In this post I would like to address some of the comments  I received in response to my post on why women fall for bad guys.

I received one type of comments about the reason why women fall for bad guys is that they are emotionally wounded in some way. For example, they might have had an abusive or absent father, and so they simply are attracted to the type of men that their father was.

I agree with this completely. Yes, if women don’t heal from emotional traumas, they are likely to attract exactly the type of person that the abuser was. But to say that all women who are attracted to the bad guys’ type are emotionally wounded is a huge overstatement.

To understand my point it’s important to keep in mind that our current understanding of what a good man is is set by the trends of our society. A man who’s considered a good guy now would be viewed in a much less acceptable way in the past. People would think him to be feminine and he would not be respected. And the men who were considered heroes a thousand years ago would be locked up in prisons today.

So who is there to say which type is acceptable and which is unacceptable? And if today one type is preferred, that doesn’t make all women who prefer the other type emotionally disturbed or psychologically unwell in some way.

Also, if in your birth chart the seventh house of marriage and unions doesn’t have a positive star and planet combination, then even if you had an excellent childhood you will like guys who are very masculine and somehow dangerous. We don’t judge people who prefer spicy food to milky food or sports cars to family cars as emotionally disturbed, so why is it that if women like very masculine men they are labelled psychologically unwell?

Sure, if a man is a total abuser and a woman stays with him anyway, there’s definitely some unaddressed psychological issues that need to be dealt with. But if a guy is simply very masculine and not a guy who is very sensitive and loves home life, why would the preference of him make a woman emotionally disturbed?

It’s the current understanding of psychology that is also to blame for it. Psychology doesn’t pay attention to time-bound trends, but filters everything through what’s accepted by the society now. So the preference of a guy who doesn’t like routine and who doesn’t mind getting into fights for what he believes is straight away labelled as stemming from some trauma. Yet why is it overlooked that a thousand years ago that was the type that was the standard definition of man, and a woman wasn’t thought to be mentally unstable if she fell in love with this type.

So it’s important to understand that our view with regards to how men are supposed to be is strongly colored by our values and preferences today. Men are becoming more feminine and they are encouraged to be so. Because of this, love is no longer so passionate. There’s less passion, but more trust. There’s less excitement, but more stability. Who is there to say that one quality is better than another?

When you let go of these rules of the society of what’s right and what’s wrong, you can structure your life in a way that you enjoy. But if you stick to the rights and wrongs of the today’s society, you will live a standard life that’s not of your preference but someone else’s. And what’s the point of living if you live a life as though it’s not your own but designed by someone else?

How can you even know yourself if you don’t allow yourself to understand what you prefer but go by what the society expects of you? Life is supposed to be the full expression of who each individual is, and I believe that not expressing your true being is the greatest insult to life, because it has the quality of death.

Who is to say that a man who opposes aggressors with violence is worse than a man who does the accounts? Both types are required for the healthy functioning of our society. To label one wrong and another right is to fail to see beyond current societal beliefs and thus fail to mature beyond the average type.

Just because the society considers one type acceptable, doesn’t automatically make those who prefer another type insane or somehow inferior. Different people will find happiness in different ways, and to claim that only stay-at-home fathers who don’t actively display masculine traits is the source of happiness for women is like saying that everyone must like one particular type of dessert and other choices are wrong.

Who is there to say that one choice is superior over another? When the societal understanding changes, the preference of one type over another will change as well. So what we consider as ideal men today will not be considered so in the future. So where is a fixed rule of one being better than another?