Why are women so fickle in love?

[rasputin0009]

Woo! Generalisation of a whole gender! I'm sure something smart will be said by the OP!

Funny thing about women, they're people, too. Everybody is different when it comes to love, and what they want from a relationship. And when it's said that "It's not just my life, it's all around me", that's just you looking for that negative. You're going out of your way to find something that backs up your narrow viewpoint.

 

[Colour Scientist]

Life is tough-I'm sure you'll find someone you can love and who will love you back just as much-just hang in there ok ^_^

Well, isn't that a complete change of tone from what you had there first.

 

[EeveeElectro]

"I'm not generalising but women love chick flicks and fairy tales..."

Erm, okay. I hate to be 'that guy' (or girl) but I really can't stand chick flicks and as much as I do love a good fairy tail, I know the difference between them and reality.

Both genders can be stupid in love. I've done some completely stupid things and guys have done the same for me. My friend is in a very "meh" sort of relationship, what ever happens happens and they're both laid back about it. That's my idea of Hell but it works okay for them. It depends on the individuals needs.

I know I've certainly loved guys much more than they have loved me, and vice versa. I love my boyfriend more than I've ever loved anyone but I can hold my hands up and say he loves me more.

In addition, if you personally don't care for love and mushy things, anyone will seem much more fickle to you.

 

[Lieju]

Another totally random and ill-formed idea: women are, generally speaking, the "gate keepers" for our species (in developed, non-backwards nations). They control sexual opportunity, which is why most people would agree that a female "5" has a much better chance of finding a "mate" of equivalent or greater "value" than a male "5". On average, it seems women have more options and more opportunities. This wouldn't cause more fickle behavior so much as enable it.

What? I don't follow your logic.

How do women control sexual opportunity and have more options?

 

[Dragonbums]

Falling back on the old "men and women are basically the same" chestnut is a reductive cop-out. As others have pointed out, the enormous gender gap in divorce applicants (and subsequent suicides) can't just be hand-waved as irrelevant. It's not okay to judge one gender or the other morally for what are basically ingrained behaviors, but I think it's silly not to acknowledge or explore the differences.

Another totally random and ill-formed idea: women are, generally speaking, the "gate keepers" for our species (in developed, non-backwards nations). They control sexual opportunity, which is why most people would agree that a female "5" has a much better chance of finding a "mate" of equivalent or greater "value" than a male "5". On average, it seems women have more options and more opportunities. This wouldn't cause more fickle behavior so much as enable it.

Very attractive or powerful men also fall prey to "fickleness", though they tend to label it "sex addiction". In fact, I'd say the rate or degree of "fickleness" among such men is far higher than it is among the general population of women. This would suggest that, all things being equal, women might actually be LESS fickle than men before you take into account the disparate levels of opportunity.

What options?

If I were to go back even 100 years the only opportunity I would be becoming a professional baby maker.
If only being able who you want to marry are liberating "options" then I would rather just swap genders with the sex that's allowed to basically do whatever the fuck they want for the most part, and actually live their life.
So they fall for pretty woman? Well great. At least the man has other things to do with his life.
For that woman, that is the only thing she is worth in society. Might as well let her have her only semblance of self empowerment she is ever going to get in her life.

I mean, come on. In Japan way back, a woman could be executed for wishing to join the army.
In certain parts of the Middle East, it is still accepted to throw acid at a woman's face if she rejects a marriage proposal from a man.

 

[Cecilo]

I pretty much implied that, you didn't have to run over and kick ass LOL.

I was recently informed I hate men. I'm simply trying to follow through on something I didn't know I was!

>.>

But seriously, I was mostly just agreeing. However, the nature of the Escapist doesn't allow simple "Yup" comments, so I expanded on it.

...and kicked it when it was down! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA....errr...Meow?

You don't say, I was just recently informed I was a sexist, and rape apologist, Small world eh?

On topic - Men and Women are capable of cruel acts, many will cheat on each other for whatever reason they damn well feel like, others will abuse each other, long story short, keep looking for the right man, or woman, or whatever, someone is right for you. Just make sure that you are actually yourself.

If you pretend to be something to get someones attention, they are going to get angry/bored/whatever when they discover you were holding a mask up to start with.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Another totally random and ill-formed idea: women are, generally speaking, the "gate keepers" for our species (in developed, non-backwards nations). They control sexual opportunity, which is why most people would agree that a female "5" has a much better chance of finding a "mate" of equivalent or greater "value" than a male "5". On average, it seems women have more options and more opportunities. This wouldn't cause more fickle behavior so much as enable it.

What? I don't follow your logic.

How do women control sexual opportunity and have more options?

Falling back on the old "men and women are basically the same" chestnut is a reductive cop-out. As others have pointed out, the enormous gender gap in divorce applicants (and subsequent suicides) can't just be hand-waved as irrelevant. It's not okay to judge one gender or the other morally for what are basically ingrained behaviors, but I think it's silly not to acknowledge or explore the differences.

Another totally random and ill-formed idea: women are, generally speaking, the "gate keepers" for our species (in developed, non-backwards nations). They control sexual opportunity, which is why most people would agree that a female "5" has a much better chance of finding a "mate" of equivalent or greater "value" than a male "5". On average, it seems women have more options and more opportunities. This wouldn't cause more fickle behavior so much as enable it.

Very attractive or powerful men also fall prey to "fickleness", though they tend to label it "sex addiction". In fact, I'd say the rate or degree of "fickleness" among such men is far higher than it is among the general population of women. This would suggest that, all things being equal, women might actually be LESS fickle than men before you take into account the disparate levels of opportunity.

What options?

If I were to go back even 100 years the only opportunity I would be becoming a professional baby maker.
If only being able who you want to marry are liberating "options" then I would rather just swap genders with the sex that's allowed to basically do whatever the fuck they want for the most part, and actually live their life.
So they fall for pretty woman? Well great. At least the man has other things to do with his life.
For that woman, that is the only thing she is worth in society. Might as well let her have her only semblance of self empowerment she is ever going to get in her life.

I mean, come on. In Japan way back, a woman could be executed for wishing to join the army.
In certain parts of the Middle East, it is still accepted to throw acid at a woman's face if she rejects a marriage proposal from a man.

He's referring strictly to sexual options.

Which is, in many cases, true. It's repeated time and again in animal behavior, and can be easily spotted in humans as well.

It's why, in most cases, wooing is a male activitiy - It's an activity based on gaining the attractions of your desirable mate. The vast majority of the time, the male pursues the female, who then says yes or no. Essentially making them gate keepers.

Again, though, this is one of those things thats getting blurry with the change in gender roles. So I suppose its not the 'ultimate truth' it used to be. Just typical.

 

[knight steel]

Life is tough-I'm sure you'll find someone you can love and who will love you back just as much-just hang in there ok ^_^

Well, isn't that a complete change of tone from what you had there first.

I have no Idea what you're talking about this was always my answer you must be confusing me for some else........
>_>
<_<
Yes someone else who was pretending to be.................Um my evil twin Brother who sometimes sneaks onto my account and writes stuff when I'm asleep................actually the truth is I have a split personality which sometimes takes over.

Generally I'm a nice-sweet-lovely-gentle-polite gentlemen who loves everyone and everything ^_^

 

[Something Amyss]

You don't say, I was just recently informed I was a sexist, and rape apologist, Small world eh?

In fairness, I am apparently everything, even if it's mutually exclusive. On here right now I am a militant feminist, but on another board I am currently a misogynist pig. I'm a liberal, conservative, teabagger, nazi, communist, socialist,sexist, feminist, racist, politically correct, black, white, dude, chick....

I am some bizarre version of Schrodinger's Cat. When unobserved, I am ALL THE THINGS! Specifcally all the things wrong in this world.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that I, too, was a rape apologist (in someone's mind).

I think the internet has made it too easy to slam other people into boxes via the "with us or against us" mentality. And I'm not immune. I catch myself doing this sometimes, and I try and correct the action. Still, it's sort of like using "retarded" as an insult. My father is a huge Boston geek, and loved Boston radio, the Boston music scene, the city itself, etc., etc. So growing up, "retarded" became basically engrained in my brain. And I try not to use the word, because it's unfairly painting a group of people who simply cannot help it as bad, but sometimes I just...slip.

This sort of has relevance to the topic, I guess....

I mean, the original post is a slightly different form of boxing. It's more "women, mirite" than "you're against me so you're a commie!" But it's the same kind of principle.

On topic - Men and Women are capable of cruel acts, many will cheat on each other for whatever reason they damn well feel like, others will abuse each other, long story short, keep looking for the right man, or woman, or whatever, someone is right for you. Just make sure that you are actually yourself.

If you pretend to be something to get someones attention, they are going to get angry/bored/whatever when they discover you were holding a mask up to start with.

My personal pet peeve is when people assume you're something and then get mad because they assumed and never said anything or asked, then got mad that you weren't what they had in mind.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

What options?

If I were to go back even 100 years the only opportunity I would be becoming a professional baby maker.

And if I were to go back a hundred years ago there's a good chance I'd have worked in a mine or some other hell of manual labour, and gone to an early grave. Or I'd have been shot to fuck in a war. The wife had to stay home and raise the kids? How awful...

I skim these threads mostly out of morbid curiosity. It's weirdly compelling, like seeing teenagers setting fire to a ford fiesta as part of their tribal rituals. Not sure the flames will catch fully with this one though. You've got some of right ingredients so far, just not enough. Misogynistic bullshit? Check. Feminist bullshit? Check. Thinly veiled accusations, absurd generalisations, complete waffle masquerading as revelation. Cheeeeeeeeck.

Good luck, everyone...

 

[Dragonbums]

What options?

If I were to go back even 100 years the only opportunity I would be becoming a professional baby maker.

And if I were to go back a hundred years ago there's a good chance I'd have worked in a mine or some other hell of manual labour, and gone to an early grave. Or I'd have been shot to fuck in a war. The wife had to stay home and raise the kids? How awful...

I skim these threads mostly out of morbid curiosity. It's weirdly compelling, like seeing teenagers setting fire to a ford fiesta as part of their tribal rituals. Not sure the flames will catch fully with this one though. You've got some of right ingredients so far, just not enough. Misogynistic bullshit? Check. Feminist bullshit? Check. Thinly veiled accusations, absurd generalisations, complete waffle masquerading as revelation. Cheeeeeeeeck.

Good luck, everyone...

Yeah, and guess what genius?

The number one cause of death for women back then was giving child birth.
In fact, most women don't survive past the first one.
Pretty awesome life seeing as how that's all your worth ain't it?
You survive the first one, and that's all you'll be doing until you died.

Funny how you are already jumping to the FEMINAZIS! boot camp, when the life of a woman was just as dull and and restrictive as a life of a man.

I'd rather work in a coal mine.
At least there I have some sort of economic worth.
At least that man has the opportunity to do something else.
Travel to better fortunes on his own merits.

A woman's entire comfort and existence depended on whether or not her father/brother/spouse was making money or not dead.
If any of them died, I can't go out and support myself with a job. I'm a woman. I'm a "fickle" and delicate being. I can't handle any of those "man" jobs. What worth am I outside of the home? I'm fucked 30 ways from Tuesday. Unless of course I find another man.

 

[Lieju]

He's referring strictly to sexual options.

Which is, in many cases, true. It's repeated time and again in animal behavior, and can be easily spotted in humans as well.

It's why, in most cases, wooing is a male activitiy - It's an activity based on gaining the attractions of your desirable mate. The vast majority of the time, the male pursues the female, who then says yes or no. Essentially making them gate keepers.
.

That's only a part of the story. In animal kingdom, the males generally try to keep the other males away, making the female's choices smaller, and in some cases (like with some spiders where the male leaves parts of it's pedipalps inside the female) make the female unable to mate again.
Also rape and 'affairs' are not rare.

In social animals the 'wooing' is intertwined with the position of the male in the social hierarchy, part of it is impressing the female, but also the other males, and the benefits the male gets from that, and the females will have their own social hierarchy.

Humans are generally monogynous. That means that instead of trying to mate with as many females as they can and then running and females trying to find the best mate they can, both sexes try to find a good mate to have a relationship and a family with, so the male needs to find a female he is 'impressed' with as well and someone they want to raise the family with.

Affairs happen, of course, even in the animal world where male birds for example will woo more than one female and then leave the less desirable ones to raise their eggs alone, which makes it important for the female to not just get the male to mate, but to keep him around.

 

[TheKangaroos]

I?m not generalising that all women are fickle in love. But there are a lot more fickle-in-love women out there than there are men who think along those lines.

This seems to be a very absolute statement, the likes of which nobody has the authority to make. It's important to remember that there's a difference between a fact and the conclusions you've drawn from your personal experiences of a girl dumping you.

I could just as easily surmise that all men are angsty, overly emotional attention seekers, using as my evidence the fact that I (a man) cry every time I watch Land Before Time and you (a man) posted such a juvenile question on this forum.

 

[Shraggler]

What does the OP mean by "fickle"?

They cheat a lot? They don't know what they want? They remain undecided for a frustrating amount of time? They complain about a relatively simple decision yet don't act? What?

 

[Naeras]

Since the OP is being incredibly unspecific both as to what happened to him and what he means by "fickle" in this scenario, I have no idea how I can respond other than the following:

Sometimes people, regardless of gender, act like jackasses. Even the ones you care about, or have romantic feelings for. That's just life, and you're probably going to experience it again. All you can really do is to suck it up, get back up on your feet again, and move on. It's way more productive than posting unspecific complaints about women on the internet.

Otherwise? Yeah, this thread turned out exactly like I had expected when I saw the title

 

[Eddie the head]

What options?

If I were to go back even 100 years the only opportunity I would be becoming a professional baby maker.

Well luckily we haven't gone back 100 years. And anyway basically what AccursedTheory said, wooing a mate is mostly a male thing. Not all the time, but it's more often then not.

I think it has a name in biology "sexual selection."

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

Falling back on the old "men and women are basically the same" chestnut is a reductive cop-out. As others have pointed out, the enormous gender gap in divorce applicants (and subsequent suicides) can't just be hand-waved as irrelevant.

Well, thats the chicken and egg problem in a nutshell for you.

people cant live without society. so how high is the % of society enforcing gender stereotypes on people and people living that way because its the way religion, science, media and your neighbours show and enforce it all the time?
how high is the influence of the small percentage of women in science, in media, in courts, in army, in the police?
how high is the influence of female stereotypes which are rather forcefully integrated? the princess(i think there is one (was it pixar?)movie with a female lead, women were snatched of nobel-prizes, women werent allowed to go to university..

my mother had to stop going to school because her parents were so sure that she would marry and get children, that she didnt need education.

this was in the 70ies.. and the family was not very religious or conservative.


you cant undo thousands of years of history, of gender stereotyping, of the westernized worlds invading the other world and bringing stereotypes with them.
we know that people talk LESS to babies if they think, the baby is male. if they think the baby is female, they talk MORE and ALSO they look more in the eyes. People tend to hold female babies face to face and male babies-face away.
little boys who cry get the "boys dont cry" treatment and are encouraged to play more aggressive, while girls arent allowed to hit people and are encouraged to solve problems with words.

this is old. and people enforce these stereotypes unwittingly. If someone is pregnant, people as boy or girl and start to buy gendered stuff. cars for the boys, pink dolls for the girls*(if i get a child, i dont want to knwo its gender and i wont tell anyone its gender as long as I am able to) princesses with glitter for girls (even on toothpaste and cakes >.<*) and boys get pirates, zombies or knights. girls get princesses and horses. later then its super model. dont you think this has impact?


so, what was before? what is now?

science shows that there is not a big difference in brain.. or genes..
one broken x chromosome is the whole difference... (even genetically similar twins are not exactly the same. they have often a different character.(and after birth you have these epi-genetic modifications) so genes are not god. not everything. And if it they where, would it matter?


the point is giving people the chance of choosing what they want.
but in order to be able to choose, you need role models, you need to know WHAT you choose.

if young girls start programming, they usually have fun-and tend to be more interested in science. i mean, now we have more female medical-students, but -100 or 200 years before, medicine was deemed inappropriate for women because of naked bodies and blood and illness and also women the idea of women which arent rational enough for science.



*(which was a boy colour until 19.00 Also little boys wore dresses in that time..So if you would live at 1903 and a mother would have a small child in a pink dress, it was a boy.)^^

 

[Bluelaughter]

My personal experience has been thus: I've never been the type to date lightly. I have always dated with the possibility of having a long-term relationship. Over time, it's easier to see which people are actually ready for a relationship, and who wants to just screw around, or find this fantasized romantic version of love which generally, isn't sustainable.

The other problem I've had with women is neuroticism. So many have self-esteem problems, and will create imaginary relationship problems. It's tough finding an appropriate mix of compassion and critical detachment in dealing with those issues.

I'm guessing the OP is just someone who falls faster, and is probably a bit romantic themselves, ignoring the warning signs. It sort of reminds me of 500 Days of Summer, which I saw recently. Maybe the women the OP finds himself with just haven't reached that point yet, or are intimidated by him coming on too strong too early.