Warning Notice: This post will contain opinions that are at odds with those of many Americans and others in general. I am posting them anyway -because it’s my right to.
I’ve started this post at least ten times -and walked away from it equally as much. Partially because it contains some heartfelt opinions on my part-and my certain knowledge it is not going to win me any friends with anyone-and the last thing this blog needs is yet one more group that has become disaffected because of something innocent that I wrote. I mean, after all, at various points in its history this little blog of mine has pissed off: feminist female naval officers, their parents, women married to naval officers, supporters of gay marriage, Teabaggers, Sarah Palin fans, people who think drinking and prostitution are a crime, Western Women living in Asia, fans of China, Lee Kwan Yew, worthless Arabs in ( fill in the name of worthless Arab country supported by the US here), legions of “America firsters”, SWO major command wannabes, SWO’s in general, the Missile Defense Agency, Admiral Harvey-and last but most definitely least-Curtis.
Nonetheless, the time has come the Walrus said to talk of many things; of women and their foolishness and of cabbages and kings!
Never forget one thing. The girl you marry and the woman you must make a life with, are two different people.
Women have a way of living in the present. Before Marriage, she is out to win you. Afterwards, you’re just one of the many factors in her life. In a way, you are secondary, because she has you, whereas everything else is in flux-children, household, new clothes, social ties. If these other factors are disagreeable to her, she will make you unhappy. Herman Wouk, from the Winds of War.
Truer words, I believe have never been written. Any discussion of relationships with women should be prefaced by this statement, then followed by this famous quote from Shakespeare:
Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!
Those two quotes are necessary to be understood before beginning any dissertation about male/female relationships. In so many ways I have been most assuredly lucky in my life-in picking and choosing women, however, that statement is most assuredly not true. I’ve yet to find the all fulfilling relationship; that person who “completes me”. Personally, I don’t think such relationships really exist. Literally, thousands of people lie and say they have that-but at its heart, they are simply lying. To themselves and to us. Because the ideal relationship-as idolized by millions of romantic words of thousands of years of history: DOES NOT EXIST!
Now there are more than a few people who are willing to line up to argue the point with me. And say they have found the perfect woman. Enjoy the illusion if you think you must-the facts remained unchanged. All successful romantic relationships are based on two things at opposites with each other. 1) Lies told to yourself and to her; 2) Settling for less than you really want or deserve.
After some 45+ years in the women chasing business, I firmly believe that all relationships begin to decline from the moment they are first consummated sexually. ( And don’t even ask me about so called “platonic” relationships-those are just stupid rationalizations for not giving each other pleasure that you both deserve. A relationship without sex is not a relationship.).
The real issue therefore-is how much they decay, and what are the abilities of each specific partner to deal with that decay. Phrased as an arithmetic formula: its rate of decay v s rate of patience and willingness to settle for less than you really want.
Couples that “succeed” ( success being a relative term), do so because of several distinct reasons:
1) The two partners are matched relatively equally in terms of sexual desire. In a relationship where both partners don’t have an over abiding interest in the sexual aspect, the odds of success are decidedly improved. It took me a long time to understand that there are men who are not as interested in sex as I thought they would be. To me -that’s a totally foreign concept. I can understand it in a woman, they, after all, bear the burden of pregnancy, but in a man? Unthinkable. Or so I thought. Nonetheless, over the years I have met men who don’t have the powerful urges that burn brightly within me. ( I am convinced that there are few women that can match my level of sexual desire, in my lifetime I have only met two who were truly on the same level – and both of them, while a joy and exhaustive in bed-where whack jobs mentally. ). Those folks who are matched sexually can probably do better than others because they don’t have the sexual mismatch always casting a shadow over the rest of the relationship. Partners that are unevenly matched, e.g., where one has a much stronger desire for sex than the other; are starting with a huge strike against them. Every other thing that happens in a relationship gets viewed against the prism of missed orgasms. I speak this from personal experience. There is no worse hell on earth than to lie in bed with a body beside you and go night after night without feeling the inside of the moist feminine region. Eventually, the dissatisfied partner wakes up one morning and says, “ I’m not going the rest of life without a blow job or getting laid in various positions.” Once that declaration is made-and it usually happens long before the final break-it’s all downhill from there.
2)2) Money is the root of all evil and it is the accelerator of marital decline. Specifically shared money. The idea of “joint accounts” in a relationship is a poison that we should have done away with long ago. One of the biggest flaws in relationships and one of the biggest drags on the advancement of women as a whole is this idea that they have to share assets with a man -or vice versa.
But wait you say, ” my husband and I get along fine about money.” Sure you do my lady-because nine times out of 10 you have the majority vote in how it gets spent because he ceded his vote on the matter to you a long time ago. Let me turn the question around to you, “ If you and your husband each had their own money-and neither knew anything about the others’ cash-but each side paid their fair share of the bills on time-would it really bother you that they had money you didn’t know about?” . If you can answer yes, to that question-it would bother you; then you are on the road to relationship decline. If you can say, “No, I don’t care what he does with his money so long as the bills are paid on time” your chances of success go up remarkably.
3) 3) At some point you have to come to grips with the failure of the other partner. As I said at the start, and as several famous comedians have pointed out, lies keep you together-not the truth. ” Still love ya honey!” “ You’re as pretty as the day we met!” A successful long term relationship is based on settling for less than you really want. And through whatever mental gymnastics works for you-somehow becoming comfortable with that denial of your own needs. Some men pull it off well. So too do many women. Others of us do not -and stew in the sauce of the bitterness that boils increasingly hotter as the days pass by. In point of fact, most of our parent’s relationships were based on a societal expectation that you would do just that. Divorce was frowned upon and women were dependent financially on their men. So unhappy couples tended to stay together. As time has passed and society’s values have changed-that expectation has diminished and the rate of divorce has risen. As well it should have. The old standard was flawed from the gitgo.
You always settle. It’s your comfort with the settling and the disappointment at the missed opportunities and how much that eats at you, that tell whether you stay the course or not. If the disappointment is so overpowering that it colors your view of the other person-it is probably best that you leave.
At this point, you are probably saying to yourself, “Man Skippy, you are incredibly pessimistic about marriage and relationships!”.
Yes, I am. I, at this point in my life, have become more than convinced that marriage and monogamy are useless concepts and institutions. Save for the fact that no one has come up with better ways of raising children-although there are some good communal concepts out there – the institution of marriage is pretty much useless. For several reasons.
One, because I don’t think men or women were meant to be monogamous and that sex is too great a thrill not be shared as universally as possible. If we could find some way to redefine the standard-and let people become partners, for a time that works until it doesn’t; without all the legal entanglements and/or the financial hassles-mankind as a whole would probably be better served. I think a world where people defined their definitions of “success” in terms of their own self-actualization-with interactions with the opposite sex being a pleasurable diversion-would be one of great improvement. For one thing, it would force people to stand up on their own two feet and recognize that they alone are responsible for their own happiness.
The idea of someone else being the be all, and end all, of one’s existence, is offensive and thoroughly antiquated.
Second, people at their heart of hearts, are selfish. Living with the S.O.-who takes selfish to a new dimension each and every passing year; I’ve become more convinced of how basic this is to our human makeup. When properly channeled-it can be a good thing. Obsessively realized, not so much.
Now, of course, there are those who are going to cite religious and other reasons why the concepts related above are “immoral”. Believe them if you wish-these beliefs are mine, reinforced in a great part because your Deity ( or Deities) has failed to intervene to make things better for us mere mortals. Your steadfast belief does not make mine wrong-just not in alignment with yours. I’d remind you that the Bible remade its ideas of marriage many times-otherwise we would still be marrying our brother’s widowed bride, or selling off our deflowered daughters.
If medical science moves on as I hope it does, pretty soon people will have 100+ year life spans as a matter of course. Thanks to synthetic organs and other age defeating treatments-“middle age” can last 50+ years or more. With Viagra and other scientific developments, sexual activity will go on for many years beyond what is accepted as “normal” now. That’s a good thing.
However I also it believe it means that people will have “phases” to their lives. We already see that on the economic front-lifetime employment is an ancient fantasy. People will go through a series of jobs-so too will they go through a series of life partners. Unlike today, however, they will avoid the recriminations ( which are mostly brought about by the economic hell imposed by our archaic divorce laws) and learn to accept each other and move on.
I just wish I was still young enough to realistically hope to see it and be a part of it. Oh to be 25 and know what I know now-I’d live by myself, and drive my own dreams.
And that is just the way it should be. It’s my view of relationships these days -as dark as it is-it is nonetheless realistic.
I warned about this from the start of this post.
Skippy,
To your point #2, I have to agree. Recently, the DOD has come out with a new revision to the 5 year overseas rule, forcing even Local Hires to rotate back to CONUS after 5 years. Several of the employees in my office have told me that their SO's have stated that they are not going, no matter what. So they are now faced with being forced to move or quit their jobs. The wives don't work, and they took the route of most Japanese married men, they gave their entire paycheck (including accesss to MyPay) to their SO's, and if they are foced to move back to the states they will be forced to find a very small place to stay and send the majority of their pay back to Japan. Never mind that in the cases I am speaking, the children are grown.
These guys have no chance to make it on their own, and when I spoke to them about keeping at least part of their pay, they get cold feet and shudder and say it's just easier to give it all to them and get an allowance. So I guess they would be in favor of seperate accounts, but due to their own fault, they don't have that opportunity.
About that-I'll drop you a note off line………
I'm probably the only guy married to an asian woman that holds the accounts. My wife gets a weekly allowance in a white envelope and when that is gone, it is gone! I work my ass off for what I get and that is the way it is and will always be. My wife knew this when we got married; did not like it, but none the less accepted it as the way I am. I like to play with the ladies, motorcycles, golf, and that is the way it is. Guys surrender because they are weak, nothing less. When I left asia the check book came with me and my wife followed. I would like to go back, but the f*&$#n army CPOL is continuing to block me. Somehow I cannot get above the cut line for a referral to the selecting agency. They are blocking an attempt to lateral transfer to the agency that wants me too. Damn! It looks like I will be heading off to Afghanistan again this fall, unless the org in Korea pulls off a major coupe with the CPOC over there.
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Matthew Arnold – "Dover Beach"
Lawrence Grant-I feel your pain. It took me three years to get overseas again-and then it was on the other contintent. ( Which is OK, but Asia it ain't.)
I concur with the rest of your assesment-the problem is women require clear thinking not influenced by Mr. Johnson……….
I'm another guy married to an Asian (Korean) that handles all the money matters. Back when we first got together, almost 40 years ago, she would hide the bankbooks at the slightest argument or trouble between us, but eventually realized that I wasn't going anywhere, and soon began just handing her unsigned paycheck to me every week. I'd sign her name, and deposit it or whatever, along with mine. These days,I'd like to get her more involved with how and where the money goes, so she could take over if I'm not able
She pays absolutely no attention to any old car or motorcycle I might drag home to restore, but I don't think another woman would escape her notice like my hobbies do.
'But the fact is that it's horrible, horrible, horrible!'
'What is?' I inquired.
'The abyss of error we live in regarding women and our relations with them….'
The Kreutzer Sonata – Tolstoy
““`
Being one of those with only a moderate libido these days, I find the life of pleasant bachelorhood eminently appropriate to my needs. The occasional social conversation with an intelligent woman of my own social, educational and economic level in a classy place, and the odd rub and tug or trip to the 4FoWs. Marriage, relationships? – been there, broke my heart and my nerve with that. (No financial issues, as we had no money to speak of.) Nowadays I do what I want when I want to, spend where and on I want anytime…
But if I had a stronger sex-drive it would indeed be very different for me.
Go back to 35? Problem is I know I would make the same mistakes as I did before because: 'No sooner does a man go near a women than he falls under her spell and loses his head.' op cit.
I was wondering. How is it you have been with the S.O. so long?
Lately, I find myself asking that question every day……… 😉
Probably because I am still fond of her, and she keeps a good house. But with the passage of time its probably true that our needs have grown differently.
And I have discovered ruefully-that the doubters were right-once you take a Japanese girl to the States, they are not the wonderful Japanese girl you loved and admired. Taking them to America ruins them.
http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/Reader/reader1803.htm
"Why i Never married a Thai"
VERY , VERY long essay but perhaps worth a read when one has a LOT of time.
Even though it is specific to Thailand-there are a lot of points that can extrapolated to other Asian societies. In particular it explains why "recreational sex venues" continue to survive-because they fill a need not being provided by Thai (or other) wives.
And that's a great thing! 😉