The Case of the Dawdling Boyfriend

It’s like damning with faint praise. A couple has been together for years. They have been living together for more than a year. The female member expects to hear a marriage proposal… perhaps for Christmas. The male member offers her a ring for Christmas… only it’s not an engagement ring. He emphasizes the point.

She feels insulted. Or some such. She is profoundly disappointed and keeps the friendship ring as a sign of rejection. Or some such. The couple has had the marriage conversation before. Boyfriend has said that the couple still has some work to do before that momentous event. Meaning what exactly? We do not know.

She feels that something is wrong, so she writes to therapist Lori Gottlieb. Naturally, we know nothing beyond her feelings. We do not know about friends and family. We do not know who pursues which career. We do not know who supports the family. We do not know how they divide their chores and define their roles. We do not even know how old they are. We do know that her biological clock is running out, fact that does not seem to register on the boyfriend’s radar.

In short, we know nothing about this couple, beyond the fact that she wants to be engaged and that the ring she received for Christmas tells her that she is not yet marriageable.

Here is the letter, from Anna in Seattle:

For Christmas this year, my boyfriend surprised me with a ring. It’s sapphire and silver—beautiful. But it’s not an engagement ring. Without saying so outright, he made clear that it was just a ring. After dating for a few years, and living together for the past year and a half, I can’t help but be disappointed. To make matters worse, when I went to the store to get the ring resized, the clerk kept congratulating me and asking me all about my fiancé.

I wasn’t expecting to get engaged over the holidays—my boyfriend has also said he doesn’t want to propose on a holiday, or my birthday, or some other occasion so that he won’t “ruin it” if the marriage goes badly. We’ve talked about marriage and getting engaged, but he also says he thinks we still have some things to work on in our relationship. I’ve tried to advocate for myself and tell him that I have my own timeline and expectations, but that I’m willing to give him the time he needs.

But now, with this ring, I wonder whether that’s still in the cards. I can’t imagine him getting me two rings in the same year, given that this is the first piece of jewelry he’s ever bought me. I’m worried he’s finding new ways of putting off our engagement without having to talk to me about it.

So this is my question: Is my disappointment unreasonable? I definitely feel the pull of marriage while I am still young enough to have children. I also know that I love my boyfriend and am dedicated to making our relationship work long-term. Am I disappointed because he hasn’t picked me yet, or because I have real fears about the longevity of our relationship?

She is asking the right questions. She does not ask how best to let him know that she is disappointed, and Gottlieb will address that issue. For now, I agree with Gottlieb on a point that Anna herself raises: what is the feeling trying to tell her? Is it saying that he has offended her by sending what seems to be more a friendship ring than an engagement ring? Is it saying that she is having doubts about the relationship? If she is fast approaching infertility, his dawdling is simply not defensible. It does not speak well of him.

Now, Gottlieb will begin by advising either couples therapy or yet another conversation. As noted in the letter, the couple has already discussed the marriage question. More discussion will feel to the man like more pressure. For all we know he does not like to feel pressured and will only propose when he can feel as though he is taking the initiative.

Gottlieb also counsels against laying down an ultimatum. She is quite correct. Ultimata never work, even when they seem to produce the right outcome. She recommends that the woman decide for herself how long she is going to put up with this. Again, a very good idea. At that point, the solution is to walk away, to walk out on her dawdling boyfriend.

In Gottlieb’s words:

Instead, the person you need to set boundaries with is yourself. How long are you willing to tolerate his ambivalence? At what point will you tell the part of you that’s willing to wait that waiting is taking too long—that you need to move forward and free yourself up to meet someone who wants what you do? The more open you are to this internal dialogue, the more likely you’ll be to do more than simply wait and see what your boyfriend does.

Don’t make threats. Don’t lean in. Don’t exercise your will to power. But, tell yourself how long you are willing to wait, and if boyfriend does not propose, you should move out and move on.  A consequential action is worth far more than a series of conversations, even, or should I say, especially with a couples therapist.

Regrettably, she is in very deep now, so it will not feel very good to walk away... because that will either involve walking out of her home or telling him to leave. It might have been better to have received a firmer commitment before setting up house together.

The Truth about Iran

Among life’s mysteries is this. At a time when the Western media and Western  politicians are up in arms about the authoritarian regime in Saudi Arabia, at a time when Western European politicians are doing everything in their power to prop up the regime in Tehran, precious few publications are reporting on the systematic oppression occurring inside Iran.

Among those that have is the Guardian. Kudos to the Guardian. It is reporting Amnesty International’s recent compendium of the horrors that the Iranian regime has been visiting on its citizens. One feels compelled to note that the this same Iranian regime also received considerable support and sustenance from the Obama administration, even outside of the appalling nuclear deal.

Lee Smith compiled a few Obama administration policy acts toward Iran in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

… a 2008 article written by John Brennan—who went on to serve as White House counterterrorism adviser and Central Intelligence Agency director—advocated a grand bargain with Iran. In 2009 the Obama White House conducted secret negotiations with Tehran.

Mr. Obama later sidelined Project Cassandra, an investigation of illicit trafficking networks employed by Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese franchise. Launched in 2008, the investigation was run by a multiagency task force, including the FBI itself. Then for 18 months in 2014-15, the Obama White House gave the Iranians $700 million a month in sanctions relief. In January 2016, Mr. Obama sent Iran another $1.7 billion in cash. The administration also had a habit of leaking news of Israeli strikes on Iranian arms convoys and depots in Syria.

You might imagine that the Obama administration felt compelled to side with Iran, against Saudi Arabia, against Israel and against America… in order to appease the regime and to give it a path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Still and all… supporting the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism should have alerted newsrooms around the world. It did not… because Obama was their god and could do no wrong.

As for the human rights record of Iran, ignored by most of the world, the Guardian reports on Iran’s year of shame. It involved arresting dissidents, beating and shooting protesters. All told the regime was seriously involved in repressing dissent. Western Europe and the American media turned a blind eye on it all:

Iranian authorities arrested more than 7,000 dissidents last year in a sweeping crackdown that led to hundreds being jailed or flogged, at least 26 protesters being killed and nine people dying in custody amid suspicious circumstances, according to Amnesty International.

Those rounded up during violent dispersals of peaceful protests in what Amnesty called “a year of shame for Iran” included journalists, lawyers, minority rights activists and women who protested against being forced to wear headscarves.

Iranian authorities beat unarmed protesters and used live ammunition, teargas and water cannon throughout the year – particularly in January, July and August – with thousands arbitrarily arrested and detained, new figures assert.

“2018 will go down in history as a year of shame for Iran,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East research and advocacy director.

“The staggering scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences reveal the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent.

“From underpaid teachers to factory workers struggling to feed their families, those who have dared to demand their rights in Iran today have paid a heavy price.”

We have read the story of the women’s rights demonstrators who have been jailed in Saudi Arabia. We have not read the story of Iran’s repression of women’s rights protesters.

The Guardian continues:

He added: “Throughout 2018, the Iranian authorities waged a particularly sinister crackdown against women’s rights defenders. Governments which are engaged in dialogue with Iran must not stay silent while the net of repression rapidly widens.”

At least 112 women human rights defenders were arrested or remained in detention in Iran last year following sustained protests against compulsory veiling.  Women silently waved their headscarves on sticks in public, provoking a violent response and a number of “grossly unfair” trials that led to some being jailed.

So, those are the facts on the ground. When it comes to Iran the rest of the Western media and the Western European foreign policy establishment hears no evil, sees no evil and speaks no evil. After all, Iran is leading the march against Western civilization... with money provided by the Obama administration. Who could be against that?

The New York Times Promotes Anti-Semitism

The Michelle Alexander New York Times op-ed about Israel was openly anti-Semitic. I commented about it on the blog. One is shocked to see that the Times would hire an op-ed columnist who can be so biased and so ignorant and so hostile toward Israel.

Since I had my say, I am happy to pass along some more recent comments by Alan Dershowitz.

The front page of The New York Times Sunday Review featured one of the most biased, one-sided, historically inaccurate, ignorant, and bigoted articles ever published by that venerable newspaper. Written by Michele Alexander it is entitled: “Time to break the silence on Palestine,” as if the Palestinian issue has not been the most over-hyped cause on campuses, the United Nations, and the media. There is no silence to break. What must be broken is the bigotry of those who elevate the Palestinian claims over those of the Kurds, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Chechnyans, the Tibetans, the Ukrainians, and many other more deserving groups who truly suffer from the silence of the academy, the media and the international community. The United Nations devotes more resources — time, money and votes — to the Palestinian issue than to the claims of all the other oppressed groups combined. Some of these other groups cannot even get a hearing at the United Nations.

As for the suffering of the Palestinian people, it has resulted from policies dictated by their leaders, beginning with Yasser Arafat. Did you know that Arafat’s uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem wholeheartedly supported Adolph Hitler… because he believed that Hitler would rid the world of Jews:

The suffering of the Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of other groups, has been largely self-inflicted. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peale Commission Report of 1938, the United Nations Partition of 1947, the Clinton Barak offer of 2000-2001, the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers — responding with violence and terrorism — because they would have required them to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people — something they are unwilling to do even today. I know, because I have asked President Abbas that question directly and he has said no. The Palestinian leadership has always wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted there to be a Palestinian state.

Dershowitz calls out Alexander for creating an alternative universe where pro-Palestinian voices are drowned out by Jews. It is a flat-out lie:

Israel is not without some fault, but the one-sided-blame-it-all-on-Israel approach taken by Alexander is ahistorical and bigoted. One illustration of the author’s bias is her absurd claim that “many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights” because of “McCarthyite tactics” employed by pro-Israel groups. Has Alexander ever actually been on a campus? Well, I have taught and lectured at hundreds of campuses, and I can attest that there is no international cause that is given more attention — far more than it deserves in comparison with other more compelling causes — than the Palestinians. It is pro-Israel students who are silenced out of fear of being graded down, denied recommendations, and been shunned by peers. Efforts have been made to prevent me from speaking on several campuses, despite the fact that I advocate a two-state solution to the conflict.

The War on Christianity

Today’s radical left, John Hinderaker reminds us, does not just hate Jews. It has moved on from Jew hatred to hating Roman Catholics. Being the sworn enemy of Western civilization, it would naturally begin by attacking the smaller and weaker Jewish community. After that, it moves on to Christians, beginning today with Catholics.

You saw its ugly face in the attacks on the Covington Catholic boys. Among those who happily slandered the boys was Minnesota Congresswomen and notable anti-Semite, Ilhan Omar:

Ilhan Omar’s outrageous lies about the Covington Catholic boys, since deleted, illustrate an important lesson. Omar is a notorious anti-Semite; she goes so far as to advocate for the BDS movement. So, is it surprising that her venom has now been directed against Catholics?

What did she tweet:

The boys were protesting a woman's right to choose & yelled “it’s not rape if you enjoy it”

-They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants

-Sandmann’s family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology 

The left does not limit itself to hating Jews. It has lately increased its open attacks on Catholics:

The people who hate Jews are, for the most part, the same people who hate Christians. In the last few months, we have seen the Left ramp up its attacks on Catholics: Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee assaulted Amy Barrett’s religious faith; some of those same senators demanded, incredibly, that Brian Buescher resign from the Knights of Columbus; and now, the Left has, in unison, baselessly slandered the Covington Catholic boys who attended the March for Life in Washington.

True enough, Hinderaker remarks. It is warming up to attack devout Catholic Amy Comey Barrett, the woman most likely to be nominated to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court. 

But, there is more to it? After Catholics, the left will set out to destroy practicing Protestants too.

Why does the left hate religion? Perhaps because its leader, Karl Marx despised religion, to the point of inspiring governments to replace Judeo-Christianity with atheism. How did that work out?

Hinderaker continues:

The modern Left is a secular movement that is deeply hostile to religion. Many Leftists hate Judaism, but they hate Christianity even more. (Go into the bakery business if you have any doubt about that!) There is good reason why we refer to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Christianity comes from Judaism; three-quarters of the Christian Bible is Jewish scripture. The twin pillars of Western civilization, it has long been said, are Athens and Jerusalem. Christianity is a principal feature of Western civilization, which Leftists detest and want to destroy. So, if they are hostile to Judaism, they are even more bitterly hostile to Christianity.

Some of those who wish to destroy religion are atheists. Others are neo-pagan idolaters. They are not sure what they are. They are not sure what they are for. But they know well what they are against.

She's Never the One

It’s becoming a pattern, if not a habit. People write to advice columnists and fail to include enough relevant information. Thus, it always feels like flying blind. For those columnists who cannot see past their noses, this does not pose a problem. For the rest of us it does.

Today, a woman who apparently does not know better, writes to New York Magazine columnist, Ask Polly, for advice. She wants to know why each of the men she has broken up with has immediately found “the One.” What is it about her that makes her the stepping stone and never the One?

It isn’t an uninteresting question. Since we know nothing about her, beyond her age, and the fact that she has been traumatized by these break-ups, it is difficult to say. We do not know what she doesn’t have or what she has that points men to better women, women she says are more amazing than her. 

For the record, I have doubts that the issue is who is more or less amazing. Men do not marry the most amazing girl they have every met. And they do not think that they are marrying the One.

For all we know, the woman's experiences with men might just be happenstance. Since we are not dealing with a very large sampling, we do not know what she is or is not doing that causes men to make better choices the next time.

She explains that she has been traumatized by these breakups. In truth, most women are traumatized by breakups. It’s the reason why it’s better to marry younger than older. Conventional feminist wisdom suggests that an older more established financially independent women will have an embarrassment of choices, but the 36 year old letter writer is alone and isolated, presumably with her biological clock running down.

We do not know whether she is seeking true love, whether she put career ahead of relationships, whether she wants to marry and have children. We do not know what she is bringing to a relationship and thus cannot surmise why men who break up with her immediately go out and find the women they want to marry and have children with. We do not know anything about her work or career, about her family or friends, or about any of the details about the men she has met.

As for bevy of exes, she sees them all as male personae, not as prospective mates. Whatever makes you think that they would want to play that role in anyone’s life.

But, her issue, somewhat appropriately, involves the question of how it happens that she is wrecked and traumatized by these breakups, to the point where she cannot see clearly or straight, while her male exes seem not to be similarly encumbered. Why does she feel broken while they feel empowered? Why is the spell she casts so easily broken?

In one sense she is simply telling us that  a man and a woman do not have the same experience of a broken relationship. For a woman it is most often a crippling trauma, one that causes her to go into trauma avoidance mode and thus to lose faith in her judgment. For a man it seems to be an opportunity… especially when he feels that he has been liberated from a burdensome girlfriend.

By behaving like a liberated woman she has managed to ruin her psyche and to show men how to choose an appropriate spouse… which meant, someone who was not like her. Again, we do not really know whether or not it was mere happenstance, but clearly these men did not see her as marriage material. And once they had a taste of non-marriage material they might well have discovered that they wanted to find a woman who was marriage material.

Anyway, without further ado here is the letter, in its entirety:

I’m 36. A long time ago, my first boyfriend, of six years, met the love of his life (fast forward to three-plus kids 15 years later) within a week after we broke up. I had ended it. He was extremely doting and spoiled me rotten, but we had good childish reasons to end it. He was totally adoring, however, which really messed me up for future standards of male regard. He and his new wife built this beautiful, creative career and partnership together. After he moved on, I was left feeling utterly disposable, unable to trust love cues, and really jealous of the “new” girls — plural because this became a motif for me. I met a couple more guys in sequence who met the love of their life right after meeting me!

So I began to think I was cursed, a stepping-stone, unlovable, giving these guys the confidence they needed to meet The One. Their partners all happened to be outstanding, successful women, so it made me feel as though there is this unstoppable force of amazing women ready to snatch every decent, single man. This is a form of female toxic incel thinking, and I make myself sick. I am disowning myself, projecting my ass off, and yet I can’t look past the evidence. I am very lonely and haven’t been able to open up to men because of this. Please help me!

Easily Replaced

Naturally, Polly misses the point. Because if she didn’t miss the point she wouldn’t be Polly. You would think that at age 36 Easily Replaced would have gotten over the notion that she needs to find the One, or that she can be the One. She gives us no real sense of wanting to be a wife.

So, Polly believes that it’s misperception, that ER needs merely to repeat to herself that she is amazing… in order to be amazing. According to Polly ER should revise her perception of herself, because she has total freedom to do so. Since Polly is seriously challenged herself she does not understand that the way we see ourselves derives primarily from the cues we receive from other people. See Tasha Eurich’s book, Insight, for the details.

So, Polly writes:

Once you see clearly that we’re all living in our own little terrariums of perception, though, you’re free to spruce up your own moist, stanky environs however you see fit. You are the one person who gets to define how amazing you are. You are in charge of what works for you. When you do what works for you, when you fertilize your little plants and check on your snails and make yourself happy, guess what? You are amazing. Full stop.

Since Polly thinks that other women are snatching ER’s boyfriends, we are happy to note that such is not the case. Other women are snatching up ER’s ex-boyfriends, men that she broke up with or who broke up with her.

And when you tell stories about how much LESS THAN the next woman you are, how you keep being upstaged by scary predatory ladies ready to snatch your doting boy out of your (somewhat ambivalent) hands? That makes you feel like a wilty plant in a desiccated terrarium. You aren’t watering your little buddies. You’re letting your snails go hungry and starve. You’re punishing yourself.

It’s very hard to be amazing when you spend most of your time punishing yourself. I think you should ask yourself why you’re so into these narratives about how you lose and lose and lose. I think you should ask yourself where your shame really comes from. Because it started before you met any of these men. Your inability to open up isn’t caused by these dudes. Your inability to open up is caused by your fixation on this bad story: “These men and their perfect partners prove that I will never be enough for anyone.”

Being a shill for the therapy culture, Polly wants ER to look into her past to discover where the shame comes from. And she believes that ER needs but to rewrite the narrative, to tell a new story, in order to open up to men. That will require her to ignore the signals that the world has been sending her. She would do much better to change her attitude toward love and marriage, to stop thinking of the One and to start thinking of the practicalities of making a life with someone. If she wants dating advice she could do a lot worse than to thumb through a book called The Rules.

Since we do not know how ER behaves on dates and in relationships, we cannot really say whether she is driving men away or is simply boring them to death. If we did we might offer some recommendations for new behaviors.

In truth, ER is terrified about the prospect of opening up to men. It need not have anything to do with her past history. It might be about her inability to process trauma. It might be about her unwillingness to be a wife. It might be that she is unwilling to take account of the signals that the world is sending her, because she has been so traumatized that she is totally self-involved and self-absorbed, dedicated entirely to shielding herself from new trauma. After all, if she stops dating entirely, she will erase the risk of being traumatized by yet another relationship. Might I mention that if she dates a man who has been divorced she will not find herself in the same position.

Her problem is how to get out of herself, not how to get into her own terrarium. Her problem is to reach out to other people, not how to retell her story.

Someone should have recommended a new set of social skills and developing more better friendships. By now she must come across as desperate. She is probably placing too much pressure on her relationships... since that's all she seems to want to talk about. Thus, time to develop some new friendships or to undertake some new social activities. Time to remove some of the pressure and to cease worrying about finding the One.

Afghan Refugee Assaults German Schoolgirl

File this story with the previous post about Denmark’s treatment of Muslim migrants. If you want to feel some empathy for the Danes, consider what one Afghan refugee did to one high school girl last Saturday night in the German city of Minden.

The Daily Mail has the story:

A teenage girl was run over by a bus and left seriously hurt while trying to escape being harassed by a drunk Afghan refugee in Germany. 

The girl, 17, was waiting at a bus terminal in Minden, 45 miles from Hanover, with her 14-year-old friend around 9pm on Saturday when the 22-year-old man approached.

The man repeatedly harassed the 17-year-old so she and her friend fled towards a nearby bus, and the 41-year-old driver opened the doors to let them on.

But the refugee and his companion, 21, jumped on board the bus - which had started moving - and dragged the girl off by her hair, Junge Freiheit reports.

The girl slipped and fell into the road as she was dragged off the bus, causing it to roll over her legs, leaving her with serious injuries according to Behoerdenstress.

You can thank Frau Merkel for this assault on a high school girl. Again, if you were Danish what would you do?

Unwanted in Denmark

A quick glance at a map of Europe will tell you that Denmark falls between Germany and Sweden. But, you probably knew that already. You might not have known it, but Denmark has demonstrated a decidedly less welcoming attitude toward Muslim migrants.

For all I know, it might have something to do with the fact that the Danes have closely observed the effects that migrants are producing in Germany and Sweden… and have decided that they do not want any of that in their country. This tells us that Europe is increasingly being divided between the Western countries that are being destroyed by their migrant populations and the Eastern countries that have successfully kept the migrants… along with their rape culture, their criminal gangs, their misogyny, their homophobia and their anti-Semitism… out.

The Danes have accepted a certain number of migrant refugees into their country, but it has strictly segregated them from the rest of the population. It is apparently trying to persuade them to leave. It is not allowing them to live among the Danes, to work among the Danes or to feel comfortable in Denmark. According to Nicholas Mirzoeff in the Nation (via Maggie’s Farm) the country’s policies are markedly intolerant and ought to change. He has painted an awful picture of desolation, the better to gin up international pressure on Denmark.

It will be interesting to see if it works. In the meantime, Denmark has made it clear that it will not accept unassimilable migrants into its communities and its cultures.

Think of Denmark and you probably conjure up a mix of mid-century design, hygge, and people riding bikes. But as viewers of the noir TV series The Bridge know, it’s also a country marred by institutional xenophobia. Denmark has a network of camps and detention centers for asylum seekers. It has legally defined ghettoes, meaning urban areas with populations of “non-Western immigrants.”

But while something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark, it’s far from an exception in Western politics. What’s happening in this former bastion of liberalism is the normalizing of white hostility to immigration. Denmark is building on Australian and Israeli tactics to form a new strategy: to disappear the refugee from society.

The Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg has said that she intends to make conditions for people in the asylum system unbearable.And if my recent visit to Sjælsmark Detention Center, outside Copenhagen, is anything to judge by, she’s succeeding.

Sjælsmark contains people whose applications for asylum have been rejected but cannot be returned to their country of origin (technically “non-deportable rejected asylum seekers,” according to EU law). The upscale suburb has no shops or other amenities for the detainees. It is suitably remote from the city, nearly two hours by two buses and a train. By car, it’s just 30 minutes, but no one has a car.

He adds:

If the Danish settler colony once wanted to extract labor from its colonial subjects in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, all it wants now from their descendants is that they go away. To that end, Sjælsmark residents cannot work or claim benefits. They are not allowed to cook, to have furniture (other than a bed, one table, and hard chairs), or to decorate their rooms. No carpets or rugs are allowed. There is no television or Internet service. Residents live in cold, spare rooms with very high ceilings. Having committed no crime, the asylum seekers are nonetheless being punished.

So, Eastern Europe, Australia and even Israel have adopted draconian and not-very-pretty ways to persuade migrants to return to their home country. Or else, to seek asylum elsewhere. But not in Denmark.

Increasingly, Western cultures are dividing according to whether or not they are willing to welcome migrants. Having seen up close the results of Angela Merkel’s open arms policy and the situation in Sweden… Denmark has chosen to put up a wall.