Angie

“The error all women commit. Why can’t you women love us, faults
and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of
clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them
knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all
the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect,
who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands,
or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us – else what use
is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All
lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man’s love is like that.
It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s. Women think that they
are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols
merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to
come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid
that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“A man is truly a man when he wins the love of a good woman, earns her respect, and keeps her trust. Until you can do that, you're not a man.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“a man cannot embrace a woman’s faults until he loves her. A woman embraces the faults and then falls in love.”
― Kathryn Smith, Taken by the Night

“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.”
― bell hooks