It’s About Making Babies!

There I stood behind the movie concession stand counter. About an hour into ‘I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry’, a teen boy comes out of the theater to the lobby. About ten (10) minutes later a couple of girls pull up in a car and mill about in front of the theater. The boy joins them. They look to be 8th or 9th graders, about 13-14. The girls might be sisters, the boy maybe a year older. After a few minutes one girl takes off in the car; the boy and younger girl enter the lobby.

The two stand and talk, quietly. A few kisses occasionally. They embrace, rub each other’s backs, hands don’t roam *too* badly. After about four (4) minutes of one particular long smooch, I told them, “Oh, please! Get a room!”, after a few more seconds to show they weren’t worried about me, they went back to rubbing shoulders and sides and talking. This continued for a while.

The car returned, the driver honked the horn. About a dozen annoying, short bleats of the horn later, and the girl actually starts telling the guy goodbye. He returns to the auditorium where ‘Chuck and Larry’ is playing with about 15 minutes of movie left.

I was a bit surprised that the conduct was as ‘clean’ as it was - that long a contact, periods of kissing, and no serious groping. I am sure their parents will be relieved.

But what really struck me was that: 1) She had to call him out of the theater - in the theater your cell phone is supposed to be turned off; and 2) She showed an enormous and critical lack of respect for him, for his choices, and his family (a younger brother, inside watching the show).

Umm, theaters have to honor the movie industry’s demands to prevent pirating - stealing snapshots or clips of movies. The theater owner association has a $500 bounty for employees that report pirating to the police - a girl just pleaded guilty and paid a fine for snapping 20 seconds of ‘Transformers’ for her kid brother. Plus, an open cell phone acts as a flashlight, distracting others. The reason for dimming the lights during the movie is to create an illusion that you are viewing the event alone, or with only a few others, making the experience more ‘personal’. This is one reason anything that attracts attention - talking, lights, noises, etc. - is so bad. No one paid to have your flashing screen or talking or seat kicking distract them from the story on the screen.

About the disrespect. He chose to spend a few hours on Saturday with his brother, at this movie. Whether or not this was his first choice for how to spend this time, whether or not talking with her and kissing were more fun, the fact remains - she claimed precedence over his choices for the moment. She did not honor him. Whether from arrogance, self indulgence (she appeared to enjoy the kissing and rubbing, too), or ignorance, she interrupted his activity. Will she be as cooperative when he sees her shopping with a sister and asks her to step aside and cuddle and talk a while? Will she reimburse him for the cost of the ticket, for the movie he saw the first half and the ending? Her intervention cost him the price of the ticket, and time with the brother. He may be satisfied with how he spend the time together with her, but who will make up the distraction from the picture that brought the younger brother to the lobby to find out what happened to the guy?

Oh, and remember, when the girl’s ride returned was when she left. She never did acknowledge butting into his day and his activity.

Now, will all kids growing up with cell phones maintain this ‘connectedness’, this butting into each other’s day and choices at random and without regard to respect for the other person’s choices, or will these kids learn to respect others - about the time they start trying to raise their own kids?

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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