Yabby

”What you are essentially telling me is that you think that you can start with a kelpie and by talking to it long enough, you hope it will turn into a poodle."

Ah Yabby, a harmless little dog analogy and yet so revealing of your attitude to women, which of course is exactly as you intended.

For you, the non-communicative male is a kelpie - a strong, agile, intelligent working dog. The male he’ll be, if god forbid a designing woman gets him in her clutches and tries to get him talking to her, is a poodle - a small, yapping accessory dog. In your eyes, any man who forms an equal relationship with a woman and allows her to draw out his communicative qualities is somehow a wussier dog, or a lesser man.

“Some women’s surging and crashing hormone levels makes things so complex, that they do not even understand themselves, let alone have any male make sense of them. Once again, biology is kicking in.”

As you so often do, you call on biology to give credence to your antiquated prejudices. Fluctuating hormones are just part of the complexity of being female. They’re something we all live with and manage to greater or lesser degrees of success, just as men too are not immune to hormonal influences. Why latch onto this perfectly natural phenomenon to somehow try and set women up as neurotic and unstable captives of their own weak bodies?

“Forcing people to be something that they don’t want to be, might well fail.”

First of all, no one here that I know is talking about’ forcing’ anyone to be something they don’t want to be. And besides, what makes you so sure that the males you see as kelpies are as keen as you obviously are to remain impenetrable emotional islands? Who’s to say that these men mightn’t actually prefer to throw off the old restrictive stereotypes and be freed to get in touch with their more feminine side?

* Yabby, men are not a single homogenous group*

Err Fractelle, nobody has claimed that they were. However if
like me, you ever have intentions of trying to understand
human behaviour and the world that is going on around us,
it pays to understand basic biological influence on behaviour of both genders.

*I feel sorry for you and Yabby that you have been so unsuccessful in maintaining long term relationships *

That is very sweet of you Fractelle, but I don't think that it might
have occured to you or most posters on here, that perhaps in my
own personal life, I don't yearn for what you yearn for?

The only one who got even close to mentioning what I am personally
developing, was Max, when he mentioned whole new kinds of
relationships that others had not even thought about, or words
to that effect.

Some young ones have discovered the concept of "friends with
benefits" and some forward thinking 50 somethings have discovered
similar concepts. Living free without having to constantly
compromise, has huge advantages. You get to do what you want,
when you want, how you want.

There are plenty of single women in their 50s, living on pretty
low incomes, yet they appreciate the advantages of having their
own homes, as they want, without the normal compromises of
partnership. Yet they would still like a bit of love and affection
in their lives. If they are quite happy to give me a bit of
pleasure, I see no reason why I should not give them a bit of
pleasure and help supplement their incomes for them. Not everyone
is focussed on money and wants a "freebie", like CJ.

Yabby claims:
"There are plenty of single women in their 50s, living on pretty
low incomes, yet they appreciate the advantages of having their
own homes, as they want, without the normal compromises of
partnership. Yet they would still like a bit of love and affection
in their lives. If they are quite happy to give me a bit of
pleasure, I see no reason why I should not give them a bit of
pleasure and help supplement their incomes for them."

Given that you also are in your 50's, have all the emotional intelligence of a pair of Y-fronts, I can only hope you pay them well for their services, given that your after sex repartee would be limited to a snore. And congratulations on those women remaining in complete control of their lives, perhaps, Yabby you should ask yourself this: "Who is comforting whom?"

Sounds like a very equal exchange to me, simply living life on one's own terms which is nothing to brag about as you appear to be trying to do.

Fractelle, there are actually huge benefits to living on one’s own terms. In one
thing Antiseptic is right, there are some nice women out there, but also
a whole lot of scheming ones, who only show their true colours after the ring
is on that finger.

We only need to read this thread to see that some women have no qualms about
trying to turn their husbands into a poodle and will use sex as a weapon to
achieve it. If he tried to leave, he might well be cleaned out in the courts,
so many men would feel trapped. What a shame that some of you girls
can’t be honest about your intentions, before you take those marriage vows,
for I wonder if those same men would have agreed so readily.

Romany, thank you for the very handsome apology, which of course I accept without reservation. I should have realised that you made a sincere mistake, as I've not known you to be deliberately dishonest. Please accept my own apology for the rudeness of my response.

Fractelle, you're right about my persona here being different to my real life personality, but then, so is yours, I suspect. In this milieu I see no need for the lubricating courtesies to be extended and I sometimes deliberately phrase things so as to provoke a response or to ridicule, or even, sometimes, to shut down a conversation although that is very rare for me. On line there are no visual cues: sometimes, extravagant language can be effective in indicating what may be otherwise missed.

IRL, I can't imagine you or SJF or the geriatric CJ engaging me, a solidly-built, sometimes gruff man of 45, in the ways you do here. Despite the fact that I'm entirely non-violent and we have laws to protect us, your visceral sense would be that to do so is dangerous and you'd likely modify your delivery and possibly the content. As such a man, I would do the same when dealing with you, because I don't want to either intimidate you or to be accused of attempting to do so. Here, that problem does not exist.

Hence, you are able to "beard the lion" with impunity and I am free to express myself as I wish, the only risk being that one of us may get offended and go away in a huff.

Geriatric? Antiseptic, as a solidly-built, sometimes gruff man of 53 I'm just somewhat more grown up than you. Mind you, the last 7 years or so have been the happiest of my adult life, so there's hope for you yet! Enlightenment might be just around the corner...

However, you're right about one thing at least - if we encountered one another in IRL you'd be unlikely to be whingeing endlessly about women and I'd be therefore unlikely to call you on it.

Back on topic, I don't suppose anybody read the fascinating article by Kate Legge in Saturday's 'Weekend Oz' about marriages that succeed for decades? It addresses many of the issues that have come up in this thread, and does so quite well IMHO. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available online.