If I may speak heterosexually for a moment
"Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song." -- Leonard Cohen
"The world moves on a woman's hips" -- Talking Heads
So here's my theory:
Although women sysmbloize the "objective world" deep in a man's imagination, the actual woman is not the world itself; it is only her image, and not the actual human being behind it, that is charged with the mysteries of the eternal and the ultimate. Thus, a man's adolescent vision of the ideal love between himself and a woman (characterized by altruism, dominance, playful freedom, or whatever) actually stands for the relationship that he wants to take place between himself and the larger world. His fantasies are really longings for a perfect spiritual union with the world, rendered in terms of erotic desire.
A man who does not realize this disctinction will never achieve a mature, honest relaitonship with women or with the world around him. (Hence the Michael Corleones and Jake LaMotta types, who revere their wives as godesses but participate destructively in the lives of everyone else around them.)
On the other hand, a man who never puts women on a pedestal at all suffers from a serious lack of imagination, and probably has a really boring sex life, so I'm not saying it's all bad.
"The world moves on a woman's hips" -- Talking Heads
So here's my theory:
Although women sysmbloize the "objective world" deep in a man's imagination, the actual woman is not the world itself; it is only her image, and not the actual human being behind it, that is charged with the mysteries of the eternal and the ultimate. Thus, a man's adolescent vision of the ideal love between himself and a woman (characterized by altruism, dominance, playful freedom, or whatever) actually stands for the relationship that he wants to take place between himself and the larger world. His fantasies are really longings for a perfect spiritual union with the world, rendered in terms of erotic desire.
A man who does not realize this disctinction will never achieve a mature, honest relaitonship with women or with the world around him. (Hence the Michael Corleones and Jake LaMotta types, who revere their wives as godesses but participate destructively in the lives of everyone else around them.)
On the other hand, a man who never puts women on a pedestal at all suffers from a serious lack of imagination, and probably has a really boring sex life, so I'm not saying it's all bad.