Looking for the right one(s) (3): "Woman" starts with an "M"

This post was inspired by a song called "Mistress and Maid" by Sir Paul McCartney from his 1993 album "Off the Ground." The lyrics tell the story of two people living together - the man is bored with the woman, who, in turn, is suffering from a lack of intimacy and connection with him: "In her bed she wants to shout at the back of his head Look at me, look at me, look at me, I'm afraid. See what it's come to, I'm just your mistress and maid." Meanwhile, the man "studies the form of every appealing soubrette", and it is suggested that he's reviewing sexually oriented periodicals. - He has a wandering eye and a wandering mind. In short, he is one step away from committing factual adultery. In her book The State of Affairs, Esther Perel proposes the hypothesis that "Men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy; women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy." If Leo Tolstoy is right that boredom is the desire for desires, I asked myself what more could a man desire out of a woman if she is already what is widely considered the best of both worlds - domesticity and adventure. Then all kinds of other M-words started coming up - all representing a specific female role, function, and place in a man's heart, home, and hideaway. Here's just an unexhaustive list:

1. MADONNA - idealization of divinity, virginity, and the holiest of female images. Most attractive to men in need of a sympathizer, especially if such is not available anywhere around, it must be invented and then sold as "found" inside and above. The eminent is just too painful to provide compassion, the real too lacking perfection to provide understanding, their mother too unmotherly to them, or not considered mother enough. Jesus' mother must be better.

2. MOTHER of heirs - nurturing and stable like the earth beneath the feet, source of life sustenance, and continuation of tradition, most appealing to men concerned about the heredity of their good genes, their fine property that runs in the family, or the security of their old age.

3. MISTRESS - a (passionate) lover who ignites intense, even if short-lived, extreme emotions from bliss to desperation that hook the dopamine-mediated reward system in the brain much the same way casino slot machine unpredictability makes the unlikely win ever more attractive to poor and miserable hope-addicts.

4. MUSE - a source of inspiration, zest for life, discovery, and creation, who can uplift the spirits without the use of spirit drinks, she is different from the daily gray chores, maybe creative, funny, looking, or sounding weird in her charming ways. (She's Funny That Way)

5. MENTOR - a wise and trusted advisor in all matters possible, some sort of editor of major (and minor) life decisions. (The rom-com Two Weeks Notice is one of my favorite examples.)

6. MATE - loyal and trustworthy companion in good and bad: room-mate, flat-mate, class-mate, soul-mate - anytime, anywhere, right next to her man as the complementary piece of a duo that moves, walks, talks, and laughs as one.

7. MAID - housekeeper, cook, personal assistant, secretary, first-aid provider, nurse, policewoman, etc., roles that secure the pain-free, care-free, easy life.

8. MAIDEN - someone to be saved, protected, and taken care of, a rose to a little prince, a damsel in distress, a sick woman, or a girl playful, cute, and helpless like a kitty.

9. MONARCH - a ruler and order-giver to be pleased and pampered, but who sets borders and definitions, gives life a clear goal, direction, structure, and routine where otherwise there would be none.

10. MODEL - someone to be armcandyied around as an ornament symbolizing status for the envy of the young and/ or poor men who cannot afford the luxury of beauty personified.

It is fair to say that men serve the respective equivalents of the above roles and many more: savior, father figure, father to her children, lover, muse, mentor, mate, footman/ lackey, sinner/ badboy to be reformed as a (lifetime) project, monarch, playboy/ boytoy, etc. In addition, even a muse needs a muse, and that higher-order muse is a man to a woman just as often as a woman is to a man. Therefore, I wouldn't see any problem at all with such categorization of male and female roles if they were not revealing the objectification of women and men alike as some good in stock for supply in times of need to be consumed or taken care of as part of the furnishing - a sort of living inventory. When placed into a category, the personality of the particular person more easily fades away to make way for a label. That same label attracts like blood the people whose unmet needs have turned them into sharks on an instinctual, primitive lookout for meat. I realized these archetypes weren't just theoretical; they formed the brutal checklist of the modern dating economy, turning every first date into a job interview for a specific M-word vacancy. At least this was my first-hand experience of dating facilitated by dating apps.

I was approaching the place and time of the date in a mood to jump into the great unknown with someone, only to find the same job interview-like questions for the open position of such and such from the above list repeated over and over again. I guess what felt more sad than offensive was the realization that my date was so engrossed in their own all-consuming need, so much in a hurry to satisfy it, that there was virtually no time and space left for looking away from catering to the need to pay attention to me. Even if I was across the table, the whole time looking right into their eyes, they were physically there but mentally far away into the movie-making of a dreamed future where they are already with someone who shares their white picket fence, mortgage, bills, honeymoon, travel destinations, dinner parties with friends and family, etc. Even though I approved most of my dates' aspirations, I was bothered by feeling measured and evaluated while the guys (most of the time, unaware of what they were doing) clumsily attempted to place me in the category that would fill their vacancy best. My train of thought was going this way:

"My date is...:

-> unable to be with me in the present. Perhaps this is because I ... (fill in with 1000 ideas of how I am doing things wrong) and/or he is...

-> so bad at math that he misses out the fact that if there is no value in the parts (single moments, like this one here, right now), there will be no value in the total - the culminating moment after event x, y, z never takes place, because...

-> if every moment is just a jam for tomorrow, the jam will get less, rather than more, as life passes the zenith point because...

-> the days ahead become less than the days behind, and selling dreams to oneself gets harder to do, disappointment with plans comes about, as investment in the days and years before was not made because...

-> the time was spent on dreaming, so there was nothing that could pile up. Ultimately,

-> what was sold to oneself as a prize, once caught, revealed itself to be air in a bag.

-> The popped balloon is lying ashamed, torn, and broken on the floor.

-> The end N.E.V.E.R justifies the means.

-> People allow themselves to be used, only if they: 1) believe that using each other is inevitable/ don't know any better, 2) think they use the other person more, 3) want to be used (to earn redemption or to satisfy a strike of vulnerable narcissism)

-> Using people is repulsive; actually, it is disgusting.

-> A notorious celibate and a bachelor, Emmanuel Kant viewed sexual activity as an objectification of a person, stating that it "makes of the person an Object of appetite," but then, are there any human relationships that are free from mutual exploitation, or does it stop being an exploitation if there is mutual consent? - Maybe. But so many people don't know what they are really consenting to when they do. Is then the loss of innocence the price of a lesson learned?

-> I'd rather live and die alone than treat a man as a means to my ends or suffer his objectification upon me, and if this is how I see things, I guess I will be alone for as long as I have a clue what is going on - I know the lesson. I need to be totally clueless about our future to be brave enough to jump into the arms of another. How I wish I had been so at least once in my life. Or maybe I was, but my fears were imagining catastrophic scenarios and reading them as too highly probable to risk losing myself. Not myself, but my shell. This comfortable, unbreakable, isolating, suicidal shell...

-> Maybe I should lose the shell and give up on end results, life goals, and master plans altogether to be able to live unarmed out in the world. Not maybe, for sure!

->Therefore, I stop looking for a partner right now. In earnest, I shouldn't have even attempted the search; I am only causing him and myself pain. I knew where it was going the first 3 seconds, so why did I give it more? How many times should I learn the same lesson?

=> Resolution: I leave it all to chance, providence, the gods above, circumstances, karma, or whatever it is that would take the initiative instead of me, for I have had enough and I am sick of it.

By that last note to self, the date is usually over, and (if I find them intelligent enough) I often imagine I have left them sitting alone with some of the following pity clues:

• "How disappointing to find that there is no single woman, even less so a girl, who could ever check all the items on my list. Even if there were such a glove to fit the hand, how could I be sure that what satisfies my needs today will do so tomorrow? Needs are so capricious and changing with age..."

• "How tiresome to look for something without really knowing what it is you are truly looking for because desire is a bad predictor of need."

• "How easily dissatisfied a human can be with their choice made under the influence of a need that changed because the need was taken over by a newer, stronger, stranger one."

• "How limiting a single lifetime compared to all the possibilities for experience and satisfaction."

• "How bodersome to realize that a girl for everything is a girl for nothing, for she lacks the signature trait that would turn indifference into passion.", etc.

The clueless who run away from facing the above pity clues, or are unable to comprehend them, stay caught up in their dreams of us. From them, I receive all kinds of things in their attempt to cloud my judgment to the level of their cluelessness.

From the ones who had had the clues before they met me, I receive silence, so they can move away undisturbed to someone clueless who could trust them more easily and press the play button when mine is on hold.

From the ones who got the clues because of me, I receive punishment instead of praise for being wiser sooner.

Yet, I know with all my heart that someday, somehow, somewhere, I will be the clueless one in the arms of someone who knows better. Not because I had suffered some sort of brain damage that made me forget everything I know from experience, but because someone would spark my admiration strongly enough to put my doubts to sleep. His calm wisdom would be deeper than mine, my faith in him strong, and my love for him brighter than my fears. As Mr Darcy says to Caroline Bingley in Jane Austine's "Pride and Prejudice": "A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment." My admiration and his adoration will be enough for us to throw away the lists and live in the Moment, and that would be the only M that matters.