Joy Crawford, Contributor
IS IT easy being a man? Many women will say a resounding yes. For, after all, it is undoubtedly a man's world. Men have the first pickings of just about everything, from breast milk to real breasts to whatever job they want. They seem to have it all, but do they?
Although I am a woman, I must confess to having a certain amount of empathy for men. Call it stupidity, call it a misplaced sense of kindred spirit, but I really can understand why men behave the way they do. We women spoil them, from the cradle to the grave. We cater to them, hand and foot and that is why, with all their so-called indulgence, they are indubitably the more ill-equipped of the human species to deal with life.
In this regard, it is definitely not easy being a man. Perhaps it is our expectations as women. We put men on pedestals. We love them into the monsters that many of them become because we do not properly establish parameters and when they stray we condone it with the fatalistic view that boys will be boys.
Think about it. We love men who are downright rakes, knowing or at least suspecting that they are rakes, and expecting that they will become Angel Gabriel, in one fell swoop. We, in the western world, have been brought up on a diet of monogamy and love and life happily-ever-after, quite forgetting that monogamy is by no means natural.
It is, by far, a contrived state. It is just that women, being true romantics, equate love and sex when they are two separate things entirely. The sex only gets better if you love, pure and simple.
PARAGONS OF VIRTUE
So we expect our men to be paragons of virtue and get decidedly depressed to learn that they are not. It is this expectation that will put a man who is halfway decent under extreme pressure, if he loves you, to be faithful and true. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying turn a blind eye. I am saying that the world does not and ought not to end if your man strays. What is important is where you fit in the picture.
Does he respect you and treat you like a queen or is he an in-your-face reprobate who couldn't care whether you know or not? That is where it becomes hard for any man who truly loves his woman to dabble and not get caught. That is always a challenge for a man. As easy as it may seem, it is indeed difficult for them. It is the love and respect or lack thereof that is the relationship breaker.
Any man who genuinely cares for his woman will always make the effort to make her feel special even if it means ending the outside relationship. Of that, I am pretty sure!
