How a Man Loves a Woman; How a Man is Loved by a Woman

What follows is my own story, perhaps reflective of my own particularities and eccentricities, but as an Aristotelian, I believe in "forms" like masculinity and femininity; and I suspect my story is not atypical or peculiar.

LOVE is a form, has an interior simplicity and identity in all its expressions, but each love is absolutely specific and unique. I am the same Lover in all my loves, but each love configures itself to the particular beloved, as well as our contextual, relational, historical position towards each other. I love each son and daughter, brother and sister, superior or subordinate or friend in an utterly unique way. But I would argue that there are identifiable forms of love: paternal or maternal, spousal, filial, and such.

Love is always an approval, a delight in, and a care for the beloved. Each love is concrete and limited, even as it is global, expansive, inclusive and infinite. Each specific love is a distinctive mixture of the multiple ingredients.

What follows does not include sexual and romantic-emotional attraction. In themselves, neither of them are love, which opens always to the beloved. In themselves they are expressions of one's own needs and passions. They are lower level analogues of love. They are in themselves entirely wholesome and natural (when not distorted by sin) in their right place. They are able to accompany genuine love and enrich it in both the spousal (consummated) expression or non-spousal (sacrificial) manifestations.

A MAN'S LOVE FOR A WOMAN 
What predominates in my many loves for many women are:

1.  Delight. Exquisite joy and happiness in the very preciousness, loveliness and charm of the beloved. It is associated with otherness: I delight far more in the beauty, goodness and truth of my daughters than I do in that of my sons, who are so similar, so familiar, so close to me. My daughters are so different, so strange, so charming, so fascinating, so admirable. Delight characterizes all loves but it predominates in that of father for daughter, as well as groom for bride, and all masculine loves for the feminine.

2.  Tender Affection and Care.  This is love of the strong for the suffering or vulnerable. This predominates in maternal love, as for the infant, and paternal love. It characterizes male love for female because the man is normally larger and stronger in the primal, physical way. This becomes even more pronounced in the man's love for his wife and child in their shared vulnerability and need. This paternal or fraternal (older brother) love ennobles raw,  potentially explosive and violent male energies and moves them into gentle but fierce protectiveness.

3.  Admiration.  In contrast with, but not contradictory of tender affection, this love gazes with reverence and veneration on the goodness, the worth, the strength of the beloved. This humbles and inspires us before what is truly holy, noble, and worthy. It is the heart of filial love for mother and father; or the respect we render all authority; and quintessentially of our love for God that becomes praise and worship. By a miraculous, mysterious paradox, a man's love for a woman combines tenderness for her vulnerability (out of his own strength) and reverence for her goodness and strength (including an awareness of his own neediness.)

4.  Companionship, Partnership, Friendship.  Here love takes on a deeper equality, a symmetry between the lovers as they see stand, shoulder to shoulder, and embark together on a shared mission, a purpose that transcends even their own love for each other: their children, their extended families, their shared or specific missions, their life of prayer and holiness. Here we see that authentic love, between lover and beloved, opens always out to an infinite horizon of Good/Truth/Beauty beyond, even as it takes very specific and concrete form...as this child, this work, this family.

HOW A MAN IS LOVED BY A WOMAN

I have no access to the interior of a woman's love for a man; but I can describe how it feels to be loved by a woman. What is most apparent is:

1.  Trust.  To be trusted by a woman is the most amazing and joyous thing in the world. I think that we are, both the man and the woman, implicitly aware that the man is stronger and the woman vulnerable. This is simply the natural order: like the mother is stronger and the infant weaker. So, the love between man and woman must build upon the tenderness of the man, which ennobles his strength and energy, and the trust of the woman. The trust of a woman gives great honor to the man and elicits all that is noble in him: a desire to give care, protection and service and even an eagerness to give his blood and his life if that is required.

2.  Admiration. This is the same admiration that the woman receives from a man, although it focuses on different dimensions in different degrees. This is close to trust which requires that the woman see in the man both strength and goodness, so that she can depend upon him, surrender herself into his arms, and bear their children in serenity and confidence.  In this there is a symmetry between the two loves.

3.  Companionship, Partnership, Friendship.  This mirrors that of the man. Again, there is an equality, a togetherness, a looking out beyond themselves to their children, families, and communities. Man and woman both crave, in their depths, a partnership in the boundless ocean of the good, the true, the beautiful. The female focus is more intently on the care of the young, sick, weak and elderly; the male looks more passionately out into the world beyond. So, more frequently the bride will support the mission of her man. But the contrary can also happen, where a husband supports an extraordinary project of his wife.

4.  Maternal Tenderness. A woman's heart is irrepressibly compassionate and nurturing. A man, as strong and noble as he may become, is still vulnerable, needy and weak. So, there are times and ways in which the fiercest warrior is comforted and healed by his bride. Here we see a marvelously harmonious dance whereby the two lovers move in and out of roles: now he is strong, and then he becomes weak and she is strong. I give this maternal tenderness, in the heart of the woman, less priority than I do the paternal affection in the man, because the woman has a certain constitutional "littleness" and her own care for the needy puts her in need of protection by the stronger one.

It is an awesome and wonderful thing, to consider the love between man and woman!