"Man is the hunter; woman is his game. The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, we hunt them for the beauty of their skins; they love us for it, and we ride them down.  -- Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Perhaps the quote above is a slightly outdated manner of observing the relational schematic between men and women. But since we just looked at how the reversal of this ideal has altered our culture, it may hold some clues as to retrieving a certain order of things that every heart, knowingly or otherwise, seems to long for and even be equipped for.
  Men, by and large, have abdicated their role of pursuer. They have been taught by their mothers, for a very long time now, that appeasement, niceness and passivity are the ways to achieve their goals. The emphasis has become centered more on avoiding failure rather than facing and learning from it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fear of rejection. Consequently, We have seen a steady decline in the male conviction to believe in or desire something to the extent that they will fight for it, or even stake their lives and reputations on it when necessary.
  One of the most powerful examples of this fight stems from the story of Jacob, documented in the latter chapters of Genesis. Jacob was a deceiver practically from birth, beguiling his brother Esau into giving up his birthright for a bowl of stew and disguising himself as Esau in order to fool their father Isaac, who was at the end of his life and nearly blind, into pronouncing his blessing on him.
  It is the common action of many men today to try and achieve love, success, prosperity and the like through the backdoor. Strong, defintive action has been replaced by the slick line and the outright lie. Or, on the honest (yet equally weak) end of the spectrum, men are settling for inertia to avoid the big risks, at the cost of missed opportunities to slay dragons and rescue damsels as their protective nature compels them to do.
  When Esau later threatened his life, Jacob fled to the house of Laban. Clearly, Jacob was void of any discernable center. He had not established himself as a man of character. But then something happened that would change his life forever, bringing to the fore his need to be "that man"...he fell in love.

To be continued...