Sex Life vs Love Life

Somehow, in the rush to be the equal of men, women are no longer women, but second-rate men. They value only masculine traits, but they are not men and never will be. However, they scorn femininity and don’t want to be women, either. What’s a girl to do?

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, feminism has become way too much flattery for masculinity, and total contempt for femininity. Feminine women have contributed so much to humanity and culture since the beginning of time, that it’s impossible to even begin to acknowledge its value.

But one aspect of distinctly feminine culture that is singled out for special scorn in the modern world of science is romance. It’s written off as some sort of hormonal response, completely overlooking and disregarding the fact that our hormones respond to our feelings and guess what? Our feelings are informed by our understanding. Enter Romance, as the cultural guidepost to understanding love and how it works.

Romance is a very personal quest that results in most intimate kind of transformation of self and character. 

However, for all the usual reasons, with the support of most of our recent American culture, most men regard romance as steamy pulp for sex starved females and not worthy of serious consideration. 

But, I, Marcy, the brainy intellectual, have always been hooked on romance stories like Jane Austen, so it’s impossible for me to accept our culture’s denigration of something that to me seems so very central to life. If I like it so much, there must be SOMETHING in Romance that the contemporary culture was overlooking.

Although it’s certainly true that men don’t haunt the romance aisles grabbing up hot new Silhouette Romance paperbacks, romantic feelings are explored in the great literature from every culture in the world, most of which was written by men, until recently. Romeo and Juliet, the epitome of romance, was written by that guy Shakespeare. Romance is as old as the Greek and Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche. The examples of great romantic stories from all corners of the world are too numerous to mention, and I am not scholar enough to be familiar with even a small portion of them.

In our recent desperate battles of the sexes, Romance was one of the first casualties. Romance requires two independent people forming a partnership, in which the whole is greater than the parts. But that requires two distinct people; you know, the old me Jane, you Tarzan thing.

Many people sneer at Romance as escapist frivolity. But, I beg to differ. Romances are the stories of how we connect intimately with another person, which is probably the most essential task of being human. Romance unites one of our basic instincts, the sexual drive, to our mind and our body. And all religions stress that love is how our mind that unites our soul to God. What could be more important than that?

There are genre romance novels and there are character-based romance novels. The usual genre-based Romance novels mainly celebrate our delight in personal differences overcome by sexual attraction. Not a bad thing at all. But romance novels can go much deeper into our psyches.

Because the nature of romance in real life is unique to each person’s experiences, romance novels offer a better way to isolate and understand the mechanism of romance as it operates on character. Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is a perfect example of how to contrast the effect of romance on differing character types. One heroine has an excess of good sense, the other an excess of sensibility. Both women’s characters are wrought to a better understanding of themselves by forming romantic attachments. And since there is only one author of these two characters, we can also say that in many people good sense and vibrant sensibility are always in conflict to find balance in our characters.

This is so much more than the ying and yang idea of masculinity and femininity. That concept is so bland and undifferentiated. People are all different, and each person has a Romance, a romantic history or some sort of romance story in their life. No two will ever be the same. 

Even men, whom the feminists seemed were so bent on imitating and now seem to want to do away with altogether, yes men, used to acknowledge the worth of romance to a life well lived.  Mr. Macho Hemingway's books always included romantic adventures which involved women. F. Scott Fitzgerald had his Daisy. The list of romantic stories is endless.

But the point is, if women won’t allow men to honor and experience romantic feelings, if women don’t respect themselves enough to value a man’s love for them as women and mates, then it’s game over: no intimacy, no love, no romance and no deeper understanding of who you are and no motive to grow and change.

What’s left? I can’t figure out what’s left. Even the boring ying and yang idea sort of evaporates into a gray mass. 

I’m not positing that women created Romance. I know that many people say Romance was born in the Middle Ages due to chivalry and the worship of courtly love. Anthropologists will tell you no culture lacks romantic tales. For heaven’s sake, even Adam and Eve is a romance.

Women who are devoted feminists end up sneering at themselves for being feminine, instead of standing strong for the womanly virtues. I think respect for femininity is one of the most important pillars of western civilization. 

Without Romantic love, what happens to domestic bliss? Who stays home and protects the innocence of children of both sexes? Just because women aren’t doing the wash and cooking from scratch anymore, doesn’t mean that the feminine presence in the home isn’t still pivotal to successful marriages and parenting. Women volunteers used to do a lot of work in communities and the world of culture that now we cannot afford to pay to have done. 

What's left is all sorts of weird sexual practices, an overactive and tiresome sex life, without a deeper, more vibrant, more engaging, more enlightening, love life.