Sunday, January 01, 2006
Sex In Suburbia
"Keep thinking of yourself as a soft, mysterious cat.. . .Men are fascinated by bright, shiny objects, by lots of curls, lots of hair on the head . . . by bows, ribbons, ruffles and bright colors.. . .Sarcasm is dangerous. Avoid it altogether."
Oh dear...more advice I've never followed.
I suppose I got the first part right. The "soft, mysterious cat" part.
I once asked my husband why he fell in love with me. I hoped, I think, to hear something like, "You have an interesting mind", or "You never bore me", or words to that effect. His answer crushed me. He said, after much reflection, "You are unfailingly kind."
Wunderbar. That sounds like a recipe for someone who gets replaced at 46 by someone with far fewer miles on the old odometer. Very likely less kind, too. Not that he would do that sort of thing, but that's the sort of thought that pops unbidden into my head all the time, prompting that wry little half-smile that makes him ask in mock exasperation, "All right... what are you laughing about now?". In high school a guy I dated used to call me Mona Lisa. He said when we broke up he used to fear I was laughing at him, each time he saw that smile flit across my face.
I told him him was mistaken. I was almost always laughing at myself.
Maureen Dowd is musing about sex and feminism in the NYT Magazine. I like her so much better when she's apolitical. When she's not trying to be a man in a man's world. I think, sometimes, that this is where the hysterical brittleness comes from. She's so much more relaxed, when she is just herself:
Throughout the long, dark ages of undisputed patriarchy, women connived to trade beauty and sex for affluence and status. In the first flush of feminism, women offered to pay half the check with "woman money" as a way to show that these crass calculations - that a woman's worth in society was determined by her looks, that she was an ornament up for sale to the highest bidder - no longer applied.
You have got to be kidding me. In a world where everywhere you look - magazines, television, movies, billboards, newspapers, even adverts we get in our junk mail, is sex - how on earth could any woman fail to get the message? Women now have money, education, and some measure of power, yet the predominant images of us are not ones that reflect this 'new reality', whatever that may be, but an increasingly retrograde vision of femininity. One that is airbrushed, perfectly made up, surgically-enhanced, scantily-clad, and eternally hovering at an impossibly delectable nineteen years old. One that no woman with a job, a brain, or any adult responsibilities at all can possibly compete with. Not that this stops us from trying. Or from feeling inadequate when we fail.
At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?
He had hit on a primal fear of single successful women: that the aroma of male power is an aphrodisiac for women, but the perfume of female power is a turnoff for men. It took women a few decades to realize that everything they were doing to advance themselves in the boardroom could be sabotaging their chances in the bedroom, that evolution was lagging behind equality.
I wonder about this a lot. My daughter in law is extremely smart. So is my son, and she managed to snag him neatly. But the thing about her is this: she's a blonde and when you first meet her, her intelligence is not at all apparent. She has a rather kittenish manner. It's something I recognized about her almost immediately when I first met her: she conceals her intelligence in social situations. I recognized it because from the time I was in second grade I quickly learned to do the same thing if I wanted to get along with people. I put myself down. A lot.
I've often thought that was why I was so successful with boys. I think women who never learn to moderate that quality are at a huge disadvantage in life. The same qualities that come across positively in men: keen intelligence, initiative, aggressiveness, are generally perceived negatively in a woman.
We don't want those things from girls. We want softness, fluffyness, giggles. What my mother-in-law calls (and I detest) "perkiness". Good God. The only place I want to see perkiness at my age is when I look at my breasts, thank you very much.
On the other hand, I look at my younger son and his fiancee. Though she doesn't look a bit like me, personality-wise we're a lot alike. She's ferociously intelligent, a PhD candidate right now at a very good school, easily his intellectual equal and that is obviously one of the reasons he's interested in her. But, like me, she's a bit of a child-woman. Fiercely independent in some ways - she'll just take off without him - she's also incredibly loyal and soft-hearted, and he's every bit as protective of her as my husband is of me.
Mo Dowd asks: So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?
I'm not sure it's that simple. I think men have a very basic desire to be needed. Who wants to be in a relationship where you feel superfluous - whether you're a man, or a woman?
Women often leave relationships because men can't, or won't, tell them they are loved. They need to hear it said. Men often think it's enough that they come home every night, that they don't cheat, that they put food on the table; but women want to hear the words. A man thinks, "I wouldn't do those things if I didn't care." But a woman wants, needs to hear the words, "I still love you". "You are still beautiful to me, even after all these years." She wants the tangible demonstrations of affection: flowers, a card, or sometimes just a phone call in the middle of the day or a email, or to see his eyes watching her face during a football game when she has taken special care with her appearance, just for him. These things matter.
And men need to feel needed too. They need to know that what they provide: the security of a home and a future for the family, is noticed and cherished. All those hours of overtime, and planning, and promotions: they are worth something. I tried, for a few years, to get my husband to consider retiring to a less stressful job, using my income as a supplement. It took me a while to realize, and I still don't understand it, that he takes great pride in the fact that he is able to support me. And he does it better than I could - I don't dispute that fact. Although he welcomes my income and he is proud of my acheivements, I don't think he wants that role taken away. That's not why I married him. But it seems necessary to him. It grieves me considerably. He is so much more to me than some meal ticket.
But I can understand it in a way, because I feel the same way about our home. It has been my domain for over 25 years, and I tend to get downright territorial about changes to my little decorating schemes. I was absurdly pleased, a month ago, when a neighbor came to my door selling chocolates and said, "Are you an interior decorator?". I'm proud of what I've done with our house. That is "my contribution" to the marital equation, and I tend to resent it when he dares to opine. I've gotten much better. He chose the oriental rug in our living room, which would have been sacrilege a few years ago because I have to redo the entire color scheme around it. We're both getting more flexible. We have to be - we fight more too, now that the kids are gone. We do a lot of things more now.
So funny, the difference between the Washington Post Magazine and the NYT. As I was sitting on the sofa watching the Giants crush my Redskins (not wholly unexpected) my husband wryly handed me this piece. Skimming through it, I almost inhaled my Bloody Mary at this line:
At 14, I was visiting my great-aunt -- Jackie's aunt -- Ellen, when a cousin stopped by to say that she was moving to Washington to live with her boyfriend, the father of her baby. Aunt Ellen was livid. "You move in with a man, you ain't nothing but an unpaid ho," Aunt Ellen told her. "Hell, the only time you a paid ho is when you get married."
"I thought you'd like that", he laughed. And later...
From an early age, I began to understand (abstractly) that sex was currency. Legal tender. Negotiable for all debts public and private. Still, it didn't become personal until later.
Well no kidding. My amusement became more pronounced as I read on. The author began to describe 'trading' sex for vacuum cleaners, nights out with the girls, the loan of a generator from her spousal unit...
I wouldn't put it that baldly. No wonder men think women are mercenary. No wonder women think sex is all men want from us, when it's so easy to get what we want by just giving it up. My God, what a tangle.
I once read somewhere that if men and women really ever understood each other, it would profoundly sadden us. Maybe I look at the world through rose-colored glasses. It wouldn't surprise me to find that was so. The thought often occurs to me. But it's hard enough for two adults to get along in a marriage. Especially in today's world. Especially if the woman is working. It places strains on your relationship. But if you screen out all the race and class BS from the WaPo piece, could it not be that sex is just how we come together again as people? The one place where everything isn't a battleground (except, perhaps, in play)? Where we let go of what society expects of us for a space and become something much more basic; more primitive? Lowering for a brief time the barriers so carefully erected against an insane world and allowing ourselves to be carried away?
It is that last that is so intoxicating, but also what I instinctively still fear. There is something in me that understands Maureen Dowd, strangely enough. Something in me that secretly sympathizes with her when she's being bitter. Yes women use sex as currency, oftentimes, because it often is all we have to barter. It is, often, all that is valued about us. That's what causes all the feminist angst, the anger and the bitterness. We have so much more to offer as people. Why doesn't that count for more?
Unfortunately, bitterness is such a turnoff. Men don't like it. It's really not Ms. Dowd's intelligence that is offputting, I suspect, but her sharpness and her anger. People (and men are people) like people who like them. But she is proud. She wants to be liked - and admired - for her better qualities. Not for her perkiness. I understand this feeling. It's not as though I haven't had those thoughts. It's just that they are pointless.
She hasn't learned to hide her feelings. But more importantly, I think, she hasn't learned to compromise. In the battle of the sexes, men tend to want to be on top. At least sexually. And there is something primal in women that finds this quality very attractive. But at the same time, there is something in me that doesn't want to submit, which was my first thought when reading this comment from a prior post:
To me, what's sexy during sex is feeling vulnerable, being able to yield, let the walls down...
I agree, but I'll be damned if I don't fight it every single time. Why is that? Subliminated post-feminist anger? Heh... I'm smiling again. If you can laugh at yourself, you never lack for amusement. The thing is, I sympathize with Maureen Dowd, but lack of moderation is her downfall. Because I can see the other side too. I can see a man's point of view, and that precludes the kind of sullen, bitter rage that is such a buzz kill. That is why we come together. To remind us that neither side has a monopoly on rightness, I think.
We women get so angry that we are, more often than not, the ones to yield. I get angry, sometimes. But someone has to yield in the battle of the sexes. Maybe we do it because we can. Or because we secretly want to. Or because we enjoy pleasing.
Who knows? I certainly don't. I do know that the process is, more often than not, enjoyable, and that a bit of a struggle certainly makes it more entertaining. And sometimes we get angry just because someone is telling us we are supposed to keep score. And I think that is misguided. The truth is that we often want different things, and the even more unpleasant truth is that for women, what we want often includes making those we care about happy. Which means, in the end, that if we are keeping score by men's rules, as Ms. Dowd seems to want to do, we will always lose.
Perhaps what we need to do is throw the scorecard away and go by what makes us happy. And stop worrying about what other people think. Now there's a radical concept. Revolutionary, almost. Call it post, post-feminist.
29 Comments:
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sun Jan 01, 12:06:00 PM:
There are certainly men who would be intimidated by Maureen Dowd, but it is far more likely that even the prospective datee cited in her article was using the "you intimidate me" excuse to avoid a more unpalatable conversation: that he just did not want to date Maureen Dowd. What man wants to date somebody who writes about her personal life the way Maureen Dowd does? For starters, you'd know that once you started dating her you could never break up, because once you did (whether at your initiative or hers) it would become the subject of endless public snark. Can you imagine how hideous it would be to have dumped Maureen Dowd? Criminy.
And even if this fear is unfair, the fact that she wrote about this guy who was allegedly intimidated by her is evidence enough that it is certainly risky to get involved with her.
Separately, I have a prediction to make: The title of this post is going to generate at least as many Google hits as this post does.
By Cassandra, at
Sun Jan 01, 12:30:00 PM:
I must admit that *did* occur to me, if only belatedly. But since this isn't my site, I found the prospect more amusing than disturbing. If it's any comfort, that was the original title and I never noticed that it brought my little personal site any traffic, but I suspect it will do far better for you :)
Perhaps some recompense for having to put up with the unpredictable nature of having a female guest blogger. Poor guy - begin with derrieres and you never know where it will lead, do you? Imagine how my poor husband feels?
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Jan 01, 02:01:00 PM:
Of course, sex-Googlers who come to TigerHawk will instantly know that they have come to the wrong place. The VC page has that lusty garter-belt babe at the top, so they have to read a bit before they realize that it is not what they are looking for!
I prefer to think of you as a co-blogger! Let me know if you want me to post your email address... :)
By Cassandra, at
Sun Jan 01, 02:17:00 PM:
Now you know durned well the garter belt wench was only supposed to be up there for July 4th. If the oink cadre hadn't squealed so loudly, she'd have been history the next day.
I guess I got to be fond of her as well, but I always felt kind of weird about it. On the otter heiny she kind of amused me - she's cute and I do like stockings. I got more mail about her - it was kind of funny in a way. I think she tweaked sensibilities all across the spectrum and it's never a bad thing to confound people's expectations a bit. Not sure what that says. But I never claimed being female was easy. You might as well have a bit of fun with it.
By 
, at
Sun Jan 01, 09:28:00 PM:
Your two latest pieces here at TigerHawk are just plain stunning. I wish you had a job at one of the major papers... your work is at least as good as what the established columnists routinely produce.
BTW, why don't you post over at VC anymore? more visibility here?
By Cassandra, at
Sun Jan 01, 10:14:00 PM:
First of all, thank you. That is very kind.
I don't really know how to answer that question. Quitting VC was probably the most painful decision I've ever made in my life. I'm still having trouble with it. I was in love with what I was doing, and with the people there, to be honest. I intended to walk away from blogging completely, but when I quit several friends asked me to guest-blog and that seemed a good way to ease out of it without having my head explode from not writing every day.
I hoped by now I would be able to give it up. I don't think I'm quite there yet, so I guess I'm still re-assessing, which sounds really idiotic, I know. I've been writing here and there, but I've been pretty bad about letting people know where I am.
I tend not to be good about that sort of thing - I'm more interested in writing than in letting anyone know I've written something. I'll probably die someday and they'll find a pile of forgotten manuscripts ten feet tall in some dusty old room... :)
Anyway, thank you for the kind words. They are greatly appreciated.
By , at
Mon Jan 02, 11:02:00 AM:
Interesting article, Cassandra, but quite secular. Marriage is a gift from God and as such is a triangle which needs to include Him. As far as husband and wife relationship, I believe St. Paul said it best when he wrote 'woman, respect your husband like you respect Christ; man, love your wife as you love yourself. Respect and love - a hard combination to beat.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 02, 12:01:00 PM:
I don't think a marriage can last long without mutual respect. That's probably something I take for granted.
When that goes, everything else falls by the wayside pretty rapidly.
By Papa Ray, at
Mon Jan 02, 01:36:00 PM:
My Mother once told me, I don't remember the situation, "That women look at their reflection in the mirror to see how old they look and that Men look in it to see their pride in their accomplishments."
I never really undertood that until I grew old and had nothing more to accomplish, other than raising my sweet GrandDaughter.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By , at
Mon Jan 02, 07:17:00 PM:
In the end, what has caused the most acrimony amongst men is that we have no idea, whatsoever, what women want. Most of us don't know what good we are to women. Women feel men only want them for sex; a great many men feel that women only want them for money. And while neither view is accurate, they are both quite pervasive and derived from the early days, when you date the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Women state they don't want a dominant man, they want somebody who will be a partner, totally equal. But, as men, we quickly learn that doing that will lead to an ugly separation in short order and a complaint that you don't take charge. To get bback to the sex thing, if a man tries to play it cool and not demand it constantly, a lot of women will take it as an insult to them ("What? I'm not sexy?"). It seems to be a no-win situation, which only makes the aggravation, frustration, and utter befuddlement all the worse.
Maureen Dowd's problem with men isn't her intellect. It's not even her profession. She wishes to believe so because it helps her deal with it, but if she truly believes that, she is a lost cause.
Her problem is that, deep down, she doesn't LIKE men. She may be sexually attracted to men --- but her resentment and disdain of men is so blatantly clear on the surface that few men feel it's worth the effort to try and break through that and see what lies underneath. You can want to sleep with somebody but not even remotely LIKE them. Lust and love are two quite different emotions (and if you manage to feel both for a person, you're quite fortunate) and while Dowd, no doubt, has plenty of experience with the former, her experience with the latter seems limited, at best.
Think of it this way --- let's say I write nothing but how bad women are. "Women are gold diggers, cheaters, shallow little harpies". I write this constantly, year after year, and you've read it for years on end.
If I were to ask you out --- odds are, you'd think of a "nice" excuse why you'd decline. You'd say you find my intellect "intimidating". You'd say "I'm already seeing somebody". You'd find a way to try and cushion the blow because that is what people do. People have been hurt badly in the past and try to help others by not causing them pain. Few people will openly state "Well, I think you're a complete (fill in your own cute expletive here) and I don't really have time in my life to deal with my own life plus all of your incessant bitterness, so do us all a favor and swallow a bullet, 'K?"
Men do cherish women. And most men love women. But it's really hard to tell a woman "I love you" when, especially early in your romantic life, you realize that those words can kill a relationship faster than anything else (though that knowledge did get me out of some bad ones in the past, I must admit). Some women do not want to hear it, will openly mock you or criticize you --- or leave you --- for saying it. So, you learn to never say it. And when your current girlfriend or your wife wants to hear it, you're oblivious because you've been trained in your past to not do that.
It's not necessarily fair to the women in a man's life --- but a whole lot of women will trade sex for what they want, which is every inch as unfair to the man. I had a girl who said she'd have sex with me to get me to do things for her (such as take her out, etc.). I pointed out to her I did those for her WITHOUT sex to begin with (which was quite accurate) and our relationship ended, in short order, after that because of how utterly painful and cruel her statement was. No man wants to feel like he's with a prostitute.
-=Mike
By , at
Mon Jan 02, 08:17:00 PM:
For a prescient (and now, as then, very non-PC) view, check out George Gilder's book "Sexual Suicide" published in the early 70's. Very briefly: He states that women have, and have long had, the real power, because they are secure in their sexuality, but men have to prove their sexuality continually. This leads men to be aggressive, so they have to be controlled, mostly through marriage, which provides them with their one major role, breadwinner. If that role is marginalized or disparaged, and at the same time sex is available without commitment, men will disengage from society/responsibility, leading to disintegration of society. It happens to the marginal first (e.g., the "society" promoted by gangsta rap, etc.), but then pervades the remainder. It promotes brutal, simplistic sexual stereotypes that are the enemy of the good. I've forgotten whether he promoted any solution.
By Eric, at
Mon Jan 02, 11:24:00 PM:
Hey Cassandra,
Villainous Company was one of the really good reads, and your support for ROTC at Columbia was appreciated. It's good to see you posting at Tigerhawk's blog. IMO, you and Tigerhawk blogging together turns this blog from a good-read blog to a must-read blog.
You know, a girl I was once in love with, desired completely and for whom I tried my best to be my best, she told me I "intimidated" her as a reason for rejecting me. Reading her stuff, Dowd sounds to me like a frustrated guy who can't figure out why that life-partner relationship continues to elude him despite success in other areas of his life.
My view is that impressive intelligence and intellectual achievement ARE attractive but impressive intelligence and intellectual achievement are not foundational qualities for a relationship. Experience has taught me to differentiate attractive 'Prize' qualities (eg, intelligence, looks, skills, taste, style, etc) from 'Compatibility' qualities (eg, reliability, sense of value, kindness, compassion, etc).
I've learned the things that impress me or even attract me to a woman aren't necessarily the same things that will make a relationship work between us.
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jan 03, 02:18:00 AM:
Mike:
I get the same feeling - she doesn't seem to like or respect men much, though from what I read, she has a way with them. But those can be two different things.
It's funny: money is the one thing I don't think I ever thought of when choosing my husband. It just never crossed my mind. I just assumed if I found the right man, we'd make the rest work somehow. But it was on his mind - I remember him worrying about getting married because we didn't make enough to afford health insurance. He viewed that as his responsibility. I viewed it as a problem we needed to solve together - not his problem but ours.
I think it's difficult to be a man right now, but I think this is part of a larger clash between biology and culture. Women are just as confused - believe me. We are surrounded by 19-year old half-naked supermodels with ginormous fake boobs and skimpy clothes who appear to be sleeping with anything on two legs. This is the "standard" our daughters are seeing that guys like, and it's everywhere now: even in office attire. Yet if you dress and behave that way, guys think you're a slut. Well... umm... strangely, the old standard still applies. If they take you up on the offer, they're not looked down on: you are. Hard for us to figure out. And harder still to hold the line when popular culture doesn't respect women who respect themselves.
Yes, women still want men to be men, but our mental concept of what a man should be is changing, while what we want biologically hasn't changed much. This is probably a good thing in some ways, but it requires an awful lot of finesse from you all. Of course that's true for women too: the roles are blurring and we're taking on responsibilities we didn't used to have to worry about. In some ways, it's not a terribly efficient arrangement. But then it helps us to understand each other a bit better.
What bothers me is what the anonymous commenter referred to: the devaluing of the man's role as the provider. From what I've seen, this is incredibly important to a lot of guys, just like caring for loved ones is incredibly important to many women. We're not a one-size-fits all world, so it's not as though everyone has to be force-fit into the same mold. We don't have to ignore the fact that men tend to behave one way (and that there may be biological reasons for that) and women another. If a woman isn't inclined to stay home, fine - she should go after and have a career. But don't devalue being a FT Mom if that's her choice: there is honor in that too.
And I think the same should apply to men - I still see them doing a lot of the heavy lifting but not always getting the credit they deserve. I don't think we need to get so politically correct we rewrite all of human history, destroying perfectly workable institutions in the process.
***************************
And thank you Eric. What a lovely thing to say. I miss VC an awful lot, but TH and crew have been very patient in allowing me to bloviate here from time to time.
Relationships are weird. So many people have a picture of what the "ideal" person for them is, and they carry that around inside them like a little shrine. Who can match up to that? Odds are, if they find that person, they either won't want them back, or that person won't make them happy.
Experience has taught me to differentiate attractive 'Prize' qualities from 'Compatibility' qualities
I just told one of my sons (about a week ago) that marriage is, first and foremost, a friendship.
That sounds boring, but it really isn't. It has to be a friendship, to last. You will *always* love your spouse, but you are probably going to fall in and out of love several times with this person over a lifetime, and if you're not friends in between, what else is there? That's the glue that binds everything else together.
By Tom Grey, at
Tue Jan 03, 05:55:00 AM:
My late mother told me, her only son, to sleep with anybody I wanted/ could, but to marry a friend.
She had the Heinlein idea of "responsible promiscuity." I tried it, but tt's a bad idea, because it causes people who lust after each to confuse sex with love.
Love is commitment. "Just fun" is almost never only just fun for both sides -- and is a terrible ideal for society to accept.
The women used to have responsibility for saying "no", er, "not yet." That was unfair, but it was better than neither having the responsibility.
Men want accomplishment -- they also want to win. Always. That's why men love sports so much; their team can win.
Women like winning too [and men like to care for others (a bit)]. But not as much, comparing average to average.
Making more money is a key way to "win." If a woman doesn't know how her man is winning, or doesn't care, she doesn't love hime.
By , at
Tue Jan 03, 03:40:00 PM:
His answer crushed me. He said, after much reflection, "You are unfailingly kind." -Cassandra
In a world growing cold, where passion is confused with sexual olympics, where the personal is public and the newest of personal vulgarities is the fashion to be pursued, the warmth and tenderness of one person to another is more precious than gold.
The Unit may be only a man, but he is an exceedingly wise (and lucky) one, at that. But you already knew that, didn't you Cass?
-David
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jan 03, 04:50:00 PM:
I know I'm the luckiest woman on the planet, David.
How on earth that man has put up with me for so long, I will never know. Every night before I go to sleep, I look up at him and there is always a brief moment when my heart just flips over. In a world full of really wonderful men, I somehow found a prince.
By Cardinalpark, at
Tue Jan 03, 05:58:00 PM:
Sensitive subject this. I passed along this post to my wife -- of 15 years. Met 21 years ago. she loved it, as did I.
This subject seems to get all the more sensitive with aging. This is my fortieth year, and my wife is approaching that same, touchy birthday. She handed me a deeply depressing article from the NYT from a woman who had written a book years ago talking about the happiness of being at home, versus the workplace. Now this same author had years later been abandoned by her husband of 40 years in favor of a younger girlfriend - prompting great depression, soul searching and a reversal of her prior views.
It perhaps isn't just about being loved and cherished and appreciated today. Fear of aging and change; an imbalance that seems to exist between the impact of aging on men versus women; and the fact that many wives fear being abandoned in favor of a younger woman.
i am finding that no amount of assurance can resolve that mistrust. And ladies like MoDo certainly feed that mistrust. Of course, much actual male behavior also feeds that mistrust.
It is a shame. It is not a fear or concern I have. And I know few guys who do. I mean nobody likes to age; and the feeling of creaking bodies, graying hair and so forth ain't great. But I don't know one guy who worries about his wife abandoning him when he's older in favor of a younger, fitter man. Perhaps we should, but I don't think we do. And yet I know many married women who would acknowledge this precise concern.
Not much to do to fix it other than behave. I just wish it wasn't a worry. Because it shouldn't be. And I know in my wife it prompts a protracted search for identity and association apart from her family. Because she worries our boys will be grown and I may be gone -- and she worries about what her epitaph will say. I have never once thought about that. Not yet anyway.
So we communicate alot to try to address these fears. It means marriage is an everyday effort, forever.
I like it...
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jan 03, 06:12:00 PM:
Strangely enough, I have always believed that men and women want exactly the same thing from each other: we both, deep down, want someone who loves us for who we really are. We want that person who sees something special in us, the way you do when you first fall in love with someone, and then never quite lets that idea die.
I told both my sons when they started dating that when you find the person you are meant to spend your life with, you choose wisely and then you pretty much decide to view that person through rose-colored glasses, because they will kill themselves living up to what they see reflected in your eyes. Treat them with the utmost respect and they will return the favor.
I really believe that to be true.
Men and women want the same things, but want them in different ways. Men don't talk - they act to show their love. They *do* things. My husband puts a new doorknob set on the front door, which doesn't seem romantic, but it is actually. He'd much rather be drinking beer and watching football, and if I only take the time to notice what he's done he is happy and I am happy because my front door looks nice even though I didn't notice it needed a new knob. But he took time out of his busy week to notice the old one wasn't safe and looked crappy. I noticed that he was perceptive enough to fix it before it broke and that he'd picked one that matched the light fixture perfectly without my having to get involved and he was happy.
Women talk, but they need to learn that men sometimes need quiet and just a simple act to feel loved, just as women need to hear the words. If we just compromise a bit, everyone gets what they need.
I have loved men all my life. They have been my friends, lovers, sons. Most of the time I get along with them better than I do other women. But in truth I still do not fully understand them even though I think in many ways they are less complicated than women, because they are *different* than we are. They are wonderful and frustrating and they make life interesting and fun and, to use a favorite word coined by a treasured old friend (also male), vastly "confusicating" :)
But magic - just like driving a convertible with the top down on a spring day.
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jan 03, 06:39:00 PM:
You know, I'm glad you brought that up, Cardinpark. I make no secret of my age: I'm 46.
I look younger (or at least people lie to me outrageously and tell me I do). And I've kept my weight down, so I still weigh the same as I did when I got married. But I have to tell you, in the past year or so, I have started to worry.
Not about infidelity so much. But about losing my looks, and about maybe my husband not thinking I'm pretty anymore even though the poor man tells me I am all the time. I have never been any great beauty, but I'm just vain enough that I don't want to lose what looks I do have.
I have to tell you that I know exactly how she feels. Society (and men) place such a premium on female beauty. And we are absolutely surrounded by it everywhere we go. And to make it worse, the standard has absolutely escalated out of control since I was a girl. What it meant to be "beautiful" when I was young, and what it means now, are two different things with plastic surgery. Girls and women who were thought beautiful then would merely be "average" now.
So where does that leave the middle-aged woman who isn't about to go in and have plastic surgery?
My mother in law is 75 and frankly is still a beauty. She has thought of having minor tucks but dismissed the idea. But I can tell she's thinking of it.
I look at that and think - "Man - I have at least 40 years left!"
I just can't see doing that to myself. It angers me profoundly that men don't even think of doing things like that. Why should I? Why can't I just get older? I want to be a Grandma. At the same time, I enjoy being attractive, but I have to say that one of the joys of being in my forties is *not* having men bother me so much. Not that they were attacking me before, but there is a freedom in being older, a joy in relating to men as people without fear so much of it turning sexual or being misinterpreted, that I am really, really enjoying for the first time in my whole life. So there is that to look forward to.
I also, for what it's worth, for some reason feel sexier now than I did at 39. I have no idea why, but it's true. I think I am more confident and centered. I'm not as happy overall with my life perhaps, but that's external. I am definitely more sure of who I am.
And I think part of that is because my boys left home starting at around my 40th birthday, and I too looked outside the home to find things to expand my horizons. It was a good thing - it made me more confident, and also caused some growing pains in our marriage. But in the end, it generated a lot of sparks and to be honest the past few years have been like when we started dating, all over again.
Marriages, like people, go through stages and the best of them grow with the times. Your wife sounds very lucky (which makes sense, as Cricket and I are both partial to Capricorns :D).
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jan 03, 09:13:00 PM:
Hey, you remember (or maybe you don't) my story about being in the airport in Chicago and having that youngish guy (30's) give up his seat on the airport shuttle for me.
Yes, it made me feel mildly uncomfortable. It didn't seem "equal". But I was all dressed up in a suit and high heels and he was treating me like a lady, and when I stopped for a second and looked into his eyes, that's what I saw: a man who was offering me respect and wanted it in return.
So I said (rather sheepishly) thank you and sat in his seat, and he had a pleased little smile and I felt a bit like a princess for about an hour. When I got off the shuttle I made sure to thank him again. I'm not used to people makin a big deal over me, but I thought it was the sweetest thing, and it really made my afternoon.
And you know what? Men like to look at women in high heels, but they *hurt*! It sure was nice to sit down for a few minutes. I was exhausted from trying to lug a suitcase and laptop across the airport and keep up with my boss and I'd already had a very long day full of meetings.
I was very touched by that small kindness. People can be so nice, even to a total stranger in a crowded city airport.
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jan 03, 09:21:00 PM:
46 with kids and lookin' for perky breasts in the mirror? Did you find any?
Start running, JHD. You are a dead man... :D
Heh. I can remember being about 14 and wishing I had what were once euphemistically referred to in Monty Python as "huuuuuuuge....tracts of land". Since I turned about 40, I have learned to be grateful that I was not so well-endowed :) What I lack in sheer mass, I make up in abundant attitude.
By Rob, at
Wed Jan 04, 12:09:00 AM:
This is such a good post, I can’t begin to tell you how much I have enjoyed reading it and the enlightening comments below it. I forwarded it to a good friend and she enjoyed it as well. You should be getting paid for this kind of writing.
I’d like to second the notion that men have a true need to provide. It’s what makes us happy and complete. To know that our sweat, blood, and hard work are providing you (the special female in our life) a level of comfort and happiness is wildly pleasing. It’s also important to know that we’re needed. It gives us purpose and drive in life to fill your need for us. It’s just that simple. A good man will suffer through anything to provide for his wife and family. Your husband is living proof of that with his high-stress job, Cassandra.
Sure, Maureen Dowd is an attractive lady. No question about it. But she is at her core a man-hating witch. Her hatred of men spews forth in her columns which are easily read and deciphered by men of even the barest intellect. All the words in all her columns say nothing more than “I hate men, I hate the word man, I hate the Y chromosome.” Such hatred in her soul. There is no greater turn-off that that.
I, too, have suffered from the “I love you” dilemma. In the past I have said it too early, too often, but never too late. It’s hard to determine when is safe for me to really say what I feel. Because I do feel, too! Unfortunately, too many women and men have been trained to think men don’t feel and therefore should not express feelings. Men feel quite a bit, but certainly not as much as a woman…no doubt about it. As far as sex goes, it’s the one activity where men feel the most closeness with their wife or girlfriend. It’s not just a physical source of pleasure, but a real and deep way for a man to bond with his wife or girlfriend. If he says "I love you" during the act, believe me, he means it deeply. That’s why it’s called making love. Or at least I consider it that. Sadly, in our hyper-sexed-up society, too many people wouldn’t even know how to make love.
Men are overwhelmingly simple and I am no exception to the rule. We like to provide, protect, and fix things (as the doorknob story covered). Let us do these things and you’ll find a very, very happy husband or boyfriend. Also, we love steak, potatoes, and cold beer…but most of all, we love you.
By , at
Wed Jan 04, 02:16:00 AM:
Ms Dowd asks: "So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax?"
YES.
Next question.
By Cassandra, at
Wed Jan 04, 07:58:00 AM:
I think my husband (who was only 18 when we started dating) won my heart when he started leaving a different colored rose in my morning paper each day. I'd rush to open the door at 7 am so my Dad wouldn't get the paper before I did because I knew what would be inside.
Only later did I find out he'd been climbing the wall to a neighbor's garden to pinch the roses before school started! He was a Vietnam vet - a POW for many years, so somehow I don't think he would have minded, though I don't think my husband would have wanted to get caught red-handed... :)
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Jan 04, 08:52:00 AM:
So many enlightened thoughts - this is much more interesting than simple politics.
I do think that the consensus of the group here is basically spot on - men and women each want to be loved and appreciated, but the form of appreciation and recognition is unique the the gender. Your own ego and sense of self esteem matter enormously in this equation too. I think it's correctly observed above that it is some perceived deficiency - a problem with a man's self esteem - which drives him to walk away from his wife and family in favor of some "trophy." It doesn't necessarily derive from a new failure though - it can be a very old problem lurking. Having spent many years on Wall Street, I have seen many superb financial providers walk straight into a "midlife crisis" and walk away from their family. The problem was hardly an inability to provide -- it was an old self esteem problem that cropped up later in life.
A healthy (but not overdone) sense of self is critical for a lot of things, including sustaining your marriage. The folks with broken egos -- they need some therapy.
We should all hold our parents responsible!
By Cassandra, at
Wed Jan 04, 11:56:00 AM:
Actually that's one of the things I miss most about VC. Most of my readers were male (or at least most of the ones who commented) but I did "Battle of the Sexes" posts from time to time and that would draw out female readers and we had some really great discussions. The guys used to pretend they didn't like that sort of thing but I think they did from the participation and traffic.
I had a dear friend once whose wife had cheated on him and it crushed him. He was a long time getting over it. The man was *gorgeous* (literally - one of the only guys I've ever known who just made me go weak in the knees when I heard his voice - I was dead attracted to him and it seemed to be mutual, but the nice thing was that we never let that come to the surface or get in the way of our friendship).
I told him that I thought it was something wrong with her, not him. I think he finally did accept that, but it took him a long time to start trusting people again and I can see why that would be so.
I've always said the biggest reason I have never cheated wasn't my husband or my love for him. You can always rationalize something like that away if you want something badly enough.
It's that I couldn't live with myself if I did it. I'd know, even if no one else ever did, and I'd never be able to respect myself again.
By Eric, at
Wed Jan 04, 09:54:00 PM:
I grew up as a staunch PC liberal (NYC born and raised) who supported feminist ideology and equality of the sexes, and I believed gender differences were a cultural product. Now, I dunno. The older I get, the more it seems that the 'regressive' gender fundamentals still apply and, as a result, I'm behind on the curve. It's confusing stuff, and I can empathize with Ms Dowd's frustration. The anger is familiar, too - I've had my share of rants. As a man, I don't look down on Dowd for complaining, because I fell in the same intellectualized trap. For example, I'm not a classical gentleman, not because I seek to be impolite towards women, but because I grew up with a different notion of polite behavior. I believed that to hold out a chair or hold open a door, etc, for a lady, these actions 'objectified' women or assumed a 'paternalist' role on my part and 'submission' on the woman's part. Actions that spoke to assumptions of inequality or fundamental gender differences were wrong actions. Those beliefs have since been shaken, and I'm still struggling with reforming my personal system.
I agree that our identity as men is wrapped up in our ability to provide, to be strong for, to support and care for our woman and family. It's instinctive stuff. We also measure ourselves by our status in the world. Not every guy needs to be Mr. Man, but it's important to feel respected, appreciated, and yes, even admired. That's all fine, but there is a downside. To be a man is to judge ourselves competitively, which has fed one of my deepest relationship fears: what happens if I open my flaws, weaknesses and vulnerabilities to the woman of my life? What if I fail? This person whom I've placed at the center, if I break down, will she stay and support me? I feel unmanly just discussing it, but that fear has infused guardedness in my relationships where I feel in order to keep her I have to maintain an image in my role as the man. That's not to say I fake everything, but I feel I have to be selective in what I reveal. It means dealing with problems on my own, closing a part of myself off and always judging relationship situations as auditions and tests. It's like approaching relationships as another form of competition. The resulting behavior isn't from preference, it's not natural as many women seem to believe - it's fear. Experience tells me that the fear is well-founded. When I have let down my guard, I've paid the price and quickly.
As a man, I accept that competition, status, and the desire to be successful, respected and appreciated are part of the deal. I just wish it wasn't so much a part of the relationship equation. My dream is to find a woman with whom I can break down, I can be weak and vulnerable, I can fail, and she'll still be there and be my strength and my support. A woman with whom I don't need to be afraid. An older, wiser, respected - and divorced - soldier I served with at my last duty station gave me the advice to "choose the woman who loves you over the woman you love". So, I gotta believe I'm not the only guy who wishes for a relationship where he can just open himself and not act from fear because he doesn't need to compete for her love.
Hm. I wonder how judgemental Ms Dowd has been of the men in her life?
Eric
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By Hope Muntz, at
Mon Sep 24, 01:05:00 PM:
I loved your old (abandoned?) tart smart blogs, so I'm delighted to read this from you. But having said that, I guess I find 'sexual bitterness' in women pretty 90s, really? WTF is there to be 'bitter' about?? If you don't like sex, don't have it! If you marry, marry a man who's so sexy it makes you wanna beg for it, as I have, so that you never have to feel like a 'paid 'ho'. What's that all about anyway? Unless you just get some kind of masochistic thrill from the feeling...
Anyway, this is the modern world. Women don't have to depend on men for anything any more; if we do it's out of choice. IMHO if a woman is sexually bitter, she has only herself to blame for submitting to it--or wallowing in it. I suspect it's all really just about attention and aging anyway, not sex per se.
