Returning to the Blue Book

We have scrupulously reported the evidence: Johnny and Janey cannot read. They cannot write and they cannot count. They do not read books and do not write their papers, in high school or college. Apparently, something called Chat GPT does it for them.

You may believe that it does not much matter. Surely, college students do not want to be wasting their precious time reading and writing, honing their intelligence and their ability to think and to articulate. 

And yet, however, do you imagine that these serial cheaters will be able to do the jobs of tomorrow. It’s nice to think that public policy is going to bring industry home, but what if we do not have the human capital to run that industry effectively.

And we will not even bother with the simple fact that if you cannot articulate a thought coherently and cogently you will be at a loss when it comes to communicating with other people.

Reading is one of the best ways to absorb the most information in the shortest period of time. And writing is the best way to learn how to state clearly what you think, not to mention persuade someone else to take you seriously.

We are all aware of the fact that the young generation, Gen Z, has a bad attitude toward work. It is lazy and inefficient, lacking in the most elementary skills.  Could it be that these young people are simply overwhelmed by the requirement to do more reading and writing on the job, and that they believe that they can get away with not doing it, because they have learned mostly how to cheat.

Now, the professorial empire is striking back. The Wall Street Journal reports that professors have resorted to the good old blue book, that is, to in class exams, written by hand, without the aid of books or phones. 

The Wall Street Journal explains:

Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it.

It’s called a blue book.

The mere thought of that exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages is enough to make generations of college kids clam up—and make their hands cramp up.

But inexpensive pamphlets of stapled paper have become a surprisingly valuable tool for teachers at a time when they need all the help they can get.

Apparently, one company manufactures most of the blue books. Lately, business has been booming:

All of which explains how a paper company in Pennsylvania has unexpectedly found itself on the front lines of the classroom AI wars. 

Most blue books for sale in campus bookstores and on Amazon for 23 cents apiece are made by Roaring Spring Paper Products. The family-owned business was founded more than a century ago in Roaring Spring, a small borough outside Altoona that has become the blue-book capital of America. The company now sells a few million of these classic exam books every year and all of them are manufactured in the U.S., said Kristen Allen, its vice president of sales and marketing.

And yes, I asked her if everybody makes jokes about Dunder Mifflin when they find out she works for a paper company in Pennsylvania.

“Nobody,” she said. “It’s weird—and it’s sad. I love ‘The Office.’ ” ...

This new golden age of blue books is not something that anyone would have predicted a few years ago, when remote school put them on the verge of extinction. But after sales tanked in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, they have picked up in recent years because of AI cheating.

And then there is the problem of communication, or lack of same. If young people do not know how to communicate thoughts and feelings, not to mention, information, their relationships will necessarily suffer--

The ability to connect with other people, to develop and sustain relationships requires advanced verbal and cognitive skills. Lacking same, the nation will quickly descend into social chaos. And besides if you are invited to a dinner party and demonstrate that you have no table manners, or that you do not know how to speak intelligibly within a conversation, you will most likely not be invited back.

Wednesday Potpourri

First, hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman is not the only person to note the conceptual deformity, but why not begin with his succinct comment on the current political scene:

A nation in which one administration can allow millions of unvetted illegal migrants into the country, but requires that a court vet each deportation decision in an individually adjudicated case will soon lose the values our democratic system was intended to preserve.

Second, meanwhile down in Argentina, the Javier Milei reforms are bearing fruit. Mario Nawfal reports:

MILEI’S “CRAZY” PLAN WORKED—ARGENTINA’S PAYCHECKS JUST HIT A 6-YEAR HIGH Private sector wages in Argentina just spiked to their best level since 2018—real wages hit 107 in Feb 2025, up from a sad 91 in late 2023. What changed? Oh, just Milei dropping economic reforms like they were hot. People called it “shock therapy.” Turns out, it was more “money therapy.” Critics yelled, “He’ll crash the economy!” Workers are now yelling, “Payday!”

Third, obviously, everyone is talking about the big show that Democrats are putting on in regard to a Salvadoran MS-13 gang member who is currently sitting in a Salvador prison. 

Allow border czar Tom Homan to explain. This, from an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

Homan said this, regarding Maryland Senator Van Hollen:

"What bothers me more than that is a U.S. Senator travels on our taxpayer dime to meet with a MS13 gang member." 

"What concerns me is Van Hollen never went to the border last four years, when Joe Biden had a 600% increase in s*x trafficking of women and children." 

"What shocks me is he's remained silent about the travesty that happened our southern border — many people died."

Fourth, from Elon Musk, in conversation with Joe Rogan, from February of this year:

As bad as Twitter was, the federal government is much worse. At least, Twitter passed audits.

“Twitter was at least break-even, and it had to pass an audit. The federal government is literally losing $2 trillion a year, and it fails its own audits.

There's a case where, Senator Collins gave the Navy $12 billion for more submarines, got no extra submarines, and then held a hearing to ask where the $12 billion went.

And they were like, we don't know—that was it. Only the federal government can get away with this level of waste.

The reason I'm putting so much effort into this is that I think it is a very dire situation. America's going bankrupt. That just can't happen.”

Fifth, Larry David-- you remember him-- just wrote a nasty and stupid op-ed for the New York Times entitled: “My Dinner with Adolph.” The subject was comedian Bill Maher’s dinner with President Trump.

The concept was sufficiently stupid to make its way into the Times. And sufficiently embarrassing to be penned by a man who has no shame.

Anyway, over at CNN Scott Jennings explained the game:

“But this isn't about that dinner. It's about the next one. Because this is the modern left. It's an attempt always to intimidate people into not ever doing it again.”

“It's to silence yourselves or we'll do it for you. That's the purpose of this op ed, so that the next comedian or the next person on the American left chooses not to speak to Donald Trump.”

“This is all an effort to get people not to do what you just said, which is to talk to each other and our political leaders.”

This is how the modern left enforces obedience: torch one person in public—so no one else dares step out of line.

Sixth, meanwhile in the movie theatres, Disney’s woke Snow White continues to fail, miserably. By the numbers, via PJ Media:

In its fifth weekend on screens, "Snow White" earned about $7 million in ticket sales domestically and internationally, bringing the total box office take to an estimated $194 million. The film cost an estimated $270 million (after tax credits!) plus another $70-$100 million to market and probably needs $625 million, after theaters take their cut, just to break even.

Seventh, in the therapy world, we now have a distinguished Brooklyn therapist named Natasha Cohen. She was trying to set a good example for her child patients, so she did something stupid. The New York Post has the story:

The Brooklyn woman accused of leaving a brick scrawled with a swastika and the word “Nazi” on a parked Tesla is a super-woke family therapist who was involved in criminal justice diversion programs — and blamed Elon Musk for her heinous actions as she was taken into custody.

Natasha Cohen was released on her own recognizance following her arraignment on hate-crime charges Saturday night, according to prosecutors.

Cohen, 46, has a private practice, working with children, adolescents and their families for more than two decades.

Eighth, in once-Great Britain the Supreme Court has declared that there are only two sexes. Now, even Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has come around to this view.

Julie Burchill has mostly opposed transmania, as has J.K. Rowling. Now Burchill has a few words about Rowling’s case:

Many brave people – mostly women, but joined by a few exceptional men – have sacrificed much for the victory we finally took receipt of in the Supreme Court last week. They have been robbed of reputations, careers, relationships and – almost – sanity, as much of the world’s establishment and institutions went gender-woo gaga and told us that women could have penises, men could grow cervixes and giraffes are born without sex. …

Until she was hated, I never cared for J.K. Rowling. The idea of anyone over the age of majority who could be reading, say, Lionel Shriver instead wasting their time reading stories about boy wizards irritated me intensely. There were so many of these clowns, apparently, that special ‘adult’ covers of the Potter books were being manufactured, to cover their embarrassment. As with adult babies, I must admit an intolerant part of me felt that such people should probably have their voting rights removed if they were not willing to fully embrace the blessed state of being a grown-up.

Last but not least, I now have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com. 

Saturday Miscellany

First, you will recall-- it was not that long ago-- that the world heaped derision on the Trump Baza plan. It was, we were assured, a non-starter.

By now, however, we ought to remain skeptical about such reactions. Initial reactions are often for show. They are not about substance.

So, if you have been following my reflections on the Trump Gaza plan, you will not be surprised to ;earn that a senior official from the United Arab Emirates had a few good words to say about it.

The Emirates signed on to the Abraham Accords and they have maintained their alliance with Israel in the midst of the propaganda war against the Jewish state. And, keep in mind, the Emirates are closely allied with Saudi Arabia. At the very least, if the Saudis had not wanted the Emirates to affirm their hesitant support for the Trump plan, it would not have happened.

Zero Hedge blog reports:

In an extraordinarily surprising development, the United Arab Emirates (UAE has signaled the possibility of removing all Palestinians from Gaza, in accordance with Trump's controversial Gaza plan.

UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al Otaiba in a fresh interview called the plan "difficult but inevitable" and said he's sees "no alternative" but Trump's plan to expel Gaza's population and undertake massive economic redevelopment of the Strip. He had been asked by a reporter whether the UAE is working on a separate plan, to which he responded no, there's no other plan.

Second, our new vice president-- JD Vance-- had a few choice words for the leftists who are running Europe. In particular, he had the harshest words for the British Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer.

The Daily Mail reports:

Vice President J.D. Vance took his culture war to Europe on Friday, warning that its greatest threat came not from China or Russia but from within as he delivered a blistering attack on what he said was the continent's retreat from its traditional values.

Vance said free speech and democratic institutions were being eroded in an address to the Munich Security Conference.

He accused European politicians of forcing people to shut down social media accounts and urged leaders to do more to stem illegal immigration. 

Vance reserved particular scorn for America's closest ally, and the case of a British man arrested after praying near an abortion clinic.

'Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making,' he said.

'If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.'

Third, some six decades ago a housewife named Betty Friedan launched an opening salvo against the patriarchy with her book, The Feminine Mystique. She posited that suburban housewives, in particular, were suffering from a maladie that had no name, a neurotic condition that was produced by the realities of being a housewife.

As a result, young women ever since have renounced the role of housewife. They have put career first and have refused to cook dinner.

The result, reported by The Daily Mail, is an outbreak of misery among young liberal women throughout America. I do not think it’s a stretch to say that these women are invariably feminists:

Liberal women are more likely to report feeling lonely than their conservative counterparts, according to a survey. 

New evidence in the 2024 American Family Survey, found that 37 percent of conservative women from the ages of 18-40 reported being satisfied with their life. 

Only 12 percent of liberal women in the same group said they felt the same way, while 28 percent of moderate said they were satisfied.

The findings also say that liberal women are nearly three times more likely than conservatives to say they experienced loneliness at least a few times a week. 

It also broke down the relationship status of those surveyed, saying that 40 percent of liberal women reported being single, while 31 percent were married. 

For conservative women, 33 percent reported being single, while 51 percent were married.

Women have come a long way. Their problem now has a name-- feminism.

Fourth, so much for amateur psychology. Walter Kern points out that those who declared Trump to be something of an egomaniac have been shown to be wrong.

Wish I had a dollar for all the pros last year who told me Trump can't share the limelight and would never bring on Kennedy and the others

Guy has shared more limelight than most politicians ever.

Is David Brooks a Moral Philosopher?

I am confident that if you want to know about character building you are not going to turn to New York Times columnist David Brooks.

I do not want to say that Brooks, with his jejune musings, is always wrong, but surely he has missed the point.

Being an ethical individual means following certain rules. When you follow those rules you become a functioning member of a community, someone who is trustworthy and reliable. When you fail to follow those rules, you are a miscreant or a malcontent. 

As it happens, we learn good behavior before we know why we have learned good behavior. We learn table manners before we know why we need to practice them. And, if we want to have good character, we practice good table manners… even when we are eating alone. 

Brooks, fully in touch with his feminine side, believes that it all requires a transformation of the heart, but that just shows that he sees things from an inside/out perspective. He does not know that you do not learn to follow rules by improving your heart, your compassion or your empathy. You can feel your deepest feelings, but if you do not know how to use a knife and fork, according to local custom, you are going to be considered a dolt. And you are going to be excluded from certain events.

Here is a sample of Brooks’s drivel:

Moral formation isn’t just downloading content into a bunch of brains; it involves an inner transformation of the heart. It involves helping students change their motivations so that they want to lead the kind of honorable and purposeful lives that are truly worth wanting. It’s more about inspiration than information.

It is not about changing your motivations. It’s about following rules. These are not the same thing. And it is not about having a change of heart. It’s about developing a good habit, and doing it unthinkingly.

Brooks does better when he suggests that character is developed within a group. He calls these groups institutions, but family and community are not institutions. Simply put, all human societies have table manners, but they do not all have the same table manners.

They are formed within an institution — whether it’s a school, a biker gang, a company or the Marine Corps — that has a distinct ethos, that holds up certain standards (“This is how we do things here”). In this way habits and temperament are slowly engraved upon the people in the group.

But then, Brooks goes off the rails and pretends that having good character means being a good listener, and showing proper empathy for the stories you will be hearing.

Treating people well involves practicing certain skills, which can be taught just as the skills of carpentry and tennis can be taught. First there are the skills of understanding — being good at listening and conversation, and eliciting life stories so that you can accurately see the people around you and make them feel seen.

You are not making people feel seen. You are making them feel like they belong to the group. The Brooks distortion is more like therapy than like working together.

Then there are the skills of consideration, how to treat people well in the complex circumstances of life: how to offer criticism with care; how to break up with someone without crushing the person’s heart; how to ask for and offer forgiveness; how to end a conversation or a dinner party gracefully. Many students today don’t learn these skills at school or anywhere else.

It’s all about having the right manners, following the right customs and norms. And to do so at ritualized social events.

These range from family dinners to celebratory ceremonies. You need not have the right feelings. You need not feel empathy for your fellow participants. But you do need to show up and to practice the proper manners. And to follow the dress code and the grooming code.

Obviously, Brooks’ sense of moral character development is largely off the mark:

People don’t become better versions of themselves as they acquire intellectual information; they get better as they acquire emotional knowledge — the ability to be made indignant by injustice, outraged by cruelty, to know how to gracefully do things with people, not for people. 

Of course, this catalogue of moral sentiments is deceptive. You can feel all the right feelings. You can be appalled at the right injustices. But, if you have no table manners; if you do not show up for dinner; if you do not share food with others; if you speak out of turn and ignore everyone else-- you are simply a dolt and will likely not be invited back.

We should not allow people to believe that thinking the right thoughts, feeling the right feelings and believing the right beliefs is going to gain you membership and standing in the nation.

If we were to follow Brooks, we would imagine that the right state of mind will gain us access to social groups, to family dinners and company picnics. Again, those who recommend that holding certain opinions will grant us access to the right groups are lying to us. Or else, they are simply confused.

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A Thanksgiving Message

Here’s one more thing to feel thankful for. You are not doing couples therapy. 

You would think they would have gotten over it by now. To the best of my knowledge, a consensus is forming around the notion that couples therapy is largely ineffective. It is a waste of your time and energy.

Nevertheless, Showtime has a series led by psychoanalyst and couples therapist Orna Guralnik, so perhaps some people have not gotten the message.

In the world of getting over things, most people by now have gotten over their childhood infatuation with the theories of one Melanie Klein. She belonged to the first generation of psychoanalytic thinkers.

Most people have gotten over Klein, except in South America. Before they latched on to the theories of Jacques Lacan, Argentinians, for example, were seriously infatuated with Klein’s musings about good and bad breasts, not to mention her notion that human development replays infantile attachments.

Now, Guralnik is trying to explain, in an especially lame fashion, that we need to understand America’s current divisions in Kleinian terms. She wrote it for the New York Times, which should also know better. 

As for whether or not that will cure what ails us, the example of Argentina is shining forth. For years that country seems to have led the world in psychoanalysis, whether Kleinian or Lacanian. The result, a largely dysfunctional natioin.

At least, until the arrival of the new Argentinian president, Javier Milei. You will have noticed that President Milei has turned his country around and has been producing unheard of levels of economic growth. Didn’t JP Morgan bank predict that the nation’s economy would grow at 8.5% next year? 

Milei is more libertarian than not, and one suspects that his role model is the Chilean revolution, led by followers of the Chicago School of Economics, i.e. Milton Friedman and Co. 

With a few strokes of his pen Milei put an end to the vast Nanny State that was mothering the people of his country. Good-bye Melanie Klein. Good-bye infantilizing the people. Welcome, prosperity.

As for Guralnik’s lame efforts to show how people who have differing political opinions can get along, you will not be surprised to learn that after all of the mewling over Melanie Klein she arrives at the conclusion: empathy.

That’s right. The buzzword that defines today’s therapy culture is trotted out to solve all problems. Everyone but Guralnik knows that this is girl talk, that women are far more likely to deploy empathy than are men. When you tell men to feel empathy they mostly do not know what you are talking about.

As for the question of how two members of a couple can learn to get along, to the point where a difference of opinion does not threaten their connection, the answer lies in a simple fact. If they are both members of the same team; if they have defined relationships within the team; then different opinions are not threatening to group cohesion.

Take a simple example. Today is Thanksgiving, where most people enact a social bonding ritual. You belong to a family, and being a member of a family comports with certain duties. As in, showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. 

If you think that you should not show up because your Aunt Sadie voted for the wrong candidate in the last election, you are faithless. You are saying that your role as a family member is less relevant than your deeply held ideological convictions. At that point, you deserve whatever you get-- as in, dinner with Joy Reid.

Therapy tends to think that we are defined by our childhood. That means you are just a big baby. If you define yourself as a unique autonomous individual, well then, you do not need to get along with other people. In fact, other people, not to mention the duties that define membership in a family, threaten your autonomy. 

You will end up being an ideologically driven fanatic. And we note, with regret, that the same rule applies to patriotism. If you want to know why the nation’s people are divided against themselves, the reason lies in the absence of patriotic loyalty, the refusal to see oneself as a member of a community and a nation. 

When you cannot bond over a ritual you will seek to produce an ersatz connection by fostering groupthink, by judging people by whether or not they agree with your jejune political opinions. It is a losing game, a game played by losers. Better to be a good member of your family and a patriotic citizen of your nation. At that point you will be able to accept differences of opinion without imagining that they threaten your autonomy.

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Poison Food

Americans are seriously overweight. They are also, apparently, seriously unhealthy. Now, Robert Kennedy, Jr. who did not much care about the health of his second wife, one Mary Richardson Kennedy-- when he tried to destroy, as a tactic in a divorce negotiation, thus leading her to hang herself in the barn-- is going to help us solve it by removing some bad chemicals from children’s cereals.

So, cereal makers are poisoning our children and compromising everyone’s health. And lest we ignore it, pharmaceutical manufacturers are poisoning our minds by advertising the latest and greatest pill, advising us to rush out and inform our doctors that we know best, because we saw some ad.

Obviously, the issue of American obesity is well beyond my ken. If the condition requires a choice between gastric bypass surgery and a new pill, one might reasonably argue that the problem involves physiology and cannot be overcome by better diet and more exercise.

Surely, there are perfectly appropriate uses for the new drugs. The problem is that we have been told that they will solve everyone’s weight problem, to the exclusion of other treatments.

It’s one thing to say that some people are suffering a metabolic disturbance. It’s quite another to say that everyone should be taking a pill to control weight. 

So, Heather Mac Donald suggests that we are losing sight of the simple fact that healthier behavioral habits can do wonders for our weight. 

As she sees it, chronic obesity, as a societal issue, is a cultural issue. We eat too much and exercise too little:

We are to believe that the sharp rise of obesity in the U.S. over the last several decades is due to genetic changes in Americans’ susceptibility to weight gain. To portray obesity as something brought on by behavior—overeating and under exercising—is to blame the victim and to commit “fat-shaming.”

To what extent is obesity a function of bad habits? To some extent it must be. If, as Aristotle once said, the cure for bad habits is to develop good replacement habits, then our relationship with our appetites should not always be considered a biomedical issue. Besides, there are degrees of overweight:

By medicalizing behavioral issues, the elites transfer power from the individual to themselves, the dispensers of technocratic responses to social problems.

The recent alteration in the Anglosphere’s diet and lifestyle is massive and obvious, however: snacking throughout the day, a diet of highly sweetened processed foods, and a lack of exercise or even of merely walking modest distances. 

To state the obvious, food consumption is a social ritual. It is not equivalent to shooting up nutrients. True enough, chemicals are involved, but there is more to it than chemistry.

 Environmental litigation focuses obsessively on chemicals. Kennedy ties Americans’ worsening health to those chemicals. He is fixated on the dyes that make processed junk food more brilliant. He wants to get rid of the artificial coloring in Froot Loops. He wants more regulation of preservatives and pesticides.

But, Mac Donald has an alternative. Don’t feed your children Froot Loops. Simple and direct. How come no one else thought of this.

Rather than coloring Froot Loops with “natural” dyes, as Kennedy suggests, a better course would be to persuade parents not to feed their children Froot Loops in the first place. 

Mac Donald recommends that we reconsider what we have done to the rituals surrounding food consumption. We know that children who participate in regular family dinners tend to have superior mental health. 

Worse yet, the alternative to excessive snacking is home cooking. Naturally, our culture does not approve of it. Surely, feminists do not approve of it. 

Family dinners socialize children, to their benefit. One suspects that it moderates appetite. It is far more difficult to scarf down a bunch of cupcakes when other people are witnessing your  bad behavior.

Kennedy should make the case for home cooking—for mothers actually preparing meals for their families, rather than leaving their children to wolf down the contents of cellophane packs or to microwave frozen pizza whenever those children can tear themselves away from their screens. (Sitting down to a cooked family meal is also a means of socializing children. Feminists scorn such domestic activities as a sneaky means of diverting females from the partner track.)

So, it’s about discipline, but especially about ritualizing food consumption.

Understandably, Big Food wants us to eat as much of its products as we can stuff down our stomachs before bursting. The solution to its blandishments is not more regulation but more self-discipline. Nor are costly drugs, with their inevitable side effects, necessary to reduce obesity.

Of course, there is the problem of appetite. The therapy world tells people who have eating disorders to eat when they feel hungry. It’s a bow to the goddess of appetite.

The trouble is, unless every member of your family feels hungry at precisely the same time, this so-called rule will make family dinners impossible.

So, let’s introduce a new rule: eat when it’s time to eat. Eat when everyone has gotten together around the table to partake of the repast. Make dinner a social bonding ritual, not merely a nutritional issue.

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Abigail's Case Fiction Concludes

Herewith the conclusion of Abigail’s case fiction.

Back in the day, when Freudian psychoanalysis ruled the mental health roost, an analyst would have wanted to uncover the desire that Abigail was repressing with her systematically bad behavior. He might have considered that she was punishing men for what one boy did to her during childhood. He might have wanted to suss out the hidden desire, that is, whether or not she really wanted to be sexually abused by the neighbor.

Seymour was aware of all this, but he was not in the psycho analysis business. Coaching was different. It involved changing behavior, changing the way one conducted one’s life. And it invited the client to follow instructions laid down by the coach, better to learn how to play the game. In this case, the game involved seduction and socialization. 

Whereas therapy sought the why, coaching looked for the how. Therapy, whether psycho analytic of otherwise, sought to provide the patient with an understanding of why she was doing what she was doing. Presumably, this insight would lead to  more constructive behaviors.

With coaching the question was how the client could learn to function differently. Clearly, Abigail’s behavior, her studied rudeness and her insistence of doing what she wanted when she wanted, was a way to manage the anxiety that attended her trauma. 

And yet, she believed that it was authentic. She believed that she would suffer if she repressed it. This meant that her path out of her dilemma would require her to listen carefully to Seymour. Her instincts were thoroughly embroiled with her childhood trauma. If she continued to follow their lead she would never overcome it. That is, she would never banish the ghost of Delbert.

At the least, Seymour wanted her to refrain from carnal relations for the time being. Admittedly, this would require something like repression, but being a hookup queen was obviously not doing her very much good.

Abigail complied, though she did not like complying. She was quickly losing her faith in Seymour. Nevertheless, refraining from sex did not feel all that bad after all. It required her to find other ways to connect.

When Bertram invited her to have dinner in Chinatown, at the Golden Unicorn, she bit her tongue and refrained from announcing that the place felt to her like a cafeteria. She merely asked him when he wanted to pick her up.

She was disconcerted at having manifested a compliance that she barely recognized as her own. Seymour, however, thought it a sign of progress. Refraining from insulting Bertram was precisely what he wanted her to do.

For her part Abigail had no real confidence in her ability to conduct the burgeoning relationship. All she really knew was her feelings. She believed that expressing them was the right thing to do. Seymour tried, with some success, to explain that she was really functioning like a character in a movie or play, someone who needed to express feelings more flagrantly because otherwise they would go unnoticed.

Besides making a spectacle of one’s feelings ignored the other person. How could she allow Bertram to tell her about himself if she was monopolizing the conversation with  dramatic display. Thereby, Seymour introduced the notion of moderation, of temperance. Rather than see the relationship as a way to learn about herself, she might consider it a way to connect with another human being.

So Seymour asked a series of questions about Bertram. “Tell me what you know about him. Who is he, where does he come from, what kind of family does he have, have you ever met his friends. 

And then there remained the question of what Abigail was looking for herself. She had declared herself opposed to marriage, and that was convenient if Bertram was just another hookup, but what if he wanted more. Would she need to overcome her compunctions about wifedom? 

Of course, Seymur wanted Abigail to be flexible. He did not want her wed to the no-marriage position, something that would almost guarantee that she would eventually be dumped.

Four days later Abigail returned to report on her date with Bertram. It had been something of a disappointment. She had learned that he was a distinguished member of his profession, that he liked mountain biking and basketball. 

Abigail had to strain to show any interest. Besides, the air conditioning at the restaurant was too cold and the service was slipshod. Yet, the food was very good.

She blamed Seymour for the dull date. “Were it not for you I would have been more spontaneous and more fiery.” Seymour replied glibly: “Sometimes one can be thankful for little things.”

Over the next few weeks Abigail found herself spending more time with Bertram. She liked him but she was far from enraptured. She was even enjoying conversation with him. On those few occasions when she came out with a gross insult, about the way he dressed, for example, he laughed it off.

The only thing that was missing in this budding romance was the sex. By all evidence Bertram was not interested. Abigail knew how to seduce men; she was rather good at it; but for a time nothing worked on her new lover.

Since she had tried every way she knew to show she was ready, willing and able to have sex, none of it had worked. So she explained to Seymour that he had to find another ruse, or else, she would lose her mind.

Seymour was up to the task. He recommended that she try showing a studied disinterest in sex. Let him come to you, he offered, rather than making him feel that he is in pursuit.

Abigail had already concluded that Bertram had been injured by a previous relationship, but she willingly dialed down her interest.

Yet, Abigail liked to spend time with Bertram. She enjoyed his company and she liked the fact that he valued her opinions. She was thinking to herself that he would not be quite so accommodating if he knew what she was really thinking, but this new version of a relationship was not entirely unsatisfying, the absence of great sex notwithstanding.

Eventually, they did manage to do the deed. Abigail described it as “non-descript” whatever that meant. Bertram was not very passionate and did not seem to know how to please her. Following instructions, Abigail did not tell him how inadequate he was. She had learned that such criticisms were ultimately self-defeating.

Obviously, the more she told herself that she could do a lot worse than to spend her life with him, the less the less-than-passionate sex bothered her.

But then, three months into their relationship, they were just about to settle into dinner at his house, when the phone rang. Abigail was in his kitchen heating up the sauce for the poached salmon, but she overheard the conversation. 

When Bertram picked up the phone the tone of his voice changed. A warmth and intimacy suddenly appeared, different from the tone that she knew well. When they sat down to dinner she asked, innocently, “Who was that?” Bertram replied curtly, “an old friend.” She continued to pry: “Does the friend have a name?” Bertram replied, “It was Leda.” Abigail let slip that she had never heard the name before. And she added that she was surprised that he did not trust her enough to tell her about Leda. 

Finally, Bertram told her the story of Leda. Twelve years ago the two had been in love. They had known each other since their days at Princeton and had planned to marry after college. Leda wanted to finish her medical training, so they waited until she had passed her oncology boards before setting a date. 

It was going to be a large and very lavish wedding. And then,  two weeks before the wedding, Leda came to him and announced that she could not go through with it. She had fallen in love with someone else, her mentor in oncology, the sponsor of her fellowship, Dr. Wenkels.

Bertram had met the doctor, but had not given much thought to the prospect of a relationship with Leda. He was in his late forties, with wife and children. So far so good. Yet, he had recently separated from his wife and declared his love for Leda. She greeted the news with distress, because she became aware that she had long since longed for Dr. Wenkels. 

Bertram was crushed, and publicly humiliated. He had sworn off women until the moment when he met Abigail. 

And yet, Abigail was strangely consoled by this information. She now understood that Bertram’s reticence and detachment had a cause. She had learned enough to know not to confront him over his nostalgia, so she changed the subject to the fashion shows.

At her next appointment with Seymour, Abigail explained what had happened and asked, plaintively, “What do I do now?”

Seymour replied that it was not always necessary to do something. Perhaps the situation would resolve itself. 

Abigail was not pleased with that suggestion, so Seymour tried another. He suggested that Bertram was probably not trying to deceive her, but was not sharing a large scale public humiliation. On the other side, his friends and family must have known what happened with Leda, and thus, were looking at her in a context that she did not know about.

Working together Seymour and Abigail decided that it would be best if she considered Leda to be their, and not just his problem. She had the right to express anger at Leda for her perfidy, and she ought to suggest that Bertram do best to cease all communication with her. 

This brought them closer together and their sex life began to improve. Bertram was not going to be a world class lover, but he was becoming more than competent. Abigail found herself more capable of responding to him.

Fourteen months later Abigail and Bertram were married on St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. In the weeks preceding the wedding they had only one dispute. Bertram wanted to invite Leda and her family. Abigail refused categorically. They both wanted Seymour to attend the ceremony, but he demurred. He did not feel it was his place.

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