This is part 2 … If you missed part one click here… The Love Coward

…This is not so much because women are braver as because a confirmed bachelor is still subject to less social criticism than and old maid. But love-cowardice in men may be deceiving because it produces two types of behavior which appear to be the opposite of one another.

On the one hand there is the proverbial woman-hater… the man who has never in his life been seriously interested in a woman, an perhaps has never even spent an evening with one. This type of old bachelor usually will live with his parents as long as they survive, and then get a sister or an aunt to take him in.

He does not really hate women; he is so attached to those women he has known from childhood that he does not dare to get himself tangled up with a strange one. And of course his women relatives, especially his mother, have done all they could to cultivate this feeling.

On the other hand… there is the last type of male the average person would call a love-coward. This is the man who had had four or five wives, or love affairs outside of marriage, and whom we refer to as a “Casanova”. He thinks he is an expert in love, and yet the truth is he has only played at it because he is too afraid of putting himself in a woman’s power to allow himself to form a very deep relationship.

I had better make it clear what sort of “love” I’m talking about. I’m not speaking of the unselfish love which we feel our parents gave us in our childhood… the love that gives everything and asks nothing in return.

The love I am writing about is that kind that one adult gives another… and especially the love a man feels for a woman who he regards as a possible mate…. and vice versa. Such love expects and wants a return… in fact, it would not exist but for some hope that a return will be forthcoming. Basically… you desire to fall in love with someone that is going to love you back… and love you for life.

In this sense a marriage, is a business proposition… not just a love match. So it is subject to the same risks as business in general. It involves the possibility of failure right from the start. The original proposal may be turned down or rejected, leaving you to feel that you have been treated unworthily. A rejected also involves disappointment, but I think it is the injury to your pride or ego that most people fear… and hate… most.

And… the more unsure of yourself you are to begin with, the more the idea of rejection will terrify you.

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