Romance Inc. → Men vs Women - Emotions and Love
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Hi everyone
It's been quiet lately, so I thought this would be an interesting topic for discussion and who knows, maybe we all learn something new about the opposite sex?!
So the question is:
How do men love/fall in love differently to women? And the other way around.
As a start, in my mind, men are visual while women are more spiritual.
Looking forward to read different opinions and perspectives (from both sexes)! 
Janet
I have to agree with Dagnee. When I met my future wife, 52 years ago, I thought she smelled great and had a wonderful bunch of pheromones, which she kept throwing my way. I was home on Christmas leave from Pensacola and headed to the Azores when my brother talked me into going to a high school party with him. I, of course, being far superior as having graduated a year earlier, nearly didn't go. We met and spent the entire evening wrapped around each other. Back at my house, I told my brother that I'd met the person I was going to marry. Funnily enough, I found out later that she'd told her best friend the very same thing.
I'm still waiting for the pheromones to wear off.
~Tom
It might be changing, but a psychologist told me once that men give love for sex and women give sex for love.
I think it's a good point and still valid - I don't think it will change soon.
My own personal belief is that in the beginning of a relationship it's chemistry that attracts you and the love part starts when the pheromones wear off.
I share this belief as clinical as it may be for a romance reader/writer! Chemistry to begin with, and then there is a conscious decision to love. For the same reason, I think you can also choose to stop loving someone. It still hurts like hell, but it remains a decision as opposed to a feeling in my mind.
I also believe when writing a character, man or woman, they fall in love according to their personality traits. In other words everyone, regardless of gender, falls in love differently.
This actually makes a lot of sense - trying to differentiate between the ways people fall in love, just looking at men vs women would be too restrictive. So I tend to agree it's probably too individual to lump it together that broadly. Not that we won't stop trying?!
I have to agree with Dagnee. When I met my future wife, 52 years ago, I thought she smelled great and had a wonderful bunch of pheromones, which she kept throwing my way. I was home on Christmas leave from Pensacola and headed to the Azores when my brother talked me into going to a high school party with him. I, of course, being far superior as having graduated a year earlier, nearly didn't go. We met and spent the entire evening wrapped around each other. Back at my house, I told my brother that I'd met the person I was going to marry. Funnily enough, I found out later that she'd told her best friend the very same thing.
I'm still waiting for the pheromones to wear off.
~Tom
But you did see her first before you managed to get closer?! 
Seriously though, this was really nice to read! It's not often you hear of pheromones that still keep going after 52 years!
But you did see her first before you managed to get closer?!
Seriously though, this was really nice to read! It's not often you hear of pheromones that still keep going after 52 years!
Thanks, Janet. She was perhaps the second thing I saw when I entered the living room (the first being a giant galvanized tub of iced-down beer). At first she didn't see me but she must have sensed me looking at her because when she looked up and we locked eyes it was all over. The elapsed time from entry to seeing her lasted about three minutes. That spark is still there.
~Tom
Janet said: So I tend to agree it's probably too individual to lump it together that broadly. Not that we won't stop trying?!
I might be simple, but to me this is what's wrong with civilization. The inability to see people as individuals instead of a group.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem or wrong. It's part of human nature and how we grow up. Eventually, we do grow up and also acquire the ability to see past the "group" and notice the "individual", but for most, unless (before) you don't get to know a person, you lump them in a group by default based on your experiences with similar people when you see them. When you've grown up and don't have the ability to see beyond someone's "group" and recognise the differences or uniqueness of that individual, then I think it's a problem.
If I had a penny for all the times I've been told, "Aren't redheads supposed to have a massive temper?", I'd be writing full-time!
janet reid wrote:But you did see her first before you managed to get closer?!
Seriously though, this was really nice to read! It's not often you hear of pheromones that still keep going after 52 years!
Thanks, Janet. She was perhaps the second thing I saw when I entered the living room (the first being a giant galvanized tub of iced-down beer). At first she didn't see me but she must have sensed me looking at her because when she looked up and we locked eyes it was all over. The elapsed time from entry to seeing her lasted about three minutes. That spark is still there.
~Tom
I didn't think it could get any nicer! Ignoring a tub full of cold beer at that age ... clearly it was meant to be!
Well, the beer was semi-easy to ignore. Back then, you could drink 3.2 beer at 18 in Colorado. It was mostly water.
~Tom
@TOM......That is so sweet.....And I totally believe it is chemistry. My husband and I are very different. I read about two books a week and I don't think he has ever even considered reading anything for pleasure. We have been in business together for years and even tho our approach is different we get the job done. You can't explain it, but after 38 years I'm still excited to hear the garage door go up and know he will be walking thru the door.
@dagnee.....Very interesting what your psychiatrist friend said....I do think tho that there isn't that much difference between men and woman when it comes to emotions. We all want to be needed and loved. Some because of past experiences or damaged childhoods might be more needy, but in the end we all want to be loved. Over the years I have come across some rough edged people, and when you wear away all their armor sometimes they are the neediest.....
When writing my characters I try to take all these things into consideration.
I adore love stories like Tom shared. I'll be writing a story soon entitled, Mary, Mary Quite Contrary. It's about my grandmother's life. It'll be creative non-fiction. I have to fill in the blanks since she's passed on. But her story about my grandfather was awesome. In 1914-15, her father want her to "spark" with my grandfather's brother, but she saw my grandfather and never wanted another man. Her father hated my grandfather, so his brother would pick up my grandmother and take her to meet his brother. Finally, they eloped, and when her father heard about it, he chased them through the woods with a shotgun. I guess he finally accepted the fact that they were happy. My grandfather died at the age of 52 with a heart attack. My grandmother was 48. She never married again and died two weeks shy of her 90th birthday.
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Romance Inc. → Men vs Women - Emotions and Love
