Why Buy the Cow...

... when you can get the milk for free?, goes the old saw. I have to confess that, as a man, this proverb never really made a lot of sense to me. In my relationship with milk, for instance, consuming a freebie of the stuff at one of those sample tables at the local Sam's club never made me less likely to buy milk the next time I needed it. And while I know that the saying really doesn't refer to milk, I don't really think it works for sex, either.

People use the old "buying the cow" saying to indicate that, if a woman gives sex prior to marriage, then men lose interest in marriage. There are a whole host of problems with this theory:

1) It reduces men to mere consumers - not even connoisseurs! - of sex. In a classic case of pots calling kettles black, women who hold this philosophy engage in the most outrageous type of stereoptypical sexism.

2) Even if you accept that men are merely after sex, the "buying the cow" proverb seems to assume that men are incredibly stupid and inefficient. After finding a place where he can "get the milk for free," are we to assume that someone who is so neanderthal that his only desire is copulation is then going to walk away from the free and ready availability of what he seeks to go and find it once again elsewhere?

3) Men have "bought the cow" for thousands of years following premarital sex. Even as a cultural phenomenon, free sex alone does not seem to have the effect of decreasing men's interest in marriage. Think of the extreme and uninhibited free sexuality that prevailed from the 1960s till the mid-1980s (with the advent of AIDS) in the US. Men were getting milk for free in nearly every direction imaginable, yet busily and happily buying cows.

Nevertheless, women complain that men are not rushing to the altar in the way that they once did. They also tell stories of the proverbial ex-boyfriends: the boyfriend who won't get a job, but merely sits around playing with his Game Cube all day long. The boyfriend who never wants to settle down. The ex-husband who won't be involved in the lives of his kids. And the simply gorgeous guy who refuses to enter into exclusive relationships, but rather prefers to surround himself with a bevy of buxom, beautiful, "friends with benefits."

What then, explains the decline in marriages that has been going on in the United States of late? Men, while voicing the same loyalty to love, marriage, and family that they have always shown anecdotally, are avoiding the altar (or at least avoiding it the second and third times) as if it were the sole source of some fatal infection. Something is wrong, to be sure, but it isn't the alleged easy availability of sex.

Modern culture devalues everything that is masculine. The focus of political discourse, year in and year out, is "women's rights" or what we can do "for the children." Feminists claim that all sexual relationships between males and females are the equivalent of battery, abuse or rape - and have changed the law to reflect that extreme prejudice. Women proudly boast that they are juggling career, children, and home "all by myself" and that they are happy and fulfilled and "don't need a man in my life" (of course, neglecting to mention the thousands of dollars in child support and alimony that they receive each month).

Aggressiveness is bad - cooperation is good. Standing up for truth is bad - tolerance for every knuckleheaded scheme or opinion is good. A consuming thirst for excellence and innovation is bad - moderation (if not mediocrity) is good.

Everything that men consider to be of value, our culture has devalued. We are told that dads are optional - just be sure to send that check! We are told that husbands are optional - but wonder why men are not aggressively seeking a wife. We are told that excellence in career or academia is not nearly as important as "diversity."

And yet we wonder why some men opt out altogether.

Ever see the game he is playing on X-box? In that little cartoonish world, bravery, honor, and skill are rewarded.

That may be the only world that is left in which the masculine is not devalued.

If men are given the option - by our culture and the women in their lives - of either becoming effeminate in reality or maintaining their masculinity in some alternate universe, a certain number are simply going to choose to live out their lives on the internet and inside a controlled universe devised by a Game Cube. Is it right? Of course not.

But neither is trying to force men into becoming women....

What To Do When He Is Distant....

The common wisdom, supported by countless self-help and relationship-jump-start books, is that men are afraid of commitment and therefore, just when a relationship starts going well, they have a tendency to become distant and ambiguous. When a woman notices "her man" becoming distant, she should just give him the space and time to figure out what he wants - no pressure, no chasing him, no declarations of everlasting love. Just quiet space for him to think.

Of course, the vast majority of people who push this strategy are women. Entertainingly enough, it seems a sizeable number of them are single....

Make no mistake about it - men (in general) want exactly what women say they want: a lifetime relationship to invest their lives in, a secure place to fall, a fulfilling love in which to grow and nurture both self and others. (Is it true that some men have now opted out of the relationship quest? Yes. But rest assured that they either DID want a long-term relationship before their divorce, or they WILL want it after they turn age 25....)

So if men want a settled, secure relationship, why is it that when things start going swimmingly they seem to zone out? And more importantly, what should a woman do when this happens?

Why do men become distant and ambiguous? Of course, there are a multiplicity of reasons, but following is a checklist that every woman should go through when she notices this happening:

1) Are things really going well? Or are things only going well in your mind? Women tend to emotionally respond to what they feel is a positive relationship and begin to adopt patterns of thinking about "my man" long before a man has intellectually discovered that the woman he is dating thinks she is in a relationship.

2) What has he been trying to tell you? Are you listening? It is very often the case that a man will date for a while, and though he recognizes there is great potential in the woman he is dating, there are also serious problems that he knows, if they are not dealt with, will impede the progress of the relationship. Has he been dropping hints about things that he doesn't appreciate? Are there themes that arise? Has he been focusing on problems while you have been focusing on positive feelings?

3) Is your communication ambiguous? Have you actually expressed - TO HIM - a desire to date exclusively? While dating, I have personally been astounded at the number of times that I found out that I was someone's "boyfriend" as a woman recounted her discussions about me to her friends: "So anyway, I said to Jody, 'My boyfriend always says....'"

4) Is your communication self-centered? Whether you agree with it or not, our culture for 20 years has encouraged women to think of relationships in terms of self-fulfillment. And after 20 years of seeing the broken lives, harmed children, and neurotic behavior caused by women actually adopting this type of thinking, men are reaching a point of utter exasperation. No relationship can be all about the pleasure of one of the parties. If you have come into a relationship with a long list of rules, a long list of changes, a long list of expectations, and your daily conversation is all about what I want, my kids, my marriage, my life, my rights, my feelings - then you can rest assured that no matter how much a guy may like you, you are spooking him. Most men have been in a relationship with a histrionic, narcissistic woman to whom men exist only for the pleasure that they bring to her. He probably suspects you could be like her.

So what should you do?

1) Ask yourself, if you were a man, would you date you? Or go further than that - since dating is still the prerequisite to a long-term relationship, go ahead and ask the ultimate question: "Am I the kind of woman whose stability, self-sacrifice, character, and beauty would make a man desire me as his wife?" And whatever issues you find yourself justifying ("Well, I know that men would want me to do X, but because of my kids/because of my career/because that represents an anachronistic gender role/because of whatever I won't do that...."), those are likely the very issues that are making him reconsider his involvement with you.

2) Listen to him. Men approach relationships intellectually. Whatever problems they see, they want them to be solved, or at least know that they can be solved, before they make a commitment. A long-term relationship requires that both parties find answers and make changes to suit the other person. And no, "No man is going to tell me what to do!", "I hate it when you are so controlling," and "I'm not changing for any man!" are not actually answers....

3) Communicate. Women have the reputation for being great communicators - but it is an unwarranted reputation. Women think that they are great communicators because they talk a lot to their friends. But the vast majority of the time that I talk to women about their men being distant or ambiguous, the women have not yet actually told the man that they are smitten with him, that they would like to have an exclusive dating relationship with him, or that they are in love. Men have many powers - mind reading is not one of them. If you want us to know something, you have to actually tell us.

4) Adopt a traditional view of relationships. Relationships worked from the beginning of time until 1968 because people realized that relationships are about both men and women. With the advent of feminist thinking, divorce rates skyrocketed and more and more women were left perenially single. There IS a correlation. Feminism teaches women to think in terms of rights, grievances, and power. Relationships require that both parties think in terms of self-sacrifice, the needs of the other, and loyalty. Feel free to vocally champion feminist philosophies - but don't expect men to take the risky step of attempting to build a marriage with someone who is perenially offended over minor political grievances.

5) Pursue him. This doesn't mean football tackle him. It means be transparent - let him know how you feel and what you would like to see between the two of you in the future. Let him know that you would be willing to be exclusive. Let him know that you are hearing him when he talks to you about problems. Let him know that you are willing to try to make room for him in your life. Let him know that you realize that you are imperfect and that you are still growing, but that a secure romantic relationship is the ideal place that you think that you could grow.

Men, both by biology and by acculturation, are romantic and sexual pursuers. When you see a man drop out of the role of sexual initiator, you can rest assured that there is always a reason. The reason sometimes is that he has simply decided that you are not the one for him - there isn't anything that you can do about that. But sometimes a man places distance between himself and a woman that he truly does desire because he is trying to objectively look at a problem or because he is having doubts about her.

Barring some outside distractor (job trouble, family trouble, illness, etc.) you can rest assured that it is always significant when a man who once pursued you becomes distant. If you pursue him and he tells you he has found someone else or that you are just not right for him, then you are free to get on with your life. And that is a positive thing.

And if you pursue him and he tells you that there are problems, or he is having doubts, or that he really likes you but he worries about X, Y, and Z, then you have an opportunity to show him that you are different from every other woman that he has run into. Because all those other women, when he became distant, either lashed out at him or ignored him.

But you can show that you have the actual skills necessary for building a lifetime relationship by digging in, listening, and responding positively to his doubts. And by solving whatever problem is bothering him, you begin to build a foundation - both in yourself and in the relationship - that can result in a lifetiime of love.

Making Room For Love

Our feminized culture tells women that they are fully in control of the romantic process - that they can make all the rules, "be empowered," and dictate to men the terms on which they will be available.

But it doesn't quite work that way. It seems that somebody forgot to tell the men....

Take the issue of kids. For whatever reason (right or wrong, good or bad) it seems that with astonishing regularity, women end up with primary custody of kids after a divorce. When a woman then begins to date again, many women adopt the attitude that whoever dates her is going to simply have to make a boatload of allowances for her because she has kids. After all, she is worth it, she tells herself (and her culture tells her).

But while she is thinking, "He is going to have to understand that I can't go out often because I have child care issues." Or, "He will have to come to my house every day because I have kids." Or, "He needs to understand that some of our dates will involve him going to the ballet to watch little Andrea dance." Or, "He will just have to understand that the kids are going to go on dates with us." Or, "We can have just a nice a date sitting on my couch watching TV as we could going out alone."

He is thinking, "It's not my fault that she wound up with the kids. She asked for them, after all. Why should I be alone? Why should my romantic life be turned into an extended episode of Spongebob? This is a ROMANCE, not a free babysitting service. She should be spending time getting to know ME."

Or perhaps it is career. Our culture says to a woman, "You can have it all. Bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, be a good mom and a great lover too!"

But career women, like everyone else, have only 365 days in a year, each composed of a mere 24 hours. "Well," she reasons, "he will just have to understand that I am committed to my career and my kids first. After all, I have worked hard to get to where I am."

But he is thinking, "How can I build a marriage when I am third in line? Genuine romance should be a priority, not an afterthought."

Or perhaps she is convinced that, now that she has finished school, her kids are in junior high, and her career is on track, now she is ready - at age 35 - to start dating again. But understand, of course, she only wants to have "friends."

But he is thinking, "Why should I waste time, effort, and money on a woman who is not serious about building a relationship? After all, I want to get married and maybe have kids again. Can I invest the next 4 years on a chimeral friendship that may or may not turn into the marriage and family that I want?"

Or perhaps she is willing to try to build something long-term. But everything will be separate. Her house and his house. Her money and his money. Her kids and his kids.

But he is thinking, "Why would I risk the investment of another period of years and perhaps taking nuptials again with someone who is standing so close to the escape hatch?"

Love, romance, relationships - they involve two people. And it is no accident that, as our culture has foisted the erroneous idea that the female is the center of the relationship, the center of the family, and has the right to make all the rules, that men have run from relationships, become players, or simply left the dating game altogether.

In 2006, for the first time since such statistics were kept, there were more unmarried women in the United States than married women. Men are voting with their feet about these new arrangements.

Our culture is wrong. Women do not have the right to make the rules.

Love is about two people. It is about the rights, wants, dreams, desires, and fulfillment of two people - not one. It is about sacrificing self - not about insisting that everything revolve around our every notion.\

Got love?

If not, maybe it is time to start looking at whether priorities need to be adjusted to allow someone to both love and be loved by you.

Want love?

Better make room for a lover, then....

Playing Games

"Never accept a date after Wednesday...."

"Never ask a guy out first...."

"Never kiss on the first date...."

"Never phone a man until a relationship has already begun...."

"Never show interest in a man too early - men like a challenge...."

Any woman who has read The Rules or any other simlarly-targeted work of pop culture is familiar with these, and dozens of other maxims that are bandied about as if they were gospel truth by a certain class of women today.

I read The Rules too. And I read Mars and Venus. And I read He's Just Not That Into You. And I have read literally dozens of books (by Christian Carter and Dr. Phil and everyone in between) targeted to women about how to catch, marry, deal with, change, and love men.

What interest, you may ask, would a guy have in reading all these books intended for women?

I lost my wife.

And after her death and our 17-year marriage, I was dragged kicking and screaming - very much against my will - back into the dating game again. And for the first time in almost 25 years, I was confronted with attempting to understand the outrageous antics, unrealistic expectations, and political axe-grinding of the female populace.

One woman entered my home and, viewing a nicely-framed pair of ancient daguerrographs on the wall in my living room remarked, "Well, if we get married, there won't be any pictures of dead people on our walls." It was our third date.

Another woman, learning that I had a Ph.D. and was considered a specialist in a certain academic discipline, picked a fight with me on that very topic. When I told her she was wrong and explained why, she became incensed and screamed "No man can talk to me that way! I don't ever want to see you again!" A week later, she called me wanting to know why I hadn't contacted her. When I reminded her of her tirade, she said, "Well, I didn't really mean that. You were supposed to beg me not to let you go."

Another woman, after telling me she loved me, didn't call for 11 days. It had been her practice to call every other day. When we finally spoke again, she said, "I intentionally didn't call you. I wanted to see if talking to me was as important to you as talking to you is important to me."

Another woman said, "You can have your way on everything that I don't care about. But on the things I really care about, you will have to let me have my way."

Petulant. Immature. Narcissistic. Histrionic. Amoral. Dishonest. Unfaithful. These were just a few of the most apparent character traits that I found in the dozens of women that I dated over nearly two years time. The problem was not that the women possessed these character traits (we are all imperfect, after all), but that these character traits seemed to be a part of some supposedly coherent means of thinking about themselves and the relationship between men and women.

And I wondered where this odd worldview that spawned such maladaptive behavior came from.

Then I found it. It was in The Rules.

Let's leave aside the notion, first of all, that in order to learn how to please a man, one should consult two women.

But I can remember as I read The Rules for the first time I sat slack-jawed in wonder. The Rules, of course, contains some 30 rules which women are supposed to use to guide their relationships with men. Three or four of them are actually sensible. But among the 25 or so that remain, I remember thinking, "If I ever met a woman who practiced a mere one quarter of these 'rules' she would never get a second date from me."

I would be so confused, I thought, as to whether this woman liked me, whether she were a raging narcissist, or whether she were even sane, that I would be glad to get away from her.

Turn on your average daytime TV program. You will see men being raked over the coals by his spouse or lover, the TV host, and the TV audience. Invariably, someone will call him a "player" or accuse him of "playing games."

But if it is men who are guilty of "playing games," where is their "rulebook'?

Aren't a lack of transparency on the part of a woman, attempts to manipulate male behavior, verbal and emotional sleight-of-hand, and the use of trickery, dishonesty, or the retention of ulterior motives all playing games?

And isn't that exactly what this subgenre of women's literature encourages women to do? And isn't that the type of behavior glorified by our culture? And isn't that the subtext of Sex in the City?

I am a man. And I know men. And I know from hundreds of locker room conversations that men are not going to countenance the type of behavior that our culture glorifies in women. Men are opting out of committed relationships, they are opting out of marriage, and they are fleeing maladaptive, narcissistic behavior in droves.

Men are just as "into" women, marriage, commitment, and relationships as they ever were. They are NOT into the games that women are taught to employ by our culture.

If you want to find true love, it is time to put down your copy of The Rules and stop treating love as if it were a game.

The Truth Hurts - And Helps

She was 30 years old and had four kids. She was essentially unemployed and was divorced from an abusive man - real abuse. He had put her in the hospital.

I met her when she contacted me on an internet dating site. We started dating, and her life was a complete mess. It didn't take long for our relationship to transform from dating to just friends, and what I saw made me worried for my friend.

Her house was filthy. Two of her four kids had tried to beat her up at one point or another. Another of the kids was so ill-behaved that he had to have an adult attendant follow him around at school all day just to make sure that the boy learned something and was not a danger to any of the other students. And her dating life sucked - it essentially had devolved into her offering her body to a series of men who would use her until they found someone better, and then leave her high and dry.

I started talking to her about her life - and it was traumatic. Some of it was due to her own bad decisions. Her first sexual experience had been with a teacher whom she had offered herself to in order to avoid being sent to the principal's office. Some were definitely not her fault - she had been semi-abducted and raped in the parking lot of a local mall.

But eventually I tried to show her that no matter what had happened to her, she was still in control of what she did with her life right now. We set up a system through which she delegated chores to each of the kids. Slowly, the kids began to straighten up. As soon as her home life was less daunting, I began to show her how to be the kind of woman that a man wants.

Today she is engaged to be married.

She had been in therapy for years. Everyone she had talked to had taught her how to "be empowered" or "increase her self-esteem" or to be comfortable being alone.

What she needed all along was for someone to break the cycle of her building destructive relationships and teach her what it really is that men want. She needed someone who loved her enough to confront her with uncomfortable truths. The truth hurt - nobody likes to be told that what they are doing is wrong. Nobody wants to hear that what is generally accepted as true in our culture is, in fact, maladaptive. But she swallowed hard and listened carefully.

And today she is engaged.

The truth hurt, and she cried some tears. But the truth also helped - she has revolutionized her life in almost every way.

She learned a valuable lesson - the wonderful thing about taking responsibility is that you can change whatever you are responsible for.

And today she is engaged to be married.