And when the girls came out to play ...
“I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” said a female friend to me over lunch last week.
She’s a late 30s-ish, attractive, charming, intelligent, funny, functional and successful woman. Kind of a prize for any dude, in my esteem.
“Why not?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I think you’d be a gem in any guy’s book.”
“Mainly because there are no men of my acquaintance that I would call a gem,” she said. “Oh, there are gems, really nice and decent guys, like you (shucks), but they’re already taken. And why wouldn’t they be?”
“No,” she continued, “I’ve been engaged three times, the last time for over three years, but at the end of it, I didn’t want to marry him, and for good reasons. He was a drunk For some reason, I seem to attract drunks. They lie and pretend they’re social drinkers, but they revert to being plain old drunks, once the glow has come off the early excitement.”
Not only, she said, were they drunks, they were often mama’s boys, slackers, pot-tokers, and were essentially motivated to be on good behavior only to separate her from her underpants at the earliest possible chance.
“I don’t need them. I don’t know if I ever even want another relationship,” she continued. “Don’t get me wrong. I am absolutely straight, and I like sex, but I’d actually rather hang out with my girlfriends. I cherish them. Otherwise, I like to travel (she’s well-traveled) and to spend the money I earn on me, not on some slob who mainly wants to drink and screw and not do anything else. Drives me nuts. What the hell has happened to men?”
At first glance one could assume she’s just bitter because the ways of love have not turned out well for her. But, I know that’s not true. I’ve had similar conversations with other female friends, also unattached, also very attractive and bright, and know that the condition of the male of the species is not bragworthy.
Of course, I could have risen up in hurt and self-important male umbrage at her borderline mysandristic assertions about mine own sex. Yeah, I could have done that, except I know that she’s right.
I also prefer the company of females as friends, and not for any sexual reasons, I really am happily and faithfully married, but because women are simply better friends. They are more sensitive, caring, curious, interested (and sometimes too damned inquisitive; not a big deal) and when a female friend asks about the state of your well-being, she really means it. There are topics, including intensely personal ones, that I would be far more comfortable discussing with a female than with a male. There’s no ‘dick-wars’ component with a male-female interchange, so a guy doesn’t have to worry about being seen as weak or cowardly.
Males are raised to be less caring than females and it makes many guys uncomfortable to go all Alan Alda-ish about sensitive issues, even if that is truly how they feel.
Part of the behavior stems, in my esteem, from the school system, which is far more female-focused. Little guys are stuck in an elementary classroom with little girls, and at the head of that class is a female.
Wee lads are a bit awkward, immature, dirty, vulgar (burps and farts are prominent sources of humor), inept, too imaginative and not always in acceptable ways, and messy as hell. They are chastised for their natural tendencies by the females in the class and left with a sense of failure because they don’t embrace what doesn’t come naturally. The little girl colors the sky blue, the boy next to her colors it brown and thinks it is screamingly funny to do so. The teacher doesn’t.
Eventually the boys turn contrarian because they don’t know how to combat the stifling. The girls continue to excel in school and go on to colleges and universities in droves (check the stats on that point, and the figures are scary in terms of the paucity of excellence in my own sex), and the boys fall by the wayside.
If the poor sod stays stuck in his immaturity, he’s not going to amount to a pinch of coonshit, as the old boys used to say. He will become one of the drunken louts trying to date my friend.
If he actually does grow up and gain some maturity and integrity, he will become one of the good ones who has already been snapped up and is hence unavailable.
I have no answers for her, or for anybody else. Considering the state of marriage today and the number of ‘for life’ relationships that crumble (including two of my own – always glad to help out the statistical count), maybe it’s itme for a new model. Could be that nobody should marry. Judging from my friend’s comments (and she says she’s happy in her chosen lifestyle, it might be time to move on to something else. Oh, we can still procreate but maybe their needs to be less fuss and muss about it all and maybe the old formalities of what a relationship should be might be in need of a realistic revamp.
Yet, I am happy being married and having somebody with whom to share my life. It works for me – finally. But, I don’t feel sad for her. What she has chosen also works for her. Or so she says.
Labels: Maybe we need a new model
posted by Ian Lidster at
1:08 PM
9 Comments:
not much of a 'gem' if it took her three years to discover he was a drunk! was she stoned, too?
I kind of agree with her Ian. Good men are far and few in between these days. I also think you've hit the nail on the head with your reasoning as to why men more than women have slid downhill. To be fair women have changed too but not as drastically as many men.
Women cherish their friends because they know how valuable they are. Men usually don't seem to get this at all.
I hope your friend does find a good man eventually, whether to marry or not. Even though her experiences have been bad, a good relationship with a member of the opposite sex is a wonderful thing and sometimes it takes a while to get it right as you can attest.
Great post, Ian. I think your last paragraph sums it up quite nicely. People do what works for them, and obviously, what she's chosen has worked for her and is working for her still. I am a huge proponent of never settling, not in relationships at least. The lovely thing about living in these times is that neither women *nor* men *have* to marry. How much more lovely for all of us, I think -- to be married because we *want* to be, not because we *have* to be. Best wishes to your friend.
Although I agree that men and women socialize differently in our society (a learned behaviour in my opinion, not one that is biologically driven), I don't think that men are less sensitive or caring. Male friendships are unforgiving. Admittedly, weakness is sniffed out and mercilessly used against you. But when you need something, male friends always help each other out. Painting, fence building, basement floors, driveway paving, roofing, moving furniture, uprooting trees... anytime I have had some serious project that needed to get done, my friends have been there without my asking. This community spirit is common among men, yet overlooked when evaluating the quality of our ability to have grown up relationships.
Your friend needs to attend different social functions in order to meet men that area a bit less self centered.
I agree with her. It's like a Catch 22. Damned if you do, Damned if you don't.
she makes a good point, but some of us luck out.
I am not sure about marriage, but sharing your life with somebody sure is nice...
It seems to me that as a society we are still in a transitional stage of male/female relationships. There have not been enough generations between now and the time when men were the breadwinners and women were the homemakers. There were drunk men then,too. However, women did not have the options that we do now. Divorce was just not done and choosing to stay single into your midlife was not easy to do because women did not have very many options when it came to supporting ourselves financially.
Now we can pretty much take care of ourselves and we don't need men in the ways women used to need them. Sexual mores are totally different. A lot more is expected of men in relationships but this new kind of relating has not been modeled for them. The model that a lot of men have been exposed to is the old one where the wife was dependent on the husband or at least the parents still kept up some symblance of that model even if the wife worked outside the home.
Women want men who will be more involved in the relationship and who are able to take care of themselves. A lot of men still want to be taken care of the way Mom took care of Pop. I think it will take a couple of generations more for this to work itself out.
I also think that we don't view marriage the way we used to. I have shared my life with a wonderful man for 9 years andwe don't see any need to get married. Why make a lot of promises in front of our families when we already know how we feel and were our relationship is?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home