The Great Mate Debate

Posted by:  Wendy Shalit
Topic: One Last Question, and Goodbye for Now

It's interesting that Dan considered Madonna's recent purchase to be a sign of her marriage's strength.  I suppose he could be right, but the fact that their "marital aid" was exhibited in a see-through bag for all to see--not to mention the nature of the toy in question--makes the whole business a bit more complicated in my view.  To me it's more plausible that Madonna was trying to send a message to the general public at the expense of Guy Ritchie.

I could be wrong about that. But I certainly have seen an increasing trend of people trying to "send a message" to strangers, often at the expense of a loved one.  At the tamer end, there are jokes about socks being left on the floor; at the extreme, one's spouse is publicly humilated for the entertainment of others.

Brings to mind a question:  Does the person you're dating bring out the best in you?  A simple yet crucial question.  I've seen cases of really great, intelligent people who, when put together, can't seem to do anything except make fun of others.  That's in the heady stage of intoxication, mind you; when that stage wears off, then they tend to make fun of each other.  Have you ever seen this, or experienced it? If it's happening to you, you might want to consider getting out of the relationship.

Or conversely, if someone doesn't seem right for you "on paper" but your gut tells you that you're a better person when you're with him or her--well then, hang on to that person, and don't let go.

I guess that would be my parting message.  Yes, it's hard to believe but today is my last blog.  These five months have gone by so quickly.   Needless to say, it's been really fun and interesting to hear all the different perspectives whizzing around on this blog.   I'm definitely going to miss all of you--yes, even you Dan!

So don't be strangers, and hope we keep in touch.

Posted by: Wendy Shalit
Topic:  Inter-faith dating – when does it work? When doesn’t it?

As it happens, I actually covered this topic already when I took a question from a reader a few months ago, and also touched on it again in my answer about interracial dating.  Haven't changed my mind a whole lot since I wrote those blogs.

Which brings to mind a question a fifty-year-old man once asked me, angrily, after hearing a talk of mine:  "Do you think that when you're older, that you'll change your mind?"

It was certainly a hard question to answer.  "Well, if I thought I was wrong and on the verge of changing my mind, I suppose I would just change my mind now and not wait til I got older," was what I believe I said.  Then after I answered his question it dawned on me that he wanted me to change my mind when I got older. 

Truth to tell, I actually like changing my mind.  What's the point of life if you're always clinging tenaciously to the same position, day after day, without caring about whether or not it's true?  If I'm wrong about something, then I definitely want to know it. 

In terms of elaborating on what I already wrote on interfaith dating, I'd simply add that the ability to develop and learn is crucial in any relationship, but especially, I think, in an interfaith one.  Could you go on a journey together and explore the truth of another's religious faith?  Or is that something you find threatening? And do you know why you believe what you believe?

Very often interfaith dating is not actually interfaith, but more accurately, dating between two people who do not believe in the religion they were born into.  If they've examined their own religion and rejected it, then that is one thing; but if they've never examined it in the first place, I think it's worth doing so in a systematic way before marrying someone of another faith. 

Posted by: Wendy Shalit
Topic: Are two people really and truly meant to stay together forever…or should we embrace more of a serial long-term relationship model for happiness?

Recently, I flew out to attend a friend's wedding. Of course, all weddings are special in their own way but this one was extra special because the bride had survived cancer. Everyone in attendance was so touched to be there, and to share these wonderful moments with the happy couple.

One highlight for me was when the elderly grandparents of the groom took the dance floor and did a graceful Foxtrot.  They looked to be in their mid-eighties and all the 300 guests stopped and  marveled at how in love the pair still looked.   

The day after, I cornered this adorable grandma at an after-wedding celebration, fetched her a Coke, and asked her for tips on staying married.  She replied that "it's very simple, actually"; things change, and "nothing in marriage is as you expect it," but you just have to hang on.  "If you just go with it, you change together and you'll see, it's worth it."

I was surprised--and a little sad--by her later telling someone else that I was her "favorite" guest, because really, I hadn't talked to her for very long, nor done anything particularly special for her.  All I did was ask for her opinion! Which apparently, no one had done for a long time.

We can endlessly debate whether we're hardwired for serial monogamy or fidelity, because evidence points in both directions. It always will, because that's where our free will and our humanity comes in.  What it comes down to, I think, is that love is a choice.

Posted by:  Wendy Shalit
Topic:  The One Key Question to ask While Dating

On Wednesday I recounted a story I heard on a Lori Palatnik tape, a story I thought was quite adorable.  Now I want to quote something else Mrs. Palatnik said which I thought was profound.

She said that when advising people who are dating, she asks them just one question.  If the person happens to be a woman, she asks her, "Do you respect him?" And if she is talking to a man, she asks, "Will you be happy trying to make this woman happy for the rest of your life?"

The difference in questions reflects a deeper difference, Mrs. Palatnik continued; men need to be respected and they want to be loved.  With women, it's the other way around.  We need to be loved, and want to be respected. 

I thought this was very fascinating, and I found myself wondering what all of you would think about it.  So--any thoughts?

(One cavil: this blog has been filed in advance because of the Jewish holiday, so I won't be able to respond to your thoughts until Sunday, sorry. But I look forward to hearing your perspective! )

Posted by:  Wendy Shalit
Topic:  When a couple settles into a rut, can they ever escape and recapture “the spark”?

Yes they can, but sometimes it requires taking a break from physical intimacy and then reconnecting.  The biggest enemy in a marriage is a couple taking one another for granted.  We all say this, and yet it can so easily happen and we don't know how.

It happens in the details. Not saying "thank you" and "please," treating your loved one in a way you would never speak to a stranger.  It happens in the attitude towards dress, superficial as this may seem.  Very often after a couple has been together awhile, both partners will get dressed up to go out, and to make themselves beautiful-- primarily for other people they don't care about.  Then when they get home, they see each other in sweatpants.  It's good to be comfortable, but not so comfortable that you forget that the other person matters.

Recently, I heard a very cute story on a Lori Palatink tape--which I hope to talk more about on Friday. But for now, the story.  As soon as it was time for the rabbi to come home, a particular rebbetzin (rabbi's wife) would rush to get ready for her husband's arrival.  With many children to manage, before long her ritual entailed just one small thing: running to the bathroom and applying lipstick.  (The rabbi always made a point of tucking in his shirt before he arrived home, in case you are fretting over a double standard.)

Well, one day the rebbetzin was taking a nap on the couch when the rabbi arrived at the door.  The children didn't know what to do: Their father was home, but their mother was not ready!  The rebbetzin woke up a few minutes later to lipstick shmeared all over her face, courtesy of her small children.

A very cute story!  But also a nice reminder, to me, that the path to reconnecting is often in the little details.

Posted by: Wendy Shalit
Topic: A couple decides to divorce. At what point after they separate should they start dating other people?

There are many ways to read this question.  One is:  should you wait until the divorce is final before dating other people?  I think it largely depends on how you've made the decision to divorce.

In Jewish teaching, divorce is compared to amputating a limb.  If your hand hurts, you don't cut it off.  If your hand really, really really hurts--well then, you still don't cut it off.  But if your hand is turning the rest of your body green and you can't restore blood flow, then sometimes you have to amputate. 

For many couples today, sadly, divorce is not a last resort.

Given this, and especially if there are children involved, no, I don't think that people who are separated should rush to date others.  Very often during a separation, that's when one party recognizes that a divorce would be a mistake. This happened to a couple I know, and they got back together--now they are doing swimmingly.   So while commonly thought of as a time to consult lawyers, a separation is also time for a more basic question: Is there anything else that can be done to save this marriage?

Obviously, that can't always be done, and if divorce is necessary then you've got to get one. Either way,  one is usually not in a good position to figure out all this while bar-hopping.

Once the divorce is final, how long before dating others?  I hope I don't shock anyone too much, but I think this part is completely up to the individual.   

Posted by: Wendy Shalit
Topic:  the unmentioned subject

I was telling my husband the other day that I thought we'd covered every conceivable topic here on this Great Mate Debate, but he pointed out that there was one topic we actually hadn't covered yet: illness.

What happens when one partner falls ill, and the other takes off work to care for him or her, or their respective child, and then boom!  Just as the ill person is getting better, the well person often becomes ill too, thus compounding the drama (and adding to the sick days). It's enough to make one sick!

It's certainly a delicate balance when caring for an ill loved one.  You want to provide excellent care and tend to every need, but if you can possibly avoid getting sick yourself--especially if you are the type for whom colds tend to blossom into full-fledged severe upper respiratory infections--then is that so wrong? Wouldn't that be better for everyone? 

On the other hand, in my experience, when you make an effort not to get sick (and skimp on the kisses for example) you usually get sick anyway, so what did you gain? These days, my policy is that you may as well do everything to help the sick person feel better, and leave what happens to you in God's hands.

Posted by:  Wendy Shalit
Topic:  Office love: Does its sometimes forbidden nature make it more enticing?

Today I write from above the clouds somewhere between Seattle and Toronto.  The lines at the airport in Seattle were so long that I wasn't sure if I was going to make my flight.  I considered dropping Dan's name since he is a local celebrity, but that turned out not to be necessary.

Without a doubt, office love is inherently more enticing due to all the barriers.  In fact, the workplace is one of the rare places in modern life where something like an actual code of conduct still exists.  Even offices without a clear sexual harassment policy or dress code will still usually encourage a sense of the "proper."  (Indeed, following Mill's distinction between the external law and the internal law, the offices with the most clearly delineated policies are perhaps often in the most trouble.)  Yet even external modesty can act as both a damper and an intrigue.

Another thing working in favor of office romance is the sheer amount of time we spend at work nowadays.  As everyone knows, love requires time to nurture, and if we work 24/7 then our lives are literally taking place at work.  Naturally, romantic opportunities present themselves.

What does this mean for those considering getting involved in "office love"?  In my opinion, the repercussions of casual workplace flings tend not to be worth it.  On the other hand, if you've found true love, then of course that's another story entirely.  In the latter case, it does help to try to keep the romance a secret as long as possible; when you no longer can, it just might be the time to make an announcement.  Even so, that's often just the beginning of the drama.  A good friend of mine who just married an office mate found it necessary to relocate so that both her and her husband could be taken seriously.   

Was it worth it?  Absolutely.

True love should trump work any day. 

Posted by:  Wendy Shalit
Topic:  What’s the allure of bad boys, bad girls, and bad relationships?

As you can see by my white leather jacket, I was rebellious from a young age.   I didn't like the sex-ed class required of us in fourth grade, so I sat out in the library and read Ramona Quimby instead.   In high school I didn't drink because I discovered it was more fascinating to stay sober.  Later in college, I protested the coed bathrooms and I didn't hookup, even when everyone else called me a "prude" and said I had "hang-ups."

By today's standard of good, I suppose I was quite "bad."      

Elizabeth Wurtzel was on to something when she wrote: “Obviously, in the pageantry of public life, in the places where women invent persons, the one statement a girl can make to declare her strength, her sure footedness, her  autonomy--her self as a self--is to somehow be bad.” 

This is very well put, but to the extent it is true, it presupposes a society where most girls are socially pressured to be good.  And the obvious difficulty is that now, in our "Desperate Housewives" times, it’s badness which has become normative.   As I argue in Girls Gone Mild, "Self-actualization through badness may have been theoretically possible when the norm did not celebrate badness--although ultimately this posture has its limitations, too.  But today it’s pretty hard to argue that internalizing all this pre-packaged Badness is the Path to the True Self."

What is the allure of the bad girl or boy?  I think it's the allure of individuality.  There is no one else quite like any of us, and we all have a unique contribution to make to this world.  Socal pressures can feel stifling at times, and so when we meet someone who challenges the norm, we admire their strength and they remind us of our own uniqueness.

And yet ironically nowadays, to stay true to our hopes and core values often means being rebelliously good.

Posted by:  Wendy Shalit
Conversation with:   Dan Savage

First of all, I love the irony Dan points out: that he, supposedly "the sex-obsessed sex-advice columnist" should come out in defense of sexless marriages--whereas I think a sexless marriage usually indicates a much bigger problem.  On the other hand, this is only an irony if you buy into the pro-sex vs. anti-sex dichotomy--which I personally don't.  In my experience, very few people are actually "anti-sex" or "sex-negative" as Dan puts it; rather, this debate is about the meaning we ascribe to sexuality.  Does sexuality bring people closer and enable the ultimate in mutual giving?  Or is it more like sneezing? 

People disagree about the meaning of sex and so naturally, emotions run high.  This may explain why Dan falsely attributes to me a belief in "all the many hoops a married person should be asked to jump through before he's even allowed to contemplate an affair."  Also he claims that I treat "the spouse that wants to have sex... as the 'problem spouse.'" In fact I did not suggest anything of the kind.   What I did suggest was that both members of the couple sounded like they needed help.  If I singled anyone out, it was the wife, wondering if there were medical issues involved in her low sex drive: "Has his wife had her TSH (thyroid levels) checked?....  It sounds like he is closing off in response to her closing off..."

In marriage, giving is not just about clearing the dishes.  If you are totally unaware of or unresponsive to your spouses' needs--whether physical or otherwise--that's a big problem.  It's a lack of consideration.  Just because I don't think a man should cheat doesn't mean that I'm treating him as a "problem."  Actually, I'm trying to avoid creating more problems. 

In such a case as Dan presents, where a husband's needs are totally ignored, it seems to me that there are deeper issues that need to be addressed first.   This marriage as Dan presents it suffers from major communication problems, and the spouses have lost the ability to be vulnerable to one another.  That cuts to the core of the marriage itself.  Their sexual disconnect is just the tip of the iceberg, if I may be permitted to mix my metaphors. 

Dan asks me, "At what point is a husband or wife allowed to stop banging his or her head against the wall and seek intimacy elsewhere?"  I'm actually not much of a fan of head-banging to begin with, but if you're asking when it's time to give up on a marriage, I just don't see this as my role.  To tell a stranger when to stay in a marriage, or to give them "permission" to cheat on their spouse? Chemistry's moniker of "expert" notwithstanding, I'm certainly not expert enough to be able to divine from such little information what is really going on with such a couple.  I would have to talk to both the husband and the wife, in much greater detail, before even coming remotely close to understanding their situation.

But Dan feels that  "sometimes people have to cheat—for their own sanity and, ironically, to preserve their marriages."  Is this based on what people tell themselves, or is this based on a study?   If there is such a study I would be very interested to review it, since for years I've been reading about how "affairs can help a marriage"  in the women's magazines. And I've yet to see a single study substantiating this claim.  Helen Gurley Brown, for one, made a career out of telling young women to "keep married men as pets," but needless to say, the wife and children of aforementioned "pets" tend not to find it as thrilling.

If people want to have sexless marriages, I personally think this challenges what marriage should be about, but I'm not going to criticize.  I suppose that what people don't do within the privacy of their bedrooms is their own business.  But the moment you say that one spouse is angling to cheat, then we're objectively talking about a marriage with a problem.

What is this debate really about?  Some of us see divorce as preferable to cheating, while others see cheating as preferable to divorce. The difference really turns on how we define marriage. I think that when you get married, you are essentially making a declaration of devotion to another person, and asking  that society recognize your devotion. So if someone tells me that he doesn't want to be burdened by being devoted--and working through the challenges that come with this--and still for whatever reason he doesn't want to divorce, then I would ask him, why? 

What is gained by remaining married while you're cheating and lying?  If marriage does not mean devotion, then what does it mean?