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The Greatest Gift

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(This is an article I wrote for my romantic advice blog — The Leading Man.)

As men, we are charged with a very special kind of mission.

We have been put on this earth to help women relax.

Show me a modern woman, and I'll introduce you to a person who is likely frazzled, feels overwhelmed, and is just plain worn out — probably in ways the average man can't even imagine.

Thanks in large part to the feminist movement, women today enjoy all of the same demands, stresses and pressures of men. (This, of course, in addition to the demands, stresses and pressures they've always had to contend with.)

Today's woman isn't exactly a man — she is a woman and a man. She is expected to play both parts.

Women don't usually complain about it. In fact, they often do an exemplary job of not letting on that anything is the matter.

Whatever successes might be attributed to Women's Lib, one area where it has failed is in recognizing that men and women are different. We are equal in moral worth, to be sure, but we don't experience life in quite the same way.

A woman's internal emotional makeup is significantly more complex than a man's. A woman tends to have a broader emotional scope, and — quite unlike a man — she is able to experience multiple, even disparate emotions simultaneously.

This can give rise to the feeling of being "mixed up," and the need to sort through her emotions in order to make sense of them.

Unfortunately, few women are given the opportunity to detach from external demands for long enough to allow this to happen. For the modern woman, it's always something — a ringing phone, a crying child, a complaining client, a well-intentioned mother giving grief.

A woman's world can easily become dominated by these "somethings," each requiring her immediate, focused, problem-solving awareness.

On top of that, women have a peculiar ability to empathize, a power essentially unknown to a man. A woman doesn't just feel her own pain; she feels the pain of everyone in her life whom she cares about. Ditto for elation, excitement, joy, sorrow, fear.

To the degree that she loves a person, a woman absorbs their feelings, experiencing them as if they were her own. This further contributes to the swirling emotional cocktail which is her inner life.

The greatest thing that a man can do for a woman, is to give her a break — to allow her to "step off the world" for a while, and provide her with a safe context in which she can feel free to relax, unwind, and let go of stress.

When a man succeeds at this, he finds himself in the presence of a much happier, much more loving and receptive woman.

In future articles, I'll discuss specific ways that a man can form a powerful connection with woman by helping her to relax. In the meantime, I'm extremely interested to hear from women about this issue.

© 2012 Kevin Delaney

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