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Love is Based on Mutual Dependence
A haunting new Staples commercial captures the predicament of the modern "independent" woman.
It portrays a typical young feminist at leisure.
She is scaling a sheer 1000-foot rock face somewhere in the wilderness.
Her cell phone rings and a co-worker informs her that she has won a contract.
She calls Staples Office Center and requests that a report be ready by Wednesday. These are her contacts: her co-workers and her suppliers.
Then, something eerie and ominous happens.
She drops the phone!
We can almost hear it crashing on the rocks below.
I don't know what Staples meant by this. Maybe they think she won't need it now that she has reached them.
But to me, dropping the phone symbolizes the plight of modern woman.
Instead of being dependent on husband and family, she is dependent on her boss and the vagaries of the marketplace and politics.
Take her job away (drop the cell phone) and her vaunted "independence" comes crashing down too. She is left isolated and alone, clinging to a rock face.
ANOTHER VIEW OF LOVE
Our culture has made romantic love into a pseudo religion. Popular songs
are its hymns. Sex is exalted as though it were a mystical experience.
We are supposed to love (or "worship") our mate's mystery as if s/he were divine.
Of course, very few people can live up to this billing. The sex-driven infatuation and novelty fade as the pressures of daily life intrude. We discover that we married a human being like ourself with both good and bad qualities.
A marriage is more likely to succeed if it is based on mutual dependence rather than romantic idealization. We are taught that love is based on mutual independence but in reality we marry because our mate fulfills certain needs and vice-versa.
These "needs" may be a combination of emotional, spiritual, sexual, familial, financial or you name it.
A husband might say to his wife: This is what I need from you. What do you need from me? No wife can meet her mate's needs if her own aren't fulfilled.
Love develops over time based on nurturing, trust and respect.
Singles might proceed in a similar fashion. Can I fulfill her needs? Can she fulfill mine?
This isn't the whole answer. Ultimately, people love each other for whom they are. But this approach adds a dose of realism.
IDEALIZATION
Our dysfunctional culture promotes the idea that people should be loved
for their excellent qualities (especially sex appeal) and achievements (especially
power and wealth.)
We are naturally drawn to people who have qualities we admire. But this adulatory love sometimes feels like envy. There is something self-negating about it, something vampire-like.
We want to possess what they have. We are looking for these qualities in ourselves. We are looking for ourselves.
Similarly, people often think they will be loved for their accomplishments.
For example, in the movie "Something's Got to Give," Diane Keaton plays a 60'ish woman. Jack Nicholson is supposed to love her because (gasp!) she is a famous playwright!
Think of the people you truly love. Is it because of their appearance, talent or achievements? Or is it because they give you what you need?
If I am right, independent women are misdirecting their energy to career (which does not bring love.)
They are so busy trying to frantically forget they aren't married and having children, they barely have time or inclination for men.
The older ones who have given up are traumatized. I have been to two offices where the women actually covered their bare ring fingers while talking to me. The toll in human suffering is incalculable.
GIRL ON A CLIFF
The traditional arrangement went like this. A man took care of a woman's
material needs. In return, she took care of his emotional, spiritual and
sexual needs. The man made the house; the woman made the home and family.
The woman raised the family's cultural level.
Mutual dependence worked very well until elite social engineers decided to break up the family using the mass media.
They convinced millions of gullible women that Fe-manism was the "latest" thing. The poor dears learned the loving husbands who toiled to support them and their children had in fact exploited them.
Today, a woman works and supplies her own material needs (making a man redundant.) Often, she is too exhausted and hardened to provide for her husband's spiritual and sexual needs. Frustrated, both husband and wife look elsewhere; their marriage collapses and their children lose a healthy environment in which to grow.
Millions of women are discovering the hard way that Fe-manism is a cruel Rockefeller-sponsored hoax which has undermined heterosexuality and the family. (Google Rockefeller Foundation and Women's Studies and you'll get 77,000 entries. The Rockefellers also funded Josef Mengele whose experiments on live inmates at Auschwitz were designed to breed a slave race.) Family decline deprives men and women of their social roles except as producers and consumers.
Our elite-sponsored politicians, media and educators must be held accountable for teaching three generations of young women to fear men and squander their precious few years of fertility starting a career instead of a family. (I'm not against women having careers, only putting it ahead of family if they want one. My wife's mother taught her to look for a man to take care of her but to be able to look after herself. )
Women do not get love and satisfaction from career. They get it from being indispensable to their loved ones and treasured for it.
Men and women were designed to complement
each other. Love and marriage are about mutual dependence. By the time independent
women realize their mistake, it is often too late. They are like rock climbers
stranded on a cliff, holding on for dear life.
