What We Can Learn from Arranged Marriage

All marriages are arranged.

Some are arranged by parents. Others are arranged by the prospective mates themselves.

Throughout human history most marriages have been arranged with the active involvement of parents. The human species, in its wisdom, has chosen not to entrust such an important decision to callow youths.

In Asia parental involvement is the norm. In America it tends not to be.

Even in America, however, the parents of Asian-American children are often directly involved in arranging meetings between prospective spouses. The same holds true among Orthodox Jews.

Needless to say, this takes a great deal of the mystery out of dating.

Obviously, the great American experiment in allowing young people to choose their mates without any parental involvement is proving definitively that it’s better for parents to be involved.

In all cases, parental involvement still allows young people to accept or reject a prospective spouse.

In America, we are so enamored with youthful exuberance and autonomy that we, as a culture, prefer a hands-off approach to mating. We have even made a fetish out of making  your own mistakes.

American parents today often refuse to interfere with youthful mating rituals. At times, they even refuse to offer an opinion.

Usually, they live to regret their reticence.

Why the silence? Most parents of rebellious adolescents know only too well that if they offer an opinion their children are likely to do just the opposite, as a point of youthful pride.

Some young people make it a point of pride to marry someone they know their parents would never accept.

American youth have been brought up to distrust and to defy authority. They are hypersensitive to any advice that might threaten their illusion of autonomy and independence.

Allowing young people independence has produced a marriage market that borders on anarchy.

Many older people are quietly distressed to see what is happening. They do their best to instruct their children on the criteria and standards they should use to make their way through the chaos, but that simply makes them involved at remove.

Given how much of a mess the mating game has become, many people long for the days when there was more parental involvement.

This morning The New York Times offers an excellent article on arranged marriage. It points out that, in the best of circumstances, young people who do not enlist the active involvement of their parents often filter prospective mates through criteria that their parents would use.

It makes perfect sense that parents would be involved in the choice of a spouse. Young people should be happy to accept the wisdom of people love them more than anyone else, who know them better than anyone else and who have considerable life experience in the area.

As the Times notes, parents can bring a more objective perspective to the mating game, and thus offer direction and guidance to young people who are likely to get carried away with love or lust or both.

What lessons can young Americans can draw from this article?

First, don’t date anyone you wouldn’t marry.

Second, don’t allow yourself to fall in love with someone you would never marry. .

Third, don’t marry anyone your parents would not accept.

Fourth, if you don’t know who your parents would accept make it your business to find out.

If your parents tell you that it doesn’t matter who you marry as long as you’re in love and are happy, they are either deluded or are lying to you.

Marriage is a social and very public commitment. Love is a private and personal commitment.

If you begin with nothing but true love, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The End of Dating

Any feminist who is living in mortal dread that her son might grow up to be a gentleman can breathe easier this morning.

The New York Times is reporting that courtship and dating are dead.

One does not understand why it took the Times so long to figure this out, but, as they say, better late than never.

Anyway, count this story in the category: You couldn’t pay me to be 24 again.

The story shows how modern courtship goes awry:

MAYBE it was because they had met on OkCupid. But when the dark-eyed musician with artfully disheveled hair asked Shani Silver, a social media and blog manager in Philadelphia, out on a “date” Friday night, she was expecting at least a drink, one on one.

“At 10 p.m., I hadn’t heard from him,” said Ms. Silver, 30, who wore her favorite skinny black jeans. Finally, at 10:30, he sent a text message. “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever?” he wrote, before adding, “I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.”

Turned off, she fired back a text message, politely declining. But in retrospect, she might have adjusted her expectations. “The word ‘date’ should almost be stricken from the dictionary,” Ms. Silver said. “Dating culture has evolved to a cycle of text messages, each one requiring the code-breaking skills of a cold war spy to interpret.”

“It’s one step below a date, and one step above a high-five,” she added. Dinner at a romantic new bistro? Forget it. Women in their 20s these days are lucky to get a last-minute text to tag along. Raised in the age of so-called “hookup culture,” millennials — who are reaching an age where they are starting to think about settling down — are subverting the rules of courtship.

Instead of dinner-and-a-movie, which seems as obsolete as a rotary phone, they rendezvous over phone texts, Facebook posts, instant messages and other “non-dates” that are leaving a generation confused about how to land a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Many people probably agreee that the millennial generation is “subverting the rules of courtship” but that is entirely too optimistic.

The younger generation is dazed and confused, not knowing what is expected, what to do and what any gesture means.

Someone or other, we have created a dating culture where everyone is following his or her bliss and no one knows what the rules are.

One professor sagely points out that young adults do not go out on dates because they never learned how to do it. Given the confusion over gender roles, no one knows who is supposed to do what to whom. And no one knows what counts as an expression of interest and what counts as a grievous insult.

Some blame the problem on social media and iPhones. Sagely, the Times also suggests that the problem might be a lack of character. One does not often think of it in these terms, so it is worth underscoring the point.

The Times writes:

Traditional courtship — picking up the telephone and asking someone on a date — required courage, strategic planning and a considerable investment of ego (by telephone, rejection stings). Not so with texting, e-mail, Twitter or other forms of “asynchronous communication,” as techies call it. In the context of dating, it removes much of the need for charm; it’s more like dropping a line in the water and hoping for a nibble.

Yes, indeed: dating requires courage and risk-taking. Among millennials these are apparently in short supply.

Dating requires you to make an appointment and to show up. When it comes to their dealings with the opposite sex millennials seem not to know how to do this.

Dating requires strategic planning: where are you going to go; what are you going to do? Worse yet, dating requires you to provide advance information about the evening’s activities so that she will be able to prepare. It’s called respect. Apparently, millennials lack this level of social skill.

And then, of course, there’s the economic recession. Dating costs money. When men invite women on dates they often pay for the evening’s entertainment. This requires a certain level of solvency, something that many millennials simply do not have.

And then, of course, in our gender neutered time, men do not know what is expected of them. They do not know whether if they start acting like a gentleman a woman will take offense or whether she will write them off as effete. Even if a woman says that she wants a man to act like a gentleman, she probably has very little experience dealing with gentlemen and so will feel that there is something strange about it.

Of course, there are still a few brave souls who defy convention and refuse to accept invitations that are less than dates. They used to be called “rules girls.”

For example:

Even in an era of ingrained ambivalence about gender roles, however, some women keep the old dating traditions alive by refusing to accept anything less.

Cheryl Yeoh, a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco, said that she has been on many formal dates of late — plays, fancy restaurants. One suitor even presented her with red roses. For her, the old traditions are alive simply because she refuses to put up with anything less. She generally refuses to go on any date that is not set up a week in advance, involving a degree of forethought.

As you know, if you ever dare to say anything positive about “The Rules” you will be ridiculed mercilessly.

It may not be a pretty picture, but it’s the world that millennials live in. 

What Makes a Relationship Normal?

Why would you want to know whether your relationship is “normal?”

Relationship expert and matchmaker Samantha Daniels asks the question and it deserves a better answer than she offers.

Obviously, if you are asking whether your relationship is normal, you are probably not very happy with it. You are on the verge of saying that you are miserable and want to know whether there is anything better out there.

If you ask the question, you are, at a minimum, saying that your relationship is draining your energy. It is requiring a great deal of hard work, punctuated with few rewards.

Daniels is wrong, however, to say that all relationships are difficult. While it is true that all relationships require some work, they do not all contain the same degree of difficulty.

Relationships do not have to be difficult. Some people get along well without very much storm and stress. 

Perhaps it’s no longer the norm in a culture that values drama over harmony, but still, relationships do not have to be difficult. For many people today, however, difficult is the best they can do. All things considered it would be more of surprising if their relationships did not feel like a slog.

Considering the way they have been brought up, the lessons they have learned, and our culture’s accepted relationship wisdom, easy and harmonious relationships can only be acquired with a lot of work. 

The culture has made it so.

The culture tells young people to postpone getting involved in a serious relationship. It tells them to go out and have some life experience and gain maturity and independence. It suggests that they can then have it all: they can have lots of youthful fun and can bring a fully self-actualized and thoroughly lovable autonomous being into their next relationship.

The culture insists that young people engage in all manner of sexual experimentation. It has convinced them that they will be failures in bed if they are not in touch with all of their erogenous zones and have not tried out all of their kinks.

They are also told that true love will conquer all.

Not only have they been told that being more independent and autonomous, thus developing bad relationship habits will make them more loveable, but they have also been told that when they find their soul mate, the One, it will all work out.

In brief, young people have been systematically lied to about the nature and the culture of relationships. They are paying the price.

Recently, blogger Susan Walsh recently wrote an excellent post entitled: “Casual Sex Makes College Students Crazy, Fat and Stupid.”

When measuring the mental health consequences of casual sex against sex within a committed relationship Walsh discovered that those who indulged the former manifested far more mental health problems than did those who involved themselves in the latter.

One might reasonably extend this thought and say that the students who become crazy, fat and stupid from having casual sex are not going to be great relationship material.

Walsh admits that long term relationships in college are no longer “the norm.” That is, they no longer count as normal.

By implication, when children go off to college they are more likely to learn dating skills and perhaps hook-up skills than to learn relationships skills.

If, at some later date, they decide to have a relationship they will make the unhappy discovery that they need to unlearn their dating skills, to unlearn their hook-up skills and to learn new and seemingly alien, dating skills.

No one should be surprised to discover that these young people will have significant and unnecessary difficulties forming and sustain relationships.

Moreover, if long term relationships are no longer the norm, peer pressure will influence college students to have fewer relationships. A student who falls in love will be pressured to go out, find herself, have some fun and explore her sexuality.

In a world that worships sexual liberation a committed relationship is considered inhibiting and even oppressive. Committing to one person limits freedom, especially a woman’s freedom.

When it comes to relationships the gold standard is marriage. Young people who are choosing relationship partners should ask themselves whether they would marry the person, whether they can take him or her home to Mom and Dad, and what kind of life they would have together.

Unfortunately, Samantha Daniels does not distinguish between a marriage and a “monogamous committed relationship.”

If you are in college, you might not be ready for marriage. Therefore an MCR—monogamous committed relationship-- might be suitable.

But, if you have graduated and are living together in an MCR and the person you are living with does not want to marry you then the chances are good that the relationship will suffer an abnormal degree of stress.

An MCR that does not lead to marriage is abnormal.

If you are living with someone who does not want to marry you it will not take you too long to start asking what is wrong with you, what is wrong with your partner, what is wrong with your relationship.

Failure to commit in public to another person will normally cause problems in your relationship.

Finally, Daniels suggests that a couple suffering an unusual amount of difficulty about what is and is not normal needs to sit down and have a conversation about what each of them takes for normal.

Again, this bad advice is always on the therapy culture menu. Young people are led to believe that every problem can be solved by being talked out. Sprinkle a little empathy and it will all go away… it was just a misunderstanding anyway. It would have been much better to advise young people to develop relationship skills and not dating skills.

As it happens, a long MCR, and especially a marriage, requires the harmonious performance of couple routines.

If you are undisciplined or chaotic, if you have no self-control and have too many bad habits, you are not going to make it all better by talking it over or by following the advice of relationship experts like Samantha Daniels or the ladies of Miss Advised.

The Case of the Pouty Boyfriend

Despairing for her relationship a woman wrote to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax.

I quote her letter in full:

I am guilty of occasionally resenting my boyfriend because he doesn’t take it well when I say no. He pouts when I tell him I want to do something other than what he wants — like going to the grocery store instead of out to dinner.

Generally I give in, but if I insist that groceries must be bought, he stops speaking to me and leaves abruptly. Over the years I have tried to ignore the pouting, but I am basically a peacekeeper and want to know if there is a more amiable way to defuse the tension.

As expected, Hax responds that the boyfriend has some serious issues, that he is mistreating her and that she should enlist a therapist to sort it all out.

The column elicited a veritable orgy of male-bashing in the comments section. Of the hundreds that I read all but one agreed that the boyfriend was acting like a petulant child and had to be dumped, sooner, not later.

There you have it, an anecdote that illustrates much of what is wrong with relationships today.

Imagine the scene.

He says: How would you like to go out to dinner tonight?

She says: No.

What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s easy. Saying No in this situation is rude, insulting and obnoxious. No one who is old enough to read this blog would turn down a dinner invitation with a flat No.

Good manners do not oblige her to say Yes. They encourage her to be polite and courteous, demurring on the grounds that she does not feel well, or some such thing.

When a woman receives an unwanted invitation from a troll she will usually not insult him by saying No. She will say that she is otherwise engaged or far too busy.

If the letter writer really sees herself as a peacemaker then she lacks the most elementary self-awareness. She is being confrontational, and she is picking a fight.

In walking away her boyfriend is refusing to take the bait. He is not giving her the silent treatment.

Unfortunately, Hax does not offer an amiable way to defuse the situation. She encourages the women's worst tendencies.

In her words:

The way to say no is with the conviction that you have every right to say no. Period.

Folks, he invited her to dinner. That’s all. Maybe he thinks that she has had a rough day. Maybe he wants to be nice to her. It is not an insult. He is not forcing her to perform a vile sexual act against her will. He is being generous.

Saying No to a generous invitation is bad manners. Period.

To add insult to injury, the letter writer, who apparently feels that her boyfriend is trying to impose his will on her, then decides that since she has said No to his invitation, he should be punished by being forced to accompany her to the grocery story.

Insisting that he go shopping with her compounds the rudeness. Having turned down his dinner invitation she has no business telling him what he must do. For all we know he invited her to dinner because he does not want to get into a fight about who should be preparing dinner.

If this embittered young woman cannot decline a dinner invitation graciously, and if she insists that he go grocery shopping with her, then she will most likely lay down the law in the kitchen, regardless of his wishes. 

Clearly, the letter writer is a zealot, someone who is following the ideological principles that have been undermining relationships for decades now.  

Her dilemma explains one and only one thing: why she is a girlfriend and not a wife.

She should have written to Miss Manners.

In Love With a Married Man

Did you ever feel that one of your friends needed a good dose of reality?

If your friend is a woman embarking on a love affair with a married man, you might feel, Kristen Houghton implies, that she needs a serious intervention.

Happily, Houghton is up to the task. Rarely have I seen such a clear analysis of why affairs with married men are a bad idea.

The reason must be that Houghton is a friend, not a therapist.

If a therapist had taken on the question, he would have offered up something that would feel, to me, much closer to literary criticism than to an analysis of the reality of the affair.

Regardless of whether it is true, as Houghton’s friend claims, that you can’t help who you fall in love with, nothing obliges you to engage in the myriad of activities that will turn your feeling into an affair.

Facing a woman who was having an affair with a married man, a therapist would offer up some non-judgmental comments about control issues and the woman’s lack of self-esteem. An empathic therapist would sprinkle in more than a few questions designed to take the woman’s emotional temperature: How did that feel?

You see, therapists believe in love. Most of them are hopeless romantics.

Some therapists are like script doctors. They try to change the script and forestall the inevitable. When the inevitable becomes real therapists will shift into literary or drama critic mode and will help explicate what happened and why.

The new insights will make you feel like a character in someone’s fiction. Thus they will never satisfy. They will not even acknowledge the dire truth that, whatever you feel, you are still responsible for your actions.

Houghton offers the only sane and sensible advice to a woman who is contemplating an affair with a married man: Don’t. If her friend is involved in the affair, the advice would be: Cut your losses.

The more it lasts the greater your losses.

Of course, this sounds like investment advice. This makes it far more real than fairy tales that pretend that a sufficiently helpless woman will naturally be rescued by a prince.

When the husband in question is a human being, and not a fictional character, he has a wife and children. More importantly, Houghton adds, he has responsibilities to all of them.

Men take their duties very, very seriously. A decent man will not abrogate duties to his family because he has fallen in love.

Moreover, whatever he feels about his wife, marriage is not just a love affair. It is an essential part of the social fabric of his life. Houghton explains:

Whether or not they have children is a moot point; he will always feel as if he has to be a husband to her and take care of the marriage, whether he truly loves her or not. Their life together includes friendships and a social network that is shared and comfortable for him. He won't risk losing that.

Continuing her correct emphasis on the man as a social being, Houghton points out that a man will not make his mistress part of his everyday life.

He will wine and dine her, offer her gifts, perhaps even take her on vacation. But she will always be his secret, hidden from the world, deprived of the social recognition and status that would come from being publicly identified with him.

In Houghton’s words:

While he is more than willing to be your lover and to bring you gifts, he is not about to have you meet his friends and risk having his family find out about you.

This makes her a mistress, or, more elegantly, a concubine. A woman who falls in love with a married man is defining herself as his concubine. For most women it does not suffice.

A woman will make her love affair the center of her universe. A man who is grounded in his everyday life will see his concubine as a “temporary diversion.”

Concubinage is an arrangement. It never has the social permanence of a marriage.

Besides, being a great concubine is not the same as being a great wife. A wife has, we assume, made a home for her husband and family. If the concubine is offering true love while a wife is offering home, hearth and stability for the children, the vast majority of men will choose the latter, without thinking.

A man's life is not about love.

Houghton explains, as coldly as she feels she must, that a concubine has no legal, financial, or emotional claim on a married man.

Correctly, she emphasizes the absence of an emotional claim.

Many women believe that love is reciprocal. They believe that if a man loves them fully and wholly then he loves them exactly as they love him. And they believe that they must act on their love and make their love the center of their lives. Some even believe that true love must necessarily lead to marriage. 

No man thinks in those terms.

A woman will think that satisfying sex is a sign that her love is true and reciprocal.

No man thinks that it is.

Houghton sagely notes that men and women process emotion differently. The point should be well enough known to anyone who has attained the age of adult reason, but men find it much easier to walk away from great sex than women can.

In part it has to do with hormones; in part it has to do with the nature of the sexual act; in part it has to do with an innate emotional disposition.

The less a woman gets out of the love affair in social terms the more she will become desperate. She will do all the wrong things, beginning by withdrawing into herself, shutting out her friends and family, pining away for true love.

Somehow she has been convinced that the purer her love, the more she is attached, the more he will return her love.

By moving out of the real world into the world of fictions the concubine has started down the road to ruin.

Sagely, Houghton warns against all of these traps.

Couples Counseling

Couples counseling is an intriguing notion.

Let’s say your marriage is in trouble. Is it sick? Should you send it to a doctor? Do you need the opinion of someone who has studied gross anatomy and has spent nearly a decade doing medical training? What medicine do you think he will prescribe for your ailing marriage?

There is, in other words, something strange about the notion that troubled marriages need medical or even paramedical intervention.

Troubled couples need mediation more than medication. They need to develop better negotiating skills, not to cure their disease.  

Therapists are recognizing, Elizabeth Bernstein suggested yesterday in her Wall Street Journal column, that they need coaching more than individual psychotherapy.

Quoting Dr. Howard Markman, Bernstein writes: “… a couples-based approach can be substantially more effective for the marriage than traditional individual psychotherapy, Dr. Markman says. This is because couples therapy teaches practical skills for improving the relationship; individual therapy often focuses on uncovering patterns from childhood and other experiences. Dr. Markman recently started offering relationship coaching on the phone for women who can't get their spouses into counseling.

If Markman is right that uncovering the so-called patterns from your childhood will not improve your marriage or relationship, then why bother?

Bernstein’s column revolves around a slightly different question:  how can you counsel a couple when one member refuses to attend sessions?

The answer is: very well, indeed.

While Markman suggests that coaching can be just as helpful if only one spouse attends sessions, it might be more effective under those circumstances.

When both spouses attend counseling sessions they often feel compelled to bring their conflict into their therapist’s office. They believe that it’s the right way to behave in a therapist’s office. How can your therapist treat your troubled marriage if you do not show him all of its symptoms? And don’t you need to justify your presence by showing your therapist the worst aspects of your marriage?

If you visit a doctor and he asks what is wrong you will both show and tell him all of your problems. Unfortunately, too many people believe that the same principle should define couples counseling.

Surely that is one of the reasons why couples counseling has never been especially effective. And then, the people conducting it are experts in science; they have no expertise in mediation or negotiation.

You might have guessed, without reading Bernstein’s article, that if one member of a couple refuses to go to counseling, that member is most often going to be the man.

We know that most therapists consider this to a sign of an unrecognized illness. They find this refusal a symptom of men’s unwillingness to improve their marriages, their refusal to get in touch with their feelings, and their failure to take responsibility for their faults.

To be blunt about it, most men know by now that the therapy business is biased against them. They know that one way or another they are going to be found lacking or at fault. They know that therapy is an extension of today’s American classroom. In it females are right; males are wrong; females are recognized; males are ignored; females are praised, males are demeaned.

Men are increasingly unwilling to play in a game that is stacked against them. Good for them.

It gets worse. If a man holds to principles that derive from religion, he will be mocked and chastised by most therapists.

American men know that therapy has nothing to do with science or objective knowledge. Today, most therapists are women and most of them are feminists. Most often their principles derive more from feminist ideology than from science or medicine.

If any therapist is tempted to complain about how men do not attend couples counseling, he or she need but recall the old adage: Physician, heal thyself.

In any event the best of today’s relationship counseling uses cognitive and behavioral techniques that were first used in coaching.

Coaches are not interested in the griping and the blaming. They do not need to be exposed to the drama. They do not counsel the full expression of feelings.

They want, Bernstein notes, to solve problems, not to create more drama.

How do they do it?

To start, they want individuals to be more respectful. They know that making demands, even to the point of nagging, does not elicit respect.

If a woman is constantly seeing her demands ignored, then she ought to get off her high horse and stop making demands.

She can, the therapists suggest, ask nicely and be willing to take No for an answer.

For the record, nagging means refusing to take No for an answer.

Rather than complain that she is not being respected she needs to ask herself whether or not she is showing proper respect to her husband.

And she will then need to figure out how she can show him more respect.

There’s an old saying, one that does not appear in medical textbooks, but that does appear in every religion. It is: do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

If you want some to be friendlier to you, don’t complain about how they are not very friendly. Reach out a hand of friendship. If you want someone to respect you more, try respecting them more.

You will be showing them how you wish to be treated, not demanding that they treat you a certain way. If you demand and then receive respect, the respect you receive can never be totally sincere.

Human relationships are complex interactions ruled by a principle of reciprocity. All other things being equal most people are inclined to reciprocate. When they do they do not feel like they are caving in to an imperious demand but that they are acting of their own free will.

Is there any guarantee that your positive gestures will elicit positive responses? No, there is not.

Do unto others ... says that when you show, not tell, your spouse how to behave and if you do it consistently, a failure to reciprocate will tell you two things: first, that you are not the source of the problem; second, that your marriage is in more serious trouble than you thought. 

We Need to Talk

All men dread those four words: We need to talk. When she decides that their problem is so serious that they must talk it over, he knows he’s in trouble.

It’s not exactly like being taken to the woodshed. It‘s more like being taken to couples counseling.

He knows he is going to be put on the spot, asked to express his feelings, and required to feel empathy for hers.

He doesn’t like the exercise. He doesn’t think it makes sense. He believes that he is wasting his time.

He might also know that it doesn’t work.

How can you solve a problem by engaging in a form of commiseration that does not even attempt to solve problems?

Human relationships, especially the romantic variety, are not a form of therapy. They should not be modeled on therapy.

Yet, the culture has told everyone that they should be. Working on a relationship is like working on issues in therapy. The culture has persuaded everyone that the best way to solve problems is to talk them out.

Isn’t that what therapy is supposed to do? True, it’s supposed to do it, but it is all too rare for therapy to do what it says it’s doing.

Rumor has it that therapy works better for women than for men. Unfortunately, it risks turning women into empathy junkies. Finding a kindred soul does produce some good feelings, but only for women.

For men, therapy that focuses on empathy does not produce similarly good feelings. Why would any man find comfort and solace in a therapeutic process that is treating him like a woman?

When therapy does not work for men, therapists tend to think it means that men need a lot more therapy. This explanation is so self-serving that it becomes laughable.

Still, therapists have been promoting the idea that if men do not respond to therapy they are not in touch with their feminine side; they are not strong enough to accept their true feelings; they are afraid of feeling vulnerable.

Therapy does not just set up this unrealistic expectation to keep men in therapy. Through the culture it tells women that a good relationship involves the mutual exchange of empathy.

Women have been seduced by the culture into thinking that men are capable of showing themselves to be sensitive and vulnerable.

When their men do not satisfy these expectations women often become frustrated. Not because of anything that men are doing, but because women have bought into an unrealistic expectation.

It’s relationship poison.

For the antidote let’s look at a study just completed by University of Missouri psychologist Amanda Rose.

Rose reports: "For years, popular psychologists have insisted that boys and men would like to talk about their problems but are held back by fears of embarrassment or appearing weak ….However, when we asked young people how talking about their problems would make them feel, boys didn't express angst or distress about discussing problems any more than girls. Instead, boys' responses suggest that they just don't see talking about problems to be a particularly useful activity."

Uh oh. Boys are not afraid to get in touch with their feminine side. The reason they do not want to talk out their problems is that they think the exercise is a waste of time.

Boys are geared toward solving problems. They recognize-- perhaps it’s in the DNA-- that talking it over does not bring them a step closer to solving anything.

Girls, however, are differently constituted. Rose explains that girls gain comfort and solace from talking out their problems… especially with other girls. They feel “cared for, understood, and less alone.”

Girls like to commiserate with other girls. It makes them feel that they are not alone with their problems.

All of this is well and good. No one ever said that girls should not commiserate or share feelings with their girlfriends.

Unfortunately, the convergence of therapy and feminism has caused our culture to idealize this form of connection. Women have been led to believe that men are just stunted women who have not realized their ideal form.

I will tell all the young women out there that if they find men who can make them feel that they are making an empathetic connection, they should run away.

Men who can commiserate with women are usually ladies’ man, and ladies’ men are not the best relationship prospects.

Prof. Rose explains: “Women may really push their partners to share pent-up worries and concerns because they hold expectations that talking makes people feel better. But their partners may just not be interested and expect that other coping mechanisms will make them feel better. Men may be more likely to think talking about problems will make the problems feel bigger, and engaging in different activities will take their minds off of the problem. Men may just not be coming from the same place as their partners.”

Men exist. They are not the same as women. They should not be treated as though they are the same. Amazingly, we now need academic research to tell us something that we should have always known.

Undoing the damage done by the therapy culture is not going to be an easy task.

Rose’s study shows us that therapy has been in the business of trying to make men more like women. It has tried to empower women at the expense of men. In so doing it has damaged both men and women.

Men are saddled with expectations they cannot really meet and women are tricked into thinking that empathy solves problems.

Women have an enhanced capacity for commiseration, but that, in and of itself, does not solve problems. It only makes women feel less bad about having their problems.

In a better world women would be encouraged to understand that the skills that solve problems-- skills that they possess-- are not the same as those that commiserate. And they would also get over the idea that they can succeed in the workplace by bringing more empathy to bear.

Sluts Galore

Jessica Wakeman wants us all to know that there are different kinds of sluts. There is a whole variety. Take you pick. You don’t have to settle for just one.

In fact, Wakeman identifies five different kinds of sluts.

Proud slut that she is, Wakeman is discomfited by the possibility that you might mistake her good kind of sluttiness for the bad kind that some other women are displaying. I suspect that Wakeman is thinking that these bad sluts are giving sluthood a bad name.

In some circles this passes for serious thought. I am going to review it because otherwise when I criticize feminism you might think that I am attacking a straw woman, a mere caricature.

In truth, feminist thinking is much worse than even I imagine. I could not have made it up.

If it was just there for the entertainment value, that would be one thing. But since Wakeman pretends to offer something like moral thinking, she is also trying to influence other women.

Wakeman insists that she is not being judgmental. It’s OK for her if some young woman wants to be the wrong kind of of slut. But still, as you read her descriptions, you discover that she is being rather judgmental.

More important for me is the set of principles that define good and bad sluts, or, should I say, healthy and unhealthy sluts.

Wakeman differentiates good and bad by intensity of sexual appetite and the ability to experience a lot of sexual pleasure. Desire and enjoyment are the criteria that distinguish good and bad sluts.

I am not surprised. These principles define the ethic of the therapy culture. If you really, really want it, you must do it. If you have any doubts about whether or not you really, really want it, your ability to enjoy it fully will answer the question.

As moral principles go, these are appalling. But, let’s look at Wakeman’s analysis, the better to see why.

Apparently, a slutty Wakeman and her slutty girlfriend have decided to use the term “slut” only when it has a positive connotation. I imagine that they learned this from the current folly called slutwalks.

Wakeman and her friend remind me of identical twins who have invented their own private and personal language, the kind that no one else can understand.

Wakeman writes: “This girl friend and I are always tongue-in-cheek calling ourselves ‘sluts’ because we love and enjoy sex and seek it out for pleasure the way that men do. ‘Why are you being pejorative about sluts all of a sudden?’ I asked her.”

Her girlfriend replied:“I’m not being pejorative about all sluts ....I just think there’s different kinds of sluts. I f**k guys because I like f**king. She f**ks them despite not actually enjoying it’.”

So, we have learned that some sluts like to have sex. And that they are doing what they are doing because they want to emulate male behavior..

I would add that when it comes to sex, Wakeman has one thing in common with men: she is not thinking with her mind.

Of course, if this view of male behavior is a caricature-- as I suspect it is-- then Wakeman has managed to make her behavior conform to a demeaning caricature of men.

Another demerit for feminism.

Wakeman has a right to pretend that she is a man. One wonders how she and her friends will feel when it dawns on them that they have been living a lie.

And what will happen when they discover that advertising your sluttiness on a popular website does not enhance your reputation or make you good relationship material.

One suspects that Wakeman’s attitude toward sex has something to do with the fact that she has taken herself out of the relationship market. If so, then her sluttiness is merely a compensation for a failure to form durable relationships.

In the meantime, Wakeman defines good sluts as women who want sex so badly that they will do anything they can to get it.

She says: “To my mind, this is the true definition of ‘slut’: a woman who loves sex and ain’t nobody going to stop her from getting what she wants! It’s not easy out there for a lady who loves sex. She’ll be tarred and feathered as ‘irresponsible,’ ‘greedy,’ ‘crazy,” and of course, a ‘slut’ in the pejorative sense....She’ll be astounded that other people have such a hard time believing that she genuinely just loves sex. Deep down she knows she has sex for her own pleasure — not any other reason — and that’s enough for her. But it would be nice sometimes if other people got it, too.”

What’s wrong with this picture? A lot. Wakeman does not differentiate between loving sex and loving the man with whom she is having sex.

She has nothing to say about relationships, which, as most people know, are often an excellent source of repeated sexual acts with someone you know and trust.

Her definition of non-pejorative sluthood is mechanical... to the point where one wonders why she needs a partner at all. Except perhaps for the ego boost.

Or, look at it differently. What if it should happen that a woman who really, really likes sex, and who really, really enjoys it also likes getting paid for it?

Surely, this does happen. What would Wakeman say about her?

Next Wakeman moves on to the bad sluts, the ones who are doing it for all the wrong reeasons.

First are those women who are hooking up too much because they think that it will improve their mental health. One suspects that Wakeman herself is embracing her good sluthood because she feels better about herself for getting what she really, really wants, and... by the way... getting off in the process.

Women who are not as healthy as Wakeman do it for the wrong reasons. For example: “One of the worst reasons of all is to sleep around because you think it will make your people like you. A lot of us figure out in high school, college, or right after college that just because someone has sex with you is no guarantee they like you, or even care about you. Sadly, there’s a fair number of women whose self-esteem is such a wreck that they’ll sleep around to try to feel better about themselves.”

Then there is the rebellious young woman who is trying to make a point about her independence or autonomy and who just wants to piss people off.

Wakeman describes her: “You don’t have to look much further than her repressed childhood and adolescence to see why this gal is putting notches on her bedpost. “Women are evil” and “sex is bad” are probably two of the teachings that she’s shaking off. Is it a good idea to rebel against Mom, Dad or Pastor Joe by sleeping with the entire state of Rhode Island? It’s hard to say. Maybe this is something she genuinely wants to do. Maybe this is something she’s just doing to piss people off. It’s best to assess rebellious sluts on a case-by-case basis. But to these sluts, I have to salute you for thinking for yourselves!”

One doubts that rebelliousness is sufficient reason for this kind of self-slutification, but Wakeman thinks it’s more-or-less OK, because, after all, she might really enjoy the sex.

I suppose that one can enjoy sex even when it is being performed for reasons that have nothing to do with desire. Wakeman thinks so, but she is wrong to say that these sluts are thinking for themselves. Their thought is a function of what their parents or communities believe.

It is neither independent or autonomous; it is purely a reaction to someone or something else.

And then there is another kind of slut who has just discovered what turns her or gets her off. Once she discovers this, it’s like she has just discovered a new toy and cannot put it down.

Wakeman explains: “Maybe this slut just came out of the closet. Maybe she just realized she’s into BDSM. Maybe she’s found a position that finally feels good. Or maybe she’s slept with a guy who is doing her properly for the first time ever. Whatever her case, she’s f**king because everything is shiny and new and she just can’t get enough! The novelty may eventually wear off ... but then again, it may not. And that’s OK, too!”

Of course, if everything's OK, then nothing is really OK. I will refrain from commenting on BDSM or any other assorted kinks. But one wonders why this slut should not be classed among those sluts who just really love sex. The fact that it took her some time to figure out should not disqualify her from being the kind of slut that Jessica Wakeman respects.

Finally, in the lowest circle of this slutty inferno, we find the woman who sleeps her way to the top of the corporate ladder.

Wakeman does not exactly approve. She does not even imagine that this woman can really enjoy the sex that is advancing her career.

She writes: “Sleep with your boss. Fine. I don’t care. (Actually, don’t. That’s such a bad idea.) But don’t sleep around just to climb up the ladder at work or social groups. Unless she can be really careful and separate the guys she f**ks for advancement from the guys she f**ks for pleasure, she is playing with fire. She may one day wake up and realize she’s slept with gross guys and didn’t even enjoy it but had ‘gotten ahead,’ while other women have advanced based solely on their professional merits.”

If we follow Wakeman’s principles, why would it not be the case that the woman who is sleeping with her boss really, really loves sex and really, really enjoys sleeping with him?

And why shouldn’t she go after what she wants with as much gusto as Wakeman pursues sexual gratification?

If, however, you were to say that sex exchanged for a promotion cannot really be gratifying because it feels like mutual exploitation, then you would also be saying that sexual pleasure has something to do with the quality of the relationship.

And that would be very inconvenient for a Jessica Wakeman.