms of spinning plates, cheating, and otherwise can’t keep it in their pants.

Women can seem to also love idealistically under the same scenarios as men do.

  • Alpha widows are primary examples of women loving idealistically under the infatuation scenario. This is the case even when they are with men who are abusive. They will stay and keep saying he’s perfect and awesome and just misunderstood.
  • While it is much rarer, a woman can pursue a man at all costs until she gets with him. In this scenario, is it often the man who can be half hearted about being with her and eventually take the opportunity to leave. I saw a couple scenarios like this in college, but very few after college.
  • Women can choose to love idealistically in terms of Christ. Although I find this to be much rarer according to the divorce statistics because women tend to be less content on average. What tends to be more important in these cases is obviously the Biblical command of respect and submission for wives as that helps get them in the right frame of mind to love.

The Scripture even lauds some examples of women who were idealistic in their love for their husbands.

1 Peter 3:1 In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, 2 as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. 3 Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; 4 but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. 5 For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands; 6 just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.

If you go back to Genesis and read the story what Abraham put her through with Abimelech and Pharaoh, that is some idealistic love much like you would see from women who are extremely strongly bonded to their man today.

The problem with a lot of conventional RP wisdom is that there are a lot of half truths that sound right, but when you examine them they’re false.

The reason why this particular trope tends to get traction is because the men talking around the manosphere were or are primarily:

  1. Unattractive and there to understand women and get one for themselves. They were previous “blue pill” and one of the infatuation types who loved their woman for who they were, even as she was pursuing other men more attractive than him. This is what eventually got them to stumble upon why his woman didn’t accept him for who he was and left him.
  2. Frivorced and/or blindsided by their wives or dumped by their girlfriends (and haven’t dumped women much if at all themselves). In general, if the boyfriend or husband was super committed to the marriage but the girlfriend or wife was not, the blindside makes it seems like they were all in and the women were not… when it was just the case that they couldn’t read the situation nor understand the nature of women.

As mentioned before, the culture also sets up the pursuers mentality and devalues men that more often biases men toward the infatuation route as opposed to understanding where he fits in the grand scheme of things and making decisions not based on infatuation.

To conclude, saying one sex and the other is idealistic and opportunistic has some half truths, but that’s like saying men are logical and women are emotional. Yes, there is some bias for men being more logical and women emotional, but both are capable of each. Many men are capable of opportunism, and while fewer women are capable of idealism there are a bunch.

Most of the idealistic love you see in popular culture is based on infatuation, and it’s no wonder why both men and women often get their hearts broken from it (men blindsided by frivorce or dumped, and women alpha widowed).