What Women Want (Respect v Adoration)
What *do* women want? It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and I may be getting closer to the answer. We want respect and adoration. But here’s the rub. We can’t have it.
Respect is being loved for higher things that give unto others. Our thoughts. We can respect someone whose ideas make us question our own motives. Our courage. We can respect those who do and say what we would only dream of or are to frightened to say. Our actions can be respected; we can respect the Mom who, through tough times keeps a family happy. Our hearts. We respect those who love and give hope to those with none.
Adoration is more selfish. I want people to love me. I want people to look upon me and to see how fantastic I am. To gaze up at me and want me.
To sum up: To be respected is to have people to ask your opinion on things. To be adored is to have dozens of men jack off thinking about you.
Oh, in our private lives, we may be lucky enough to find people who both respect and adore us. These are the few in a lifetime friends. If one of them is blessed enough to be our lover then eventually we may call them our husband or partner. And privately, people who know us even just a little will understand our true selves a bit better. We can be a bit more free to experiment, to be adored when it’s behind closed doors. But our private lives are not nearly the same as our public lives.
Publically, we can’t get it both. Not really. You have to go for one or the other. But it’s a constant war within us. We go out there and be sexy and cute, then wonder why no one actually cares what we think. We try to garner respect through thoughtful dialogue then stand by shocked when the "cute girls" get all the attention.
But here’s what I think. Respect lasts forever. It is a hard thing to master, we can spend our entire lives trying to be respectful people. And respect will eventually garner a type of love and adoration. But it’s the type of adoration that comes from being a mentor to someone else, not being a pin up girl. Adoration alone is a dead end street. Once you go down that path it’s hard... really hard to gain respect. Eventually you have to run to keep up and there is nothing cute about trying to hard to get the eyes of men. Teenagers always win that war. It’s been that way since the beginning of time. Time to strengthen other skills.
What does this mean personally? It’s hard. I could get more blog hits if I posted pictures of myself. Or talked about my sex life. I could get lots of comments that way. And sometimes I want to. Oh, I will admit that! Who doesn’t want love from strangers? But I would prefer to be respected by the people of 2old2play than to be adored by the membership. Thankfully I’ve found a great group who seems to be on the same page.