What’s Love Got Go Do With It?

A lot of us confuse love and lust. I tend to think men do that more often than women. All my aware life, I have been hearing about how men distinguish sex from love but women equate the two. Real life shows the contrary.

True, at least in our early pubescent years, women tend to live in the rosy-spectacled fairytale fantasies of dashing, handsome, chivalrous, protective and loving men chasing us. Somewhere with age (and frequent encounters with hormone-crazed real life males), most of us get more realistic. Whether this is believable or not, most women in their 20s have a pretty accurate idea of what their hearts are saying and what their hormones are claiming.

On the other hand, men, the poor critters, seem to keep fumbling with everything that goes on inside their heads. Don’t all our studies show that men are more focussed and one-point driven? Well their brains appear to work on simple two-word commands at any single point of time “Chase her”, “Dump her”, “Bash up”, “Throw tantrum”.

A simple test (for all those who seem to think I’m a male-basher): Make a distinction between the following:

Affection
Lust
Love
Admiration
Appreciation
Friendship
Trust
Awe
Fear

I’m willing to bet that most men who read this are thinking….”Bloody word game, that’s all it is”. Q.E.D……male brains can only handle the dim notions of “Go towards” or “Run from”. The why and how of it is beyond comprehension.

I started off about love and digressed…so coming back. I’m always suspicious of a man who says he’s in love. At least half the men I’ve known have parrotted this as something out of a “How to get the girl” manual. The rest are labouring under the effort of trying to legitimise or rationalise their turbulent, mixed-up insides.

My best friend says “A man on the rebound is a dangerous man”. I second that. Anyone who has just ended a relationship feels disoriented, lost, somewhat empty and missing something vital. Of course I know women rebound too (I admit to have, myself). The difference is that they seem to know that they’re rebounding. That consciousness is generally absent in a man who will try his best to convince himself (and the new woman) about how he’s over his ex-, how he’s really ready again, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes the new woman is fooled. Yes, we’re fools that way. Advice be damned, a man who needs comforting is just too much to resist. Latent maternal urges? Crap….we ask for it, too.

I have been rather surprised recently. Through my teenage years I’ve seen several girls fall victim to the raging male hormones. I say ‘fall victim’ because the males in question have manipulated, played mind-games, sweet-talked and blatently lied to get the girl into bed. Even supposedly intelligent, ‘decent’ men have done it and its despicable because of how little value they have for the girl’s feelings and her trust in them.

Into their twenties though, a lot of them appear to have sobered down. I find I’m invariably encountering one man after another who is wistful about some girl he let go, someone remorseful over his thoughtlessness, men actually coming back to say they’re sorry. The sad part is I also see a lot of women (including me) have turned cynical and jaded. It is hard to forgive people who’ve been completely callous with you when you were most vulnerable…its virtually impossible to believe that are capable of changing.

Still…weddings are taking place all around me so I guess there is some hope after all. Perhaps its just a matter of balance. There is a certain naivete required to be in love…a certain reckless, blind faith. So long as one is able to fool the other into believing, the divine deception will continue.

Love is a glorious, many-splendoured thing, after all.