Learn from Adam.

Men’s Game blogs often advocate that a man not do what his wife tells him to do for fear of compromising his masculine authority and becoming less attractive to her as a result.

What most people don’t realize is that the Bible teaches the same lesson:  Eve tells Adam to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and like a good beta husband, he does.  Voila!  Sin!  Seriously, three chapters into Genesis, and we’ve already got Adam doing Eve’s bidding.  The results of such betatude?  Well, in addition to the aforementioned sin and therefore death (no more Tree of Life!), not to mention expulsion from Eden:

• Women experience pain in childbirth — this is an exclusively human trait; no other animals experience pain in giving birth
• Women are put under the authority of their husbands
• Men must toil to ensure they can eat
• Sinful nature is passed on through men

Lesson?  Don’t do what your wife tells you to do, or suffer the consequences.

(Probably the second-best “Don’t listen to your wife” Bible story?  When Sarah told Abraham to take her servant Hagar as a concubine.  The result of that union was Ishmael.  The Middle East thanks you, Abraham!)

Love vs. In Love

Readers, please weigh in.  I’ve heard more than one man pooh-pooh the idea of differentiating between loving someone and being “in love” with that person.  (Apparently, the idea of being “in love” with someone is a female thing, ergo entirely nebulous and more or less imaginary, whereas a man just simply loves.)

For my part, I’m not sure which side I come down on in this argument.  “In love” often seems synonymous with infatuation.  “Real” love, the kind of ongoing, day-to-day love that keeps a relationship alive for a lifetime, has little to do with the waves of emotional rollercoastering of infatuation.  Then again, we’ve all seen elderly couples who still look at each other with a touch of infatuation, so….?  Complicating the matter is the breadth of meanings of love in the English language.  (“I like my Sketchers, but I love my Prada backpack….”)

What say you?  Is there a difference between loving and being “in love”?  Can a person really be “in love”?

The most painful LJBFing (for a woman).

Don’t worry, faithful readers.  I haven’t forgotten about the second half of the last post.  Stay tuned.

I saw the movie Just Wright on Friday.  For those unfamiliar, it’s a romantic sort-of-comedy, sort-of-drama starring Queen Latifah, Common, and Paula Patton as a physical therapist, NBA star, and gold-digger, respectively.  Obviously, Queen Latifah and Common’s characters end up together at the end, but not before navigating a shapely bump in the road called Paula Patton.  In this case, Patton’s character’s gold-digging strikes very close to home since she is Latifah’s character’s godsister.

Although the script never fleshes the characters out much beyond the surface, a lot of women will be able to relate to Latifah’s Leslie, who is always passed over by men for Patton’s Morgan and long ago learned to accept that men will always see her as the “friend.”  Common’s Scott is no different:  despite some sparks with Leslie during a chance meeting at a gas station, the minute he sees Morgan, Leslie is but an afterthought.  In practically the blink of an eye, Scott proposes to Morgan, assuring his skeptical mother that Morgan is different from the girls he normally encounters.  The future looks set — until Scott injures his knee during a game midway through the basketball season.  Scott’s agent arranges for a top-notch physical therapist to work with Scott, but when the therapist turns out to be a sexy blonde, Morgan gets Leslie to work with Scott instead.  It’s while Leslie is rehabilitating Scott that Morgan returns Scott’s ring with a note, telling an irate Leslie that she can’t be married to a has-been.  It’s also during this time that Leslie and Scott begin to get closer.

Although nothing unpredictable happens in this movie, it did contain what I thought was one of the most painfully realistic moments that most women have experienced at least once in their lives:  the female version of “let’s just be friends.”  In the scene, Scott asks Leslie why her phone isn’t blowing up with calls and texts.  He points out that in the time she’s been working for him, she hasn’t been going on dates.  Leslie absorbs his observations with dignity and simply says that she’s single.  I’m not sure that any woman can go through this experience without feeling slightly humiliated, especially when the person who has noticed that you’re a romantic dud is someone you’re attracted to.  But Scott unknowingly makes the experience even worse, because he goes on to say (helpfully, I’m sure, in his mind) that Leslie is smart, funny, and attractive.

It’s really the fact that he says Leslie is attractive that twists the knife.  Most women enjoy hearing that they are smart and funny.  If a man whom a woman is attracted to tells her that she is smart and funny, she will maybe feel a little disappointment that he didn’t say more, but she generally will not feel despair.  It’s when the issue of looks enters the picture that women can really be devastated.

Women instinctively know that their looks matter to men and that some men will never be attracted to them because of their appearance.  Much as women hate the priority that looks have, all women want to be considered attractive by men, especially men they’re attracted to.  As a result, nothing is quite so painful as being told you are physically attractive yet the man doesn’t want you.  This is by far the most horrible way that a man can “let’s just be friends” a woman.  A woman can get over “you’re really cool, I like you a lot, but I just don’t see us this way,” but a woman will feel her soul being crushed when a man says, “you are beautiful, but I don’t have any feelings for you.”  Every woman’s next thought is, “If you think I’m beautiful but don’t want to be with me, then there must be something terribly wrong with me.”  Every woman’s brain translates the man’s words as “I would fall in love with and/or have sex with every horrible, lying, ugly, stupid shrew in the world before I would fall in love with or have sex with you.”  It’s not just a rejection of her as a person, it’s a rejection of her as a woman.

Obviously, in the movie, Scott comes around and sees that Leslie really is the right person for him, so all’s well that ends well.  (Although I had to suspend disbelief that an NBA star would marry and, presumably, remain faithful to a woman, much less a woman of Leslie’s size.  I just can’t believe that an NBA star as big as Scott would not have a nationwide harem with svelte “girlfriends” in every city.)  Anyhow, my point is this:  men, if you really care about a woman, don’t compliment her looks directly unless you have immediate intentions to act romantically.  In other words, it’s fine to say “you look nice today” or “I like that dress on you.”  It is NOT okay to say “YOU are attractive” or “YOU are beautiful.”  Especially not beautiful.  I highly recommend not saying “you are beautiful” to a woman unless the next words out of your mouth are “I love you.  Will you marry me?”

P.S.  for the Culture Police types – The movie is a very true PG.  There is next to nothing objectionable in the film other than a very brief, very not-showing-anything love scene between Leslie and Scott.  No language, and Leslie has a very good relationship with her married parents.

Why Christian girls have so few boyfriends.

I was reading the comments at another blog, and one commenter mentioned how “shocking” it is that so many cute Christian girls in their late 20s/early 30s have only had one or zero boyfriends in their entire lives.  Honestly, this kind of news is only “shocking” if you don’t know anything about conservative Christian culture.  Here’s how a reasonably attractive, non-psycho Christian girl of, say, age 32 can go boyfriend-less her entire life:

• Very poor male/female ratio of singles at church. If mating is a numbers game, women are on the losing side.  Most churches that are not specifically targeted to single professionals (a.k.a. “seeker churches”) have a low singles population.  Of the singles who are regular attenders, the majority of them will be women.  Of the men, a lot of them will be “old” or weird.
• Single men at church do not initiate. If there are any single men who pass muster, they often aren’t asking out the single women at their church.  Sometimes this is due to fear of social ostracism (i.e., ask out too many women and you get a rep of being an indiscriminate player who’s only looking for a warm body), sometimes it’s a lack of sexual interest…in general, sometimes it’s immaturity, sometimes it’s apathy, and sometimes it actually IS that all of the single women at church are fat and/or damaged.
• Refusal to date both non-Christians and nominal Christians. Most “good” Christian girls will not hang out at places where the average (non-Christian) man will go to meet women, such as bars, clubs, sporting events, house parties where alcohol is served, or the mall.  They are much more likely to be found in the church nursery, leading a youth group retreat, helping out at a women’s shelter, attending a small group Bible study, baby-sitting the children of married Christian friends, on a missions trip, hanging out with her parents and family, or at a game night sponsored by the college & career group at church.  Should a good Christian girl actually meet a non-Christian man who is attracted to her, she will most likely be very wary of him as a romantic prospect and will refuse to go on a date with him if he asks, due to the biblical command not to be yoked (married) to unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14).  Ditto for a man who is nominally a Christian (i.e., claims to be a Christian yet doesn’t “bear fruit”).

Other factors can come into play as well — being too picky is a problem regardless of creed — but these three points cover the major reasons that Christian girls endure such long periods of singleness.  In the end it’s pretty much a numbers game, and the girls are losing it.

ManLingo: “smart girl”

Quite often you will hear men complain that there are no “smart girls” in their social circles to date.  Even a quick perusal of good ol’ Craigslist, that bastion of high standards, will reveal a desire to have sex with date a “smart” or “intelligent” woman.  Educated single women hear/read stuff like this and immediately begin bashing their heads against their desks.  Hello, we’re right here, they think as they silently curse eHarmony, match.com, OKCupid, and the universe.

Several years ago I came to the conclusion that what men mean by “smart” and what women mean by “smart” are really two different things.  When a man says he wants to date/marry a “smart” or “intelligent” woman, he means:

• A woman who will laugh at his jokes
• A woman who will be impressed by him/his job/his car/etc.
• A woman who is only moderately helpless (i.e., needs his help in many different areas of her life but doesn’t have to use her fingers to calculate 2+2)
• A woman who also meets his minimum standard of attractiveness (because no man who’s surrounded by, say, dumb, homely women is going to complain first that they’re all dumb)

What “smart” or “intelligent” does NOT mean to a man is (not an exhaustive list):

• Has an IQ exceeding 120
• Got good grades in high school or was even class valedictorian
• Got an academic scholarship to college
• Has a graduate-level degree
• Knows times tables through 13×13
• Can easily converse about politics, religion, science, art, music, and popular culture with both breadth and depth
• Is witty
• Doesn’t need a calculator to calculate a tip at a restaurant
• Knows how to change the oil in her car, fix a clogged drain, or hook up the home theater just from reading the manual
• Has an SAT-worthy vocabulary
• Is a brilliant writer
• Reads dozens of non-fiction and/or award-winning books per year
• Keeps getting promoted at work with stellar job reviews
• Kills at Brain Age 2
• Taught herself Latin by reading Harrius Potterus et Philosophi Lapis

This is not to say that a man won’t objectively acknowledge a woman’s brains if she meets criteria from the second list.  It’s just that, for all practical intents and purposes, all he really cares about is the first list.  Plus, it’s simpler (and sounds better) to say “I want to date/marry a smart woman.”

What does a woman mean by “smart”?  She means a keen, quick, analytical mind that can easily and clearly express itself.  Advanced verbal skills (especially syntax and vocabulary) are powerful and attractive indicators of intelligence to a woman, especially when paired with wit.  Intelligence sans social skills/social intelligence is generally not attractive.

Aloof vs. So-Aloof-You’re-A-Jerk.

I meet weekly with a group of single women from my church for a combination Bible study/fellowship group.  Yesterday since only three of us showed up, discussion was firmly in the “fellowship” camp.  One of my friends shared the story of what had happened when she went on a date with a younger guy from church.  He was a guy she had gotten to know, who constantly said to her that they should hang out.  Because he was several years younger, she was hesitant but felt that she should go in with an open mind.  So, she accepted.

They went to a movie.  Afterward, he did not make any conversation.  They also met up with his friends (I think?), and he sat on the opposite side of the table from her and also talked about another girl he was interested in.

Needless to say, my friend was not impressed…but what do you know, the guy called the next day to say that he’d had a great time and that they should do it again.

Men, if you’re going to single a woman on a date, then that date really needs to be exclusive.  Don’t bring your buddies along, do be the leader in making conversation, and by all means DO NOT EVER talk about another woman you’re interested in.  You may think that you’re being cool and aloof and demonstrating higher value (i.e., non-neediness) as well as self-social proofing, but all this does is make the woman deeply uncomfortable and confused, and possibly embarrassed.

The disappointing thing about this is that this young man is otherwise a stereotypical “great guy” treading in Youth Group Guy territory.  All he did on this occasion was disappoint my friend, as well as hurt his own reputation (which is now “nice guy but too immature and not ready to date”).

Being a little aloof on a date is good.  You don’t want to come across as overly attentive; that’s a big turn-off.  But going in the opposite direction to the extreme is a huge mistake as well.  You’ll just end up on a date with a woman who is wondering why you even bothered to ask her out.

The most famous chastity story of all time?

No, I’m not referring to Britney Spears circa 1999-2001.

I was thinking the other day about the Bible story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.  For those who are woefully ignorant unfamiliar, basically what happens is that Joseph, one of Jacob’s twelve sons, is sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers.  He is purchased by Potiphar, the Egyptian Pharaoh’s captain of the guard.  God gives Joseph success in everything he does, and Joseph rises through the servant ranks.  Eventually, Potiphar puts Joseph in charge of his entire household, which prospers as a result.  Unsurprisingly, Potiphar’s wife starts getting massive gina tingles, to use a Roissy-ism noticing that Joseph has both a great face and great bod, and eventually starts coming on to him.  Joseph, however, respects both God and Potiphar and refuses Mrs. Potiphar, explaining that he cannot betray his master or sin against God by sleeping with her.  Joseph starts to avoid Mrs. Potiphar, who only finds this resistance more gina-tingling refuses to take no for an answer and continues her pursuit.

One day Mrs. Potiphar manages to corner Joseph when the house is empty.  According to the biblical account, she grabs his cloak and once again asks Joseph to sleep with her, but he runs out of the house, leaving the cloak in her hands.  Mrs. Potiphar then calls to her servants and accuses Joseph of trying to rape her.  She holds on to Joseph’s cloak and waits for Potiphar to come home.  She then repeats her fake rape attempt story to her husband, who flies into a rage and has Joseph thrown into jail.  (The story ends well:  Joseph prospers in jail just as he did in Potiphar’s household and eventually is put in charge of the prison, and one thing leads to another and blah-de-blah ends up being Pharaoh’s Number One, saves Egypt from famine, and ends up having a happy reunion with his family.)

The Bible doesn’t give us any details about Potiphar’s wife other than that she tried to seduce Joseph and, when spurned, epitomized “hell hath no fury” revenge.  As a result, it’s very easy to superimpose your own image of what Potiphar’s wife must have been like.  When I was growing up, I always pictured her as a cougar-ish, menopausal woman who was clearly past the prime of her beauty but accustomed to wealth and privilege.  I imagined her heavily-made up eyes following Joseph around like a hungry hawk, and her pouncing on him unawares, aggressively demanding sex at random times.  I imagined her howling like a banshee and her indulgent husband white knighting for her honor.  And as far as I can recall, no pastor or speaker that I’ve listened to has ever presented a really different idea of what Potiphar’s wife was like.

It’s very possible that Potiphar’s wife really was a menopausal cougar, an Ancient Egyptian crazy lady who refused to accept that she’d grown old and unattractive to men and basically had a psychotic breakdown when confronted with reality.  There’s nothing about this take on Mrs. Potiphar that doesn’t jive with Scripture, or feminine nature as we know it today.  Any woman who’s brazenly thrown herself at a man and been rejected usually suffers a horrible mixture of rage, embarrassment, and depression all at once.  Mrs. Potiphar’s reaction, while a bit extreme, really isn’t anything out of the ordinary, especially if you watch a lot of Cops or any of the myriad of judge shows on afternoon TV.

More recently, though, in light of reading some Game blogs, I’ve started to rethink my idea of Potiphar’s wife.  For starters, if Mrs. Potiphar were old and menopausal and therefore not all that attractive to a younger man whose own attractiveness was starting to peak, would it have been such an issue to turn her down?  Why would Joseph’s refusal seem to contain an element of regret?  Gen. 39:8-9 says,

“But he refused.  ‘With me in charge,’ he told her, ‘my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care.  No one is greater in this house than I am.  My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife.  How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?'”

This doesn’t sound like a dude saying, in essence, “Mrs. Potiphar, I’m not the kind of guy who sleeps with his boss’s wife, but even if I were, well…I’m, uh, just not that into you.”  Instead, Joseph seems to be saying, “Look, you’re really attractive, and if the circumstances were different, maybe we’d have a chance.  But because things are the way they are, we don’t and can’t.  I’m sorry.  You need to accept this.”  Another point to consider is that Potiphar was a very powerful man.  As captain of the guard, not many men in Egypt had higher social standing than Potiphar.  It seems very believable that Potiphar would have had a young, beautiful trophy wife rather than an aging crone of a wife.  Maybe Mrs. Potiphar was even the second or third Mrs. Potiphar (the previous ones being “retired” as Potiphar ascended in rank).

The story takes on a much more dramatically and emotionally interesting read when you put a young, gorgeous, attentive, and admiring Mrs. Potiphar into the story.  It wouldn’t have been (as) hard for Joseph to turn down a 40-something, papyrus-skinned Mrs. Potiphar whose bathroom was stocked with twenty different Jewel of the Nile anti-aging cold creams and mud masks.  I imagine it would have been painfully difficult to turn down a soft-bodied, sweet-smelling, lush-lipped Mrs. Potiphar who was always impressed by the way he did things and never failed to say so, who might have teased him about finding the right girl for him while looking at him from under long, sooty lashes, who was open about being lonely and not able to relate to her much-older, always busy, never there husband.

It’s easy to imagine this scenario:  New slave Joseph proves again and again that he’s very good at whatever task he is given, and what’s more, he doesn’t gripe or complain.  The other servants like and respect him, and Potiphar starts to realize that Joseph is a much better administrator than the guy who’s currently in charge of the house.  Potiphar says “smell ya later” to the current guy and puts Joseph in charge of the household.

With Joseph in charge, the household has never run better.  It’s clean and organized, bills are paid on time, the other servants are getting along and are more productive, and Joseph is even talking about getting those long-put-off renovations taken care of.  Potiphar is thrilled and wonders why he didn’t put Joseph in charge much earlier.  At night, Potiphar talks up Joseph to his gorgeous new wife, who agrees that Joseph is doing a great job and mentally makes a note to take a closer look at Joseph herself.

Joseph notices that Mrs. Potiphar is being more friendly these days.  She also looks and smells amazing as she teases him about his cute accent.  Joseph reminds her that he’s busy, but he’s struck by her charm.  His boss is a lucky man.

Joseph is inspecting part of the property with another servant, making notes for improvements, when Mrs. Potiphar joins them.  Joseph greets her with a smile and begins to tell her about his tentative plans to landscape the area.  Mrs. Potiphar listens politely for a few minutes, then dismisses the other servant, saying she has business to discuss with Joseph.  Joseph asks her what she needs help with.  Mrs. Potiphar says that her husband is going to be out of town for a few days.  Joseph says that Potiphar had recently informed him — just a business trip, nothing major.  Mrs. Potiphar lays a hand on Joseph’s arm and says that they can get to know each other better while her husband is away.  Every hair on Joseph’s body stands on end.  He jokes that they know each other pretty well already, as he can name her favorite foods, how she likes her clothes laundered, and what her favorite song is.  Mrs. Potiphar tells Joseph that she knows he can feel the chemistry between them and that it’s not wrong.  And they get along so well, Joseph really gets her, unlike her husband.  She asks Joseph if he’s ever wondered what it would be like to be with her.  Joseph’s brain is about to explode — she’s standing so near, it would be so easy to take a taste — and then somehow all of his convictions about God and his morals come rushing back, and he removes her hand from his arm and tells her that she is the one thing he cannot have, and that he could not betray his master nor sin against God this way.  To his surprise, Mrs. Potiphar doesn’t seem disappointed; oddly enough, she seems charmed.  Joseph quickly excuses himself and goes back to the house.

Joseph does everything in his power not to be in the same room as Mrs. Potiphar.  When she enters a room, he leaves.  When she calls for him, he sends another servant in his place.  But he can’t avoid her always, and he endures some very tension-filled moments where he tries not to look her directly in the eyes.  At night he prays for relief from the situation, but none seems to come.  Things get to the point where the other servants have started whispering about them.

One day Joseph goes to the house to look for some documents in storage.  The house is quiet since all of the other servants are outside.  Joseph opens the closet where Potiphar keeps his files and is so deep in thought mode that he doesn’t notice that someone else has entered the room.  A rush of cool air on his back — his cloak — he spins around to see his master’s wife clutching his cloak to her chest, her eyes full of feminine victory.  He stammers her name — she presses a finger to his lips as she comes closer.  “I’m yours,” she says, and now her hands are touching his chest.  “You can have me however you want.”  Joseph tries to speak — no words come — her touch burns trails of fire — all his blood — her tunic drops to the floor  — “I’ve given the servants a lot of work.  We won’t be bothered.”  Suddenly he receives a bright-white moment of clarity — and he runs — runs hard — past the servants — to the most distant corner of the property.

Inside the house, Potiphar’s wife is stunned and embarrassed.  Joseph left.  He ran.  He ran away from her, when she offered him the finest curves he could ever hope to find in all of Egypt.  She picks up her tunic and starts to redress — and then it occurs to her:  what if he tells Potiphar, or word somehow leaks out?  Potiphar adores Joseph, like a combination of a brother and a son.  Fear paralyzes her for a moment; Potiphar is a permissive husband but very possessive.  He will not suffer a wayward wife.  Self-preservation kicks in, along with a hot streak of anger.  Joseph just made a huge mistake.  He didn’t know who he was messing with.  No one walks away from her and gets off scott free.  She screams, then screams louder.  She hears the sound of running footsteps, and within seconds, two servants burst into the room.  Potiphar’s wife clutches her tunic to her body with one hand.  In the other hand she holds Joseph’s cloak.  “He tried to rape me!” she screams.

When Potiphar arrives home from work, the atmosphere at the house is chillingly subdued.  A servant greets him.  “Your wife would like to speak with you.”

Potiphar finds his wife lying in bed, disheveled and listless.  He asks what’s wrong, and she tells him.  Potiphar can hardly believe it — but his wife wouldn’t lie — of course Joseph would have tried to take her, she’s beautiful, and Potiphar had given Joseph too much power.  A seed of anger bursts into a raging fire.  He yells to his servants.

As Joseph is being escorted out of the house, Potiphar can’t bear to watch.  As angry as he is about Joseph’s betrayal, he can’t help but feel pain at losing the best house manager, and maybe even friend, he’s ever had.  Kid was so promising.  Such a shame.

Don’t be these guys, Vol. 1.

There are a couple of message boards that I skim read pretty regularly that are mainly populated by women in their 20s-40s.  This means that there tends to be a fair amount of relationship talk.  For anyone with traditional values, most of it is a little depressing since most of the women are feminists (or are brainwashed by feminist principles) who have not yet hit the Wall and are clearly operating under the assumption that they will always be able to attract men as easily as they do now — therefore their feelings take utmost precedence in their decision-making.  I was skimming reading today and came across a couple of relationship threads that made me shake my head regarding both the men who are discussed and the OPs’ treatment of them.

Guys, don’t be these guys.

THREAD 1:

OP brags advertises in the subject line that her boyfriend asked her to marry him but she said no.  In the post she says that she feels “horrible” about it but that it had nothing to do with her boyfriend, plus he knew beforehand that she never wanted to get married.  Despite this apparent knowledge, he proposed anyway and then seemed “disappointed” when he got rejected.  The rest of the posters divide into two groups, one in support of the OP, the other warning her that this could be the beginning of the end, but most of them congratulate the OP for her honesty and agree that not only does marriage have little significance in the area of commitment (this despite the documented increased volatility of non-marital unions), no one should stay in a marriage if she is “unhappy.”  The posters generally agree that there will always be “someone else” if the boyfriend walks.

Later the OP returns to the thread to inform everyone that she and her boyfriend “talked” and that the boyfriend apologized to her for assuming she would say yes.  Yes, he APOLOGIZED.  OP reports that this “talk” lasted TWO HOURS.

I feel like the takeaway lessons from this story should be obvious, but anyhow:  Men, if you want to get married, then don’t date a woman who says she NEVER wants to get married and believes her feelings love for you is equivalent or even better.  Sure, you might be the superhero to change her mind…but you might not.  Why waste your energy on a woman who’s a tough sell as opposed to a woman who really does want to be married?  Second, NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR PROPOSING.  My goodness.  If you want to marry someone, then I very well hope that you are prepared to lead in all aspects of the relationship and won’t wither in the face of a woman’s disgruntled vanity.  Third, never discuss a woman’s feelings with her for any amount of time over, say, thirty minutes, tops.  What could the OP and her boyfriend possibly have discussed for that long without running around in circles with the woman continually gaining momentum against the man?  The longer you let her run on, the less authority you have in the relationship.  Probably what happened here is that the OP browbeat her boyfriend for well over an hour for disturbing her feelings.  No wonder she doesn’t want to marry him.  The real question is why he wanted to marry her.

THREAD 2:

OP is a med student who has been pining away for a guy in her program for the past two years.  She deeply regrets not telling him that she’s in love with him.  They are on the verge of graduation and will soon be going their separate ways, so OP asks for advice about how to tell this guy about her feelings.  (Anyone who’s read my blog lately knows my feelings on the topic.)  Of course, in a show of female wishful thinking solidarity, the other posters rally around her, telling her to invite him out for dinner, get some drinks in her, and spill her guts.

Later in the thread, OP reports back, saying that she did exactly as the posters suggested and…drum roll, please…their advice WORKED.  (Hey, it happens every once in a blue moon.)  After exams, she and her friend went out to a “nice steakhouse” where she worked up the courage and blurted out her feelings to him.  The guy then admitted that he’s been feeling the exact same way.  OP says that they concluded that they both used their coursework as a reason not to take a risk and that each other was the reason they hadn’t dated anyone else in the entire time of their program.  OP then says that the evening went perfectly and hints that they slept together because she had just arrived home (and apparently sprinted to the computer) and the timestamp was in the morning.  Plus, they found out that they would be doing residencies in the same city.  Much cheering from the peanut gallery commences.

On its face, this is the kind of story that makes women swoon because it is very much like something out of a movie where you’ve been pining and pining and pining and the guy actually reciprocates your feelings.  But what is ennobling about this story from the man’s point of view?  What kind of man hides behind coursework as an excuse not to date anyone for two years?  Especially when the woman is a close friend and others have pointed out that they should date?  What kind of man lets the woman take all the emotional risk in the relationship?  It seems to me like this dude would have been content to let the relationship simmer in sexual frustration indefinitely if the OP hadn’t taken the reins.  At the beginning of the story, the OP didn’t even know if they would be assigned to the same area for their residency — it sounds like this guy was willing to let the OP drift out of his life without even once making a move.  That’s not love.  That’s ambivalence at best and cowardice at worst.

It’ll be interesting to see (if we ever get to find out) how this relationship progresses once the OP and this guy are out of the med school bubble and are working long hours at different hospitals.  My guess is that once the initial relationship euphoria wears off, the guy’s natural reluctance to lead will start to kill off the OP’s attraction to him.  Pining from a distance and actually being involved in a relationship are two different things.

Did Halle Berry seal her own fate?

Yes, I am a stereotypical woman in that I enjoy reading about celebrities, seeing what they’re wearing, and dissecting their life mistakes choices.  It’s not so much a lifestyle aspiration (I live in Los Angeles and work in the entertainment industry, so I’ve gotten to see a lot of celebrities up close; most are uninteresting when the cameras are not rolling) as it is a perfect storm of things I like to analyze — faces, fashion, and behavior — all wrapped into one.  Basically celebrity trash magazines and blogs are like Super Wal-Marts of my interests…um, besides poring over John and Stasi Eldredge books, I mean.  Yeah!  Woo hoo!  Captivating 4eva!

Evangelicals spend a lot of time trashing Hollywood, not entirely without reason — Hollywood produces a lot of trash.  (Christian productions produce a lot of trash, too, but when the litmus test of trash vs. non-trash is “does it have an ~uplifting, heart-warming message that’s suitable for the whole family?”, trash production is an impossible thing to acknowledge.)  Anyhow, I see Hollywood not so much as something to denounce with the pointing finger of moral superiority but as the clearest possible picture of our sinful nature.  It is an unvarnished reflection of what lies in all of our hearts.  The only thing that separates most Hollywood behavior from our own is opportunity.  Remove all social and moral restrictions, and surround yourself with enablers and the most beautiful and powerful people of the opposite sex — the most sexually irresistible people in the world — and it’s not hard to see why celebrity after celebrity falls off the holiness wagon.

Last week news broke that 50% mega-famous, 100% gorgeous couple Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry have split up.  (Gabriel is a male model who is the father of Halle’s 2-year-old daughter.)  They were together for four or five years, which in Hollywood time is pretty impressive.  The only thing surprising to me about this break-up was that fans were surprised.  Applying a Game analysis to the Berry/Aubry relationship, the reasons for the break-up quickly become obvious:  Halle, despite being acknowledged as one of the most beautiful women alive, is 43 and about to hit the Wall, if she hasn’t already.  Gabriel, on the other hand, is only 34.  At the time they began dating, Halle was still near the peak of her looks while Gabriel was still ascending in value.  Now, however, the tables are beginning to turn.  Halle is aging out of the fertility market, while Gabriel is just beginning to peak in his attractiveness to women.  (Obviously, being a gorgeous and successful male model, his attractiveness was high to begin with, but now he has maturity to add to his menu of scrumptious offerings, not to mention the insanely high preselection value of having dated a woman as beautiful as Halle.)  In addition, Halle got the baby she had always wanted and maybe didn’t tend to her relationship with Gabriel as before; I always got the impression that she valued having a baby over having a man.  Another important factor was probably the separation of the couple due to working in different places for extended periods of time.  Add in the unequal fame and earning power of the couple, the emotional baggage each brought to the relationship, and the extreme temptation of Hollywood, and voila!  Breakup.

Maybe the most predictive factor, though, was that Halle and Gabriel never married.  Halle is twice-divorced and has stated more than once that she has no intentions to marry again.  She told Ebony in 2004 that she wanted someone to “come and stay and be there because he wants to, not because he has a piece of paper saying he has to.”  Which is all very fine and noble, but…what if she and Gabriel had married?  Wouldn’t that have given Gabriel more incentive to stay with Halle and be an everyday father to their daughter?  Most divorces, after all, are initiated by women, and so far there hasn’t been gossip that Aubry is a player with a wandering eye.  Additionally, men generally stand to lose more (financially) in divorce, especially in California.  Despite being a community property state, it strongly favors mothers upon dissolution of a marriage.  I think it’s very possible that Halle Berry created a self-fulfilling prophecy for herself to lose a man by refusing to commit to him beyond mere feelings.  It takes two to tango, but beauty (which rapidly depreciates) and feelings (which come and go) are not the things you want to tie your hopes for a lasting relationship to.  There needs to be a stronger bond and reciprocal obligation between two people to weather the ups and downs of life, and in the vast majority of cases, that is marriage.

One thing you shouldn’t tell him.

On a message board I regularly read, there is a dating advice thread.  Sometimes the posts are entertaining, like when posters recount their adventures in online dating, but a lot of times posters genuinely seek advice or share personal stories, both triumphs and failures.  Today a female poster wrote that she had finally told a male friend that she liked him, only for him to tell her that not only did he not have those feelings for her, he was also secretly dating a mutual friend.  Quiver of arrows, straight to the heart.

The other posters all rallied around this girl, assuring her that she had done a brave thing and that the next time she did so, perhaps the outcome would be different.  They then recommended ice cream and booze as remedies.  I think it would have been kinder advice to tell her never to confess feelings for a man she wasn’t dating.

In general, feminist dating principles rarely lead to greater happiness for women.  Women’s magazines keep trying to encourage women to ask men out on dates and to make it seem chic and just the thing men are all dying for (the reasoning being that you, female reader, are just so bodacious that men tremble and lose their words in your presence), but the reality more often than not tends to be that a woman suffers disappointment and sometimes a severely crushed ego.  Usually what happens is that either the man accepts the date, but with no real enthusiasm, or he turns down the woman.  If a dating relationship does spring up, the woman will eventually become more and more agitated as she wishes to progress the level of emotional intimacy and commitment, while the man dawdles.  Finally, when the woman can take no more, she and the man break up, and the woman flips out when she discovers six months later that her ex-boyfriend just got engaged to his new girlfriend and they are getting married soon and have never been happier.

Similarly, when a woman confesses her attraction to a man when he hasn’t done anything to make her believe her feelings are reciprocated (like, you know, asking her on a date), disaster usually follows.  All the feminist orthodoxy in the world can’t change the fact that men are psychologically designed to be initiators.  It’s part of what makes them so relentlessly interested in competing and exploring and innovating — and pursuing romantically (although in these feminized times, it often doesn’t feel that way).  So when a woman takes matters into her own hands, so to speak, she’s thwarting natural design.  She’s taking the chance to initiate away from the man and robbing herself of the pleasure of being singled out.  It’s the “he’s just not that into you” principle:  if he wanted to date you — really, truly wanted to date you and kiss you and march around in public with your hand in his — then he would find a way to make it happen, especially if you were giving him loud signals to go ahead.  Your eager “help” is not necessary.  And, really, what do you think is going to happen when you do reveal the feelings that have been turning your insides out for the last however-many weeks?

YOU:  I have to tell you something.

HIM:  Uh, okay.

YOU:  It’s something that’s been on my heart and my mind for a while.

HIM:  Uh-huh.

YOU:  And I’ve been trying to hold it back, but I just can’t anymore.  I have to get it out.

HIM:  Okay…

YOU:  Sorry, I’m kind of nervous.

HIM:  It’s okay, just tell me.

YOU:  All right…I have feelings for you.

HIM:  OH, PRAISE THE LORD!  I HAVE BEEN PRAYING FOR THIS SINCE LAST JULY, YOU DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND!  THERE WERE SO MANY TIMES I WANTED TO ASK YOU OUT, BUT GOD HELD ME BACK, TELLING ME THAT YOU WOULD MAKE THE FIRST MOVE IF IT WAS HIS WILL!  OH, MAN, THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE! LET’S GO TO CHIK-FIL-A TO CELEBRATE!  I HAVE A COUPON!

Yeah, it usually doesn’t happen like that.  I know, the temptation is strong, and it seems so simple and rational, and your situation is going to turn out differently — but! — there is beauty in restraint.