“Experience breeds cynicism. That’s why many people don’t believe in love anymore.”

• ME

Remember all those cool ass love songs from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s? I used to listen to all of them. Every damn one was queued up on my favorite device. I’d pine for a woman and listen to Night Ranger or some other hair band and quote them word for word that love, true love, existed in some woman that I was intrigued with. I remember specifically laying in my dorm room in college listening to Van Halen’s “Why Can’t This Be Love” for my latest crush who I refused to talk to and I would sulk when she either did turn me down or I found out she had a boyfriend.

I’d imagine that having sex with such a woman would blow my mind, giving me some ridiculous high on top of the high of orgasm, and the afterglow of sex would be a session of cuddling followed by my thanking God or whoever else was listening that this woman fell into my lap.

This is the love story so many men are pining for. They wait, hope, and pray for a woman just like the above. She checks off everything important, but the most important part, that she has a vagina and she gives it to him, is the only thing that truly happens.

But as many of us in the manosphere have found out, the reality of love is much more difficult than the wide-eyed optimism of a beta male.

Optimism gives way to brutally painful truth when a man understands how many women are.

The man loves romantically, the woman loves pragmatically.

And he feels terrible when he finds this out. All the songs, all the movies, were lies to him.

But were they? Or were they just telling him what he longed to hear? That love is the answer to his life. That love is the reason he lives. That love for a woman is a critical part of his life, and if he doesn’t have it, he doesn’t have anything.

Yes, these are the things told to men willing to believe them.

Between The Two Genders

Love means different things to men and women. The word itself means much more to a woman than a man. When a woman says it, you know that there is deep meaning behind it.

Women don’t mess around when using the word “love” and you know it very quickly either for or against you if you make the bold assertion that as a man you “love” your woman.

Wanna see where you stand with a woman? Say you love her. She’ll let you know if a few moments when you see her face.

Just like with the words “honor”, “loyalty”, and “dedication”, as well as many other words, the meanings mean different things to men and women. Ask a man about honor, and he’ll tell you about the men’s lives he saved in war. Ask a woman about honor, and she’ll tell you that a man’s word is an honor to her, and he will honor her with his presence and dedication. Ask a woman about loyalty, she’ll speak in the context of a relationship, a man who doesn’t cheat on her. Ask a man? He’s talking about brotherhood, holding himself to a standard with his brothers or friends, supporting them when they need him.

The context by which both genders take these words are important, which is why, just like with love, both genders see it differently.

Men use the word too flippantly, and women take the word too seriously, but it’s how both are programmed to deal with it.

Never has there been a word that elicits such different reactions from men and women as the word “love”.

When I used it too often in my dating and my first marriage in my 20’s and 30’s, the word lost all meaning to the people that I used it to. I thought the word was needed in my everyday vernacular. I said it all the time, losing the meaning, very special meaning, to my then wife as well as those who I kept talking to using it as a punch line.

Women take the word “love” VERY SERIOUSLY. You don’t go around loving someone and saying that word unless you mean it, and if you do mean it, she’ll mean it back, or you’ll be on the road to Nopeville very quickly.

The L word lets you know where you stand very quickly, so saying it, similar to the Harry Potter “his name” nonsense, is akin to a “Leeroy Jenkins” event, when a conclusion happens very fast regardless of what outcome you want.

Love In The Sphere

What happened to all those love songs when I unplugged and took the red pill?

Trashed. Never to be listened to again. Because the love in those songs doesn’t exist.

The love in those songs is a love for a man who is blinded by the illusion that women will love them back that way, they don’t and they won’t.

The differences in the genders come to a head when in a relationship when a man is under the impression that the woman will love him the way all the songs, the movies, and the TV shows show.

Women, as I’ve learned very quickly through my dealings with them, take the word love very seriously, but in practice, can be cold blooded with their “love”. They can pull the attention they give to a man as quickly and as brutally as a cold dictator, leaving men reeling. Women are masters of emotion, working in it, and they can savage men, who aren’t good at dealing with emotions at all, and give them sometimes permanent issues to sift through.

Men who don’t know this are in for a rude awakening. Men who experience this have many paths, but the two they hit are utter bitterness and competent understanding. In short, knowing what you get with a woman is going to be key in understanding their views and actions on love.

What the pill and the manosphere teach men is something they should know when they get into the dating world, that love is a four letter word. And it’s one that need not be stated unless you absolutely need to say it.

The misconception is that the manosphere hates the word love. We don’t, however, recommend using it often, especially knowing how women and men react to the word. It’s that we stress the importance of the word, the blind usage of it can only lead to bad things, especially men putting their heart out there all the time to women only to be bashed or left after using it. And yes, I’ve been there in my usage of it. The last two times I said “I love you” to women, over two and three years ago, respectively, I was left quicker than you can say “matrimony”.

Which is why when it comes to love, the manosphere wants men to understand that with that word comes a responsibility to use it correctly and when the time comes to use it.

They want men to understand what women feel the meaning of it is without going off half-cocked as many men do when they utter the word.

What I’ve always said, and will always say to men, is to be extra careful. Matters of the heart are not for the weak.

It’s much too easy these days for a man to become enamored with a woman, only to have his heart broken by her, then to do something terrible to either himself or the woman. It’s why men must gain control of their emotions and be masters of their world before having a woman come into it.

Love is a dangerous thing for men, especially those who can’t control themselves on falling into it, from it, or a broken heart out of it, which is why the manosphere takes such precautions to not use the word as much as it’s being used.

We understand how quickly men can fall. We understand how men can take a word like this and make it harmful.

We don’t hate love. We hate the emotions it conjures up in the ill-prepared. We hate what men who’ve been hurt by it can do with it when they hear it. We hate what men do when they get their hearts broken.

We must understand that love exists, but in different states in each gender. And the sooner men and women understand this about each other, the sooner we will see acknowledgement of love being more than a buzz word, but a word that has real meaning, real depth, and of course, real consequence.

I’ve learned through these last years of being unplugged to hold my tongue when stating I “love” someone. It’s a very big word and a very real feeling. And many men think they feel it, but don’t. And then they get hit and dragged.

So make sure, before you utter this word, that you understand the implications of using it. That you understand what she’s going to hear when you say it, and understand that she feels the same way.

But also understand that when you hear it and when she hears it, it means different things.

And with that understanding, love can grow between you both in a better, more clear direction.