I have been blessed over life by the most extraordinary collection of people coming in and out of my life. And this has been true of random strangers as well as people more formally introduced.
Take for example the absolutely stunning woman who just sat down next to me on the train. I was in her seat, the window, and the scramble to remove my belongings from my actual seat, the aisle, was the gateway to a conversation that sustained us, breathlessly from Philadelphia to Baltimore on Amtrak. She wore a smile and delight on her face like bubbles…and had the most bright and inquisitive eyes. She is/was a genius, working in a field of maths that put her at the forefront of AI.
We talked about love, crying, mortality, divorce, death, aging, math, computers, and a million other things. The freedom of flight with a stranger. The warm familiarity of shared language and circumstance. An unspoken bond of shared vulnerability. She told me how much she would love to have someone who just cooked for her, who would ask her what she would like to eat and then would make it for her. And I told her that my dream was to cook for a woman who would tell me such things.
For not one moment did the back-and-forth wane. And as I looked at her, half my age, and so stunningly gorgeous, and thinking of how she might have found me…particularly well-dressed on this day, wearing very high waisted black trousers from my favourite designer, very high heeled boots, a crispy white blouse, a chocolate suede belted coat, my hair big and flowing, and a push-up bra making the most of my still growing cleavage…I was also wearing a magical necklace which is the symbol of the female Buddha, and manifesting and putting out the energy.
She introduced herself, first name and last, and I did the same. We will only ever see each other again if she chooses that or if some weird twist of fate makes it so, but it was an enlightening reminder of the random beauty of life.
Relationships which come about two people eventually have to have equity or they will die out. Equity in a relationship, in love, can stem from many things, and no two factors are weighed in the same way by any two people. This is also true more generally, men and women, for example, might value things very differently. People from different socio-economic, religious, sexual, spiritual, educational backgrounds would similarly value things differently.
The most common factors might include money, health, looks, intelligence, fitness, values, emotional availability. Men, for instance, might place the looks of a partner higher than women do. Women might place financial security higher, particularly those for whom having children is a key objective. My wife, in her coaching of me when she thought I was cheating on her reminded me that I had to make her laugh. The only woman in my life at that time my dear was me.
Humans spend an awful lot of time wanting to be in relationships. Being single is often not considered a social positive. But it is also very often more interesting—the desire to put oneself out there as a single person is life-enriching in ways that couples’ live are often not.
Many men are bitterly resentful that a woman might seek financial security. They might even refer to this as gold-digging, or some other equally negative thing to say. This is a failure to understand the different levels of commitment to child-rearing that present themselves to a man or woman. It is also to ignore that women have sexual power, the power to choose, in ways that men do not. At least, most men. Women are desirable. Men are not; men desire. I realise this is a generalisation, but the peacock’s feathers are bright on one side of the gender divide in the peacock world. The same is true for humanity.
There is also the exhaustion of railing against the patriarchy. Not everyone wants to keep fighting. And there are some men, fit me, Star Child informs me, sports stars, who can pull and fxxk in an hour when out with friends, go out for a quickie and rejoin the group with barely a hair astray. An exception to the rule.
Women put themselves on display to encourage men, the best among them, to display themselves for them. The patriarchy is an elaborate superstructure which has been created to hide the power that the female of our species wields in choice. Keep women dependent, deny them agency, shame them over their sexuality, their attractiveness, and succeed in levelling the playing field for men. Only it isn’t working anymore.
Women are claiming the mantle of power that they are born with. An empowered, independent woman has the freedom of choice, and will make that choice with a free will that is not coloured by a position of weakness.
I kind of like that kind of woman. I can’t say I much care for the passive kind. Not in a negative way, just not my thing. Most women, though, don’t like the kind of man that I was. I was certainly not passive. Nor was I conventionally weak either. Lot’s of women are drawn to abusive men. I may never understand that. The women in my life have invariably had a stretch with abusive men. Am I where they go to recover?
We are who we are. I have always wanted the most beautiful women to be with me. I don’t think its shallow. They are more challenging. The female version of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth is to be drop-dead gorgeous. Don’t get me wrong, please. Pretty girls are more likely to be abused. That’s a theory, not a fact, but a disturbing reality. Wealth begets its own problems.
I wonder if my mother was abused. It would explain a lot. And she was gorgeous. And as it happened, kinky, and in ways that no child should know. At least not as a child.
She once told me that the most beautiful girls were always the loneliest. That was certainly true of her generation. I am not sure if it is true today. She spoke of her lived experience, but her words were a lesson for me. In a room of people, if there is a gorgeous woman I will just go up and talk to her. That’s the way of things. That’s how I met Star Child. Out of a sea of 200 people I spotted her.
Harry Cipriani, of great bar fame, once said, “the secret to a really great bar is that the room be small enough that one gorgeous woman can change the energy in the room.” If there is such a person in the room, I will want to talk to her, and I will. Most of the time they like me. When they don’t I usually leave the party. Its best that way. There are other rooms after all.
Did I answer the question in the headline? Nope. What’s the answer? Just be you. Bew charming, solicitous, listening, humble, and with an open heart. And if that doesn’t beget her love then nothing will. And when it does, be worth it.
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I have been enjoying your posts when I have the time to read them. I like your openness and honesty in your transition. I am getting a glimpse of a different world that is part of my world but separate and yet no separate.
I found myself not agreeing with most of what you said here, while at the same time thinking this might be true in another’s world. When I was young, I was rarely called beautiful and I never felt beautiful. People didn’t respond to me like they do to beautiful women, even when they did call me beautiful, their response did not live up to that statement. I didn’t care if I was beautiful or not as in the standard external beauty that men and women are instantly caught by. And yet, I could dress up and create such beauty but to me it was artificial. For me, beauty is what is on the inside and yet people, men and women, rarely took the time to discover what I was beyond the external. They saw a woman who is independent, and able to be comfortable on her own and in her own skin without all the frill and glamour. Being myself meant this is who they saw and formed a judgement from their first impression deciding that I neither wanted or needed someone in my life. The problem is, their assumption was wrong only in the aspect of how they perceived that want and need to be. So most rarely bothered to discover who I am beneath the external layer. Being myself, had meant I am more alone than the beautiful women your mother told you about.
~Lu
I just saw this comment…it got lodged into the spam area of the blog, which seems to happen the first time someone comments. That post kind of took on a life of its own.
It was originally meant to be about my mad quest to woo the professional sex worker. My closest friend says I do this because I know I will fail. That I am afraid of succeeding at relationships so this is a safe place for me to work against myself. But as you can see the post ended up being about something entirely different.
Many years ago, a Harvard professor whose name I don’t remember, put out a theory about partner attraction, and used many different factors, including looks, money, health, and other softer things such as optimism/outlook on life, sense of humour to formulate a hypothesis of what attracts people to one another and then holds them.
I can relate to your comment. I think that my mother would have too. She was an “ugly duckling” and only came into her beauty after she lost her awkwardness and stepped into adulthood. I think that my father, despite being a shit in so many ways, was instrumental in her finding her grace. I remember dating a girl in high school, I think we were about 14 or so. Nobody liked her, nobody wanted to dance with her (we were together in the same school and also in ballroom dancing). She and I always ended up dancing together because nobody else would dance with her. She was tall like me.
And I discovered that she was ostracised for her height and slight goofiness/awkwardness as was I. Those insecurities we suffer from our classmates linger forever–you never quite believe in your own beauty. Later, I couldn’t quite believe that people wanted to photograph me, or to have me model their clothes. I felt a kind of freak, and ironically, the agency I was with at the time was called “Ugly”.
The difference between Ex-Mistress and New Mistress, both outwardly gorgeous women, is that New Mistress is even more beautiful from the inside. It is so rare. Rare in humanity, but also rare for someone who is conventionally attractive to have a sufficiently developed sense of self to have that kind of calm inner beauty you are describing about.
There is nothing more beautiful than an independent woman. A strong woman. Especially since society seems to encourage or foster a lack of independence in women. It seems so wrong. It makes it all the more impressive when a woman decides to have the world on her own terms.
One of my friends in the professional kink community is a woman who is very much like this. She has built a business for herself, has a collection of clients who have been with her for ages, one for her entire career, but she lives on her own. She says what you say. “I have friends. I have community. And I have a companion when I want one. But for the rest, I want to live my life on my own, on my own terms.” I think it is admirable.
We seek partners and want them until we have them…and then when they’re here, we tire of them. Separate bedrooms, separate bathrooms, whatever, are devices to cope with how intrusive and difficult it is to live with someone else.
Inner beauty is what lasts. Inner beauty is what you are remembered for. Inner beauty begets respect. Outer beauty is fleeting and attracts very different, more superficial feelings in others. You might be drawn to someone initially because of what they look like, but you only stick around because of what they’re like on the inside.
-PLJ