[bryony]

Bryony,

"Us"? So you do consider yourself primarily male? Big Grin

I suppose so, in the sense I'm a bio-male with no interest in transitioning.

I'm not sure you are quoting me precisely. I do idolise women in general though there are [specific] instances whose behaviour is abominable and repulsive; and on the whole due to evolutionary pressures, I think that their attitude to commitment is far, far better than ours, and in that sense at least (though there are others) they are better beings than those of us who still admit to being male.

Here's your original quote:

I've always thought that one of the reasons that I am the way I am is that I idolise women so much, in many ways because they are better than us. Time and again I see behaviour that shows how right this belief is.

As I said earlier, I don't subscribe to this belief and I think it certainly shows.

I think being good at commitment is only part of the story in regards to being an excellent partner. The other part I think is having the foresight and discipline to select a compatible person to marry, rather than marrying someone just because they are rich, good in bed or sexy. There's a saying that men want their wives to stay the same and women want their husbands to change. If there is any truth to this, I think it shows both sexes can be in denial about who they are really marrying.

Without this skill for finding compatability, women (and men) can be good at commitment but still be doomed to having lousy marriages. Frankly, I think very few happy and devoted partners just up and cheat at the drop of a hat. Instead, I think cheating is a symptom of a far greater problem that probably arose from a lack of communication and compatibility in personality. For instance, he may have cheated because she was withholding sex to manipulate him because they got into a disagreement about something and so on. If women divorced solely because of infidelity, I think women would soon figure out how to avoid the horny men who lack the discipline to not get into bed with another woman whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Well, we say a lot of things in shorthand which require clarification later. CA requoted my intentional meaning in the next message, so I won't repeat it. I still find the stereotypical female to be inherently more pleasant than the stereotypical male for the simple reason that evolution has made them that way. I would rather face a cow than a lion, for example, because evolution has made one more of a threat than the other. The male mammal, in what I would guess is the majority of species, takes the female by force, and I'm pretty sure that was how it was with our ancestors, and is programmed into our genes to be triggered by testosterone as sure as murder and mayhem. The programming triggered by estrogen produces behaviour which is, on the whole, far more admirable when war isn't looming.

I think it's worth stating for the record that, yes, I understand that marriages end for many reasons of failure. What I was particularly focused on were those failures caused by known deceit at the time of proposal.

To sum up, as this discourse has covered a lot of debate, and to bring it back to the original posting, my opinion is that it is wrong to encourage people, who have got a wife and kids, and from whom they have hidden their GD from day 1, to start growing breasts without telling them. It just compounds dishonesty upon dishonesty and contributing to the breakdown of a family which with counselling and willpower could be saved.

I'm probably considered old fashioned, romantic, or maybe just a fuddy-duddy, but I do believe that anyone who claims to have a loving relationship but does not conduct it with integrity is simply a scoundrel. Now this may not apply to the original post, but is a general point that governs my personal moral code. If being "modern" means abandoning integrity, then I want no part of modernity.

B.