fools and jerks and intimate relationships in 2005 and intimate relationships and relational dynamics

I could not have written this essay ten, or even five, years ago. At that time I was still affected by a certain expression of feminism that I picked up in Boston in the late 1970s which believed, though it would not expressly say so, that the basic problem with Western civilization was men. Men invented the "patriarchal system;" we perpetuated that system; we should be ashamed both of inventing and maintaining the system; and we should work hard to overthrow not only patriarchy but all sexist attitudes that flow from it. Because I bought into this ideology in the late 1970s, I was quite happy to agree that we men caused all the major problems in the West and that women were, if not inherently more virtuous than men, comparatively more innocent and generally to be trusted in all of their judgments. That is, I couldn't have brought myself to criticize a woman's manner of thinking or her conclusions a decade ago; such criticism would be a subtle attempt, I believed, to reassert the noxious patriarchal system which we all agreed needed unceremonious internment in an unmarked grave.

But, I don't believe this anymore. I have come to see this ideology as an expression of what all ideologies try to do--to provide an overarching explanation of all life by articulating one or two basic principles and then fit the disparate experiences of life onto its Procrustean bed. Ideologies naturally dehumanize because they fail to account for individual experience that may run counter to the dominant belief; indeed, ideologies are often no more than projections of fearful people who themselves are not fully committed to what they say they believe. Ideologies run roughshod over individuals in the hope of saving that same individual.

So, with this paean to the individual firmly in place, I feel freer to try to understand the dynamics of intimate male and female relationships in the first decade of our century. What I have concluded is that both men and women bring their individual baggage as well as their more gender-related baggage to relationships. Though no hard and fast rule obtains as to which characteristics reign in any particular relationship, I have concluded through extensive conversations, observations of men and women and reflection on my own experience that women, basically, are fools and men, in their essence, are jerks. How they get together in lasting and satisfying ways remains a mystery to me.

Fools First

I have a female friend who fits perfectly into this category. She is an accomplished professional woman, about 47, never married, but desirous now of connecting for a LTR (as we call it) with a man. She thinks she has found someone who fits her requirements and interests: a doctor, 55, with no kids from his first marriage, ambitious, hard-working, rich and with very little apparent baggage. They struck up the relationship about 10 months ago through an online dating service and it seemed to blossom like a spring flower. He would call her daily, even twice a day. She visited him (they live about 1000 miles apart) a few times; they talked easily and apparently had a lot in common. However, in the past few months, it seems that his medical practice has become very busy. He has multiple certifications and increasingly seems to have difficulty finding people to "cover" for him. In addition, he entered into a partnership with others to purchase a medical building, and some complications with the purchase have kept his life rather busy. The net result: no time for my friend. She writes emails to him, calls him, patiently waits for him, and wonders why he doesn't respond. She says repeatedly that she is getting fed up with his tactics. After all, she is a brilliant woman, a person of great worth and talents, and she doesn't know how much longer she should give him before she tells him to "drop dead." I check in with her every month or so on the issue, and she vows that she will give him "one last chance."

What I have told her, which she doesn't really understand, is that she, by persisting in a losing cause, is a fool. He is not interested in her. He may have been at one time, but he seems like a man who is so engrossed in his work and his economic life that he doesn't have the interest or time to "start" a relationship. The virtue of long-term marriages, I tell her, is that once you get to your 50s, you sometimes can get to your work without hours of deep conversations each day. Many men in their 50s are in their prime, and they simply don't want the responsibility or can't take the time to cultivate a relationship from the "ground up." She agrees with me, and then gives him more time.

Jerks Second

Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be jerks. What this means is not only that they (we) are dense to possible signals that a woman sends out, but we become so engrossed in the affairs of our own life that we don't pay her much heed and then we have the effrontery to blame her when things don't go well between us. Men as jerks means that men, in general, are not very familiar with their hearts; that we have real trouble admitting mistakes; that we are skeptical about intimacy and deep relational conversation; that we blame others for our mistakes; and that the only kind of love we can muster is a sort of reflective love rather than a generative love.

Let me explain what I mean by this last sentence. One of the soliloquies from Othello I will always cherish is Othello's great speech in 1.3 where he talks about the former hardships he faced. While he narrated the story of his hardships to Desdemona's father, she was listening to the narration, and she fell in love with him. Othello comments: "She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,/ And I lov'd her that she did pity them." She fell in love with him because he was a man of adventure; he fell in love with her because she was in love with him. His love is "reflective" or second-order. Women frequently tell me that they have met men who truly are able to love them for their own sake, and not simply reflectively, but I think that Othello's type of love is very characteristic of the male gender. By loving this way, it is much easier for men to be jerks, because we often miss the meaning that a woman is trying to communicate, and we are too caught up with the stories of our adventures to hear the palpitations of her heart. Thus, we don't hear things aright; we make poor judgments; we chose our words unskillfully; and we do dumb things.

Conclusion

Many women will readily admit that they, and women in general, are fools when it has to do with love. They cherish dreams and hopes that open them up to self-exposure and unnecessary pain. Not as many men admit that they are jerks. This latter happens because most men aren't very self-reflective, and therefore don't see the blinking bulbs with the bright lights attached to their suits that say, "Caution, you are in the presence of a jerk." But men and women still want each other. One friend told me that a counselor mentioned to her that most women, by the time they are in their mid-50s, don't like men much anymore. I can see why that is true, if indeed the data supports it. But, there still are enough of both genders out there who are interested in making matches. Yet, both genders carry their unique weaknesses or vulnerabilities with them, which should probably be understood and accepted before you get too much older.

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