A visual representation of the portion of a woman’s personality truly understood by men

 

It is with a bit of hesitation that I tackle my first post in the category of Romance and Relationships.  I had envisaged this category from the early inception of this blog, as I-think-I-have-a-lot-to-say-and-share… however it is a risky area for a variety of obvious reasons.

More importantly, how can I portray to know about the topic, given my apparent inability to properly settle?  At the end, I reflected on the observation that “good jockeys do not need to have been good horses earlier in their career” and if a mediocre footballer like Bearzot could become the best coach ever in leading Italy to win the 1982 world cup;  well maybe I can also share my experience in this fascinating area, if anything else to put to use my experience and the disproportionate amount of time I spent thinking about it.

The topic of Romance and Relationship is obviously fascinating for a plethora of reasons, especially because it touches us in such a personal way, and has produced millennia of artworks, poetry and philosophy.  Plus, it is fun to talk about it as each one of us has comparable knowledge and right to contribute.

Barriers to entry are low: a social conversation on solving differential equations in the Riemann’s space is likely to have few contributors (unless taking place somewhere at MIT) but a chat about love?  Everyone is welcome!

Like for many other subjects, I find frameworks a particularly interesting way to talk about a topic, especially for something as complex, esoteric and multifaceted as the topic of love.  And one of the best frameworks I have found to interpret the nature of a love relationship is the one called the Five Love Languages, developed by Gary Chapman.

Dr Chapman maintains that once our love is triggered (either through a mysterious process or as explained by a framework outside the scope of this mini-essay), the key issue becomes one of maintaining our love for our partner alive.  To achieve this, we need to understand and speak the “love language” of our partner, otherwise our efforts run the risk of being vain.

The five love languages are:

• Word of appreciation and confirmation – expressing verbally our love
• Acts of service – doing something nice or alleviating the chore burden for our partner
• Quality time – the ability to remember and celebrate special occasions
• Receiving gifts – of various material value
• Physical touch – which includes but it is not limited to sex

Dr Chapman maintains that each person has a dominant language, so if we understand the dominant language of the person we love, we should concentrate our efforts to please them in that area.  For example, no point in showering with presents a lady who cares about acts of service, she will react better to us doing something with her instead.

I have been myself unable to properly speak the love language of the lady I loved, and vice versa, with disastrous effect on our relationship.

However my main point is not to present this framework, which anybody can research on the web.  Rather, to complain about it.

Or more specifically, to complain to women’s readers of this blog.

The 5 love languages is a great idea, but how does someone cope with a Polyglot woman?  Dr Chapman states that each one of us must have a dominant language yet – when I asked a lady I really liked to undertake the test, the result was confusing!  Despite the test being built as a conjoint analysis, and offering clear trade-offs, the results were such that 4 out of the 5 languages were equally important.  A Multilanguage preference, a Polyglot indeed.

Basically, a woman who cares about everything, hence – my contrast – very hard to satisfy.  A polyglot ladies wants the lot, often in unpredictable, random sequence and order. She keeps you on your toes, and can always have an excuse not to be satisfied.  A lady like this is dangerous for any romantic man.

So what is the conclusion?

Am I unlucky and I only meet unachievable polyglot ladies?

Or are all women truly mysterious and impossible to catalogue according to  any framework, no matter how cute the framework is?  My view is that ultimately men are destined to lose…. or they should accept that a real courtship should never end.