It’s About Making Babies!

NML got me thinking on  how we lost sight of selecting a mate, rather than finding a hot date.  The hot date is for fun, only we should instead be spending our time finding and encouraging a lifetime mate and partner.

For most of us, great, great grandma *knew* what the point was about finding a husband. Great grandma surely knew. Grandma probably knew. Mom might have known. But we have trouble hearing ‘truth’ from our parents — it all sounds like ‘You can’t do that because I said so!’, even when that isn’t what they tell us.

The problem may be loneliness, and being alone.  In the modern world parents routinely send their children away, to be with other children.  Or they send them (or allow the children to be enticed) into another room to let TV, radio, music, electronic games, and other computer exposures to occupy their time.  All these activities reinforce the social rule, "kids don’t spend time with adults", meaning the only relief from being alone, is either popular media or classmates.  We send kids to Sunday School during church — to keep them from being restless and ‘disrupting’ services.  We have baby sitters to care for kids when parents take in after-hours entertainment or business functions.  After a lifetime (for the young people) of being sent away for instruction, entertainment, and so they aren’t seen or heard, the pressure to ‘fit in’ is enormous.

Then kids graduate, either high school or college.  And begin the transition from ’social by group’ to ’social by mate’.  Only no one really comes out and explains that this transition is necessary. No one in the world the young person is accustomed to turn to for advice has any inkling of how or why to choose a life mate — that information is freely available from the parents, church, and schools that sent the kids somewhere else.  Even graduating school is a clear message that ‘this school is done with you — go away, we have other things to do’.  It is a tough world.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are many people that maintain good communications with their parents, neighbors, and extended family.  That learn from watching and listening what people they respect think about social and personal values.  From watching my classmates and community, I think the people that invest the most in participating with ‘the crowd’, have the most problem thinking of meeting their own needs, and finding someone else that will help them through the rest of their lives.

Since all of our friends drink at a certain bar, read certain magazines, find certain boys or girls desirable, we follow along, forgetting there is a goal beyond being accepted by our friends.  This issue seems to be similar to the problem of marrying the lead cheerleader or captain of the football team.  The captain and the cheerleader have invested a large part of their lives to excel in a specific endeavor, and also to develop tremendous social skills to achieve their dreams.  Only, the day after the wedding, the skills that possibly brought the couple together, that surely constitute a lot of the individual’s self-esteem, becomes a problem.  A wife with skills to attract men isn’t focused on living her life with the man she married.  The guy that dominated those around him, intimidated opponents, and is used to getting physical to get his way or to communicate, has a problem demonstrating the discipline, communication, and understanding that will be useful to raising children, let alone meeting the needs of his wife for the rest of his life.  Those that pick a mate that fell outside the ‘in’ crowd, that didn’t hang with a group, that never dressed ‘hot’, that didn’t have a ‘reputation’ — seem to win more often, with suitable dates and prospects for marriage longevity.

If people blow off prospects because ‘there are other fish in the sea’, that is an example of nearly reasonable advice from peers.  The girl dressing most provocatively gets asked for more dates, this is a fact of life today.  But dressing provocatively, moving and speaking suggestively, driving the ‘baddest’ vehicle, these are other examples of weak advice from peers.  It is the more fundamental values that get people married more happily, for longer.  Simple things like — is she honest?  is he kind?  is she respectful to parents, elders, and kids?  is he a hard worker?  does she avoid drugs and drunks?  does he have any skills towards a craft or career?  is she good with kids?  is he good with animals?  does she control her temper?  does he spend money wisely? is she responsible in all things?  is he responsible in all things? Do they understand why they should be making babies?

Today’s culture is even more focused on conspicuous consumption, than the consumer driven economy that horrified our grandparents.  I pray that we find a way to tell our kids that despite mass media, finding the wildflower with character is more precious that picking the flashiest flower in the flower bed.

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Annie D. at Smart at Love wrote about women and accusations of wielding unfair control in relationships (Women love being in control).  Thanks for the great article, Annie!

Where some see women ‘loving being in control’, I think what we see is a difference in goals, discipline, and lack of training or understanding: ignorance.

Men and women learn at an early age that pregnancy is handier inside a family, generally considered to be a marriage.  Men and women learn pregnancy outside a family is a disaster in legal, economic, and reputation terms, and a time to worry about pressures to Do Things.  Like get married.

But men learn from brothers, from friends, from watching older boys (heaven forbid, their father or their mother’s boyfriend) that scoring is important.  Besides feeling good, scoring is like football or basketball — if you are good and do it a lot, people look up to you.

For girls, scoring is a problem.  Yes, it feels good, but it also risks pregnancy.  Pregnancy for the unwed mother risks all that it does for the boy, but the girl is also detoured by the developing baby from her previous life plan.  Girls also gain social points for how close to ‘all the way’ they go, except ‘giving in’ is a loss of points. Then, too, girls develop breasts.  They demand training bras and other sexy underwear and piercings, being told that ’sexy’ is ‘grown up’, although the explanation why this is so remains fuzzy.

For older people, say in their 20’s or 50’s, similar pressures still apply.  Only the older person has experience — they have learned pitfalls and dangers to avoid, and have created their own rules on how to avoid pain and sorrow.

So if a woman wants to avoid problems, she will attempt to learn whether she wants a guy in her life for the long haul, whether she wants him to be her Prince Charming and give her ‘lots of sex and babies’ (as they put it in the movie ‘Love Actually’).  And she also wants to have the fun and excitement of both the romance and the sex and other aspects of physical intimacy.  So she will attempt to follow the best advice she has in getting to know, to encourage, and to evaluate the current guy.  How well she sticks to the planned agenda is called ‘discipline’, the will to complete a task.  If her agenda is well thought out, it provides both safety for her and a likelihood of achieving her goals. 

The poor guy.  Don’t believe it.  Some guys get the point — you are trying to pick a mate.  You want to have fun today, but you need to know if this woman will be a good mate for you and mother for your children.  Too many guys don’t get that.  Just like too many women, many guys get the point that sexy is good, scoring is better, and the point of having men and women in the world is to have a good time getting physically intimate.  Too often the name of the game is ‘how good can you make me feel today?’

In US society today, for the most part women entice men, men chase women.  Disciplined women impose rules, procedures, and evaluations on their search for a mate.  Undisciplined men express frustration that they have been ‘tricked’ — they were searching for undisciplined women searching for gratification only.  Disciplined men probably pick out disciplined women more often, or are responsible in separating from chance encounters with undisciplined women — so we seldom hear anything at all about disciplined men.  Except maybe that all the ‘good’ men are married.  Go figure.

I figure the undisciplined, media-driven search for lust and gratification turns things around from what was intended.  I figure our bodies react more strongly when adapting to a *new* partner.  So the people looking for lots of casual encounters keep getting that rush from their bodies adapting to a new set of pheromones, new hormone-enriched intimate fluids, in addition to the hormones excited by sexual activities.  Instead, if we actually pick our mate before getting intimate, that ‘bodies adapting’ frisson is available to help cement the relationship.  Yes, that means three dates is precipitate.  Pick your mate, then hit the sack together.  With the person you fully expect to spend the rest of your life with.  How long should that take?  A colleague from India met her husband on her wedding day, at the ceremony.  She didn’t relate how long the families had known each other, or how long the marriage had been planned.  And she seemed at least as happy, after more than ten (10) years, as many other wives I have met.  The selection of a mate should take as long as it takes, for a once in a lifetime selection.

I prefer to think of the careful pursuit of a search for a mate as being disciplined, rather than being a control freak.  I would think that a control freak would be a really dangerous person, damaging to everyone around them.  I would consider expecting particular behavior to be discipline, or perhaps training.  Expecting actions to be performed in a specific manner is controlling.  Controlling can be an important technique in training, for teaching new skills.  Abuse by controlling outside a ‘new skill’ training environment would be a control freak.

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