Simple Amiability
Published by nancyann July 20th, 2007 in CommonplacesMy husband is a big fan of H.L. Mencken, who wrote on just about every subject. Here is a Mencken quote he came across on how women tend to over-estimate the importance of “mere physical beauty” to men.
”. . . of infinitely more value is a quality that women often neglect, to wit, the quality of simple amiability. The most steadily charming of all human beings, male or female, is the one who is tolerant, unprovocative, good-humored, kind. A man wants a show only
intermittently, but he wants peace and comfort every day.”
This is another area where unmarried women need to be careful not to “give it away.” We’ve all gotten the message that we’re not supposed to sleep around, but we also need to be cautioned not to be that “peace and comfort every day” without any commitments or safeguards. We can get ourselves humiliatingly, painfully entangled by that sort of emotional exclusivity.
Um…so I’ve heard…wouldn’t know a thing about it myself, of course.