A gripe that is familiar to many: "Our relationship was great until we got married."
Why does getting married change relationships for the worse?
During each of the steps leading up to marriage - traveling together, meeting the family, living together - you are on your best behavior. You're doing all those appealing things with the goal of being deemed a partner worthy of marriage. Then you get married, so you are no longer aiming for marriage. You cease to be on your best behavior; wearing your best clothes, going to the gym, going the extra mile in every way. You have crossed the finish line, so you stop running.
Before you tie the knot, the relationship benefits from constant oneupsmanship. Your partner jogs, so you start jogging. Your partner is generous in bed, so you try to be generous in bed. You are constantly trying to keep up with your partner so that she will remain interested. It is a romantic arms race...a bit like the Cold War, only in this case the end result IS World War III.
Once you're married, the tendency is to rest on your laurels, because in theory, marriage is permanent and you're no longer competing with half the species to win your partner's heart. You think you have a monopoly on her love, and predictably, you become a worse product. You let your hair down, and in doing so, let your spouse down.
Now with divorce being so common and cheating discussed so openly, maybe people will wake up to the fact that they absolutely must try to excel in every way, or else their ladyfriend will hastily find someone who hasn't yet achieved all his goals with her. It could be that the answer to divorce is high divorce rates.
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Monday, December 9, 2013
Sunday, March 10, 2013
I tend to meet women who are logically unavailable
When a woman is thinking out loud about her romantic history, she'll often say: I tend to go for men who are emotionally unavailable.
Somewhere in Hell, Freud is sniffing another line (though maybe in Hell there are no razors to cut up your coke...it is Hell after all) and cackling as newfangled versions of his nonsense continue to confuse otherwise thoughtful people.
Let's walk through this:
So upon meeting this guy in a bar, you immediately sized him up and figured out he was ultimately going to be emotionally unavailable. While the two of you made bad small talk about micro-brews ("Have you tried the Staten Island Guido Stout? It's made with 20% Muscle Milk"), you just divined that three months down the line he was going to be "emotionally unavailable?" This subconscious insight then sent signals to your loins to GO FOR IT..?
Interesting. The same woman who will come running to you, New York Times in hand, screaming that there is a WAR ON SCIENCE!!! will in the next breath declare she was able to do the very thing no human, scientist or otherwise, has ever been able to do: forecast the future. She can't believe people still believe in psychics!!!!, but when it comes to her relationships, she talks like a madame staring into a crystal ball.
Here are some possible alternative explanations:
Maybe you're just incapable of attracting stable men.
Maybe he just doesn't care about the same things you care about. Just because someone doesn't get as emotional about something as you doesn't make that person "emotionally unavailable." Have you ever stopped to think you might be emotionally overavailable? Maybe you're an emotional 7-11 that remains open even on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maybe you should close once in a while.
Maybe you simply like him far more than he likes you; hence the lack of reciprocation. Even if his feelings equal yours, remember that men in general do not chatter nonstop like women. Failing to be effusive and monotonous doesn't make one emotionally unavailable.
Maybe you just go for men with blue eyes. You see a blue-eye chap, the blue eyes trigger the initial spark, and by coincidence, you happen to have met five blue-eyed losers in a row. The common denominator that grabbed you at the outset was the eyes, not the emotionally unavailability you somehow foresaw.
Most relationships, like most things in life, fail, so no matter what kind of men you are attracted to, it isn't going to work out THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME, regardless of whether or not you have some fatal flaw. And because relationships have such a huge impact on us, we are inclined to construct powerful narratives and rationalizations to explain their failure. Also, there is the reality that people today play the field a lot more before getting married. When they do get married, it lasts six months, leading to more field playing. All of a sudden you've got a generation of women with 85 failed relationships to ruminate on. Combine that with the insidious boom of the self-help, pop psychology, and MAKE IT WORK! industries, and next thing you know every woman is approaching her relationships with the confidence Bambi had just after seeing her mother get it between the eyes.
Have you noticed men never talk about women being emotionally unavailable? With men and mating, the decision is binary: either a woman is attractive enough to have sex with or she isn't. If she is, and the pursuit works up to a point, fine. If not, there are several million other women between the ages of 18 and 40.
Somewhere in Hell, Freud is sniffing another line (though maybe in Hell there are no razors to cut up your coke...it is Hell after all) and cackling as newfangled versions of his nonsense continue to confuse otherwise thoughtful people.
Let's walk through this:
So upon meeting this guy in a bar, you immediately sized him up and figured out he was ultimately going to be emotionally unavailable. While the two of you made bad small talk about micro-brews ("Have you tried the Staten Island Guido Stout? It's made with 20% Muscle Milk"), you just divined that three months down the line he was going to be "emotionally unavailable?" This subconscious insight then sent signals to your loins to GO FOR IT..?
Interesting. The same woman who will come running to you, New York Times in hand, screaming that there is a WAR ON SCIENCE!!! will in the next breath declare she was able to do the very thing no human, scientist or otherwise, has ever been able to do: forecast the future. She can't believe people still believe in psychics!!!!, but when it comes to her relationships, she talks like a madame staring into a crystal ball.
Here are some possible alternative explanations:
Maybe you're just incapable of attracting stable men.
Maybe he just doesn't care about the same things you care about. Just because someone doesn't get as emotional about something as you doesn't make that person "emotionally unavailable." Have you ever stopped to think you might be emotionally overavailable? Maybe you're an emotional 7-11 that remains open even on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maybe you should close once in a while.
Maybe you simply like him far more than he likes you; hence the lack of reciprocation. Even if his feelings equal yours, remember that men in general do not chatter nonstop like women. Failing to be effusive and monotonous doesn't make one emotionally unavailable.
Maybe you just go for men with blue eyes. You see a blue-eye chap, the blue eyes trigger the initial spark, and by coincidence, you happen to have met five blue-eyed losers in a row. The common denominator that grabbed you at the outset was the eyes, not the emotionally unavailability you somehow foresaw.
Most relationships, like most things in life, fail, so no matter what kind of men you are attracted to, it isn't going to work out THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME, regardless of whether or not you have some fatal flaw. And because relationships have such a huge impact on us, we are inclined to construct powerful narratives and rationalizations to explain their failure. Also, there is the reality that people today play the field a lot more before getting married. When they do get married, it lasts six months, leading to more field playing. All of a sudden you've got a generation of women with 85 failed relationships to ruminate on. Combine that with the insidious boom of the self-help, pop psychology, and MAKE IT WORK! industries, and next thing you know every woman is approaching her relationships with the confidence Bambi had just after seeing her mother get it between the eyes.
Have you noticed men never talk about women being emotionally unavailable? With men and mating, the decision is binary: either a woman is attractive enough to have sex with or she isn't. If she is, and the pursuit works up to a point, fine. If not, there are several million other women between the ages of 18 and 40.
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