The twelve Animal Signs

for Men

Dragon man
His love behavior

The Dragon man has specific ideas about the kind of mate he will be prepared to accept: She must be breathtakingly beautiful yet modest, brilliantly intelligent yet self-effacing, well at ease in society yet good at housework, reticent with others yet ready to sing his praises loudly and lavishly. With such exacting criteria, it is obvious he is more often disappointed than satisfied in any choice he makes. His life may therefore be a long string of love affairs which begin with the speed of lightning and are abruptly broken as soon as his lovers prove to fall short of the kind of perfection he looks for. This is particularly true during his youth, of course, but neither age nor a legal marriage is likely to put a definite end to his trial-and-error quest.

However, it is the rejected partners who will suffer most. As for the Dragon man himself, he enjoys a natural state of grace which allows him to forget his sorrows quickly and enables him to resume hunting with renewed enthusiasm and an intact heart.

Because of this particular brand of inconstancy of his, he is often wrongly accused of donjuanism. His promiscuity, in fact, proceeds from his thirst for what he considers an indispensable paragon, not from any basic fickleness or doubts about his sexual adequacy.

The women who love this man and want to keep him are well advised to convince themselves that his ego is all to him and behave accordingly. He must be allowed to believe himself superior to them in all ways or at least some way - this is one of the reasons why he often seeks to marry beneath him - and inferior to them in no way at all. It does not make any difference to him if his belief is well founded or totally unwarranted. They should not overlook or minimize his vital need of admiration, compliments, and even flattery - he always looks forward to being treated by them as king of their castle. Since he tends to take his women for granted, he naturally expects them to revolve their lives around him and does not bear competition under any form. When his pride has been hurt, when his feeling of self-importance is no longer corroborated and boosted, he will choose either of these solutions: to become a domestic tyrant, or to provoke a brutal rupture.

Some of his lovers mean well when they try to pamper and mother him, all the more as he frequently seems to need it. But they could not make a worse mistake: Their solicitude just will not make a hit with him since he never wants to appear weak. The best way for them to compliment and please him would be to do the exact opposite - to let themselves be taken care of by him, to pretend to be a sort of clinging vine - for this will confirm the fiction of his power and importance.

Despite his excessive and sometimes grotesque egocentrism, the Dragon male aims at being an excellent mate, and not rarely is he so in many respects. He is tender, ardent, capable of the most profound sentiments. He gives all of himself when he loves. He likes to protect the object of his affections, dazzle her with his fiery, somewhat theatrical, display of love, and move mountains for her. In compensation, he wants her to act as an element of his prestige and subordinate her personal ambitions to his. The ideal companion of this man must be the one who devotes herself entirely to contributing to his success in life and resigns herself to living submissively in his shadow for ever.

The Dragon man is too much wrapped up in himself, too anxious about his own image to be able to love in an "absolute" manner. But his good intentions must be noted. He generally spares no efforts to render life as agreeable as possible to the woman of his heart. A sadistic streak does exist in him, but at an unconscious level most of the time. His fidelity is uncertain for the reasons given above.

This man carries his good taste over into bed. He is very much attached to a certain erotic and aesthetic quality of his sexual relations. Lovemaking is to him primarily an artistic expression, not simply "a contact of two epidermes." His sex drive, beside being refined, is powerful: He is a most passionate and hardy lover, and the woman who has known the secret to his heart will be utterly gratified - emotionally and physically. But it is very important to preserve his fragile self-image of virility; any gaucherie on the part of his partner could give a deadly blow to his ego and consequently might cause him to be sexually impotent for some time.

Though a good spouse, the Dragon man is rarely a good parent. This is generally a despotic and exacting father who sets up impossible goals for his children to achieve. Whatever they are able to realize can never satisfy him. His lack of understanding and intransigent attitude are apt to give them a severe feeling of inadequacy which will burden them throughout their lives. He is interested in his offspring insofar as they execute his orders blindly, add luster to his halo, or have extraordinary ambitions themselves. His affective relations with them are usually lukewarm and superficial.