Pre-Ramble
I’m coming out of what feels like a long, groggy, nap where I’m not quite sure what day it is, where I am, or how I got here.
The reality is, I probably burnt myself out quite a bit because of the mental tax of job searching and wanting to control the outcome of interviewing. You can’t — an interview process is a lot like dating and regardless of how well you do, there are a million and one factors that will never make the love last. She’ll break up with you even if you’re the perfect little baby boy (I am, obviously). So instead of focusing on what I cannot control, I'm learning to let go and let breathe as I’ve said before. Growth.
The past two weeks have been incredibly busy, between the interview process I’ve been talking about for over a month now, my sister visiting and us walking 40 miles over 4 days, and doing a really cool photoshoot for a DJ I’m obsessed with, I feel like I’ve exhausted myself.
Or rather, I feel like I haven’t been intentional with myself. Taking care of myself and rejuvenating — the last few days have been helpful. However, it has been just that. The last few days. We’re getting there, babes, we’re getting there. Do not fret.
I’ve been contemplating what to bring to you today. After my last long post did so well and was incredibly vulnerable — I worried I wouldn’t be able to compare and give you something to chew on, spit on, or lick up.
But I think I figured out it out. Love.
No — I didn’t figure out love, I figured out what I want to write about ON love. I posted this note:
And I got some pretty interesting takes. I’ve concluded that writers are a bunch of loveless lovers (an over generalization, of course).
But it got me thinking.
What is love?
Is it:
Baby don’t hurt me?
‘Luck’ —
Just a bunch of chemicals?
Universal?
when two people love each other very much they stick the pencil in the sharpener?
‘An irritating side quest’ —
‘Ever present, but ego taps in and out of it’ —
‘No’ —
Blue suede shoes?
Fleeting?
Everlasting?
Different from man to woman?
A thread weaving together a sweater that protects, warms, and keeps safe? —
The original human feeling? —
??????? —
To be honest, I don’t have an answer. But what I do have is a perspective as a person who feels that they operate very differently than what society tells a man how to love.
This is diving deeper in and following on to my post…
… where I talked about my experience with masculinity and ‘wHaT iT mEAnS tO BE a MAN’.
Today — we’re gonna talk about What It Means To Love As A Man*
I hope the haterz come out of the wood works for this one too, I love arguing.
*We’ll talk mostly about my relationship with Love as a straight man, but I’ll touch on how my understanding of love has expanded beyond love between men and women.
Taking A Bullet, Knife, Arrow, Nuke, Machine Gun, Chainsaw, Dildo to the Heart.
As we are all very aware — I’m a lover boy*. But how did I get here?
*I’ve written about love previously — but I didn’t really get deep into it or vulnerable. I was still figuring out this ‘writing’ thing. You can think of this as a part 2 to this post.
How did I learn to love? Who taught me it? What did society teach me about love?
What did I previously believe about love? And what do I believe about love today?
Let’s start from the beginning.
If I try really, really, reallyyyyyyy hard — I can remember the first time I was told ‘how to love’. My dad told me that the key to it is to ‘treat her like a Queen.’
As a young kid, I didn’t really know what that meant. And I’m sure many other men/boys were told similar things. To me — treating her like a Queen meant incredible sacrifices to keep her happy.
Society portrayed that as acts of heroism, saving a damsel in distress, being a knight in shining armor, cutting our own limb off to save her, ripping our heart out of our chest to hand it to her on a silver platter with a smile on our face.
It meant giving up bits and pieces of ourself to put HER together. Because, OF COURSE, a woman needed to be put together. They’re nothing without men. And ALL women want (NEED) to be saved.
Being a man, and being in love meant sacrifice. It also meant that we needed to provide. We must pay for everything, get her gifts without her asking, we must be ‘chivalrous.’ We must anticipate her every want, need, whim, and yearn. And we must be all knowing.
Being a man in love meant that we had to earn her fathers approval because her father was the most important man in her life.
It meant we must protect this delicate flower that needs all of OUR water and no one else’s. Love meant not sharing — love is for one person and one person only.
Men learn to weaponize love — the emotion that we are taught women feel most strongly. We learn that all that women want is OUR love, because we’re men. And here’s how we can use it to get what we want. Read
post below if you’d like an in-depth experience I firmly believe a large population of men have had:
This last part might not be taught explicitly — but it’s inherent. We’re taught that simply ‘being nice’ is enough to get you, as a man, sex, desire, intimacy.
Whatever WE want.
Society romanticizes men who have ‘Sex Appeal’ as deserving of love. We need to look clean shaven, have a suit and tie, be suave, have charisma, be a lady killer, and drink strong dark liquor to be appealing to women. That’s who women fall in love with.
Hollywood teaches us that:
We must fight like Maximus from Gladiator, must lady kill like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, be creative and seductive like Don Draper from Mad Men, have a ruthlessness like Tony Soprano from The Sopranos, break the rules like Tyler Durden from Fight Club, and be absolutely invincible like Superman.
The Bible teaches us that:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres
Society taught me that I must be ALL of these things as a man and then I will find love.
Society also teaches us men that love isn’t for us. It’s for everyone else and for us to provide it for them.
That is pretty confusing, right? Look at all the contradictions. A fighter for good, a mobster, an adman who sleeps around and cheats on his wife, an alien. We can do and be all of these things and we will receive it, even though it isn’t for us.
For me: love was taught in contradictions — you must be everything a woman needs, but give her the space and distance for independence. Even though she needed to be dependent on me.
We must be a fighter, hard, stoic, domineering — but soft, loving, gentle and caring towards her.
Love is fighting for everything we believe in while sacrificing all of ourself.
Love was simple. We do all of these things and we find our soulmate.
This is why the bar is on the floor.
Soulmate No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10…
My search for love started incredibly early — or at least that is how it feels now. My 3rd grade love, the love of my life, my childhood sweetheart.
Who broke my heart by singing ‘U.G.L.Y’ to me on the playground.
Soulmate #1 down. Soulmate #2 on the way. She came along in 7th grade. But quickly moved away to Colorado, a forbidden distance. Crushing. Devastating. How could I EVER recover.
The next love of my life came along shortly thereafter in high school. My first real girlfriend. The hottest, longest love of my life, nothing could top this. That was the best three months ever, the passionate kissing (no tongue of course, how scandalous), the dry humping in her parents basement, spending our first Valentine’s Day together, getting her a necklace from Claire’s that matched her eyes (they were brown… I think?).
Romance. At. It’s. Finest.
Spending all night texting each other and her ruining our chance at a wedding by 23 because ‘she just wasn’t feeling it’ or something like that. Soulmate #3 down.
But Soulmate #4, oh man. She was it. She was the one. I could definitely see us getting married — riding horses together, having a farm, being a good ol’ country couple. But if you recall — her little sisters ruined that one for us. My heart can never financially recover from this.
Soulmate #5 THOUGH. WOW. I can definitely fix her — wait no Soulmate #6 came into the picture. God. Captain of the cheerleading team — we’re going to be THAT hometown hero couple. Oops — she cheated on me, Soulmate #5 comes to the rescue. I put my all into her — troubled family life, I can be the guy that saves her from herself. I can do this. A true Knight in Shining Jeans. Never mind, no I can’t.
#7 though — yea she’s the one. Wait. What was her name?
Shit.
One of my favorite, and funniest, long running jokes is that I see the love of my life at least 4 times a day.
But in reality — I don’t believe in soulmates. I believe there are people’s souls that I will always know in every life, but there is not JUST one person on this planet that I’m meant to love.
That has taken a lot of ‘learning’ from having my heart broke many, many, many times. I have been many things in each of these relationships. I’ve been the ‘I can fix her guy’ because that is what I saw in some movie or something.
I’ve been the ‘nice guy’ because all guys are assholes from what I’ve heard.
I’ve been the ‘nonchalant’ guy who has no jealousy — but is secretly seething because all he wants is you. Apparently obsessions is cool or something?
As a man — I was putting my everything into love. I was ‘doing everything right’ — and every single one of these loves didn’t end up working out.
Why? What was I, as a man, missing? Why wasn’t love working? Why wasn’t being chivalrous enough? Why wasn’t fixing her enough? Why wasn’t buying her everything enough? Why wasn’t being nice enough? Why wasn’t giving her space enough? Why wasn’t being her therapist enough? Was the sex not good enough? Was my love not enough? Did I over love? Did I under love? Did I love sideways? Was I not romantic enough? Was I not vulnerable enough? Was I too vulnerable?
The questions go on, and on, and on. With less and less concrete answers.
The one answer I did find…
I did not love myself in any of those relationships.
It took a long time for me to figure out how and who that is.
You can go back and read this post I mentioned earlier to figure out how I learned who I was. But this story is about how I learned to love myself.
I’ve loved a lot and learned even more, and as
said:We’ll come back to this dog lover thing.
I broke many times, healed even more, and learned just as much.
Lover Boy Learnings
The one thing that I’ve learned by loving is that society doesn’t teach a man the most important thing about love:
You NEED to love yourself.
Yes, yes, I know what you may say — ‘But the cliche!! You must first love yourself to love others!’ Shut up. Let me speak.
For a man — we are taught to GIVE love, not receive it. We are not taught how to love ourselves. We are taught that a woman, not friends or other men, will teach us how to love ourselves but first we must figure out how to love them.
I’ve learned A LOT about love by being broken up with, hurt, and ultimately falling OUT of love.
I’ve learned even more about love by letting others love ME — my parents and siblings, my friends, strangers, hook ups, and people I am not IN love with but willingly accept their love.
However — the most I’ve learned about love is by loving myself. And by getting a dog (we’ll get there). And therapy. But that is part of loving myself.
One of my favorite analogies is the watering can analogy. To be able to love (and live) fully — you must think about your life like house plants. You are a watering can and you have a bunch of plants here that ALL need watered. You have your partner’s plant, you have your own plant, you have your friend’s plants, you have your family’s plants, etc.
You only have so much water in a watering can at one time. You water one plant too much — the rest die. You must find balance. To be able to love fully, you must take care of them all according to their needs. You can always continue to refill your watering can but you still need to give each plant it’s necessities to thrive.
This includes your own plant. The plant that is the cornerstone of your life, the plant that is your wants, needs, and desires — that plant that makes the room grow and glow.
For much of my life — I did not water my own plant or let others water it. And questioned why it was this dusty ass, barren ass, stick of a plant.
What was it missing? The answer? Water. It was missing the essential nutrients to thrive. It was missing ME watering my own plant, or allowing others to water it for me. Water is love. Water is life.
That was one of the big things that I’ve learned about love — you can give ALL of it to someone, but if you don’t give it to yourself AND allow others to give it you, life will never be fulfilling or full of love.
Men are not taught this — I was not taught to think deeply about how I need to take care of myself outside of eating healthy, exercising, having fun, and earning money.
Often, the emotional side of love (a big part of watering your own plant) is not something men are good at. I’d hypothesize that historically women have taught men how to be vulnerable, open up, and work on themselves within a relationship.
Today? There is a movement where women are holding a higher standard for men to do the work themselves. And rightfully so. Again — men, historically, have not taught each other how to ‘love right*’ or be better men.
*the asterisk here is that there is no formula. But it shouldn’t be the job of a partner to teach you how to love and care for one another.
I’d also hypothesize that this is the why the Red Pilled Group is so vocal and angry with women even though it is their affection that they so desperately want. They’re not teaching each other love or lessons, in fact, they’re teaching each other extremely toxic forms of ‘love’ and lessons (see: gym bro depression culture).
And — I think this is likely a big cause of the male loneliness epidemic. We — as men — have not loved each other enough as humans should love each other. We’ve tried to dominate, compete, and compare each other instead of lifting up, collaborating, and supporting.
The way I learned to love myself was letting go of my desperation to find love, and rather let love find me.
And that came from very surprising places.
Part II to come next week.
Much luv,
colin scott mortemore
(bet some of u besties didn’t even know my middle name. fake bitches. we ain’t even friends are we?)
Ps. if you’ve not checked out my poetry on Medium you should. A whole 77 other people like it and so should you. Click here for my deepest darkest secrets.
MM realationships are so much harder than MF realationships. Unless we learn to threat each other like brothers things won’t change.
There’s this great quote by Kelly Brogan: “Men need men to be men. Women need men - as a collective - to be women.”
Women of today are just a reflection of our society not having this collective masculine container where she could thrive in.
Great read.
My cynicism immortalised, mum I’ve made it??
A beautiful read as always😙