Relationships

In my current funk, I’ve been coming to a slow realization. I’ve known it deep down all along, but the romantic in me has always wanted to suppress the reality of it.  Because when you accept the fact that relationships are not about sex-but about power and whose dreams get mortgaged for the future- that future becomes depressing indeed.

Even if you take matters into your own hands and send the mortgage broker packing.

If relationships were about sex, and one partner providing the requisite quantity of that commodity, then the divorce rate would be a hell of a lot lower than it is today.  You can take the word sex and substitute just about anything else of value: money, companionship, sympathy, support and its always the same. The other partner is always using it to get her way. Pat Benatar wrote a song about it.

Women, because of their history as the supposedly disadvantaged member of the partnership,  learn this reality at an early age. Its taught to them subtly and subconsciously by their mothers and sisters- as well as the girlfriends they hang with, who willingly serve as the background for their attempts to use sex and emotion as a weapon to render the other partner powerless and subject to their desires and needs. Thanks to the rise of feminism and its denigration of the need for men to play the roles men were meant to play,  women have acquired some powerful allies in this drama of emotional slaughter. The law and other men.

Miles (telling Jack how he believes romantic relationships work for males approaching middle-age): “If you don’t have money at my age, you’re not even in the game anymore. You’re just a pasture animal waiting for the abattoir.”

This by the way is why single men may not live longer, but they smile a lot more along the way. The only person to deprive them of what they want is themselves.

“But wait”, you ask, “the whole point of any relationship is to get bonded with someone who shares your dreams and together you go forward along the same path”.

YEA, RIGHT!

Any relationship may start out that way, but over time the women quickly figure out ways to welch on the deal. As Herman Wouk said in one of his books:

“The girl you marry, and the woman you have to live your life with, are two entirely different people.” 

Maybe Katherine Hepburn had it right:

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Either that or have the resources and the emotional strength to just keep recycling relationships so that you stay in the excitement zone. Of course that gets expensive. Or does it?

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less. ~Brendan Behan

At least in a long term relationship, one person gets to be happy:

The worst part is that while the other partner slowly grinds you down, they all the while insist that they are doing it for good reasons. That there is too much risk involved, that its foolish just to move someplace because that has been where you always wanted to live-for 10 years-and that the simply want to make sure you can survive. They believe in their hearts that its done out of love.

Maybe it is. But the sadness of seeing the thing you want pass you buy because you can’t quite figure out how to get it, and no one around you seems to know how to help you-leaves me more than a bit depressed.

Of course this does not help either.

However that is no matter to her, provided….always provided-she gets A, B, and C. But rest assured its done with a sense of love and whats best for me. Except-and I know this is going to come a shock for you-I know what’s best for me and its not on the menu yet.

Sigh! It is going to be a long winter………………….

Nick: Wise up, folks. We’re all alone out there and tomorrow we’re going out there again.

However as Scarlett always said, tomorrow is yet another day:

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.— Pope John XXIII.