#"I can't help it. I love the way men love”

[belamercado]

Anonymous said–

You know that Ada Limón poem where she's like "I can't help it i love the way men love"? My dad recently confessed to me that he became a shoemaker because they buried my grandma shoeless.

[karlkapri]

flower wearing the deweys shirt with glasses and a mustache drawn on duhaime in the post game interview this is not a drill https://x(.)com/BallySportsNOR/status/1743831808804823356

this is some middle school level flirting. i bet duhaime saw this and smiled huge.

i can't help it i love the way men love: mild bullying

[dreamgirljune]

human things that i think abt when the world feels particularly bad

that moment in concerts where the performer stops singing and you can hear the audience shouting all the words together

when an animal stretches and you automatically go :0 "big stretch!!" approvingly

when u and ur friend both want to try a couple things so u get both and share them

when u compliment someone on their skirt/dress and they show u with completely genuine excitement "it has pockets!!"

that "i can't help it, i love the way men love" post

when strangers run up to u bc they just had to tell u they think ur hair looks cool

when ppl name inanimate objects

when ur in the car listening to music together and ur just jamming out with no sense of self-consciousness

when ur writing something and ur friend grabs ur paper to do a little heart or :) doodle

bedtime stories and lullabies

"i remembered u liked ____ so i got it for you :)"

feel free to add on

[ellorypurebloodculture]

TT: I can't help it. I love the way men love.

I spotted this quote on another blog and it hit me right in the solar plexus. Hope you like it too.

Theodore Nott/Harry Potter.

Heiress Elaine Black watches Heir Theodore Nott chase after her favorite godson and wonders when Master Harry Potter will allow himself to be caught.

[blubushie]

do u tell people u love them even though u don't?

Bit personal of a question to ask... But yeah.

You ever read that poem, "I can't help it, I love the way men love"? That's me. I don't really love anyone (save 2 people, maybe 3), but I do care about a sparse few people, so yeah I say I love them. It's not an accurate word, but it gets the point across well enough. And it's better than me trying to explain how much I care but how my Issues affect how that presents itself, because I often come off as aloof and distant and cold and like I just don't care about anything or anyone. And that's not necessarily true! I do care about some people! Rarely.

But sometimes it's hard for them to remember that with my behaviour, or how I act, so it's helpful to occassionally reiterate it with a simple "love you". They know I don't mean love, they know it's just an easy way for me to say "I care about you", but it's less words and rolls off the tongue better so I prefer it. "I care about you and appreciate you" sounds too centred, too perceived. A simple brief "love you" works great for getting my emotional state across even if my care for them isn't actually that intense and pretty surface-level. And people like to hear it, so it works fine. I prefer it. Little white lies don't hurt anyone.

I can't help that the way I show how much I care comes off as obessive, and dangerous, and scary. I can't help that it presents itself as stalkery, or intense, or possessive, or overly-protective. And it's not love, not really, but it's as close as I'll ever be, and it helps me to express that in a way that other people are familiar with and can empathise with. "Yeah I know I come off as an obsessed scary possessive arsehole sometimes, but it's because I care about you and have a really intense need to protect you because I'm mentally ill and if you get hurt, I'll get hurt, and I can't have that." This is better just expressed as a simple "love you" in passing to remind them that all the bullshit comes from somewhere with good intentions at least.

[kingarthurflourofficial]

june books

The good soldier Švejk : and his fortunes in the world war 3/5 (i have to confess i skimmed over the last quarter of this bc it got VERY samey very fast but it absolutely does what it sets out to do which point out the absurdity of creeping fascism)

trouble 4/5 (the hands down winner of this library trip - not only a great homage to the sound of music but also features a bisexual lead and one of the best period representations of a trans character i've ever read. didn't realise until afterwards it's the same author as art and gwen are not in love but it makes sense bc i loved that one too!)

the jungle book I 4/5 (every time i have to apologise for loving this imperialist author but i re-read this and kim every few years and there are many and many quotes that form part of my DNA at this point)

swordheart 4/5 (re-read - love an unlikely love affair!)

paladin's grace 4/5 (re-read - upsettingly accurate portrayal of trying to love again post trauma/post domestic abuse with a cracking mystery/adventure happening in the background. really sets the scene for)

paladin's hope 5/5 (re-read - i can't help it i love the way men love! [steering one another through an ancient murder maze and having desperate life affirming sex while a long-suffering gnole waits in the hallway])

britt-marie was here 4.5/5 (re-read - BACKMAN!!!!!!!!!! i am in your WALLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! britt-marie is about finding how to impose your social structure and important base beliefs onto the world in a way that benefits both you and the world and ALSO it's about waking up after a long bout of depression where you burrowed into a cave and thought you'd never come out again and discovering there were people waiting for you all along and ALSO it's about going to paris and ALSO! it's about cleaning things with bicarbonate of SODA)

castle in the air 3/5 (re-read - alas for the days of my youth when i picked this book up as my first diana wynne jones and it changed my life! re-reading as an adult you notice a little more fatphobia than the first or second time around and feel a Trifle uneasy about the Fantasy Desert Culture Trope)

death by silver 3.5/5 (a rare non-reread! a great victorian gaslamp mystery featuring two interesting OCs. tw for past period typical abuse in all boys boarding schools)

a death in the dionysis club 4.5/5 (sequel to the above. loved the second one better than the first! is this bc there were fewer flashbacks? MAYBE! there's also an excellent negotiation scene halfway through that doesn't stick in my craw unlike Many that try and superimpose modern bdsm onto historical times)

and novel length fic!

An Ace that I Could Keep 4.5/5 (i've missed harriet_vane's writing so much! what a joyful return!)

WWMMD? (What Would Mianmian Do?) 4.5/5 (beautiful worldbuilding and thoughtful bdsm etiquette without veering into 'he would not fucking say that' territory)

Peerless Melons vs the Patriarchy 4.5/5 (hands down one of the most IC shen yuans i've ever read)

True Treasure 3/5 (love a rare-pair)

hey, share the weight a little 4/5 (LOVE A RARE-PAIR)

pale shadows of forgotten names 4/5 (madam lan lives!)

A word, a look, will be enough 5/5 (jaytim! jay! tim! by FEYBURNER!!!!!!)

Who is holding your hand? 4/5 (yiling patriarch supremacy!)

Palimpsest 4/5 (growth and healing? in yue qingyuan's economy?!)

now you’re tearing through the pages and the ink 4/5 (this fandom does SO MUCH with minor characters and every time i am more in awe)

anything you've read lately that i absolutely have to add to my list for july? please share if so!

[abandoned-as-mustard]

that tumblr post that said 'i can't help it, i love the way men love' rewrote my brain chemistry

[tolerateit]

thinking about that post that goes "I can't help it. i love the way men love" and all the little anecdotes that people have typed in the replies and the comments and the tags and then crying over that fact that love really is all around us and makes life worth living.

love really is all around us and makes life worth living 🥹

[kimbapisnotsushi]

ada limόn's "i can't help it, i love the way men love" except it's kageyama tobio and how much he loved (loves) kazuyo and how he carried kazuyo's legacy forward and how he loves volleyball in such a particular way BECAUSE of kazuyo and will not ever stop loving in this particular way and THAT'S the love he has for his friends and hinata and himself and and and

[ofmermaidstories]

merms, I just want to say that every time I read your stories they make me think of all those "I can't help it, I love the way men love" vibes and I absolutely adore them

anon! 🥺 From Ada Limón’s Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds, right?

i like to think we write love in one of two ways; how we experience it, and how we want it. and i have so far been lucky enough to experience it through actions—it’s someone driving two hours on a weekday to bring me soup, after an exhausting time at work, just because i had the flu. it’s—someone making me sit down as they grab the first aid kit, so they can clean and slap a bandaid on a light scrape on my shin, that i hadn’t even realised i’d copped. it’s one of my closest friends shepherding me into his car so he can drive me around the corner to where mine was parked, just because it was like, lightly drizzling. it’s my best friend in high school always bending down to tie my shoelaces for me, because i never did them properly in the mornings.

people talk a lot about love languages and like, use them as a definitive set of rules or expectations—service, affirmation, gift-giving—but i think it’s a lot simpler than that, a lot of the time. sometimes we just do things for people, because we love them. sometimes we do it to feel a little bit of control in areas we might otherwise be helpless to them in. we invent gloves for them because their hands are chaffed. we learn to build chairs so they have somewhere to sit. we learn what we can about plane crashes, because of the risk they take, every day. we write about people loving us enough to do these things for us, because it’s human compulsion—we love one another enough that we are stirred into action with it.

[prince--kiriona]

can't place exactly what it is but something about that. "i can't help it. i love the way men love" post really bugs me?

and like, i know it's not that deep. it's a cute post about acts of service people's loved ones have done for them, there's no Message About Masculinity it's deliberately trying to send. but some combination of valorising men's tendency to not talk about their emotions, praising men for the kind of loving behaviour that's considered normal and unremarkable in women, and acting as if quiet and devoted acts of service towards loved ones are the exclusive province of men... does this make any sense at all or am i being insane for finding this a little bit uncomfortable

[chicafinal]

i can't help it i love the way men love

[typewriter-worries]

"he's written by a woman" "she's written by a man"

well i'm written by ada limón!!

i can't help it; i love the way men love!

[girafeduvexin]

Je viens de voir passer le poème d'Ada Limón " I can't help it / I love the way men love" et pour l'anecdote, mon grand-père m'a construit quand j'étais petite une boîte avec un double fond et dans le double fond il y a un mot qui dit "Cette boîte a été construite par Papi [le nom de mon grand-père] et [moi]" et j'y pense parfois.

[sleepysera]

"When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought of my friend M. He's obsessed with plane crashes.

He memorizes the wrecked metal details, the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke.

Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa.

How people go on, and how people don't.

It was almost a year before I learned that his brother was a pilot.

I can't help it, I love the way men love."

-Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (2015)

[rattyjol]

that quote that's like "I can't help it I love the way men love" except it's me about the way dog people talk about dogs