SmokeAndMirrors
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Well, no. Not really. I commited the cardinal sin of describing things how they actually are in an overly direct manner. :lol:
Again, all politically correct assertions to the contrary aside, I have seen absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that a relationship dynamic favoring a more interpersonally assertive male and a somewhat less interperssonally assertive female is not the norm under most circumstances.
As S&M's example attests, even very aggressive women tend to prefer men who are at least equal in assertiveness to themselves, and often times even more so.
The same simply cannot be said of most men.
It is what it is, and I don't see any reason to quibble around "P.C." sensibilities on the issue. :shrug:
Ahem. I'll speak for myself.
I think you're confusing submissiveness with meekness. They are not the same.
A lot of people are meek. In fact, more people are meek than are submissive. That's why a dominant person (which is different from controlling, again) has to work so hard.
Submissive people are perfectly capable of raising their voice when they need to. It's just that they usually don't want to.
Meek people are not. Their vocal chords are pretty flimsy.
Now, personally, I am a very mixed-trait person. There's really nothing about me that's middle-of-the-road. So I prefer men who are dominant where I am submissive, and submissive where I am dominant (although in reality, I think it's more complex than that -- it's more about capability than high/low).
I think this is true of nearly everyone. I have never met any dominant person -- male or female -- who is dominant in everything, and has the stamina to be dominant all the time without break. Never.
I have, however, met controlling people who want to be controlling about everything, all the time. Because being controlling is a lot easier than being dominant. If you're just controlling, you don't care about how the people under your purview feel. It's about you and your sense of control. But for people who are dominant, it's about the goal and the well-being of everyone involved.
Being controlling is easy. And there are plenty of controlling men out there, and yes, if you can't tell the difference between dominance and controllingness, it might appear to you that "dominant" men want women who are consistently more "submissive" than they are, and dominant women want equal or more dominant men, but really, that difference is created by men who are controllers who want women who are meek.
People get different things out of relationships, and there are dominant people -- male and female both -- who prefer an over-all submissive partner. They tend to be dominant types of a more extroverted bent, so they have a bigger pool of people from whom they can draw balance. But I don't notice any gender break-down in this, and as an introverted person with a strong dominant streak, I require a partner who is... shall we say, "complimentary," if not necessarily "equal," because I have a smaller pool of balancing people.
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