LOVE WITHOUT STAYING POWER

FROM WHERE I SIT  Love Without Staying Power  August 3, 2013  Pat Spilseth

Women mourn; men replace.  Sure, it’s a generalization, but take a moment and count how many divorcees and widows do you know?  Lots, I’m assuming.  And how many single men are you acquainted with?  Not many...they’ve been casseroled out or set up with prospective dates the moment they became single.  Today, I’m on a bandwagon against temporary “relationships”.

Recent TV and newspaper headlines about the married Mad Flasher and e-mail Lothario are certainly embarrassing and so tasteless.  Why does an intelligent, accomplished women remain with the miscreant?  Was she raised in Saudi  or is the lock due to having a young child?  There are some solid reasons to end a union.

Certainly, there are many fine men and women out there, but you have to admit, some deal with other people as interchangeable batteries.  When one  runs down, they go out and get another.   Are some partners just interchangeable need-fillers?  

When a woman is dumped or left by a man, many women go through staged withdrawals with all sorts of symptoms: grieving, sobbing, anger, and finally acceptance.  When a relationship ends, it’s basically a death for her.  Generally, women seem to have long resting periods before they feel ready to try again.  That’s not usually the case with men.

Do women wallow, and men act?  We gals tend to romanticize; we go into massive depressions when left; we lose 10 pounds or gain 20 stuffing ourselves with chocolate and other comfort foods.   Women believe in mourning/grieving as a way of paying respect to the feelings they had for the guy who left, the time and energy they put into the relationship.  Most women believe it takes time to heal.  Usually that involves talking with girlfriends who eventually give them the confidence to move on. 

I grew up on movies staring Grace Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Annette where the final scenes faded out with a man and a woman walking hand in hand into the sunset accompanied by lovely music.  So, it took me awhile to accept the current concept of relationships between men and women.  Now movies seem to end with an ending.  The love-mating-dismantling scenario where art imitates life on the big screen...there don’t seem to be many love stories any more about permanence.  Mostly they’re chick flicks, sugar-coated serials or violent, noisy shoot ‘em up adventures of stars unlike anyone I know has ever encountered.  Romance is weak, flabby with middle-aged “me” issues or mental health issues.

Remember when music swelled to the tune of “Love Will Keep Us Together” and you got a lump in your throat; perhaps you needed kleenex?  Well, they don’t play that song any more.  In those star-kissed movies of the fifties, you knew when Doris Day and Rock Hudson kissed, they would end up married.  For goodness sake, movie makers of that era never filmed stars in bed together.  And they didn’t film anybody French kissing. In contrast, today’s movies have stars jumping in and out of beds and swinging from partner to partner much too often.  Do I sound too conservative?  Well, perhaps, but I believe there has to be a limit to promiscuousness!

Romance, in which permanence is the ideal, has been replaced by romantic impermanence as reality. Too many disastrous matings make people want to throw in the towel with relationships, certainly marriage.  But these new “real” love stories actually portray the romantic spirit still alive in many of us, even as we deal with the reality of “irreconcilable differences.”  Hope in an everlasting love remains eternal.

Once upon a time, relationships blossomed into marriage and a family   Those were the old days when only Hollywood’s movie stars and New Yorkers had battered mates or got divorced.  Somewhere in the sixties, we got into “I’m OK; You’re OK” and all the interpersonal relationship jargon.  Relationships feasted on touchy, feeling dialogue, self-medicating drugs and counseling.  We were more into self-actualization rather than working at the relationship.  Divorce soared.  Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that sometimes divorce is the best option to a dissolving relationship that isn’t working.

Do you really believe that people “fall in love”?  Phooey, nobody “falls” in love.  Now, some enter a relationship as if it were a law firm.  Prenuptial legal agreements are abundant...just in case it doesn’t work for them.  Relationship isn’t a poetic word.  The term is too passionless.  You can’t send flowers to a relationship.  UP with love; DOWN with relationships.  Today our society takes cohabiting for granted.  Some think that living together before marriage is a chance for a couple to test if the relationship will work.  Sorry,  that just doesn’t jive with marriage and divorce statistics.  

A recent paper from the RAND Corporation confirms that men and women tend to have significantly different expectations of cohabitation.    On average, men are less committed.  52% of cohabiting young men between 18 & 26, are uncertain about whether their relationship will last.  Only 39% of cohabiting women that age agree.  More than four in 10 men say they are not completely committed to their partners compared to 26& of women.    Those are polled facts.  That’s a problem!

Men and women deserve better...we want; we deserve to love another and to be loved.  Marriage is not a simple matter; it’s hard work.  Partners have to work at the marriage to make the marriage successful, rather than only a short term relationship.  It’s too easy to end a relationship; it’s harder to dissolve a marriage of two committed individuals who value their bond and family.  935 words