Just after Valentine’s Day is the perfect time for this discussion while some of you are still basking in the afterglow.
People are so lost in, and confused by, what they consider to be love these days; it is time we sorted this out once and for all, and set the record straight.
These might be the wisest words I have ever written:
Only fools believe sex and love are related!
Sex and its effects are temporary while “true love” lasts your entire life no matter what transpires.
Love is built or destroyed by the qualities of a person’s character.
Empathy, compassion, morals, scruples, intelligence, and integrity are reasons to fall for someone possessing most or ideally all six of these character traits.
Physical appearance, voice, scent, taste, and a knowing touch are reasons to have sex, but they ARE NOT legitimate reasons for thinking we are in love.
For far too many people, their idea of love speaks of “loving feelings” which are usually strongest after sex but weaken again with time. How many times have we seen or heard the words:
“I am SO in love right now!”
This is NOT love. If you need further clarification, my book offers science-based explanations of sex and its effects, as well as the biological imperatives which drive us to partner up. Don’t worry, it’s a light-ish read.
Just because you choose to be in a committed relationship, DOES NOT mean you are in love.
You cannot force love into a sexual relationship even if it comes with the added perks of companionship, convenience, and security. You may “love” being in a relationship, but this IS NOT the same as being “in love”.
If you ever experience true love, you will find it is a CONSTANT CONDITION that can only be altered by changes in your partner’s character.
Well, almost nothing. If you find out you have been deceived and betrayed on a massive scale, a different fire burns, and it is one which is difficult to extinguish. You anger is like a gasoline fire in the sand; just when you think it is out, it flares up once again.
This is my story of the devastation that occurs when you have been deceived, and how this writer works through his pain.
Everyone has witnessed sexism or outright misogyny at some point in their lives. What we all must remember and understand is each of us will have emotional challenges at some point brought about by our personal lives. Most of us try very hard to appear as though all is well when we show up for work or a social event when going through personal problems. However, it is possible for each of us to allow bitterness or resentment to unconsciously affect how we are perceived by others. Sometimes we hate. It’s as simple as that. The important point to question is whether the misogyny being displayed is a temporary condition or has it become a part of who we are.
It’s incredible how quickly love and caring can turn to vile hatred.
Men are most often labeled as misogynists, but this is neither fair nor equitable. While men are historically far more practised in the art of misogyny, courtesy of our five-thousand year old patriarchy, women are also completely capable of similar behavior; granted, with a little less testosterone fueling their hatred of women. Further, women are capable of atrocious acts against their own sex when they feel threatened by, or are in competition with, another woman. I am certain there are deniers and rationalists who would say there is a difference between hating one woman or a few women and hating all women.
To me, hate is hate.
My personal philosophy differs from most. I do not believe in the cut and dried─black and white─good and evil─right and left we are endlessly being sold on by the division propagating media. Instead, I tend to explore the gray area between black and white because it is there where change can be accomplished. My view of our messed up world is akin to a pie divided into three equal portions: 33.3% good, 33.3% bad, with the final 33.3% in flux; capable of going either way on any given day. When our world has a dark period, it is because too much of the gray area has shifted to one side. Nature teaches us about her delicate balance and we can apply this to human behavior as well. We must maintain our emotional balance or hate will consume us.
Just before the holidays, I managed to unravel a web of lies, deceit, and betrayal my now ex significant other had been attempting to hide. I could feel something was amiss as her behavior toward me had changed, as did her attitude toward important career matters. She was no longer interested in or putting any effort into either. When I pressed for an explanation in the early going, she blamed it on being so busy with work. A part of me knew better, after all, this was far from my first rodeo. When she was finally cornered just before Christmas, the truth came out. While I was at home tending to her forgotten small business and worrying about her because of an alleged family crisis on her side, she was travelling with another man.
Needless to say, I was outraged.
No one who professes their undying love for you should ever do this, but sadly, this type of behavior happens all the time. There are those in our society who rationalize such abhorrent actions with sayings like: “The heart wants what the heart wants.” or “We are only human.” but I do not buy into this.
These words are sociopathic rationalizations, written by sociopaths for sociopaths, in my “authoritative” opinion.
Civilized people say goodbye to an old love before beginning a new one and they do not cheat. After some very heated and hurtful words were fired in her direction, I terminated the relationship with extreme prejudice. I was devastated, bitter, and angry as I began rewinding the tape in my mind of our entire relationship. Doubts crept in. What else might she have lied about? Could I believe anything she had ever said to me?
I uncorked a bottle of very special scotch whiskey and began to wash away the pain. I remember thinking: I am an authority on relationships, and I will be damned if she is going to ruin my holiday season. A few drinks later, I remembered a word string I had committed to memory decades ago: That f—ing good for nothing two-bit bimbo, slut, pig, dog, whore, bitch, c–t. It takes a “special” kind of woman to create this kind of emotional damage in a man. It also takes a “special” group of women to make the damage permanent. My conclusion?
I am the short bus for these “special” women.
I was definitely getting in touch with my deep-seeded misogyny. What I found most astonishing was how the decades I have spent researching and writing about women in order to become a better more aware man who works to elevate women, vanished in that moment.
It was as though I had a system crash and I returned to a default program setting.
How many heartbreaks does a person need to suffer to create a word string like this? How many heartbreaks must they endure to keep it in their memory for decades? My life is literally an open book; chalk full of poor choices. You would think I, of all people, would not sink to this level . . . but I did.
The holidays became about getting through and getting past what had transpired. I went into full survival mode. I consumed alcohol as required to wash away any thoughts of her, even though I know it is a depressant. I thought to myself: I can drink every day if I offset the effects of the alcohol with an anti-depressant like dark chocolate. We all have our rationalizations.
It only took about two weeks for the anger, rage, retribution, lunacy phase to pass, and to begin the healing phase. I kept my mind and body busy. It helped to think about how the two of them will inevitably obliviously continue their patterns of behavior, and how much pain they will create for each other.
When a man wants to see the world, he signs to work aboard a ship.
When an attractive damsel in distress wants to see the world, she will see it as a first class passenger through the portholes in the captain’s quarters. Oops, my bad. I guess all the misogyny has not been purged yet, but I will continue to work on it.
Misogyny is a version of directed hate which exists in some form in all of us. It is just a branch on the hate tree like racism is. Sexism is only the next branch over. My hatred of women comes and goes depending on whether or not I have been hurt by one recently. I love women most of the time, but I can also hate women occasionally. Sometimes I can be ambivalent where womankind is concerned.
The important thing is to be conscious of what we are feeling.
Get to know your darker deep-seeded nature. Expose it to light so it will wither and die instead of allowing it to go unchecked only to become a permanent part of who you are. Speaking of death, did I mention I hope they are hit by a beer truck? Yeah, I know, I still have a few unresolved issues.
FYI: This article saw massive editing six weeks after the split. I removed all their dirty little secrets from the original piece so I guess I have reached the point of closure. The whole story she fed me might have been lies anyhow. She is like that. Lastly, I almost forgot to comment on what a big a fan I am of rebounding. It’s SO GOOD for quickly getting over a Ms. Creant.
My latest relationship disaster forced me to clean up my facebook wall before saying a final farewell to that time-suck. What remains on it is very revealing. If we post to social media based on what we are feeling, and I believe we do, then my posts are a tell-all with trackable mile-markers on the road to Splitsville.
March 18, 2018 I shared a post which said: Always trust your gut. Your brain can be fooled and your heart is an idiot but your gut doesn’t know how to lie.
April 16, 2018 I shared a post which said: Never discredit your gut instinct. You are not paranoid. Your body can pick up on bad vibrations. If something deep inside of you says something is not right about a person or situation, trust it.
June 21, 2018 I shared a post which said: They don’t discard you for someone better, they discard you for someone who can’t see their bullshit.
June 21, 2018 I shared a post which said: I am too old for games, too tired to pretend, and too wise for lies.
June 24, 2018 I shared a post which said: Always trust your gut. It knows what your head hasn’t figured out yet.
June 25, 2018 I shared a lengthy post which began with: Do yourself a favor and learn how to walk away. When a connection starts to fade, learn how to let it go. . . .
July 5, 2018 I shared a post which said: Pay attention to your gut feelings. No matter how good something looks, if it doesn’t feel right, walk away.
July 6, 2018 I shared a post which said: Without communication, there is no relationship. Without respect, there is no love. Without trust, there’s no reason to continue.
July 24, 2018 I shared a post which said: Forgive yourself. You had no way of knowing you would be betrayed. A pure heart often trusts more than it should.
July 25, 2018 I shared a post which said: A relationship is worth fighting for but you can’t be the only one fighting.
August 5, 2018 I shared a post which said: Love (n.) Giving someone the power to destroy you, and trusting them not to.
August 9, 2018 I shared a post which said: Never lie to your partner, even if the truth might hurt them. Lying ruins trust.
August 29, 2018 I shared a post which said: I don’t regret the things I did wrong, I regret the good things I did for the wrong people.
August 30, 2018 I shared a post which said: Don’t you dare shrink yourself for someone else’s comfort. Do not become small for people who refuse to grow.
September 12, 2018 I shared a post which said: The only people who are mad at you for speaking the truth are those living a lie. Keep speaking the truth.
September 21, 2018 I shared a post which said: How do you lose a woman? Just be a good guy, they hate that crap.
October 28, 2018 I wrote a blog post here in my Relationship Advice blog: Relationships are hard, especially when your significant other is unconsciously starting a new one.
November 2, 2018 I shared a post which said: I never cared about the material things. I care about time, attention, honesty, loyalty and effort. Those gifts mean more to me than anything money could buy.
November 20, 2018 I shared a post which said: I seriously wonder: How many highly intuitive, intelligent & totally sane women & men have been labelled as crazy because they got too close to figuring out someone else’s bullsh*t.
December 8, 2018 I posted on my Blog Madness site what I now call my Duped Fool Post. While I was worried and working on her behalf, she was up to no good.
I ended the relationship shortly after the above article was posted. She was finally cornered by questions she did not want to answer which ultimately led to my unravelling her massive deception.
My gut had long known what my head would not accept.
Love will do this to you. When someone covers lies with still more lies, their words which echo in your memory trick you into a condition of wanting to believe anything that will keep your heart from being broken.
feck·less – [ˈfekləs] – ADJECTIVE – lacking initiative or strength of character; irresponsible.
I must thank Shelby Kent Stewart {A great writer, author, and blogger. Find her and follow her.} for adding this new word to my vocabulary. Honestly, I don’t know how I missed this one as it is “right up my alley”, so to speak.
Photo by luizclas on Pexels.com
Shelby has read and reviewed Ms. Creant–thanks for that, by the way– and queried, perhaps rhetorically, ‘Why are feckless women so drawn to me?’, which, after looking up the meaning, I pondered for some time. I came up with nothing concrete. To be conscious, you must be self-aware, and to be self-aware, you must self-examine. I flipped the question to read:
Why am I so drawn to feckless women?
And presto, answers began to emerge.
I have been saving, or attempting to save, damsels in distress for as long as I can remember. I always fall for the classic femme fatale types, and the results are ALWAYS the same.
femme fa·tale – [fem fəˈtäl]- NOUN – an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who will ultimately bring disaster to a man who becomes involved with her.
You save them by whisking them away from their troubles, whether real or imagined, to a place of relative safety–usually your place–where you begin to explore all their damage so you might set about repairing them. At first they are grateful, and they show their gratitude by rewarding you with sex. This keeps you motivated to continue to care for them even though there is a voice inside you screaming: This is NOT the type of woman you want!You ignore the screams because you are busy with your new repair project. Before you know it, a year of honeymoon bliss has gone by, and somewhere along the way you uttered the words: “I love you.”, usually in reply to their having said it first. It is here where you have committed yourself, but the screaming persists.
They absolutely smother you with love and affection on a level you never imagined possible.
BINGO! There it is!
Once the fog of sex begins to lift as the honeymoon period ends, you begin to see how your repair work is coming along. You got them the help they needed to change their lives. You cared for them in every way you could think of. You encouraged them to get a job while building a career for themselves, so they would never be reliant on men again. You dropped everything important in your life, that you should have been focusing on, to assist them in rising like a phoenix from the ashes of their former selves. You are proud of yourself for your altruism. You consistently promote the idea that through awareness, growth, and change, they could leave their past behind to become someone truly fantastic–someone who could even silence the screaming voice within you. You want what is best for them, but in truth you are selfishly attempting to build what you have been unable to find.
Here, Shelby, is the revelatory bit.
What happens when you are working harder on them than they are on themselves?
Enter their fecklessness.
You notice only a minimal effort being applied to their life-building so you create a plan for them to follow, but because ‘Organization is hard.’, you end up doing most of it. They mask their lack of initiative with the cries of the consummate damsel in distress:
HELP ME! HELP ME!
SAVE ME! SAVE ME!
I’M SO VULNERABLE!
You discover their lack of character when they freely tell you how this man or that man is doing stuff FOR THEM in answer to their pleas for help. It is as though they think you might rush to join the herd competing for her affection. You point out this backsliding, as well as the list of previous mistakes they have made in similar situations , but it falls on deaf ears. Their irresponsibility is evident as they would much rather be cultivating and shopping the numerous offers they receive from men on the Internet, than focusing on the work you have been pushing them to complete. You are no longer a part of an easy solution; YOU are now the problem. The guys on the web are quick to reinforce this idea–manipulating easy prey–by telling them: ‘How different things would be if only. . . ‘
It should be noted how quickly feckless women fall in and out of love based on their “What have you done for me lately?” mindset. You and YOUR plan to make them someone worth knowing is abandoned in favor of immediate gratification.
