"Tradition" vs. "Modernity" in Love (or, logged out strikes again)

In general, I think that there's a place for these kinds of roles and games if both parties are equally happy/able to play their part. If not, then you get into the realm of wanting your partner to be something they're not. And that never ever ever turns out well EVER.

Personally I would dump someone who was turned out to be looking to act out social roles in a relationship, but I get that it's sometimes more complicated than that.

all that said, we're both broke. Like anything, it's more complicated than just this

i bet it's not MUCH more complicated than that.

It's a really sad situation. She's a fantastic girl, very smart, sexy, perceptive, like I said I've been on cloud nine. But a lot of this "chivalry" stuff I think comes down to a combination of assertiveness and in-the-moment attentiveness, and I don't feel good at all about the prospect (I still don't know how we stand as of now) of losing her because I've fallen down on those things. Or worse, that I'm just no good at that kind of behavior, for whatever nature/nurture reason...

Anyway, thanks all.

So um, it's kind of down to whether or not you feel like taking on the responsibility, isn't it? I couldn't make a value judgement from the evidence even if I felt like making one at all...I've certainly known people whose relationships/marriages were based on what I thought of as horrible, limiting roles but it suited them just fine, and a certain couple are still "in love" 30 or so years later and beamed at each other across the dining table at their anniversary dinner in Atlantic City (urgh).

I'll take care of anyone who buys me dinner.

Get in line, sister. ;) No, but okay, so it's not a game for some people, it's the way they think the world works, for whatever reason! So how easy/difficult is it to date across those expectations when neither party thinks that he or she is "playing" anything, just living out what they've seen and/or expect to be true? This is actually sort of an interesting/pertinent question for me, esp in retrospect.

So I sympathize, but I'd rather adjust to whatever makes a relationship work than "not play games".

NB, I thought this was gonna be about something else, which is a weird sense I've gotten about some people's relationships. Not sure exactly how to explain it, except that there are three things in a relationship -- two people, and one kind of social construct of what a "relationship" is. It's funny that sometimes you seem to see instances in which both people want to relate to each other, in whatever way fits together for them, but one of them person is also fixated on the social construct of what a "relationship" is, and whether the two of them are properly engaging in one. Like the important thing isn't so much to relate to the other person (in an, umm, relationship), but to have a capital-R "Relationship."

(Ha, this should link over to the Friedan thread: it's some weird question of men's relationship with masculine roles.)

xpost That seems like something I'd have said or agreed with at different points of life, and then not so much in others. It's also kind of semantic, in terms of how we conceive of "friendship." (I.e., sometimes we have friends who are really close to us, and sometimes we have friends where our interactions with them have zero resemblance to a relationship.)

jaymc, the price of those added bonuses is those "certain games that feel artificial" to you. That's just, like, the way it is. It's the cost of doing business, and I don't mean $$$. Sorry dude!

Well, I guess I'll just prepare for lifelong bachelorhood, then!

I remember the thread -- I said the same thing then, Dan just has a better press agent. :/ (xpost)

It doesn't have to be depressing!

Is the "you" in this sentence me specifically?

No, I know, I can lead a perfectly fulfilling single life. :)

but to start off you don't have shared rules -- so you have to adopt lame-seeming social conventions as initial stand-in for the shared rules you'll later make up for yrselves

J, I'm trying to nail down what the distinction is. It's not a huge or depressing one. It's just that no matter how close you are to your friends, there's still a barrier where your business isn't wholly wrapped up with theirs. This doesn't necessarily make a huge difference in the everyday business of a relationship, but there comes a point where it's suddenly huge. And you're kind of aware of that, even in the everyday relationship, because you're working on building the kind of trust the allows you to be interdependent in that way.

I now fear that maybe I've implied (to William, maybe?) that I don't want to work on a relationship, if that's one of the differences between friends and lovers -- which isn't true at all. Maybe it's more the case that I'd rather just fast-forward to the point where we're intimate equals instead of going through the "lame-seeming social conventions" that Mark mentions. Which is what I mean about "can't we just be friends?" Like why do couples have to go through this cat-and-mouse game at first? I'm usually ready to drop my defenses pretty quickly so we can get to the point where we snuggle and gossip with each other.

I have been with my husband for 6 years, married for two.
I like that he does what he says he's going to do (manly point 1) and doesn't complain/whine about stuff (manly point 2). I remove/kill all of the bugs. He tidies the house. We just do what needs to be done. We don't talk about gender roles or who "should" be doing what. There's really no need to talk about that. It's all fine. If he yakked on and on about gender roles, I would absolutely NOT like that.

Why are we making this big huge differentiation between "being the man" and doing nice things for your partner? Unless by "nice things" people are talking about, like, taking out the cat poop or something. I really doubt there are that many women (and certainly not very many who'd be dating ILXors, sorry dudes) that are seeking dragon slayers or some shit. But yeah, kyle is basically OTM, if you're "intimate equals" to the point where you aren't going out of your way to do anything romantic at all, that's been, in my experience, a one way ticket to Sitting-alone-by-yourself-ville. A good percentage of people here seem to have this idea that being romantic/sexy/etc involves like millions of dollars and putting together boats or something??? Which it really doesn't and that isn't what an awful lot of women are talking about when they complain that their boyfriends seem to have lost interest in them/aren't acting romantic anymore.

You don't have to do it all the time but being "intimate equals" all the time is pretty goddamned boring and doesn't make you feel special at all. It makes you feel like a bro. Which is cool and all but not every day. I HAVE bros for that. And yes, because of traditional gender stereotypes, if the male partner isn't doing anything that resembles romanticism, it is read as disinterest quite regularly.

Dan isn't really a yakker in general, though, is he?

anyway this thread is illuminating and these fears relating to payment for things, etc, are what plagued me throughout my adolescence. I had no idea how to even ask a girl out on a date since I had no money and no car to take her anywhere. Hence my lonely life until college. Teenage girls like them some flash, that's for sure.

you sound like the Grizzly Man

so "romantic" = "unequal"?

When you jerk off, are you thinking of/looking at men or women? There's a really easy test for this. If tits turn you on, you're not gay. Ask any gay man.

Amanda, you are a treasure! But I like co-opting my friend's statement (originally in reference to being "punk rock") and say only that the definition of "womanly", FOR ME, is "whatever I do". Because I am one. So ner. Etc. And I think we can all get behind that kind of flexibility (I mean, right?!?) BUT we still have to negotiate those definitions with the partners who will be taking up the accompanying roles in whatever situation. So even though definitions of womanly vs manly change between every couple, they still have to be sorted out at some point, by whatever preferences the partners share or can hammer out.

I mean, hell, with some of my female friends I'm the boy, and with some of them I'm the girl, and with plenty of them we trade places depending on the topic (ie one friend is much more "masculine" than I about her sexual freedom but is less practical-minded and less handy in a fix-it way). As long as the roles are acknowledged to be fluid & situational, does it really matter if we call them masculine or feminine or bald-as-an-egg-and-painted-silver?

Ally is so lovely and right about bro-dom vs. making each other feel singled out & special.

Not really. I mean, if I jerk off three times a day, does that make me manly?

Although I guess I need to keep defending my original points yesterday about friendship, which has now morphed into bro-dom, because I do think being singled out and feeling special is key to any dating relationship; any friendship ideal I've been championing has been more like a best friend and one true confidante than just "one of the bros."

actually, i have no idea what i'm saying.

(xpost) well, yeah

I had this thing written about "womanly"/"manly" but I lost it. And I cut myself earlier while in what I'm now calling the Kitchen of Terror and am still in shock, I think. So no more thoughts on this right now anyway.