"Among our structurally closest analogues - the primates - the male does not feed the female. Heavy with young, making her way laboriously along, she fends for herself. He may fight to protect her or to possess her, but he does not nurture her."- Margaret Mead, Male and Female
I may have been thinking about girls my entire life, but I've only written about them for a year, and it's obvious on paper that men and women are essentially different. Gone are the days of hunting and gathering when men killed for their family to eat and women tended to their offspring and habitat - that is so 1950s. We are the last generation to remember traditional gender roles.
Gentlemen, the power has shifted. It used to be as simple as wearing a leather jacket atop your sports convertible outside the soda shop, but now women can have much nicer things than us. There's no after-school gathering of girls swooning over who the quarterback will take to the dance. It's now the guys that bid for time with the women who dictate the date.
None of this is to say things are better or worse; they're just complicated. Where once men knew they were supposed to ask the woman out on a date and put food on the table, there are now gray areas. Now, it's a game where once it was a programmed formula. And this is what I learned:
Men and woman are like PCs and Macs. While there are many similarities, especially on the surface, both are inherently different and sometimes incompatible. Men place emphasis on logic and rational thought yet are turned on visually and develop a separation between love and sex. Women instinctively react emotionally and require emotional connection for attraction (generally speaking) making separating love and sex far more difficult.
That brings us to casual sex, where both partners struggle to keep the understanding clear as to the line between love and sex. However, the person with the highest expectations always loses in casual sex because the least committed partner holds the power. This is not to say casual sex is bad, but having it under false pretenses and dishonesty always does damage.
Keep it honest. No one needs to be in a relationship just to have sex, and following such advice keeps relationships alive due to the presence of "something else."
And should that "something else" be "love" or "something that feels like love," be careful. Love overrides logic, rational, and common sense on a regular basis. It can make anyone do crazy things, and while love can set you free, it can also trap you and isolate you, so always approach with caution.
Perhaps the worst thing "love" can do is make you give up a part of yourself. Especially in a college environment, people rush into an intense living-on-top-of-each-other situation. First you lose your free time, then your friends, then your activities, your privacy, and eventually yourself. While you think you're doing this for love and with the hope that it will benefit and strengthen your relationship, you're only compromising both.
Establish some barriers, set aside some private time, and if you're spending nights together, alternate between dorm rooms. Your girlfriend wants to be with the guy she first met, not the guy you think she's molding you into. It is not uncommon for a woman to find herself bored and annoyed with the new you that never leaves her side, so please restrain yourself because even if that's what she thinks she wants, you need to be yourself first.
Like it or not, I foresee PCs and Macs sticking around. The good news is that you can buy parts for both in the same store.
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