When it comes to beliefs, I have two lists. The list of things I don’t believe in is much longer than the list of things I do believe in.
I DON’T BELIEVE IN:
Gods.
I think that the idea of Gods or a God stems from the arrogance and insecurity of human nature. We so desperately need to think that we are special that we conjure up a deity that watches every move we make.
Which leads me to my next point. I don’t believe that we are all special. By definition, to be special is to be distinguished or different from what is ordinary or usual, therefor it is impossible for all of us to be special.
Magic.
This includes, but is not limited to, Crystals, Runes, Tarot Cards, Palm Reading, Astrology, Numerology, Voodoo, Vampires, Werewolves, Fairies, Elves, Sprites, Leprechauns, Wizards and Witches. Although I do like to suspend my disbelief and watch movies about the subject, to me, magic is (as Sheldon Cooper would say) hokum.
Love.
The idea of romantic love as described by fairy tales, books, movies and the media is unattainable. For that to exist, human beings would have to be either inherently trustworthy or eternally forgiving and we are neither. I’m not saying that there isn’t beauty in commitment to another person, or that two people aren’t capable of a life together. Just that the reality never looks the same as the ideal, so perhaps we should stop looking for the ideal.
Justice.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a very strong sense of justice. I just don’t believe that justice/fairness/equality really exist in this world. I do think it’s worth striving and fighting for, but we are a long way from having it.
Anything a man says when he has an erection. (no image or explanation needed)
And the list goes on… and on… and on.
I BELIEVE IN:
Choice.
Our lives are what we create through the choices we make. If you don’t think you have a choice in any given situation, either you’re not looking hard enough or you just don’t like (or are afraid of) the choices you see. Fear of the unknown is what most often stops us from choosing happiness. It’s often easier to stay with the familiar than to explore new territory, even if the familiar is making you miserable, but there is always a choice.
Proof.
If you can’t prove it to me, chances are, I won’t believe it.
Myself.
I am the only person I can rely on to look out for my best interests. I am the only person I can trust (most of the time). I am the only person I can truly know, warts and all. If I’m not okay with where I am, I have only myself to blame and only I can fix it. Sure, others may offer advice, but in the end, it’s up to me if I choose to take it. My life begins and ends with me, so I had better like myself… and I do.
I’m not a fan of Valentine’s Day. I think it’s a pointless Holiday aimed at selling greeting cards, roses and chocolate hearts. I mean, you don’t even get the day off work. Valentine’s Day excludes single people, or worse, gives them false hope that some secret admirer will turn out to be their soul mate instead of just some creepy stalker. But, in the interest of finding the silver lining, I have assembled a collection of adorable babies, dressed as Cupid that can make even the most cynical among us smile.
Love songs, poetry and Valentine’s Day cards are all considered romantic ways of wooing a woman. These things might work on girls, but women want more. Well, actually, women want less. Less crap. We all know that when you say, you’d climb the highest mountain, or swim the deepest sea, just for one touch of our hand that it’s a line of crap. Those types of sweet nothings mean just that to a woman… nothing.
If you really want to impress us, instead of promising to cross a desert why not promise to leave the toilet seat down? Instead of saying you’d walk 500 miles for us, how about picking up your dirty clothes off the floor and putting the in the hamper… or (gasp) actually washing them yourself? You tell me that you’ll give me the moon, when all I really want is for you to listen to me.
Men spend a lot of time working on their “game” in order to get a woman. And women, I’m not cutting you any slack here either… you’ll believe anything as long as it’s what you want to hear at the time, then wonder why your relationship isn’t what you want it to be. I have news for you. Once the wooing is over, real life begins and no amount of roses will make up for the fact that the dishes need to be done.
For you married couples out there who wrote their own vows years ago, don’t you wish that instead of promising each other a lifetime of eternal love, you’d promised to always put the cap back on the toothpaste, promised to share the carpool duties equally or promised never to go into more debt than you can realistically handle? I know that these things may not seem like romance, but in the long run they mean so much more.
Romance is for teenagers who are too naive to know better, but when we reach adulthood, romance becomes outdated and impractical. If we entered into our relationships with even half the amount of thought that we entered into choosing what car to drive, we’d all be having much longer relationships.
So don’t tell me how much you love to cuddle, tell me that you know how to fix the plumbing… now that’s romantic!
I grew up in the Disney era when little girls were taught that, if we were good little girls, someday, our prince would come and rescue us. All the movies of my childhood preached the idea that girls needed a handsome prince to give them a happily ever after. My grandmother used to tell me, “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man” over and over again. All this preaching didn’t sink in, however. I was a rebel and the feminist movement was the female voice that was speaking directly to me. I had a long string of relationships with men who were not only, not rich by any means, but not ambitious either. I was the bread winner and the caretaker until I realized I wasn’t getting anything out of the situation, lost all respect for my partner and eventually moved on. I have become the man I want to marry and I never wanted children, so marriage has now become a moot point for me. I firmly believe that marriage is for people who are planning on raising children. But lately I’ve been thinking about the message that society has been sending women about love and marriage.
As I mentioned, the Disney movies of our youth told us to wait for that handsome prince to rescue us. From what? From getting a job, standing on our own two feet and realizing that we are strong enough to take care of ourselves?
I guess there’s a shortage of princes and rich men now because it seems lately the romantic movies are preaching to successful women that we should go for the sweet poor guy rather than the rich guy who’s married to his career. Movies like Sweet Home Alabama, Letters to Juliet, and Leap Year illustrate this message. Of course the message is wrapped in the delusion that it’s only the sweet poor guy who could ever REALLY love you. Don’t rich men have feelings too? Apparently, if we are successful women, we can’t have a successful man because that would throw the earth off it’s axis or something. The movies of today are also telling men that they are spending way too much time working, money is not what’s important and they should be home with their families more. Movies like Liar, Liar and Click illustrate this point.
My question is, if no one is working, who is earning the living that’s needed to raise a family? Kids are expensive. So then we get back to the women should marry rich message again, but that’s bad. If you do that then you’re a gold digger, which is the societal equivalent of being a whore, which is also bad. After all marriage is supposed to be about love, pure love, true love. Scientists have found that this thing we call love is simply a chemical reaction in the brain caused by hormones and neurotransmitters… romantic huh? Maybe my grandmother had it right all along… it is just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man, when you look at love in terms of hormones and neurotransmitters.
Let’s go back to the gold digger label for a moment. It used to be that women sought out a good provider to mate with so that their children would be well taken care of. These women weren’t called gold diggers, they were called smart. Now that so many women are a success in their own right, they are looked down upon for seeking out a good provider. In my opinion, gold diggers are getting a bad rap. In the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe has a great little speech where she defends herself against the accusation of being a gold digger. “Don’t you know, that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but, my goodness, doesn’t it help? And if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you rather she didn’t marry a poor man? You’d want her to have the most wonderful things in the world and to be very happy. Well, why is it wrong for me to want those things?”
So, which is it? Do we marry for love, marry for money, make our own money and marry for love, marry for money then force our hard working husband to spend less time working or just say to hell with it all and try to find happiness no matter what it looks like?
It seems there’s been a rash of celebrity engagements this past couple of weeks. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Drew Barrymore, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, Mario Lopez, John Legend and even Aretha Franklin all announced engagements. Even Sinead O’Conner is staying married, after announcing a split. With all of this attention put on marriage, I thought I’d take a look at who really benefits in a traditional marriage.
The institution of marriage predates reliable recorded history. It was the norm for all marriage to be arranged, sometimes at birth. The parents would pick a spouse based on purely economic factors. Families joining to become financially and socially stronger. Whether the groom’s family paid a bride price, or dower, or the bride’s family paid a dowry, the melding of families was very much for power and economic reasons and had nothing to do with love. It was a purely secular union put in place to help each family move up in society. Brides wed out of obligation and duty and were expected to be virtuous and faithful to their husbands, who, in turn were expected to provide financially for their wife and children. However, sexual monogamy was never expected for the husband. It was assumed that his sexual needs would be met both inside and outside the marriage bed. Great deal for him, but what about her?
These women went directly from their father’s home to their husband’s home and were expected to be obedient in both surroundings. They never enjoyed the luxury of personal freedom and exploration. Even in North America, women weren’t able of choose to be single without fear of societal backlash until the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Women were expected to subjugate their personalities in favour of the path their husband chose… even when marrying for love. It was 2006 when the Church of England officially took the word OBEY out of the marriage vows. Yes, women were expected to OBEY their husbands. That one four letter word gave men all the justification they needed to abuse their wives for centuries.
In the 1960’s women in western civilizations seemed to have had enough. There was an uprising of women who were demanding their human rights. The right to choose what to do with their own life. It sure took us long enough, but once we started tasting freedom, it became more and more widespread. The church was still doing everything in its power to keep us barefoot and pregnant, from not allowing birth control use and abortion to shoving the institution of marriage down our throats at every opportunity.
There was a perceived danger in women choosing to be single. The erosion of the family unit. Traditionally, parents would take care of their family, then later in life, the family of their children would take care of the parents. If a woman chose to be single, how could she possibly afford to take care of her parents in their declining years? Would she even want to? If she is choosing freedom, what does obligation even mean to her? These were some of the questions at the root of society’s fear of the Women’s Movement.
Indeed marriage rates did decline and divorce rates went way up. Men went from “Honey, I’m home. What’s for dinner?” to wondering when the delivery guy was coming. Something else of importance happened during this time. In 1965, in the United States, medicare and medicaid became available. This took away the need for children to take care of their elder parents. This changed the economic family dynamic.
Unfortunately, there was a backlash to the feminist movement. It seemed to create a generation of men with severe Peter Pan syndrome. These adult men, not only want their wife to be a partner, but also a mother. It seems that these liberated feminist mothers didn’t think to teach their sons how to be liberated, strong men. This, along with the media (magazines, movies etc.) telling women that they are not complete without a man, created a surge in marriages. .. marriages that didn’t last. After all, what liberated woman wants to be mean mommy to her husband? And let’s face it no man (unless it’s his fetish) wants to have sex with mean mommy.
Women who choose to be single, have reproductive freedom like never before. Now medical science has made it possible for women to have babies without benefit of marriage, or even a relationship. It’s easy to understand why there are so many heterosexual men out there who seem to genuinely hate women. They fear they are being rendered obsolete, and that is a legitimate fear. Successful women are choosing to be single mothers.
As Gloria Steinem once said, “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”
Yes traditional marriage was great for men. They had a subservient wife who took care of hearth and home, their every need and want, with no expectation of sexual fidelity. The pendulum travelling inexorably to the other side now. Even in the non western world we are seeing another women’s revolution. Here in the west, there are women who choose marriage just to have a companion, knowing full well that it can be as permanent as they want it to be.
This attitude has spawned another type of man. I have seen it in generations Y and Z. This young man is looking to be kept. They are male gold diggers, looking for an older, successful woman to marry.
I suppose marriage hasn’t changed that much after all. After a brief flirtation with love, it’s still all about money and power.
