Expand on this. What’s a romantic thing a woman could do for you? In my experience, which admittedly is with the least romantic men on earth, they don’t care
I guess that depends on how you're using "romantic" -- the comment I was responding to was in the context of men supposedly being aromantic. In that sense we have different ideas of what romance is; a lot of what qualifies as "romantic" for women seems stupid and extraneous to us (or at least to me), but there is absolutely a... feeling, quality, I don't know, that is exclusive to a romantic relationship, something separate from lust or fraternity or agape. We don't seem to define it the same way, but we don't not feel it either.
In a broader sense, "romance" as passion and acts thereof... I think people are quick to forget that "passion" shares an etymological root with "patience" and it means "to suffer". To be passionate about something does not mean that you're overjoyed about it, it means you suffer for it. In soap operas and musicals that's represented hyperbolically with hysterical melodrama, people writhing in the crushing lows of heartbreak and betrayal, and I think that fucks up the perception for a lot of teenage girls and consequently teenage boys, whereas the reality is more of a covenant, a choice to commit to suffer for someone -- not because of them but for them -- because you have deemed them worth it; and a lot of the "romantic" experience for boys/men is related to that gamble and the decision to enter into that covenant. Maybe. Or I'm just autistic, I don't know. But anyway the actions that I've been recipient to that I'd describe as romantic stem from that, actions that have made me feel like my efforts are acknowledged and appreciated. That can be a card or a gift or some reciprocal act of service like a meal or being handed a beer or just an unexpected silent embrace with no specific reason or demand attached to it.
More esoterically, I think it's pretty self-evident that men and women both tend to cool in our passions for our partners after a year or two and shift our focus elsewhere, like raising children or building a life together, and I think there's a lot of anxiety and opportunity for doubt and regret in that; without giving a whole lecture on behavioral biology, we probably aren't meant to mate for life, it's a thing we choose to do for the good of the development of our offspring and for social cohesion. So it's important to reward that decision in each other to assuage that doubt. Being a consistent source of warmth to each other is better than occasional bursts of heat. Though either is preferable to nothing at all.
Hopefully some of that made any sense at all idk.
How do you guys fall asleep so quickly?
We do stuff all day. It makes you tired. And hungry.
Single men: do you own any indoor plants? Does your home have anything on the walls/do you own any objects with a purely decorative purpose?
(Asking because my husband had absolutely no decor before I moved in with him, and his answer to "do you like our new plants?" was "I like that they make you happy." I don't seek to change this about him, just wanted to know if other men felt the same.)
No indoor plants, I want some but don't have a good place for them where they'd get sunlight. I have artwork, mostly done by people I know and wanted to support, and gifts from loved ones, but of my own volition I mostly use walls for storage -- bookshelves, pegboard, instruments, cooking utensils, guns, etc. I have too many things I enjoy doing to waste space on things I enjoy looking at, if those things were even mutually exclusive, which they aren't. I also just don't really want to be particularly stimulated when I come home from clown world, I'd rather look at nothing.
I don't think many men have the "urge to care" that most women have. Like I care for elderly parents, love teaching kids, enjoy being kind to friends or a girlfriend, but I don't have an urge to care in itself, and wouldn't get it from watering a plant, or even feeding my kid. Those are just (boring) obligations that are important.
The masculine/paternal role is to help things grow so they can take care of themselves after you're gone. It's normal.
Plants belong outside. Like my roses, which hate the PNW climate due to lack of sun and high wind, but they do ok. And the drip watering system does most of the work. I'd dox them but the same lack of sun means they're still napping.
Plants belong outside but we benefit from being around plants and we also benefit from being inside so we bring plants inside to their detriment for our benefit, as is our right as the dominant species on the planet.
If I had my way I'd live in an Earthship but as with everything else in the world the government has fucked up my right to do that for bribe money.
or maybe he's a boat guy and I don't know that yet
