Men demand unconditional love while refusing what that devotion reciprocally requires

Evidence

Men have rivaled each other proclaiming that love is a woman’s supreme accomplishment. “A woman who loves like a woman becomes a more perfect woman,” says Nietzsche; and Balzac: “In the higher order, man’s life is glory, woman’s is love. Woman is equal to man only in making her life a perpetual offering, as his is perpetual action.” But there again is a cruel mystification since what she offers, he cares not at all to accept. Man does not need the unconditional devotion he demands, nor the idolatrous love that flatters his vanity; he only accepts them on the condition that he does not satisfy the demands these attitudes reciprocally imply. He preaches to the woman about giving: and her gifts exasperate him; she finds herself disconcerted by her useless gifts, disconcerted by her vain existence. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1885

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the mystification theme toward the sacrificial logic a reader knows from Octavia Butler, and the classed double-bind familiar from earlier chapters. — connects to: The lover demands to be chosen absolutely, not as one among others — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 948; Romantic love demands proof through the beloved’s willingness to violate morality for the lover; Romantic love is a struggle over who gets to define the other’s freedom. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 679 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The lover-man divergence in love stems from differing situations, not nature #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1842
• Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself #complicates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• Male desire is fleeting while women become emotionally bound after love #expands (0.78)