2846, Love is Never Enough — 13: A Mixture of What Works

I’m always making lists. I made the following as spillovers of female goodness and don’t know what to do except post it. Women can’t relate well enough to know how to use it, but each item makes a favorable impact on the male nature and keeping a husband.

1. She doesn’t expect more from him than she extends herself. She’s the major giver, and he’s the major taker until he learns that he enjoys caring and pleasing her pleases him, and his behavior shifts toward her favor.
2. Her almost perpetual smiling countenance suggests all is well with her so it must be okay with him. It also helps confirm the sincerity of her love.
3. Her lack of complaining suggests all is well with him. His shortcomings are typically identified that way, or so he interprets her complaints (explained in footnote*).
4. Her excitement about sex with him is far superior to his enjoyment of the frequent and convenient availability of it. As romantic love and his sex drive fade, reminders of her excitement adds much sincerity to her expressions of love.
5. Her sense of charity keeps her from criticizing, yelling, or otherwise getting in his face to make her points.
6. Her delightful attitude makes her man smile, because she’s energized by that spirit.
7. Her faith in self and him as couple tends to weld them together.
8. Her frequent evidence of trust of him energizes his greater respect of her.
9. Her frequent but not smothering expressions of love seal her likeability to him.
10. Her female goodness sets a shining example to all they contact.
11. Her ability to manage their relationship satisfies him that he chose the right woman.
12. Her affection for him, if not overdone, amplifies her likeability without boring him.
13. Her chaste behavior promotes his belief that she’s mostly loyal and, therefore, faithful.
14. Her faithfulness and trust inspires him to follow her example.
15. Her gentleness invites him to seek comfort with her.
16. Her habitual neatness displays attractive standards and inspires others to be more like her. Not necessarily the same neatness but copy her other qualities. By inspiring others to copy her, his admiration and respect for her grow.
17. Her hope brightens their future together.
18. Her joyful cheeriness inspires greater hope and suppresses many urges he may have to quit her for work or someone else.
19. Her modest, mysterious, and feminine nature confirms that she’s unique from other women.
20. Her modest display of her body and discouragement of flirting symbolizes fidelity to him.
21. Her open endorsement of chastity and monogamous love confirms her loyalty as part of their role together.
22. Her patience calms the waters of frustration for her and him.
23. Her physical attractiveness keeps his eyes focused on her more than others.
24. Her steadfastness of character as strong person prevents her complaining.
25. Her strength of character earns his admiration.
26. Her thoughtfulness displays her gratitude for others, especially him.
27. Her trust in him promotes his belief in her.
28. Her unselfishness spreads as a character quality that he admires.
29. Her eagerness to listen to him reinforces his respect of her.
30. Her personal selfishness is removed from their lives, as soon as he picks up on her indirect promotion of being generous as a couple.
31. Her receptiveness to his ideas without finding fault confirms his worth to her. (If and when execution of a plan of his threatens failure, she must be absolutely certain before she competes to get her way. Even then it’s dangerous for them as a couple.)
32. Her respect of him energizes greater trust of her.
33. She becomes a better woman by living up to someone higher than herself—law, God, and her mate—in high hopes that she will become a better woman and, without her applying pressure, he will become a better man.
34. She carries a happy spirit that spreads infectiously and uplifts his spirits.
35. She confirms her strong sense of cooperation by submitting when its appropriate, and thus confirms his leadership role.
36. She finds such gratefulness in herself that he likes himself for just being with her.
37. She hints that his worth goes up in her eyes when he does good things for her and others.
38. She keeps the body shape that he proposed to so that he doesn’t tire of changes in her appearance.
39. She promotes her sexual attractiveness discretely but modestly and solely for his enjoyment.
40. She tries extra hard to forget his faults that she more easily forgives.
41. She finds a way to develop enduring love as romantic love fades away in a year or two.
42. Finally, and most importantly, she keeps him satisfied with himself that he chose properly by teaming up with her. (When she does that, she earns the privilege of getting her way in many other matters such as managing home and relationship.)

Those female behaviors have beneficial effects on husbands and promote a couple’s staying together. If she can’t live that way, can’t form such habits, she at least needs enough of something other than her love that makes her man satisfied with himself living with her.

If he’s not a better man for involving himself with her, she’s not doing things to fortify their togetherness. In which case, she’s not the good woman that a satisfied husband brags about mostly behind her back or mostly late in life. If he can’t be proud of her as mate, he can’t be satisfied that she’s the right woman for him.

——

*Regarding explanation of item 3. In the back of husband’s mind is the conviction that he’s responsible for the marriage. But he turns operation of the home and relationship management over to wife. Now, if she complains, she must not be able to handle her affairs of heart and home, and so he’s left to be responsible. Her complaints land as guilt in his mind, and men don’t handle guilt very well. In fact, they mostly shun or forget it, and her complaints just make her look bad.

2811. A Special Recap for an Upcoming Bride: Love

Her Highness CartieB, with questions at post 2808, inspired this series in four-parts: compatible, purpose, love, and sex — i.e., posts 2809-2812.

LOVE. The sexes are generally born as described below. However, individuals modify and intensify their lives variously by lessons learned growing up.

The multiple expressions of womanly love can be described in four forms. 1) Romantic love, the offspring of infatuation, fades a year or two after a couple’s first sex together. 2) Enduring deep affection with romance embedded, and 3) enduring love for people and things without romantic connections, both of which reward a woman just by its presence in her heart. 4) Mother love sprouts anew and unconditionally after giving birth to each child.

Men have one highly complex form of loving a woman, mate, or wife. Founded on his respect that she has to earn, his devotion grows from his dedication to please her and habit of pleasing himself by pleasing her. Her personal likeability enhances his devotion and he senses pleasure when in her presence.

Complementing that with self-interest, logic, and reason, and her expected loyalty to him alone, he convinces himself that he can be more satisfied living with her than satisfied with himself living alone. It’s the revelation point; he admits to himself that she’s the one to fit into his life, and he decides to propose.

It’s a one-time moment and a man’s version of true love. He convinces himself that he will be more satisfied living with her than with himself or someone else. IOW, admitting true love to himself IS his willingness to commit. He proposes, thereby blindly accepts responsibility for generating success in their marriage, and trusts that his bride will govern their arrangement such that he remains satisfied with himself for marrying her.

Note what’s absent above, her love of him. While her love confirms that he’s worthy of her , it’s less for him and not the convincer or persuader she hopes for. Her love adds to her personal likeability, reinforces his likeability to her, and helps sustain his conviction that she will remain faithful to him. All of which grow a man’s love. But her love of him, however wonderfully she feels convincing him of it, isn’t nearly enough to keep him as she hopes and prays.

Two factors outrank and override both her love of him and good sex as predictors of their future together: 1) His devotion to her. 2) His satisfaction with himself living with her. Without one or both, she’s temporary.

The following dissolves any and all glues shown above and guarantees a couple’s togetherness will end sooner or later: blame, guilt, frustrations, criticisms, irritants, and belittling remarks aimed at husband.

2251. The 2-year glitch, 7-year itch, and 20-year switch

This was posted 1/19/08 as the 65^th on this blog. It’s not been changed here.

It’s a cinch. Three monumental events face each marriage. Prevention starts years earlier. Avoidance is difficult. Recovery makes the steep slope slickier, but it toughens mates.

The two-year glitch arrives quietly as romantic love fades away in a couple’s second year together. Both undergo transformation. If an enduring kind of love has not developed mutually, separation is not far off.

The foundation for the man’s enduring love is laid in the respect she has earned, especially before conquest, and her likeability as a mate. The base of her enduring love is the current and anticipated gratefulness for him and what he does.

The seven-year itch arrives when his wandering eye opens. Devotion to her and commitment to vows are essential for survival.

She’s in charge. Seven years earlier she chose a man susceptible to wander. Or, she chose a man devoted instead of just committed to her; a man with sufficient character to honor his vows.

The twenty-year switch arrives when he wants to start over and hopes to do so with a trophy.

It’s a dream he’s harbored for years, because his sense of significance has been fading, needs rejuvenation, and he’s just dying to prove it to himself with an attractive woman.

2158. Dating in Mid-life — Part B2: Chaste Courtship Works [492]

Relationship development begins at end of first date. Want it or not? It’s up to you, provided numero uno seller thought you numero uno buyer.

Life is a power game. So are relationships with these exceptions. Dating and successful courtships are predominantly an endless mind game. They require that you make your man more female friendly by subtly neutralizing two masculine drives, those for dominance and sex. You do so by substituting opportunities and promises that satisfy his urge to achieve, which is another primal urge that triggers his prime motivator for increasing his sense of self-admiration.

In effect, dating and courtship require that his feelings be drawn away from dominance and especially sex to magnify and focus on you and your interest. Your biggest challenge is to encourage him such that his romantic love morphs into enduring love, but you may have up to a year or more to make it happen.

Contrary to what women believe, lathering on your love and affection doesn’t win him. First, he doesn’t need it; he does like to see it however as confirmation that you like him and he’s making progress toward his objectives. Second, smothered with love reminds of mom, nurturing, and childhood, which may be too much and irritate if not offend him. He looks more for loyalty than affection.

The human mind works diligently to erase conflicting and disruptive thoughts or ‘noise’, aka cognitive dissonance. For erasing the noise, actions overpower feelings, e.g., action cures fear and conquest enlarges his significance. Consequently, deliberate actions can change one’s feelings.

Actions that contradict emotions overwrite feelings with new ones. For example, act as if you love someone, and love will blossom. Act as if you love them more and more, and love deepens.

Women do it naturally. Men don’t, which is why long non-sexual courtships work best to capture and hold a man. His actions, both trying to influence you to yield sex and simultaneously not displease you, program his heart with a sense of loyalty that over time grows into devotion.

You expect and he demonstrates his infatuation or romantic love with actions—flowers, gifts, hot dates, surprises, special attentions, and deep inquiries into your interests. Having to simultaneously suppress lustful urges creates both ‘noise’ in his thinking and desire to escape it. Hence, more action essentially invests himself deeper in you, which moves him ever so gently away from the noise and his intent to conquer.

Such actions also stimulate greater displays of infatuation in hope of getting you to yield sooner. More mental noise. Over time in a long courtship, his actions that confirm infatuation reprogram his heart and his lustful feelings into loyalty and dedication to you, aka devotion.

 

2157. Dating in Mid-life — Part B1: You Gotta’ Know the Territory

Her Highness MeowMeow at 2153 asked about dating in one’s fifties. I expand it to ages 30 to 60 and deepen it to include developing (but not maintaining) a lifetime relationship. After all, that’s the unspoken objective and endless dream behind all dating for women in mid-life.

Some women too easily, however, give up before they exhaust the blessings they inherit at birth. They shouldn’t. Hope springs eternal from the heart of a woman, and by God’s design it enables you to make your world turn in your favor. Born to be happy, you earn it as you find and expand your gratefulness while searching, capturing, and relating with a man. Hopefully he’s valuable and beneficial for your mellowing lifestyle. But if he’s no better than adequate, it’s no reason to give up. You’re powerfully skilled to improve a relationship that starts out short of perfect.

Age doesn’t matter before first date if you exploit your relationship expertise. You aim at success. It calls for you to exploit your own strengths, compensate for your weaknesses, make the most of new man’s strengths, and ignore his weaknesses long enough to learn to also compensate for them. The female heart is wonderfully designed and powerfully blessed to exploit strengths and weaknesses and do it well. After learning, of course, and avoiding discouragement from the few or even more mistakes made along the way.

It all may sound too complex to fathom, but my role is to make the process simpler so you can make it easier for yourself and more meaningful for the next man in your life. I present this series in four major sections: a) the children (posted at 2156 and more to follow), b) relationship development process, c) your role, and d) the roles of men.

Relationship Development Process.

Others talk endlessly about the dating scene. Most women’s interest at every age, however, is about what dating leads to. It’s the start up to merging two or more lives together harmoniously and hopefully for life. So, all about dating that follows is designed to help women develop relationships that lead to permanency. All else is folderol or fun and games and irrelevant here.

By nature women are processors; they keep things going. Men are producers; they find satisfaction in making single events and results come out as intended. First date is a production and belongs to the man. Second date begins the relationship development process and your involvement. Being a series of events, dating one guy or many, the process works to the woman’s advantage or she’s not doing it right. That’s why women float along under the stewardship of each individual dater; return engagements are best produced by not driving the bus. Men are willing to deliver one date at a time, because they hope with minimal obligation to discover what price they must eventually pay to get you in bed.

You all know this but—especially during passionate moments—it’s inconvenient to remember it. Men date to associate and work up to getting sex. Women date to develop a lasting relationship. They compete. Each tries to sell the other on their agenda. He works directly but tries to disguise it with dynamic selling of himself. You work indirectly, and it takes you much longer to sell a man on your agenda. If you can’t find time and reason to hold him off and complete your sale, you yield first time sex and he wins and you may or may not lose him. What happens after his conquest is unknown until after it happens. He changes, and then you find out how accurate and true were his words. How he really, truly feels about you—or doesn’t. You take all the risk or you don’t get very far.

Unfortunately, that’s the only way for you to uncover a man’s intentions. Wait to see his actions and believe what he does after your first sex together, and locked in marriage is optimal. After his momentous conquest outside of marriage, he will be a changed man. He also takes charge of your sexual agenda as conqueror’s right, and you become keeper, booty, or dumpee. You don’t know which until the time comes, unless you have delayed conquest long enough for his devotion to you alone to have developed. That means months at least and perhaps a year or more of courtship.

Romantic love is often a scene stealer, disguiser of truth. It may or may not contribute to the enduring love that you hope will follow after romantic love fades a year or two after conquest.

Over the first few decades of life, the youthful attitudes of both sexes change. Out of unsuccessful relationships and soured marriages, the genders shy away from closeness except often for the mutual comfort of sex. But sex doesn’t bond men, only women.

Consequently, you are more interested than men for developing a relationship, and it generates three burdens for you in the dating arena. You have to virtually ignore risks to your feelings, learn to proceed cautiously, and have to earn the respect of each man you date. Moreover, development works best when you neither explain yourself or your feelings directly, nor try to convince him of your love with words. He believes much more easily what he figures out for himself.

You have to earn a permanent relationship. You do so by actions that show new man that he’s admired and favored over others. Oh, not on first date but both later and by indirectness. It enables him to see promise in you that can and likely will help fulfill his present life and future ambitions.

From day one you should claim these truths as part of your attitude. Men stay married when they sense themselves rewarded and admired for husbanding, fathering, and believing that only they can do as well at what they do best. That is, produce, provide, protect, and problem solve for those to whom they accept responsibility.

During dating and courtship, you should get your mind and heart wrapped around how to do your part in that scenario. After marriage is too late to start. Without it being habitual in your heart before marriage, the glow of bridal success will keep your focus elsewhere and thus hold you back. The absence of admiration, respect, dependence, and gratefulness for his presence in your life are toxic to a marriage, and so should be developed in courtship.

Men date for fun and games and put sex at the top of the priority list. When you don’t have a plan to follow, it releases men to follow their interest, which inevitably doesn’t work well for you. Expecting to develop a relationship, you do best when you have solid intentions that are more important in your heart than having a date or dates (more later about a plan).

That’s the territory. Now, let’s talk about the value of chaste courtships that fall automatically out of chaste dates and the promise of more chastity. It’s coming tomorrow at #2158.

 

2153. Compatibility Axioms #671-680

671. A man’s natural pursuit of other females does not stop until one woman so captures his respect and captivates his imagination that he devotes himself to her alone. [234]

672. It’s a boob paradox. Women publicly appeal directly to the sexual interests of men. They capture men for sex, but they can’t hold one for long after infatuation, romantic love, and lust fade in a year or two. [234]

673. Men call it romance, whatever is required to initiate foreplay or sex. Women know romance as the special attention he pays her when sex is not at stake. [234]

674. She marries expecting him to change, but he doesn’t. He marries expecting her not to change, but she does. Both get what they don’t want. [234]

675. Erotic attire has one-person value: It puts the male mind on track to conquer or to show her off. Neither track is about her true self. [235]

676. After nakedness and conquest, there’s little left. Her ad campaign dies with conquest, as it kills his imagination except for future arousal. (Conquest is the man’s end-game. Booty sustains him between conquests.) [235]

677. Dating as a sex object plants the seed of booty for him but maybe only something better for her. [235]

678. Men want to move toward conquest at their pace. More mystery, modesty, and doubt about scoring slow it to her pace. [235]

679. Suggestive attire is more effective than erotic attire at energizing the imaginative side of the male mind. (The more he has to imagine, think, plot, and worry, the better for her.) [235]

680. The appeal of boobs lies in the challenge to get to them. Once uncovered, conquest is assured. [235]

 

2146. Compatibility Axioms #661-670

661. Virtual virginity is all about earning greater respect. A man’s enduring love—the kind of devotion that survives infatuation, lust, and romantic love that inevitably fade—is founded most deeply on respect that she earns and devotion that develops in his heart from the actions he takes to please her repeatedly, primarily if not all before conquest. [231]
662. Nothing focuses a man’s mind so assertively on changing a woman’s mind than continued refusals for their first sex together. Continued refusals either earn his respect or departure, and that’s the only way she can find out what he’s after primarily—her or sex. [231]
663. Trying harder and harder for conquest focuses his attentions on her. Looking for weaknesses, he uncovers her strengths, qualities, and virtues. Over time, it convinces him she is more worthy of his time, effort, and personal investment. Long courtships breed more of his investment opportunities for her to seal the connections. [231]
664. His dominance will always be present or threatening, but greater mutual respect upgrades her opinions and enhances her influence. [231]
665. When men have to make arrangements for their own meals, whatever woman pushes them to have to do it becomes more easily disposable. [232]
666. Manly boredom and female attractiveness do not show up together. A man always enjoys looking at an attractive, pleasant looking female. When his woman looks sloppy and uncaring, boredom does set in and his interest goes elsewhere—perhaps to looking for something more attractive. [232]
667. Men graciously live with the exaggeration that a man’s home is his castle. But it happens most reliably when his woman exploits her relationship expertise, showers him with gratitude, and recognizes him as head and her as neck of the family. Anything less is not a castle, and there’s a certain manly satisfaction looking for it somewhere else. [232]
668. Men highly value feminine virtue, qualities they admire, because the promise of eventual conquest adds honor to his manly persona and significance. [232]
669. Men intend to make themselves admirable (primarily to themselves) and their life significant (usually above all else). [232]
670. Men love working or doing what they feel compelled to do. The most reliable men turn their life into loveable work both at home and on the job. (There’s an old saying, Show me a man that loves his job and I’ll show you a man that never has to go to work.) [232]

 

2145. Unisex Fails Women

It’s been happening for half a century through six or seven generations of females, each of which seeks its own identity with a different lifestyle from previous ones.

Women possess some male hormones, and I use testosterone merely as example. Hormones respond to behavior. The more masculine-like is female behavior, the higher the level of Big T. The higher the level, the more masculine they act in response, so hormones and behavior trigger more of the other and spiral upward making women more like men. The reverse is true too. The more feminine women behave, the less T floods their body and the less they act like men.

Most men want to marry a virtuous woman, but she’s not virtuous enough unless she’s fascinating to him. Except for sexual potential, men see little or no fascination in women who act like men. Such women possess too few of the virtuous qualities that fascinate men.

Consequently, over 50 or so years women migrated from potential mates to undesirables for permanent relationships. They depend on romantic love to support their relationships. It fades in a year or two after conquest, and men are free to move on to another sex object, if they didn’t move on before.

The unisex movement is political and sprang out of Feminism. Ergo, feminist thinking, theory, and belief are responsible for short duration of marriages. But it’s really not that simple; that’s just the foundation. Unisex politics convinced women they should act more like men, which flooded them with more testosterone, which brought out more self-centered female aggressiveness that men find unpleasant, which cost women much of their non-sexual fascination, which lured men into sex-only relationships, which brought about the shortening of marriages.

The more feminine that women behave, the more likely they appear fascinating to men, and the more likely men see promise in them as lifelong mates. They are made that way in order to live compatibly with each other.