I for one applaud nightstalian. At least now he is sticking up for himself and not letting that girl walk all over him.
Phinehas: you say the letter was childish. He could have done a lot of more immature crap, like giving her the silent treatment for a week, or spread dirty gossip about her, or whenever she walked by, pretend to cough and say "whore!". And I know this may be a bit of a stretch (ok, a tremendous stretch) but the declaration of independence created by the United State’s founding fathers was somewhat similar. They listed the wrongs committed against them, and declared that they would cut themselves off from England. so, were the founders of the United States immature? Alright, I admit this is just a random tangent that has little to do with this, and in fact all this conversation about the letter seems irrelevant to the original topic.
Zorbels et alii: you say that women do not pay attention to money, and claim yourself to be different. You claim that love is formed on something deeper than superficiality and trivial baubles. I suppose I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But for those who doubt those beliefs and believe humans are not that righteous and good, I will look up a quote from a psychology textbook I own (Psychology 6th edition by David G. Myers (yeah yeah, it isn't the latest edition, but it has pretty much the same info and is a hellavalot cheaper)).
(After a long time scouring the book) crap... I can't find the specific quote. I'll try looking for it again later to find it. I do remember the gist of it though. It basically said that males are attracted to females who appear youthful and healthy, while females are attracted to males who are more mature (older) yet healthy, dominant (assertive, type A personalities), and affluent (powerful). Now affluence can take many forms, such as wide social networks and connections, charismatic ability to sway others, physical prowess, or money. So there could be some element of truth to the idea that a women's affections could be bought.
Now, don't go thinking my page turning was fruitless, I did find a nifty section that has some good info. (For those of you who would feel inclined to check the book, it starts on page 677). The section is on what brings about attraction, both friendly and romantic.
1) Proximity: geographic closeness. If you live in the same area, go to the same classes, ect. You have more chances for repeated exposure to one another. Richard Moreland and Scott Beach did an experiment in 1992 showed this by having 4 equally attractive females sit in for 0, 5, 10, or 15 class sessions in a 200 student class. At the end of the experiment, students were shown slides of the females, and the students were asked to rate their attractiveness. The ones who had been seen most were ranked highest. This is an example of something called the
mere exposure effect[/i].
2) Physical attractiveness: yeah, people are shallow. Now for a quote so people won't yell at me for interpreting it in a cynical manner.
“In one study, Elaine Hatfield and her co-workers (Walster & others, 1966) randomly matched new University of Minnesota students for a Welcome Week dance. Before the dance, each took a battery of personality and aptitude tests. On the night of the blind date, the couples danced and talked for more than two hours and then took a brief intermission to rate their dates. What determined whether they liked each other? So far as the researchers could determine, only one thing mattered: Physical attractiveness (which had been rated by the researchers beforehand). Both the men and the women liked good-looking dates the best. Although women are more likely than men to say that another’s looks don’t affect them, a man’s looks do affect women’s behavior (Feingold, 1990; Sprecher, 1989; Woll, 1986).”
3) Similarity: opposites repel. “Friends and couples are far more likely to share common attitudes, beliefs, and interests (and, for that matter, age, religion, race, education, intelligence, smoking behavior, and economic status) than are randomly paired people” (p. 680)
Well, there you have it. There is a section following that that has information about the psychology of love. I may ad on some to this post later.