Sounds way too harsh
Tired of Men wrote about ‘You Make Your Own Relationship Luck‘.
This review article runs over fairly common ground — some women move from unavailable guy to unavailable guy, then wonder at their string of bad luck.
The advice seems to boil down to ’stop picking the wrong guy’. I think the advice should come a bit stronger: ‘pick a mate, and a co-parent for your children for any date or fling’. You cannot afford the time to flirt or play with some guy that seems attractive. Any person, male or female, that is groomed fashionably spends way too much of their life living a fantasy to have much real life left.
The best I can come up with a rule for success, is to get people that have been married long-term — over 20 years — involved in the process of deciding whether to date a prospect. This almost goes back to our great-great grandparent’s time, that if his family doesn’t impress your family, you won’t be dating. Anyone wonder how Paul Harvey keeps announcing 70th wedding anniversaries, when so many marriages end in divorce in 10 or 20 years?
Figuring that someone you meet in a bar is a good bet for a quick intimate encounter, or dating someone because they are ‘hot’, attractive, or just willing… And we are back to NML’s ‘don’t pick the wrong guys’ advice. We teach our kids through TV, movies, and how we behave, that getting sex is an important life goal, just like winning the football game is important. We advertise clothes and cars that will make you a sex magnet.
Sex has filled many purposes in human history — in warfare, rape is used to subjugate and demoralize the enemy, sex is used to make babies to be soldiers in the next generation’s wars (according to the Bible Old Testament), to dominate partners for financial or political gain, or as a venue for sex games with no real purpose. Sex can be a comfort, a sharing, or a domination and humiliation. A social tool and a weapon. For the mated couple, sex is a way to make babies, and also as an adventure and a joyful sharing, a comfort and a distraction.
If you go looking for sex, I daresay you will likely find some, more easily for some than for others. My problem is that we cannot afford the time we spend diverted from finding a mate. Finding someone to make babies with. Whether or not we actually make babies is beside the point, whether due to infertility, stage in life (too young or old), or already raised our kids, a mate needs the qualities needed by a successful parent, discipline, honesty, perseverence, loyalty, a nurturing spirit, and communication, social, and character skills worth teaching. Any boob can be taught to dance well enough to be fun, when they are with their mate. A dilletante or romeo will never learn to be honest and loyal as long as they believe their ’skills’ are making them ’successful’ at getting laid — that guys and girls will keep picking the ‘wrong guy’. Stop it.
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January 21st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
As always you raise some very interesting and key points. I think in the context of the subject of your blog, the subject I wrote about and your view on it fits in correctly. I think that it is important to look at someone in view of how they will be as a life partner or a co-parent but the reality is that most people look at those qualities in the person 1) if they are outcomes that they want and 2) if there is enough other qualities about this person for you to think you will be around with them long enough for you to make a decision about either of these things. Yes it is very likely that if I had looked at partners from the perspectives that you suggest, I likely wouldn’t have been with some of the guys that I was with, but I also believe that 1) I didn’t want either of those things until my late twenties although some or most of the guys did, even when the relationship for me wasn’t quite right and 2) I may have found myself making decisions about either or both of those things earlier than I planned to.
I think that you are right about the importance of these qualities however and if anyone is considering a serious relationship with someone then life partner at the very least should be at the top of their considerations.