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New York, 11:00 AM
Tue Nov 10
73 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/22/09
I consider myself a grown-ass woman. I'll gladly take a grown-ass man.
09/22/09
It's just so messed up. She had a dad who was a certain way, highlighted by one specific incident, and he died shortly thereafter and when she was quite young, so she didn't get to know him as an adult. And from that, she generalizes -- and suggests that we all should generalize along with her -- about two false categories of menfolk. She's so freaked out at the idea of men that she has to make it a category that she avoids completely, and creates a new name altogether for the men she likes.
I think some of the best Modern Loves are highly specific and personal stories -- I've got nothing against someone writing something specific. But her apparent lack of self-awareness that her views are a specific-to-her coping mechanism for dealing with her own personal experience with a specific man who hurt and disappointed her, and instead making it a generalization, makes the whole thing pathetic.
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men are few and far between, and the world needs more of them.
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09/22/09
On the other hand, I think of my husband as a man. He has a certain maturity, a sense of being settled in to who he is, that I don't find in "guys."
It's not really an age thing, I don't think. It seems more about knowing yourself and your place in the world, and being okay with that.
09/22/09
Thanks ML for being sooooo cliched
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09/22/09
My father is a "man," traditionally defined - he works hard to provide for his family, can fix anything wrong with your car, got into fistfights growing up, will kill spiders, is overprotective of his daughters. He is loving and can be sensitive, which I think also measure a real man, but I've seldom seen him cry.
Those qualities of responsibility and protectiveness really appeal to me and I think they are increasingly hard to find.
Perhaps guys in my dating circles just don't have that manly blue-collar background? Or maybe as we've learned that women can fix cars and kill spiders too, men, as a whole, no longer have societal pressure to cultivate those "manly" skills/behaviors?
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09/22/09
"The world is full of guys. Don't be a guy. Be a man."
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09/22/09
And yep, he could shut my mom out when he didn't want to argue or deal with something and it made her nuts.
I've been holding out for a man in touch with his inner guy.
09/22/09
Edited to add: Haha, which is exactly what Sadie is arguing at the end. I suck at reading.
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