William Shakespeare: Sonnet IV
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank, she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
For, having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which usèd lives th’ executor to be.
If you spend much time on Youtube (Alas, raising hand. Guilty as charged) you might run across videos of women taking men to task for not "wife-ing up" the "virtual goddesses" that inhabit our cities.
In fact, those same women are outraged that men are hardly paying any attention to those "virtual goddesses".
Their choice of words tells more than they know.
It seems as if many of these Instagram influencers have turned themselves into graven images that they themselves worship. "For, having traffic with thyself alone, thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive." Men sense that. They quickly figure out that they are a disposable accessory, like a handbag or a set of false eyelashes to the "virtual goddess".
Those graven images aren't getting too many takers.
Physical beauty fades often with bitterness on all sides.
ReplyDeleteVain women and angry men can look good but are impossible to live a peace and joy filled life with. So many proverbs and scriptures attest that's as old as man.
A Proverbs 31 woman continues to be beautiful even as she has a cane to get to the kitchen.
But you have to treat them right.
I have seen a few of those videos. The harsh undertone, their feigning genuiness, an empty plea for knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThey are innit for clicks. Surely there are some in their lives who are wiser, imbibed of understanding and reason. Yet they haven't listened. They go it alone, again, their plea, whether a pretended vacuity, foretells of a loathsome union for him the unfortunate.
That they contrive emotion, bouncing from one state to the other belies the very instability they ignore.
For clicks. Why 'seek' understanding before the world instead of quiet communion with wise grandmother, at least introspection. One has to think that their brain chemistry has been altered.
A project for the foolhardy.
In the movie, Blast From The Past, the boy raised in a bomb shelter, now an adult, asks his feckless helper why she has so many problems in relationships.
ReplyDeleteIn a poignant moment of clarity, she answers that she always falls for a 'cute butt' though it is attached to a jerk.
These days, they now have a microphone and followers who comisserate yet not see error.
As problematic is this subculture, worse it is persistent. The influence and effect is spread wide.
The problem is 80% of females are only interested in the top 20% of men. The rest of the men are "beneath" them. A mindset guaranteed to result in widespread dissatisfaction.
ReplyDeleteI think you are being generous with regard to the 20% the many women believe they "deserve" and are entitled to.
DeleteI would guess 5%. And they are slow to take the feedback that they don't have what it takes to command that kind of guy. By the time they capitulate to reality, they have already squandered much of their "value".
OK, let's do the maths.
DeleteLine up 100,000 random men for one of those "ladies" to select.
He must be over 6 feet tall but as only 15% of men are that height or over then that reduces the potential pool to 15,000 men.
Must be wealthy, of course, so if you take for the sake of the discussion that 10% of the population pay 90% of the tax, then taking 10% of 15,000 and you are down to 1,500 men.
Naturally he must be handsome and Tinder reports that women only swipe right on 2% of mens profiles so 2% of 1,500 leaves 30 men that match these three basic criteria or 0.03% of the original 100,000.
If you want to run the numbers with the men over 6 foot 3 inches (only 1.3% from here https://www.calcnation.com/calc/height-percentiles/feet/75/men) then it is even less than that.
Add in the Chinese menu list of other "must have" qualities (sense of humour, emotionally available etc. etc. ad infinitum) that they demand and there is likely not one man on the planet that will match their detailed selection criteria.
If you notice that of those 30 men out of those 100,000, there are 100,000 women demanding the self same attributes and desiring those self same 30 men ... Those 30 men have the pick of any of those women that they want so will "play the field". Hence the all men are bar stewards chanted by the women that meet Humpty Dumpty (they hump them then dump them).
Where are all the good men at? Down here, ladies, at under 6 feet tall ...
Phil B (at 5 feet 4 inches tall). >};o)
My name is Joe. I am 5'-9" and I approve of this message.
DeleteToo much time spent on social media believing what they wrote.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to be happy for the rest of your life
ReplyDeleteNever make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
Jimmy Soul
ERJ, I am thankful that I am married. I would not make it at all in this current atmosphere. My next best option would likely be having one or more close and reliable female friends to "help" me with such things. They are much better at seeing such things than I am.
ReplyDeleteIt was my experience that the female friends were looking out for the females they were hooking you up with rather than me. I worked with mostly women in my last job and often had the opportunity to converse with young ladies about their romantic goals( I was usually their dads age and clearly not trying to date them) they sometimes were realistic about what they wanted in a young man but most were unprepared to answer the question- what are you going to bring to the table? A couple were bold enough to respond looks or sex but didnt like me telling them there was a lot more to maintain a relationship.
DeleteTSJ - I somewhat speak from a position of never having had exercise the option, but as I think through those female contacts over my work career, I am pretty confident that for the bulk of them, they would not have preferentially "steered me" somewhere. Then again, I have had the good fortune on the whole to know grounded women.
DeleteIt is extremely difficult to have a good relationship these days.
ReplyDeleteI thought I had found a good woman, we had kids and I provided well for them ... But after a while nothing I could do was right, no matter how much she tried.
She demanded more and more time with her family, and last year she left, taking the kids out of state, emptying the accounts she had access to and running up the credit card.
She spread some very nasty rumors, and filed a police complaint, and has tried to turn friends against me. It's been rough.
I can see why many guys won't even consider a relationship anymore.
Jonathan
Get a good lawyer. Most states won't allow children to be taken to another state without your consent. Never, ever give her money for the children without it passing through legal hands. Good luck.
DeleteThat only applies if there is a custody agreement in place; this happened before that point...
DeleteJonathan
That was brutal, Jonathan.
DeleteSadly, it is a common story. The other-party (80% of the time it is the woman) feels a need to justify the injury they inflicted so they vilify the man. They trash him to justify their actions to the crowd.
A similar thing happened to one of my younger brothers. HIs long-time girlfriend dumped him, maxed out the credit cards to buy a plane ticket to California to hook-up with a former boyfriend.
And she left him a good-by present; told him that he needed to get tested for several STDs.
My brother was crushed and never quite-right after that.
You know, of course, that whomever wrote Proverbs sure had read a lot of Shakespear... Roger
ReplyDelete