I’m on a Nice Man kick. If you live up here in the Pantheon, you meet, like, one or two really nice gods–the rest are as likely as not to hurl a goddess off a mountain or turn her into a tree if they’re not having a dgood day.
If nice gods are rare, nice men are not terribly valued, methinks. Nice men get a raw deal down there on earth–kind of like women who have “good personalities.” They’re thought, in the annals of erotic training, to be dull. Not sexy. Bad guys are sexy. It’s a false dichotomy, pairing hot with bad and dull with nice. I’m not here to try to tell you what should turn you on, my darlings, but there’s an underbelly to being turned on by bad guys. If the bad guy of your dreams is just sort of fun and dangerous-seeming, nonconforming and wild, say, well, cool. But if he’s not nice to you–that’s the bad guy I want you to get rid of, fast.
Some guys who get off being mean to women. (And you know, of course, that a whole slew of dating tips revolve around teaching men to be mean intentionally–to be nice to you one day and not nice the next–as a way of keeping you unhinged and, it is thought, turning you on. Swell, right?) Well, let these men win neurotic women–not you. This goddess will not let you waste even a month of your precious time getting turned on to the guy who is so ambivalent, so rude, so tortured, so mean, or so desperate for control or power, that he doesn’t see how important it is to be good to you.
Having a lover who’s good to you is Number One on the list of what you’re looking for. Way ahead of the criteria you’re trained to want–whether he’s rich, say, or tall, or whatever. So when you ask, Is he employed? Is he a substance abuser?, ask also, Is he someone who will treat me well?
I know women who like to tame mean men; feel it’s a challenge; feel the crazy highs and lows prove that a relationship exists, that conflict and the futile attempts to resolve it IS Relationship. No, no. That’s not Relationship, that’s a side show, a circus act, and there’s you feeling like a freak just standing around and praying for the good moments, getting exhausted and lonely and wondering, “So is this what they mean by a relationship being hard work?”
No. That’s just endless drudgery. Hard relationship work is when you’re in it with someone who cares about how he acts toward you, and you’re facing the world together; tangling not with each other but with the issues of life.
This topic needs another blog….it’s too important and there’s just too much to cover right now. Stay tuned till next time.
TLG
Once again, you are so right, my darling Love Goddess to whom I daily pay reverent respect and divine loyalty.
Perhaps I, the God of Love should take up the burden of launching the very blog you suggest. And I would… if only I were not currently engaged in the full-time job of being nice to the plethora of deserving mortal females who have been hurt by bad mean satyrs and who could use a gentle foot rub, a sympathetic ear, and even the tiniest bit of godly encouragement before floating back out into the worldly Battle of Love.
Sadly, it is the rare and fortunate nymph who received proper and complete loving from her own male parent.
Sadly indeed.
Ironically odd that my omniscient brain fails to recall where I, God of Love, first heard the following advice… very possibly from the Love Goddess Herself. It is that it is our jobs to teach others how to properly love us. Speak up, dear lovelies, you simply must find your voices and, clearly and completely, tell that man how you expect to be (deservedly) loved.
GOL
Did I say battle OF love? I meant to say battle FOR love.
I’m a very old god. I could stand to have a devoted editor.