All's Fair In Love And War

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I don't know what this means

What does it mean

I think it means that when it comes to war and the mating game, people tend to play dirty tricks, probably because it's usually so important to win. It's pretty obvious that war is going to be a dirty game because it involves mass murder and blasting people's stuff to smithereens. I think they just put the two things together - love and war - to highlight the idea that although you might think love is all nice and moral, it's often not.

ToughDiamond said it very well. The way I might phrase it - we're a Darwinian species, anything that matters at a deep level to physical bodies - like death and sex - is existential in it's level of importance, also zero-sum, and because of that the rules of civility tend to go out the window rather easily.

What I don't understand is why the perfect gentlemen didn't go extinct a long time ago. Is there something else going on to balance it out, or are the perfect gentlemen all faking it?

I am not sure about the exact definition of "the perfect gentleman", but maybe he's just someone that very strictly always act in a certain way around women to get popular with them? A kind of "masking".

Well, I was using the term loosely, which is probably the only way it can be used. I mean the kind of chap who out of principle would be loathe to nobble the competition, seek undeserved brownie points by hiding his shortcomings and exaggerating his strengths, or use other dirty tricks to improve his chances with the ladies, but would instead just present himself as he is. Something like that anyway. So I was wondering whether there's simply no such thing. I mean you've only got to trim your hair a bit more carefully than usual for a first date and you're not being quite as genuine as you might be.

[Off-topic]
I've been looking around the Web to find out what a gentleman is, but the answers are varied and subjective. Some think it's opening doors for women, others go a bit deeper and say time will tell - things like how they cope with hard situations such as a disagreement where it's hard to think of a decision that both parties can live with. Fascinating subject.[/Off-topic]

Ok. When I hear someone refered to as "a perfect gentleman" I picture an oldfashioned man, extremely polite towards women, attending to their every need and treating them like delicate flowers. Someone that would take off his jacket and place it in a puddle for her to step on in order to not getting her shoes dirty. But I realize now, that may not be the proper meaning of the term.

That's certainly one definition, and I guess it's as valid as any of them. But whatever the perfect gentleman turns out to mean, what I mean is the genuine, honest chap, as opposed to the cheat. I should just have said that in the first place, but as usual I was in a hurry. Sorry for the confusion.

It does make me wonder how much the ASD honesty thing might be at the root of the ASD-related failure to form romantic relationships. Obviously ASD being a spectrum thing there are going to be many exceptions to the stereotype, and I'm sure honesty isn't the only thing that could make Aspies unpopular romantically. But could we in a sense be a bit too "good" for the mating game? Should the less romantically-successful among us reconsider our integrity and think about applying an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" fix? Just food for thought, I'm not saying it's a good idea. I always mostly stuck to my moral guns regardless, yet finding girlfriends wasn't that much of a problem, except when I first started out, and there were some other very good reasons for those failures.

Hmm......maybe the proverb isn't 100% true, and integrity is actually something of an asset with a lot of people?

All is fair in love and war...

...that's why I firebombed my love interest's industrial heartland and dehomed her loved ones, in hopes of breaking morale on the homefront.

Dear Valentine, I expect an unconditional surrender of your heart and your military forces.

Sincerely, Lord Battenberg-Huscarl, Duke of Vespra

I've heard of chaps desperately trying to do that kind of an "if you don't fall in love with me I'm going to make your life very unpleasant" thing, but I've not seen anything quite that extreme.

Allow me to introduce you to the Rough Wooing.

This was a forced arranged marriage, forced not by the prospective husband himself but by his parents, and thus of no relevance to how much of a "gentleman" (in whatever sense of the word) Edward himself did nor did not grow up to become.

In any case, as the Wikipedia article points out, "The idea of the war as a 'wooing' was popularised many years later by Sir Walter Scott, to hide the extreme nature of the war. ... The historian William Ferguson contrasted this jocular nickname with the savagery and devastation of the war."

In an earlier post in this thread, you mentioned:


Who is this? I just now googled that and found no references except an AI overview saying "The individual 'Lord Battenberg-Huscarl, Duke of Vespra' is not a recognized historical or well-known figure."

Kinda reminds me of the Troy story.

Lord Battenberg-Huscarl, Duke of Vespra is a character I invented for the post.

I think you're reading a joke far too seriously.

With me! For the Duke!

But merely trimming your hair a bit more carefully than usual does not rise to the level of what most people would deem to be dirty tricks.

When people speak of dirty tricks in the context of love, they usually mean things like outright lying about one's background, or things like deliberately starting nasty rumors about your love interest's current mate. In other words, things that violate what techstepgenr8tion referred to as "the rules of civility."