The Problem With Men Viewing Women As ‘Cake’

I am not cake.

Yet thinking of the way this generation looks at love is enough to make me so nauseous you’d think I ate a whole one by myself.

I once dated a guy that told me to understand the way modern men think of women like cake.

He was one of the rational ones, or so I thought. Someone I had come to consider a very close friend, an equal. We were both entrepreneurs and leaned on each other when necessary. It became so comfortable eventually it was all the time; we made very little decisions without the others input.

We had very different ideas and used that to our advantage. I was the creative dreamer and he was the ambitious businessman.

I encouraged him to think bigger, to be bolder. I showed him the rewards of doing things from the heart and how the payout would always be bigger no matter how long it took.

He taught me not to take crap from anyone and that if I did good work; I deserved to be paid for it no questions or excuses.

Everything we said to each other, although spoken in virtually different languages, made sense. He spoke American Realist and I spoke Celestial Dreamer.

So when he told me to close my eyes and think of my favorite cake, I did.

I saw a beautiful four layer Cookies n’ cream ice cream cake. There were layers of vanilla cake and Oreo crumbs sandwiched between layers of hard ice cream. The whipped frosting was heavenly, white like I imagine angel wings are.

He told me to think of how delicious it is and how much I love it, and I did, because I do.

Then he asked me about the others. From time to time don’t I still crave red velvet? And Chocolate? What about cheesecake? Or marble?
Could I go on with life only eating cookies n’ cream ice cream cake?
Surely, eventually I would feel engorged, grow bored.

I thought about it. No matter how beautiful and tasty that cake is there’s no way I’d be able to keep myself from having any other type of cake for the rest of my life and if I were to bring in the other desserts, there’s no way I could live off of cookies n’ cream ice cream cake alone.

I visualize it in my head. The cake looks very good, good enough to eat, but surely it’s not to be compared to a woman. It’s spongy and porous unlike our smooth soft skin, and once I eat it, it’s gone unlike our forgiving nature.

No two slices are the same, like no two women are the same. The difference though is we breathe, and we feel, and we DO.

I am not cake.

It hurt me to hear and at first I wasn’t sure why. Surely it made sense. I hate eating the same thing two days in a row.

What it revealed to me though, was something very sad. He, and maybe a large amount of the male population believed that women, like dessert, were put on this earth for pure pleasure. A treat, but never a necessity.

Men were meant to taste the different slices always comparing the texture or the sweetness, or how moist one cake was from the other. And even if you were to commit to a favorite, what’s to stop you from trying the wedding cake at the wedding, or the tart coffee cake in the office lounge? Or a foreign cake you can’t even pronounce while on vacation. After all aren’t desserts meant to be enjoyed?

I thought of our bond. To me it was precious and not something that could be lessened by the fact that men were plentiful and opportunities endless. Not to every man was I able to confide in about my fears and hopes, and not every man cared about my creative endeavors and would willingly let me share my ideas while offering feedback.

For so long I had allowed myself to build a bond with someone who I was only able to see a few times a year because I believed despite the distance, our bond was rare. One in a million rather than one of a million.

Is this the key to it all? Does this answer the questions that the partners of the unfaithful are asking? Is this why he rather talk about marrying me “in the future” rather than officially dating me?

I started to object. Aren’t we more like water? The vitality of this whole charade? After all, doesn’t life come from our very womb? Our breasts supply the very first nutrition, and our backs pay the price as we hold that life up until it can stand on its own two feet.

But water is so tasteless, so blah. No one looks forward to the weekend so that they can drink all the water they want. We want wine! We want soda! but water?

Nah.

You don’t crave it until you’re on the brink of dehydration. Like many don’t crave a good woman until their soul is on the brink of dehydration.

I’m not cake.

Cake won’t miss out on sleep to help you with that deadline you were sure to miss. Cake won’t worry about your well-being before its own. It’ll give you cavities, diabetes even, but it won’t give you a part of itself it doesn’t show to the world.

Cake doesn’t rub your back after a long day. Cake doesn’t let you rest your ten-pound head on her tender breasts, when you need to be babied. It doesn’t wear that dress you like just to see you smile a little wider.

Can you tell cake your dreams? Will it help you achieve them?
You can’t even keep cake! Once you swallow it you don’t see it again. I mean you may see it again, but not in the same form and it definitely won’t be as pretty.

I guess it’s what we’ve grown accustomed too. We don’t own anything anymore. Our phones are leased, our cars are leased, our music is leased, our houses rented, even our photo editing software is leased. In the past you kept things until they broke, now the smallest scratch makes something less desirable. And lets face it, as human beings we have more than a few scratches.

We trade each other in so often we start to ask ourselves what’s the point? Our opportunity to make connections so plentiful,commitment feels like an unnecessary limitation.

No matter how cool and with the flow we try to be in the beginning, we are complex beings. So we cover up, with frosting so to speak. We try and cover the imperfections and try to stay above the surface as much as possible.

If this guy who was living through proof of how powerful a man and woman can be as partners felt this way, what chance did I stand with the guys that would come later merely making pleasant conversation over dinner and wondering how soon they could get to the good part, the dessert.

But when we love people the way we love cake we destroy them. You break them down, make them easier swallow, transient. You limit their potential.

Or what if you’re too full for the cake?

Think of the times you’ve wanted the cake so bad, but simply had no room. You simply place a napkin over it and tell yourself you’ll come back to it when you’re ready for it, only to find it has grown stale.

But still I’m not cake.

Although I’ve had to feel the loss of potential because someone thought they could put a napkin over me, store me in a fridge, come back to me once they were done sampling the others or they weren’t so full pursuing their goals.

But maybe that explains it. Maybe if you’re too rich, too much like Miss Trunchbull’s chocolate cake; If you give too much love, too much warmth, or care too much you choke the consumer who only bargained for a taste of the sweetness.

So maybe I am like cake. Too sweet, too desirable, to ever be enough to sustain love and that need that goes beyond dessert and back to water.

The comparisons make the bitterness more pronounced. It makes me a cynic, something I have no interest in being.

It makes me wonder whether all men think like that or not and if they do, then what’s the point?

I want to trust love; I want to believe myself when I promise that someday I’ll have the real forever type love. That I’ll find someone that looks at me as someone that can’t be replaced or substituted, and definitely not like a slice of cake.

I want to rest easy on a cloud of love without the negative images associated with love our generation promotes clouding my head.

But because I’m not cake, I control my destiny. I choose who gets to sample parts of my soul and who merely gets to double tap my selfies. I don’t need to be bitter, I need to do better, stay away from those that don’t see the mutual value we pose to one another.

Because if they don’t, let them eat cake!