Sam Reviews "Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others" by Merle Shain

It's kind of amazing to read something written in the 70s that seems so relevant today. We are living in the future she was hoping for (though we've still got some improving to do). This feels somewhat self-help style but in a very casual and easy to read way. Can't wait to dive into more of her writing.

"Men are supposed to fear loving because they fear dependency and truly loving always involves surrender of power. ... So most men opt for security in lieu of feeling and call their decision maturity."

"Loving someone because you failed to love someone else isn't the same as loving them for themselves."

"Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life."

"The value of a man is the sum of his commitments ... and men who are loving make their women bloom.  And because one of the best reasons for loving anyone is that they love you, men who understand that love is like the kind of flowers that grow more the more one gives away, are loved a lot, and men who do not water their gardens do not have roses to love."

"Women need men to love them so they can love them back."

"Our times are obsessed with finding fulfillment, so there are times when people try too hard, and there are people who want to have the newest feelings just as there are those who want to have the latest model car.  You can't play at love any more than you can be proud of your humility, or add water to your perfume and expect it to smell the same."

"One can get obsessions about people who give and then take away.  Then what the lover doesn't have he seeks for obsessively until the seeking becomes a replacement for the loved object and is more satisfying still."

"There are men who are addicted to the magic of falling in love, and the ego-aggrandizing, intoxicating splendor of it s all, and never learn that loving is better still.  For them there is no help for a love that is losing its excitement but to fall in love again, with someone else - and when that too loses it's intensity with someone else again."

"Loving acknowledges the differences between people and helps each person to grow, and while it's unpredictable, and sporadic, because it's a process of exchange, generally lovers who are loving are more self-approving, yet less selfish, and happier in themselves.  Romantic love seeks to possess the other person out of fear of loss, and romantic lovers want to give up everything for each other, merging themselves in the ones they love, until they have nothing left to give and their partners nothing left to love."

"Women are often trapped by their own romantic natures into believing that love means surrender, not recognizing that men who demand a woman's surrender are protecting themselves against her."

"Girls gave sex to get love and boys have love to get sex and conning girls was the favorite indoor sport."

"Men found their bodies through women but women sometimes didn't find there's at all, and women who didn't find their bodies often didn't find themselves, so they didn't love back much either, which was everybody's tragedy and still very often is."

"Pleasure is not the same as joy."

"Once we couldn't speak of sex and now we can't speak of love."

"Love is lonely and poetic and mysterious and whether we recognize it or not we climb into bed wrapping our identities closely around us, not knowing what we want from each other, and fearing both that it might be too much and not enough."

"When we love more than one person at the same time, we are expressing various sides of ourselves, so men with mistresses as well as wives come to their mistresses to find themselves, not the woman they seek."

"Women need men to believe in because that's how they've been raised, and when they no longer believe in the one they've got they feel abandoned and terribly in need."

"Women who've been raised to believe they will find fulfillment through a man think the man has failed when he doesn't give them what they think he should."

"Nobody loves anybody like anybody wants to be loved."  -Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook

"'In every marriage there is the one who loves and the one who lets himself be loved,' Somerset Maugham wrote.  And there are people who prefer to have someone to hurl themselves against than to have someone who is on their side."

"Marriage doesn't work when it cuts us off from finding who we are and defining ourselves for ourselves."

"...so [marriages] based on the premise that a wife's needs are met by meeting her husband's are doomed before they start.  And whether the worst offender is the woman who rushes to give up her needs hoping to please the man, or the man who accepts her sacrificial gifts, they both pay for it a thousand times."

"Men often want to have children, like writers who want to have written more than they want to write, so after they father children, they leave them at home while they go elsewhere for their lives."

"There is a difference between wanting and needing and loving, and both partners have a right to what they need, although not always what they want.  Each partner has a right to one life and to that life he has the sole right.  He hasn't a right to his spouse's life, and he hasn't a right to his child's, but he has a right to his life, and no one should interfere with that."

"It is not possible for one person to meet all of another's needs and marriage partners who expect this soon find each other wanting.  When people don't meet all of our needs, they are not always rejecting us - more often, they are saving themselves - and in a good marriage this is perfectly all right."

"The happy hungry man believes in food.  The happy homeless man believes in home.  The happy unloved man believes in love.  I wouldn't mind believing in something myself."  - George Jonas

"Loving someone means helping them to be more themselves, which can often be different from being what you'd like them to be, although often they turn out the same.  When you ask someone to live through you and for you, they warp like a Japanese tree to suit the relationship which you are, and cease to be what you chose them for, that is, cease to be themselves."

"A woman who marries a man to give herself an identity tends to choose the most powerful man she can find, so she often marries an over-achiever, thinking that his success will make her a success as well.  One always things that very successful men will be more generous and kind, but over-achievers of either sex are driven people, hoping to win love from every source, and a woman who chooses that kind of man is usually neglected for his work, and ends up with less identity than she had to start."

"If women have to ve small so men can be big in their own eyes, nobody much us fooled, and men who require this lose out in other ways "

"I'm not sure there can be loving without commitment, although commitment takes all kinds of forms, and there can be commitment for the moment as well as commitment for all time.  The kind that is essential for loving marriages - and love affairs, as well - is a commitment to preserving the essential quality of your partner's soul, adding to them as a person rather than taking away.  And if you haven't got that you haven't got loving, though you might have something else.  You could have adventure or a postgraduate course, you might have rehabilitation, or a bit of gossamer to highlight an otherwise somber life, but you haven't got loving, and of that you should be sure."

"I've learned not to ask for everything, just to make sure I get what I must have.  It doesn't matter who else gets what - it only matters if youre deprived."

"Being faithful means not costing people you love more than they can afford to pay."

"Women who hoped their husbands would take care of everything and then turned cool when they found that he could not, would be wiser if they parted with their illusions instead of with their husbands.  Because after you're divorced, you're still left with yourself."

"No marriage is one person's failure any more than it's one person's success, so it works best to see a marriage that has ended simply as something that didn't work out."

"It is not necessary to devalue the past and find it spurious because it doesn't last forever, it is possible to simply go on to what's next."

"If there are no endings, there are no beginnings and you see no new lands, so for everything that's lost, there is usually something gained."

"It is more difficult to plan when you're alone and your whole world could change twice before tomorrow."

"Single life looks exciting to those who are quietly settled, and contentment looms large and elusive to those who've had a lot more emotion than they can take but very little quiet joy."