Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Oh, and brightstar...
[Read the article: I'm in love with my bandmate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@brightstar
Have you sent her flowers, have you told her she is attractive, have you looked at photographs of her family and told her how fine looking they are?
I know you think all these things are infra dig, but they are a necessary part of the courtship game.
The fact of the matter is that roughly all healthy males are sexually attracted to all healthy females and vice versa, but because this is the case we human beings employ all kinds of nuanced strategies to narrow the number of candidates, otherwise we would spend so much time screwing that we would still be living in caves and praying for rain. Oh well, one out of two ain't bad.
So it is not how you look, it is how you play the game.
You really ought to read Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, specifically the chapters on courtship strategies, and I think you would understand this girl much better. Chapter 12, Nice Guys Finish First should interest you too, as well as the chapter entitled You Scratch My Back, I'll Ride on Yours.
@AKA Smith
I know, I know, but I would rather try to help him than beat up on him. It is a fatal flaw in my nature.
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@ brightstar
[Read the article: I'm in love with my bandmate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well it sounds like you are on the right track. Don't worry about the flowers. I can never figure out why women want to be gifted colorful sexual organs of plants. OK, maybe I can, having spent the day building a herbaceous border with flowers (blush).
Yes, be friends with her, and if not her, then maybe you will find a friend of hers at some point. Friends are always useful.
I think there are certain common points between you and the LW. The LW does not just have the hots for the guy, she says she is "in love" with him, which makes it so much harder.
People do confuse love and sex, and really they should be kept apart. Sex, which is a necessary component of a man-woman relationship, is a basic function like taking a crap or eating a meal. When you have all you want, it hardly seems important, but in our society it is often rationed and therefore assumes a kind of exaggerated importance, like Cuban cigars being more desirable because you have to travel outside the US to smoke them.
There is a tendency to "fall in love" with a new sexual partner, which means becoming infatuated with an idealized image of the other. This often happens after a long period of sexual continence when the floodgates open. "It's awesome. We have so much in common. We both like television, food, beer, music, and sex. It's amazing to find someone like her."
This wears off after about 6 months, which is when you find out whether you really love the person, even though their personal habits disgust you and they read in bed when you are trying to sleep and have to get up early next day to earn money to pay for her and the children that she keeps presenting you with.
I don't think declarations of love do any good. In the early stages of a courtship it is only necessary to tell them that you find them attractive. I believe the word "awesome" is popular in the current argot, though personally I would never say this to a woman as I would have thought the term more fitting for a cathedral or an underground cave, or something, and I would not want to give any woman the idea that I was awed by her.
Telling a woman that you find her attractive does not involve much risk. It should be taken for granted.
Amerigo is pretty much attracted to all women of reproductive age to some extent, though some more than others, but of course most tend to disqualify themselves from viability as a partner by certain demographics or characteristics of personality,and then there is the simple fact that there is a market in human flesh. Each individual will tend to select the best (most desirable) partner that they think they can get, so this rules out great swathes of humanity.
Problems arise when an individual rates themself higher on the sexual totem pole than members of the opposite sex do. (This may apply also to gays, but I have no knowledge of that area.)
People who claim that they are only attracted to a very few members of the opposite sex are basically full of it, though they may not be aware. This is a sign of a very sexually repressed nature. These people have a massive system of filters that excludes nearly every viable sexual partner.
(Interesting example of the incest taboo in action in a letter above, in which a male rejected sexual approach of female, because he had "known her too long", so apparently the sexual attractiveness had worn off without even being consumated.)
The first step to recovery is to admit to yourself that you find all women attractive. Once you have taken that step, you can feel free to flirt with any woman you meet, even the ones whom you don't want. Once you do this the women will come running after you.
The one thing that puts women off is the whiff of the scent of desperation. They do not want to be a last resort. They would prefer to believe that they have lured you away from another lesser woman, not that no other woman would have you!