Why buy the milk?
That particular analogy, “Why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free?” bothers me this afternoon.
NML wrote on ’8 Things That Every Woman Should Steer Clear Of’, some dating pitfalls to avoid, on Baggage Reclaim. One of her commenters apparently advises against getting into sex too soon. Johnny used the above homily as a reference.
Back when we kept milk cows on a farm (Dad milked cows), the cows accomplished several things. First, when Dad had to give up milking cows due to health problems, they found they made about $2 less per year. A cow eats. And drops fertilizer over the pasture, what gets dropped in the farm fertilized fields and the garden. Buy the milk, you don’t get that. At least, not in the stores I shop at. You also get to know the cows, the calves (there have to be calves or there isn’t any milk). You learn a lot, raising and working livestock. Think of what a pet dog or cat teaches, and they won’t step on your feet if you get too smart for your britches. Cows have expressions, moods. It can be rewarding to work with them, to share your day. The cows make the farm a richer environment and experience. Plus, keeping livestock makes lots of work, which is essential for raising healthy kids.
The real reason to ‘buy the cow’, is a matter of character. Do you choose to join a woman in a home and make babies, or do you choose to chase sexual favors for a life? Think carefully. The time and skills you invest in one choice can never be undone, and make you ill-suited for the other choice. Just think of the day after the wedding, she wakes and looks at you — does she think ‘Wow, he is really skilled at wooing strange women into bed!’ Likely not. All those ‘social’ skills become useless, and a liability any time you get the urge to ‘dust off’ those old ‘specialties’.
But then, I don’t buy milk, either.
That last paragraph is so perfect! If only many other men recognised how useless and unattractive those skills become after a while. One day they’ll wake up and look in the mirror and see a played out, tired out has been looking back at them in the mirror and they’re likely to be alone!
NML, you are probably right about one consequence. I was thinking more about how chasing around is emotionally abusive, and how repeatedly abusing partners changes a person.
As a species, people have persisted on the face of the earth because of the way babies follow sex. Men and women that use sex but won’t create enough of a home to raise babies, whether babies follow or not, are acting contrary to themselves, the forces of nature, and most religions. Society sends such screwed up and mixed messages I hesitate to even mention culture or what parents may or may not have told children through recent generations.
On a personal level, there is a vast number of possible partners out there. Spending enough time with one person to exchange names, let alone anything more intimate, requires an act of investment of self, of time. A gift. The natural tendency ought to be to want to preserve and increase the value of that investment. That is, when we find a nice girl/boy, the right thing should be to want to continue to cherish that acquaintance. When one such acquaintance becomes intimate, we should be heavily invested in preserving that relationship, just as we should be heavily invested in assuring ourselves that the intimacy is with a person of value — a potential life mate and co-parent.
I feel that what many people call a ‘relationship’ is wrongfully considered something to achieve. Instead, I consider this period between friendship and life mating, to be one of evaluation. The evaluation should either end when it becomes clear the potential partner isn’t of good character, or isn’t likely to be a good co-parent or life mate — or the evaluation period should flourish into a life mating.
Anything else would be abusing what I consider our inherent drive to maturity and life mating. And allowing abuse to continue changes the person doing the abuse, along the ‘be careful what you pretend’ lines of becoming what you seem to be.
‘Shop around’ should include getting to know the prospect’s family and character. Skin-to-skin comes really late in evaluation, and not as a social objective.