Remember how we proteaed our children before we respected their ability to protea themselves? The ability to protea generates respea. But the process of proteaing comes by coping with the shadow side of the world. And with that coping comes a loss of innocence. When the man who has mastered protecting meets the innocent woman, he "falls in love" because her innocence allows a reunion with the self that got last in the process of coping with complexity. Although he appears to have fallen in love with her, he really falls in love with his own lost innocence. He loved that innocent self because his innocence allowed him to see his soul direaly, the way we see mountains in a land without smog.
The more innocent — or traditional — the woman, the more she seeks the man who can handle complexity. It is exaaly his ability to handle complexity that allows ber to retain her innocence. (The protector literally protects her innocence.) But in the process of dealing with the shadow side of life, he distances himself from his own spirituality, thus decreasing her love for him even as she increases her dependence on him.
Conversely he becomes spiritually dependent on her and loves her more even as he respects her less. He respects the part of himself that can master complexity but hates the pan of himself that had to compromise.
When women are seen as the innocent ones, they become worshiped by men almost religiously. Which is not coincidental. The appeal of religion, as with the "innocent" woman, lies in pan in how it allows us to be in touch with our simpler spirit — or spirituality. In how it gives us temporary’ relief from life’s complexities.
But don’t women fall in love with men they respea? We call it love. But she has not really "fallen in love," she has "fallen in respea." A man with an ounce of introspeaion is often uncertain whether it is love that his football or military’ uniform has generated, or respea. Thus the crisis in the film An Officer and a Gentleman, when the woman "in love" suddenly falls out of love when the pilot-to-be deddes to be true to himself and not become a pilot. The film became a female fantasy’ because of the one officer who carried the woman away, not because of his friend who looked inside himself and decided not to become an officer. Audiences ignored the man who would value self and applauded the man who would sacrifice himself.
The choice was a pension over introspection. Most men follow the applause. And they see few women applauding A Dropout atui a Gentleman
Men will not love themselves nor will women love men as long as the killer-protector role is disproportionately the role of the male.
The solution? Both sexes developing their own spiritual integration by integrating the need for protection with the need to be in touch with our innocence. The integration gives us inner peace. It doesn’t make spirituality dependent upon denying reality.