some of the boys twist the old, battered doorknob violently, as though they were breaking the neck of an intruder.
others’ hands begin to shake, slightly, imperceptibly, then audibly, betraying the hollowness of the bravado that sustains them on the street.
their ways of opening the door are as colorful and revelatory as they are varied, each slightly exaggerated in the way so characteristic of teenagers.
every day they try on new identities, new comportments, new ways of apprehending the world, with all the grace and aplomb of a teenager stepping on the gas for the first time.
the cocky one torques the doorknob just as he’ll slam on the pedal in a couple of years, pressing his passengers into the seats and mistaking their trepidatious bewilderment for awe.
the hesitant one tries to twist the doorknob softly, hoping to slink unnoticed into the gym, but the rusty old knob and plate announce his presence in their unmistakable basso profundo — just as the car will jump and buck under his unsteady foot three years hence.
they are as energetic and dynamic as they are errant and unschooled.
they are full of piss and vinegar, but the piss is, more often than not, splattered all over the toilet seat, sprayed across the walls, and trickling onto the floor.
i was one of them, once, not long ago.
unlike many of my peers who view them with suspicious eyes, i have not forgotten.
and so i am here.
gentlemen, meet our newest fighter.
the bright california sunshine is no match for the dank, musty air of the gym, and is swallowed into a thick and impenetrable veil of darkness — a darkness so thick that it can be felt.
with it are swallowed pretentions, pretexts, bluffs, and fronts.
as the boy’s eyes adjust to the relative darkness, he finds that he has left flash, sound, and fury outside, and that this is it.
sandoval!
the boy snaps to attention with a mixture of respect and angst. by using his surname, i evoke in his mind’s eye vivid images of both the coaches and teachers who have helped him grow, more often than not against his will, and the officers, judges, and bailiffs that have shoved him through california’s one-size-fits-none juvenile legal system.
go stand in the doorway.
one foot in, one foot out.
even god only helps those who help themselves. and i am certainly no god.
if you are willing to be knocked down, defeated, bested, broken, and beaten, and you will keep getting up and fighting, then step inside.
if you step inside, you’re family.
if you find yourself with nowhere to go, and nowhere to turn, you have a new home.
anytime.
if you would rather not be knocked down, defeated, bested, broken, or beaten, then step back outside, and close the door.
which way are you going to step?
the boy stares me down, waiting, testing me, looking for the punch line.
i wait.
our eyes linger on each other. were i his age, even half this much direct eye contact, with neither side deferring even momentarily, would already have instigated a fight.
never taking his burning gaze from my eyes, he gathers up the last bits of his bravado, takes a slow, deliberate step inside the doorway, grasps the battered old handle from the inside, and shoves the door shut.
i reach out and grasp his hand. coming from a world where straight handshakes are often laced with straight razors, the boy is hesitant at first — he breaks the stare, a gesture of deference i’ve no need to point out explicitly — but then he slams on the proverbial pedal, meeting my eyes with renewed vigor as he clasps my hand and wrist in an overwrought, but gentlemantly, grip.
welcome.
–
for the next two years, neither boxing nor life was good to the boy; both dealt him countless numbers of knockouts.
once, he decided he was just done; he threw his gloves into the floor, tears streaming down his cheeks, and stormed to within inches of the door.
and then he stopped.
and looked at the door.
sandoval!
which way are you going to step?
he turned around.
he met the stares of the other boys, who had all once been in his place.
some dared him.
some encouraged him.
some dismissed him.
some scowled at him like disappointed fathers.
he picked up his gloves.
and his heart.
one more round.
–
what keeps us coming back, in situations when our rational calculus tells us that the costs have begun to outweigh the benefits?
what keeps us fighting through fatigue, ennui, conflict, injury, heartbreak, disillusionment, anomie, and betrayal?
many things, to be sure.
but, often, rites of passage — symbols of commitment, which in times of trouble can pull more weight than can commitment itself — are the carbon-steel rebar that keeps the whole structure from crashing down around us.
for those men who deserve to be called men, word is bond.
and actions speak even louder than words, so ritual actions are superglue.
when words and actions are combined to create ritual, men become bonded for life.
which way are you going to step?
with these words, the door comes alive with persuasive force that few boys can resist, no matter how intractable they are in other areas of life.
they won’t leave, unless they are bloodied, beaten, disillusioned and broken. and, often, not even then.
do you promise to be to her a loving and loyal husband, to cherish and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, to be faithful only to her as long as you both shall live?
with these vows, the man’s wedding band comes alive, with the same persuasive force.
he won’t leave unless his life is sucked out in its entirety. and, often, not even then.
–
and so it is, too, with women — put through, and schooled with, the proper symbols and rites of passage, they will cleave to their relationships with intense ardor.
the fatal mistake, though, is to attribute to women the same degree of agency so often shown by men who take vows and undergo rituals — to assume that women’s minds will construct the same schema of loyalty, devotion, and duty around those rituals as will men.
ain’t gonna happen.
as with so much else in matters of love, it’s best when men lead, and women follow — when men move women, and women are moved by men.
the same is true for rites of passage.
women can be as compelled by ritual to stay in their relationships as can men, but they won’t by themselves transmute word into bond, or actions into superglue. that has to be done for them, by their man.
take the wedding bands again.
to a man, the wedding band speaks in its own voice, animated by the matrimonial ritual; he internalizes the symbolic significance, and therefore transmutes word into bond all by himself. hence why he doesn’t need to be reminded, and why constant “reminders” from his woman are at best nagging, at worst domineering behavior, and always pernicious in their effects on the relationship.
to a woman, the wedding band doesn’t have a voice of its own — it will only speak in her man’s voice. its symbolic power will only be actuated if he instills it in her, if he transmutes word into bond for her, as though leading her through the steps of a dance.
it’s his job, when he grasps her left hand, to meet her eyes, stare her down, and tell her, this ring means that you’re mine.
i own you. you’re my property.
over and over.
again and again.
until he has successfully transmuted word into bond, without her even noticing, and she now hears his voice emanating from that ring.
you’re mine.
–
and you don’t need a wife, or wedding bands, to make this work.
any symbol will do.
a cheap bracelet or ring that you bought her at the beach.
a necklace or bracelet that claims her as yours, which you can lock onto her body and keep the key if necessary.
a tattoo that she gets for you, in a location that others may or may not see.
the way you look into her eyes, making both of your jaded hearts burn with passion, with love, when you fuck her.
women end relationships more often than men do, but only because men don’t bother to ignite them.
2010/07/05 at 12:29
Thank you for this, it is lovely, you are so talented.
I am on a very brief break from work so do not have time to read comprehensively or respond substantively.
However I think I get the main point, which I agree with.
I will respond more fully to this and the other comment by you, which you linked to on the other thread later.
2010/07/05 at 13:47
This is really beautiful.
2010/07/05 at 14:16
Interesting connection there. I understand where this post came from.
For many men word=bond is so natural as to go without saying. They might break a commitment after conscious reflection, recognizing and regretting the failure but taking responsibility for the decision and the new state of affairs. But they would recoil at the thought of being someone upon whom no one could depend, being unaccountable and irresponsible, because they understand that such men are at best marginal participants in the community of adults and in the drama of civilization. The man who uses his words to manipulate with no internal responsibility for conforming to them is either an enemy (in the case where he does have a community to whom he is responsible and accountable for his commitments, which is alien to one’s own community) or a monster (in which case his continued sociopathic existence is intolerable).
This cartoon exaggerates the theme a bit, but you’ll see the point.
For other men, the responsibilites of agency are not so explicitly embraced, but a general sense of duty to society is a mostly adequate substitute.
Fewer women have this kind of fundamental personal commitment. Many religious women have accepted that they are accountable to a Code outside themselves, but most women’s orientation is so fundamentally relational that they do not do this at all naturally, and require (initially, until they have internalized) the context of a relationship to be motivated by considerations of internal congruence and consistency.
After sufficient experience, this kind of commitment to congruence and consistency can be self-sustaining for a woman, but it does not arise naturally as it does in many men.
2010/07/05 at 17:49
Degree of agency, difference in men and women:
There are women, quite a few of them, who will not accept any kind of leadership from their man, not even advice, feeling that this would destroy their independence and autonomy. Often though the same women sign up with a religion or political movement that tells them what to do to a much greater extent than the average husband or boyfriend.
I wonder if it’s possible to break through the almost pathological assertion of independence and fear of control and have a successful relationship with such a woman?
Also, if you’re correct about the outside-directed nature of women, wouldn’t this have big implications for society as they have become much more influential in politics?
2010/07/05 at 18:36
Iconoclast –
There are women, quite a few of them, who will not accept any kind of leadership from their man, not even advice, feeling that this would destroy their independence and autonomy.
oh, i know the type you’re talking about.
as you may suspect, their oh-so-rugged individualism is largely a front, although it’s an extremely well-crafted front that is impenetrable to most men.
by the way, i’m of the opinion that submission should be earned; i’d rather tame a tiger than a housecat, as it were.
i’d prefer one of these women to a total doormat, any day of the week. i like challenges.
also,
–
Often though the same women sign up with a religion or political movement that tells them what to do to a much greater extent than the average husband or boyfriend.
2 + 2 = ???
make the connection.
in my experience with such women, their desire to be controlled, to become self-actualized through being actualized by another, runs, ironically, much stronger and deeper than in most other women.
hence (a) your observation above, which is quite correct — they allow themselves to be controlled and indoctrinated, by whatever is the strongest influence in their lives, to a greater extent than do other women — AND (b) they will test and filter men much more stringently than will average women.
i can see why (b) is frustrating, but it’s also completely understandable.
analogy: you’d be much more exacting in your standards for a guest to whom you planned to give the run of the house — in fact, a guest to whom you planned to relinquish control of the house altogether — than for a guest who was simply going to occupy a spare bedroom.
2010/07/05 at 18:45
Iconoclast — more
wonder if it’s possible to break through the almost pathological assertion of independence and fear of control and have a successful relationship with such a woman?
heh.
oh yeah, it is.
i’ll probably post on this in the future, but, for now, here’s the basic deal:
you fuck her so thoroughly that she can’t tell up from down.
first, you wrest physical control from her, during both sex and play. (most of these women are used to fucking like beer-soaked college boys — hit it, quit it — with the corresponding bumbling level of “control” as well as the corresponding low level of satisfaction.)
then, you jack it up by injecting emotion into the mix. these women will always be uncomfortable at first when this happens, because emotional investment will destroy their carefully honed illusion of “control”.
you take the physical control, which you’ve wrested and cemented as yours, and you use takeaways and selective deprivation — oh boy, they want that drug, and they want it bad — to force passion and emotion on her.
then, when you can control both her mind and her body in the bedroom, you’ve got the critical leverage that you need to pry her away from her other anchoring influences, and make her yours.
lest this sound like too much effort, let me point out that these women are, bar none, absolutely the best fucks in the world once you’ve gotten to this point.
they combine surprisingly good technique (they’ve usually slutted around a fair bit by this point) with the breathless, spellbound quality of a virgin awed by carnal power for the first time. the latter comes from the fact that they basically are virgins, when it comes to the sort of sex that’s most actualizing for a woman — to be taken, to be controlled, utterly, totally. let me tell you bro, that’s a potent combination.
2010/07/05 at 18:53
Also, if you’re correct about the outside-directed nature of women, wouldn’t this have big implications for society as they have become much more influential in politics?
lightbulb moment. absolutely yes.
the biggest, and most nefarious, implications come from the fact that the strongest influence usually comes from those who actively want to exert the strongest influence.
sounds obvious, right?
consider:
* most women generally “shit test”, the final objective of which, if not countered and mastered effectively, is to obtain more or less total control over a man’s life. this isn’t really what women want — they want the tests to be successfully parried and defeated — but it’s a strong biological drive. even the mousiest, most retiring woman can henpeck a man’s entire being in a few years of uncontested shit testing.
however,
* the VAST majority of men generally DO NOT try to achieve a corresponding level of total control over their women, even though, ironically, this obverse situation is much more likely to generate happy, workable relationships than is the more common vice-versa above.
in fact, the few men who do — pimps, “abusers” (as contrasted with real abusers), etc. — are castigated, deplored, criminalized by society. it takes a serious set of balls, in both the sense of “wearing the balls in the relationship” and “fuck what society says”, to counter this dissuading force.
as a result, the influences that do penetrate these barriers, and do control the women who hold “power”, are, almost invariably, not of the most benevolent type. (note that these influences don’t have to be men — many of them are disaffected shit-testful women, whose reluctant tendrils of control extend in much the same way as they do around the life of a henpecked husband.)
–
on the other hand, in a world of grrrl power and mancessions, one type of man’s stock is skyrocketing: the type who can successfully harness the illusory “power” of “powerful” women, and put it to work for themselves from safely behind the scenes.
2010/07/05 at 19:26
This is genius.
Absolute, unadulterated genius.
And true.
2010/07/05 at 20:39
@Gorbachev
This is genius.
Absolute, unadulterated genius.
And true.
Ahem. I said it first, on the other thread. He really is very smart.
2010/07/06 at 01:35
Western men are somewhat unique in that they take vows of forsaking all others in marriage, and often take the vows seriously. In most other parts of the world it is not the case. Men often cheat and / or visit prostitutes after marriage. It’s hardly even remarked upon, just taken for granted in other places.
My grandfather has an entire other set of children by a mistress. At large family gatherings the generations of descendants from both women get together. I was too young to remember if there was awkwardness. My grandparents have an over 50 year old marriage.
So what is more powerful after all? Tradition, or the man’s leadership? In most cases, for most societies, social glue holds marriages together more tightly, at least superficially, than individual agency. As the glue loosens things can fall apart more than any one person has the ability to stop.
That leads to other questions: Do most men really want to spend the rest of their lifetime with one woman and one woman only, truly forsaking all others (even let’s say until menopause)? Can they? Or is the premise of true monogamy for the masses a bit of an idealization to begin with? How can an average woman hope to keep any particular man enthralled with her forever, even if she is utterly devoted to him and bears the title of his wife?
2010/07/06 at 02:02
gorb & sd:
thanks.
to me, boxing and lyrical writing have always seemed deeply, inherently connected. i know that several other authors in the canon of 20th century masculine writing have felt similarly.
–
@hope
the meaning of “faithful” varies from culture to culture, the one and only invariant being staying together through thick and thin. more on this later.
2010/07/06 at 05:15
Narisco:
This kind of deep devotion from women is beautiful, but it becomes tragic when the person she is devoted to is someone who can never give himself away.
I think one of the inherent problems of this is often the kind of guy who knows how to illicit these kind of feelings is the exact kind of guy who has enough other options to feel like he wants to have a “harem” or even forgo long-term relationships all together. Or even if he is interested in eventually settling down long-term, the stastical likelyhood that window of time is right-now is quite small.
2010/07/06 at 11:12
“knows how to illicit these kind of feelings”
best typo (or Freudian slip) of the day so far
2010/07/06 at 17:10
I think you are right that women are far less restricted by their word than men, and I think this is related to the fact that traditionally women found their power in the interstices between social constructions of power rather than in those constructs themselves.
Whether or not women were this way because they had to be (it was imposed on them by society) or because it naturally suited them (they arranged society this way becaue this was how they preferred to operate) is another question.
We definitely do not play by the rules, and we fight dirty. I think your point about being relational is also very true, a woman will give up everything for a man, a man is much less likely to do so for a woman.
So yes, I think you have women absolutely correct here, in all our positive and negative traits. Not that all of us would break our word, but we keep it not because we necessarily feel a deep and compelling inward need to do so, but because it is socially (or for those of us who have morals) morally advisable to do so.
I think with men (some men) it goes deeper.
There are of course men to whom their word is emphatically not their bond however, you get round this quite neatly by saying that they are not worthy of the name of man, but they still do exist and they are a sizeable enough category.
Re boxing, wasn’t it Hemingway who said “my writing is nothing, my boxing is everything” or something like that. Of course, like everything that old fraud said, it has to be taken with a grain of salt.
2010/07/06 at 18:05
SD,
Generalizing “no true Scotsman” to other nationalities, eh?
That’s one way of looking at the social process. When a community of men self-consciously defines a code of honor for themselves, they will often choose a label to designate themselves at the same time (“gentleman” is only one of many examples). But sometimes the label is implicitly or explicitly just “men”. (Or a translation like “mensch” which does pretty much the same work.)
2010/07/06 at 18:08
Generalizing “no true Scotsman” to other nationalities
yes, that’s exactly what johnny is doing here with his “no man will ever leave a marriage willingly” thing, he does it so well though that one doesn’t realise the fallacy immediately, his image of men is so appealing, one really wants to believe it.
And yet there is a basis in truth for what he says, men generally are this way, women generally are not. It’s just generalizations aren’t absolutes.
he does however have the decency to refrain from saying “no man will ever cheat on his wife willingly”, presumably he knows not to completely suspend disbelief.
2010/07/06 at 19:53
SD…”we keep it not because we necessarily feel a deep and compelling inward need to do so, but because it is socially (or for those of us who have morals) morally advisable to do so”
Please distinguish between deep/compelling inward need on the one hand, and morally advisable on the other. I *think* I see the distinction you’re making between these two, but I’m not positive.
2010/07/06 at 20:51
I am talking about women’s relationship with the truth, and with promises they ahve made, generally.
Deep & compelling inward need applies where someone would find it emotionally difficult to break their word/lie, the thought of doing so is unpleasant, they feel that if they did so they would no longer be themselves.
I don’t think a lot of women feel this generally about breaking their word or lying we don’t see keeping promises or telling the truth as something which defines us in the same way some men do, I think many of us are much more flexible in this regard.
I think it only becomes emotionally difficult for a lot of women to break their word/lie if they are in love with the specific person to whom they have made the promise/told a lie or if they are their child/parent/family member/a very good friend, there has to be some emotional connexion with another person before lying/breaking promises hits one on an emotional level.
Morally/socially advisable is more emotionally detached, it involves keeping one’s word because to do otherwise would be morally wrong or inadvisable from a practical point of view (usually because it would hurt someone else, damage society generally, damage oneself in the long run, or simply because it is not the way that one would like to be treated oneself, we can hardly expect standards off other people we can’t meet ourselves.), the only way I can distinguish it is to say that there is more calculation & logic involved than emotion.
I do appreciate that re. religious people morality & emotion are much more closely linked and the distinction I am making gets more easily blurred, also, some people have a greater attachment to truth & promises than others.
I tend to tell the truth & keep promises because it is an easier way to function, people do not trust one otherwise and it is not nice to deceive people or let them down, but I don’t feel compelled to do so, it is a matter of conscious choice rather than an atavistic pull towards the truth/keeping promises, except where emotions are involved as detailed above where I would find it very difficult not to be truthful etc.
I hope this helps explain a little.
2010/07/06 at 22:07
@ vasafaxa
I think one of the inherent problems of this is often the kind of guy who knows how to illicit these kind of feelings is the exact kind of guy who has enough other options to feel like he wants to have a “harem” or even forgo long-term relationships all together. Or even if he is interested in eventually settling down long-term, the stastical likelyhood that window of time is right-now is quite small.
true that. this is one application of the old saw that what looks too good to be true is probably just that.
on the other hand, many of these men have such an emotional presence, and such an ability to stir up raw love and devotion in the hearts of their women, that their women don’t need absolute sexual fidelity from them — at this level, the emotional and sexual connection is sufficient to satisfy the woman’s needs (and more).
in fact, one of the dirty little secrets of female nature is that sexual fidelity is only something that (most) women will demand from men who have ramped up the beta qualities just a little too far.
in particular, there is a VERY narrow threshold range of “beta qualities” (affection, material provision, non-sexual time together, etc) below which the alpha man will eventually lose his woman, but above which she will want to start controlling/restricting him (increasingly with his distance past the threshold range). the upper end of this threshold gets higher as the man becomes more alpha (see my “to whatever self be true” post), i.e., extremely dominant men can “afford” more affection without being labeled commitment targets.
the aforementioned dirty little secret is that sexual fidelity is only wanted –or even seen as a good thing — when the man is past this beta threshold point. if he knows how to give the woman just enough beta/emotional connection to keep her heart hooked, without going too “soft”, most women will never demand any sort of commitment from him, unless said demand is a test that he would fail by giving in.
if he knows women, and he is high alpha AND right at that beta threshold, the strongest women will almost always be happy — deeply happy — as his bottom bitch, his no. 1 even despite his other playthings and even romantic trysts. less headstrong women will be equally deeply happy with “having something special” with him, even if he has something just as special with several others.
BUT woe betide him if he lets the alpha slip. a woman scorned ain’t nothin’ compared to a woman who paid her heart for gold and got pyrite.
–
by the way, an equivalent axiom to yours is the fact that the most seductive, irresistible, vibrantly sexy women are largely the same femmes fatales who are almost certain
to break men’s hearts.
life’s a bitch.
you go all in, you just might end up with nothing. but how else do you win the whole pot?
high risk, high return, etc.
2010/07/06 at 22:16
Thanks for the comprehensive response, SD.
2010/07/07 at 09:54
polymath #3
yes to all of that. we’re on the same page here.
–
polymath #15
When a community of men self-consciously defines a code of honor for themselves, they will often choose a label to designate themselves at the same time
absolutely.
i can immediately think of such terms — or such notions, even in the rare instance in which they aren’t given formal terms — for any male hierarchy that has ever intersected my life, even remotely.
2010/07/07 at 09:58
sd #14
So yes, I think you have women absolutely correct here, in all our positive and negative traits.
the only thing that surprises me is how rare this is.
oh, and that people are calling me a genius for pointing out things that, given diverse and cold/detached enough empirical observation, should be obvious.
oh well.
i should be a business consultant. take the watch off your wrist, and tell you the time.
–
There are of course men to whom their word is emphatically not their bond however, you get round this quite neatly by saying that they are not worthy of the name of man, but they still do exist and they are a sizeable enough category.
true, they are a sizable category. however, the people in this category (who, as you have correctly ascertained, i don’t think deserve the title “men”), as polymath has stated in #3, don’t tend to earn much respect — and therefore don’t tend to ascend to much power — within male hierarchies.
the surprising fact is that the same is true even of male hierarchies that are otherwise known for thumbing their noses at the codes of law, decorum, and conduct that define “mainstream” society; the only difference is that the particular words and rituals that have bonding power, and the particular (and elaborate) codes of mostly unwritten rules in question, differ dramatically from hierarchy to hierarchy.
however, even those hierarchies that would seem (to outsiders) to have few or no rules other than those of the iron fist and the nietzschean will to power — such as the hierarchies of pimps, criminals, drug dealers, and the like — still have strong codes of conduct under the hood. they just aren’t the same codes of conduct followed by white-collar types, or even by square blue-collar types.
–
Not that all of us would break our word, but we keep it not because we necessarily feel a deep and compelling inward need to do so, but because it is socially (or for those of us who have morals) morally advisable to do so.
yep.
note that “morally advisable”, when it comes down to brass tacks, usually means “advisable in purely practical terms, weighted according to the strongest influence on any particular woman” — whether that strongest influence is her parents, her girlfriend network, her professional network (unlikely but not impossible, in the case of power grrrrrls immersed up to their ears in corporate culture), or her man.
in general, women just don’t have a code, an invariant “moral compass” with a fixed north pole, in the same way that men do. instead, they tend to download the moral compass of their strongest influence.
if that influence is powerful, persistent, and long-lived enough, as polymath said in #3, many of these women “internalize” that moral compass — but, if you really look under the hood, it’s not really internalized; it’s just downloaded onto RAM rather than merely onto the hard drive. it can still be erased by an even stronger magnetic field.
note that this lends credence to the whole notion that a woman can “change overnight”.
consider the all-too-common parental threnody, “my daughter is just … someone else since she started seeing that guy.”
yep — she is.
he wiped the parental moral compass right off her hard drive, and installed his own.
oh, and i would be remiss if i didn’t point out that what you’ve said above is a damned good reason to allow men the credible, though limited, threat of physical violence against their women.
for a select group, that’s the only external moral compass that carries any weight, at all.
–
also:
i note with extreme interest your deliberate choice of the words “morally advisable”.
you’re smart enough that i’m not going to give you the benefit of the doubt here; this seems like a deliberate obfuscation, and i’m going to call you out on it. you’re falsely equating the masculine and feminine ideals of morality.
the masculine ideal of morality is generally an internalized “code” that is largely invariant. the absolute platonic form of such a code allows for no flexibility at all, even in situations of extreme arousal, imminent death, or emotional catastrophe. few men can truly measure up to that standard, but most are surprisingly good — much better than one might think, given their manifold failings at most other things in their lives — at approximating it.
the feminine ideal of morality is, by contrast, almost pure situational ethics, tinted by an externally imposed moral compass with a varying degree of transience. the males who follow this sort of moral code — the “sneaky fuckers” — can be good with women, sure, but generally have zero or even negative status within male hierarchies.
2010/07/07 at 10:00
sd #16
yes, that’s exactly what johnny is doing here with his “no man will ever leave a marriage willingly” thing
whoa there turbo, that’s one hell of a misquote.
what i said was, “not unless his life is sucked out in its entirety”.
for the vast majority of men — almost every single one who is willing to marry in a western country in this day and age, given that the rules are so bad that the “advantage players” will largely stay away — this statement is quite literally true; they won’t actually initiate divorce by their own hand unless they’ve gotten to (and have been at, for some time) the point where the marriage has quite literally become worse than death for them.
and if they undertake this decision — quite willingly, i might add, highlighting the rather grave nature of your misquotation above — they will do so with all the gravitas with which they might desert an army, turn in their badge, or renounce their citizenship.
this is why divorce hits men so much harder than it hits women, even in the relatively rare cases where the man is better off, in objective terms, after the divorce.
–
he does however have the decency to refrain from saying “no man will ever cheat on his wife willingly”, presumably he knows not to completely suspend disbelief.
as i stated above in #19, “faithfulness” in many relationships, even when optimal, does not necessarily encompass absolute sexual fidelity.
2010/07/07 at 10:01
sd #18 (and this whole thread)
your honesty is refreshing, commendable, and, above all, vanishingly rare, although it will shatter the worlds of many of my readers.
2010/07/07 at 10:10
I have a very simple personal moral code, and it is based on treating other people as I would like to be treated myself.
Although it is difficult to be completely objective on this, I suspect it is not entirely motivated by self-interest, I do have a sense of basic fairness, whether acquired from my parents or from reading the works of Enid Blyton & other 1930s kids’ literature as a child, who knows.
Of course, I don’t always keep to this moral compass, and I don’t always feel as much guilt as I probably should when I don’t do so, not a huge amount of emotion, I would not beat myself up about it too much, more a sense that breaking one’s word is a slippery slope & to be careful.
Is it moral or motivated by social self-interest? Indeed, what is the difference between morality & self-interest generally> I don’t really know but there is no instinctive physical revulsion on my part to lying or breaking promises, it is more a consideration that this is simply not the right course of action.
2010/07/07 at 10:12
sd #25 –
you’re also capable of analyzing female nature through a mostly objective lens (and abstracting moral principles from stories!) so it should come as no surprise that you are also ahead of the curve in the ways you’ve just stated.
2010/07/07 at 10:13
I think you have hit on the difference in terms of flexibility, there would be more flexibility in my moral code than that of a man in my situation. This is exactly why women are so good at things like espionage etc., they are much more jesuitical about making the end justify the means.
2010/07/07 at 10:21
So sorry about the misquotation, “not unless his life is sucked out in its entirety” was more or less what I was trying to say.
I can’t resist pointing out though, that when a younger sexier mistress hoves on the horizon, quite a lot of men leave without this requirement being satisfied (particularly if said mistress gets pregnant), and they are often men who are scrupulous at keeping to their word in other ways. Usually these are men who have made the mistake of giving their word twice, once to the wife & once to the mistress, in two conflicting ways. It does happen.
2010/07/07 at 14:48
Jesuitical. Hm. There is much more to say about this particular concept than I had realized until recently, when I went on a retreat and for the first time “got” Jesuit spirituality. But I need to process this for a while more before writing about it.
2010/07/07 at 14:49
I will say though that his thread is the right place for such a discussion, and that there is a good reason Jesuits are almost the only male Catholic religious order with no adjunct female order.
2010/07/07 at 15:50
That would be interesting, the Jesuits are quite some operators.
2010/07/07 at 17:24
For your consideration and potential analysis, Narciso, a fascinating example from the econo-sexual wilds:
“Moffat’s arrest was utterly shocking to the people who knew him. He was a confidant of IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano and widely considered a candidate to succeed him. He had plenty of money and a family who adored him. On so many levels it didn’t compute. Moffat didn’t make a penny from the information he provided, nor did he trade a share of stock. The former Eagle Scout had a reputation for loyalty as solid as his 6-foot-2, 265-pound frame. Kenneth Hammer, a former IBM attorney who had worked with Moffat, recalled his reaction on hearing of the arrest: “There was no planet on which I could have understood what was being said about Bob. I just shut down.”
Moffat was a number cruncher of the first order: He had been, among other things, the head of IBM’s supply chain. Spreadsheets sang to him; he carried three-ring binders stuffed with data about the business. Some people might think his work was dull. But in 2002 he met a hedge fund analyst who found what he did insanely alluring. Danielle Chiesi, a former teenage beauty queen, was a woman for whom business information was the ticket to gratification. She liked older men, and she enjoyed pushing their buttons. “I love the three S’s,” she would tell them. “Sex, stocks, and sports.”
Chiesi, arrested on the same day as Moffat, maintained a stable of highly placed sources at the tech companies she covered for New Castle. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of securities fraud and conspiracy. The government alleges that she was one of Rajaratnam’s many gatherers of insider information and that both their hedge funds illegally profited from trading on it. “Moffat’s terrific,” Chiesi told Rajaratnam, according to an excerpt of a government wiretap. “He’s a huge coup for me.”
The ballad of Moffat and Chiesi is a classic tale of desire and betrayal. Chiesi had an affair with Moffat, but the person she truly loved was her boss, Mark Kurland, the co-founder of New Castle. But Kurland wouldn’t leave his wife and ultimately renounced Chiesi.
Sex was part of the picture, to be sure, but the dangerous elixir that really bound these people to one another was information. It enriched some of them, it thrilled all of them, and it eventually ruined their careers. Trading business information, Chiesi would say, was “like an orgasm.”“
2010/07/08 at 16:01
“mistaking their trepidatious bewilderment for awe.”
–haha, this happens a lot from what I can tell. What many men conclude as awe is simply forced neutrality, whether in an expression or within the words/reactions of their audience.
2010/07/08 at 17:49
“you go all in, you just might end up with nothing. but how else do you win the whole pot?
high risk, high return, etc.”
–I live by this. I have gained unmeasurable highs from it and lows that took me to near death. All or nothing baby. It’s just in me to be this passionate. Spectacularly written, as always johnny. Have you read the novel “The Reader”? You must if you haven’t.
2010/07/11 at 05:06
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