Dating : Men’s advice. If you treat someone as if they are on a pedestal, you’re attached to the idea of them, not the actual person. Why would they want to be in relationship with someone who acts nervous and unworthy around them?
Hollywood and other forms of western romanticism have programmed men with the false message that women are to be viewed as goddesses, not actual people.
The story of a weak, quirky man who wins the heart of a beautiful woman primarily through pure devotion and acts of servitude, presents a false representation of how attraction actually works. Logically, we all know these stories are fantasy, but somehow this idea is still adopted and accepted by a large number of men. This often leads to situations of unhealthy infatuation, years in the friend zone, or a pattern of unrequited attraction.
We want to be in relationships with those who make us feel comfortable, we can have fun with, laugh with, who evoke positive emotions.
Since men are visually driven, we will project our idealized fantasy of someone if we have a high level of physical attraction to them, instead of vetting them and getting to know them as an actual person before developing deeper feelings so quickly. Women may find someone they find physically attractive, but are typically more concerned how someone makes them feel before developing feelings. This is primary reason why some handsome guys will sometimes have trouble holding down a long term relationship.
It is crucial to take your time to get to know a woman and not fetishize her beauty before deciding that she is someone you want to be with. Beautiful Women may be aware that they are attractive, but don’t view themselves as un flawed goddesses that some men make them out to be. They can be clumsy, they have frustrations at work and with family. They do mundane things like go to the grocery store.They can be insecure. They are human, just like you.
If you find yourself acting nervous or feeling unworthy around someone, ask yourself if you’re projecting your needs and desires onto them or fetishizing their physical appearance, rather than seeing them as complete. Can they feel safe and comfortable around someone who is intimated by their mere presence? There is no way a healthy relationship, or any relationship at all, can happen with that dynamic. If you cannot be yourself and feel like you are in their equal, you must realign your thought process and focus on staying present, not projecting needy fantasies onto women you truly don’t know.
What if you’re always anxious, regardless of person or situation?
What if you have no friends but instead a history of being bullied and ostracized by your fellow peers?
Just go 5head and treat them like your sisters… Or rather, treat them how you want others to treat them.
Very good! Thank you!
Definitely been there and I look back on that in discomfort. And she didn’t even deserve the pedestal. But ah, you live and you learn.
Appreciate this post alot. It hits home but it’s a read I needed.
This is a really good perspective. Thanks for sharing!
I wish every guy would understand this. I can’t be myself with you if you idolize me – because that’s not who I am. I don’t want to have to fall off the pedestal for you to see me for who I am. Love me for me, not for what I represent in your fantasies
Good post but whenever someone mentions men are visual creatures I often find myself confused with the statement. Are you saying men fall in love visually or is it more men are more lustful when seeing someone hot. I am always lustful when I see an attractive women but never do I feel like I’m in love with her.
The reality is we should never look up to anyone Nor look down on anyone.
If we do this, we will see everyone and everything for what it is.
Good advice. I was very much in this trap when I was school. Had to learn many hard lessons to get it to stick. Now I’m all about spreading the message to others. Don’t be like I was. The pining, the friendzoning, waiting in the wings, uncomfortable (for both us) confessions and pleas, the romantic gestures and painstaking lengths….that’s just what it is – painstaking. It took a very unhealthy obsession that I had, and later an unhealthy obsession somebody else had for me, to make me finally understand. And it took a lot of pain and darkness to get there. *Don’t put them on the freaking pedestal* it’s bad news for you and it’s unfair to them!
I feel like this applies for women viewing men as well- being more in love with the idea of someone than the reality of who they are.
Very interesting perspective thanks for sharing
I’m the first one to tell you this is me. If a woman’s shoes are dirty, I’ll lay down on the ground and she can clean them on me. Now that’s obviously not to be taken literally. The point is that I treat women like gold.
Now here’s my question; I’ve been left, cheated on, et al – and they always pick a guy who quite frankly treats them not so well over me. I’m sure that someone more “woke” than I will tell me that there’s a correlation there. I’m a rational man. First and foremost. So it just doesn’t make sense to me that you’d leave someone who treats you like gold in the dust and take someone who treats you like garbage. I don’t see any of it as a lack of self-respect on my part. I see it as acts of love.
Here’s an example I guess; a woman I was seeing told me randomly one day that she really liked a mug she saw in a coffee shop. Unbeknownst to her, I went back and bought it for her. She melted when she got it; said she was shocked that I paid so much attention to what she said that I would do that. Her abusive baby daddy was over one day visiting his kids, and asked where she got the mug. When she told him, he literally threw it on the floor and broke it. Said only a d-bay would think that was a good gift to give a woman. Down the road, she got back with him, leaving me in the dust. I’ll just never understand how decent people get left for jerks. Such is life I guess. None of that will change me. I’m still going to treat women the way I was taught to treat them.