Warren Farrell on Love

"With confidentiality as the key, men’s groups open the door to men opening their hearts."

"The teenage female has less demand to perform and more resources to attract love. Her body and mind are more genetic gifts."

"Love doesn’t eliminate defensiveness, because love creates vulnerability, and defensiveness is vulnerability’s mask."

"Many of the qualities your son develops to kill in war—or be a hero at work—undermine the qualities it takes to love at home."

"The more a boy represses his feelings and puts armor around his heart, the harder it is to open our hearts to him."

"Women attempt suicide more often because they want to become the priority of those they love rather than always prioritizing them."

"The less our sons our trusted, the less women are able to really love them, and the more women feel entitled to use them as wallets."

"Fatherhood was about your dad trading in the old glint in his eye—what he loved to do—for the new glint in his eye: his love for you."

"When I feel very loved, when I nurture and support people, my experience is deepened. I feel connected to a larger purpose and meaning."

"From the male perspective, when commitment is associated with diamonds and mortgages, promises of love can feel like promises of payment."

"If the life of a beloved woman—whether romantic partner or mother—is at risk, his life is at risk."

"From evening soaps to preteen romances, inner values are for losers."

"The challenge is shifting our appreciation: being willing to give up some of dad’s money for more of dad’s love. And, in the process, altering the psyche that makes him lovable."

"We teach boys to associate being abused with being loved."

"And without love, your son’s purpose has no purpose."

"For thousands of years, most marriages were in Stage I--survival-focused. After World War II, marriages increasingly flirted with Stage II--a self-fulfillment focus... Love's definition is in a transition."

"Men’s pay paid women to love and nurture, to connect and feel. To be nurturer-connectors. In contrast, men received their pay by being some form of killer-protector. By becoming a human doing , not a human being ."

"When we train men for war, we lose some part of every man we train -- even if we win the war. When we train men to be better nurturers, even men who fail the course will have won. And so will every child they ever meet. Training men to love is a nation’s best investment."

"A man cannot tell whether a woman is in love with him or his security blanket until she is financially and psychologically independent enough to leave. Until a woman has learned how to leave, even she cannot be sure she has learned to love."

"Women-in-jeopardy movies are, in essence, the updated versions of men dying to save the princess from the dragon to earn her love. They are modern-day training films for teaching women to select the best protectors while weeding out the rest."

"When a boy drives down the serpentine road of mental health, feeling depressed and isolated because he feels no one who knows the real him loves him, no one needs him, and there’s no hope of that changing, he may one day find a cliff and drive off."

"So while in men’s magazines success is a power tool to get sex and love, and therefore the look of success is crucial, in women’s magazines love and sex are power tools to get success—and therefore both the look of love and the sexual tease/promise are crucial."

"en who work to make it as computer whizzes or owners of black Porsches are confused when they're told they are not vulnerable enough. We can't fall in love with men who appear invulnerable and expect vulnerability. Why did he want a black Porsche? Because he never saw an ugly woman get out of one."

"What makes a teenage boy’s anxiety so overwhelming is that a teenage boy’s socialization is the demand to perform without the resources to perform. As a result, not only are his risks many, but his failures many. And so apparent… Second, the biggest winners—the football players—are receiving love via self-abuse. For some boys, receiving love via self-abuse creates anxiety. But losing love creates even more anxiety."

"Somehow, women’s romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said “No”. They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this “marry the rapist” theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women’s most enduring romance novels."

"The New England Journal of Medicine has recently reported that speaking about one’s faults creates abnormalities in the pulsations of our heart. Tiny abnormalities? No. Abnormalities as great as those produced by riding a stationary bicycle to the point of either exhaustion or chest pain. Perhaps , then, contribute to men being four times more likely than women to suffer heart disease before age fifty. In essence, our sons might be practicing heart-disease training."

"While the label “date rape” has helped women articulate the most dramatic aspect of dating from women’s perspective, men have no labels to help them articulate the most traumatic aspects of dating from their perspective. Now, of course, the most traumatic aspect is the possibility of being accused of date rape by a woman to whom he thought he was making love. If men did label the worst aspects of the traditional male role, though, they might label them “date robbery,” “date rejection,” “date responsibility,” “date fraud,” and “date lying."