LOVE: CAN'T FIND MR. RIGHT? COMPROMISE

You are a 37 year old career woman; your job gives you the social and financial status you need to enjoy a comfortable and stable lifestyle. You know what you want out of life and you're on your way to achieving it. None of your previous relationships lasted long enough for you to settle down and fall in love. But as a single person you are now finding out how difficult it is to find a man who can compliment your lifestyle. Lately you've been a little anxious; you're not getting any younger.

Your ideal; man must possess enough pizzazz to at least be able to further stimulate your already fulfilling life. Not too much to ask.--Right' You keep a long list of requirements your ideal man must fulfill. But are you being realistic?

I've asked several career women to describe their ideal mate. Here are some of the answers I received; Soul mate, emotionally secure, financially stable, and intellectually stimulating, a good sense of humor, a gentleman, not afraid to express love and affection, ready to commit and accept responsibility. In addition, he must be reasonably good looking, in good physical shape and sexy, and it won't hurt if he is a good dancer. Wow!

It's not that such men don't exist but how available are they? Hence how realistic are these expectations. Remember, men who meet these requirements, may also have their lists of must haves in a mate. And maybe, just maybe, you may not meet these requirements. So you may come face to face with this reality; two people seeking perfection in each other with no intention of budging until they find it. The sad part is that some people hold out for years determined to find their Mr. Right. The fallout is an army of eligible individuals approaching the age of 40 living lonely and unhappy lives.

So what is the solution? --- Compromise.? --- I can just hear you saying. Compromise? Why should I? I set my standards and by no means am I going to settle for less than I deserve. And you're right. Sometimes accepting second best may work for a while, but no matter how good things turn out, you may always be dissatisfied believing you could have done better.

The good news is that compromise does not always mean settling for less. And since no one is perfect, there is no harm in modifying your requirements to accommodate someone you consider worth while. However, it must always be your decision. You and no one else know how much you are willing to compromise or sacrifice to achieve happiness in a relationship.

Five ways to Compromise without settling

1. Be Approachable.

A self confident independent woman may assume that eligible men would see her as a valuable asset to a relationship and flock her for dates. More often than not this does not happen. Why? Men may not openly admit it, but an attractive independent and self confident woman can be intimidating to them. And many times men overlook them assuming they are already spoken for.

Some of the career women I interviewed however said. Men hesitate to date us because they feel our standards are not easy to live up to. Men on the other hand say they can quickly recognize a woman's unwillingness to compromise in a relationship, and it's for this reason they shy away.

Five ways to make your self more approachable.

* Let the world know you are single.

* Be friendly. Initiate conversations by asking questions and making interesting statements. Show interest when listening to others.

* Don't be aggressive. Smile, -- a pleasant relaxed smile without being false.

* Use your sense of humor. You don't have to be a stand-up comic --- simply reply humorously to questions. ---- make people feel relaxed in your presence.

* Don't appear to take up a lot of space when in the presence of others. This sends a signal of power and superiority, according to nationally acclaimed body language expert Patti Woods who says. Women who want men to approach them must show that there is room for someone else in their lives.

2. Modify your perception of Mr. Right

Since childhood you've had a mental picture of the person with whom you will fall in love and eventually marry. The fact that you have not found him until now could mean, 1. He is a rare specie. 2. You do not easily attract this type of man. Perhaps it's time to consider changing your outlook. This of course is much more easily said than done; childhood perceptions can be difficult to erase, but consider this.

Say your perception of Mr. Right has always been a man who is tall, handsome, debonair and physically fit, but every relationship you've had with such men failed. You may want to stop and ask yourself why. And after careful consideration, you may conclude your image of Mr. Right might be a lifelong fantasy that bears no relevance to the person you are now.

Another example is a woman who grew up with parents who always struggled to make ends meet, may instinctively be drawn to a man who possesses all the attributes of a good provider. She is attracted to this type of man although she is fully aware that like herself, today's woman is capable of providing for herself and family. So instead of clinging to your lifelong fantasies and holding out for yesterday's Mr. Right, change your focus to include men who can compliment your life as it is today.

3. Be flexible in your dating choices.

Always keep an open mind. Not everyone will be a perfect match, so don't eliminate a prospect because at first glance he does not meet your requirements. Get to know him better and allow nature to take its course. You may be pleasantly surprised. He may impress you in so many other ways that not driving a Ferrari or looking like Arnold Swartzenegger no longer are important issues to you.

4. Let go of past prejudices

You may have eliminated a certain group or groups of men from your list of eligible prospects. Perhaps you had an unpleasant experience with one or more of these groups and vowed never to date for example, another married or divorced man or even a musician. That was when you thought finding Mr. Right would be easy. But prejudging a man before you spend at least an evening with him may cause you to miss an opportunity of finding the one that's right for you.

5. Look again at the people around you.

Overlooking the people around you is common when your primary focus is finding the perfect partner. Most likely you may have already decided no one you know fits the picture. Take a step backwards and look at the people you already know; for example guys you date casually. Even though you have eliminated them as your possible Mr. Perfect, you may still maintain friendships with them. Perhaps you share common interests or maybe one or more of them is in love with you but never got the chance to let you know. It won't hurt to open your mind once again to the possibilities, give them a second chance. Sometimes our decision to be flexible can cause us to see things from a different perspective; and changing our outlook may open a floodgate of possibilities we never knew existed before.

LOVE: MY OPINION OF DATING TODAY

In the rapidly changing world of light speed communications an infinite supply of competing vendors bombard us daily with a little better deal on a little better model of the latest gizmo. Stamps are virtually a thing of the past with Electronic Bill paying, online banking, and credit card auto pay. Gone are the days when we perused the Sears catalog and made out our wish lists for Christmas or Birthday. No longer do we need to visit local jewelers, retailers and department stores for that perfect gift or accessory for the home. Even traditional Car and Home buying have become obsolete. But is it a good thing?

Compromise is a word and a condition that are quickly becoming a curiosity of the past. Why settle for less than your ideal when the entire world is at your fingertips. Don’t buy that car in blue if you really want it in red, it’s available for the same price or less on the Internet in Cincinnati. Don’t consider that house on Elm Street, the back yard isn’t what you envisioned, and you can find a new job, home and mover all in one simple step at help-me-relocate.com

While the convenience of it all may be great, what are the long term effects of this very selective, demanding attitude we are developing as a result?

A hundred and fifty years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a marriage proposal to occur between people who had never even held hands or spoken for more than five minutes. Commitments were made and kept, lifetimes were spent honoring those commitments. Today our unwillingness to compromise and adapt has created a flesh market where singles can select their Ideal Mate based purely on the lack of compromise. What exact features are you looking for? Is their appearance up to your standards? Does their personality profile indicate perfect compatibility? Do they share all the same interests? Are their life experiences the same as yours?

Humans are the single most adaptable creatures on the face of the planet. Our likes and dislikes, our opinions and attitudes change. As we mature we evolve and acclimate. New friends and acquaintances introduce us to new hobbies and activities. New opinions develop as a result of relationships and events. These all become part of our ever-changing personality. As we age our appearance changes, our moods change even our goals and aspirations change, often as a result of the relationships in our life. What we are is a constantly evolving complex assimilation of our past, present and future as influenced by our home, job, friends, family, life experiences and societal influences.

So how can we possibly narrow our field of vision when seeking a mate to a few check boxes? How can we say that we want a person that is Thin, Athletic or Average between 5’6” and 5’10”, lives within 25 miles, likes Nascar or Fishing, makes between 50,000 and 75,000 a year, wants kids and loves dogs.

What happens when we change? Will that person who once fit our profile perfectly change to suit our new ideals? Aren’t we dooming a relationship from the start by demanding they fit specific criteria that happen to be a snapshot in time of our wants and desires? When we change, or they change will we not instinctively reflect on our ideals as represented by check boxes and seek to find a new ‘perfect match’? If they gain a bit of weight, or color their hair, or change professions will we go back to the drawing board?

You may be obsessed with watching the Soprano’s or CSI or Football, if you expect the same wants from a mate what happens when other programs replace them? What if you don’t like the same ones? I used to watch the Dukes of Hazard and Starsky and Hutch everyday, but wouldn’t watch them now to save my life. How could I possibly have liked those shows?

Is there really such a thing as Love at First Sight? Any reasonably objective adult with a grip on reality will tell you no. Love is a work in progress, love is about compromise and commitment. Love takes work, and it’s painful, joyful and everything in between. How do we know if something is Hot? We know because we’ve all felt the Cold. Diversity is interesting, different is good. Is there such a thing as a match made in heaven? Perhaps, but will it always be a match made in heaven? I doubt it.

LOVE: HOW WOMAN ARE DEALING WITH FINDING MR. RIGHT

If we imagine that the decline of boys into wimps and barbarians has led inversely and categorically to the rise of girls, we would be gravely mistaken. In the new gender-blind world promising careers open to talents, young women have found unprecedented opportunities in science, medicine, academia, letters, and the law. Title IX has ensured that no stone is left unturned in allowing women to wrestle, play lacrosse, or bass fish competitively. But today, many young women are suffering from the aftermath of the sexual revolution and the extreme demands of the radical feminist agenda. These movements have made it far more difficult for them to find honorable men to love them. As the authors of the immensely popular The Rules contend, "many women we know find it easier to relocate to another state, switch careers, or run a marathon than to get the right man to marry them!" The truth is there are fewer "right men" around these days—in part because of the ways women themselves have compromised their natural modesty and the inmost promptings of their hearts. Though women can command higher salaries, they have ceased to be able to command men.

Many young women today look upon the world of dating with anxiety, hopelessness, disappointment—even dread. They express disappointment with young men's stubborn immaturity, with their own slim chances of finding love, and with the sad fact that whereas in the past, everyone expected women not to have sex before marriage, nowadays everyone, especially their boyfriends, expects that they will. And though they often don't say so directly, many young women are disappointed by their parents' advice or, more often, complete lack of it. Young women have, of course, adjusted to the world around them. In the vernacular, they aren't looking for Mr. Right but for Mr. Right Now. But looking for Mr. Right Now has taken an enormous toll on their lives and emotions. The decision to look, or settle, for Mr. Right Now might be described as Heather's Compromise. Heather, today's young woman, is tempted continually to compromise her ultimate happiness for the momentary attention of an undependable young male on his terms.

Young women respond to this temptation in roughly three ways. According to their different responses, we might call them party-girls, perennial girlfriends, and romantics: the first have lots of sex with lots of men; the second become continually "involved" in relationships; and the last are those women who hold out for something better.

Party-Girls

The party-girl embraces the new regime of sexual freedom. She's the celebrity of the hook-up world. Paris Hilton is her patron saint. She is stunningly attractive and has no conscience. She wins hot legs contests, flashes passers-by at Mardi Gras, and goes home with a guy she meets at a club, if she wants to. If not, she leaves with the satisfaction that as she danced to Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body," all the men truly wanted her "naked by the end of this song." (Though given the way she dresses, there isn't much left to take off.) There have always been girls who are considered "loose" or "fast." But in the past they had to be somewhat discreet in their escapades. Nowadays, they are brazen. The party-girls begin dating college guys when they are in high school. In college, they join the sorority most known for its attractive women, low average GPA, and wild parties. The party-girl will, of course, have a boyfriend from time to time. Between boyfriends she will hit the clubs aggressively, partly to get back at her old boyfriend, partly to see if she can find anyone else, mostly just to have fun. She has no thoughts of the future and no dreams about romance. Nor has she any worries that men will not want to be with her because of her sexual history. She has guys literally falling all over her. Why should she care if there are one or two men out there who would not want her to be the mother of their children? Those guys are boring anyway.

True party-girls are few in number. But there are many more party-girl imitators and wannabes. Girls of weak character and low self-esteem, left alone by laissez-faire parents, frequently crave social acceptance. Sex becomes the easy answer. Most any girl who offers sex cannot fail to be accepted, at least for a night. By the time she gets to college, if she goes to college, her habits are fixed. Unlike the celebrity party-girl, who has her pick of men and can say no to anyone, the party-girl wannabe must say yes to almost everyone. She often ends up sleeping with entire groups of young men. The girl who wants to be with a certain type of athlete ends up servicing the whole team. The same is true of the "house-rats" who sleep their way into a fraternity and never leave. Indeed, even some of the fraternity brothers get sick of these women hanging around. These pathetic girls are simply used. Though not publicized in recruiting brochures, many colleges in this country have something called "the walk of shame." On Sunday mornings a steady file of female students can be seen walking from fraternity row back to the dormitories, their clothes somewhat wrinkled, their hair a mess. The real shame, however, is that these women don't appear, at least on the outside, the least bit ashamed. They have had drunken, casual sex with a fraternity guy. What's the big deal? Their secret unhappiness and chronic self-doubt are the big deal.

Girlfriends

Most young women are incapable of brazen sexual abandonment. They long for stability and permanence and love in their lives. But they begin receiving the attentions of young males at an early age, long before they intend to marry. So they enter into a half-way covenant between marriage, the longed-for ultimate source of stability and love, and the worrisome condition of the unattached female. To be unattached and female in our society is a difficult undertaking, psychologically, socially, and, at times, physically. Psychologically, the unattached woman often wonders whether she can get a man. Her self-confidence is not helped by her friends reassuring her that she will get a man "some day" or that she will "have lots of men." Unattached males, on the other hand, are always assumed to be playing the field. Women by their very nature have more difficulty being alone or unnoticed. They want to be loved, or at least complimented. The best male compliment to a female that we currently have in this society is the invitation to a date or to a kind of ongoing date.

Socially, women and men both have a hard time being unattached because the world is set up for couples. High school formals, for example, come with great regularity. These events practically mandate teenage pairing-off. Who wants to show up at a formal occasion alone, have his own picture taken, and have no one with whom to dance? To the unattached adolescent, a high school formal appears like the coming of The Deluge. To board the Ark two-by-two one must find another unattached person. The collective attempt to find that other person constitutes the great emotional drama of the high school years. Nowadays it is also becoming physically necessary to "be with someone." Because the barbarians leer and jeer at women walking alone, women often attach themselves to men just to feel safe when going out. To keep the gorillas off, as young author Wendy Shalit has observed, you have to find your own gorilla. These various pressures practically force young women to attach themselves to someone. To whom is less important than the fact of being attached.

This attachment is called a relationship. The woman who enters into a relationship takes on the status of girlfriend. In relationships we come to understand Heather's Compromise in its purest form. The pattern begins somewhat like this. Heather is a 16-year-old girl, a sophomore in high school. All her friends began dating even in middle school, but Heather was a late developer and was not asked out very often. Now she is developing, and boys are beginning to notice her. She is pleased by the attention. Finally, the cute guys in the school are noticing her rather than her best friend. One of the boys is in her chemistry class. He's "a pretty nice and cool guy," so she goes out with him. Her parents are pleased that Heather is now dating just like all the other girls. Pretty soon Heather and her boyfriend are a serious item. No one else would dare ask Heather out. He introduces her to all his friends, and she quickly becomes "popular." Admittedly, she does not always like the way he acts around his friends, but it's different when they're alone. He makes Heather laugh on their dates. He can also be romantic. On her birthday her boyfriend puts a card and a flower in her locker. After about three months, right around Christmas, he uses the word. One night while saying good night on her front porch and kissing her (her parents are already asleep), he says, "You know I love you." Heather is thrilled. His words give her butterflies in the hollow of her stomach. She can hardly get to sleep that night. A week later his parents go out of town on a skiing trip. Though he normally takes these trips, he stays behind this time to work on his chemistry project. Heather goes over to his house without telling her parents that the two will be entirely alone. They get pretty serious that night. They do not go all the way, though. Throughout the spring, they try increasingly to be alone together. He takes Heather to Junior Prom, of course, and that night they do go all the way. Heather does not feel completely right about it at first. But he loves her. He assures her that he will still respect her even after they've had sex. All her friends had sex "a long time ago." Why should Heather be any different?

Such is the nature of relationships. They become more serious, physically and emotionally, by increments. No one step seems completely revolutionary except perhaps the last one. But that step is taken at Prom, which after all, is a special occasion. Realize, however, that after Prom, Heather has no reason to refuse sexual favors nor may she want to. She loves her boyfriend and loves being his girlfriend. They have already gone that far, so why should a Tuesday evening in the summer be any different from Prom Night? Prom Night has served its romantic, or carnal, purpose as The First Time. But when Heather and her boyfriend break up, as surely they will when they go off to college or he gets tired of her, Heather now has no reason not to go all the way with any other boyfriend. That boyfriend only has to say, "So you loved him more than you love me?" "No, of course not. It's not like that. That was a different kind of relationship," Heather will counter. Here Heather is wrong since every relationship is like that. When she lost her virginity, she lost the argument for sexual continence. She is right when she invokes the experience of her other friends in saying, "I have known so many couples whose relationships have been ruined by sex." But her current boyfriend won't understand that reasoning. Nor does Heather, because she doesn't understand the true nature of relationships and of being a girlfriend. That ignorance is the source of her undoing and her unhappiness.

In today's culture, chastity is a difficult enterprise. Girlfriends are not libertines. They do not get involved in sexual relationships based upon the pleasure principle. Rather, two principles of their own nature work against them. First, their feminine nature invites them to please others, especially those close to them. Second, they long for intimacy. Young men are by nature keen and devious psychologists of the female sex. They can easily appeal to these principles of the female nature and produce a winning argument for their case by using the language of sacrifice and intimacy.

And indeed, these psychological comforts can be had for a time within relationships. Ultimately, however, relationships fail precisely because there are no social sanctions or supports to make them work and they have no view to the future. In former times, the ends of marriage were straightforward. Marriage was the basis of the family, which in turn was a microcosm of the political or religious order whose purpose was to secure the good life. But what's the purpose of a relationship? Relationships don't aim at the procreation and education of children; indeed, they must avoid procreation at all costs. The ends of a relationship make no reference to the whole of a person's life. Young people date in order to express their passions, to find companionship, to gain social acceptance, and to have fun. All of these are fleeting aims. The goal may also be love, in some sense. Particularly in these times when, due to the breakdown of the family, love is not easily come by at home, adolescents tend to throw themselves into these volatile affairs of the heart. I suspect that whereas in the past most adolescents (especially girls) confided in their parents about their romantic troubles, today more young people confide in their boyfriends and girlfriends about their home troubles. Nonetheless, if this attachment in relationships can be considered love, it is conditional and temporary rather than permanent. It depends on the couple's present feelings towards each other, which may change very rapidly, especially because the young, as yet unformed, boys and girls are themselves changing as they grow up.

To be sure, relationships end up imitating marriages. Boyfriends and girlfriends talk of "anniversaries" and of belonging to each other, and they engage in sex and often live together. When not involved in a relationship, they call themselves "single." Yet every girlfriend secretly knows that a "break-up" could occur at any moment. Indeed, couples even talk about "taking time off" for an indefinite period when things do not seem to be going well. Married people don't have the luxury of taking time off. There's no sabbatical for the seven-year itch. Marriage, at least according to its vows, settles for nothing less than always and forever.

The prevailing culture of relationships, however, tends to undermine marriage. Most perennial girlfriends will have had several serious relationships before getting married and therefore several serious break-ups. These break-ups take an enormous toll on the happiness of young women. Especially when sex is involved, young women can feel these failed attempts at love as "losing pieces of yourself." They no longer feel whole. Erotic encounters, like any repeated activity, are habit-forming. If you have broken up several times before, what will stop you from doing the same thing once you are married? Relationship gurus assert that dating helps you find the right mate and that living with someone teaches you how to live with someone. It is more statistically accurate to say that the cycle of dating and breaking-up is good practice for divorce. In our society, with all the emphasis placed upon youth and individuality and fun, marriages more often imitate relationships than relationships prefigure marriage.

The obvious outcome of Heather's Compromise is that Heather loses more often than she wins, if ever she wins. Occasionally, a young woman will, after several tumultuous relationships, find a decent man, marry him, and live happily ever after. That happiness appears to be the result of Fortune, as fickle a deity as Eros, rather than any planning or attributes of character on her part. More often she ends up emotionally drained, jaded, confused.

At this low point, Dear Abby might tell Heather to seek a "spiritual advisor." Oprah would tell her to go on a journey to find her spirit. Dr. Phil would tell her to get tough. The Rules show her all the tricks of playing hard-to-get and tell her not to have sex until she is in a "committed relationship." No one, at least no one she is listening to, tells her to become a lady and to require this "guy" to become a gentleman. The sexual revolution aimed at undermining the sexual restraints imposed by a supposedly patriarchal, puritanical, repressive society. Young people of both sexes waged this revolution. The young people won, so it would seem. But only the young, unattached males won completely, from their limited point of view. The females gained a Pyrrhic victory. They are forced to resort to tricks to keep their boyfriends "committed," but commitment is relative and changes with the wind. The girlfriends "can't get over it," it being the endless series of relationships that rarely materialize into something beautiful, transcendent, ultimate.

Heather's boyfriend, at least for now, thinks he has won. He always gets sex and, equally important, the base sense of achievement that comes with sexual conquest. Certainly, guys may get upset and even cry during a break-up. In part, they are sad that they are losing a good deal. In part, they are not completely unfeeling and have some sympathy for their girlfriends. They can also be good actors. For the nice guys who enter into relationships with the best of intentions, breaking up can be a very hard thing. But the emotional consequences are far less dire for the male.

The sexual revolution, nonetheless, has had deleterious effects on men as well. In previous ages, the system of courtship and marriage required on the part of young people both sexual restraint and a strong sense of the future. Young men had to "clean up their act" before they could become truly eligible bachelors. In order to gain a young lady's approval and ultimately her hand, a man had to do several things. He had to master his sex drive. He had to prove his devotion to her, usually over a long period of time. He had to pass inspection before her discerning parents. He had to become financially stable so that he could support his wife and the children they would have. In short, he had to become a man of means, a man of parts, and a man of character. The exacting demands of courtship discouraged males from becoming wimps or barbarians.

What worked to the advantage of individual women also worked to the advantage of society. Women, at least a certain kind of women, force men to become civilized when they are not already. Clearly men will not be properly civilized in our day unless the traditional standards of courtship and marriage return in some form. Rowdy men who are not married and have no plans of getting married; who can "score" with party-girls from time to time and with party-girl wannabes all the time; who may occasionally lie enough about their emotions to have a girlfriend for a few months; who share the rent with their roommates, both male and female; who need only shell out for beer, cable television, and pizza; and whose ambitions amount to little more than a higher "max" bench press--these barbarians have all the basic pleasures and no incentive to shape up. They're just living out their favorite beer commercial.

Romantics

We will never re-establish the happier relations between the sexes until the third group of young women, the romantics, make their preferences known and become models for others. The romantics are those few young women who are disappointed in the young men they meet these days and unwilling to compromise their hopes just to have boyfriends for the moment. They believe that the ultimate source of romantic happiness is marriage to a good man. Unfortunately, they live in a world largely populated by wimps and barbarians. The romantic would rather sit at home or go out with her female friends than be bothered by such types. This patient longing for a true man is admittedly not an easy task. The romantic woman may often find herself lamenting to her parents like Rousseau's Sophie:

"Give me," she said, "a man imbued with my maxims or one whom I can bring around to them, and I shall marry him. But until then, why do you scold me? Pity me. I am unhappy, not mad. ...Is it my fault if I love what does not exist? I am not a visionary. I do not want a prince. I do not seek Telemachus. I know that he is only a fiction. I seek someone who resembles him. And why cannot this someone exist, since I exist...?"

But the romantic woman, the modern Sophie, prefers this anxious waiting for a good man to the unhappiness she is sure to find in settling for a bad one. Meanwhile, she will let the wimps and barbarians who try to whine or crash their way into her world know that their behavior is unacceptable and unmanly. Deep down, no man wants to be rejected or, worse, laughed at by a superior, discriminating woman.

Once while teaching the topic of chivalry in a Western Civilization class in college, I put the question to a "barbarian" student: If women refused to be around you if you cursed in front of them, stared at their chests, and in general acted in a lewd and drunken manner at parties, would you clean up your act? His answer was straightforward. "Yeah, of course. Who wouldn't?" Should romantic women across the nation make their preferences known by their great power of refusal, and should increasing numbers of perennial girlfriends come over into the camp of the romantics, young women would regain their natural capacity of commanding men. As surely as day follows night, young men would have to reform their character in short order.

What women want is neither Rambo nor Woody Allen. Nor is it Mel Gibson in pantyhose and in their aerobics classes. They don't want men to boss around. They don't want men who cook meals and do the dishes. They want real men, the kind that men themselves deep down want to be but have largely forgotten how to be. A former college student of mine explained the problem succinctly. The class was debating the merits of a required period of national service for men, lasting at least two years. The women saw the benefits of such a program, not so much for the nation as for themselves. Boys would leave high school, they imagined, serve their country for a couple of years in some important capacity, and enter the university as mature and responsible men rather than as immature partiers and class-ditchers. They would be more like the men in Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, said one woman, a business major. Back then it was not unusual for a man to be a real man at 19. Nowadays, she said, guys that age behave like they are 14. On a much larger scale, the enduring popularity of movies such as Blast From the Past and Kate and Leopold, in which gentlemen literally come to the present from a previous age to woo jaded and unhappy women, reveals that young women long to be treated like ladies again; but on the whole have lost the self-confidence, the arts, the patience, the self-restraint, and the hope to make their dreams a reality.

LOVE: FROM ONE GUY TO THE NEXT

WAKE UP. She's probably standing right next to you. maybe she works in your building. maybe she serves you coffee. my bet is she's not far away, is extremely accessible, and in a lot of cases wondering why you don't fucking get it. She may even ask her friends over drinks or while watching Sex in the City why you don't fucking get it, which in the long run won't bode well for you...trust me. 

Now close your eyes and try to picture a girl you would be really happy to have on your arm. the girl that you'd actually be proud to walk through a major city with because you'd have that feeling you have when you think you have something that other guys want, or should want. we don't have to be talking LOVE, fellas...just someone you might TREAT WELL rather than just want to bone once or twice. got that girl pictured? her looks...her manner...some of it? 

now if that girl in your head resembles or just plain IS someone from the following categories, take note: 

- pop stars: guys, come on. britney spears is an airhead who probably can't cook spaghetti, much less have an intelligent conversation about anything but celebrity rumors and TEEN magazine. christina, brandy, michelle, avril...not one of them is good-looking before three hours of make-up SHE CAN'T PUT ON HERSELF and while you may be incredibly proud of yourself if you managed to intrigue any one of them, you're getting sloppy seconds to some of the pussiest musicians alive. 

- movie stars: for all you angelina jolie or julia roberts or demi moore types, turn off the television. these woman in most cases are very, very selfish people, despite what you may see or hear about their service efforts or adopted children from rwanda. when your contract for a shitty movie who's only selling point is your TITS is not only for millions of dollars, but also includes everything from pocket money during filming that you couldn't POSSIBLY need, to the fucking LATTE you'll recieve every morning from some hard-working intern you won't so much as notice, you have lost touch with reality and will undoubtedly end up with another self-absorbed movie star or musician. if you're not one of those things, stop imagining yourself as one. 

- movie star (part b): ask yourself one thing if your dream woman resembles a movie star...what the hell do you know about her? odds are you're either picturing her in the context of one of her characters...say lara croft or viv (pretty woman)...and haven't figured out that SHE'S ACTING...or you're thinking "she seems caring" or "she seems so nice and fun"...in which case YOUR MISSING THE POINT. those qualities exist in people you see every day...people you enjoy being around...SO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM!! 

- the models: yeah, you just saw some woman splashed across a photo spread in the sports illustrated swimsuit issue and wish you could parade her around in front of your friends. first of all, STOP BEING SHALLOW...a woman is not an object. second, she probably DOESN'T EAT and has so many issues as a result of it, that your head would explode if you tried to spend even a weekend with her. she lives a life completely based on her LOOKS, which will GIVE OUT SOME DAY. it is totally unrealistic for you to expect the woman you meet to look like her, and i doubt you'd want to spend all day shopping or hearing about the new dolce & gabbana spring clothing line. 

- your best friend: this one can go either way. i simply suggest you don't FUCK IT UP. if you're lucky enough to have a woman you can be yourself around and let into your dirty, perverted mind on a semi-regular basis, you owe it to yourself NOT to pull something STUPID because you listened to your DICK again. if you think she is perfect for you and you're perfect for her, there are only a few reasons that you wouldn't already be together. all of them require that the issue be brought up between you...which doesn't mean you try to get her wasted and then "see what happens" (translate: "you trying to slyly get her naked"). in any case, either she FEELS THE SAME WAY or she DOESN'T! if she does, consider yourself lucky, and treat her with the utmost respect until you leave this earth. if she doesn't, do EVERYTHING YOU CAN to avoid letting your feelings ruin what the two of you already have. that means you need to BE HONEST about where you're at emotionally and may need to take a 
break from her to remind yourself as to how important to you she is, rather than getting your boxers all in a bunch like a SELFISH BITCH because you CAN'T HAVE SOMETHING YOU WANT. 

- the mary-kateandashley thing: the twins are a good example of a current fad to fantasize about these young hotties who now seem to come in pairs more often than not. i remind you that these girls are SEVENTEEN, and wear enough make-up to make zsa zsa gabor look homely. beyond that, see above. 

- the nympho: so you wish you could find a girl who loved sex as much as you do. well...most woman love GOOD sex MORE than you do. because it's rare. if you started paying attention to what a woman wanted from you in bed, she'd want to fuck your brains out every day. however, the only relationship that sex will sustain over time is the one you have with your HAND. 

- the cool chick: this has gotta be the most common gripe about woman a guy can make..."i just wish i could find a really cool chick." hey, almost every woman is cool in her own right, and more than likely a lot of the woman you know are even cooler than you think they are. but a woman is still a woman, not a guy, and needs to be treated as such. she needs to know that she's special, and letting her fuck you, despite what you're arrogant ass may hope, doesn't convey the message "i value you". a woman doesn't have to like football or video games or poker in order to understand that in at times your world might revolve around them. but if you want to be yourself so damn bad, and do things you love to do, than you need to get your head out of your ass and realize that she needs the SAME THING. a 'cool chick' will listen to you bitch about your baseball team if you're willing to LISTEN when she bitches about work, or wants you to listen to a song she loves. 

there's no need to start seeking out the 'right girl'. but stop joking yourselves and writing woman off who don't meet some expectations you have of them that are entirely the product of marketing or misconception. there's nothing wrong with one-night stands, short relationships, or dating a few people at once, as long as there's a level of honesty, with both yourself and the people you encounter, employed by YOU. 

the world is full of absolutely beautiful women, many of whom you have probably kept in your periphery while staring at some girl's chest or making dirty jokes with the boys. it does a guy a lot of good to pay attention to the women he knows...to learn from them...and to figure out who they are and what the world looks like from their eyes. 

soon you'll find women are putting a smile on your face for all the RIGHT reasons.

LOVE: WOMAN WHO THINKS ALL MEN ARE JERKS

Every time I hear you make that comment, I want to scream “Get over it, he doesn’t like you!” But of course, a little voice says, “Bite your tongue. Her feelings are real. You have to stop coming across as an insensitive asshole every time she whines to you about how her latest attempt to snag a boyfriend backfired." 

Let me see if I can articulate my observation…a perspective that would likely result in the messenger getting killed. 

A girl wants a boyfriend so bad that she will take the first guy who comes calling...and I will bet that the first guy that does comes calling is probably a player because that’s his M.O. He reaches out to multiple women at a time and makes sure all his bases are covered. He lives by the motto, “If you go to bat a hundred times, you’re bound to hit something.” 

He’s charming and knows how to work a girl. She’s thinking she’s the only one in the game and that he must really like her to be paying her all this attention. 

Meanwhile, the nice guy you totally ignore sits in the background and observes. A side note to the nice guys...you can’t win if you don’t play. 

They flirt, she puts on her best front. They hit it off and he suggests they get together again. He calls four days later. In the meantime, she’s freaking out at why he hasn’t called yet, why he would say he would call if he's not going to and if he hasn’t already called in three days, then she’s just going to blow him off. Then she gets the call and all the hatred, anger and frustration just went out the window. The intent to write him off never existed. It’s new and exciting again. 

They make plans to go out, again they are enjoying each other’s company. She invites him to her place and lets things get physical, but not go all the way because she’s holding out with the intent of sustaining his respect for her. 

The next day, I hear about the date and how great he is. He doesn’t call for a few days. Now I’m starting to hear “What a jerk and why hasn’t he called?”. He finally calls and she pulls an attitude with him. She wants to start laying down the rules early. He’s turned off by her attitude, but still asks her out because he hasn’t gotten laid yet. 

Second date or even third date, it’s the same scenario. Eventually, things get physical enough that she puts out. Things couldn’t be better--except when he doesn’t call for a week. During which, she is an emotional wreck! She rants on about how she really liked this guy, thought he was different and that he really liked her. I’m thinking “Didn’t we go through this with the last four guys you dated?” Same story, just different guys. 

He finally calls thinking they can just hook up. Her attitude towards him is hot and cold and totally unpredictable. She’s totally sweet one minute and a bitch the next because she’s torn between wanting to be with him, but hating the fact that he isn’t up her ass. Of course, this whole time they’ve been seeing each other, his intentions has never changed. He is still the same guy as when they first met. So after all the emotional episodes she exudes, it starts to wear on him. He doesn’t want to deal anymore and starts distancing himself or moves on to some other girl. She senses his distance and becomes desperate so makes herself available for him. So now the few and far in between times that he does call to hook up, she accommodates. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not building a case for the “men are jerks” notion, just trying to get you to see the pattern you have created for yourself. Every time you act out on your insecurities, you become someone who’s unbalanced and emotionally draining to others around you. I can guarantee, that is not the kind of girls most guys want to date. The kind of girls that most guys fall in love with are girls who are their friends. Girls who are rational, stable, and fun to be around. A girl who knows the difference between physical and emotional connections, who understands and appreciates the physiological needs while separating that from the emotional needs. 

Try getting to know a guy before you consider recruiting him for the position of “boyfriend”. Let him see you as his friend first before you try luring and trapping him with sex. And if the physical attraction becomes too much and you end up in bed with him, don’t take it so personally when you discover that was his only intention. Remember, you are the female. You have the control and deciding vote on whether or not he gets to sleep with you. Take ownership of the fact that you allowed him into your bed. If you’re feelings happen get hurt in the process, know that it is the cross you must bear for ignoring that nice guy in the background who’s still wondering why the girls go for the assholes...

LOVE: WHY DO WE FALL IN LOVE?

We all want to fall in love. Why? Because that experience makes us feel completely alive. Where every sense is heightened, every emotion is magnified, our everyday reality is shattered and we are flying into the heavens. It may only last a moment, an hour, an afternoon. But that doesn't diminish its value, because we are left with memories that we treasure to the rest of our lives. Love those who love you.

You may only be one person to the world but you may also be the world to one person. 

The hardest thing to do is watch the one you love, love somebody else.
men suck 

A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks;
a woman loses hers after four kisses My love for you is a journey;
starting at forever,
and ending at never When I saw you I fell in love,
and you smiled because you knew To let a fool kiss you is stupid, 
to let a kiss fool you is worse. Love that we can not have
is the one that lasts the longest,
hurts the deepest
and feels the strongest Does God punish or reward us with love? 


"Don't let your mind rule over your heart..." "The first time I saw you I already knew, there was something inside of you. Something I thought that I would never find... Angel of mine."

Monica "I am yours, you are mine, of that be sure. You are locked in my heart, the little key is lost and now you must stay there forever..." "Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."

Alfred Lord Tennyson "Sometimes the one thing you are looking for; Is the one thing you can't see."

Unknown "True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about but few have seen."
Francois de La Rouchfoucauld "If, each time I thought of you, were a flower I could walk in my garden forever."

Unknown "Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Others stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never ever the same."

Source Unknown "A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears."
Woodrow Wyatt "So, fall asleep love, loved by me....for I know love, I am loved by thee."
Robert Browning "The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."
Gilbert K. Chesterton If Roses are Symbol's of LOVE why do they alway's Die?
-Unknown Paul Bowle's Sheltering Sky

"Because we do not know when we will
die we get to think of life as an inexhaustible
well and yet everything happens only a certain number
of times and a very small number really. How
many times will you remember a
certain afternoon of your childhood, an
afternoon that is so deeply a part of
your life that you can't even conceive
of your life without it. Perhaps four or
five times more? Perhaps not even that.
How many times will you watch the
full moon rise, perhaps twenty, and yet
it all seems so limitless." The Crow-TV Series

"I've lived a thousand lifetimes to find a soul like yours. A soul so pure, a soul so brave. An angel that takes my breath away. I want to lie with you forever, my passion knows no bounds,I want to shield you from all evil, protect this love we've found. Love me with your spirit, promise we'll never be apart. We are not the same as others, we are forever lovers..." 
Shelly Webster and Eric Draven Will from Young Americans

LOVE: RELATIONSHIP ISN'T A STATE OF BEING

If any of you are worried that you haven't run to anyone named Right, male or female, don't be in such a hurry. Chill, relax, and enjoy your freedom, because once you are in a relationship you don't have that kind of freedom anymore. So many people rush to met their soulmate, only to complain about being in a relationship with them...it is nuts. Living the commitment everyday takes alot of doing. In short, just because you know how to get into a relationship doesn't mean you how to be in a relationship. My point is relationship isn't just a state of being. It require time, thought, and attention. It's a million separate actions taken in order to stay with someone, share a life with someone, have a partnership with someone, appreciate and support someone, cultivate love with someone, ----actions taken consistently over the long haul. On thing that can kill any relationship and i have written about this alot of times is...expectation. That's expecting your partner to do itall for you: make you happy, fix you, fulfill you, complete you, define you, make your life for you, make your life more meaningful for you. Giant mistake.

This is what i will tell my next partner:
"Don't expect or rely on me to make you happy. You must be happy with yourself first. Be happy with your life separated from what the other person beings to the table. I am the icing on the cake and you shouldn't expect me to be the whole dessert."

Don't expect your partner to make your life and give you an identity. I guarantee you'll have a distant, uninvolved, and resentful partner in your hand...and you will be angry because that person failed to fulfill you expectation. That is your problem..it is your unrealistic expectations. There's no faster way to kill love tha to blame the other party for not doing what you ought to do for yourself. To be sure, you can be blissfully happy with a partner, but you can't hold him or her responsible for making and keeping you happy. It's not fair and it's not possible. 

You have to expect problem in relationships. There will be stress and pressures from the outside that momentarily pull you apart or push you together. Even when nothing huge happening, there are disagreement and arguments, times when you might want to get the hell out. Life goes up and down, and so does the natural ebb and flow in relationships. You're not suppose to be lovey-dovey all the time.

Let me tell you something, when I meet a couple in office that's been married for all time, I ask them how they do it. No matter what they are, they have something to teach me. One thing I hear over and over from couples who've made it work is that you must have respect for your partner, and you must be able to practice the art of forgiveness. One couple told me they practice "automatic forgiveness"-if one of use hurts the other's feeling or does something to infuriate the other- and that happen very often, because we're sensitive to each other--then you have get mad, let it be known, have a little or big fight about it and then let it go and move on. That's forgiveness--not holding on to and cultivating the felling that you've been wronged and then parading around like a wounded martyr. That is what Melissa (my ex girlfriend) would do. We would have a fight and she would be angry for days....be cold. 

Make sure you having a great time on your own before you get married. You'll have a great time after you get married, but it's just a different kind of great time, if you catch my drift. Enjoy your freedom. Spend as much time as you can getting to know yourself and what you want and need. And then keep your eyes open for that great love to appear--that person who loves you for you....right now I am enjoying myself..with my books, music, movies, family and friends and you should also. And by the way, make sure you love that person for him.herself. Chances are remote ( one in a zillion) that you'll get your partner to change. They won't. Certainly, the things you find most annoying and objectionable won't ever change. What does changes over time is your own willingness to accept these things. 

Please don't expect your prospective mate to have all the same interests, to want to talk about all the same things, No one person can do it all for you. Didn't you ever notice that's why you have a variety of friends? Friends are people who reflect different aspects and interests of your life. 

I thank God I didn't get married yet...because as I work my way up on life...i learned more about myself and I gained self-confidence. But know I am ready....Where are you.....

LOVE: ANOTHER FRAGILE AND QUIRKLY HUMAN BEING

When you love someone do you give your power away?

This may seem a strange question to ask and you may wonder what 'power' has to do with 'love'.

However, if we take a look we might see that love and power are very closely linked. This may not seem very romantic, but that does not mean it is not true.

We see another person as attractive depending on the level of 'personal power' that they hold. Things like good looks, money, success (however we define it), musical and artistic abilities, and the like all, can add to attractiveness - and 'attractiveness' is a form of personal power.

When we love someone it is natural to want to give to him or her. It is part of the fun of a relationship. Yet, if we try to give too much of ourselves before the other person is ready the chances are that they will run a mile...

Has anyone not experienced that kind of 'rejection'? I don't see any hands going up...It seems to be part of the human experience for everyone no matter what their status in life.

The problems start to arise when we place another person above ourselves. If we do that it can come across as if we feel that the other person is more important that we are.

"What is wrong with?" that you might wonder. "Isn't that how love is supposed to be?", you may ask.

Well, the problem with it is that it is not sustainable. The other person is looking for an equal not for more members of their 'fan club'. In order to have a meaningful relationship they need more from us than simply adding ourselves to their list of admirers. Sooner or later they will believe our own low assessment of ourselves.

The more we look up to someone the more we reduce own status in their eyes. Indeed, perhaps the more we look up to someone the more reason we give them to look down on us.

This does not mean that we cannot admire qualities and abilities in others. It just means we need to do it with a feeling of equality and not with a feeling like we are some kind unworthy creature admiring someone far better than we are.

Love is really something much bigger than us as individuals. In a sense, love is a process. How we love has to do with how we respond in that process. It may have little to do with the other person because we will respond the same way with someone else.

If our response to love is to try and raise up the other person by lowering ourselves then that will be our experiences of the 'process' of love. We will experience being reduced and diminished when we love.

If our response to love is to raise ourselves up and the other person too - then that will be our experience of love. We will experience love as enlivening and enriching. Yes, we may still have our disappointments - but, overall it will raise us up and not diminish us.

We need to look at our response to the process of love and see it is different from the 'object' of our love. In that way we can find more skillful ways to express how we feel.

And, the expression of love is a skill. It is perhaps one of the highest of skills, but it is still a skill. It is something that needs to be learned - often through trial and error. There is not sense beating ourselves up when we make a mistake because it is just part of the process of learning the skill.

Part of the process is learning to feel good about ourselves as part of our own experience of relating to others. If we try and exclude ourselves from our own ability to love, that is what makes us want to sacrifice ourselves to the image we make of the other person. We have set ourselves up to lose if we do this as it makes a false god / goddess out of them.

Then we begin to look at the other person as if they are source of love in our life. Which is a dangerous thing to do to another fragile and quirky human being. It is dangerous as it is too much power to give another person - especially when it is someone we might hardly know at all (except that they are 'so wonderful'...).

We need to recognize that the source of love in our lives is a deeper and wiser part of ourselves, which lives within us. That is our true source of love, and our true source of personal power.

LOVE: VAGINA DENTATA

Imagine the soft, glistening folds that open into the female vagina. Indeed, if you are male you probably imagine them quite often -- the wet, inviting warmth, the luscious sensuous sensations as you glide into your lover. Now imagine that hidden within these same supple folds lurk a ferocious array of teeth or fangs ready to devour the genitals of any man foolish enough to insert his member. This is the mythology known as vagina dentata.

Well you might ask, What the fuck? Who came up with this shit? And of course the answer would be Sigmund Freud -- the same fellow who told us that every woman secretly wants to take the knife to the hot parts of her honey, separating him irrevocably from his out-thrusting manhood. Makes you kinda wonder what life was like between Freud and the Mrs., doesn't it? Over the intervening decades since its popularization by the good doctor, vagina dentata has been invoked by countless individuals seeking to explain how "society" came up with this image of the castrating twat armed with deadly teeth.

Oddly enough few have noted that the real question is, "How did Freud come up with this idea which he then projected onto the unconscious of his patients, society at large, and even the mythologies of other cultures?" Instead his assertion that the vagina dentata was a universal fear, lurking in the unconscious of every man, went relatively unchallenged. Why? Freud was the father of psychoanalysis, credited with drawing his conclusions after years of careful listening to the fantasies, dreams, and phobias of countless patients. Furthermore, he was a Great Man, and of course Great Men know more than the rest of us schmucks. That's what makes them Great Men, right?

But over the years, more and more scholars have begun to notice a disturbing fact -- that Freud's interpretations of his patients' dreams and obsessions contained a very unscientific "fudge factor". Not only did it appear that he had blatantly projected his own bias onto the data (by interpreting his patients dreams to mean just what he wanted them to mean), but he had possibly even fabricated some of the data itself! That is, a few of the "case histories" or stories from patients were made up by Freud himself -- there was no patient. Therefore, where he used these same dreams and stories to demonstrate or "prove" his theories (that penis envy, vagina dentata, the Oedipus complex and etc.) were archetypal human fears and longings, he was not proving anything at all. Except how skilled he was at finding justification for his preconceived ideas in literature and in life situations.

This tendency to interpret texts and events to fit preconceived theories would later be copied by psychology majors and lit crit students ad nauseum, as they found vagina dentatas, envied penises, and other Freud derived symbology hidden within the words and imagery of countless books, movies, songs, plays, speeches, and ancient myths. Gleefully they plucked forth their Freudian plums and crowed, "What a good scholar am I!" Eventually this over zealous symbol detection led to the opposing cry, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!"

This same approach to collecting "evidence" may have frequently led the great man himself to steam roll over the real meaning (and value for healing) in his patients' confessions. Thus a dream of a man's head being cut off was "really" a symbolic Castration. Never mind that countless other fears and neuroses could be equally symbolized by decapitation. Never mind the value of exploring what decapitation meant to the patient himself. Freud was looking for castration -- and so castration was what he found.

Of course, it may not be entirely fair to look back over the great man's notes and second-guess his interpretations. After all, a good therapist follows also his intuition, as to what the patient's real issue is and what he or she needs to confront in order to heal. Maybe all those patients really were hung up on castration.

Maybe.

But Freud's assertion that "probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of female genitals", just doesn't ring true for most of us today. American porn mags are full of images of moist pink labia and come-hither vaginas. And clearly the response it creates is not terror, but gleefully horny desire! Sticky pages indicate an entirely different reaction to the vagina than that pointed to by Freud.

Which is not to say that there aren't plenty of people out there who are afraid of the female genitalia. Two million cases a year of genital mutilation or Female Circumcision would indicate otherwise.

It is simply that it is important to view Freud (and others with vagina angst) as a person of a certain time and place. He was a Victorian. And as the anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out, the Victorians raised children in complete ignorance of many of the facts of life that children in earthier cultures took for granted.

As a consequence, while children in Samoa, for example, were able to take in stride the death of a grandparent, the birth of a sibling, the bickering of parents or their routines of making love, the Victorians and their children could be deeply traumatized by any and all of these same events. Unlike the Samoans and similar peoples, they were sheltered, disconnected -- ignorant of the messy phenomenon of natural life.

Therefore, afraid to mention the "unmentionable", they were left to their own mental devices, attempting to concoct understandings that would help them make sense of the life situations encountered. Essentially they were left to reinvent the wheel, as it were -- while their peers in other cultures (like Samoa) had only to call on first hand knowledge all around them in daily life -- or to ask their aunty or uncle.

Not surprisingly, this information gap created a lot of shame, guilt, trauma, and neurosis. Imagine the qualms of the properly brought up Victorian male, never having seen or discussed a twat before in his life, not knowing what to expect of it, what to do with it (other than mount it -- if he was a farm lad he had an advantage), and then suddenly, there it is!

Pretty scary stuff. Interestingly, his angst becomes even more understandable when you consider the fact that the Victorian woman, subdued by society, somewhat enslaved to her husband, was herself a thing of mystery. Repressed, hemmed in, prone to strange fits of temper, anxiety, and hysteria -- who knew what she was hiding inside! And so in dreams, her hidden regions came armed with teeth. That place where she was supposed to "submit" to her husband, that place where he was to take his pleasure (and she receive frustration and another chance to get knocked up), that place might have some hidden monster waiting within, waiting to wreak its revenge.

So goes the workings of the unconscious. But the angst that Freud identified was specific and local -- the uneasiness of the Victorian male at putting his member, for the first time, in a female's cunt was his own -- not Humankind's.

Also culture specific are more recent theories of the vagina dentata that focus on the notion of the vagina as misplaced mouth (that is, because it is seen as being like a mouth, it is ascribed teeth, teeth that could angrily gnash off the penis of the intruder. Rather than being a pan-human terror, vagina dentata crops up most often in societies where women "have no teeth", where they have no power to enforce their words, their will. Little wonder then that some men in such cultures fear those teeth will one day crop up "down there" and wreak their revenge.

But despite the anxiety many a virgin male in (less mysogynist) cultures has felt at his first encounter (Will I be able to get it up? Will I last long? Will she like it?), not every male everywhere necessarily fears that his dick will be bitten off by some hidden set of teeth. To claim otherwise is ridiculous and unsuported by the evidence. (Unless you stick with the tactic of ignoring evidence that says otherwise.) For example, the average modern American male, might fear getting laughed at, getting dumped -- but devoured?

Well... maybe. At least if supplied with the right visual suggestion! But the fact that there have been numerous cultures with fears about the vagina, does not prove that every man, everywhere, and in all times inevitably fears being devoured by it. It merely proves that some men, sometimes, have harbored this belief. And it shows that the study of the relationship between culture and mythology provides us with interesting insight into the nature of gender relations -- especially into the unconscious components of gender relations. And in fact, we might even be able to conclude that being the "dominant" gender in an uptight society is not without its psychological perils!