Is Chivalry Dead? Yes, But So is Basic Human Decency

I spend a lot of time in airports. And if you really want to get the pulse of human nature, there is no better place to find it than in an airport–or on an airplane–in the rush to board or deplane. This is where people show their true colors. And the colors are not pretty. We’re not talking sunny yellow and soothing insane asylum lavender (which is, by the way, the color I painted my office). We’re talking angry orange and dire black.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have lifted heavy suitcases for pregnant women when plenty of able-bodied men were about. Or the number of times I have seen elderly ladies taken out by the roller suitcases of businessmen. But a recent tripped to Chicago topped it all.

I was suffering from a minor wrist injury and had my right hand in a brace when my five-year-old daughter and I boarded a plane in Detroit on leg two of our trip home. When I struggled a bit trying to get my suitcase in the overhead bin with a bum hand, Heidi called out from behind me, “Can someone help my mommy, please?”

Nothing. I dropped the suitcase. Heidi repeated her question in a plaintive voice four more times with no reaction from any of the passengers seated around us. I looked down the aisle and met the gaze of a flight attendant. “I’m sorry, but I have bad hand,” I said to her. “Could you help with this suitcase?”

Remarkably, she shook her head and turned away. (And in case you’re wondering for the sake of future flight planning, this was Delta.)

Then what I can only admiringly call a “bad ass grandma” appeared behind Heidi. Petite but feisty, she said loudly, “I cannot believe with all the men on this plane, not a one can get up to help you put that suitcase away!”

Still there was virtually no reaction from anywhere, save first class. A young man from business class finally met the call to action and stowed my suitcase for me.

Next item: climb over young businessman to access my window seat. He was sitting there in his aisle seat engrossed in his iPhone. With my good hand clutching the fingers of my energetic preschooler, I said, “Excuse me.”

No reaction.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Still nothing.

I was beginning to think I was the victim of some horrible practical joke. I knelt down to put myself at eye level with the seated businessman glued to his handheld electronic device, and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to sit beside you. Could you please let me in?”

That finally worked. He got up and let me in.

Once I had Heidi and myself buckled into our seats, I sat there wondering over this latest experience of human decency gone awry. I don’t expect too much of people, men in particular. I’m a self-made businesswoman who knows how to wield both a weed whacker and an orbital sander. But just because I can do everything most of the time when required does not mean I do not appreciate acts of basic human kindness.

Like men who open doors for me. Or young people who offer to hoist my luggage into the overhead bin on an airplane.

But basic human kindness has become an increasingly rare commodity. When a man holds a door for me these days, it almost bolls me over so rare is the occurrence. And when a businessman in an airport actually lets me go first to get off a plane rather than running me down in his mad rush to get to wherever, I find myself pleasantly surprised.

But I don’t think this is how things should be. Fellow contributor Susannah tells me she thinks the trouble is that men are scared to be kind to women because there are women who are offended when a man offers to carry their bags or pay for their dinner.

Um, really?

Who are these women?

I’m a feminist. I believe I can do whatever a man can do for the most part, though there are some areas where I fail. I can’t, for example, swing an ax for hours on end. But I suppose if I really wanted to be able to swing an ax for hours, I could build up the strength to do it. But just because I am smart and capable doesn’t mean I don’t ever want a gesture of respect or assistance. I am human, after all. And I have to wonder about women who take offense when a man commits an act of basic human kindness.

I really don’t think this is the problem. What woman in her right mind would get annoyed if a guy opened a car door for her or bought her dinner on a first date? It is no different from when I help an elderly woman find her seat on an airplane because her eyesight is no longer so good. It’s a small matter of honoring one’s fellow creatures as human beings deserving of care and respect.

I don’t believe men are the problem or feminism is the problem. I think our culture is experiencing a disturbing decline in basic human decency, and I wish I could pinpoint the answer as to why.

I cannot.

I just know it has reached epidemic proportions.

The one advantage to all this rudeness, however, is that it provides an excellent filtering system. For example, if a man fails to open a door for me or fails to buy dinner on a first date, that’s it. He’s done. And if an acquaintance fails to show proper empathy for a friend or colleague in need of comfort, I know instantly that person is not worth my time or energy. The playing field of people who understand basic human kindness and basic modes of showing respect has narrowed so much that it’s become quite easy to dismiss potential friends, lovers, and colleagues as complete duds on first acquaintance.

But the question remains–what is going on here? It wasn’t so long ago that a person who did not help an elderly neighbor with her groceries, hold doors open for women and old folks, and at least offer to foot the bill at dinner gatherings would be socially rejected as a numbskull. But now it’s perfectly acceptable, apparently, to be rude and self-centered.

I had the pleasant experience this last week of having a door held for me by my 10-year-old second cousin in Chicago. “After you,” he said. And when he and his brother received gifts of soccer jerseys from Norwegian relatives, without any prodding from their parents, they put them on and then pleasantly posed for pictures from trigger-happy relatives with cameras who thought they were cute. These young men will be rare commodities, I fear.

Decency isn’t that hard a skill to master. You would think otherwise though by how many people lack it, of course. As Susannah, who is training her 10-year-old son in the arts of social grace, says, “It’s really not that hard to hold a door open and say, ‘How are you?’ It should be a social reflex.”

Unfortunately, it’s not.

The social reflex these days is to ignore your surroundings and scroll on an iPhone while buildings burn and women give birth in the aisle four feet from your airplane seat. Oh yes, and you’re an M.D., too, but let’s just forget that for right now, as it would be awfully inconvenient to offer your expertise and aid on your vacation trip to Panama.

The problem here with this “ME” attitude, however, is that it isolates. And, as any history major knows, isolation only leads to a dangerous disconnect from reality and society.

If you don’t offer yourself to others, they sure as hell are not going to offer themselves to you.

So next time you see a single mother struggling with a stroller, three suitcases, and two toddlers, offer a hand. Because the thing about basic human kindness is this: just like the more popular mode of toxicity, it’s contagious as hell. Make a mom smile, and you’ll smile, too. And honestly, wouldn’t you rather see O’Hare or Hartsfield-Jackon as places of opportunity rather than places of massive rush and stress. Care for your fellow man, and I guarantee, in times of trial, he will return the favor.

Why I Write This Blog…and the Audience I Never Expected

Yesterday morning when I was engaging in my more conventional role as serious journalist, interviewing a horticultural research scientist for an article in The Progressive Farmer, I was surprised when my source ended our conversation with the comment, “I looked you up, by the way, and read your blog. I think it’s great. I’m going to tell my wife to read it.”

A year ago, this comment would have surprised me. After all, if you’ve read “The Scoop,” you know I started this blog as something of a testimony on behalf of women who have it all, or thought they did, and have discovered that the life they strived for isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be. I and my contributors have always written with that strong-willed but sometimes brokenhearted female audience in mind.

But here’s the sticking point: half my followers are male. And they are more likely to respond to my commentary than women. Even more intriguing—I’ve never had a one respond with disgust or anger.

This seems to fly in the face of the warning I received from my ex-husband once he became one of the many followers of my blog, perhaps interested to know the woman he never knew when married. “You know,” he told me one day last winter, “that blog of yours is honest and funny, but you’re never going to get a date again.”

He wasn’t quite right about that, though the blog has proved to be an excellent filter. Let’s just say it very quickly separates the men from the boys. And it would seem there are an awful lot of “boys” out there, but I don’t think too many of them are following my blog.

The men who find themselves strangely glued to the electronic pages of “I Only Love You Because I Have To” send me e-mails or call me on the phone (if they happen to be friends, acquaintances, or colleagues) and say things like this:

“I’m so glad I read your post about Valentine’s gifts. I was almost going to ask my wife to get me Bose noise-cancelling headphone for my birthday. Thank heaven I didn’t.”

“I have passed your blog address along to my daughters. I think they really need to read this.”

“Um, I just need to tell you, Deborah, that the reason I don’t help my wife with the housework is because I get tired of being told how I never do it right.”

“I love your blog. It’s like being a fly on the wall inside the female brain!”

And then there is the husband of one of my girlfriends who tells me, “I read it all the time, so I will know exactly what I’m doing wrong.”

This male audience was not something I expected at all. In fact, I tended to think early on that perhaps my ex was right—that men would interpret my posts as a rant against their gender, the disgruntled ravings of a disappointed female. I have been pleasantly surprised, however, to learn that for once in my more than a decade of column writing, the audience is not misinterpreting.

I really like men. They wouldn’t frustrate me so darn much if I didn’t. I’d just give up and become a lesbian. (And um, yes, I know women who have done this.) And heaven knows, there are days when my girlfriends and I lament our sexual orientation, wishing we could find a way to be attracted to women so we could live out our lives in the blissful company of someone who gets us.

Unfortunately, however, for the myriad ways in which our husbands, lovers, and boyfriends drive us to distraction, we still cannot get enough of them. We keep going back for more—junkies for disillusionment that we are. Or maybe it’s the drama. I have often wondered what on earth we women would talk about were it not for men. They dominate all of our conversations with one another.

If men knew the degree to which women analyze them, discuss them, dissect their actions and words in the company of other “researchers,” they might never have a thing to do with us. And, in reality, some of them don’t. I have known plenty of men, personally and through friends, who depart before the drama of the female brain has time to set things in motion. They play Lothario up until that first night in a woman’s arms, and then they promptly hit the road and move onto the next specimen before the last has a chance to know what hit her.

But there are those who hang on through it all, looking a little sheepish at times when they accidentally walk in on a gathering of women. Like last night in my all-female dance class when the studio owner’s husband walked in unbeknownst to us as we were gathered in a little circle, not dancing but talking, of course, about men. When I happened to turn around and saw him there, I almost squealed, “You didn’t hear us, did you?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t hear anything,” he said, looking to the side, looking to the floor, and then quickly grabbing whatever it was he wanted and heading for the door again post haste.

Yet an hour earlier this very same man, the moment he had pulled into the dance studio parking lot when we were all gathered around our cars, wondering why the assistant dance instructor’s vehicle smelled of toasted brakes, was only a little alarmed when we pounced on him and said, “There’s something wrong with Ashley’s car. Can you look at it?”

Surrounded by women with expectant faces, what was the poor man to do? It is a moment every male dreads—far worse than having a wife who expects him to know every intricacy of engine repair just because he has testosterone is a gaggle of women expecting the same. “You’re a man,” Ashley blurted out, “so we figured you might know what was wrong with it.”

He handled it with impressive grace, however, kneeling down to look at each wheel, then announcing the car in question seemed to be bereft of brake pads, in the back of his mind no doubt wondering why estrogen makes women overlook details like basic car maintenance.

For a brief moment, he looked a bit heroic, not because he successfully passed the test of identifying the problem with Ashley’s car but because he didn’t bat an eye when surrounded by tittering females placing demands on him. And his wife wasn’t even around. He chose to be gallant because these were his wife’s friends. His actions reminded each of us that men have their moments, those endearing spaces where we cannot help but like them an awful lot, inexplicable though they may seem to us 90 percent of the rest of the time.

So while I did indeed profess to write this blog for women, the other audience I have gained is one I’m glad to have. Because as anyone who has read my posts with care can probably see, I am not angry at men, despite the personal trials I have had with some of their number. If anything makes me angry, it is perhaps the lack of willingness on the part of both sexes in far too many cases not to try to understand one another or, at the very least, stop misinterpreting so willfully.

The next time you find yourself in crisis, ladies, and your husband is offering you countless solutions to make things right while you feel invalidated and ignored because you are crying and all you want is for him to say, “This is the most horrible thing ever; let me hold you while you cry,” try to remember that Mr. Fix-It is expressing his love in the only way he knows how. At least the only way he knows how without your guidance. Either guide him to what you need or forgive him for giving the only thing he knows how to give.

And gentlemen, the next time you find yourself about to take flight because your girlfriend is crying, and you feel your inability to make her stop crying is going to emasculate you and strip you of your confidence in being able to make things right, see if you can’t take a moment to put your arms around her and just be there, the way she would be for you if you would let her, and trust that you are doing exactly the right thing to be heroic.

The Five Types of Dates…And When It’s Time to Shop Elsewhere

Earlier this week a married friend and I were discussing online dating or perhaps I should say “profiling.” She was remarking on how many friends she and her husband had tried to assist in making profiles that might actually get them noticed, including not posting that picture with the chubby arm or noting that one’s favorite pastime is drinking beer.

Not that she was advocating for dishonesty, mind you. But perhaps you should let the guy see the chubby arm after he’s smitten enough with you that he thinks your triceps look like Michelle Obama’s or let the girl know how much you like beer after she’s discovered it’s not accompanied by nightly, obsessive football watching.

But apart from the apparent trickiness of creating just the right profile is weeding through the profiles of all those guys who want to take you out (precisely because you kept your jiggly triceps to yourself when so many others didn’t). Thus, with the careful input of my friends, I’ve come up with a basic dating guide for women that will hopefully help you weed out the studs from the duds before you waste precious hours of your life dating a guy who kisses you as if he’s probing for a gold tooth:

The Egoist: He’s not always easy to spot on first glance, though he’s invariably immaculately dressed, drives a luxury car, and will send you lots of pictures of himself without any prompting or acknowledgement from you that you really care to see them. (He might even send you a few of his car.) He just assumes you’re into him because, after all, how could you not be? He’s smart, handsome, funny, and maybe even rich. He is convinced that the only thing he needs to complete his persona is an equally smart, funny, and beautiful woman. This is the type of man who wants “a complicated woman without complications,” as a good friend of mine describes it. Of course, no such thing exists, and once he discovers this, he bolts. Another thing that will send him packing faster than you can say “no, I’m not having sex with you tonight” is your questioning of his arguments or your failure to be enamored with his intelligence.

What to do with this guy: Ditch him as fast you can. I don’t care how handsome he is or if he pays for dinner every time you go out. The kind of woman he really wants is one who salivates over him constantly and believes he is always right. And unless you’re willing to play the exhausting game of suppressing your thoughts when they don’t agree with his, this will be a highly unsatisfying relationship. Not to mention the fact that he’s likely so self-absorbed, he is sadly clueless on how to kiss a woman in a way that will make her want to see him again anyway.

The Hobbyist: This guy is a hopeless romantic and obviously so from the get-go in most cases. He never tires of you, is the only date type who will look you in the eye for more than five seconds at a time, and who tells you how stunningly beautiful you are on the first date. He’s so into you that it sometimes sends the red flags up, so much has the coolness of most men trained us to believe that anyone who seems to adore us must be crazy. He will call you just as he says, will never stand you up, and will even go a little berserk if he goes too long without hearing from you. You have become, as another friend of mine explains, “his newest hobby.” And the major plus here: he really, really knows how to kiss, among other things.

What to do with this guy: Sometimes it can be a little hard to tell “the hobbyist” from the “the stalker,” but give him a chance as long as he’s not staking out your workplace. See if you can’t let your cynical mind adjust to the idea that maybe you actually are worthy of some serious admiration. Because this rare type is the only one who is not going to leave you guessing 24/7. He’s far too honest and romantic to play games. And he’s probably the only one of the five types of dates who won’t be scared off if you talk to him the way you do your girlfriends.

The Quiet Man: This is the toughest date you will ever go on. He may smile a lot and be enjoying every minute of looking at your lovely face, but he doesn’t say a word, at least not unless you ask him a question. And then his answer is likely cursory. He’s just not the chatting type, and talking about himself to a complete stranger makes him nervous as hell, all the more if the stranger is beautiful. He would actually be quite content to just walk quietly with you along the beach or sit with your hand in his in the movie theater, and while that may not sound so bad, keep in mind his quiet nature probably extends into the bedroom, too. He’s unlikely to be very assertive: translation—conventional and dull.

What to do with this guy: Before you dismiss the “Quiet Man” as hopeless, recognize that he can be trained. It is possible to make him open up and lose his inhibitions, but you have to be willing to invest some major time. If you’re patient, giving, and willing to ease him into intimacy gently, you could help this guy find his inner “hobbyist.”

The Joker: No doubt about it, this one can be loads of fun. He makes you laugh. He knows how to have a good time. And he seems pretty comfortable in his own skin. He’s also not usually threatened (at least not very much) by a woman who shares those qualities (unlike the “Egoist”). However, keep in mind that his fun-loving behavior could be covering up some feelings of inadequacy. He will be a tough nut to crack if you want him to whisper sweet nothings in your ear some day. That’s way outside his comfort zone. He’d rather just give you a laughing orgasm.

What to do with this guy: Again, patience is the order of the day here if you think he’s worth it. Enjoy his “hanging out with the guys” type of camaraderie, and recognize that this type, kind of like “the hobbyist,” is likely more willing to accept you as you are because, well, let’s face it, you’re pretty darn funny when you’re not trying to be perfect. He can be coaxed into a deeper level of interaction once you establish trust with him. How do you do that? Keep laughing at his jokes, but never laugh at those rare moments of soul baring.

Mr. Hopeless: This is the guy who is late to pick you up, fails to change into a clean shirt, and forgets to open the car door for you on the first date. He’s not really comfortable with himself; therefore, he’s not really comfortable with you either. And, on top of that, he has maybe two interests outside his job: one of which is playing Frisbee with his dog. These are the men that a friend of mine likes to advise “go to the library and read a book or take up roller skating. Just please do something to make yourself interesting.”

What to do with this guy: Unless you are suffering from low self-esteem yourself, run fast and hard. Dating this type can feel like pulling teeth on a whole different scale from that of the “Quiet Man.” No amount of questioning is going to get you to any depth here. Because even if he has depth, he’s not confident enough in himself to share it. And don’t worry, you won’t have to let him down easy. He’ll never call you. He’s too scared.

The Three Little Words You Should Never Say

And no, ladies, it is not “I love you,” though I do subscribe to the theory that you should never be the first to say those three little words either, even if you’re certain he feels the same. Nothing will make him reevaluate his feelings faster. (But that’s another blog post.)

I’m talking about “I need you.” I don’t care if you’ve been married 20 years, do not say those three little words. There is plenty of truth to the idea that men need to feel needed, now more than ever. (They are still coping with adjustment to the upheaval of sex roles in the last few decades, trying to figure out if they still have a purpose in life if their wives make more money than they do or their girlfriends know how to change a flat tire.) But that is all going on in the subconscious brain that most of them never visit. Saying “I need you” is still about as good as cursing at them. In fact, it may be worse.

Just in case you’re scratching your head at this dichotomy, let me enlighten you. It’s kind of like when you say to your husband, “Can you please take out the trash?” And he sits there in front of the TV another 45 minutes (at least) until he gets up and does it. It’s his way of asserting that he’s not doing something just because you asked him or, worse, told him to. Men still think they are and must be the great initiators.

I don’t care how progressive your beau is. Deep down in his Neanderthal brain, he does not want a woman telling him what to do, particularly not the woman he has it in his head he’s supposed to be taking care of, and that’s you.

Subtlety is required when dealing with the male brain.

Want him to take out the trash? Then you put the full and tied up trash bag in the middle of the kitchen where he has to trip over it while getting munchies out of the cupboard. Unless he’s a complete moron, he’ll get the hint, take out the trash, and feel like it was his idea. (Don’t worry, his brain will never go so far as to analyze why the trash was sitting in the middle of the kitchen in the first place.) Oh, and this works well with vacuum cleaners, too.

So back to “I need you.” Let’s say you’re in an emotional crisis, and you’d really, really like him, at the very least, to hold you and stroke your hair, tell you how much he adores you, and that everything will be okay. You absolutely do not tell him, “I’m going through hell right now, and I need you.” He will run from you as fast as he can.

Because anytime a man feels so directly and acutely needed without any mental preparation time, he panics. He can’t help it. Emotional sustenance is not in his native skill set. This doesn’t mean he can’t do it. But it’s kind of like handing him a piece of paper that says, “If you don’t want to lose your job, you have 10 minutes to prepare a speech on why Sarah Palin would be a good President, and it has to be convincing.”

And while I’m still all for the idea of “skip the guy, and go to your girlfriends, who actually know how to deal with shit,” I realize there are times when, for whatever crazy reason, you really want the man in your life to rescue you. (Yeah, we’re not over the gender role crud entirely either.)

So how do you get him to come to your rescue when he doesn’t really want to be called upon to rescue you but still has the need to rescue you so long as you’re not telling him to rescue you and he feels like he saw all by himself you were in distress and came to your aid of his own manly accord?

No doubt about it. This is a tough one. Because unless your S.O. happens to be a rare and progressive man who doesn’t freak and run into his cave to hide every time you say the words, “I’m sad,” or “I feel like,” it can be very tricky getting him to give you what you need when you’re in crisis.

So you have to play to his native tendencies, and one thing men hate worse than anything is to see a woman cry. They have absolutely no idea what to do with a crying woman and will pretty much do anything within their power to keep you from crying. But start crying, and they will bolt. So here’s the key: as long as you stay on the verge of crying, he will do anything at all to make you feel loved, cared for, and tended to. And this doesn’t apply just to your husband or boyfriend. It applies to the service manager at the automobile dealer and the president of the local bank, too.

By the way, if this looks like manipulation to you, I’ll tell you what a wise friend of mine once told me, “Doing what you need to do to get what you need and want is not manipulation; it is motivation.”

So start motivating your guy to give you what you need.

When he successfully navigates the neediness waters, praise him profusely, even if he does it clumsily. It’s a start. Tell him how much it meant to you that he held your hand through a crisis. Let him know he saved the day. Men still have hero worship complexes. They want and need to be knights in shining armor, and they have increasingly few opportunities to fulfill this biological/social compulsion. The more opportunities you give them to come to your aid, when they feel like they’ve come to your aid without you demanding or begging for it, the more confident they will feel in their role as provider of comfort and support.

You get what you need; he gets what he needs.

Because unless he’s a completely selfish, moronic idiot, he really does love coming to your rescue, particularly if he feels like he saw the problem coming and ran in to sweep you off your feet and carry you into the sunset before anything really bad happened. It gives his ego a massive boost. And he needs that boost because, as a modern woman, you’re so incredibly competent most of the time that he finds it difficult to see where he fits into the puzzle. Evolution has not caught up with him yet. He still thinks of himself as provider and rescuer in a world where women can provide for and rescue themselves.

Time for a Trade-In? Why Men Are Like Cars….

Maybe there is something of “the man” in me, but I love cars.  No, I’m not interested in how they work, and I don’t like changing oil. But I love driving cars, really nice cars that round corners as if they were designed for the racetrack.  I often carry on deep love affairs with my vehicles…if only for a little while…when the paint is still shiny, the aluminum wheels clear of scratches and scrapes from curb encounters, and the interior as clean as my house is in the five minutes following the housekeeper’s departure.

But after awhile, as we all know, the paint gets marred by encounters with Walmart shopping carts, we drive up against the curb at the post office and take a chunk out of the wheel, and our children trash up the interiors to the point that we just give up and decide we’ll live with driving around in a trash can on four wheels.

It’s not quite so unlike our relationships with men.

And after discussing the “two-year rule” with a girlfriend this evening, I decided it’s high time we ladies have the option of trading in our men the way we do our cars. Here’s why: men, like automobiles, start to lose their glossy perfection after about two years. It’s not because we grow bored with them, mind you, anymore than we would grow bored with our cars. I’d keep my car forever if I could count on it to last me till death without rusting, breaking down, or just plain giving up.

But men, like cars, have their heyday…in relationships, that is. Ever noticed how wonderfully attentive they are in the beginning?  They listen to our problems, offer their sincerest empathy, kiss away our tears, hold us for hours and claim that they love cuddling. They open doors for us, hold our hands when walking down the street, whisper sweet nothings in our ears at restaurants, and stroke our thighs in the darkness of theaters as if we are the most tantalizing women on earth. They buy us dinner. They give us foot rubs. They cook stupendous meals for us. They make love for hours.

Then suddenly, about year two (sometimes sooner), they stop.

Some of us consider this a grand deception. We feel as if we’ve been deceived, duped, tricked into falling in love with a luxury car that has turned out to be a heap of junk.

But let’s face it: men are like cars. They wear out.

Because it really isn’t natural for men, in general, to be the doting lovers they appear to be when they are trying to win our affection and admiration or maybe even our hands in marriage. They know if they want a prime catch, they’re going to have put forth some serious effort and time. They’re not stupid.

Men know if they want to earn our love, they’re going to have to work for it. And they’ll happily do it for a little while, figuring all the trouble is worth the action in the bedroom.  And some will keep doing it even after they’ve won our hearts to prove that they are more worthy than their counterparts who become turncoats after the wedding band is firmly around our fingers. But they won’t do it forever. They can’t.

Men just haven’t been socialized to give in the way women do.  The energy and effort required for them to hold us for an hour while we cry is pretty enormous.  While it may be a matter of course for women to sit with a distraught friend for hours, it turns men into anxiety-ridden heaps of beer-craving gunk. We thrive on being there for the ones we love. Men, on the other hand, feel like we’re sucking out their innards when we require emotional sustenance.

It’s unsustainable.

After a couple of years, the effort of being the perfect man becomes too much for even the finest male specimen to bear. He gives up, reverts to his former self, and leaves us wondering why the hell we ever fell in love.

Pretty soon we’re resenting him hard for not holding us while we sleep, not giving a shit when we complain about our bosses, and not calling us on our lunch breaks to say how much he misses us. Our eyes start wandering, but our hearts keep on believing this is just a temporary funk he will snap out of. So we hang on like a spider clings to a broken web, convinced this is just a phase. One day, we think, he will return to his role as perfect Lothario.

Ten years pass.

Nothing.

He still prefers a beer and football to our company.

My only consolation here, ladies, is to say that it is not you. It is just the way things are.  Perhaps by the time our daughters (or maybe granddaughters) come of age, men will have completed their socialization into a world where it’s okay to love, and give, and feel, and need. But for now, it’s not gonna happen, I’m sorry to report.  Most men are, as a friend of mine likes to say, “emotionally stunted.”

Hence, I’m advocating for a two-year lease.

To hell with this “to have and to hold” till death shit. How about “to have and to hold until he stops acting like the ‘Prince Charming’ he pretended to be in the beginning?”

This might require a flexible leasing option. While the average male can sustain attractive behavior and good grooming practices for about two years, some can’t keep it up (no pun intended) for two weeks, much less two years. Perhaps it all depends on whether you date a Kia or a Lexus.

The problem here, as my girlfriend pointed out to me, is that the two-year leasing option goes against the grain. We sign ourselves away on useless lifetime warranties that never pay out when the product goes bad because the originator of the warranty (Prince Charming) has gone out of business. Convention, no matter how stupid and unproductive, is a hard thing to buck.

But I’m all for being a pioneer and dumping the guy at year two if it looks like his behaviors are mirroring those of a Ford Fiat instead of a Mercedes E series.

After all, guys have been doing this for years.  Sometimes they even carry on relationships with multiple vehicles at a time. They are not exclusively devoted to one make or model. Why are we?

Because we are suckers for the sales pitch.  That’s why.

So next time a man seems like the perfect match for you, do a detailed inspection before you sign on for life. And if you’re feeling a bit skeptical (as you should), consider the two-year lease.

Men Are Cowards, It’s True…But You Don’t Have To Be

She was bored.  She loved, had a capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

—William Faulkner, The Town

I have a friend who is about as tough as women come. I say this with both admiration and regret. I admire her for being able to plow through the world without giving up despite all its disappointments, but I also regret that she has never found a safe place to be vulnerable. On the surface, it doesn’t make sense. She is married to one of the kindest men I know.

The problem is this: he isn’t brave.

And it is not an uncommon problem. At the risk of some serious e-mail flack in my inbox in the morning, I’m going to say that men, in general, are cowards. I’m not questioning their physical prowess, their ability to withstand the stress of armed combat, the ambition and drive they exercise in climbing everything from corporate ladders to Himalayan mountaintops. But modern men are lacking in courage in some areas that have women hopping mad.

And it’s not just my friend, who complains about the fact that her husband doesn’t stand up for her, will not take her side in heated conflict, but stands there mute, and, in some cases, even allows her to be insulted. She fights back. He remains silent. Is my friend suffering from some kind of fairytale idea of a Prince Charming who is going to ride in on his white horse and defend her honor?

I actually don’t think so. I think the guy is engaging in the classic male conundrum of “conflict avoidance.”

My former spouse used to chastise me not infrequently for being a bit too vocal at times with my often controversial opinions. “You know I’m the one who is going to end up defending you with my fists one day,” he would say.  I knew there was never any danger of that, first of all, because my husband, like most men, would, when push came to shove, do everything to avoid conflict (emotional or physical), and secondly, that the likely opponent would probably do the same…meaning it was highly improbable that any man was going to come up to me and tell me “what for” in an aggressive manner that might lead my husband to clock him.

My ex-husband never clocked anyone on my behalf. And he’s not a small man, by any means.

I remember a couple of years ago another girlfriend of mine noted how a male acquaintance had made a flirtatious remark to her one day in church and then promptly patted her on the rear. I asked her if she had advised her husband of this pass. “Are you kidding?” she replied “You know how scrawny Mark [names have been changed to protect the conflict avoiders] is. He could never take that guy out.” She totally overlooked the reality that even if Mark was a body builder, he would not have done a thing. My friend even asked her husband to give the offending churchgoer a call. He declined, saying it would be “awkward.”

The fact is life is awkward.

And men just don’t like awkwardness.

Rest assured, I’m not advocating the revival of dueling pistols. But once in awhile women like to know their husbands, boyfriends, maybe even their fathers think they are worthy. And it doesn’t require beating anybody up.

It requires something much more frightening to the male psyche—emotional risk.

Most men aren’t willing to take it and will do anything possible to avoid even having to look at it. Women, who live lives rich with emotional risk taking (unless, of course, they have experienced some trauma that has shut them down and made them more like men), cannot help but get angry at the men whose avoidance of reality causes so much depression, anger, and heartbreak.

In her essay, “Why Women Get Mad at Their Husbands,” J.R. Bruns, M.D., talks about this apparent emotional “detachment and selfishness” on the part of men that “leaves women feeling abandoned and frustrated.” Bruns describes the average American marriage, marriages that are often defined as “good” (meaning only that the couples are staying united despite their daily verbal exchange of snipes, ongoing resentment, and tension so thick you could cut it with a knife), as “loveless unions of obligation.”

Part of the problem is that men, in an effort to win the prize of the woman they think they want to have between the sheets with them for the rest of their lives, play an unconscious game where they temporarily release their emotional inhibitions, often speak and demonstrate their deepest feelings, and put on a display of just how much they will give for love that frequently rivals that of a Bird of Paradise. Even the smartest among us have been misled by this mating ritual, believing ourselves to be among the lucky few who have found some rare gem of a man who is unafraid.

What happens after marriage or after a year or so of cohabitation is that men go back to being men. Meanwhile, the brave women they seduced are left scratching their heads, feeling neglected, unloved, and bitter because the guys they so adored have turned into these creatures who make them feel used and taken for granted. The loving looks across the dinner table have ceased on the part of both parties. As Bruns points out, the eye gazing has turned into eye rolling.

Most men are actually okay with this state of things so long as their wives aren’t giving them too much crap about going out every Saturday morning to play golf with the guys or preferring the company of the television to date night. As their wives and girlfriends fall into despair over the loss of emotional intimacy in the relationship, the guys are issuing forth some sigh of relief that the risky stuff is over.

And while I know I tend to try to be upbeat (or at least humorous) when discussing the absurd trials and tribulations we all go through in this life, I have to be honest, ladies, and tell you the odds are stacked against you if your quest in this life is to find an emotionally courageous man. There are plenty of them masquerading as such. But don’t maintain too many fond expectations that the guy you’re in love with right now (if you’re unfortunate enough to even be “in love”) is ever going to pull out all the stops for you one day. He’s likely no Prince Edward, and while he may tell you you’re as worthy as Wallace Simpson, rest assured, he is not going to give up the throne of England for you…or anything else that makes the average male reasonably comfortable.

You’re just not that important to him.

This is not to say you’re not worthy. You know you are.  Your girlfriends call you “fabulous,” and they mean it.  You are.

But fabulous just isn’t a big motivator for guys, I’m loathe to report. Unlike us, if they have a comfortable place to sleep, access to some fine liquor for when they have an “off” day, good food to eat, some hunting or kayaking gear to keep them amused in their free time, and at least the respect of their colleagues and kids (if not you), they’ll consider life good enough if not downright grand.  If they’ve got some true emotional intimacy with a woman who feeds their ego and makes them feel accepted, that’s just icing on the cake that most of them can live without, especially if they have to work too hard to keep it.

It’s a values game. Women value deep emotional connections; men, by and large, do not.

Women crave and dispense emotional intimacy as naturally as breathing, whether because they are biologically predisposed to nurture and love or socialized to be there for the people they adore, I don’t know.  I just know that because women are so good at it and men so clumsy and ultimately uninterested, it makes for a tragic disconnect between lovers. Women come to see the men in their lives as fakes and cowards. Men come to see their women as nagging and bitter.

Respect dies on both sides.

And once respect dies, love is the next casualty.

This morning, my four-year-old daughter crawled into bed with me, as she often does on lazy weekend mornings. After snuggling up to me and peering at me with those large blue eyes, she said, “Mommy, I love you, and I will take care of you for the rest of your life.”

She was decidedly baffled when I broke into tears.  The tears did not come because I believed her or even because I knew that children say these endearing things while we parents know full well our children will grow up, move away, and think not much about us anymore (which is as it should be). The tears came because I, like so many women I know, once believed that a romantic partner would say those words to me and mean them, live by them—consider me worthy of the risk of his heart.

I have not been wise enough yet to give up on this quest for the brave man, though some of my friends laugh at me for believing men can offer anything to my life other than grief. They have been burned so badly by faith that they have forsaken it. One of my girlfriends who watched her own parents live in seething misery with one another for years said she can remember once sitting on the countertop in her mother’s kitchen when she was nine and saying matter-of-factly, “Mom, you need to get a divorce.”

The experience of her parents’ “loveless union of obligation” cemented her feelings for life that men and love were hopeless. She would, no doubt, call herself a realist.

Another of my acquaintances who spent years in a passionate love affair with a man she admits to this day is the only person who has ever lit her fire ultimately gave up the whole thing, exchanging it instead for a stable if passionless long-term relationship with a man who is often gone from home all week. She says she enjoys the alone time and remarks that she and her life partner have “really good sex” maybe four times a year.  “And it’s enough.”

She may be onto something. Maybe we need to be more like men and start to understand the concept of “good enough.” Not only will we be less likely to be emotionally devastated when love forsakes us, but perhaps we will not resent the men in our lives so much either for failing to be brave and failing to love us as we feel we deserve.

There is one problem here, however, and it goes back to the old saga of shifting gender roles. In a world where most men no longer go off to war, earn all the bread for their families, or provide the tangible protection they offered a century ago to wives and daughters, courage has become a lot harder to define.

For some women, courage means having a husband who will tell off his dad who insults his wife. For others, it means having a boyfriend who is confident enough to cry when he is sad. It is no wonder, in some ways, that many men have given up the ghost, settled for “good enough” marriages, and forsaken love. We want them to be tough and sensitive at the same time, devoted and adventurous in the same breath.

The cultural dialogue is a mess of mixed messaging where we at once berate and honor the men who suck it up and stick around, frequently poking fun in popular culture at their dogged dedication to wives who despise and disrespect them yet then trashing the guys who go for broke and walk away from sterile relationships. Women who leave the “decay” of modern marriage, as Los Angeles Times reporter Robin Abcarian (who reported on the Schwarzenegger-Shriver split) calls it, are applauded for bravery. Men who go are often painted as selfish devils even though they were painted as selfish devils in the marriage, too.

It is a marvelous and wicked Catch 22.  Risk everything, and you’re damned. Risk nothing, and you’re damned, too.

Women know the definition of courage for themselves. It has been the same for centuries and across cultures: risk everything for love (whether that’s love of lover, love of children, or love of friend).

For men, the definition was once “risk everything for honor.” Honor used to be a much simpler thing back when cultural hegemony was the norm. Now we live in communities and countries where values, religions, and ethics are more diverse than they have ever been. There is no longer one definition of anything anymore. The result is knowing what is right and brave is often a very individual decision bound to be condemned by someone.

It is easier perhaps to just lay low, watch TV, have a beer, and tune out of all the emotional drama. That is what men do.

It is why we women are so angry.

We have been taught to follow our hearts. When we stop following them, we know we have failed somehow. Men, on the other hand, have never had a cultural injunction to live for love. They know all about living for honor and duty (however their particular culture defines those things). But living for love is not in the male cultural lexicon unless they are poets.

So while I don’t know the answer for finding a satisfying relationship with an emotionally courageous man, short of finding your own personal Pablo Neruda, I do know you should not abuse yourself as not being worthy of love or give up on life, as Eula Varner Snopes did in Faulkner’s The Town. Nor should you, however, try to draw water out of a stone.

I have forgiven the cowardly men of my life because I know the varying societal pressures under which they operate and the psychological dramas from which they come, but forgiving and accepting are two different things. Sometimes accepting means settling for far less than you expected or desired. I’m not ready to do that yet. Because the day I do it is the day I become a coward. And, in the end, if we want to define bravery, let’s keep it simple: bravery is decided and worthy action in the face of fear.

If the man you love is afraid, do not censure him. We are all afraid. Cowardice is when we let fear stop us, whether we are women or we are men. “A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got,” William Faulkner wrote in Light in August. “He’ll cling to the trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.”

Faulkner is right, of course, but just because our natural tendency is to give into fear, that doesn’t mean we have to.

Who’s Bringing Home the Bacon? And Does It Matter?

If women’s level of power in America is at an all-time high, why is their sense of adequacy at an all-time low? You’ll find some of the answers in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent and controversial essay, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” in the latest issue of Atlantic Magazine. In it, she talks about her own feelings of inadequacy in juggling a demanding, high-powered career and the raising of two sons, remarking about her not always successful superhuman efforts, “I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).”

If you’re like millions of other working women, you might breathe a sigh of recognition at those words. How many days have I worked myself into a frenzy of stress, meeting inane deadlines, racing to get to daycare to pick up my daughter at a reasonable hour (or maybe going to dance class first because, after all, I have to exercise to maintain the figure of a 25-year-old when I’m pushing 40), coming home to put together what truly amounts to a pathetic dinner (thank heaven my daughter is only four and thinks making spaghetti takes skill), while I fold laundry while watching her finish her meal, then answer e-mail on my Blackberry while I give her a bath, and often find my quality time with her is accidentally falling asleep beside her in her bed after a 10-minute bedtime story.

And I’m not even married.

Slaughter is though. And while she acknowledges her husband is largely responsible for making her rise to the top possible (he took care of the kids while she was hours away in D.C. all week for two years), she does not once mention in her essay of many thousands of words making time for him. It’s about kids and career.

And, unfortunately, that’s exactly the kind of outlook that has led millions of American women to divorce high-powered husbands while their friends looked on in incredulity. Are the tables going to turn on American women (who are, by and large, responsible for initiating 80 percent or more of divorces)?  Probably not. Men just don’t have the same high standards we do when it comes to relationship satisfaction.  Lucky for us, I guess.

Pity for them.

I’m not suggesting Slaughter doesn’t love her husband or that she doesn’t value him. She obviously values him since she suggests that one way for women to climb to the top professionally is to “marry the right person.” That would be someone like her husband who is willing to take on responsibility for home and kids when she is away. And honestly, I couldn’t be happier that at least some men are willing to do this, even if only some of the time.  But um, is that all the guy is good for? For me, it’s just a little too reminiscent of the perfect hostess/housekeeper 1950s housewife. Marry the person who will help you advance your career and keep you comfortable.

We’ll never know Slaughter’s take on the husband’s role (though we suspect being a lover has very little to do with it given her long hours) because she doesn’t go into it. But we do know she asks people to introduce her as a “mother of two sons” alongside all her professional accomplishments. She does not, however, ask to be introduced as the wife of Princeton University professor Andrew Moravcsik.  Maybe she thinks her audiences already know this.

My point is, however, when did women, who have regretted for centuries their insignificance in the lives of husbands who were out in the working world, decide to be hypocrites and forget the men in their lives?  Or at least overlook them a lot.  I’m speaking of professional women, of course, and I know a lot of them.  Some of them are devoted wives; some of them, however (and I’ll admit I’ve been guilty myself at times), have come to see marriage as a convenient partnership where the benefits accrue in a rather lopsided fashion.

Part of the trouble here, as is so often the case, is the shifting landscape of gender roles. I don’t know if Slaughter makes more money than her husband, and, thankfully perhaps, they enjoy professional parity at least, but there are an increasing number of women who have outstripped their husbands professionally and financially.  And that’s where things get tricky.

A close friend of mine was persistently convinced during the seven years of my marriage that a likely source of the trouble between my husband and myself was the fact that I made more money than he did and, later, when he chose to be a stay-at-home dad for three years, I made the money, period. She insisted this just didn’t sit right with men. I persistently disputed her.

But when I look back at how frequently my former spouse defended his contributions to the household, even when they were not being questioned, I wonder. Because I’ve seen resentment on the part of female friends and acquaintances who have lower-earning spouses or stay-at-home dads for partners. They rarely mean to but they cannot help but see the guy’s role as somehow diminished because he is either not bringing home the bacon or not bringing home as much (or more) than she is.

What’s going on here?  Isn’t this what we wanted?  Isn’t this what our mothers’ generation fought for?  For us to have equal earning power with men? And to have no glass ceilings?

Sure it was.

But remember the old adage, Be careful what you wish for.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that I’d like to see American culture go back to a 1950s model. I am beyond grateful for the fact that I can be economically independent as a woman.  And were it not for the freedom I have had to grow professionally and financially, whether married or not, neither I nor my daughter would enjoy the opportunities we have to live far richer and more meaningful lives than the women who went before us.

But there is a problem here.  Men are becoming largely insignificant, at least in the lives of women who can pull off six-figure salaries or better.  Because even if he knows how to do laundry and change a diaper, well, you could always hire a housekeeper and a nanny.  So if the sex isn’t over-the-top or if he’s not just plain enormously charming, what exactly is his point here outside of offering a sperm donation?

This is a question, I’m afraid, more and more men are asking themselves.  And we women aren’t helping matters.  Because the plain and ugly truth is, there are an awful lot of high-income earning women married to men who just aren’t in the six-figure category. Why? Well, my theory is that rich and powerful men really don’t want competition.  So those of us with brains, no matter how beautiful we are, are not likely to land any millionaires.  If you check out the spouses where the wife is earning as much or more than a high-earning husband, my guess is you’ll find the two of them have been together since before either one of them was making much of anything. Women who have chosen to delay marriage until they themselves are financially secure are not likely to get too many proposals from men playing at the top of their game in high-paying fields.

So is my friend right? Is it hopeless to expect men and women to co-exist in a mutually loving, respectful relationship where the wife is bringing home the bacon and the husband is cooking it or maybe bringing home a basket of eggs instead?

It’s not an easy question to answer, especially given the archetype many of us still hold, sometimes against all reason and education, that men are the providers and protectors. It’s not just men who hang onto this idea and feel themselves less than men if it’s their wives who have the bigger bankroll. Women buy into it, too, even the liberal, executive-level women who have chosen as their life partner an incredibly worthy guy who, despite all his intelligence, charm, and decency, has an annual paycheck of $50,000.  Or maybe, because daycare is so darn expensive anyway, he’s decided to stay home until the kids hit school age while she goes into work every day at a law firm.

Is it possible to maintain love, respect, and passion under this scenario that seems so in conflict with biology, tradition, and the Jungian archetypes of our unconscious brains?

The answer is “yes,” but you better be prepared for some complex choreography:

1) Never forget for a moment that your spouse is and should always be the single most important person in your life. Put your career first, put the kids first, and you’re screwed.  And that’s the case no matter who’s bringing home the bacon. Get that in your head before you even get married because once lost, it’s awfully hard to get it back, if not impossible. Respect and love are earned; once lost, they are rarely regained…unless, of course, you want to spend $150 an hour on cognitive behavioral therapy with a marriage counselor.

2) Create an atmosphere of equals. If you think the fact that you earn more money (or all the money) is going to mess with your ability to see your spouse as an equal, then you probably shouldn’t get married. But if you’re already in the stew, then make sure things are as equitable as possible. If you’re bringing in a quarter million a year and working 14 hours a day six days a week, it won’t take long for you to resent the spouse with the regular 9 to 5 job who’s not earning nearly as much. Together, figure out what you need to do to make things feel more equal. If that means he mows the grass, cooks dinner, and gets the kids to bed, fine, do it.  And if that’s the agreement, stick to it. It’s not fair to start resenting later when he’s pulling his weight exactly as you asked him to.

3) Don’t pull out all the feminist crap. After all, it’s the two of you, not society at large. Let him do things for you.  Let him carry your luggage, open doors for you, pay the cab driver, hold you when you’re scared, kiss away your tears, fix things that are broken, take charge of whatever he wants to take charge of. And don’t think there is something wrong with you because some part of your brain needs all this. We’re human, and it’s totally okay to let down your defenses with the one you love.

4) Don’t forget why you married him in the first place. You can tell yourself it was because the doctors, lawyers, and CEOs wouldn’t give you the time of day (and maybe they wouldn’t), but did you really want that kind of man anyway?  The kind who considers his career more important than you?  And let’s face it, the man who is top-notch in the boardroom is rarely top-notch in the bedroom—he really just doesn’t have the time.  So honor the characteristics that led you to choose this man who may not be CEO of a Fortune 500 company but who puts meaning, love, and joy ahead of making money and gaining power. Count the many blessings of having him in your life. And no, I’m not talking about the fact that he knows to separate whites from darks before tossing clothes in the washing machine. I’m talking about the way he looks at you as if you are the only human being on earth…because, in his mind in those moments, you are.

Before some of my female cohorts jump my case, let me say that none of this is to suggest that there are not men out there who will not take advantage of their six-figure earning wives. Some intend it from the beginning; some do not but end up doing so over time, just as the “desperate housewives” do who come to value the backyard pool, the European vacations, and the BMW more than their spouses. If you’ve married the kind of guy who sees your high-powered job as a great opportunity for him to kick back and enjoy the fruits of your labor without contributing much labor of his own, then my uncensored advice is this: dump him.

Because if you’ve climbed the ladder high enough to have attracted (or created) a gold digger, then you’re worthy of something far better…unless, of course, you have failed at points 1 through 4 above and the most exciting thing outside your professional life is the cocktail you have after work to deaden the heartbreak of going home to kids who know you only as the person who paid for the latest trip to Disney World and to a spouse who has grown more accustomed to sleeping with the family dog than with you.

Nothing is set in stone, however, much though it may feel that way. With summer here and school out, I have been letting my daughter stay at home from daycare a couple days of the week, and she occasionally drifts into the home office, leans against my chair, head tilted into my shoulder, and says, “Mommy, why do you have to work so much?”  And some days, like today, I get a clue and break from my story editing to cut out paper dolls for her.

My own mother rarely played with me when I was a child. She was too busy working.  One of my girlfriends, who graduated college at the top of her class, had the same experience with her own mother. Despite all of her promise as a rising professional, she dumped it to be a stay-at-home mom, and she actually plays with her kids, knows how to relax into it, and can leave dirty dishes unattended for hours without too much guilt.  I’m not quite that good.  But I’m trying to learn the art.

Long ago, I became a writer in part because I envisioned it as a flexible career that would give me greater control over my time. And it did to a point. Once upon a time, my ex-husband and I enjoyed three-week long vacations and monthly weekend getaways. Never would this have been possible in a conventional career.  My career also made it possible for him to retire from the military and stay at home after our daughter was born. I cannot thank my work enough for the life it has given me.

But it has also taken some things away.

And that is the challenge for women, who, for better or worse, are still expected to be nurturers, caregivers, and lovers even as they also assume the role of breadwinner. We are never allowed to slough off any of our roles. We just keep adding more, and so often they seem incongruous.  That is the hardest part, trying to figure out if it is okay to be in charge at the office and then let go of it in the arms of our spouses.

I’m here to tell you: it is okay, and it is critical.

Keep bringing home the bacon if you will.  But if you really want the meaningful home life (and one that includes your husband as well as your children), you’re going to have to drop the role of powerhouse at the door and allow yourself to be vulnerable to love, open to being cared for, and willing to let go of the idea that you have to be on top of things all the time. You do not. Give it up. Let it go. So maybe your husband fell in love with you, in part at least, because he found something tremendously sexy about your take charge attitude, your intelligence, the way you look in a suit and three-inch heels.  My guess is, however, that he also fell in love with the idea of finding the vulnerable woman who needed him beneath all that.

Let him have her.

And soak it up whenever you can because heaven knows there is rarely a place for letting down your guard at the office.

And when you’re standing on that stage accepting the Nobel Prize or whatever grand distinguishment your career earns you, remember to thank all the important people in your life who made your success possible, including, if you’re lucky enough (and hopefully, you know just how lucky you are), the man who has been confident enough to stand aside and let you have your glory.

To Settle or Not to Settle: That is the Question

There’s nothing particularly fun about divorce. Of course, this is not news to the 50 percent of American couples who seek one each year. So why do we do it? Good question. I suspect most would answer that, for whatever reason, the often massive hassle of divorce and the despair and loneliness that often go with it and follow it, are preferable to remaining in the marriage.

And trust me, that’s no easy call.

It struck me just what a hard call it is when a friend of mine said recently that in the wake of separation and divorce and subsequent failures to find Mr. Right, she actually got to the point where she would drive through tunnels and across bridges, hope that they would blow up on her, and then be angry when they didn’t. That’s how bad it felt.

I think most of us have, at some point or another, felt that level of despair in life, that “oh my god, can it please just be over because I cannot take one more frigging day” feeling that comes when tragedy strikes or life doesn’t go as planned. But who would choose to feel this way?

Because that’s what divorce is—a choice to go through hell…at least for a little while.

I’m not even sure I speak from experience. My separation has been, for the most part, amicable, and I cringe when other people tell me their horror stories of two-year long custody battles, raging and expensive wars over personal property, losses of years and years of earnings and assets. Why indeed would anyone go through such mess? Is it like childbirth? We dream of the joy that must surely follow the pain?

I’m not so sure.

How many divorcing or divorced people do you know who maintain a sunny outlook on relationships and a belief they will one day find that person who meets their expectations and needs? I’m trying to think here…I can’t think of a one.

But somewhere, deep down, that’s got to be the driver. Else why do it?

Well, it could be because married life really just sucks that bad. So bad, in fact, that we divorcees believe that trading an unhappy marriage for a potentially unhappy single life is a good deal. At least if you’re single, you can’t get mad about things like your spouse sitting at the computer for the 70th night in a row, ignoring you completely, or his lack of ambition to mow the grass, requiring you to hire a landscaper for a not inexpensive weekly fee so you don’t have to bushwhack through the yard to get to your car.

The fact is you’re just not as angry about sitting at home on a Saturday night when the person leaving you alone is not in the next room blissfully reading BBC News while you are sipping wine in front of the fire wondering what the heck. And you don’t really get annoyed about mowing the grass either when your spouse is not snoozing on the sofa while you do it. There is something to be said for minimizing one’s exposure to opportunities for funk.

But plenty of people settle. 50 percent of the population remains married for the long haul. I’m not saying all of these folks settle for uninspiring relationships that leave them bored, resentful, and frustrated for some 40 years of their lives. I do know a handful of happily married couples (and I guess knowing them and knowing “happy” just might be possible in the same sentence with “marriage” is what keeps me from throwing in the towel on love completely). But I also know what I can only call a crapload of, if not unhappily married couples, couples who certainly don’t get their kicks from being together. They have entered into something of an unspoken truce that reads like this: “I’m not all that crazy about you, but it’s too much of a hassle to get you out of my life, so we’ll just suck it up and try to stand each other as best we can until one of us keels over.”

I’m not sure that’s any way to live. So why do it?

The answer lies in the basic cynicism most of us develop about life and love the longer experience we have with both. There’s nothing easy about living. There’s nothing easy about love. Yet we grow up thinking the experience of these things is gonna be grand. We fall in love, or maybe only lust, cannot imagine ever not feeling that way and marry the wrong person or marry the right person but then decide to take him or her for granted because, being human, we are lazy. And love, like life, takes work.

It’s really not like riding a bicycle. You can forget how to do it. You can get rusty at it. And if you let it rust too long, forget it. No amount of Rust-Oleum is ever gonna wipe off the crud. There’s nothing to do at that point but toss the heap of oxidizing love into the trash and maybe try to start over. If you’re brave enough. Plenty aren’t.

While some divorcees remarry, many do not. And most of those who do not are women. I’ve heard their war stories, their “I’m done with love; I don’t need it” attitudes. They don’t feel like risking their hearts, their assets, and their sanity for another round of tennis with a blind teammate who doesn’t know how to do the laundry or the dishes. Better to settle for singlehood, less risky and probably less headache. And most report being happier single than married anyway.

Then there are those who are just settling for married life as they’ve got it. Because that’s less risky, too. Better to live with the devil you know than wander the streets sifting through the devils you don’t. And there are the kids, too, if you have them. You fake it for their sake, hoping they won’t notice you don’t hug and kiss anymore, don’t have fun dinner conversations, and stick to your own side of the bed with a book at night. And you kind of hope they won’t take those same tactics of settling into their own romantic lives.

But they often do. After all, no one has taught them differently. And they certainly haven’t observed what a happy marriage looks like.

Which is part of the reason I decided not to settle, not to let my daughter think it was normal for a husband and wife not to adore each other, not to respect and admire one another, not to want to play together and help one another…at least once in awhile.

But I also realize I may be engaging in another form of settling. Chances are good I will either settle for singlehood, always wondering in the back of my mind if maybe the right person could have been out there and I could have been happy, or settle for another relationship down the road with someone who doesn’t necessarily light my fire but offers tolerable companionship without too much grief.

Last weekend, I cleaned all of my ex-husband’s stuff out of the garage, wiped down all the shelves, swept the floor, creating a new space free of the clutter that never bothered him but always made me nuts. I thought about how I might have been able to accept the clutter and a hundred other little inadequacies had there been more love.

While cleaning off the shelves I found a bag of sand-peppered seashells he, and I, and Heidi had collected on the beach two autumns ago during our annual trek to Corolla for my daughter’s birthday week. Tonight, I emptied them into the kitchen sink to rinse off the sand, and, as the water cascaded over them, their colors brightened into multitudes of orange, and red, and black, and pink. And I remembered sitting on the sand in the last light of afternoon as my husband drew Heidi into the ocean with him. It was one of the last times we spent together with some level of peace and happiness as a family, a rare moment without resentment, or conflict, or spoiled hopes.

It is a good memory.

But I have no regrets. Because had I stayed for those rare and isolated moments of something not quite joy but almost good enough, I would have been settling, I am sure.

Several days ago, finding myself in a funk over divorce settlement concerns, I mentioned my despair to a friend. He said, meaning to give me hope, “You’re a survivor. You’ll make it through.”

He did not realize that was perhaps the last thing I wanted to hear—that I would survive. Who wants to survive life? I’d rather live it. Giving up on a dream that did not work out was part of my effort to live instead of settle. Because sometimes the best thing one can do with a dream is let go of it and try for something better.

Guys Will Be Guys, and That’s Okay…For the Most Part

It all started when a heterosexual male acquaintance of mine remarked that he’d never been hit on by a woman in his life. What made it worse, in his mind anyway, was that he’d had several “offers” from gay men. I told him this was a clear sign he was hot.  He did not agree. He felt it was only a clear sign that something about him must scream, “Pick me; I’m gay, too.”

But as fellow contributor Dorothy Stephenson likes to point out, “Even gay men are men.”

In other words, no matter whether a guy wears pink shirts and has the most beautifully decorated house in the neighborhood, he’s still got testosterone. And testosterone drives men to be, well, forward about soliciting sex.  What my male acquaintance overlooked in bemoaning the solicitations he had received from homosexual males while getting nothing remotely similar from women is that women, by and large, just don’t walk up to a man and say, “Hey babe, your house or mine?”

It’s not that we don’t necessarily think it, mind you. It’s just not how we operate. The female come-on generally consists of something like making eye contact across a crowded dance floor and maybe, if she’s especially brave, smiling slightly once his gaze meets hers. This is the signal. But the average man doesn’t consciously read it as such. He just knows some cute girl looks like maybe she won’t turn him down if he offers to buy her a beer.  Let’s say he does, and the two of them end up getting married three years later: the guy will undoubtedly say it was he who made the move.

We ladies know better, of course.

But far be it from a man to read subtleties. I’m guessing the guy who complained he’s only been hit on by guys has been missing signals left and right his whole life. Or, at the very least, assuming he made the first move on all the women he’s ever dated when in reality his subconscious mind (yeah, men do have them, but they’re buried deep, baby) saw “the look” and jumped on it.

And because women are, by nature, so much more subtle in their communications, a lot of them (and I’ve been guilty, too) suffer not a little outrage at the overtness with which men often approach them. Most of us would never dream in a million years of cozying up next to some man we hardly know at a cocktail party, making shoulder contact, and leaning in hard to tell an off-color joke. At least not unless we were three sheets to the wind. But this is how guys do it (unless they’re incredibly emotionally mature and have had experience with the risk involved in such maneuvers), and, unless we’ve already established we sort of have the hots for this person, we’re immediately turned off.

And then we go tell our girlfriends what a complete jerk the man was. “Did you see the way he bent his head in close and pressed his arm up against mine?! Apparently, he thinks he’s irresistible or something, the moron!”

Yet if the guy is irresistible, we accept it, even find it titillating. What’s a guy to make of all this?

You got me.

Because men, in general, don’t take hints very well, as I’ve already mentioned. A case in point is a neighbor of mine who takes “touchy-feely” to the extreme. Even though he’s married, he never misses an opportunity to put his arm around me or try to hug me. And the word on the street is this is his normal manner of operating with women. The last time I got the too hard and too long squeeze around the shoulders from him and felt my blood run cold, I went to my friends asking how to subtly let him know his advances were unwanted.

Everyone pretty much agreed subtlety was not going to cut it given that the guy obviously had no ability to understand that not only were his advances not invited (i.e. no eye contact across a crowded room), but he also failed to note the golden rule of “if she doesn’t reciprocate, back off, buddy.”

(You’ll notice I’m not even addressing the whole issue of the wedding ring on his finger because, guys being guys, that does not even play into the equation when they’re putting on the moves.)

In some ways, it’s easy to understand why women get so aggravated with men and think they’re all players, and often awkward ones at that. I’m not an apologist by any means, but, um, they are guys, you know. Which means they are biologically, socially, and emotionally different from us.

They are far more driven by their reproductive organs than we are, at least when it comes to hot pursuit of the opposite sex. In their brains, sexual and emotional intimacy are largely the same thing. And they’re socialized to be more aggressive, less subtle, and, in general, poor readers of all the psychological signals women live and communicate by.

Being in full awareness of their own sexuality and observant of it in women at almost all times, it is difficult for them to imagine why their wives and girlfriends get annoyed by their double-takes when the hot young college girl walks by in a bikini on the beach. It is second nature. They do not even know they are doing it until they get slapped on the wrist.

I remember when I was a girl how my dad would always say to my mother as we were getting ready to head off for the pool in summer. “Well, I’m off to gaze at bathing beauties,” he would tease, though my mother was never amused. Nevermind that my dad was well into his 40s, sporting a pot belly, and a hairy chest, all of which ensured no female in a bathing suit would ever look at him twice. Sweet blue eyes aside, he was past his prime. But my mother could not help but be threatened by the idea that he window shopped, as most men do, just for fun. It was irrelevant that he had no intention of buying and could never place a high enough bid anyway.

And what happens when women express their persistent disdain at men for these trifling pastimes? Well, if recent psychological studies are to be believed, the harder you get after him for looking, or flirting, or just “being a guy,” the more likely his window shopping will turn into, “how about I just walk in there and try something on for size?”

Just because you, once you’ve found Mr. Right or Mr. Pretty Darn Right or Mr. As Right As It Gets in This Life, you stop noticing the college guys playing volleyball on the beach (because for you, it’s all about emotional intimacy and that makes him the world’s sexiest man in your eyes), it does not mean Mr. She Thinks I’m Right as Rain is going to stop noticing the grad students in their bikinis. Just doesn’t work that way. He’s not you, and he’s never gonna be. The good news is, however, if you’re confident enough not to give a flying fuck who he looks at as long as looking is all he does, you’ll find the apple of your eye never strays very far from the tree.

So let him be a guy. He lets you be a girl, right?

Yeah, so he only does it because he has no choice if he wants regular action between the sheets. Sometimes we all worry a little bit too much about motives and miss the good stuff…which is the here and now with the man you love.

As for the wacko who keeps hitting on you despite all your graceful attempts to let him know he’s not your type, not even in your generation, and certainly not on your short list of men who are allowed to put their arms around you, you might just have to do something incredibly unwomanly…and be direct.

10 Reasons to Stop Believing in Love…and Why I’m Ignoring Them

1)      Pyschological wisdom says the “in love” feeling only lasts 8-12 months, and then it’s gone. After that, love takes work. I’m rather convinced that most things in life worth having take work. Unfortunately, humans, being the stubborn and born for misery creatures that they are, like to ruin a good thing over dirty dishes in the sink. I figure if you’re not having sex with your spouse because he failed to scour the baked on lasagna off the oven pan after dinner, you probably deserve what you get. And if you’re the spouse who was supposed to do dishes, start scrubbing. Give and take goes a long way in any relationship, but particularly one with two people living under the same roof day after day.

2)      It hurts…a lot.  Sure, you could skip a lot of life’s worst troubles by skipping romance, but who wants the pinnacle of their existence to be a rising crust pizza in front of the TV on a Saturday night? No pain, no gain is actually true.  If you want something bad enough, you might have to walk through fire to get it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did it; so can you.

3)      Finding true love is a pain in the ass.  Between the dates with mindless idiots who do nothing all night but talk about themselves to the letdown of thinking you’ve found “the one” only to discover you were drunk the night you made that revelation, finding true love is usually an ordeal. Lots and lots of failure, boredom, and drama.  But then so is parenting, and lots of people are doing that.  Not that the actions of the majority necessarily mean anything is right. But heck, you’re here, you’re alive, you might as well give it a go.  At the very least, you’ll get a fine education in human nature.

4)      Being emotionally naked in front of another person is scary as shit. And also incredibly freeing.  Ever wonder why little kids go to their moms when they are hurting?  Because Mom accepts them for who they are (at least we hope so).  When someone else does the same, it will rock your world. Unfortunately, you’re probably gonna have to get naked in front of a lot of people before you find “the one.”

5)      There’s no such thing as a soul mate, at least not if your idea of a soul mate is someone who can read your mind. Even Prince Charming needs a guidebook sometimes. If you’d prefer to sit and sulk over all the things your S.O. isn’t doing that you need him to be doing rather than giving him a few heavily dropped hints (or maybe even being downright direct—imagine that!) about just how much it would mean to you if he’d plan a romantic getaway for your anniversary or actually do something besides stare blankly at you when you tell him your latest problem, then I can guarantee finding a soul mate is not in your future. Soul mates are the people who get you after you tell them who you are, not the ones who intuit your every need and whim. The latter is actually your mother, your obsessive compulsive mother who makes you want to jump off a cliff every time you pick up the phone and you hear her voice….

6)      Screwing up not only hurts; it can get expensive. And it might also require you to give up that in-ground pool in the backyard of which you’ve become so fond. (Yeah, I’ve actually had friends who were baffled when women left their wealthy husbands who provided every material comfort known to man for the wild and crazy notion that maybe being miserable was not worth the Lexus and the annual trip to Europe.) Messing up in love can cost you an ugly divorce settlement, or it can cost the sacrifice of a materially perfect life, maybe both. If you have to think too hard about whether or not you love your closet full of shoes more than the chance at a fulfilling relationship, then I’d say put on a pair of Manolo Blahniks and get as drunk as you can. For the rest of you, bury the keys to the Lexus in the yard (just for kicks), and start living like you mean it.

7)      Men are basically jerks anyway. Yes, it’s true, but a few of them actually don’t mean to be—they just need a little tough love.  For better or worse, most of them have been spoiled rotten by their mothers…and by us.  They are so used to the sweet and natural attentiveness of women that they take it for granted.   They know that if they go on that fishing trip with the guys on Mother’s Day, you’ll forgive them.  You always do.  While I’m not an advocate of game playing for the most part, sometimes you need to kick back hard.  Don’t be so darn available.  You’ll find the jerkdom dissipates pretty quickly (if he’s a basically good guy deep down) after he discovers you actually don’t think he’s God’s gift to the universe of women. At least you don’t think so when he’s being a jerk….  And did I mention there are plenty of female jerks out there, too, who take advantage? If you never get a “thank you” for all the times you open doors for her, bring her drinks, or rub her feet after a long day at work, you might want to consider whether she likes you or just your foot rubs.

8)      All men want is sex. It’s close to the truth, but shift your perspective, ladies. Sex doesn’t carry all the emotional sustenance for you that it does for him. (Yeah, I’m serious.)  Call it socialization; call it biology. The reality is it’s between the sheets that guys feel most vulnerable. Reject him there, and you might as well tell him he sucks at life. You can have a less than stellar night in the bedroom, get up the next morning, have your girlfriends tell you you are “fabulous,” have your children kiss you at the bus stop, and have your boss tell you how sharp you are, and all is well.  For him, failure in the bedroom is kind of like what happens to you on a bad hair day. It cuts to his self-worth.  Give him a break. If he bends over backwards to please you in bed, he’ll bend over backwards to please you in life.

9)      Communicating need opens you to potential ridicule. But you’re not going to reach the heights of ecstasy if you sit there being resentful because your S.O. prefers a slam dunk to a long ramble down the court. Speak your mind. If the other party is offended, sure, you’re gonna feel like an idiot, but did you really want to waste a year hoping that person in bed with you would magically hit the right spot? Move out, and move on.

10)  Risk is the scariest thing on the planet. And that’s because whenever you’re talking about risk, you’re talking about uncertainty.  There’s no bigger uncertainty in the average life than wondering where your heart will take you…if you let it do the driving. And plenty of people don’t after a few close brushes with disaster. They toss their hearts in the trunk and hide the key before something else brutally ugly happens. There are plenty of good arguments for playing it safe, no doubt about that. But you only get to drive this circuit once (as far as I know anyway). And what have you got to lose?  Absolutely nothing. Because the last time I checked, the idea that you can control anything, from your kids and your boss to your spouse and the stock market, is complete bunk. You’ve got nothing but time…and maybe not even that. Hop to it.