I read this article the other day.
One of the many, many unexamined assumptions this article has is that relationships with men are an either/or proposition. That is either a man will be charming, handsome, and infinitely sexually appealing but temporary or he’ll be steady, responsible, and not terribly sexually exciting but marriage material. The implication is that if one wants to marry, one has to settle. How depressing. No wonder I don’t hang out with normal people. Their views of life are so morbid.
The first problem with this either/or mentality is that it is demeaning to all parties involved. It suggests that a husband is something that is caught, like a large sea bass on a fishing expedition, and then hung on the wall of one’s living room.
“My Cheryl, what a fine looking husband you have. He’s quite the catch.”
“He certainly is, Marge. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had snagging him. He fought me tooth and claw. In end I was forced to bash him over the head with a rock.”
“I lured mine in slowly. The trick is to get him used to your scent first while leaving out food. At first he wouldn’t even let me touch him, but by Spring, he would curl up on the couch with me, lapping up the cream.”
“You’re a magician, Fern. Mark was so feral!”
“He still is. Rowr.”
Yes, snagged, bagged and dragged to the altar. Because of course no real man wants to be married to a woman. That’s preposterous! Surely, the only men who are willing to tie themselves to one female are either so pathetic marriage is the only way they will get laid on a regular basis or because they have been utterly bamboozled by one’s feminine wiles.
Now, I grew up Mormon . . . sort of. But that’s not the point, the point is that there was an infamous tome that was circulated among Mormon women in the 1960’s, the 1970’s and even into the 1980’s called Fascinating Womanhood. It circulated elsewhere but that is the context I know it from. This book was a guide for already married women on how to “fascinate” their husbands into a better marriage. The best part of this book (which is both disturbing and hilarious) is that many of the examples of fascinating women are taken from works of great literature. Characters from both Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo appear as prominent examples. The authoress (because aren’t they always?) Helen Andelin also wrote a book for young, single women called Fascinating Girl which was all about how to go about this very snagging. I believe her husband, Aubry, wrote a book called . . . wait for it, people . . . A Man of Velvet and Steel. Yes, yes he did. I know.
The point . . . and I do have one . . . is that we aren’t that far away from the conception that in order to be happy in marriage a woman must: 1. Settle for someone she may not be in love with or even sexually attracted to 2. trick him into proposing and 3. fake her way through the marriage via a series of deceptions, falsehoods and emotional manipulations.
Love in this paradigm, doesn’t exist. They, being those authors and proponents of these sorts of texts eg. The Rules and the vast majority of articles in Cosmopolitan, don’t really believe in love. In many ways, love is like Christian faith: it requires of us the belief in grace. That is that inspite of our fallibility we are saved; that we are loveable and loved. People don’t really believe this. They look at themselves in the mirror and think “Eww”; they are universally aware of how they fall short of the ideal. The only way people think that they can be loved, can garner approval is by painting themselves as the ideal even though it is false. They must trick, fool and exploit others into loving them. The ironic part is that if you are loved for you facade your remain as unloved as if you had been rejected for your true self.
Love is not a Pygamlion project in which the beloved is a real fixer-upper. Love is not love if you love the other for what they can be or what you want them to be but never for what they are. If we force the other to reflect back at us the best of our own ego, that is not love; it is narcissism.
Though it seems to me that if 1out of 25 Americans is a sociopath then narcissism is rampant. That’s also pretty depressing.
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
