How far are you willing to go for love?

How far are you willing to go for love? Photo | Photosearch

What you need to know:

  • We've all been there in a sense. That time we had to jump through hoops just to get the girl. It always does make for a funny story afterward
  • Every man reading this can think of something they did just to win a girl. 

"Looking back, it's embarrassing to recognise the degree to which my intellectual curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say to the long-legged socialist who lived in my dorm; Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave me a second look; Foucault and Woolf for the ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black. 

As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless; I found myself in a series of affectionate but chaste friendships." 


These are not my words but those of former US president, Barrack Obama, in a section of his memoir, A Promised Land.


It's comforting to read that even presidents have struggled to get the attention of women and would put every effort to get laid. Obama's quote mirrors one by a great thinker and philosopher Michel Foucault when he gave a quote as an anecdote about his early education. "In order to ingratiate myself with this boy who was very beautiful, [I] began to do his homework for him—and that's how I became smart, I had to do all this work to just keep ahead of him a little bit, in order to help him. In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys,"goes Foucault's quote. 


Obama could have achieved way more than his frustrating dry spell because at least he would leave there with a political education degree, but the rejection still made an impression. 

I would also like to write a book where I can publicly speak about long-legged socialists and amply bosomed revolutionaries.


We've all been there in a sense. That time we had to jump through hoops just to get the girl. It always does make for a funny story afterward. Every man reading this can think of something they did just to win a girl. 


It tickles me to hear stories by men about how they decided to go big to win the love. Like there is this man who told me that he has been sending his now-wife flowers for the last 30 years. He's an old romantic, I must say. 


I created a top three list of things that men have done to attract women. 

Let me start with this Redditor, Kipkelwon who moved countries because he wanted to see his lover more often. He'd met her in Johannesburg and he had lied that he lived around because he wanted a second date. He moved to Jozi from Kenya and got a job and embarked on winning her over. They even got married but later divorced. 


Then there is Birgen who risked a heart attack for a perfect date. He had promised a girl he was dating a bungee jumping date because she said she loved it. He on purpose forgot to mention that he was deathly scared of heights. He had his friend take him for three jumps before the meeting to overcome his fear even though he had a panic attack on the second week. She's now his girlfriend and they are planning on getting two more children before they get married—the unspoken Kikuyu marital tradition. 

The winner has to be this bloke Mano who proposed to his girlfriend of three years through an art installation with different parts put together from her seven bucket list destinations. He figured out ways of getting the most obscure of items for two years from these countries and put together a proposal of a lifetime.

Pretty impressive, right?


I see no shame in putting effort into someone that you genuinely love—you can even go all the way and do a chopper ride over Mt. Kenya— but I suggest that you also guard your heart just in case you are rebuffed.


We can't all be (former Prince) Harry and send her a forest of flowers or shut down the Natural History Museum for a private after-hours tour but we can try. I'm saying all these things knowing very well that I work a 15-hour day shift and do romance through drinks on the couch and lots of cuddle dates full of gossip and laughter. Maybe just maybe, I'll take one step forward.

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