The Value of Experience

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted....

Jenny Sanford: Commitment to Marriage

Below is the statement released by Jenny Sanford, who for her commitment to her marriage and willingness to think of reconciliation first, and divorce second, deserves elevation to the status of a National Heroine.

__________

I would like to start by saying I love my husband and I believe I have put forth every effort possible to be the best wife I can be during our almost twenty years of marriage. As well, for the last fifteen years my husband has been fully engaged in public service to the citizens and taxpayers of this state and I have faithfully supported him in those efforts to the best of my ability. I have been and remain proud of his accomplishments and his service to this state.

I personally believe that the greatest legacy I will leave behind in this world is not the job I held on Wall Street, or the campaigns I managed for Mark, or the work I have done as First Lady or even the philanthropic activities in which I have been routinely engaged. Instead, the greatest legacy I will leave in this world is the character of the children I, or we, leave behind. It is for that reason that I deeply regret the recent actions of my husband Mark, and their potential damage to our children.

I believe wholeheartedly in the sanctity, dignity and importance of the institution of marriage. I believe that has been consistently reflected in my actions. When I found out about my husband's infidelity I worked immediately to first seek reconciliation through forgiveness, and then to work diligently to repair our marriage. We reached a point where I felt it was important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity, self-respect, and my basic sense of right and wrong. I therefore asked my husband to leave two weeks ago.

This trial separation was agreed to with the goal of ultimately strengthening our marriage. During this short separation it was agreed that Mark would not contact us. I kept this separation quiet out of respect of his public office and reputation, and in hopes of keeping our children from just this type of public exposure. Because of this separation, I did not know where he was in the past week.

I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal. I believe Mark has earned a chance to resurrect our marriage.

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance.

This is a very painful time for us and I would humbly request now that members of the media respect the privacy of my boys and me as we struggle together to continue on with our lives and as I seek the wisdom of Solomon, the strength and patience of Job and the grace of God in helping to heal my family.

Become a "Challenge" For Him: Why Women Stay Single

I am utterly flummoxed by some of the unmitigated nonsense that gets pushed as "relationship advice," especially to women, these days.

Someone recently sent me a website for evaluation that simply bowled me over for its sheer wrongheadedness. Don't think I didn't notice that, for the articles that I examined on this site the comments section was closed...!

I'll comment on some of the nonsense that is being offered to fix relationship problems below. I'm not going to link to the site though, because I would hate for anyone to mistakenly actually find the site.

One of the most offensive articles that I found continues a couple of themes that are often found in books like The Rules. These themes are 1) that it is primarily women who invest in relationships, not men, and therefore it is up to women to function as the benevolent supervisor of the relationship, and 2) that a sure way to keep a man interested in you is to play hard to get.

"Most men are not the likely one in the relationship to be nurturing and keeping track of the barometer of your emotional health. That barometer is usually the woman in the relationship. Some counselors have even coined the expression that women have an innate marriage handbook that men need to learn to read."

Since 2/3 of all divorces are initiated by women in the West, we can rest assured that this "marriage handbook" has a final chapter.

This quote is among the most sexist and outrageous statements I have ever read in print (though the month is young, yet). By the very nature of engaging in the pursuit of the woman - which the article itself encourages throughout its remainder - the male is, of course, engaging in "keeping track of the... emotional health" of the relationship enough to come to this conclusion: "I haven't caught her yet." But this kind of "Yay for girls" doublespeak is typical of the fantasyland advice that have bookshelves groaning in the relationship advice section of your local bookstore.

Secondly, this quote assumes that the "emotional health" of a relationship involving two people can be determined and managed by the fiat of one. Again, this sort of solipsistic perspective, while common and adequate enough for a Harlequin Romance novel, is exactly part of the reason that relationships are unraveling left and right in the modern world. By both implication and explicit statement, women are being taught that relationships are all about them.

They aren't.

And because of that, the REAL way to gauge a relationship's "emotional health" is to sit down with your man and ask, "How's it going...?" Then listen carefully when he says things like "I like/don't like" or "I want" or "I feel like _______ is lacking." Then plan accordingly to accommodate his needs in every reasonable way.

Then express the same back to him, and note that while you'll be trying really hard to meet his needs, he should try the same for you. Where negotiation is necessary - negotiate. But keep in mind that negotiation looks far more like "splitting the difference" than it does seeing who can get their way.

Because relationships involve two people, both of whom - if the relationship is going to be long-term - need to find a way to serve, accommodate, and build up the other.

"...men don’t usually like to be doing hard labor in the relationship, but if you make him chase you, he will be doing his fair share of the work and that is where you want him to be."

Notice the rancid self-absorption that is urged here. "He doesn't want..." but you make him do it anyway and "that is where you want him to be."

Tell me again why it is that every woman who has an online dating site that she is not into game-playing? Does this seem just the slightest bit manipulative and narcissistic? And yet this article purports to draw back the curtain to allow you to explore the concept of the "emotional health of the relationship?"

"Create a sense of urgency in his eyes that he is missing out on something special if he doesn’t chase you. You need to become more interesting than other women. Develop your complexities and revel in them. Delve into your mysterious side and make him wonder about you so much that he feels compelled to follow you and find out. Become a refined woman that lives a life with confidence in her abilities and does not play with a victim mentality but is the victor in her life."

Notice the wonderful vagueness of all of this. What does it mean? Anything you want it to mean - unless it doesn't work, because then the authors will insist it means something else and void their money-back guarantee!

"Create a sense of urgency?" OK, how do I do that? "Develop your complexities?" Does that mean to behave like a spoiled brat or to start reading Proust or Nietzsche? "Delve into your mysterious side?" Is this about sex, lying, or should you just learn Italian and make him wonder where you learned it? Is this stuff really good advice?

Well, to give credit where credit is due, that last line really is good advice: work hard to "become a refined woman" who does not have or demonstrate "a victim mentality." Knowing something about art, cuisine, literature, politics, and having a bit of sophistication and worldly-wise understanding would be a good thing. And the victim mentality is a genuine relationship-killer - I tell my male clients to hit the road as soon as they see it because it is one sign of an unstable person who cannot build lasting relationships.

"Especially in the beginning of your dating seeking days and in the initial dating relationship, you need to play hard at playing hard to get.... Once you get into the relationship, keep playing hard to get, but soon there will come a time when you need to actually let him catch you. However, when he catches you, then you can start running again and let him chase you once more."

Years ago, when I first started reading relationship books, I can remember my response when I read The Rules. I thought, "If I ever met a woman who engaged in just 25% of the activity recommended in this book, I'd run screaming for the hills and never call her again. This paragraph produced that same gut instinct in me.

First, let's talk about why this is wrong - and it is not my opinion that it is wrong, it is wrong! There was likely a time when something like this was true. When society was a lot different, and there was no feminism, and sexual mores were a lot different than they are today. A guy could likely be drawn in by some combination of invitation and rebuff that looked like "playing hard to get" to a woman. But why was that?

One reason is because of the way guys communicate. Guys filter signals. They push out that which is not useful to them and embrace what they need. That is the essence of "guy-communication."

Think about some of the contexts in which guys have historically been forced to communicate with one another. Guys are running down the basketball court with defenders in their faces. He doesn't have the ball, but he is breaking for the middle. He has to find a way to integrate certain important information - the location of the ball, the location of the defender, the location of the basket, his strategy for getting open, and what kind of shot he is going to take - while excluding certain unnecessary information - the cheerleaders, the crowd, the screaming coach, the fact that he might have twisted his ankle. If he can't filter the unnecessary information from the necessary information, he is not going to reach (score) his goal.

Or here's a guy on the battlefield: there are explosions left and right, he is running through the mud, bullets are whizzing by his head, the captain is screaming, his buddy is down - but up ahead is an enemy machine-gun nest. He has to formulate his plan, maintain some modicum of safety, arm his grenade, and find a stealthy way to approach in order to get the grenade into the machine-gun nest while filtering out fear, concern for his wounded buddy, and other distractions.

Now of course, you say "my guy has never done anything like that." He probably hasn't. But remember that his communication has been formed by generation of guys who have. They have learned to filter incoming communications down to their absolute necessities, and to filter their outgoing communications to the crisp, clear, necessity that communicates everything that needs to be said in the shortest possible expression.

What does this have to do with playing hard to get?

In Victorian England or 1950s America, when sex wasn't something that could be had by simply picking up the phone, guys decided on a girl that they found desirable and they worked hard to get her. She gave him just enough of an "invitation" to let him know she was interested, but rebuffed him enough to protect her purity (and reputation). The guy, however, just filtered out the negative rebuff and focused on the positive invitations - if he worked long enough, he believed he'd achieve his goal.

But in the modern West, sex is freely available. If you want to spend your time playing the coquette, sending mixed signals in an attempt to achieve some power play like that recommended by the writers of the blog I refer to and the writers of The Rules, get very accustomed to spending Friday nights alone. Or, get very accustomed to dating someone new about every third Friday night - because while you are here saying, "Comehere/Getaway! Comehere/Getaway!", there are 15 other girls who are saying, "Come here."

Here's the second reason why this type of strategy will seldom work, and it is directly related to our basketball/warfare illustrations above: Women use communication as a means of building and solidifying relationships, with a lot of implicit, between-the-lines content. Men don't.

I have been in numerous situations in which I have been in the presence of more than one woman, all of whom were talking, yet in my mind I was screaming, "THEY AREN'T TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING!" And that might have been true....

But when women talk, they don't have to be talking about "something," because the mere act of talking is a means of building a bridge from themselves to someone else. They are therefore very attuned to implied meanings, emotional content, and content that occurs between the lines.

Men, though, use communication as a tool. Tools are chosen for their power and efficiency. The best tool is the tool that gets the job done quickly and certainly. Therefore, there is very little implied communication with men.

Numerous times in my dating life a woman has given me a list of about 1,001 things that she "feels are not going well" and has said, "I don't think this is working out." My response has, uniformly, been to stop calling her and to move to the next girl.

Dozens of times, I have eventually received a call from a woman who has said, "I don't think this is working out" and she has asked, "Why don't you call me any more?"

"You said you didn't want to go out anymore."

"Well, yeah," she replies, "but I just said that to see how much you wanted me/I just said that so you would know I wasn't happy/I just said that to see if we could work on some things/I just said that so...."

You get the idea.

When a guy hears, "I'm done," he doesn't begin to ask himself, "Well, did she really mean it?"

Because that is not the way we talk to one another. That is not the way we have been reared to communicate. How many of us would accomplish our goals if we had to read between the lines in the boardroom, on the basketball court, or on the battlefield?

So this whole "playing hard to get" makes perfect sense to women - who are accustomed to reading between the lines and fishing for "emotional content." To guys, it is just a bunch of mixed signals. And why should I listen to mixed signals from Female A when Female B is giving me something decidedly unmixed?

Is there a joy in the chase? Sure. But the chase has to end. If I go deer hunting, I don't catch the deer, then let him go so I can chase him again. I chase him, catch him, then eat him. If I had to re-chase him every time I sat down to eat, do you really think I would ever go deer hunting?

By the way, I am not a hunter. This is all just an illustration.

Why, then, would any fool say to a woman, "Let him chase you, and then let him catch you, but be sure to make him chase you again after he has caught you?"

Men have a word for this kind of woman: unstable bitch. And they run from them. And rightly so.

These two problems from this one website illustrates why long-term relationships are almost never helped by mainstream relationship handbooks. First, all mainstream relationship handbooks are written from the female perspective. They assume that the female desire is what is best for the relationship, and they teach the female to focus on her own wants and needs. This necessarily undermines any chance at a long-term relationship because a genuine love relationship is one in which both partners are committed to meeting, not their own needs, but the needs of the other. The end result is a library of books, tapes, and websites that make women feel really good about themselves, but never challenge them to get outside of the female perspective and learn how to please a man.

The second reason why mainstream relationship handbooks undermine long-term relationship health is that they assume a pattern of experience and communication that is female-friendly, but totally ignores that of the male. Because these books are largely written for females, who, understandably are the largest audience for such items, they are often written by females who have never experienced dating from a male perspective. They don't really know what men want, or what men think, or how men communicate. These female (usually) relationship "experts" have various political axes to grind, pay due homage to certain cultural assumptions, and tailor their message to sell books - not to teach new patterns of behavior and communication.

And the result is that more than 50% of all marriages in America today will end in divorce, and 67% of those divorces will be needlessly initiated by women who, when they tried to learn how to save their relationship, were told to play hard to get by people more intent on selling their books than on saving a relationship.

Two Basic Errors Women Make

I received the following question from a friend (not a client, since client communications are confidential) asking for dating advice. I secured her permission to reprint her (modified) email and my response in full. It demonstrates a couple of basic errors that women make in their dating lives, which they pick up from our Oprahized culture.


Dear JJ:

As you know, I'm a very outspoken, loud, strong and opinionated woman. I speak my mind and know what I like and what I don't like. I am always upfront about my past (cancer) and problems stemming from it. Particularly, as you know I have both scarring and limping as a result of my bout with cancer.

I think my strength, independence, and opinions are awesome attributes for myself to possess, but I honestly feel like it intimidates and/or scares guys away.

I refuse to change who I am, but I thought some outside opinions and thoughts could help me in realizing what or how I could do things differently.

I find that the men that I meet tend to drift off and basically stop talking to me. I'm curious as to why this happens as well.

What do you think?

Girlie

Here is my response:


I don't honestly think that limping or scarring would scare most guys off. If it did, then you didn't want them anyway.

On the other hand, a couple of things that you write about - if I saw them in your profile online or if I noticed them in your character, I would never ask you out. Here's why -

1) "I think those are awesome attributes for myself to possess...." This is a basic mistake that many women make because Oprah tells them it is so. Philosophically, it goes like this: "Whatever makes me (the woman) happy will also make him (the man) happy. What I find attractive in a man is also what men find attractive in a woman."

Utter and complete Balderdash.

First, dating is not about you being happy with who you are - all self-esteem and feminist empowerment nonsense to the contrary. Dating, and building any kind of a relationship, is about making someone else happy. Love is about meeting someone else's needs - selfishness is about insisting that your needs are met. You reveal a self-absorbed outlook in the mere typing of the above sentence that reveals someone who does not have the character to build a long-term relationship with a real man. Sure, you can find somebody with a foot fetish or slave fetish that would just be into worshiping someone sexy - but there would never be a healthy relationship with a real man if you really think in the way that sentence indicates you think.

Secondly, it is NOT true that men find the same things attractive in women that women find in men. Women find independence, self-assurance, and strength attractive in men. Real men find softness, demureness, and a certain vulnerability to be attractive in women. Let me rephrase that - men find those traits desirable in the women who they want to have long term relationships with. Sure, we like loud, brash women too. But those are for short-term flings, if you get my drift.

2) "I refuse to change who I am...." You also, in refusing this, refuse to build a healthy relationship with someone else. Because change and accommodation is a necessary part of living with someone for 40-60 years.

Now, let me clarify for a moment. What I am saying has nothing to do with your status as a cancer survivor. Sure, we are all given the experiences that we are given by God/fate/whatever, and we can't run from who we are. So again, if someone came along and your status as a person scarred by cancer (or whatever) "scared them off," you are better off without them.

But on other matters - should you be willing to change the essential quality of who you are? Again, I realize that fool Oprah Winfrey and the feminism-lite that controls the non-thinking of most of Western culture implies (when it is not screaming it) that if a man is dissatisfied with any aspect of a woman's existence, he is "controlling" or "abusive" or he "ought to accept me [the woman - of course the same rule does not apply to women who want to change men, for in truth, society considers THIS quest to be quite noble] as I am."

Worse Balderdash than the previous.

Only if you postulate that you are perfect and therefore need no improvement or change in your life could it be true that a man mentioning, "Hey, kicking the pit bull may not be a great idea. Maybe you should control your anger." would be abusive or controlling in any way. But again, the feminist-oriented culture (read: utterly non-thinking culture) that is the West assumes that women's character and morality is innately higher than that of men, and therefore women need no change, while women desperately need to change all those deviant men.

But even if it were true that women have higher character than men (and it manifestly is NOT true), your attitude would keep you from building a healthy relationship because it gives off the vibe that you refuse to accommodate others. Love is not affection, lust, or attraction (though most in the ignorant feminist culture believe that it is). Rather, love is a settled commitment to meet the needs of another.

Meeting the needs of another necessarily implies that those who possess such a commitment are willing to change as needs change.

If I am allergic to seafood, then I would expect my significant other to lay off the fish when in my presence. And such an attitude is not "abusive," "controlling," or unreasonable in any way. If my significant other has an allergy to cologne, I will stop wearing it post haste, and it is not unreasonable of her to expect that I would do so. And on a thousand lesser matters, the only healthy relationships are those in which both parties accommodate each other constantly - at least on matters that do not touch on matters of right and wrong (on which matters, of course, there can be no accommodation).

Yes, if your conversations with men are anything like what you write, you are probably scaring the right kind of men away. Because if you really think consistently with what you write, you are very definitely NOT long-term relationship material.

Understanding Bad Boys

There are two kinds of men in the world - the marrying kind, and the non-marrying kind. The non-marrying kind tends to develop a reputation as being "Bad Boys," and trust me, they use their "Bad" both as a means of attracting and repelling women. Bad Boys, in other words, are labeled "bad" not only because they do things that seem inappropriate or cruel, but because they do the one ultimate thing that is guaranteed to flummox and frustrate women - be utterly unavailable for a real relationship.

All men, at a basic level, long to be in long-term relationships with women. But the Bad Boys never seem to get around to it - or if they do, their long-term relationships are punctuated with intermittent breakups, flings, or disappearances. It is important to recognize, when dealing with a "Bad Boy," that he is a "Good Boy" gone bad. Why does this happen?

In my 20+ years of counseling (and my 40 years of locker room conversations with men, some of whom are self-professed "Bad Boys"), I have found that almost every "Bad Boy" was a "Good Boy" with a horrific relationship with a woman in his past. Sometimes that relationship is with his mother. Sometimes with an ex-wife. Most often, something happens early on, as early as the teen or college years, with a girlfriend which solidifies a thought process that male and female relationships are an "Us v. Them" proposition.

Don't worry - Bad Boys will never sneak up on you. Ask him about his friends - all his married ones, he will tell you, are unhappy or on the verge of divorce. Look at the friends he travels with - it will be a rat pack of other bad boys. Listen to them talk - there will be lots of talk (indirectly around you of course) about "conquests." Ask him about his prior relationships - with a rare exception they will be very short, and very shallow. Is he in the practice of dating women who are much younger than he? Read: easy sex, little chance that he will be pressured for ultimate commitment. And in the event that he actually does form some sort of relationship with you, he will be astonishingly lacking in relevant tools for doing the hard work of building a life. He is likely immature, materialistic, brazenly lustful toward other women - perhaps to the point of infidelity, lacking in communication skills, utterly self-referential, and more prone to abandon ship than to invest time and effort when you and he are fighting.

And one of the dead giveaways that your guy is a "Bad Boy" is this: during the time you and he are merely "messing around" (or whatever he calls it), he won't exhibit a preference for female friendship. All of his friends will be his rat pack of male players. After he gets into a relationship with you - viola! - all of a sudden he is surrounded by a bevy of female "friends" that he insists it is necessary to keep in orbit. Think about that....

Can Bad Boys be changed? Sometimes.

Sometimes it is merely a function of growing up and realizing that all women are not as bad as that awful woman in his background. So with a lot of patience, a lot of self-sacrifice, and a lot of forgiveness, if you are the last woman standing when he wakes up and realizes that it is time to grow up, you win.

And sometimes it is matter of finding someone that they are secure to love. Women have incredible power over men - including the power to change them. I have seen the most outrageous players settled down and schooled into a white-picket-fence-and-cocker-spaniel-and-three-kids existence simply because they loved someone.

But recognize that this is the exception, not the rule. Nowadays, with societal expectations changing and the easy availability of sex, there can be little or not motivation for a Bad Boy to change - even at more "advanced" dating ages. And also realize this - even when Bad Boys do change, they leave a wake of broken hearts and emotional (and other) carnage behind them. In other words, you MIGHT be the one who changes him, but what are the odds?

Things You Should Never Say To A Guy....

It is rumored that women are better communicators than are men. I assure you, this is merely a rumor. I have been counseling for 20 years, and while it is true that women TALK more than guys, I would deny that women often SAY more than guys.

And frankly, some of the things that they say are destructive to a relationship. Rule number one with guys: say what you mean when you say it, and always be willing to tell the brutal, honest truth. Rule number two in communicating with guys - we hear what you say, not what you meant to say.

Want more constructive patterns of communication with guys? Try the following on... and NEVER say....

1) "You never listen to me."

Of course I listen to you - I just don't understand you. At a basic level, I am listening very hard for the information that I need to know in order to make changes, solve problems, or help you in the way that you need. It has never occurred to me that you would talk to me merely as a means of establishing intimacy. I am listening hard for something concrete that you want me to know - so when you are tying to bridge the gap and share your feelings, make sure that you couch your communication to me in something that I can KNOW, ACT ON, SOLVE, or DO so that I get what it is that I am supposed to get from our conversation.

2) "Is she pretty?"

Probably, or you wouldn't have even thought of asking. Do you want me to lie or tell you the truth? You better want me to tell you the truth - don't encourage the habit of lying. I know that the foundation of any strong relationship is the truth, but if you train me to lie, I am capable of doing that. Do you want to start a fight? Fine, but remember you are training me to believe that you can't handle the truth - that truth only insults you. Are you asking me what it is that makes me want you more than her? OK, then rephrase the question: "What are some of the things that make you want to be with me?" See how constructive that can be?

3) "Which outfit do you prefer?" or "Does this make me look fat?"

When you ask this, I actually think that my opinion matters. You know, I really do believe that it is a problem that women tend to dress to impress other women rather than to attract men, so if you ask me, I am going to tell you what I really think. And let's face it - men have a different outlook on women's clothes than does "Allure" magazine. But hey - I think that is a postive - because you are never going to DATE the editors of "Allure," are you?

4) "That's not nice."

Maybe not, but it is true - that's why I said it to you. In the male ethical heirarchy, it is OK to say something unpleasant as long as it is true. Nice doesn't enter into the equation. We are accustomed to dealing with behavior that is "not nice" by saying things that are "not nice." The whole idea is to motivate better choices in the future, after all. You wanna tell me that what I said was not true? Fine, that we can talk about. But if what I said was true, then "nice" is utterly irrelevant to what I am trying to communicate to you.

5) "I just want to be friends."

Actually, what you want is for me to stop asking you out. Say so. Give me the freedom to move on to somebody that is romantically interested in me. Don't try to keep me around as a safety valve - it is fair to neither of us.

6) "Nothing is wrong between us."

Balderdash. And this is the surest signal to me that you have given up on our relationship. When people don't even care enough about each other to fight anymore or try to work out their problems, there is no hope. Be honest with me - men are born problem solvers and we live to make things right. Where there is something wrong between us, tell me what it is and let's both work on a solution together. But be sure that you actually do want a solution... I don't want to keep arguments stewing forever in some sort of twisted power play. I want peace, stability, and the freedom to grow in our relationship.

7) "Sports is not important. It is just a game."

BUZZZ! Wrong answer! Sports is important because it reminds me of all the virtues that are necessary to being a man - teamwork, devotion, perseverance, loyalty, and reaching down inside of myself and finding strength when I have every reason to give up. Trust me - when I am forced to live in the presence of men being men, it helps remind me of what it means to be the right kind of man in every area of my life, from work, to home, to love.

8) "We need to talk."

No we don't. What we need to do is "solve a problem." When you say "we need to talk," I fear an endless, meandering soliloquy on your part in which I am lost in a labyrinth of emotions and conversations and details. Tell me, "There is something that is bothering me and I want to see if you can help me solve it." Again, now you are asking for me to do what's natural, and I am already on your side. But remember, men have difficulty establishing intimacy in a merely verbal exchange - so you may turn me off from the beginning if you make me anticipate the verbal equivalent of another afternoon in the principal's office.

9) "That looks cute on you."

For God's sake - I haven't desired cute since I was four wearing that Navy outfit. I am a man - I am a protector and a fighter. I work hard, play hard, and own a pit bull, for crying out loud. The surest way to get me to hate something is to associate it with the word "cute." Tell me it's sexy, manly, or accents that certain part of my body. Show me by your own response that it turns you on. But for crying out loud - leave "cute" in the dressing room at the mall with your sisters!

10) "If you don't _______, I'm leaving."

This is the surest tipoff that you don't love me. Say it, but expect me to hear it. And when I let you go, remember that it was YOU that left. Love, after all, is eternal....

Love's Ugly Stepsister

It ought to seem axiomatic, but unfortunately many things that are obvious are considered to be problematic by our culture.

When we invest ourselves completely in a relationship, and risk so much for the love and affection of one person, cutting ourselves off from the love and affection of every other person for the joy of rooting an eternal love with the one person of our choice, there is bound to be a desire to make sure that the other person is just as committed and just as "off the market" as we make ourselves.

It is commonly believed in our culture that jealousy is a bad thing. But in fact, exclusive, permanent, self-abandoning love is impossible without a tinge of jealousy.

Even in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the chapter containing the Ten Commandments asserts that God is "a jealous God." Certainly these religious traditions would maintain that God is a loving God - yet his love is manifested in such a way that he can be jealous about the ones that he loves.

All of life is made up of yin and yang, masculine and feminine, positive and negative.

Love is without a doubt, when reciprocated, one of the highest positives in life. But it comes joined with a slight negative. When we commit ourselves to someone else, we take it upon ourselves to guard our relationship so as to ensure that they have committed themselves to the relationship as well.

This tendency to guard our investment in another and reduce the risk is called "jealousy."

Love is beautiful. Jealousy is the ugly stepsister of love. But they are always joined together. Jealousy is that thing in me that reminds the object of my love that he/she has a responsibility to not only NOT break the bounds of our relationship, but to not even APPEAR to break the bounds of the relationship.

Attempting to remove jealousy from the equation ultimately undermines our ability to love. The modern notion that love can exist without jealousy asks us to remove our expectation of both permanence and exclusivity from our romantic entanglements - and the romantic carnage that has been left in the wake of such unrealistic expectations indicates that we would be better off admitting that true love always condones, perhaps even appreciates, the contribution that jealousy makes to keeping people together.

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....