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Valentine’s Day has come and passed, but this year it really made me start thinking about romance. I’m sure that’s in part because I now officially write about love and marriage. But as the ads on television and the radio were dedicated to talking about getting gifts for the holiday, as friends posted pictures and comments on their Facebook pages about what their husbands got them or the frantic lines of men in department stores and flower shops on the day, I really began to wonder: why is romance so one-sided?
Think about it: usually when we think about something romantic, it’s selfish. It’s about what we want the man to do for us. Even our movies tell stories about the grand gestures men make to show women how they feel. You already know how I feel about grand gestures, and in my diamond commercial-themed article I began to scrape the surface of this: our ideals of romance almost always involve what the man will do for the woman.
Now I know this is not true across the board. I know that many wives make as much effort to woo their husbands as their husbands might do for them. I certainly try to do that in my own life. But I’ll admit it was a struggle at first, especially before I got to know Jonathan very well. Why? Because we have nothing to go on.
If we look in the media it’s so uncommon to see women romancing men. Usually when we see women going after men they do so in a very matter-of-fact manner. I’m sure many men will say, well, that’s because it’s what we like: cut through all of the fluff and get right down to the point. And I agree that in many cases that might be the most appropriate.
But I want to get to the root of the problem: cultural expectations. If you follow my Disney blog you know I’m a bit obsessed with gender roles and how society and the media reinforce them. I just have to wonder: is it inherent in the male gender for them to care less about being wooed than it is for the female gender, or have we just culturally decided it’s so and raised our boys and girls accordingly?
It’s part of the human condition to crave reassurance that others like us. Everyone likes being flattered. Being romanced, made to feel special, certainly qualifies as a form of flattery. Do men genuinely not care about being romanced, or are they conditioned not to like it, just as many men are conditioned to avoid pink? (The fact that some men like pink suggests that such color avoidance isn’t a natural inclination so much as a result of cultural conditioning).
I realize I’m getting a bit off the topic for a marriage blog. I just want to raise the question: if we worry when we don’t think there’s enough romance in our marriages, is that one-sided? That’s not to say we shouldn’t want to be romanced; husbands better make their wives feel special or otherwise they’re not doing their jobs right. I’m just saying it goes both ways. If we want to kick start the romance in our marriages then we ought to be the ones bringing it to the table.
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*(The above image by photostock is from freedigitalphotos.net).