Posted by lil' jimi on March 27, 2003, at 12:18:59
In reply to A guy who hasn't called LOL............, posted by Krissy P on March 25, 2003, at 23:20:26
hi kristen,
here's my big fat over-generalization about the boy-girl / men-women / dogs-cats romantic thing:
girls get to grow up in presumption of emotional acceptance and in acceptance of their having emotions, being emotional and practicing emoting...and these are all really healthy things.
ok, Not all girls get to grow up that way... but Generally, they get to do so significantly more than boys do.
comparatively, boys get much less (if any at all) affective support, practice or training ... stereotypically boys get less acceptance, indulgence or even tolerance of their emoting and their feelings, in general.
one group gets tolerance, indulgence and encouragement when they cry or express exuberance, whereas the other group is discouraged from crying or showing their feelings or even feeling their feelings.
this disparity has the effect of encouraging girls (women!) to develop robust affective strengths and abilities, While boys' (really 'boys'!) deprivation tends to make them Comparatively, underdeveloped emotional weaklings. ... guys tend to hide their feelings from others out of defensive self-preservation and they tend to hide From their feelings because emotions are such intense things for them because they Are emotionally puny ... and these classical guy strategies conspire to keep them from developing emotionally.
all of which is an overlong description of how women are more mature than men ...
so, when this stereotypical girl goes out with our stereotypical guy, the guy may have finally screwed up his courage to take this big risk onto the battlefield of emotions we’d call ‘romance’, but once the interaction is engaged (and likely no-real-big-thing for the girl/woman) it starts to seem really spooky for the guy, because of this sense of being overmatched and in over his head and just generally threatened: :
“What if she expects *something*, ...like me to have a ... response ... idea ... a clue?” “AAAAAAAAA! RUN AWAY!!”
and then maybe later when he can calm down, he might think, “hey, that wasn’t so bad ... it isn’t like she could kill me ... she seemed nice ... maybe ... Maybe .... i could try that again!”
i guess what i’m suggesting is that for a lot of guys this is beyond just fear of intimacy, let alone fear of commitment, ... this is so before guys can even get there .... more like fear of even “out-imacy”.
i’d guess i was in my 30s before i got over these kind of feelings and felt like what i could call emotionally developed ... maybe.
my big brotherly advice about mister hasn’t-called-back-guy ? ... you have got it exactly right: wait him out, but no holding of any breath there... more advice? ... finding a mature intact male dating-like companion Might require planting the acorn and cultivating it till it does its oak tree thing (?) because they don’t come from the factory that way ... they just need some growing up .... okay, maybe a lot of growing up ... patience of a saint would help.
Good luck , sweetie!
hope i made you smile!
~ jim
poster:lil' jimi
thread:212834
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030326/msgs/213452.html