One might ask: "Isn't love love, masculine or feminine?" No. There is no generic, androgynous, abstract "love." Each love is particular, concrete, specific: the engagement of this unique lover with this beloved. Love is a "form" that is multiformed and takes concrete shape in a universe of particularities, one of which is gender. Masculine and feminine love share all the same features but in distinct gestalts or combinations. It is as if you gave two chefs the same ingredients and asked them to create a food product: they would be quite different even as they shared the same components. The distinctive forms of feminine love I have noticed: maternal, filial, companionable, and receptive.
Maternal love is the defining form of mature femininity. It is generous, compassionate, spontaneously sacrificial, unconditional, and welcoming. It is fluid, spontaneous, physical-emotional-spiritual, instinctive, and not primarily deliberative. It may be the most powerful force of nature, even stronger than romantic-erotic or paternal love. This love largely structures the entire life of most women: maternal love expressed in family and even career. In my own extended family we number about 100 adults. Women work in education, medicine and counseling by a ration of 35-9; men by a ratio of 13-23. Our women are in these nurturing fields at 80%; our men 36%. Nurturing, paternal love is a strong factor in men; but not as overwhelming as maternal love is for women.
Filial love as receptivity, trust, gratitude and respect is a feminine love I know very well: from my daughters, younger sisters, students and the women in our Magnificat Home residences. Question: is not the sons' and younger brothers' love the same? No, not at all. There is an entirely distinct dynamic, taste and flow to the father/son love. Man to man, even the most fond and trusting, brings with it a constitutive element of tension, conflict, distance. For example, the son needs to distance himself from the father in order to enter into his own adult masculinity and fatherhood. By contrast, the growth of the daughter into maternal maturity does not require such a rupture or distance. The father projects his own insecurities onto his son and complicates the relationship. Not so with the daughter. Under proper circumstances, the love of the father for the daughter is so delighted, carefree and spontaneous that it elicits an effortless trust, receptivity, gratitude and respect from the daughter for her father in his very otherness, strength, and protectiveness. The filial love of the daughter and son are quite different.
Companionable love is where the woman's more closely mirrors the man's: each is longing for companionship in a life adventure of love, of participation together in the Beautiful, the Good and the True. Here there is an equality and similarity; a real partnership; a brother-sister sense of shared and equal mutuality. Even here, however, there is a slight difference: the man's psyche, because of his destiny as father, retains an element of detachmetn and independence; while the woman's heart as maternal and filial is more pourous, receptive, and open.
Receptive love as honorable, true, beautiful dependency is proper for the woman because she gives herself so generously, sacrificially, spontaneously that she must be replenished lest she exhaust herself entirely. In a virtuous, childlike, innocent manner she looks to the man to resupply her as she pours herself out unthinkingly to those around her in need. If that love is not provided, she is vulnerable to become anxious, even hysterical, if not resentful. This receptivity must be seen as a virtue or strength rather than a weakness or deficiency. It is similar to the receptivity and trust of the child; it is wholesome and good. It resembles the receptivity of the second person of the Trinity, the Word, Jesus himself, who in his divinity is equal to the Father even as he is generated and not generating. It resembles Jesus in his own dependency upon Mary and Joseph. Masculine receptivity is different entirely. The male is receptive in his formation by mentors who love him. He is receptive as an infant but that neediness, prolonged into adulthood and not overcome, is an actual deficiency which must be recognized and treated lest it yield disastrous results. He is dependent upon God, the Church and all the authorities in his life. A woman's receptivity correctly elicits the man's generosity which replenishes her and ennables her to continue to pour out her love to others.
Lastly: what I have noticed about feminine erotic and romantic desire. First, it is clear that in general women are not tormented by the desperation typical of male erotic longing. Good for them! On the other hand, there seems to be a greater vulnerability to the illusions of romantic love, the conviction that true happines will be found in companionship with the ideal lover. This, of course, leads to so much disappointment.
Womanly love, as distinct from the manly, is a Mystery, a boundless fascination, a natural-spiritual miracle. It reached its perfection, of course, in our Blessed Mother in her love for her son and for us. Ordinary womanly love, in its mundane workings, is healing, ennobling and sanctifying, especially for us men.
Sidebar: Fleckinstein would appreciate any feedback from women: is this accurate? What is missed? What is off target? But that raises another interesting question. There are a handful of faithful readers of this blog: all men. I am unaware of any women who read it. It clearly is uninteresting, if not distasteful, even for those women who love me in my person in real life. Why is this?
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