The Gendered Challenges of Loving: Filtering Impurities for Women and Tempering Hardness for Men

This podcast episode, "What MEN and WOMEN have to do in order TO LOVE how to get better at loving," delves into the distinct challenges men and women face in their capacity to love, moving beyond the initial stages of finding love or attraction. Dr. Taraban posits that true love is an "incredibly High thing" that few people are capable of in their present state, but everyone can learn to love better. The core argument is that each sex must overcome specific internal obstacles to transmit and receive love effectively, using powerful metaphors to illustrate these points.

For women, the metaphor of water is used: while water (love) itself is pure, it can be mixed with "impurities" that make it toxic. These impurities include possessiveness, materialism, jealousy, control, pride, delusion, martyrdom, deceit, and greed. The central challenge for women, therefore, is to "filter their love" through honest self-reflection and discernment, straining out these contaminating elements so that their pure love can "shine forth pure and unadulterated." Failure to do so, the host warns, can lead to a string of broken relationships and isolation.

Men, on the other hand, face a two-part challenge, illustrated by the metaphor of a tree. First, like a sapling needing to harden to survive and grow, men must "get hard" emotionally. This involves developing resilience, carving out a place for themselves in the world, and fighting for their existence, often under less than ideal conditions. This initial "hardness" is presented as essential for men to attract and give love, analogous to physical hardness for sex. However, the second part of the challenge is to temper this hardness with "suppleness." Men can become so rigid and inured to emotions (except anger) that they lose the ability to give or receive love. Like a tree that is too rigid will break, a man must cultivate "firmness" – rigidity tempered by pliability – to effectively engage with love.

Ultimately, the episode emphasizes that men and women have fundamentally different developmental paths and challenges regarding love. Women must purify their love by filtering out toxic attachments, while men must first develop emotional resilience and then learn to soften that resilience with flexibility. Understanding and addressing these gender-specific requirements, rather than applying the same standards to both sexes, is presented as the key to enabling both men and women to love and be loved more effectively, fostering healthier and more fulfilling relationships.

love is an incredibly High thing and few people are capable of doing it in their present State

Water by itself is always pure and uncorruptable the same principle holds true for women's love

the issue with women is that their love is subject to being mixed up with so many other impurities that it can even be toxic to experience

women have to filter their love to strain out all the other impurities that are subject to contaminating the transmission of love

a boy will never become a man if he stays soft

men need to learn how to grow under less than ideal conditions

just like a man needs to get hard physically in order to have sex he needs to get hard emotionally in order to get love in order to give love

a tree that is too rigid will break when the weather which is in motion is too extreme

firmness is like rigidity tempered by pliability

most men are too soft they don't need to worry about this second step yet