When a Man Loves a Woman

 

“A Complete Unknown,” the Dylan biopic, has reinforced my belief that men love at a deeper level than women do. Men love in technicolour. Women love in black and white, on a flickering cathode tube. 

A man will, in principle and often enough in practice, lose everything for a women. He will give her everything he has. He will die for a woman. 

For women, on the other hand, a relationship is transactional. What is she getting out of it? Can she do better elsewhere?

Ann Landers’ test when a letter writer asked whether they should leave their marriage was: “Are you better off with him or without him?” 

In other words, never mind him, or the kids, what’s in it for you?

This was even pre-feminism. Or at least, Landers was not considered a feminist.

This is shown also by the fact that 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Men will stick it out, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. The reason women usually give for leaving is that they felt unfulfilled; that they felt the relationship was holding them back in some way.

Ask Betty Freidan.

The feminist movement said out loud that for a woman a man is only a means to an end, like a bicycle. Does a fish need one? Do you need one? What’s love got to do with it?

Since the increased home automation of the 1950s, if men applied the same test, the answer would have always been no. But for men it is not transactional. They fall in love.

For men, it is about love. For women, it is about being loved. Or as someone once said to me, for women it is just business.

If if you are a man’s first love, or their special love, you are forever the world to them. It is not whether you are the prettiest they ever met. You are all women. You are really the only woman.

I note that male poets and artists invariably have a muse—some idolized women they are creating for. Beatrice, Maryanne Ihlen, Suze Rotolo, Maude Gonne, Lucy, Annabelle Lee, the dark-haired lady of the sonnets … someone. I discover on asking that female poets and artists never do. They write for themselves.

It is a tragedy that women and men are different in this way.

The matter used to be balanced by making divorce difficult, and more difficult for the woman. And by the social expectation that the woman, in exchange for the love and support the man was giving, would show gratitude, respect, and at least public deference.

Sadly, that has been lost, and many lives lost and destroyed as a result.