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posted by 4th Dwarf
Today, 5M is back with no real details of her trials, but another of those "why am I with M" lists.
I'm struck by 2 and 3:
2. He understands/accepts/loves me (in his way).Is that the problem? Is it that she can't love a person who would fully understand, accept and love her?
3. I doubt I can meet someone else who 1. I could love, 2. who would understand/accept/love me.
Peter Kramer has an interesting exploration in Against Depression. Early in the book he writes that he has encountered a significant number of otherwise mentally healthy men who have an almost pathological attraction to women prone to depression. Later in the book he notes that as melancholy and depression are more and more considered to be a "disease" and less and less a "noble state of mind", this attraction is diminishing, but it still seems to exist.
Which we can see every few days in the comments various men add to 5M's posts.
Later in the book, in looking for some possible upside to depression, Kramer speculates on whether there might be an evolutionary advantage for men to be attracted to depressed women. He puts forward one possible explanation.
Women are more likely to suffer from depression than men are. But once a person has suffered one bout of depression, men and women are equally likely to suffer subsequent bouts. One factor that appears to make women more likely to suffer an initial bout of depression is that they are generally emotionally attached to more people than men are. Losing a person one is emotionally attached to is a common trigger for a bout of depression.
So, someone who is depressed could be someone who forms strong emotional attachments. Which might be something a man would instinctively look for in a mate. [Kramer notes there are significant weaknesses with this theory. Like mothers who are too depressed to care for their children and cases of mothers killing their babies during post-partum depression.]
Going back to 5M. Perhaps she would see a man who understands, accepts and loves her as being a man who is attracted to her depression, her flaws and her weaknesses, and sees that as an abhorrent trait or a sickness.
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2 comments:
Interesting 4D. This goes hand in hand with traditional female wisdom that men prefer weak women to strong ones. (Or as the Former Chair once put it, most men like their woemn awkward and flirty).
So, weak women are more likely to be needy, therefore more loving to the emotionally starved male, who, apparently, spends most of his time in emotionally unattached states with people.
I hadn't put that all together before. I'd assumed it was because the (traditional) male likes to hold a solid position of superiority. Now I see that he just wants to be loved, and the weak are more likely to give that to him.
Welcome Nathaniel,
A man of substance and honesty.
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