‘You are old enough to be her father,’ Muriel had once said; but those scornful, recriminating, wife’s words never sear and wither as they are meant to. They presented him instead with his first surprised elation.
Elizabeth Taylor, “Hester Lilly”
This is a great observation by Taylor. The wife here is projecting her own perceptions onto her husband and makes a mistake. He doesn’t feel humiliated by the idea of courting a much younger girl. He feels invigorated by it.
It’s humiliating for a woman to be with a guy half her age. But it’s not for a man. Women lose status from being the financial donor in a romantic relationship. Men gain status from it. I’m not expressing any sort of joy about this. I’m simply stating a fact.
And by the way, woke as Richard Russo has become, in his most recent novel he keeps slipping and honestly depicting how things really work. Men in the novel signal their readiness to enter into a relationship with women by doing things for them. They shovel snow, help to pay the rent, beat up an abusive ex, and take charge of a complicated relative. And women signal that they are interested by accepting these offers. Even Russo still knows that a woman who starts shoveling snow to impress a guy would scare the poor dude into another time zone.
Those end up being the best scenes in Russo’s novel because he doesn’t try to massage reality into weird shapes.
Clarissa's Blog 
Marrying a woman half your age is the ultimate dyed hair.
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“ Women lose status from being the financial donor in a romantic relationship.” Why is that so?
Same question about the “snow shoveling” quip of yours and accepting favors as a means of reinforcing their sincerity towards a relationship so — care to elaborate?
Maybe in a different post …
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” Why is that so?”
That’s an extremely simplified answer: Evolutionary biology FTW!
Slightly longer (still oversimplied) version:
Biology doesn’t evolve as fast as social structures so modern humans are basically smart monkeys driven by evolutionary pressures faced by our distant ancestors.
The later stages of pregnancy and the early infancy are times when our female ancestors were extremely vulnerable. Males demonstrate mating fitness by showing they are willing and able to provide for and protect females and infants. Females indicate mating willingness by accepting provisions and protection.
That doesn’t mean that every tinme a man holds a door open for a woman hes demonstrating willingness to mate with her, but daily social interactions were/are formed by mini-verions of this dynamic.
Females and males that rejected that model didn’t leave any ancestors behind… In a modern technological environment, non-conformists have greater chances at survival (and even reproduction) but the harsh dawinian conditions of our past still inform lots of our behavior.
It is what it is….
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Yes, maybe the tasks which need hard physical labor can be traced back to evolutionary biology. For that matter, even men are no longer strong cave men/apes who can or want to do all kinds of hard labor!
And what about women being the financial donor upsetting their status??… not every traditional insecurity of men (or women) can be put down to some evolutionary biology or misguided chivalry.
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If a woman offers money and sex, she’s overpaying. It sounds crude but there is a reason why male prostitutes are only sought after by men.
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” men are no longer strong cave men/apes ”
Again, technology changes faster than evolutionarily driven impulses….
” women being the financial donor upsetting their status?”
male female intimate relations boil down, in the early stages at least, to exchanging resources for sex (even penguins do that) a woman provisioning a man upsets that… in weird ways.
Of course there are lots of individual exceptions (we’re conditioned by the evolutionary past not completely controlled by it) but majority values are what they are.
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There are many things like that which lie in the area of archetypes that we don’t notice on an intellectual level.
For instance, when a woman goes on a trip, a man often starts doing projects around the house. This is his way to make the nest pretty to lure the woman back in. Even when it’s completely certain that she is coming back, he’ll be subconsciously drawn to doing this.
When I leave for over a week, I’d be concerned if N didn’t start fixing things around the house. I can very much afford to pay for home improvement myself but this is a symbolic thing.
It’s the same thing when a man doesn’t find any food when he comes home. He feels unloved. Food is the language of love, even if one can afford to eat out every day.
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All true.
As for shoveling snow or trying to take care of a man through cooking and cleaning during the early stages of courtship (once again, early stages, not throughout a long marriage) scares men away because they read it as “she’s not into sex”. The logic is, she doesn’t have to be doing any of it at this stage. She’s got to be covering some big flaw with this striving. What can it be? OMG, she’s not into sex.
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Frankly, under a certain income level, these principles are still active. Late pregnancy and caring for a new baby may not leave you vulnerable to lions and starvation anymore, but they’re still times when things can get really dicey if the woman is the breadwinner of the family.
No woman with any sense wants to be stuck in that situation.
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Interesting!
So apparently men think that sex sirens are necessarily clumsy helpless bimbos… this is “damsel in distress, but in a sexy dress” syndrome!
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