"A Guide to Men" by Helen Rowland - 03 - True Love--How to know it (Variations)

TRUE LOVE-HOW TO KNOW IT TRUE LOVE is nothing but friendship, highly intensified, flavored with sentiment, spiced with passion, and sprinkled with the stardust of romance. True Love can be no deeper than your capacity for friendship, no higher than your ideals, and no broader than the scope of your vision. True Love, in the cave man, is expressed by a desire to beat a woman, and to pull her around by the hair. True Love, in the Broadwayite, is expressed by an insatiable craving to buy things for a woman. True Love, in a husband, is expressed by his willingness to give his wife anything, from the tenderest piece of steak to a divorce, if it will make her happy. True Love, in any man, is the essence of unselfishness; and the most selfish thing in the world. It is the selfishness that transcends selfishness; the vanity that puts egotism in the shade.[36] True Love, in a bachelor, is exemplified by his willingness to marry a woman-against all his instincts, his sense of self-preservation, and his better judgment. True Love, in a born flirt, is evidenced by his inability to think of any other woman, while he is kissing a particular one. True Love, in an author, is demonstrated by his self-restraint, in refusing to make "copy" out of a love affair. True Love, in a college boy, is expressed by his ability to think of somebody besides himself for a whole hour at a time. It is the flash of light, by which one sees clearly that to do for another, give to another, and sacrifice for another, will get one the most happiness out of life. True Love, in the poet, is expressed in soul kisses, and by his inability to do any work for days at a time.[37] We speak of "falling in love," as though it were a pit or an abyss; but True Love is the light on the mountain-top, to which we must eternally climb. True Love is a relic of the Victorian Age. It still exists, here and there, like the buffalo; but in the face of eugenics, feminism, and the growing masculine determination not to marry, it may some day have to take a place beside the Dinosaurus in the Public Museum. VARIATIONS FLIRTATION is a duel in which the combatants cross lies, sighs and eyes-and the coolest heart wins. Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common-sense. In the medley of love a man's soul sings a sonata, while his heart plays a waltz and his pulse beats to rag-time. Better be a strong man's "rib" than a weak man's "backbone." True love isn't the kind that endures through long years of absence, but the kind that endures through long years of propinquity. A man seldom thinks of marrying when he meets his ideal woman; he waits until he gets the marrying fever and then idealizes the first woman he happens to meet. Love is what tempts a man to tell foolish lies to a woman and a woman to tell the fool truth to a man.[39] It took seven hundred guesses for Solomon to find out what kind of a wife he wanted; and even then he seems to have had his doubts. The only thing more astonishing than the length of time a man's love will subsist on nothing is the celerity with which it is surfeited the moment it has any encouragement to feed on. Even when a man knows that he wants to marry a woman, she has to prove it to him with a diagram before he is really convinced of it. A man is so apt to mistake his love of experiment for love of a woman that half the time he doesn't know which is which. Why is it that a man never thinks he has tasted the cup of joy unless he has splashed it all over himself, as though it were his morning bath? A man is so versatile that he can read his newspaper with one set of brain-cells while he carries on a conversation with his wife with another set.[40] A girl hides her emotions under a veil of modesty, a spinster under a cloak of cynicism, a wife under a mantle of tact, and a widow under a cloud of mystery-and then women wonder why they are "misunderstood." Proposing is a sort of acrobatic feat, in which a man must hang on to his nerve with one hand and to the girl with the other. If he lets go of either, he is lost. In love, as in poker, men play just to play-and then proceed to throw away what has been easily won, without any thought of its value. Thus gamblers so often die in poverty and Lotharios in loneliness. Nowadays, a truly chivalrous girl will "lie like a lady" in order to protect a trusting man's vanity. The woman who fascinates a man is not the one who looks up to him as the sun of her existence, but the one who merely looks down on him as one of the footlights.[41] Don't doubt a man when he says, "I never loved like this before." Each time a man falls in love with so much more ease and facility that he doesn't recognize it as the same old emotion at all. The first time a man lies to his wife he is surprised to discover how easy it is to do it. After that he is surprised to find out how hard it is not to do it. A man always speaks of having "given" his heart to a woman as though he had done something generous and noble; whereas, nine times out of ten, she probably had to wrench it from him. About the only things in connection with his wife for which a man shows any respect after a few years of marriage are her reputation and her toothbrush.