Because most men are romantics, they struggle to accept the reality that a woman’s love for a man is usually conditional. And quite understandably, being romantics, they discount the observations of any men who tell them otherwise for a variety of reasons that range from accusations of misogyny to serial zifogyny.
It is, however, a little harder to discount the opinion of an intelligent and deeply empathetic woman on the subject. One cannot reasonably accuse Florence Nightengale of hating anyone or lacking observational skills.
In one sense, I do believe I am “like a man,” as Parthe says. But how? In having sympathy. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other woman attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?
I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most shocking selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from their own experience.
They really don’t have sympathy or the ability to empathize, because they are always judging everyone and every thing as a product on a social value scale that relates to their own egos and bounces off of themselves. There is no capability for genuine feeling.
This is what I have experienced with women, there is no capability for genuine feeling for other humans, or really in general, except when those feelings are for themselves and the other people are just proxies to bounce ideas off of.
“Women Aren’t Capable of Love”, Florence Nightingale
This doesn’t mean that men shouldn’t pursue marriage or stop loving the beloved, nor does justify the hatred, contempt, and fury so often exhibited by low-status males who are losers in the sexual and marital markets. But it does suggest that most men very much need to modify their basic conceptual models to account for the female tendency toward solipsism and the consequent effects.
UPDATE: A thought for the reactive contrarians to consider: If female love is unconditional, why do men have to earn it and prove themselves worthy of it?