[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by emeraldheart

It's too much of a generalisation to me... beyound the obvious physical and chemical hormonal differences all human beings are far too complex for simplistic generalisations... even the hormonal differences are unique and variable according to one's specific makeup, social and environmental factors.

I don't mind the love language idea though but... I deffinately don't fit into the 'generalised' model for communication... my love language is actions - I like my partner to express love through actions - helping me with mundane things and I also like them be able to help me fix things mecahnaical or emotional and then help me to understand the process so that I can be self sufficient later.

I generally don't like talking about emotional stuff just for the sake of talking... I like solutions... and then actions to follow those solutions lol.
My husband likes to communicate through displays of affection- so we had to learn each other's styles and meet somewhere in the middle...

He fixed the washing machine yesterday and then was able to tell me what was wrong with it and show me how to do it myself next time if I decide I want to haha... that is some serious love in action right there lol
seems I know his love language is displays of affection and I might just give him a hug and say thanks lolzzz.

By the way...Neither of us are within the stereotypical perimeters for our gender such as the ones prescribed by many of those books like mars/Venus...

A book like that might be useful of you happen to fit within that model.

Agreed with much of this, and Lorelyen also had a very informative post.
I think these books are generally most helpful revealing the major differences in gender within our history and our current society. They will often not really help anyone navigate individual differences in the personal sense and that's why many say this is rubbish, LOL... BUT they are hugely useful in seeing just how much of what we do and what we are is confined or defined by these broad boxes of male and female and what is culturally set out as expected or accepted for men, versus women.

At the individual level, I personally also don't find them too helpful mainly because most men all pick the same few main categories and say "touch/quality time is my love language 100% baby" whilst many women find none or very few of the categories fit them very well. What is this telling women? Suck it up and keep enabling us gents by giving us what we demand...and as for your needs, how can we give you "love" if we don't feel it and it's not something we can just go do or buy? 'I say...good answer now why on earth would I have sex with you? LOL...clearly, anyplace without authentic love and kindness is not a place where men and women can meet in the middle, IMO. However these books can reveal much about our society and the scripts men and women have historically followed and the scripts we are each following in the modern era, where gratuitous indulgence and exploitation, and effect of violent and degrading porn have in many ways all reached new heights.

Historic Roles and Broken Modern Scripts

Historically, women generally tend to seek presence and engagement in ALL relationships, a personal knowing and love of one another as people. Whether fam, friend, partner, etc. For women, sex is NOT the main driver, and sex is NOT =intimacy without love, and sex is NOT =authentic love which is universal in all relationships. For women, presence, engagement, and a personal authentic love are the main drivers IMO. Sex is good within that setting if both are present with love, committed, etc., and otherwise it's often quite vile and not desired by women.

Men of course also seek and need presence, engagement and a personal authentic love in all relationships, whether fam, friends, partners, etc. But these things are not magically created through sex and touch and in the modern era, it's a lazy shortcut that many men take...hence why almost 100% of men will say touch or quality time is my love language, where quality time means foreplay or nights out, with sex and touch. Unfortunately this script often gets translated very basely, without any reference to authentic love, to gratify a man's basest urges, like the script Aziz Ansari followed...where it's pretty clear what aspects of the woman are sought. Not her heart and not her mind...so the whole "touch" equals "love" is slimy when in the vast majority of cases, it is obvious that it does not. Using the word "love" here is designed purely to misdirect and exploit many folks into thinking "oh he wants to touch me because he loves me...it is his "love language"... No, if he love you, he loves you... but if he's not open to it or capable of it, all the sex and touch in the world won't turn a convenient sexual arrangement into an authentically loving partnership. And he knows it.

Men and growth

The current age presents both a great need and a great opportunity for growth. Many men are going to have to challenge themselves to carve out an entirely different way of being, one where it's not primarily about them and their needs. However, historically they have always strategically cut women out of authentic love in both friendship and partnership, upon maturity. This has allowed them to use women to service their sexual needs (and run their households historically) but it has also enslaved men to viewing women in a base way. And to relating to women in a base way. This is really hampering men's spiritual growth, at the level of the human species, the human being as a collective, as well as many of those individual men's spiritual growth.

Men have strategically related to women primarily for sex and degraded and diminished both women, humanity, and themselves in the process. Most men do have a natural drive for sex that is fundamentally and completely different from women's, and that is normal. IMO men need to accept that women have their own drives but that the sex drive of men is not like a woman's and society needs to stop lying to men and telling them "women like sex the same way (hard core, just gonads) that you do". Gents that is just a massive lie. If that's what you really think, it's almost never aligned with a woman's reality. It is men's challenge to master and channel it for good...for work, for authentic love (not just sex and touch), and for energy and growth broadly. IMO men must challenge themselves to grow and become heart-centred so that they can honour a woman's humanity and elevate the male-female partnership by loving her authentically. Once men do this, they can actually progress spiritually (if their heart is also open to forgiveness and reconciliation more broadly).

Women and growth

Now for the last half century, women have been told to enable men by servicing them sexually outside anything remotely resembling love or meaningful commitment. This allows to men to continue to stagnate in the old historical position, to continue to remain in a base position regarding women, withholding authentic love in partnership AND it now also fully implicates women as complicit in men's moral and spiritual stagnation. Over this last half century, women are becoming a part of the problem of men's stagnation and thus humanity's stagnation. Because now that women have some legal and social autonomy -- which they have never had before within civilised recorded history in any meaningful sense, historically -- women too are responsible for their choices in a way that has much more parity with men's responsibility for their choices. Despite women's vulnerability and continued disadvantage relative to men in most major aspects of society, STILL, both men and women are at the place in human evolution where individual ownership of one's choices is a moral and spiritual reality and a moral and spiritual imperative.

IMO women must continue to individuate and develop themselves, their courage and their strength of heart. Additionally, though, women will need to stop enabling men to use them sexually. And the solution is not the "modern alternative", which promotes women using sex coldly (not for sex though, as we're not men, but rather it can only lead to the attempt to appease/placate/manipulate men with sex)...to see who can out-use and abuse/manipulate and manage the other. Two wrongs never make a right.

The solution IMO is to step back and simply expect and require that men meet us in a place of simple kindness, presence, and honour. Quit partaking in our own exploitation if that's what we've been doing. And simply expect and require men get to know us and love us as people and as friends. Without allowing men to require and demand cold or casual "good times" sex from us without any hint of authentic love or real care or concern for our highest good. Participating in our own exploitation only enables men's own stagnation and makes us complicit in it, as I see it. And of course, it causes deep trauma and harm for many women and has done for ages now. That in itself is reason enough to make fundamental changes and go in the direction of sustainability and authentic love, along with the burning imperative for growth in humanity as a whole.

Peace & blessings
7L