A little background about me. I was voted most athletic by my peers in 6th grade and thus voted most athletic of all elementary that year. I loved collecting insects in the 4th grade. I’d help butterflies hatch from caterpillars. I also collected black widows and brown widows in beef jerky bottles. I played a ton of video games/arcade at the liquor store. The ritual was, buy soda pop, pop in some quarters in the machine, and beat my last score. I was beating teenagers as an 8 year old. In middle school, I was shy. I hung out with the lower to mid tier popular kids. Eventually I started, “dating” a girl from the upper tier popular group. We split up I didn’t want to get back. I maintained my athleticism, but I fell deep in love with music at this time. I “dated” a lot of girls in middle school. “Dating” then was purely holding hands, chatting on AIM after school and maybe catching a couple movies. That was it. High school I transitioned from the fastest runner in middle school out of 2000 students to the football field. It was a crazy time, I was joining football with the local high school while some of my really good friends were taking the bus to “better” (richer) neighborhoods. My immediate group of friends who were a bunch of basketball players had no aspirations of being on a high school official team. For them it was all about the rec center. I have no doubt in my mind that if that single group of friends of mine had joined the high school sports scene, we would be mentioned through out all of Division 1 not a single doubt. Remember our middle school held up to 2000 kids, a ton of that talent went elsewhere while I decided to stay in our town and actually participate. I joined journalism in the 10th grade and was also in football. It was weird showing up to class with a jersey top on (we had to wear those all day since 6th period was football) Football was a lot of working out. I feel like the coaches should’ve just focused more on tackling techniques and the actual plays. Anyways, my best friends never attended my practices after school to wait for me to walk home and I got really depressed. They would go home and play video games. And guess what? After a couple games in, I quit to play video games with my best friends after school. It was liberating. I went from being greeted by all the cheerleaders to just straight up late night gaming on the weekends with my best friend. Eventually I joined Tennis that was more manageable and a couple friends joined with me. I tried to join guitar class but they didn’t have enough students, so they ended up recruiting us for orchestra, and yeah, we stayed. I ended up becoming a musician. My love for journalism grew. I loved debate time in class because destroying someone with facts and sources was satisfying at the time. Maybe especially since I grew up in a household where my moms boyfriend (the dad of my sisters) was very psychologically abusive and controlling. Senior year my counselor told me I would be 1 unit shy and would have to make up for it in the summertime and I may not walk. I hated that so much. I was so devastated. My only problem was never turning in homework in highschool. And I never turned in homework because I hated arguing with my mom to buy some ink for the printer. (I did do it for a while but it got old fast) Eventually I dropped out and went to charter schooling where all my subjects were taught by one teacher. It was awesome. I did miss my other teachers at high school a lot too though. Anyways I was in out of college since I was putting myself through it and had zero direction from any of my family members or peers I guess you can say I was lucky for even discovering how it works. I eventually figured it all out and am 3 math courses and 1 art course away from transferring from a junior college to a university. But guess what? I chose to keep working during a time where my car was having trouble pass smog. And that fucking restaurant closed 4 months later. I’ve had plenty of great times in my life, I just wanted to point out those for some reason so you can get a sense of who I’ve been through. Just a sense not trying to define myself.
To answer the OP, yes I love being given flowers, yet I have never been given flowers. My wife has come with me to buy orchids if that counts? But I would love bouquets as gifts.
I love football, basketball, tennis and baseball. I’m hard into the underground New York/California music scene and there’s not a single dish I would never try in my life. I guess I’m answering so lengthy to you because I don’t believe there’s anyone mold that fits your answer. I do believe however there are ton of males who were taught that it’s unmanly to like flowers. But then again I firmly believe in grace and respect as a form of dominance as opposed to bulking up in the gym and belching the loudest in bars. (Not saying anyone else here believes that just free flowing my thoughts right now after a long day at work)