Happier Abroad Forum Community

I don't mean this literally, but if you read a lot of old books there are a lot of similar themes to what men are complaining about on this forum today and themes in classical literature.

Examples:

Crime & Punishment: Raskolnikov's romance with a prostitute
Jane Eyre: A young schoolmistress falls in love with a much older wealthy man
Madame Bovary: a beautiful poor woman marries a sequence of men to sustain her luxurious lifestyle
Candide: a young idealistic man chases a woman so hard he ends up harming his life
Cyrano de Bergerac: a man with a facial deformity believes the woman he loves cannot love him in return, he helps a more attractive man win her heart and in the end she finds out it was he she loved all along.
The Great Gatsby: A man achieves great wealth and social status in order to win the love of a high society woman

I do think things have changed in the culture, but perhaps to one level or another these stories always have existed and always will exist?

Depends on how traditional you are. Would you sacrifice everything for a woman? Are you a romantic? Further, do you believe that your worth as a man is primarily a function of your ability to provide (i.e. resources and wealth)? If you answered "yes" to these questions you're probably conservative. In which case, yes, these traditional themes will ring true.

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Tezcatlipoca, you have the wrong time periods. Look at other decaying cultures. Try Chaucer, The Secret History by Procopius, The Golden Ass by Lucius, or Juvenal.