Online Dating

What men really want to hear from women

2011-11-20T12:57:00.000-08:00

Certain key phrases tell a guy you’re genuinely interested in getting to know him.

In general, men are in awe of women’s date-night conversation skills — which are, hands down, far superior to their own. Even so, though, you ladies do still insert your stiletto’d foot in your mouth every once in awhile — or, conversely, miss prime opportunities to make a remark that would raise your stock in our eyes. Curious about whether you’ve got the right choice phrases in your back pocket and avoiding the bad ones? Check out this list of things guys love (and hate) to hear on a date!

Five things men love to hear on a date:

1. “Then what happened?”

It’s only human for a man to want to think that his life is reasonably interesting. And while interrupting him, changing the subject, or acting bored are well-known nails in the conversational coffin, it’s not enough to just sit there, smile and say “uh-huh” every few seconds. Actively egg him on with comments like, “You’re kidding! What happened next?” or “Go on…” That way, he’ll know you’re genuinely interested versus just being polite.

2. “That’s pretty impressive.”

Maybe he placed in a local triathlon recently or got a promotion at work, or he figured out how to fix his air conditioner by himself. Whatever he’s done, if he’s mentioning it on a date, he’s most likely proud of it — and if you feed his ego by applauding his efforts, you’ll make him feel like a king.

3. “Thank you.”

No doubt about it, manners matter — and are sorely lacking in today’s less formal dating scene. Tap into your inner Emily Post, and it’s sure to make you stand out. So, thank him when he tells you that you look pretty tonight. Thank him for paying for dinner. Thank him for walking you to your car. It’s such a small thing, but it’ll make a huge difference to him.

4. “What do you do when you’re not at work?”

Although a man’s job might be of primary importance, he also has other things in his life that he values. Does he juggle? Work on his car? Play an instrument? With a little probing, a woman can hit upon hidden passions — and convey that she’s interested in getting a complete picture of him as a person and not just what he does to earn his paycheck.

5. “I’d like to get your opinion on something.”

It’s the damsel-in-distress call, and it’s pure catnip for men… and that’s because we love feeling useful, and seeking our advice definitely fits the bill in that regard. So whether you need tips on buying a digital camera or how to handle a tricky situation with your boss, he’ll be glad to help you. (He will be less eager, however, to comment on shopping, knitting or his dating past…but you already knew that.)

Five things men hate to hear…

1. “My last boyfriend…”

All we can say is, why? Why mention that your ex was a jerk to your date? Why mention that you and your ex are pals? Why mention your ex, period? Whatever you say, all we will hear is, “I’m out with you, but I’m still thinking a lot about another man.” Although men like to compete, they don’t like to do it on a date with men who aren’t even in the same room.

2. “Do you mind if I take this call?”

Of course we mind! We won’t say that we do, but trust me, we do. So unless it’s a dire emergency involving your kids or grandmother on her deathbed, let your voicemail pick up instead. An hour paying attention to your date won’t kill you, right?

3. “So how do you feel about abortion?”

This type of question is known among men as a “litmus test” — a touchy topic that women raise to gauge whether we’re politically, morally, or spiritually on the same page as themselves (the death penalty, gay marriage, and the war on terror also fit the bill). Sure, we probably have strong opinions, but we’re not interested in getting into them with you; at least, not yet. After all, this is a date, not debate club. Let’s have fun and save more heated back-and-forth discussions for later.

4. “And then I found this cute pair of sandals…”

Granted, you and your girlfriends can spend hours gushing about shopping, shoes, and new hairstyles, but you’re not out with your girlfriends right now. You’re out with a guy, remember? And since we wouldn’t subject you to talk about stocks or our favorite sports teams, please, do us the same favor.

5. “How do you feel about having a family?”

Pop this question during those first few dates, and most men will assume your biological clock is ticking fast — and that’s not a good thing. It’s not that we don’t want families; in fact, many of us do — it’s just that we like to get to know a woman first before doing so. And we also like to know you that like us as more than just as a potential baby-making machine. After all, where’s the romance in that?

Needs of marriage and family living

2008-02-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

Needs of marriage and family living have to be considered in relation to the times in which they are observed. They are determined by cultural attitudes as well as by world events. They often reflect the conflict between former established family patterns geared to an earlier economy and the needs of today's rapidly changing social scene. The transition from an established, to a new and as yet untried, value system constitutes one of the most important challenges that marriage faces today.

In this century, revolutionary discoveries and global interaction have had a terrific impact on our lives. The social aspects of the business cycle, which used to concern us so much, seem almost trivial when compared to two world wars, the cold war, the draft, and prodigious advances in science and technology. Modern technology has invaded not only the factory but also the home, and many skills required of husbands and wives are quite different from those learned in their parental homes. Furthermore, the division of labor between men and women is no longer so clearly marked. It is much more blurred, workwise and homewise.

Urbanization in all its forms has been another important factor in changing family life. Tremendous progress in communication and transportation has taken place. This has had its impact not only at the level of world diplomacy but in terms of a teen-ager's "date." We have become an urban-industrial people, the majority living in cities, many of us in small apartshy; ments. We are highly mobile. Our families are smaller -- not only in terms of fewer children but, although there are proportionately more oldsters, there are fewer grandparents living with us.

It would be comforting to think of marriage as a haven to which one could retreat from the strain and conflict of daily living. But contemporary marriage is not a thing apart. It is a way of life within which we must cope with the uncertainties and complexities of the Atomic Age.

Specifically, changes in age of marriage, size of completed family, and length of life have greatly affected patterns of family formation and have introduced complicated problems of personal as well as family development.

There has also been an increase in life expectancy, a remarkable achievement of the medical and related sciences. The marriage of persons who today marry in their twenties is statistically capable of lasting forty-one years. Two generations ago, because of later marriage, more children and earlier death, there was a fifty-fifty chance that one spouse would die at least two years before the last of five children married. Today when one's two or three children leave home for college, career, or marriage, one-third of one's married life (fourteen years on the average) is still ahead.

Sexually, too, women have come into their own. No longer is sex for women a taboo subject, or an experience to be only "dutifully" accepted. Today, women have begun to realize their capacity to enjoy sex and respond to it under circumstances of their own choice. The potential for enrichment of the marital relationship is great; but it is not without its problems in a society where there is still a considerable lag between conventional patterns of conduct and the newer and more flexible attitudes.

Importance of Relationship in Counseling

2008-02-22T17:09:00.000-08:00

The relationship between counselor and client, or therapist and patient, is coming to be recognized in this country as central in the counseling or therapeutic process. Different schools or systems of therapy and counseling may evaluate it differently, but all recognize its importance and some deem it basic in the results obtained.

The relationship between counselor and client should not be confused with such concepts as transference or rapport. Thus the term "transference," as used in Freudian technique, refers to displacement of the libido from its infantile love-objects (usually one's parents) to the psychoanalyst in the course of psychoanalytic treatment. This redirection of desires and feelings which are usually retained in the unconscious, may be positive, if they are warm, friendly, and affectionate, or negative if they are unfriendly or hostile.

"Rapport" is a more general term referring to the positive, co-operative association of two persons which makes possible a confidential, sympathetic, understanding, and helpful process in counseling and therapy. "Relationship" as used here refers to the interaction between counselor and counselee which becomes a motivating force in the changes and growth which take place in the counseling procedure. In marriage counseling there is a multidimensional "relationship," that is, the relationship of the counselor to the marriage partners, individually and collectively, and, where necessary, to the children and the family as a "unity of interacting personalities," as well as to the new and developing relationship between the spouses to each other and to the family as a whole. The counselor needs to keep this manyfaceted relationship constantly in mind in order to stimulate its development to its fullest potentialities and to utilize it for the growth of the personalities involved.

Psychotherapy and Counseling

2008-02-22T17:06:00.000-08:00

Counseling, in this sense, is also closely related to psychotherapy. Psychotherapy may be considered the more generally inclusive in terms of personality reorganization; marriage counseling, the more specific procedure in its focus on the interpersonal relations between men and women concerned in the marriage. We shall approach the more specialized interest of this chapter -marriage counseling -- through a brief discussion of the more general aspects of psychotherapy and counseling.

There are as many conceptions and definitions of psychotherapy as there are schools -- one might almost say, individual psychotherapists. A recent and "comprehensive" definition of psychotherapy has it as "a form of treatment for problems of an emotional nature in which a trained person deliberately establishes a professional relationship with a patient with the object of removing, modifying, or retarding existing symptoms, of mediating disturbed patterns of behavior, and of promoting positive personality growth and development." According to Wolberg, there are three major types of psychotherapy: supportive psychotherapy, insight therapy with re-educative goals, insight therapy with reconstructive goals.

Regardless of what one may think of the suitability and applicability of the varying methods and techniques of therapists from different schools of thought to their goals and objectives, several things become clear. First, that the different types of psychotherapy are not necessarily mutually exclusive as to either goals or methods; second, that whereas the goals and objectives are relatively few, the theoretical framework, the methods, techniques, and procedures are many and in some instances substantially different from each other; and third, that in a field where there are such wide divergencies of practice there is room for, and in fact bound to develop, a wide variety of schools of thought aiming at the crystallization and formulation of philosophies. These schools of thought will furnish a so-called theoretical basis for practice and will confer upon the practitioner the sanction of authoritativeness because of belonging or adhering to the particular school or system.

Some thoughtful therapists are both puzzled and challenged by the divergent or diametrically different schools and theories of human behavior and motivation underlying psychotherapy, especially when all the schools claim success in treating maladjustment. They can only conclude that none of the schools has the whole truth and that the dynamic elements responsible for the success claimed by all the schools may be the features common to all of them. Hence they proceed to select out what appear to them to be those elements which are common to all psychotherapeutic situations. In spite of criticism, eclecticism is not without merit or justification.

Two of these elements seem to be of special importance to marriage counseling and deserve discussion at this point. They are the "relationship" between the counselor and counselee, and the counselor's concept of "personality."

Marriage Counseling

2008-02-22T17:05:00.000-08:00

Counseling is a generic term and much of what will be said here about marriage counseling will apply in equal measure to other forms of counseling. All counseling aims, at least theoretically, at developing insight into the nature of the problem and the causes or factors which produced it; and endeavors to give the counselee support, encouragement, reassurance, and new perspectives so that he may look upon himself as but one of many who face or have faced similar problems which can be solved under favorable circumstances. To some extent also all types of counseling use similar means to achieve their ends even though they may be quite different in their fundamental and basic theoretical approaches. At one time or another every counselor is called upon to give advice, information, and guidance.

Some will use these devices only as a last resort. Others will utilize these methods more freely because they feel that the counselee wants, needs, and is entitled to more direct and immediate help. They believe, moreover, that unless the counselee does get such help he will become discouraged and will discontinue the counseling. The damage to the counselee from discontinuance when he needs counseling, they feel, is bound to be much more injurious than giving such direct help.

Battle of the sexes?

2008-02-22T16:48:00.000-08:00

Every marriage involves at least two individuals. Its success, therefore, depends upon more than the situations which surround it or even the separate personalities which compose it. There is the matter of mate combination and personal interaction. Not only do men and women need to be personally prepared and socially oriented to be most happy in their marriages, they also need to be well matched and to understand themselves and the opposite sex, each in relation to the other.

Must there always be a "battle of the sexes"? We think not. Though different in some ways, men and women are nevertheless very much alike. They both belong to the same human species, perform the same body functions, are broadly motivated by the same sort of things, and live generally the same kind of lives. Though physiological differences may mean that complete understanding of the other will not be possible, better understanding is both possible and desirable. Males and females are complementary to each other; antagonisms, where they exist, are learned, not natural. There is need for some "unlearning" on the part of many, followed by a "relearning" in the direction of greater understanding and cooperation.

Individuals are born male or female, but learn to become masculine or feminine. It is the biological factors in sexual differentiation that have been our concern up to the present. We have seen that sex is determined almost entirely by nature; that man's control in this regard is extremely limited (though by birth control, death control, migration, and the like he can exercise some influence over the sex ratio). We have also seen that sex is a relative term, that everyone is to a small extent both male and female, and that people vary greatly in degree as well as in direction of their sexual development. What we have not fully recognized as yet is that sexuality is more than biology, that it takes more than the genes and the hormones to explain why men and women behave as they do. Masculinization and feminization are parts of the larger learning process called socialization, discussed in Chapter 3. Through exposure to society, individuals in varying degrees learn how to curb their natural impulses and to assume the roles of men and women that their culture prescribes.

Thus, little girls are encouraged to play with dolls and discouraged from being rough or aggressive. They imitate their mothers by playing house. In time they learn how to sit properly, and they learn that there are certain rules of conduct for being 'ladylike." Boys, on the other hand, find themselves teased when they play with their sisters' things, but approved by all when they act "like a man." They therefore tend to identify themselves with the father's role and to assume the attitudes and the mannerisms that go with it. In this way boys and girls become men and women according to the established patterns around them. A female infant isn't any more frightened by a mouse than is a male, for example, but she stands a better chance of learning this somewhat typical feminine response as time goes on. Imitation of that which is made to seem attractive or proper, together with pressure in the direction of social expectation, incline children to the masculine and feminine roles. Culture is changing, however, and today there is less difference between the roles expected of boys and girls than formerly.

A sexual division of labor is to be found in every society. Generally speaking, man has handled the governing function, warfare, and economic production outside the home, while woman has kept busy preparing meals, fixing clothing, taking care of children, and the like. Division of labor, in other words, has mainly followed the biological lines of cleavage between the sexes--man taking up those pursuits that are most compatible with his superior physical strength and woman keeping to those activities that are closely associated with her childbearing function. Though the basic roles of men and women are thus related to biological differences, they are nevertheless cultural in nature and are highly variable from society to society and from time to time. Women are expected to be rather submissive in most societies, for example; though in some they are aggressive, and this aggressiveness is accepted. The modern American female is more open and less inhibited than was her grandmother. But whatever the culture, men and women will be molded to conform.

Reasons why some people should not marry

2008-02-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

There are good reasons why some people should not marry. Every right carries with it an equal responsibility, and marriage is no exception. For those who are either mentally or physically incapacitated, marriage would be both foolish and unkind, for it would force them to assume adult roles that they are totally incapable of handling. Consider the lowest grade of feeble-minded individuals, for example, those who are not even able to take care of themselves or to assume the most elementary responsibilities. Mentally, they are as infants, and there is no hope of their ever becoming self-sustaining. Consider the violently and permanently insane or extreme cases of chronic invalidism. Where persons like this can recover, marriage should be held as a real possibility; but it should wait upon recovery. For those either immature, or morally or socially inadequate, marriage should be delayed until there has been time for development and/or reform to take place. Unless ready and able to assume the necessary responsibilities, no one should marry.

The low-grade feeble-minded cannot be permitted either marriage or parenthood for the reason that they are custodial cases, unable to take care of their own needs, let alone those of a family. These are usually kept in institutions. They are incapable of responsible marriage even where their condition is known to be nongenetic.

Certain persons should probably be denied parenthood, though permitted marriage. These are those known to be defective in hereditary capacity, though themselves capable of a reasonable amount of self-support and social adjustment. High-grade feeble-minded individuals probably fall into this category. They should be denied parenthood for at least two reasons: (1) so that they will not pass on their defects to future generations, and (2) so that they will not give birth to children they cannot support--their lesser ability making them incapable of that much responsibility.

There is no simple or commonly accepted eugenic standard for judging when a marriage should remain childless. It seems questionable that most couples would consider clubfeet as a sufficient reason, or a harelip, or any one of a number of physical handicaps that may be related to the genes. Mental deficiency generally presents a greater problem. Each case is a matter for separate decision. Society ought to take a hand only in those cases that are quite serious and are known to be hereditary.

Sterilization is probably the most effective means for preventing parenthood. Other approaches are institutional segregation, which is expensive and therefore impractical except for the most extreme cases, and birth control which, to be effective, requires more intelligence and skill than mentally handicapped individuals ordinarily possess.

Modern sterilization is accomplished by a rather simple operation in which the tubes that carry the germ cells are cut and tied. It in no way desexes the individual, and the only way it alters his normal life is in the prevention of parenthood. About two thirds of the states have laws permitting sterilization for defective strains and to date more than forty thousand operations have been performed. The question is still a controversial one, however. Certainly it cannot be said that sterilization is a panacea. Chief difficulties are these: (1) the impossibility of determining accurately, in the light of present knowledge, just which defects are hereditary, to what extent, and in which cases; (2) the subjective and politically dangerous nature of deciding where to draw the line, who shall be sterilized; and (3) the fact that many defects are carried recessively, not showing in the individual, which makes them impossible of being reached in that generation. But when used cautiously, and only on those cases which are somewhat extreme and have been carefully diagnosed as to their hereditary nature, sterilization seems definitely to have a place.

Special attention has been given recently to the so-called Rh factor in human blood types, so named because of its discovery in Rhesus monkeys. Approximately 85 per cent of the white population is known to possess this factor. These are labeled Rh-positive; the remaining 15 per cent, rh-negative. The factor is hereditary, with Rh-positive being dominant over rhnegative. Complications can develop whenever the wife is rhnegative and the husband Rh-positive, which is true in about one out of every dozen marriages. In such cases the fetus is apt to be Rh-positive (will definitely be if the father is homozygous, Rh Rh, and may be if he is heterozygous, Rh rh). Antigens from an Rh-positive fetus will sometimes pass into the blood stream of the rh-negative mother. This takes place rather rarely, however, there being no direct connection between the blood streams of mother and infant. When it does happen, antibodies are produced in the mother's blood, which can pass back into the blood stream of the fetus, combine with the Rh-positive cells there, and destroy them. The condition is characterized by anemia and is known as erythroblastosis fetalis or hemolytic disease. It frequently causes stillbirth. Most of those born alive are now saved by means of rh-negative blood transfusions. Fortunately the antibodies produced in the mother's blood accumulate slowly, and as a consequence the first child of a marriage is usually not affected-- unless previously there has been an aborted pregnancy or unless the mother has at some time had an Rh-positive blood transfusion. The possibility of a child's developing this disease increases with each succeeding pregnancy. It is estimated that only about one out of every thirty or forty children of rhnegative women are affected by the hemolytic conditions.

Over half of the states have laws forbidding first cousins to marry, and some carry the prohibition to second cousins. This is because of an incest horror, a feeling on the part of society that close blood unions are not good. Stockbreeders, however, have long used the principle of inbreeding to advantage. What inbreeding does is to bring out the recessive traits; it can be called good if these traits are good, but bad if the traits it brings to the front are undesirable. Eugenists tell us that there is nothing wrong with cousin marriage so long as the ancestries of the mates are good; in such a case it may even result in superior offspring. But if there are hereditary weaknesses, such as feeble-mindedness in the family lines, cousin marriage is extremely dangerous. It is much safer for cousins to avoid each other so far as marriage is concerned, but where the question does come up both law observance and genetic purity should be factors in making the decision.

In all instances, those considering marriage will want to concern themselves seriously over family backgrounds, realizing that heredity cannot be ignored and that the right to parenthood carries with it certain obligations. One way of meeting these obligations is to marry into a family that gives evidence of native normality, that seems to be free from the blights of major hereditary weaknesses. Unfortunately there is no absolutely certain way of determining this, though if one were to examine carefully the backgrounds of his own and the other family in question he should not go far wrong. Family doctors and old-timers in the community can often assist in this process. If a defect is found to repeat itself generation after generation, one can be rather certain that it is in the genes. If this same defect shows itself in the two family lines, it can be considered to be all the more likely to show up in the offspring. Where there is a question or doubt it is well to consult a geneticist or other qualified expert. It must be remembered, however, that no one has all the answers and that in every marriage there will be some risks. The main thing, and all that can be hoped for, is to reduce these risks to the smallest possible minimum. There will always be the problem of judgment, of deciding how much risk one is willing to assume, of determining whether a given defect is serious enough to matter.

The foundations for successful marriage

2008-02-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

The foundations for successful marriage do not start with the marriage ceremony itself; they reach back into the courtships, into the childhoods, and into the hereditary backgrounds of those involved. Happiness in marriage is the product of years of preparation, conscious or unconscious, whereby the infant is first formed and then molded gradually into a mature personality capable of the loves and joys of married life. The roots of successful marriage for every man and woman reach deep into his past. Parents should realize that by giving birth to normal healthy children, and by caring for these children and training them properly, they not only secure greater happiness in their own lives but they also lay foundations for successful marriages and families in the generations to come.

Not only are these the most important of all forces operating to affect the success or failure of marriage, but they are formed largely in the home and they have continuity from generation to generation. "As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined."

What makes people behave the way they do? Although research has not moved far enough for a complete or final answer to this question, the following factors seem basic: (1) biological heredity, (2) physical environment, (3) social environment, and (4) cultural environment. The problem is to determine, as best one can, how these several factors converge upon the individual, how they shape his personality and influence his behavior. Before that, however, it will be well to briefly examine the nature of each.

Marital success factors, society, personality

2008-02-22T15:46:00.000-08:00

Viewed broadly, marital success can be regarded as contingent upon two interrelated factors: (1) society, and (2) personality. Though these overlap and express themselves in an infinite variety of combinations, they can nevertheless be separated for purposes of analysis. In later chapters we shall deal with the personal elements. Here our focus is to be upon society as a factor in marriage and family stability.

Social institutions are in large part the products of their cultural environments. They are usually organized around certain biologically determined needs, it is true, which explains their universality. But they develop along a variety of lines according to the cultural and interactional patterns of the societies that provide their settings. Thus, every institution represents both unity and diversity, unity as to broad outline or general characteristics, and diversity as to detail. Furthermore, as circumstances change, institutions alter--either that or lose their functional usefulness and in time perish.

To all of this the family is no exception. It arose in response to basic and universal human needs; it has assumed a variety of culturally imposed forms; and it changes as society changes, though not always at the same rate or without disturbance.

Society is in a state of flux. It has always been so, for that matter, but the changes that have been affecting it in recent decades have been particularly violent. Most of these stem from the Industrial Revolution and the new mode of life it has ushered in. Gone are the days of isolation, self-sufficient economy, and hand production. Gone also are the simplicity and the slow tempo of living that were a part of the preindustrial age. Nearly everything is mass production now, and living in general has become more accelerated and complicated as a result.

Change itself is never bad, nor good, only inevitable. But it does require adjustment. Institutions quite naturally receive the impact of the social currents about them, and where they are able to adjust adequately they survive. Otherwise they may pass out of existence.

There is no implication here that society has been in a state of retrogression, or that man should return to the "good old days" when life was simple and almost everyone was supposedly happy. There is no reason why man should be less happy today than formerly; quite the opposite. Times are not worse, just different. The suggestion is that man and his institutions must adjust, always adjust, or they will lag and may be thrown off balance. Though there are special difficulties in the complexity and the unsettled nature of this transitional period, opportunities are probably greater for genuine accomplishment and satisfaction today, because knowledge is widespread, than in any other period of time. The potentials are here; it is now up to man to turn them into actualities.

Highly romantic pattern of mate selection

2008-01-30T11:14:00.000-08:00

Under our highly romantic pattern of mate selection, the average youth approaches marriage after many experiences of dating, after numerous emotional thrills in the realm of romance, and after having broken at least one previous engagement.

In a society where love-making is a major pastime and where the choice of a mate is left almost entirely in the hands of youth and where the recognized goal of marriage is personal happiness, young people would seem to have a great deal more responsibility placed upon their shoulders for the future of the family institution than in societies where marriage comes without a previous history of romance and where mate selection is by parents or other elders who have in mind practical considerations rather than romance in matching the pair. At least we must admit that many of the problems of modern adolescents and youths in the realm of emotional turmoil, moral decision, and anxious deliberations over courses of action grow out of the romantic complex.

Among the youth group in high school and college, dating is used as a status-gaining device. A girl's or a boy's desirability as a date is taken as a measure of personal worth, the number of desirable dates as an index of success and popularity.

It is considered desirable today that young people "circulate" until they find a relationship that will satisfy both their emotional and intellectual taste. It is even considered that wide experience in dating is favorable to ultimate courtship. The girl who is considered desirable as a date by a number of fellows is presumed to be the one most likely to be sought after in marriage.

The extent to which this point of view is sound depends on a number of factors, the conduct of the girl in dating, for example. If she passes beyond the point of discretion in love-making, she becomes the object of exploitation and becomes the type of person few men would want to marry. If she possesses proper restraint and dignity, she may be considered highly desirable for courtship.

Because of extensive dating in contemporary society, it probably becomes increasingly difficult for the average youth to narrow down his courtship to the point where he is ready to select one mate and enter into a marriage bargain for life. Dating, however, if conducted on a proper level, gives the youth experience in evaluating different personality types and behavior patterns in the members of the opposite sex, which is probably an advantage, providing he does not associate so promiscuously that he loses the ability to decide the type of person who would be a mate satisfactory to him. Dating experience is also essential to tempering the highly romantic and unreal notion of love so characteristic in American society. Most young people after a certain amount of normal experience in dating come to appreciate that there are many individuals of the opposite sex with whom they could live happily and that there are certain other individuals with whom they could not possibly be happy.

As unsatisfactory as this form of mate selection is in terms of its consequences to the stability of family life, we must accept the fact that the pattern exists and will persist in American culture. In a mobile society where much of romance is conducted beyond the reach of parents and other interested relatives, greater responsibility is placed upon the adult group in family and school for seeing that young people have some standard by which they may evaluate themselves and those with whom they associate as prospective mates. The ability of a member of the opposite sex to inspire romance seems now to be the primary criterion for mate selection. Yet this quality alone is a highly speculative element on which to found a permanent and satisfactory marriage. A lifelong institutional relationship must have something more than impulse to guarantee its success.

For the young person in a highly mobile society who is so often, in his early adjustment to economic life and to secondary group experience, among strangers, the love element is likely to have an exaggerated importance. In strange situations deep affection for a member of the opposite sex is likely to be used as a remedy for a sense of isolation, as a device for restoring selfassurance and for protecting himself against the apparent hostility and coldness of the world about him. Love for such an individual comes to stand for success in social adjustments. It is likely that many young people in their first experience with new situations will continue in our kind of society to rate love as an emotional experience much more highly than it should be rated among the other values that are essential to successful marriage and family life.

One of the unfortunate by-products of our highly romantic conception of marriage is that the girl who fails to obtain dates and later proposals of marriage, in our society, where the male is the aggressor in dating, courtship, and marriage, feels that she has lost out in the most important competitive relationship of a woman's world. The unfortunate consequence is that many of these young women feel defeated, unreasonably frustrated, even to the point of personality distortion. This aspect of the romantic pattern is especially unfortunate at a time when we are for the first time in the nation's history entering a period when there will be a considerably higher proportion of marriageable females than of males, making it inevitable that a portion of young women in our society will have no opportunity to marry.

We need to make romance a somewhat finer art

2008-01-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

Youth will continue to do the mating in America with little regard to the interest or wishes of teachers, parents, guardians, or society. This we may as well take for granted. Mating will be based on romance. But we must temper the romantic impulse in youth, as we do other human impulses, by instilling in their minds ideas that will restrain and guide their emotions. We need to socialize more fully this impulse as we have socialized hunger, for instance. Eating has become sort of a fine art with us as compared to its practice by savages and infants. We control the hunger drive by etiquette and by our notions of the balanced ration and regular meals. The organic drive is still there, but in civilized society we try to act as though it were not there.

We need to make romance a somewhat finer art, to elevate and direct it in the interests of a more permanent family unit and a better race. Parents could do much by building standards by which the youth can guide his selection of a mate, but reforms in custom more often begin in the school than in the home.

Most youngsters acquire a new idea of a desirable mate after going to college. They have a better ideal, and their romantic interest seeks out a type of person different from that selected before this training. College marriages on the whole turn out well. But most young people, even in our enlightened age, never go to college.

Give a young man or woman a course in eugenics and he will have set up new barriers to the free exercise of the romantic urge, for he will invariably check up on the ancestral characteristics of anyone he considers for marriage, to see whether certain weaknesses that are known to be hereditary are likely to be present in the germ plasm. Let him face economic selfresponsibility and he will have set up other barriers. He will not so easily rationalize himself into marrying on short notice with the experience-belied phrase, "Two can live as cheaply as one."

We need to give young people some practical ideas regarding marriage and the family; some standards by which they can evaluate themselves and their companions of the opposite sex with regard to their capacity for marriage and homemaking.

In most fields now we believe in giving experience vicariously through books and through the school curriculum. In this manner we pass on the best that the race has learned and experienced. Yet in the field of marriage and the family we let youth learn by experience. The establishment of a family--the basic institution of any nation--is left almost entirely to chance, as though we had no concern about the marital happiness of youth, to say nothing of the welfare of the next generation.

Perhaps our lethargy is a carry-over from the prudish days when marriage was sacred and sex was taboo. Perhaps it is due to the fact that most teachers are unmarried women whom we would not trust to educate our children for successful marriage. Probably, however, we have no reason, other than that romance is the custom to which we have entrusted this function of life and, having it safely pigeonholed, do not care to disturb it.

We need courses in high school and more courses in college dealing with marriage and the family. Perhaps after having succeeded there we can go into the lower grades. Some of the problems to be dealt with in a high-school course are (1) physical qualities essential to successful marriage, (2) social qualities essential for living together happily in the family, (3) the importance of similar culture heritages, especially in religion and in economic status, (4) personal adjustments needful in family life, (5) the economic responsibilities of the family, (6) the importance of an understanding with regard to the wife's place in the home, and (7) parenthood.Since marriage is society's ceremonial endorsement to a permanent institution, we should teach every youth to ask himself at least the following questions:

1. Do we have the physical and mental traits that guarantee reasonable hereditary equipment to the children we may have?

2. Do we have the emotional stability and ruggedness of character that is necessary to an intimate lifelong partnership?

3. Do we have the ability and training necessary to "keep the wolf from the door"?

4. Do we have culture backgrounds that would assure us. similar ideas on morals, religion, standard of living, and nationality and racial questions?

5. Are we satisfied with each other's families and with the relationships that we are likely to maintain with them after marriage?

6. Do we have similar ideas regarding the place of woman in the family and the desirability of children?

7. Do we have a sufficient number of similar vocational, reactional, and other interests so that we are likely to maintain permanent bonds of companionship?

The screen notion of love at first sight, followed by the passionate kiss, the overpowering urge, the hasty marriage, and the "lived happily ever after," has been too typical of our courtship and marriage conceptions. We may as well admit that such practice does not work so well as it might, and try to draw a more realistic picture of marriage and the family for youth in the schoolroom where we are supposed to have some respect for reality.

Romantic love is not entirely a matter of unguided impulse

2008-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Romantic love is not entirely a matter of unguided impulse. If it were, there would be little hope of improving mate selection. Although individual tastes and perhaps unanalyzed biological factors enter into romantic attraction, social factors play a large part as is indicated by studies of the attitudes of high-school and college students with reference to traits they expect in a member of the opposite sex.

A questionnaire was given to a group of 869 high-school students in the sophomore, junior, and senior classes, 426 boys and 443 girls being asked to rate 25 traits, putting a 1 by the trait they considered most important in the person they would like to go with, and a 25 by the trait they disliked the most, arranging numbers from 1 to 25 for the other traits in terms of their desirability.

Both boys and girls listed "real brains" as the most important trait. Girls listed second "cleanliness," third "good health," fourth "dependability," fifth "cheerfulness." Boys considered "real brains" of first importance, "good health" of second importance, "good looks" third, "cleanliness" fourth, "cheerfulness" fifth. It was interesting to notice that girls, rather than listing "good looks" as third in importance, listed it as eleventh.

Because these young people were in school, where good marks are a basis for competition, they tended to rate "real brains" more highly than young people under other situations would.

Studies of college students show that they rate certain personality traits very high. For example, a study at New York University showed that both men and women rated "disposition" extremely high; 98 per cent of men and 96 per cent of women said they would not marry a person with an unattractive disposition and personality. This study also showed that men rate looks much higher in their marriage partners than do women. Sixty-eight per cent of the men would not marry girls who were not good-looking; whereas 79 per cent of the girls would marry husbands who were not good-looking.

It will be seen that these choices reflect definitely the values of our own culture, as they affect choices in general and as they affect differences in choices between men and women. Being goodlooking, as in the other studies, is rated much more highly by young men than by young women. In our society good looks is considered a very important attribute of women, not of men. Young women are much more insistent on having a husband who has more education than they. This relates directly to the role of the man as breadwinner. His occupation determines the status of the family, their standard of living and income. Young women want a man who is older and established financially. Other results in the test reflect unique factors in our marriage customs which clearly affect romantic tastes.

All these studies indicate clearly that young people do not face the problem of mate selection on the basis of romance alone. They are guided by the general standards prevalent in our culture which affect notions of beauty, character, and disposition and by the fundamental factors that affect economic security. The fact that such values do act as a check upon romance and a guide to it indicates clearly that the family, the church, the school, any institutions having to do with the training of youth, can provide values which will guide adolescents and youth more intelligently in their evaluation of a person as a prospective marriage partner. This important field of social behavior need not be left in the realm of chance even in an age when adolescents and youth, rather than parents or other adults, select their own mates.

Romantic Beginnings

2008-01-30T10:50:00.000-08:00

Before we discuss how physical attractiveness operates in both the fantasy and reality of the dating marketplace, let's begin at the beginning. Just how many people are out their bargaining in the marketplace, and who are they?

Remember "Old Maid"? Whoever got stuck with the homely old crone was clearly the loser. This card game symbolizes the stigma once attached to being single, particularly if one was a woman. Single women, "old maids," or "spinsters," were assumed to have no choice in the matter--they were single because no one found them attractive enough to marry. Single men were "bachelors"; it was assumed they chose to remain single because they loved an exciting life.Today, it is more acceptable to remain single--even for women. In fact, in 1978 about 48 million adult Americans (about one-third the adult population) were single. Here are some other facts:

Most college students are single.

More than one-half of Americans aged 18 to 39 are single.

At any age, there are more single women than single men. This gap increases with age. For people in their forties, there are 233 unattached (never married, divorced, widowed) women for every 100 men.

Today, many people are choosing to remain single for a longer period (or all) of their adulthood. There are several reasons why they are choosing not to marry. Many women find this choice gives them greater freedom to pursue a career. Other individuals have developed negative attitudes about marriage, perhaps from growing up in a broken home. Some develop such negative attitudes about attachment to one person that they choose to be "creatively single."

Other people, however, are reluctantly alone. Rather than choosing not to select, they are not selected. These people may have problems being selected because of unattractiveness or lack of social skills. The emptiness and despair of such singles is portrayed in the following comment by a young, single man:

I have cried over my general inability to meet women--once even in my car in the parking lot of a disco in L.A. after having an extremely difficult time conversing with a number of girls who I was really attracted to (which is rare). I have been intrigued with the subject of suicide and realize that it is the most effective way to cure one's depression. . . . My depressions always center around my inability to meet women. Period. I really envy guys who have the "gift of gab" and who can just walk up to strange women and start a conversation. If I had that ability, it would solve all my problems, I'm convinced of it.

Although many single people are involved in romantic relationships, many are not. There are many adults truly unattached. Although they may not always stay home on Saturday night, there really is no special person in their lives.

The Dating Age

2008-01-26T20:53:00.000-08:00

As soon as she turned 16, Jaimi Semper started going out with the same guy every week - her father.

"We'd go to dinner and a movie, to a museum or to the Mall in the District for a Frisbee-throwing competition," Mr. Semper says. "I strove to be a role model so she would know what a gentleman acts like."

An ex-Prince George's County police officer, Mr. Semper teaches leadership workshops for at-risk youths. He says his proactive approach to his daughter's dating debut was necessary to counteract the sexual and violent messages bombarding teen-agers.

Teen magazines tell them how to hook up with a babe, make a hunk happy and have an orgasm. Their favorite TV programs teach them that to be in love is necessary, but temporary. And their music encourages them to wallow in the agony of it all.

Unless parents agree with pop culture's version of the birds and the bees, they need to get involved when their teen-age sons and daughters become interested in dating, warn Mr. Semper, psychologists and child-rearing experts.

"Too many parents practice the ostrich theory: They either ignore or refuse to acknowledge that their children have become interested in the opposite sex," Mr. Semper says. "Many parents are afraid to discuss what their kids see on TV every day."

The stakes are higher than ever. According to Robin Sawyer, assistant professor of health education at the University of Maryland, 54 percent of all high school students nationwide have experienced sexual intercourse, with that figure increasing to 72 percent for high school seniors.

VIGILANT AND VOCAL

Mr. Semper insisted that Jaimi's dates pick her up at the family's Mitchellville home and sometimes asked for their parents' telephone numbers - just in case.

Sometimes he would warn them: "This is my heart; she better be returned to me safely."

Call him strict, overprotective, even old-fashioned, but Mr. Semper says his rigid rules helped his teen-age children survive the thrills and spills of the high school dating game.

He's not alone. When Sandy of Lanham discovered that her teen-age daughter was dating a boy with a bad reputation, she and her husband "just had to put our foot down" and forbid her to see him anymore. She requested that her last name not be printed to protect her daughter's privacy.

"It was really hard. She didn't get over it for several months," Sandy recalls. "But he ended up dropping out of school and getting another girl pregnant. She came to me and said, `Mom, you were right.' That made me feel good."

Jaimi Semper, now 21, says she appreciated her father's vigilance, though it was "unusual for my generation."

His straight talk didn't embarrass her but assured her of his love and protection, she explains. "My friends thought he was cool."

While many parents would rather censor themselves than risk recriminations for humiliating their children, Mr. Semper would warn Jaimi's suitors: "I was 16 once, and I know what you've got on your mind. I'm not going to make it easy for you."

Taken out of context, Mr. Semper's straight-talking cop routine "could be disastrous in another family," his daughter says. But it worked because he had always played the tough guy with a soft heart.

"I'm tough, but they like me because it comes from my concern for them," Mr. Semper explains.

Most psychologists say there is no one style - or particular set of rules - that works best with teen-agers who want to date. Rather, parents need to communicate the family's expectations and values clearly and consistently to their children as they grow up.

"Whatever happens to teen-agers in their high school years with regard to relationships is an outgrowth of the early years of their life," says Laura Kastner, a psychologist who counsels teen-agers and is co-author of "The Seven Year Stretch: How Families Work Together to Grow Through Adolescence."

"It's not a matter of adopting a certain stance on an issue in high school - it's how you parent every day for 15 years."

DATING VS. WAITING

Besides the physical risks, the emotional and psychological perils of teen romance can wreak havoc on a teen-ager's self-esteem and school performance, says Connie Marshner, mother of five and author of "Decent Exposure: How to Teach Your Children About Sex."

While most parents strive to prevent their teen-agers from becoming sexually active and want to protect them from the pitfalls of dating, they don't always agree on how to do it.

Mrs. Marshner, a Christian and conservative activist, discourages dating until a person is ready to settle down: "Why say to yourself, `I probably don't want to marry this person or spend the rest of my life with him, but I'll go ahead and fall in love and get myself kicked in the teeth'? That's the kind of stupidity the dating culture engenders."

Mrs. Marshner, whose children range in age from 7 to 22 years old, didn't allow her sons, now in their 20s, to date until they were 18. That's probably still too young, she says, especially if a young man or woman aspires to go to college.

"Why imitate courtship behavior if you're not in the position to get married?" she wonders.

In fact, she contends, serious dating teaches divorce skills, not marriage skills.

"The heart is hardened, defense systems are developed, and cynicism is fostered until one is unwilling - or even unable - to make a commitment, which is the legendary problem among adult singles," she wrote in an essay that appeared recently in Insight magazine.

Mrs. Kastner, a psychologist, disagrees. The mother of two, ages 9 and 12, says dating can be a healthy part of a teen-ager's development. But it takes some parental guidance.

"Part of what we're looking for as parents is a chance for our children to have a safe, tolerable practice at the world of relationships," Mrs. Kastner says. "We don't have to put our teen-agers in cold storage," but parents have to keep a vigilant eye and be observant, she adds.

Both women agree that platonic friendships between boys and girls are a good way to learn about the opposite sex.

Mrs. Kastner sees the trend toward group dating as positive. "Often, it's a wonderfully innocent" way to socialize, she says. "There's lots of cross talk, lots of interesting dynamics without being intense. It takes a lot of the pressure off to go out on a date."

The more group activities parents can find for teen-agers, the better, Mrs. Marshner says. Hanging out with other teen-agers keeps the focus of the relationship from becoming too exclusive, too intense.

"The way to truly get to know each other is to have a common interest, like working on a volunteer project together. Then you'll see who's lazy, who's cheerful, who's nice and who's nasty," she says. "Once the focus is on each other, they put on masks to try to be what the other person wants them to be."

WHAT ABOUT SEX?

"Parents may not like this, but nearly all [teen-age] sexual intercourse happens within the context of going steady," says Mr. Sawyer, of the University of Maryland. "It's when you see an awful lot of someone and you start to feel awfully comfortable with them" that sexual exploration happens.

That's why Carmen Pate believes dating - especially going steady - should be strongly discouraged. As vice president of Concerned Women for America, an organization that promotes chastity until marriage, she works to convince teens and parents that abstinence is a viable option.

"Teen-agers are not animals. They are given the capability to make wise choices," she says. "It's so much safer and healthier to teach them how not to have sex."

The consequences of teen sex certainly are grim.

In 1990, about 1 million teen-agers between 15 and 19 years old became pregnant, and 521,626 gave birth, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Every year, about 3 million teen-agers are infected with sexually transmitted diseases, while a quarter of all new HIV infections occur in people 21 and younger, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Sandy says she would prefer to see her children wait until marriage before having sex, but because of the risks, she sat down with her daughter to discuss birth control and protection before her daughter graduated from her parochial high school.

"I thought I couldn't tell them simply not to have sex," she says. "When the passion hits, they'll find a way to do it."

Agrees Mrs. Kastner: "Parents can talk abstinence over and over, but given that sex can be lethal, I also talk about keeping yourself alive."

Mrs. Pate couldn't disagree more. Telling teen-agers they shouldn't, but be careful if they do, gives them a mixed message, she says.

Meanwhile, those who abstain from having sex really aren't missing much, according to a survey of 332 sexually active college students conducted by Mr. Sawyer.

The mean age at which both men and women first had intercourse was 16 1/2. Eighty-six percent of the women and 59 percent of men reported that they had been in a dating relationship at the time, while 67 percent of women and 26 percent of men said they had considered themselves to be in love.

However, in retrospect, 38 percent of women and 20 percent of men said they wished they had not lost their virginity when they did. The most common reason stated was related to having the "wrong" partner, either because the respondent didn't care enough about the person or felt the person didn't care enough for him or her.

In terms of physical pleasure, women rated their first sexual experience a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10; men gave it a 5. Both men and women said the emotional satisfaction of the act rated about a 5.

Though Mr. Sawyer says his study could be instructive for adolescents, he still believes teen-agers will want to "find out for themselves" what sex is like.

Nancy Samalin, a mother of adult sons who's been teaching parenting courses for 20 years and has written three books on the topic, says there's no sure technique to keep teen-agers from experimenting and rebelling. But those who have their parents' trust, who understand that their parents have their best interests at heart and who enjoy a relationship based on mutual respect are less likely to betray the values with which they've grown up, she says.

That's what parents should strive for, she says, because "as soon as your child leaves the house, you have no control except psychological control."

Boy meets girl

2007-11-18T18:44:00.000-08:00

No doubt the problem of most concern to most parents during their children's adolescence has to do with boy-girl contacts. There are practical, down-to-earth parts to this. Parts that deal with behavior and conduct--with how a boy or girl ACTS.

There are other parts to it also. Parts that have to do with how a boy or girl FEELS.

Too often we talk about and work with the first part only. For feelings related to the sex drive have long been hard for us to deal with.

As a result, we are inclined to focus on how our children behave in their boy-girl relations. We are inclined to by-pass how they feel. It's as if we were expecting them to handle their feelings automatically by the attention we pay to their acts.

As with other things, however, we do better if we pay attention to both.

At the beginning of the puberal cycle, a small gland--the pituitary gland--located at the base of the brain sends out a secretion called the gonadotrophic hormone. This in its turn sets off growth of the sex glands, the testes in the boy and the ovaries in the girl. It stimulates them to produce sex hormones or endocrines of their own and eventually to manufacture mature sperm cells and egg cells.

The puberal cycle with these internal changes starts long before puberty proper. Though the girl's first menses ordinarily come between twelve and fourteen, the changes inside her body start anywhere from nine to twelve; sometimes even as early as eight. Though boys ordinarily have their first seminal emission around thirteen or fourteen, the internal changes begin between ten and a half and twelve, in some boys even as early as nine.

As the internal changes progress, the outward changes come. These we notice as we observe our teen-ager's growth. They proclaim to the world and to the opposite sex that childhood is being left behind. Here, for all eyes to see, finally stands a woman. There stands a man.

The puberal cycle, however, does not stop with puberty. Internal changes and often external growth continue for several years.

It is probably a combination of the physical changes, the sight of the opposite sex growing into maturity and the perception of one's own development that brings the upsurge of sex feelings and the increased interest in sexual concerns.

When boy meets girl in the early teens, hesitance is usual.

On her part the girl is giggly and coy. She whispers and titters and has secrets with her girl friends. She seemingly shuts boys out. Perhaps this is because she is thrown together in school and elsewhere with boys her own age. These boys seem "babyish" and beneath her, since they are normally slower to develop. Till about fifteen, they are apt to be smaller. Their beards are pinfeathering and their voices quaver.

With disdain, the girl looks down on them. "That Bob! Those boys! They won't dance. They won't do anything!" with a snort. "They don't know a horse from a cow. They don't keep their ears clean. They actually smell!"

But give the same girl a chance at some more mature and noble-looking creature, then her interest crops out. "That Roy! Have you seen him? Let's face it, he's terrific! He's six feet tall if he's an inch. He simply walked away with the class election. I tell you, he rates! Only, do you know? One of the girls said he wanted to kiss her the second time they dated. That's rushing it too much. But still, let's face it, he's cool!"

Nevertheless, if she suddenly finds her Adonis seeking her out, quite unexpectedly she may retreat.

Ruth has been dying and sighing to be asked to the dance in the gym by a boy two grades ahead of her. However, when the invitation actually materializes, Ruth turns it down. "I was crazy to go," she exclaims, "but I couldn't. I'm crushed. I've never had such a bitter disappointment. What happened? Why can't I go? Don't forget there's that tremendous assignment we got in English. Miss Zee's a mean one. If I don't get it done, well, you know . . ." lamely trailing off.

On his part, the boy in his early teens characteristically sneers or teases or turns on his heel at sight of girls. George, who is thirteen, says with contempt, "The girls in my class think they're real cute. They act real conceited and real glamorous. But when you try to talk to them they just ignore you and act so big shot they give you a pain."

Mike can't see his older sister for dust. From his thirteenyear-old viewpoint he belittles her attractiveness and doesn't see why any of the boys want to take her out. But one evening he sticks his head into her room to call her to the telephone and catches her half dressed. In spite of himself, young Mike lets out a whistle. "Oh, boy! Bosoms!" he exultantly exclaims.

Actually both boys and girls are tremendously conscious of the other sex and are reacting with body feelings that frighten them.

The boy, seeing the girl of his own age as more of a woman than he is a man, often unconsciously identifies her with "Mother." The earlier love-rivalry feelings then come rushing. His jeers then serve as self-protection to make himself keep himself away.

Somewhat later when he falls, he usually falls for a girl much older. This still is protection. He knows that "older women" are quite out of sight.

Similarly the girl entering her teens who yearns for an "older man of about seventeen" still holds the picture of an idealized father in mind, so that she is ordinarily her own dictator in insisting for herself that the arm-length policy prevail. She will hang on to the telephone betraying her interest in everlasting conversation about boys at first, and later with them. But she still must keep the distance safely between.

This might be termed the period of avoidance. A pause, as it were, in which to build courage.

Some boys and girls seem to skip this period. Some go through it before they reach their teens. But when it exists with its various incompatibilities of boy wanting older girl and girl wanting older boy and the older ones of both sexes looking down on the younger ones, there are resultant barriers which either bother parents or let them breathe a sigh of relief.

Thirteen-year-old Dave's mother was one of the bothered ones. She was overconcerned with her son's lack of interest in girls. She arranged for him to go to dancing school. She invited girls over. She surprised Dave with a "gorgeous Valentine party," and kept urging Dave to "be nicer to girls."

However, when he crawled inside himself, becoming more morose and truculent, she decided she had better get inside herself for a change, at least for long enough to do some soul searching.

"Yes,"--she came up with a good discovery--"when I was twelve or thirteen, my older brother wouldn't pay the least attention to me. I was utterly crushed. I see I've been identifying myself with the girls Dave neglects; as if I were in their boots, once more being neglected myself. I've been thinking of them and not of how Dave feels at all."

The change that followed in her attitude helped Dave to be franker and more open.

"Girls," he confided to her, "they're just impossible."

"I know." She nodded, feeling with him at last. "I know they make for a lot of problems."

"They sure do for boys."

His mother's mirroring of his feelings was far more helpful than her earlier proddings. It left him freer, when he became ready, to move ahead at his own speed.

In contrast, some parents try to delay things and are pleased if their youngsters are not concerned with the opposite sex. "He's got plenty of time to go with girls!" Or "I'm grateful, believe me, that she doesn't care about boys yet. I'll have enough trouble on that score later."

The age at which boys and girls become outwardly interested in each other does vary. So--be watchful and tolerant. And in early adolescence, don't try either to hold back your child or to push him on in his contacts.

Let your young teenager's INTEREST IN THE OPPOSITE SEX develop at HIS OWN RATE.

Love affairs start long before seventeen

2007-11-18T18:07:00.000-08:00

As boys and girls grow into adolescence, old wishes, fears and imaginings are bound to crop up inside them. Probably the most important of these date back to the first serious love affair which almost every child lives through during his first five or six years. It is the love affair that the little girl fantasies having with Father and that the little boy fantasies having with Mother.

It is a love affair that invariably ends in disappointment. A love affair that inevitably brings frustration. It must.

As it runs its course a child must learn to accept his littleness with its deprivations. At the same time, he needs also to gain a sense of still being worth while and beloved.

"My daddy likes me most," says small, blond Lisa, "because I'm a girl and he's portly to females." Already she holds the conviction that as a woman creature she is acceptable to a man.

"You mean partial," says her older brother amusedly.

"Daddy, yes, maybe. But not Mother. She likes boys the best."

These convictions as to the parents' partiality are not destructive but natural. The girl's wish to be Father's favorite is her first marriage dream. The boy's wish to be Mother's favorite is his.

When there are several boys or girls in the family, they will naturally vie with each other. In their own minds also each vies with the parent of his own sex.

Four-year-old Peter's designs are bold and bloody. "My daddy's leaving on the train tonight . . . The train is going to get wrecked. Then I'll be the daddy around here."

Walt, at nine, has not yet outgrown his rivalry. On his parents' anniversary after they have gone out to celebrate in the evening, he picks a red rose. Carefully he places it on his mother's pillow. Then he gets a ribbon and stretches it down the center of the double bed. At the foot, he prints a sign. "Congratulations! But, Daddy, stay on your own side."

Five-year-old Mabs, her mother reports, is a regular siren. "She flirts with her father from the moment he sets foot in the door. It's 'Rub my back, Daddy.' . . . 'Please, Daddy, smooth my hair.' . . . 'My arm's itchy, Daddy, scratch it gently.' . . . She crawls into bed with him practically every night."

But there came an evening when Mabs gave away the other side of the story. Her father was busy and seemingly ignored her. So she accosted him bitterly. "If you're too busy to pay attention to everybody, you better not pay attention to Mother. She's too old. You better only pay attention to me."

Obviously Mabs had in mind a fantasy of shoving Mother out and of taking her place.

But here grave danger enters. It is one thing to fight against brothers or sisters for supremacy. It is quite another to fight against a mother or father, especially when the child imagines wanting the big rival out of the picture.

The excitement Mabs had felt when she roughhoused with Daddy had been much like the excitement she had discovered in a certain part of her body when she had touched herself, in the same way as most children touch themselves. But Mabs had learned, as have most children, that touching is "bad." In her mind she put the two things together: The feelings you get when you touch are "bad." So the bouncy feelings with Daddy are "bad" . . . Especially since they were connected with the fantasy of getting rid of Mother . . . Mother would come and take Daddy away. She would take away whatever Daddy gave Mabs. And she might also hurt Mabs, injure her, do something nameless to the special place where the excitement registered. Do something fearful to her body . . . The very thought was too terrifying . . .

Mabs, like many other children, finally had herself thoroughly scared by her fantasies. To escape and deny them, she did a rightabout-face. Suddenly she would have nothing more to do with her dad.

"Your whiskers pinch me," she threw at him and shoved him away.

Meanwhile she clung afresh to Mother. She wanted now to climb into bed with her instead of with her father. "When I grow up, Mommie, you and I--we'll get married."

"Why, Mabs, you know girls don't marry ladies."

"But I want to, Mommie. And we won't have any old stickery men around."

Through making her father's whiskers a fence to keep them apart, she hid the fantasies of wanting him as husband. Through claiming excessive love for mother, she hid the mindpicture of shoving her out.

One more thing she did to bring comfort. She began eating constantly. And when she couldn't get things to chew at, she chewed at her nails.

In this Mabs was running back to the more babyish focus on mouth satisfactions to avoid the excitement-pleasure in that part of her body which had scared her too much.

As her father talked with the psychologist about the problem, he discovered many things.

"I see," he said, "I see among others that by tickling Mabs, bouncing with her and taking her into bed at night, I played up the very feelings she feared."

A baby needs physical closeness in the earlier periods of his life, with both father and mother cuddling him plenty. But in this period of love rivalry the body excitement of tickling and poking, of tossing and bouncing and of too much caressing is blown up by the child's wishful imaginings. He becomes stimulated beyond his capacity and becomes mortally afraid of his big rival's vengeance. He is filled with a kind of animal fear beyond all reason that he will be punished and hurt in that part of his body where the excitement has been most intense.

If he has had warnings against masturbation or threats because of it, he is apt to attach such warnings to these similar sensations.

Long before a child reaches adolescence there will then lie inside him several strands linking sex with hurt in his mind: If you touch, you will hurt yourself or hurt will descend on you . . . If you try to rival Mother or Father and shove out the one you are rivaling, hurt will come . . . If you're a girl and have a baby, you'll be hurt; or if you're a boy, you'll cause the hurt and you know well that if you cause hurt, you will bring hurt down on yourself too as punishment.

All children have feelings similar to Mabs'. They have the same urges and the same fears but ordinarily to a lesser degree. The overstimulation Mabs had received simply made her feelings more intense.

With some children still another source of fear may enter. Perhaps they have seen or overheard their parents having sex relations and imagine that Father is hurting Mother.

Or perhaps a child sees animals in the sex act. Says Nina, seven, excited but bothered, "He put his puppy seed into her backside." Like many another child she imagined that the rectum was being used and her mind jumped from animals to men and women and she concluded that with them the same thing occurred. Then disgust added itself to the fear.

If a child can live through the love-rivalry period, admitting the rivalry feelings and having them accepted and understood, he is fortunate. But once more actions and feelings need to be separated. He must have it made clear as crystal that actions which take Father from Mother or Mother from Father are of no avail. But this does not mean that his feelings are "bad." Quite the reverse. They are good and important. They plant a healthy desire to love and be loved later on by someone of the opposite sex.

Says Tad's father gently, "We know, Tad, there are times when you can't stand me, when you'd like me to disappear so you could be the boss around here. That's natural. All boys are that way. They'd sort of like to be their mom's husband and get rid of their dad. But Mom and I couldn't get along very well without each other. When you grow up, you'll be getting a girl of your own . . ."

Stell Smith's mother and father said nothing in particular. But their tolerance and warm interest in Stell's feelings said a lot for them. They were firmly entrenched in each other's affections and this was part of Stell's sex education. Stell's mother accepted her little girl's adoration of her father, and her father took it quietly, responding with kindly warmth but not seeking more numerous or greater displays of affection.

Stell's mother expected her child to be hostile to her out of jealousy for the place she held and which Stell coveted. Stell's father knew his little girl would also have her moments of hostility to him because he could not grant her what she imagined she wished. Both parents took Stell's displays of animosity with easy forbearance. They felt assured that if they permitted her these feelings, she would pass through the loverivalry stage with greater security. She would shortly arrive at the day when she could admire and imitate her mother as a mother and not as a rival, and admire and love her father as a father and not as a longed-for sweetheart who turned her down.

Both smiled out of their own depth of love and understanding when Stell announced one day, "I'm glad I'm a Smith. There are so many Smiths in the world that when I grow up-what do you think? I can get myself a husband with Daddy's name."

During the love-rivalry period and out from the dim, dark infant past, these and other fantasies are universal. During adolescence, when man-woman relations again move to the forefront of the individual's mind and emotions, old desires and fears are apt to be rejuvenated. These may transfer from mother and father to sweetheart and lover.

If they prove too frightening instead of strengthening, the adolescent may hang back, unconsciously loath to take his place as a mature man or woman. He may remain essentially hesitant about sex feelings. He may, as protection, belittle sex because of old fears and shames. Perhaps then he runs back to the mouth pleasure of food and drink as the aim of existence, finding in them somehow a more dependent and dependable safety than in moving forward. Perhaps instead of love he seeks bigger and better productions, turning back the clock to the time when another kind of production gave him claim to fame. Perhaps he shuns contacts with the opposite sex as well as with his family, unconsciously afraid of loving any one person too much, afraid that another person may retaliate with injury and hurt. Or perhaps he goes berserk in sexual exploits trying to show by bravado that no fear exists.

In any case, it may prove comforting to us to know that what we have done is not altogether the cause of whatever problems confront our boys and girls. The thoughts and the fantasies which they invented earlier also play their part.

We can perhaps be more tolerant as we take this into consideration. We can then fulfill our role better in answering what they are after and in steering them safely into man's and woman's estate.

That crazy little thing called love

2007-10-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

When I was five, her name was Tina. Mostly we held hands and giggled, and that was love. When I was twelve or so, it was Buffy. I admired her with a deep and abiding passion that was, I believe, based mostly on how she looked in this one particular mohair sweater. That, too, was love. Today I'm in love with a girl named Sue. A lot of the time we fight. Sometimes we're just friends. Other times we're a lot more. I don't understand all my feelings about Sue, but I know that without her, my life would be totally different. And not better. And that, I think, is love for sure.

As we grow and change so does the way we love, along with our whole idea of what that magic thing is. So, this Valentine's month, I thought we'd look at an age-old question: Exactly what is love?

How about this for an answer: Love is a complex mixture--of friendship, desire, patience, sacrifice, tolerance, courage, occasionally pain, and (hopefully) ultimately happiness.

Did you say friendship? That's right. A real love affair is the deepest form of friendship there is. My friends Jack and Jannie knew each other for two years before they realized they were in love. All of a sudden one day they just turned around and really saw each other for the first time. Now they've been together a lot longer than other couples who started out twice as fast. So if you have fun together and care about each other's feelings -and feel free to be truly weird around each other-you're there.

You mean it doesn't always strike like lightning? There is such a thing as Love at First Sight-but that's not the only way.

Sometimes a great romance begins as coolness, sometimes as positive dislike. When I met Sue, I thought she was hopelessly stuck-up; she thought I was an irresponsible jerk. We took it from there, and we've been happy ever since.

What's the difference between love and lust?

I'd like to tell my boyfriend. Lust springs into full force almost immediately. But without friendship and tenderness, it fades and eventually dies altogether. If all you want to do is make out, you've probably won't last beyond the first frost. Love takes time to develop. And as it does it grows, adding facets-like a diamond's. Okay, what if I think I love him, but sometimes I think he's kind of a nerd? Loving someone means accepting him basically as he is. If you're thinking, "I wish he were more my type," something's wrong. Loving him should make him your type. But we fight sometimes. Does that mean we're not in love? It probably means you are. Love involves all of you, and that means it's not always going to run smoothly. I get it! Love is pain, right? Wrong. Sure, there's some yearning and heartbreak involved, but if a love doesn't make you happy overall, it's not worth keeping. So am I in love? Do you have to ask? Then you're probably not. Love, above all, knows itself. And when it happens, you know it, because it's wonderful.

Here's hoping that this year's Valentine is the real thing.

Love Common Fallacies

2007-10-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

Someone facetiously defined sweetheart love as "an insane desire to squeeze orange juice out of a lemon." We can smile at this analogy because it comes so close to the beliefs and practices of so many. But it is incorrect. True love is neither insane nor is it based upon deceit.

A frequent fallacy is to regard love as an irrational force, mystically and mysteriously operating to shape man's destiny. It has been said, for example, that "love is blind." Though we would agree that some persons are blinded by what they think is love, we contend that real love comes from understanding, not ignorance; and from self-effort and adjustment rather than from any supposed manipulation by the fates.

It has also been claimed that everyone has a "one-and-only," a "soul-mate," who is waiting and searching for him, just as he is in return.

Part of this belief is that people are "meant for each other," predestined to get together; and that unless one finds the right person, the one intended, he can be only partially happy. We say nonsense. Given an equal start, there are very likely any number from the opposite sex that each person could be equally happy with--or if not, the reason would be in the matching combinations rather than in the fates.

Our position will be discussed more fully in the next chapter; here we would only say that in mature love there comes an intelligent choosing rather than any mysterious searching or intuitive reaching for "signs." Another notion, which can hardly stand up under analysis, is that people "fall in love," suddenly and completely, whenever the right person comes along. We have heard some people talk about "love at first sight." We have listened to claims that "when love strikes, you will know it." To all of this we would say that there is a difference between the infatuations and "puppy loves" of romantic youngsters, and the tested loves of mature companions.

There may be the beginning of love at first sight, but that is all. Whether that beginning will ever develop into "the real thing" it will take time and testing to determine. Love is a process, not a static fact; we grow in love, not fall. Many have thought, at first sight, that they were in love, only to change their minds after taking another and a closer look. On the other hand, many have thought that they didn't particularly care for the one they were going with, only to find themselves coming to love this person after time and close association.

Sometimes, too, people hold to the mistaken idea that "love is all that matters," that if man and woman are madly in love they should be willing to give up everything else in order to have each other; that if they are in love and marry, they cannot but be eternally happy regardless of everything else. All we can say to this is that other things are important too; things that the head must decide; things that, if favorable, will give love itself a better chance of maturing and enduring.

Madness in love is dangerous, for with it people are irrational and impetuous in what they do. Emotional love needs to be tested, strengthened, and controlled by the intellect. Complete surrender to love leaves one open to exploitation by the unscrupulous, and it leads to decisions that may be regretted after the emotions have cooled. A large proportion of the heartaches men and women experience in courtship and marriage are attributable to this attitude of "all for love."

Students of marriage and family very commonly group all these mistaken notions concerning love under the term Romantic Fallacy. The fallacy lies not in the acceptance of romance as an element in love (for certainly every relationship needs some demonstration of affection to serve as a social lubricant, if nothing else), but rather in the belief that romantic love is just about everything that needs to be considered in choosing a mate or in making a happy union. Romance has overglamourized the love concept; it has discouraged rational action and has added mystery and superficiality to the whole thing.

This is particularly true, though not exclusively so, in American culture. It is no wonder that youth are so often swept off their feet by romantic infatuation, for almost everything they do in courtship tends to stimulate and reinforce the idea. The modern novel and the picture show usually depict the struggles and conflicts of courtship, highly flavored with romantic passion, and then end with marriage and the assumption that all conflict is over and that eternal bliss is certain.

These modern fairy tales, although they do not say "they lived happily ever after," imply as much. Their harm lies in their overemphasis on romance and erotic stimulation and upon the unreal picture of life they paint in the minds of those who follow them. The popular song, which is given so much attention in the dance hall and on the radio, does very much the same thing; it stimulates the sentiments and builds up the idea that love is all that matters. This is the fallacy or the illusion that so many of our young people are living under. They are often "in love with love," and nothing more; they see their lover through colored glasses rather than with clear vision; they are blinded by romance.

Unless our culture can be made to change in this regard, unless the romantic infantilism which underlies so many of our marriages can be modified, the American family will continue to be in trouble.

Nature and function of love

2007-10-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Love might be simply defined as any sentiment of attachment that is centered upon any person or thing; it is a pleasurable feeling, in other words, and it is directed toward some object. The love object might be entirely nonmaterial, as when we say that one loves some standard, principle, or cause that he shows a strong devotion for; he can love democracy, for example, or peace, or the Christian Church.

Similarly it can be said that one loves a certain type of activity such as swimming, reading, or listening to musical concerts. Again, the love object might be material though nonhuman, as when we say that one loves ice cream, or new hats, or horses.

Finally, the love object might be a human personality. There are many varieties of this latter also: there is self-love; there are filial and parental loves; there are friendships everywhere, regardless of age, sex, or social relationships; and there is the sweetheart love of courtship and marriage.

Broadly considered, love exists whenever and wherever people obtain satisfactions from the objects and the activities that attract them. It is to the narrower usage of the term, to sweetheart love, that attention is now being turned. Though love is of many types, it is only that which relates to marriage that will concern us here.

Why Don't They Marry?

2007-10-17T15:13:00.000-07:00

Some people remain permanently unmarried by choice, others due to circumstances. Major types are as follows:

Certain individuals are denied the right to marry by society. These are those who fail to meet the minimum requirements of the marriage statutes or who are under long-range custodial care in institutions.

Sometimes people remain single in the spirit of self-sacrifice and because of defects in heredity, health, ability, or character. These are likely to feel inadequate to the marriage situation--incapable of a normal sex life or of anything else that goes with marriage and family.

In certain cultures there are individuals who remain single out of devotion to a cause. A good example of this is religious celibacy, as in Roman Catholicism.

There are always a few persons who remain basically unresponsive to heterosexual love. These are frequently individuals who are autoerotic, or homosexual, or who have strong parent-fixations. Having been conditioned against marriage, they are likely not even to want it.

Then there are those who see marriage as something that is competing with other desires, and who consider the price as too great; they are reluctant to give up their independence or to accept this new responsibility. Men (more than women) sometimes seek arrangements whereby they can have sexual satisfaction without the obligation of marriage. Women (more than men) sometimes find love and marriage interests interfering with their plans for an education and career.

Finally, there are persons who never marry through lack of adequate opportunity.

This last point requires further elaboration. It seems likely that the majority of those who remain single do so out of circumstances rather than desire. This is especially true with the female, for she is less free in making advances. Yet choice is relative to the values and standards which people hold. Many of those who have gone through life alone could have married had they been willing to lower their sights and had they done it in time. But who is there to say which is better, no marriage, or marriage to an undesirable person? Judgment in such matters must be left to the people concerned. It is true, however, that single people as they get along in years frequently feel regret over having passed up earlier opportunities.

One's chances for marriage decrease with age. The middleaged female is at a particular disadvantage, for men generally choose someone younger than themselves. Furthermore the older men are when they marry, the greater is the age difference between them and the ones they marry. For this reason, older girls frequently get skipped and left out. By waiting too long--because of career interests, or extreme standards, or immaturity and indecision--young people sometimes let the opportunity slip away. Not only is the marriage market smaller as they get older, but they also become more set in their ways and harder to please.

Marriage opportunity is contingent upon situations which permit people to meet and associate with adequate numbers of the opposite sex. If the residential sex ratio is unfavorable, or if occupational activities keep the sexes apart, or if the culturally provided contacts are so formal or superficial as to make it hard for men and women really to get acquainted, marriage becomes difficult. The problem of the white-collar girl in this regard has already been described; surrounded by millions, she is nevertheless lonesome and without male companionship, or enough of it, or the kind desired.

Those who never marry

2007-10-17T15:10:00.000-07:00

United States census figures reveal that nearly 10 per cent of our adult population never marries. Only about 90 per cent of all who reach the age of forty-five have had the marriage experience. Since very few of the remaining 10 per cent will marry after that age, it follows that about one tenth of all adults end their lives as single individuals.

The percentage that never marries is even greater when all ages are considered. This is illustrated by the fact that of every 100,000 females born, only approximately 78,000 ever marry (of these, only about 65,000 eventually become mothers). This means that between one fifth and one fourth of all persons born never marry; some because of death before the time of marriage and others because they either choose it that way or lack opportunity on the adult level.

It would be both inaccurate and unjust to assume that the unmarried, as a class, are inferior to the married. Though some individuals remain single because of personality deficiencies, others never marry in order to better express their personal talents. Though society encourages marriage, it is rapidly coming to accept the unmarried state as normal and to remove many of the handicaps which formerly surrounded it.

Single persons of every age group have higher death rates than do those who are married. This is particularly true of the male, but with certain exceptions during the childbearing ages it applies to the female as well. Reasons are two: (1) Marriage is selective as to health, the tendency being for those with serious constitutional weaknesses or deficiencies to remain single. (2) Marriage tends to favor the health of its members by encouraging a more settled and systematic mode of living.

There is a strong probability that unmarried men and women differ from each other in regard to quality. In an earlier chapter we referred to the commonly observed tendency of men to marry beneath themselves for the sake of ego protection--supported by parallel tendencies of many capable women to want a career, to delay marriage for it, and to be more particular than men in choosing a mate.

This "marrying down" expresses itself in the areas of age, education, general socioeconomic status, and very possibly with reference to physical and emotional aspects of the personality. Folsom has used the term mating gradient to describe the tendency, claiming that it "would seem to leave an unmarried residue on the upper rungs of the female social ladder and on the lower rungs of the male ladder."

This point finds reinforcement in the fact that of women who don't go beyond the sixth grade in school, about 95 per cent marry, while only some 70 per cent of those who graduate from college ever marry. Apparently it is the more able and career-minded of the females that go on for higher education, and in going on they reduce their marriage chances, both by becoming older and by becoming too intellectual for the dominance-loving male. We should add parenthetically, however, that though marriage after college graduation becomes slightly less likely for the girl, this does not apply while she is in school; the college campus has proved itself to be an extremely productive laboratory for mate selection. Furthermore, as studies reveal, college marriages, when they do take place, are less likely to end in divorce than are noncollege marriages.

Six killer comments a guy'll make

2007-10-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

"You're such a good friend."

It's the ultimate letdown. Well, I could go on (and on and on), but I'd rather stop and try to explain why a guy would say some of these things. Bear with me, because there's no easy answer.

It's like this: Some ego crushers are simply clumsy attempts at humor: We like you, we want to make you laugh, but sometimes our jokes just aren't funny. Sometimes we start off with the best intentions, but the wrong words come out-like in example one. (We may think your hair looks fantastic and still manage to phrase our compliment this way.) But some ego nukers are simply downright mean-spirited: A guy is showing off for his friends, maybe, or simply taking out his own frustrations or insecurities on you.

What should you do? You could start by letting him know he's hurt your feelings. Believe it or not, if you don't flat out tell him, he may never realize you're hurting. If he cares about you, he'll shape up (he might even be cool enough to apologize). If he doesn't . . . walk away. Some guys are angry at the world in general and looking for targets. So stay off the shooting range.

One more thing: If you cut your hair- or put on makeup or change your style or act a certain way - just "for him." you're setting yourself up for a possible letdown. There's nothing wrong with hoping he'll like you, but what's more important is that you like you. Self-confidence doesn't arrive all at once: It's won little by little. But once you feel it, comments like these won't be able to crush you . . . even if they do sting a little.

"Check her out!"

This one cuts deep-whether he's admiring a girl you don't know or comparing you to his ex-girlfriend. When he openly drools all over your friends - especially when he knows you like him.

"You're wearing a lot of makeup today."

It makes you feel like Bozo and your ego deflates like a popped balloon.

"Is your whole family flat-chested?"

"Did you wake up late this morning?"

Seven small, wounding words that fueled more than a few self-doubts-about hair, makeup, talking, walking, clothes, breath . . . you get the point.

"What happened to your hair?"

This little question is your biggest complaint. Especially rude after you go out and get a great new cut for him. This topic also topped the guy-crusher column.

Confusion and Complaints in Regard to Dating Experience

2007-10-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

A relatively noninstitutionalized pattern such as dating may result in confusion, misunderstanding, and complaints. One issue involves the modest, passive, supported role for females, which denies them initiative and spares them expense. Girls may want to take the initiative and may be willing to pay and yet be reluctant to seem other than sought after, Boys may be uncertain and ambivalent about their masculine role. Minnesota men attributed to their partners far more initiative and sharing of expense than women students admitted in their own behavior. The revealed differences were statistically significant.

There is confusion in regard to the "rating" of persons dated and concerning the motives underlying the dating process. Not uncommonly circular reasoning is implied, as when the phrase "attractive personality" is used, meaning essentially a person who attracts dates. A student therefore dates because he dates. Yet the logic is not totally unrealistic, for it may well be that students date in order to seem sought after and hence desirable for further dates.

There may be a real distinction between dating for the sake of rating as a means to further dates and dating just for fun. Perhaps it is more pleasurable to be with a person that you like rather than making an effort to attract and impress a "sorority queen" or a "big man on campus." Social pressure complicates dating as a personal means to a good time.

Early Dating Difficulties

2007-10-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

Parental opposition may exist in regard to dating behavior. Since the mothers are more inclined than fathers to encourage sons as well as daughters, a Freudian interpretation is inadequate. Mothers in general are romantically inclined and may identify more than fathers with dating behavior. The figures give no evidence as the exact nature of opposition, but there is evidence from other data of teasing by parents and siblings.

Awkwardness and isolation complicate acquaintance with the opposite sex.

Lack of money was frequently mentioned by male students as a reason for lack of opportunity to meet girls. This suggests the double burden of men who often must both find and feed the woman.

Reports of college students concerning dating may be misleading, for a denial of dating is essentially a denial of popularity.

A limited contact could be wishfully interpreted as a date by way of ego protection. Of the Minnesota men, only 5.7 per cent reported no dating, and the remainder claimed on the average 10.3 girls dated more than once. Of the girls, only 2.7 per cent reported no dating. The girls dating claimed on the average 11.7 per cent persons dated more than once in the course of dating history.

Failure to marry

2007-10-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

"We are the most married nation on earth," as Professor Ross said repeatedly to his classes on the family, and yet about one person in ten never marries. That so many should fail to marry is surprising when we consider how habituated to and dependent upon family roles each of us comes to be through the conditioning experiences which we undergo as children -- at the very time in our lives when our personalities are being basically shaped and molded.

How can we account for this one person in every ten, particularly when we note further the fact that his married friends exert pressure upon the unmarried individual in many subtle ways, the most obvious effect of which is to exclude him from the circle? Parents and relatives begin to volunteer subtle but insistent advice when he remains unmarried beyond the age of twenty-five (this is even more true for young women than for young men).

Even the cultural restrictions on freedom of behavior of single women become more obvious and probably more keenly felt by them when most of their friends have married. There are places where they may not go unescorted. Finding a socially acceptable living arrangement becomes more complicated. In smaller localities the single person, male or female, is forced into a pattern of living so different from that of the rest of the community that he is soon aware of not "belonging." And finally he who does not marry must face, more or less alone, the problem of dealing with sexual drives, with the understanding that most of the ways alternative to marriage of getting release and gratification for these drives are highly disapproved by our society. What, then, are the reasons why some people never marry?

Paradoxically, one of the processes leading to nonmarriage is identical with that process which is most potent in leading people to marriage. It is the process which causes adult attitudes and behavior patterns to result largely from childhood experiences. Usually, as we have seen, this tends to bring people to marry, but in the case of an unhappy childhood, one in which basic wishes and needs remained unsatisfied and frustrated, the carryover to adulthood will often include hostile attitudes toward marriage and family life or in other cases toward members of the opposite sex. It is probably well that such people do not marry in great numbers, for when they do, they often play roles which lead to an inordinate amount of conflict -- roles which at times are carried over from the patterns of intense conflict followed by parents and at other times occur simply by the continual expectation of frustration from family life, conditioned by unfortunate early experiences. This reason for not marrying is one of the personal and internal factors limiting marriage over which there is little conscious control. After all, one cannot choose his parents, nor even his childhood experiences!

Some people do not marry because the objects of their sexual and affectional drives are those of their own sex. It is a "common sense" assumption in our society that interest in the opposite sex "comes naturally" -- in other words, is innate -- and that homosexuals are biological freaks or "queers." This assumption is no longer held among biologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists.

The more tenable picture would seem to be this: the heterosexual direction of the sexual drive is not implicit in the drive itself, especially since the individual of either sex is even somewhat bisexual in organic equipment. The direction of the sexual interest is acquired as a result of conditioning. The drive is without object at the outset, and the various processes by which it becomes attached to an object are as yet imperfectly understood.

It seems likely that we all tend to identify ourselves with those of our own sex at some time or other in childhood or youth, but most of us pass through more or less culturally standardized experiences in which our love drives become firmly directed toward those of the opposite sex. Some people, whether from constitutional or circumstantial causes, remain attached to the homosexual class of love-objects. When homosexuals, or "inverts" as they are sometimes called, do marry the results are usually tragic. Consequently it is well that these people, too, do not ordinarily marry. Here again we are dealing with personality factors over which a person has little or no control -- in the ordinary sense of the word "control."

Other personality variations which may, in specific situations, disqualify people for marriage are too numerous to list here. There are people who tend to recede from all social relations and dwell in worlds of fantasy within themselves. Others are inordinately suspicious. The actions of still others are of a highly compulsive nature.

How mates are sorted

2007-10-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

Do you expect to marry? Nearly everyone in his late teens and early twenties not only intends to marry but spends an enormous amount of time talking, thinking, and daydreaming about the kind of mate he expects to choose and the kind of family he hopes to have.

This is not surprising when we consider how important the outcome is to the later course of anyone's life. It is even more understandable when we consider that the youth, whether boy or girl, has had his basic purposes and intentions molded by family living. His own parental family, a constellation comprised of a host of deeply ingrained and intermeshing habits working within and between its members, is the most important model he has for picturing his future pattern of life.

If his deepest needs and wishes have been satisfied in this parental family situation, he has an almost irrepressible need to establish his own family when his growing independence severs most of the ties with his parental family. It is as natural, then, to spin dreams about the choice of a mate as it is to spin dreams about the choice of a vocation. In fact, the two problems are often so related that neither can be considered alone.

But can you really "decide" whether or not to marry? Can you "choose" your wife or husband? Can you "plan" a wise and stable marriage? There is much less choice involved than is commonly believed. A number of factors narrow the range of conscious choice, factors which are not essentially different from those involved in any other aspect of human behavior.

We may place them in three broad categories:

(1) Personal and temperamental traits are first in the list; these result from the interplay of inherited predisposition and early childhood experiences, probably forming the framework on which most later attitudes and purposes are built.

(2) Interpersonal factors come next; these are the precipitate of interaction during the immediate period of courtship.

(3) Then there are impersonal factors of three principal varieties: (a) spatial and occupational limitations upon choice -- such as vicinally (inexactly, geographically) imposed isolation; (b) limitations resulting from the peculiarities of population structure and sex ratio; (c) cultural permissives, cultural preferences, cultural prescriptions, and similar shadings of cultural prohibitions with respect to marital choice and in terms of status in the group. It should be noted that all these types of factors tend to limit conscious choice without themselves becoming conscious or subject to conscious control or alteration.

From this standpoint there is a grain of truth in the romantic doctrine that "Some one person is destined by the stars in their courses to be my mate." Is not every person limited (that is, somewhat "predestined") in settling the problem of whether or not to marry, in choosing a mate, in planning intelligently for a happy marriage, by such factors as his geographic location, his parents' vocational and economic group, his inherited intelligence, as well as by his traits of temperament and physique as they have been modified by early childhood experiences?

This is not, however, a fatalistic or deterministic philosophy which would rule out the exercise of intelligent choice and rational planning. On the contrary, it is precisely through bringing certain limiting processes to one's conscious attention that he is able to be reasonable rather than romantic in the choices he does have the capacity to make. In short, we can marry wisely only if we understand wherein wisdom is possible.

Dating Quotes

2007-10-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Dating and Love Quotes by Famous People

"A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; A woman loses hers after four kisses" H.L. Mencken

"It is better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all." Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house." Rod Stewart

"When I had no work and all this time on my hands, I couldn't get a date. Now that I have women banging on my door, I have no time to answer it." Scott Wolf

"Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night. Rodney Dangerfield

"I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy." Tom Clancy

"What's nice about my dating life is that I don't have to leave my house. All I have to do is read the paper: I'm marrying Richard Gere, dating Daniel Day-Lewis, parading around with John F. Kennedy, Jr., and even Robert De Niro was in there for a day." Julia Roberts

"According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful." Robert De Niro

Marriage High Expectations

2007-10-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

Judging by statistics, marriage is more popular today than it has ever been. In America today, 84.8 percent of the men and 84.5 percent of the women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four are married. Because marriage is a social institution that has been with us for a long time, we have some widely accepted understandings about what a marriage ought to be. We can say that most Americans see marriage as the deepest, most vital partnership in a person's life. We tend to look to it for an experience of growth and vitality that we hope will be richly rewarding to both husband and wife. These high expectations with regard to marriage derive from the traditions of romanticism, Western Christian teachings about monogamy, concern for the preservation of private property, and the high esteem with which our culture regards personal freedom.

What seems to be happening in America today, however, is that, while we may be in some ways expecting greater things of marriage than we have in the past, we also are willing (or forced) to settle for much less. Study after study sadly suggests that marriage today typically is a quite colorless affair. These studies suggest that at least a near majority of us have settled for marriages of convenience that are at best merely comfortable because they have become routinized and demand little of the partners. If our understanding of what is happening is correct, the image that more and more young people are acquiring of marriage is not a good one. On the college campuses coeds talk of not marrying at all because of their distaste for housewifery and domestic roles. Young men and women are deferring marriage longer and longer before taking the final step. Our impersonal society generates a high level of loneliness and a foreboding sense of separation. A part of our apparent eagerness to enter into marriage, therefore, may be seen not as the result of an attraction to marriage but as an attempt to escape from the loneliness and impersonality of our technologically driven society. Americans thus tend to come to marriage with high expectations and great needs at a time when the institution of marriage is being subjected to enormous social pressures which make it difficult for persons to realize these expectations in marriage.

Learning to love

2007-10-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

There is no clear-cut line separating what we have called the "factors" and what we are now referring to as the "processes" of marriage. Our analysis of factors has emphasized the structural or organizational aspects of the phenomenon under study; it has let us examine the major elements of marriage, though without particular reference to dynamics or over-all processes.

Our present concern is with the application of this knowledge to the developmental stages or sequence patterns in the family life cycle. We shall want to examine the period of premarriage, mate adjustment within marriage, parenthood as a fruit of marriage, widowhood and other aspects of postmarriage, and spinsterhood or nonmarriage.

Love seems to be the logical starting point. Though not synonymous, love and marriage are nevertheless very much interrelated and are generally thought of together. Marriage is the natural consummation of love interests. Love is the magnet that brings people together and the cement that holds them together; it is the most essential element in pair unity.

Yet there are perhaps few concepts so misunderstood and abused. In the name of love people sometimes flounder, when they could have intelligent direction; dissipate, when their energies could be spent constructively; exploit, when they could, and should, cooperate.

Some people regard love as a blind force that can be neither understood nor controlled. Others see it as an excuse for indulgence or for the satisfying of narrow self-interest. Only a few, relatively speaking, learn the full meaning of the term and are able to use well the full power that love provides.

When your boyfriend is a flirt

2007-10-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm at a party. Samantha's on my left. Didi's on my right. My head's swiveling back and forth like a weather vane: I'm trying to entertain them both. Suddenly I'm aware of two hazel-green eyes shooting lightning bolts from across the room-straight at my head. They belong to my girlfriend, Sarah. I think I'm in trouble. I think I'm in big trouble.

Was I flirting? Tough call. I definitely wasn't doing what my friend Drew does-Drew, aka Drac, who feeds on female affection and ricochets from one girl to the next like a human pinball. But I also wasn't quite as innocent as my friend J.J., who has tons of girl "friends" but really has eyes only for Jaime, and everyone knows it including Jaime. The fact is, whether or not I was flirting wasn't what really mattered.

What mattered was that I was being uncool to Sarah (who's a pretty cool girl)-and the way she handled it is one of the reasons we've lasted as long as we have.

See, there's no set formula for identifying when your boyfriend's a flirt, but there is a point when you have a right to say something about his, well, abundance of affection for other girls. That point comes, simply, when his behavior starts to bother you. Of course, if you freak every time he looks at another girl, check your jealousy meter: You may be making demands he's not willing (or required) to meet. And if you serve him up with an ultimatum, face it: You're taking a risk.

That's what happened with J.J. and his ex Diane, who exploded when she found female voices on his answering machine. "It's me or them," she barked. He (reluctantly) picked them-which later became Jaime-but I think eventually neither J.J. nor Diane regretted his choice, once they got over the initial sting of a romance gone sour. J.J.'s better off with Jaime, who's confident enough to deal with his slew of girl "friends." And Diane's now in hog heaven with Wally, who's never been a real social guy (and who worships the pavement she walks on).

Drew's current flame, on the other hand, has chosen to put up (and shut up) when it comes to Drew's antics-which isn't easy for her. "I love Drew when we're alone, but as soon as we step out the door everything changes," she told me a while back.
"What can I do?" I didn't have the heart to tell her that not even a ton of garlic would persuade old Drac to retire his cape; I figured she'd pick that up soon enough herself and dump him for a guy who's a little less of a slimeball (sorry, Drew!).

As for Sarah and me? I'm happy to report that I'm the one who changed my ways-with help from Sarah, who handled things in her usual cool way. "You were flirting," she said, gently but firmly (once I had finally extracted myself from Didi and Samantha). "I was just being friendly," I countered. "You were flirting," she repeated. "You know I don't mind you being friends with other girls. But do you need quite so much affection from Didi and Sam when you've already got all of mine?" She put it that simply, and after about two seconds, I realized she was right. It just wasn't worth losing Sarah to have a few more minutes of attention from Didi, Sam, or any other girl. Not that I've become antisocial or anything. I'm just a little less "friendly". . . and now I've got the best of both worlds.

What does it mean to be engaged?

2007-10-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be engaged? From the foregoing it is obvious that a good deal of ambiguity and haziness surrounds not only the act of becoming engaged but the very state of being engaged. Perhaps no situation in any society is ever completely defined by the symbols which relate to it, but the engagement situation in our society is one which is left almost completely undefined by its symbols. The symbols are commonly the wearing of a ring or fraternity pin, the announcement of engagement at a party and in the newspaper, exclusive courtship over a long period of time, the words "I love you. Will you marry me?" and so on. The significance or meaning of engagement, however, is not at all standardized or universal. While the symbols remain fairly constant throughout our society the meaning varies from couple to couple. Even more striking is the fact that the functions which the engagement period fulfills are not regulated by the formal customs of our society. In this respect modern America differs from most other societies. This will be appreciated when we survey the varying customs and functions of the betrothal among groups other than our own.

Comparative Marriage Choices of the Single, Widowed, and Divorced

2007-10-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

More information is needed on the choices made in first marriages of men and women, as well as those in second or following marriages. Who marry the widows and divorced women? Are they chosen chiefly by bachelors, widowers, or divorced men?

Most girls want to marry someone older than themselves, and in four out of five cases they do. The average age difference for the country is three years. Although going to college theoretically gives a girl an excellent chance at selection, actually her opportunity is not so great as supposed. Her classmates are men of her own age; and though she may be ready to marry upon graduation, they usually are not. Either they have postgraduate work to do, or they must get jobs and become somewhat established before they can marry. By that time, unless they have held through a long engagement, they are more likely to be interested in girls from three to five years younger than themselves, which rules out most of their college mates. The freshman girl who can put her brand on some not-too-haughty senior may get out of college just about the time he wants to marry, but such skill denotes special favor of the gods.

Standards of Choice Are Built Up Gradually

2007-10-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Those who want to do something to help young folk in this difficult matter of selection frequently go at the matter from the wrong end. They assume that they have an unencumbered field on which to work, when actually it is already covered with ideas, whether good, bad, or indifferent. For young folk do not, when they reach the marrying age, suddenly begin to study the characteristics most desirable in a mate. They have ideas on this subject, but they don't get them just at that time. Reading, talking with friends, discussion courses in college or voluntary organizations-all these give additional ideas and help to clear up uncertainties. But most of their ideas on the subject have been acquired from childhood up. They have been built into their whole system of life values by parents, teachers, friends, and companions, for successful marriage (to a considerable degree at least) depends upon the same rules as successful friendship.

From an early age, children are unconsciously influenced by the kind of playmates they are encouraged to play with and even the kind of adult friends their parents choose. This constitutes a process of selection, a continual choosing of persons with whom it is worth while to spend time, and the avoidance of those with whom one would waste time. This is much the same as saying that we choose as friends the people that we like and that we like them because they represent, in varying degrees, life values that comfortably coincide with our own.

In much the same way, one marries a person because one likes her-not because one has gone around with list in hand and checked her as the one who most nearly meets all specifications. Even those who temper romance with common sense are hardly that cold and analytical. We marry persons, not abstractions. This does not mean that a study of attributes which in general are most likely to make for success in marriage is not helpful; the emphasis of ideals is helpful at any age. But it does mean that the most strategic point of influence is long before the mating age and that the responsibility of education for marriage rests first on parents, teachers, and others who shape the ideals of children.

By the time young people have reached the marriageable age, their life values are pretty well established, which is to say that the general type of person they will marry is already determined, within reasonable bounds. Even then they may be influenced in certain crises by the counseling of elders whose wisdom and judgment they respect, but on the whole they are satisfied to follow what they consider to be their own ideas, little realizing that these ideas are not their own but have accrued from a hundred sources through many years. Any cross section, therefore, of their standards of selection would be to a considerable degree a reflection of the value patterns of the social milieu in which they grew up. Nevertheless, such a measure of youth's attitudes should be of interest.

No study has been made on this subject that includes proportional representation of all races, nationalities, religious faiths, and social and economic classes in the country, and hence no "all-American" standard can be determined. It would be easy to argue that such a study would mean little, for most people marry, at one time or another, and these of necessity include rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, generous and selfish, honest and dishonest, good cooks and poor cooks, and most of the opposites that could be mentioned. But it is possible to find the prevailing ideals of smaller groups, for example, those of a given locality, or of a selected class within a given locality.

Preferential mating

2007-10-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

By preferential mating is meant the conscious or unconscious choice of a mate because of certain desirable characteristics, whether or not these are possessed to any marked degree by the one doing the choosing. In assortative mating, much of the selection is unconscious, but in preferential mating a large share of it is conscious and thus more amenable to social influence, particularly education. But even here part of the process is unconscious, for individuals absorb much of their social thought from innumerable sources, some of which seldom come to the foreground of attention.

Similar social and economic status is undoubtedly a large factor in selection, not only because of consciousness of kind and the comfort of the familiar but also because one's acquaintanceship usually lies mostly within one's own class and the laws of numbers play their role well. There follow the more personal characteristics, such as beauty, disposition, vivacity, intelligence, health, stability, and a host of others. These will be rated differently by different social groups, and the ratings may change at different periods in time. Beauty is practically always desired but, of necessity, not always insisted upon. Also, it is well that individual standards of beauty vary as much as they do, for many a person who would rate low in a professional beauty contest can qualify as beautiful to someone. Beauty is such an elusive, indefinable attribute that it need not wholly depend upon regularity of features and conformity to an accepted type but is determined partly by the reflection of personality through face and body, revealing such factors as animation, kindness, courage, and grace of movement.

But it is impossible to compose a list of attributes that a person must have in order to be a successful husband or wife. The press has frequently exploited the subject through "love columns" as well as through the sensational statements of notoriety seekers. One of these, a doctor of some standing, warns young men against marrying a girl who cannot run 100 yards in 13 seconds. Presumably, this is merely a test of good health rather than ability to keep out of reach of said husband when in an irate mood. Anyway, the husband supposedly travels in another medium, for girls are adjured to pick husbands who can swim 25 yards in 30 seconds. One writer insists that the young man select a college graduate if possible, but another says that college women make the worst wives in the world. There are innumerable lists with names like "Ten Rules for Choosing a Husband (or Wife)" which include such banalities as "He must not be jealous," "He should not be conceited or tactless," "He should be willing to let his wife audit his accounts"; "She should be charming, clever, and entertaining, always neat in appearance, thrifty" in other words, a mate should be a paragon of virtue and grace.

Granted that these lists contain many admirable characteristics, as well as negative ones to be shunned, the absurdity is not so much in their innocuous enumeration as in the authoritative assumption that this or that list is the perfect guide and that unhappiness will result from the choice of a person who does not measure up. It is worth while to analyze certain characteristics that frequently have great influence one way or another, for youth needs all the enlightenment it can get on this difficult question, but to make arbitrary lists that can automatically sort out the successful or unsuccessful prospects is patently impossible.

What sort of person should I marry

2007-10-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

"What sort of person should I marry," is a rather academic question unless there is real opportunity for choice. This means that each person should have sufficient acquaintance with a sufficient number of eligible partners. Modern life has made human beings more highly individuated than they ever were before. Being exposed from childhood on to a wider variety of situations, they develop interests and tastes which are more diversified than in those days when there were fewer and simpler types of environment.

Not only is the actual variety of personalities in the marriage market greater, but the demand for a congenial mating seems to have become more insistent. There was a day when all women were in a sense more or less alike. The men, too, were more alike than now, although their differences in prowess, occupation and status were recognized. Within wide limits it did not make so much difference just what woman a man obtained, or vice versa. In any case she was reared in the culture of the community, had learned to do the things all women must do, and apart from the fireside she would not be very much the companion of her husband. Her place, like that of every other woman, was in the home. The man must find companionship in his adventurous, awayfrom-home activities, his more personal interests, among his own sex, or in a limited way in some societies, from hetairae or "free women."

With the emancipation of women and their assimilation with men in interests, a more all-pervading companionship comes to be expected between man and wife. The modern young person hopes to find all sides of his personality satisfied by his partner. Whatever his actual behavior, the man at least does not take for granted, as he did in many earlier societies, supplementary satisfactions from other women. The wife now expects from her husband emotional satisfactions which formerly she would have obtained through other relationships, including those with her children. She also demands a more perfect physical sex satisfaction, for she cannot help knowing, from modern literature and conversation, that such is possible. She can no longer accept the notion taught by her grandmother that sex is merely a woman's concession to male passion.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the problem of finding the right mate has become more intense. If to find the one right mate, an acquaintance with five candidates was once sufficient, it might seem that today one must know at least 25 candidates to have the same probability of achieving a good choice. Yet the social machinery for the mutual discovery of partners has not changed to keep pace with the increasing difficulties of the choice. This is what sociologists call a cultural lag. One kind of change has lagged behind another; the result is a problem where no problem existed before.

It is true that chaperonage has relaxed and that young people have a certain measure of freedom to mingle and become acquainted in all kinds of situations, which did not exist before. Under many circumstances they become acquainted without the formality of an introduction. These relaxations of the older rules do not, however, meet the need. The new informality is very irregularly distributed, it does not operate among many who need it most; and commonly it brings only a superficial acquaintance. The circumstances are not conducive to serious friendships which might open the way toward marriage.

Not all the situations in which persons of opposite sex meet are favorable to the kind of interest which leads toward courtship and marriage. The attitude produced by the situation may be too irresponsible or too serious. Two very worth while young people may meet in "pick up" fashion under unusual conditions of gayety, the very atmosphere itself creating a mental set which prevents each from recognizing the worth of the other. On the other hand, many persons meet potential partners in connection with their work, and the tense or "hectic" atmosphere inhibits the playful or personal interest which might otherwise develop.

Some young people feel that the modern custom of going to places of commercial amusement such as roadhouses, night clubs, and the like, narrows the possibilities of acquaintance, because the participants tend to remain in the small groups in which they arrive at the scene and do not, of course, mingle freely with the strangers. Insofar as such entertainment replaces home and church parties where all guests freely mingle, there is a loss of acquaintance possibilities. What is really needed is a type of gathering where the people are personally strangers, but are selected in such a way that each feels safe in approaching any other. Gatherings of this kind are found in churches, schools, institutions, and in the national or regional assemblages of members of various organizations.

The school or college group is a labor-saving device in spreading personal acquaintance, since each learns to know and observe many others without a special introduction or approach to each individual separately. Young people of the working class in America, at least, are not as well provided with these opportunities as are the more privileged classes. In Europe labor unions and labor political parties perform this function to a degree unknown here. It is not surprising that many of our working class youth must resort to the casual "pick up" method of acquaintance.

There is real need in modern society for institutions which perform the function of the marriage broker of other times and countries. There are indeed agencies which play the role in part, or for certain classes of people: advertising columns, correspondence leagues, date bureaus, individuals who take a special pleasure in matchmaking, debutante parties, and hostesses who carefully keep lists of eligible young men. Either the older machinery must be greatly extended, or new machinery invented.

A really good match

2007-10-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

What is an intelligent choice, a really "good match"?

In a study several hundred couples were rated as to their present degree of happiness in marriage, and many facts about the life of each individual before marriage were ascertained. It was found that certain of these characteristics were associated with marital happiness; such, for example, was high education. By combining all the variables which did actually correlate with happiness, a "prediction score" was developed by which one could estimate, from known pre-marital facts, the probable future happiness. However, such social prediction scores seldom give more than a certain degree of probability; they never give any certainty as regards any individual case. They are worth having and the intelligent young person will give them some attention, without drawing from them any fatalistic or inevitable conclusions about any single case. Predictions for the mass are more accurate than for the individual. We can predict with some reliability how many divorces will take place in a given city, or in a given large group of people with known characteristics. But we cannot predict reliably which particular persons will be divorced.

Scientific observation dispels at least one popular fallacy. Namely, it is widely believed that opposite types attract each other like the poles of a magnet, and ought normally to marry. Science finds no evidence for this belief. In some respects like tends to mate with like; in other respects people tend to choose at random without regard to likeness or unlikeness.2 Frequently one is attracted by some trait in the partner which fascinates him because of its novelty, or its apparent differences from his own traits or those of other familiar persons. This unlikeness-to-himself, however, is more probably incidental rather than the real reason for the attractiveness. Commonly the trait is one which he himself wants to acquire, and may possibly acquire later. When all traits are considered, the partner is probably more similar to him than she would be to a man chosen purely at random. On the whole one is safer to marry a person near his own age, of his own race, religion, culture, and social background; a person of interests, ideals, and beliefs compatible with his own; such matings in fact are more common than those of opposite or radically unlike backgrounds. It is better for mates to be reasonably similar in physical energy and mental ability, otherwise one may become a drag on the other. It is dangerous to marry in order to uplift somebody, or to be uplifted. In some minor characteristics of temperament, taste and style, it may be safe to choose a so-called opposite. But the only absolute rule of opposites is that one should choose the opposite sex.

Under our American romanticism, cultural differences between mates are not so serious a difficulty as they are in caste societies, where marrying outside the pale is a family disgrace. The romantic ideology lends a special atmosphere of adventure and drama to the intercultural marriage. "True love" supposedly proves its strength by its ability to overcome such handicaps. While this romanticism misleads many into unwise marriages, it also shifts the emphasis away from cultural differences and furthers the assimilation of unlike social elements. When trouble comes to an intercultural marriage, as Mrs. Mowrer points out, the cultural differences are often used as a rationalization, or outward explanation, of the conflict, whereas the real cause may lie in personality incompatibilities. 42 Thus the woman who is dissatisfied with her husband as a love-maker may attribute her annoyance to his plebeian habit of going about in his shirt sleeves whereas her family used to dress for dinner.

Many kinds of differences, including those of cultural background, may be used to enrich and educate the couple who face these differences intelligently. Thus one man values especially in his wife the culturally higher level to which she, through her family, was able to introduce him. One woman, reared in a western, farm, Protestant environment, finds her life enriched by marriage to a New York Jew reared in the midst of sharp business practice and machine politics. In many such cases marital happiness is genuine beyond doubt. "It can be done."

About age differences much the same thing can be said as about cultural differences. What evidence we have indicates that it is somewhat safer if the man is two or three years older than the girl and she is at least twenty-one. But certainly the risks do not differ greatly enough to permit us to say that any given couple, well suited on other grounds, should abstain from marriage merely because of an abnormal age situation. We do find, however, one combination which should be inspected carefully because it appears in divorce or domesticrelations courts much oftener than it would by pure chance. This is the marriage of a girl of nineteen or less to a man five or more years her senior.

The more serious danger to happiness exists where the major life-drives, goals, purposes, values, expectations, of the two partners, are incompatible. In the past, indeed, these major differences of values which distinguished one person from another were to a large extent cultural, that is, they were the product mainly of different religions, national, social backgrounds of the two. Today cultural values are losing their authority and rigidity; persons are becoming mutually tolerant or even similar about many cultural tastes and ideals which once set them apart. At the same time new differences are arising; differences having to do with the chosen pattern and style of the individual life, especially with the ways in which leisure time and money are spent.

A student, writing anonymously her conception of "my ideal man," says: "He should enjoy, mildly at least, nature, sports, books, music, and the theater, and not have any highly absorbing interest to which I was wholly indifferent after making an effort to cultivate such an interest." This girl, instead of being scolded for selfishness or egotism, should be commended for her realistic facing of her own personality. Only by first recognizing this highly exacting desire of hers, can she modify it and adjust herself to realities.

The values upon which it is dangerous to differ are those whose pursuit requires much time, money, mental concentration, physical transportation, or absorbing effort. In general they are values to which one devotes leisure time. Men and women normally expect to spend their working hours apart. Working in the same occupation, or together on the same

specific project, may bring them into closer harmony; in other cases it may cause mutual irritation and perhaps jealous rivalry. Important for harmony is the integration or compatibility of their purposes rather than whether they spend an average or a much greater number of hours together. It is also important, however, that they spend a certain minimum of leisure time together and that this be free from tension. It is during these relaxed hours that love may perpetually renew itself.

It is silly, however, to become alarmed merely because one's partner likes golf while one's self dislikes it, and instead, plays an excellent game of tennis. It is the deeper patterns of enjoyment rather than specific activities which are significant. Suppose, for example, we have a person who fundamentally likes to do a few things and to do them exceedingly well. He sees himself as a specialist in leisure, as well as in work, where everyone must be a specialist. He has already set for himself certain long-run goals in his sphere of interest. He may aspire to a trip around the world, or acquiring a summer home in the country, or becoming the best tennis player in six states. Suppose he (or she) marries a partner who may be equally intelligent, but whose essential satisfaction is to drift with the tide of circumstance, to sample many of life's pleasures, to "putter" now with this hobby and now with that, collecting now some antique furniture, then selling it at a loss and taking up the breeding of dogs, under the shifting influences of fashion and friends. Both patterns of life may be equally worthy. It may be the Puritan component in our culture which causes us to give a certain admiration to the former. The serious problem is the difference in this respect between two persons who must live together, share a limited space for household storage, share the same purse without any authoritative formula for its apportionment between them, and who, to keep their love, need to spend a certain number of pleasurable hours in each other's physical presence.

The Individual Choice of Partner

2007-10-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

If the sexes were evenly distributed and everyone married on his own level, there would still be the problem of proper mating. Who should marry whom? Let those who have already committed themselves not be disturbed by this question. A scientifically ideal choice of mate is not essential to marital happiness. There is also a scale of values which says: "The highest achievement is to make a success with her whom you have already chosen." This achievement also is facilitated by science and understanding.

Most advice to young people about choosing a mate seems to imply that there are a number of bad types of personality which all should avoid. Indeed it is quite true, as the experience of case workers and marriage counselors will testify, that many persons are psychologically unfit to marry anyone. The significant question is: how numerous are these bad risks? If they are less than 10 or 15 per cent of the population, perhaps we can persuade them to stay unmarried. If, however, they are 50 per cent, as one might suspect from the numerous and broad descriptions sometimes given, then most of them will marry anyway. If we steer one person away from such a black sheep the latter merely falls into someone else's arms. Are we not merely helping one person at the expense of another? How does it profit society as a whole?

This analysis, of course, is too abstract and there are not the facts to answer concretely the question raised. It was raised to call attention to our basic assumptions in this discussion. Do you as an individual merely want help to get an advantage over some other individual, or will you help to increase the general welfare and happiness of the whole? About the possibility of increasing the general welfare, thinkers are today becoming more rather than less optimistic. Moreover, many of your individual problems can best be solved, not by something you can do single-handed for yourself, but by the joint efforts of groups in which you coöperate. If you are able to accept this social responsibility, you will want to discuss this process of courtship and marital choice from a social point of view which will be independent of your own present personal status in the process.

According to the romantic theory there is something mysterious about the process of pairing off. It is more or less believed that each person has a "natural mate," and when this mate is found, the couple will know intuitively that they "belong to each other." Calculations and cold-blooded analysis, it is thought, do not help; they may spoil the beauty of romance. Here is where understanding is needed. True understanding will not spoil the romance; it may save one from disillusionment afterward.

Love, or any other emotional experience, consists of two parts. First, there is the feeling itself; second, there is the object of the feeling. In the case of romantic love, the object is a particular human being of the opposite sex. John says he is romantically in love with Mary. If he says so, he probably is. Except under very abnormal conditions, he is the best judge of his own feelings. There is nothing false, or unreal, or illusory about that feeling of his. It is there. Neither is there any question about Mary's being the object of his feeling. Furthermore, John, throughout his life, will probably experience now and then the same love feeling that he does now. These feelings are as possible and real at fifty as at twenty; they do not wear out in a few years like a suit of clothes. Moreover, Mary will probably always be much the same type of person as she is now; she will change only gradually. If she is lovable by John now, she will probably be lovable by him in the future, and is lovable also by many other men. In all these respects John is under no illusion. Both his feeling, and the object of his feeling, are very real, and they are substantially what they seem to be. If John is an average young American, however, mentally nourished upon popular love literature and movies, and has not had scientific training, he is likely to suffer from illusion in one respect. Namely, he will believe that there is something inevitable, changeless, unique, and irreplaceable, about this connection of his love feeling with the object, "Mary."

Yet, in sober truth, while she indeed may be the "only girl" for him under present conditions, she is not the only possible girl; she was not so in the past, and she may not be in the future. Maybe John will admit these facts in certain moods, but to admit them gives him a sense of disloyalty and disillusion. He would rather cherish his illusion! If he becomes disillusioned he may become cynical, that is, he will try to lay aside his more "idealistic" feelings and to live upon a lower level of pleasures and emotions which are less subject to disappointment.

I would like to inoculate all young people against illusion, disillusion, and cynicism. The essential element in my mental antitoxin would be an appreciation of change. We have been taught to overvalue what is static. We crave that which "stays put," the rock amid shifting sands. Yet the fact is, all things change. John changes. Mary changes. Their love relation changes. Probably John now likes many foods which he formerly disliked intensely. He may feel enthusiastic about certain sports, men friends, political theories toward which he formerly felt indifference or dislike. Toward other objects his feeling has shifted in the reverse direction. It is natural that similar shifts should take place in his love feelings.

Yet all these facts do not destroy: (1) the possibility of this love relation's being supremely valuable, indeed the most beautiful experience in the life of John or Mary, whether it endures for a long or short while; (2) the possibility of maintaining this love relation, if they so wish, at a high intensity throughout life. If they wish to maintain it, however, they must not think of it as something inherently static, which will endure forever because of some mysterious inner quality, but as something which is now so beautiful that it is worth continued development through careful, intelligent nurture. A supreme love relation between John and Mary may continue throughout life, but it will not be changeless. What they really want and can get is continuity, not changelessness. They can get continuity by accepting change!

The writer's generation was taught: "Put thy faith in that which endureth." Then they were disillusioned. Some turned cynical and said: "Nothing endureth, hence ideals are vain, and only sense pleasures are worth cultivating." A few, however, have seen beyond this. As they see it, "everything changeth, hence let us rejoice. Life itself is change."

With this dynamic concept of life, of personality, and of love, the younger generation may face the future without illusion and also without cynicism. Everything changes, that is, in its specific configuration and constitution. But any aspect of life which seems worth continuing, can be continued if one will accept the changes which are necessary to continue it. Thus the seeming paradox, that the only way to secure permanence in life is through change. In the case of the love relation, the meaning is this. If John wishes always to love Mary as intensely as he does now, and she him, they must perpetually renew their love by learning new things, doing new things, changing their treatment of each other as new needs and circumstances arise. In other words, they must continually change themselves and their relation to each other to keep in step with the other changes which life will continually and relentlessly force upon them. To put the matter in more philosophical terms, the only kind of permanence in human relations is a dynamic equilibrium maintained by keeping related changes constantly adjusted to one another in their speed and direction. This is better named "continuity" than "permanence." Why should this make anyone melancholy?

To choose a mate intelligently does not mean to choose unromantically. Few if any persons marry without emotion, without love, which sooner or later takes on a "romantic" quality. The issue is simply whether one will use his intelligence to guide love, or place himself at the mercy of circumstances. To be sure, one cannot directly, through mere will power, make himself fall in love or out of love with a given person. He can, however, by will power, keep himself out of situations which may cause his present mild interest in a potential but unsuitable partner to develop into romance. He can by will power put himself into situations which promise new and desirable acquaintances. He can hold a budding romantic feeling in check until intelligence, so to speak, gives him the green light, and then advance joyously. When that time comes, he will not find that his love emotions have been dulled or impoverished because on certain earlier occasions they were held under control.

The reason for many mismatings is that the partners fall in love because of one or two highly desired traits and overlook the remainders of each other's personality. Thus a young woman was in love with A, but was obliged to break with him because of certain abnormalities in his personality, including a pathological tendency toward fits of gloom and depression. Soon afterward she met B, who emotionally was the very opposite of A: light-hearted, frivolous, always eager for a good time. On the rebound from her earlier disappointment she fell in love with this second man and married him. Years later she found that she had made a mistake. What she really wanted in the long run was a much "deeper" person than B; she wanted someone like A without A's pathological tendencies. But the reaction against the frustration of her first love caused her to overvalue, for some time, the one trait which had been lacking in that person. During this period of emotionally warped judgment, she made her mistake.

There are other causes beside disappointments in previous love which lead one to overvalue a particular trait in a potential partner while being blind to the more important remainder of his or her personality. It may be some ideal or whim developed years ago and never yet satisfied. Suddenly one discovers "just what I've been seeking all these years," and one's emotions surge up into a mighty wave which sweeps all before it.

One woman had had several men friends who were devoted to her. More than one had asked to marry her and she admitted they would make ideal husbands. Yet she couldn't "fall in love" with these men. To get that romantic feeling, to be carried away by her emotions, she needed a man having certain specific characteristics of manner and attitude: he must be gay, free from apparent seriousness or anxiety, and sophisticated. Once she found her man and was overwhelmed emotionally. But she couldn't accept other aspects of his personality; the two put each other to certain tests, the tests failed and they parted.

A young man working toward a career in science was weary of the smug conventionality which characterized most of the girls with whom he had been so far associated. He craved a girl who was "intellectual" and could share his joy of emancipation from his small-town conservative past. He found such a girl and married her. Then he discovered that she had only a few traits out of several which he needed. She could share with him a brilliant conversation and some groups of friends, but not his chief leisure interests, which required a more or less rural, home-and-fireside type of living, with certain manual skills and crafts. He had given up only certain of the values derived from his background culture; others which he retained were vital to his happiness. The woman likewise found that she did not possess quite the kind of husband she had anticipated. The interests of the partners were not only different, but mutually interfering, because they called for very different places and styles of living. They struggled hard to maintain their marriage, but the progressively deepening conflict was too much for them.

The Marriage Market

2007-10-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

To use the term "market" in connection with marriage may suggest something sordid. Perhaps here lies our first exercise in realism. The term is used to analyze certain aspects of marriage; it is helpful in our intellectual understanding of the situation. Let us fear nothing which helps toward understanding. Why should it make our feeling toward marriage any less refined or delectable than it was before? To analyze a rose into carbon and water does not by one jot or one tittle change the quality of roses nor their power to beautify and enrich human life.

Marriage involves a market as does every other human process where there is a free seeking and choosing, by multitudes of individuals, of good things which are limited in quantity. There is demand and there is supply, whether we look at it from the standpoint of men or of women. The individual who falls in love and marries may feel that this course of events is something unique and personal, which was predestined to happen to him and his partner. Yet in sober reality, the romance and marriage of this young couple were governed by the social circumstances and conditions surrounding them. If the young man had lived in a different community where there were fewer girls and more boys, someone else might have taken his beloved before he had a chance to know of her existence.

It will be helpful to bear in mind certain general facts about the marriage market in the United States. About 80 per cent of both men and women marry eventually, that is, if they live to be fifty-five or more. In the case of women, all but two or three per cent of those who will ever marry have done so by the age of thirty-five; in the case of men a somewhat larger proportion wait until after that age. If the man is in the early twenties, the average tendency is for him to marry a girl about three years younger than himself; the average groom of thirty-five takes a bride six or seven years younger. Because of the usually greater age of men when they marry and the fact that women on the average outlive men by two or three years, there are many more widows than there are widowers. Young men of the professional classes marry on the average at twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, while those of the laboring and farming classes tend to marry at twenty-five or less.

Just as we need today a greater appreciation of individual differences, so we need also to give more attention to the differences which exist among places, social classes, groups, and situations. These differences are more important than averages and "totals." If there is an average human being, he is a very rare one. If there is an average situation or community, few persons are blessed by living in it.

One of the most important irregularities in the marriage market is the geographically and socially uneven distribution of the two sexes. The number of boys born is very slightly greater than that of girls. While Nature provides a partner for almost everyone, human beings do not stay where Nature puts them. Migration removes adolescent girls from the farm to the village or small city more than it does boys. But it also takes men and boys to the West, to large cities and to industrial communities. The farms, the large cities, metal-working industrial cities, and the West tend toward excess of males; suburbs, small cities, textile cities, and the South and New England tend toward excess of females. In wealthy suburbs there are only three single men to four single women, whereas in industrial suburbs there are four single men to three single women. In New England the sex ratio of the approximately total marriageable population (i.e., single, widowed, and divorced persons aged fifteen and over) is 89, in the Pacific states it is 125.

No one knows how much our marriage rate is cut by these local irregularities in the distribution of the sexes, but it is certainly a factor of considerable moment. In the industrial suburbs as in the working class areas of large cities and in the West generally, it is the men who must compete vigorously for partners; the women are in the favored position, being fewer in number. In prosperous residential suburbs and among the more educated classes women must compete for men. This is a very rough picture of the situation, because the real competition is based not merely on the sex ratio of the whole population, or of the unmarried adult population, but more particularly upon the sex ratio within specific social horizons. Many of the excess males in the larger cities are itinerant workers or foreign-born, who would not normally be accepted in marriage by most of the resident women. In such cities there may be an actual shortage of men in the class within which the native American women, for example, would be willing to marry.

In some cases the young person may decide that his major life objectives will best be served either by moving to another locality, or by deliberately crossing social boundaries in his acquaintance with the opposite sex. If he is an attractive and popular person who feels no worry about his own marriage prospects, he will become a still more worth while person if he is informed and intelligent about this situation which concerns his fellows.

Puzzling as it may seem, women are more affected than men by the sex ratio of their community. A certain irreducible percentage of men seem to remain bachelors anyway regardless of the sex ratio. They do not marry even when there is a surplus of women from which to choose. It is probable that these men remain bachelors either for financial or personality reasons and that many of them should so remain. On the other hand, when the men are in great preponderance in a community, almost every woman marries, there is no great residuum of spinsters. Thus if we examine the population of about forty years of age of the wealthy suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts, and the western industrial city of Pueblo, Colorado, we find that the percentage of men who remain single at this age is about 18 in both communities. On the other hand, the women of this age are 33 per cent single in Brookline, which has a huge excess of women, and only 9 per cent single in Pueblo, which has a large excess of men. Since women are more affected by the surplus or deficiency of men than the men are affected by a surplus or deficiency of women, it would seem that the woman's fate in the marriage market is relatively more a matter of opportunity or circumstance and less a matter of her own personality or personal competence. This means that there are probably many married women who are not well fitted for marriage, and many unmarried women who would make admirable wives. The same statement would not be true to so great a degree about men. It also follows from these facts that there are probably more frustrations among women than men because of wanting to be married and not succeeding. These are further intensified by the fact that men are still more free than women to secure a substitute for one aspect of married life, the sexual.

In general, then, it would seem that the marriage market presents a greater problem to women than to men. While women may take the initiative in attacking the problem, they need to secure the more intelligent cooperation of men.

Finding a Mate in Modern Society

2007-10-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

There are three truths which all people today need to realize. First, society is changing rapidly. This involves not only changes in the way we live, but also in the very ideals or values which govern our thinking. Second, individuals differ. They differ in more significant ways than ever before. They differ to such an extent that in many spheres of life the concept of "normality" has become practically meaningless. Third, the conflicts and problems with which modern life seems to surround us cannot be blamed upon individuals.

Our society is full of conflicts and inconsistencies. It is time we stopped talking about the mentally sick individuals who cannot adjust themselves to society. Perhaps it is society itself which is the patient.

The modern youth must admit to himself that he is merely making the best possible adjustment under existing conditions; that this is essentially experimental and subject to change. He must learn to throw off that paralyzing sense of guilt and of failure which so many people continue to feel, even after they have literally done their best. He must learn to manage his life as he plays a game, striving always for excellence and success, but taking his failures humorously and courageously. Certainly we need this kind of "maturity"; but let us not think of it as something which comes automatically with natural growth and years; it is a matter of personal temperament plus training.

Technique of Harmony in Modern Marriage

2007-10-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

In a sense the conflict between a man and a woman is at its height when they mate. The process of mating, of yielding to attraction, of overcoming repulsion, of working through a series of countervailing forces is the process we now call adjustment. It is at the point when this adjustment reaches a balance that marriage may be said fairly to begin.

The point which is not usually stressed is the fact that there is no single moment at which a balance is struck and when that balance becomes permanent. Though the stress is less than during courtship or early marriage, the process is continuous, varying in tempo and degree, but always present. It is always possible, if the process fails, for love to become hatred; indeed an especially favorable soil for hatred exists where there has been a prior love. Acquaintances do not hate; they merely part. People who have no adjustment to each other, that is, whose personalities are so far apart that the adjustment process never takes place, are too indifferent to each other to excite any violent emotion.

If we do not accept the hypothesis that the relationship of man and woman is a conflict, we may at least concede that the process of marriage, once the strictly physical phase has become subordinate to the intellectual process, involves a continuous balancing of opposite interests, opposite tastes and opposite ideas. This is too often pictured as life in which one or both give up interests which they hold very dear. Indeed, that is sometimes the case; we all know marriages where one has been entirely subjected to the other. Domination may fit the psychological needs of one partner just as slavery may fit the needs of the other and in such a case the arrangement is a satisfactory one for the individuals concerned. But there is always the danger that the slave will rebel. A husband or wife who tries to reduce his partner to complete subjection, who asks him to sacrifice all his heart's desires, must bear in mind that the worm will turn. There is no hatred or resentment more bitter than that of the rebellious slave.

Actually marriage can be and should be an evolution by which each adopts interests which were formerly foreign. The result should be not that each is limited by the other, but that each is expanded by the other. If there is any quality of defeat in this mythical conflict, the conquered should find not that he has lost a province, but that he has become a member of a larger kingdom. This idea has no novelty except as applied to marriage. Certainly every religion in the world has proceeded from the theory that by acknowledging subjection to a spiritual ideal the individual discovered that his life was not narrowed, but enlarged; certainly by giving up some individual idiosyncrasies men have discovered that their range was not limited but increased. In the closest and most intimate relationships the same result can be achieved; and the result of the assumed conflict which has been so often depicted in literature as a bitter and destructive tragedy can, and in fact usually does, become a development increasing the radius of both lives. Each is himself, but more than himself because he has become a part of the other. Gilbert Chesterton once observed that while it may be conceded to mathematicians that two and two make four, a human relationship of one and one makes more nearly a thousand times one--which is why the world in spite of its many and obvious disadvantages will probably always return to monogamy.

While marriage is a social institution, it is also the most personal, intimate, and comprehensive human relationship. It is therefore natural that man should center many of his most important and tenacious dreams around his mate. In the mind of every man and every woman who enters marriage there is usually a pretty complete mental picture of what his wife or her husband "ought" to be like.

This dream picture is for the most part an unconscious one. True, almost anyone would be able to write down some of the qualifications for an ideal partner according to his way of thinking. But that list would include but a small part of his dream picture. The rest is formed of emotional needs and sense impressions, unconscious, unformulated, halfforgotten.

Speaking in simple terms, an individual has behind him the impressions he has formed of his parents' marriage and other marriages he may have observed. From these he has drawn conclusions which lead him to emulate or to despise the examples he has seen. These conclusions might best be called "reactions," which merely means that they are not logically and categorically worked out. A trivial example may serve to illustrate the point.

A friend of mine was telling me that she was experiencing some difficulty in getting her young son, aged six, to help in making his bed. "But," said the little boy, "Daddy doesn't make his own bed. You make it for him." The little boy will forget his remark; when he applies for a marriage license at the age of twenty-five, he will not be saying to himself, "I expect my wife to make my bed for me." But somewhere in the back of his mind he can see his mother making his father's bed; that, along with myriad other impressions, goes to make his mental picture of what he expects a wife to do. The illustration is here used only to make clear that the pattern of our dreams is made up of thousands of unconsidered trifles like this.

This pattern of our expectations and of our needs, like marriage itself, is many-sided. It is concerned with what the man and woman shall wear, what they shall eat, the kind of house they shall live in, the kind of friends they shall have, what they shall spend their money on, what is man's work, what is woman's work, how they shall bring up their children. Above all, it is concerned with what part each shall play in loving, supporting, comforting, or hating the other through the great and small fears, failures, successes, irritations, satisfactions, tragedies, and joys of life.

When two people marry, they bring their dreams with them. Marriage involves the meeting of two dreams with a state of facts. Matching the dream with dream, and both with the realities, is the essence of adjustment. This is a continuous process; it begins with courtship; it continues through marriage; it is not ended even by divorce. Our parents meant something very like it when they spoke of the necessity of give and take in marriage, although they assumed a set of principles governing that give and take which today are not always accepted.

It would be absurd to pretend that anyone knows much about the process. The cardinal fact that we have vastly increased our knowledge of the physical development of man is matched by the equally important fact that our knowledge of his mental, psychological, and spiritual functioning is hazy in the extreme. But we do have some information, collected from realms as diverse as anthropology and poetry, history and biology. From these we can, at least, make certain hypotheses--sophisticated guesses, if you choose, as to this process of adjustment.

Romance and Realism in Love and Marriage

2007-10-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

There is a tendency in our day to describe love as "realistic" if it is individual, physiological, and without ideals. Sexual intercourse, according to this view, is not social intercourse. To believe that physical expression of love inevitably involves two personalities, each with its own rich and inescapable history, is considered "romantic."

Surely here is some confusion of terms.

The way of romance has always been the way of oversimplification, the way of fitting complicated reality into a single pattern or ideal. The way of realism has always demanded an honest attempt to consider even complex and puzzling factors. So it is interesting that at least a part of the thinking of our time is calling "realistic" that which is an obvious over-simplification of the relationship between men and women. The over-simplification is understandable in a time of doubt and change. There is much to be said for it: at least that it sharpens issues. But over-simplification it remains, and therefore romance.

The "truth" about love and its possibilities lies still in the region of unsettled questions. What we do not know, and what perhaps we need most to know, is how much of human conduct is biologically inevitable from the moment of conception on, and how much is determined by cultural patterns or social inheritance. The answers are not all in; indeed, we are only beginning to ask the questions.

At the same time, we must all continue to act in this area of uncertainty, even though still blindly. But blindness as such is not necessarily a virtue, and what attempts have been made toward the light are presumably helpful. To follow them far may even require a sort of high courage in the presence of mirrors.

But courage has always rated fairly high among the romantic virtues. What follows might even be described as an attempt to show that, in a certain sense, realism in matters of love is less a destruction of castles in the air than an attempt to build foundations under them. It may, indeed, offer the best way in which so-called romantic values can be realized.

Steps in Love and Courtship

2007-10-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

What is true love? How can it be found? Should love be a prerequisite for marriage? Must its thrills and inspiration eventually wear off?

Such are the questions in the minds of young people facing marriage. There are no ready-made answers but rather a background of information and suggestive ideas which will help the student work out his own answers. These, in the last analysis, must be individual.

We shall first analyze love psychologically, that is, mainly in terms of individual experience and behavior; then sociologically, that is, in terms of the group and the relations between persons. But both analyses will be sociological in a broader sense, namely in the sense that we shall recognize the constant influence of the cultural environment. By this we mean the general atmosphere of customs, mores, social values, and common ideas which surrounds every person and gives pattern to his development despite the enormous variations of personal circumstances.

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The Role of Choice In Love

2007-10-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

The essential core of our individuality is not fashioned from our opinions and experiences; it is not founded upon our temperament, but rather upon something more subtle, more ethereal and independent of these. We are, more than anything else, an innate system of preferences and distastes. Each of us bears within himself his own system, which to a greater or lesser degree is like that of the next fellow, and is always rigged and ready, like a battery of likes and dislikes, to set us in motion pro or contra something. The heart, an acceptance and rejection machine, is the foundation of our personality. Before knowing a total situation we find ourselves gravitating in one particular direction, toward certain particular values. Thanks to this, we are exceedingly wise about situations in which our preferred values are brought into play, and blind about others in which different, whether equal or superior, values exist which are alien to our sensibilities.

I wish to add to this idea, which is vigorously supported today by a whole group of philosophers, a second which I have not yet seen mentioned.

It is understandable that in living together with our fellow man nothing interests us so much as discovering what is his range of values, his system of preferences, for this constitutes the ultimate root of his being and the source of his character. Similarly, the historian who wishes to understand an epoch must, first of all, compile a list of the predominant values of the men of that time. Otherwise, the facts and statements which the documents of that age reveal to him will be a dead letter, an enigma and a charade, as are the words and acts of our fellow man if we have not penetrated beneath them and caught a glimpse of what values they serve in his secret self. This self, this nucleus of the heart, is, in fact, concealed to a great extent, even from ourselves who bear it within us--or, rather, who are borne by it. It acts in the subterranean penumbra, in the cellar of one's personality, and it is as difficult for us to perceive as it is to see the span of ground upon which our feet step. Neither can the pupil of an eye view itself. A good part of our lives, moreover, consists in the best-intentioned comedy which we ourselves play for our own benefit. We feign temperaments which are not our own, and we feign them in all sincerity, not to deceive others, but to enhance ourselves in our own eyes. Impersonators of ourselves, we speak and act under the motivation of superficial influences which the social environment or our will exercises upon our organism and which for the moment supplant our authentic lives. If the reader devotes a while to analyzing himself, he will discover with surprise --perhaps with fright--that a great part of "his" opinions and feelings are not his own, that they have not sprung spontaneously from his own personal self, but are instead stray ones, dropped from the social environment into his innermost valley, as dust from the road falls upon the traveler.

Acts and words are not, then, the best clues for identifying a neighbor's intimate secrets. Both are capable of being controlled and feigned. The thief who has made his fortune through crime can one fine day perform a philanthropic act, but he is still a thief. Instead of analyzing words and acts, it is better to notice what seems less important: gesture and facial expression. For the very reason that they are unpremeditated, they reveal information about profound secrets and generally reflect them with exactness.

Respecting feelings

2007-10-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

One of the major sources of conflict in intimate relationships is the fact that two partners are likely to have quite different feelings about some things. The conflict thus serves to bring these different feelings into the open, but in many cases it will not do anything to change them. You may be tempted to assume that this means that conflict is pointless. If a husband and wife have different feelings about something, argue about it, and still have different feelings, what, you may well ask, is gained from the conflict?

To answer these questions we must first understand that changing your partner's attitudes and feeling should not be the primary goal of conflict. A person feels what he or she feels, and being told (or telling yourself) that it is wrong to feel that way doesn't do much to change it. The feelings remain, and added to them is a sense of guilt for feeling that way in the first place. If either partner were to be pressured into renouncing his or her feelings as a result of conflict, that partner would be surrendering an authentic part of himself or herself. (On the other hand, we do not mean to suggest that people do not sometimes genuinely learn, as a result of conflict, that their feelings were wrong. Most people have had the experience of getting into an argument with someone and admitting in the course of the conflict, "You know, you're right; I don't know why I let myself get so worked up about that. I guess I wasn't thinking straight; I just got carried away.")

If we cannot reasonably expect one of the partners to renounce his or her feelings, what does the conflict accomplish? If we recognize that conflict often arises from the fact that an ongoing relationship has numerous goals that sometimes are mutually exclusive, we can see that conflict can help bridge this gap as long as each partner realizes that it is important to respect the other's feelings. If the two of them simply denounce each other for being selfish, they will only make the situation worse.

But if as a result of the conflict they come to a fuller appreciation of each other's feelings, they will be better able to navigate the difficult periods in their relationship. Many situations of conflict persist throughout a relationship. The important thing is not to make conflicts go away. It is to appreciate and respect each other's feelings so that you and your partner can approach your problems as something you are struggling with together rather than as something that is driving you apart.

Why can't i fix this?

2007-10-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

We're afraid there's virtually nothing you can do to make Jane see your point of view. Even though you're only trying to protect her, if you tell her she's wrong to go out with him, you just may succeed in driving her away - not from Rob, but from you. After all, you probably wouldn't want Melinda to decide who you should go out with, right?

Maybe Jane is allowing Rob to treat her badly. Why don't you ask her how things are going with him? In talking things over with you, it's possible she'll see what you see.

But maybe you' re not seeing how things really are between them. When you care a lot about a friend, it's hard to watch her do something that seems dangerous. And it must be horrible for you to think of losing Jane because of Rob. But no one can see inside someone else's relationship. Why don't you make plans with Jane for times when Rob's not around? If it's true that he's bad for her, she especially needs you in her life right now.

Jane will sort this out in her own way, in her own time. As long as she stays together with Rob, you'lI have to take it on faith that she's there because she wants to be. We're very moved by your situation and your desire to help your family through this frightening and stressful time. However, your first job is to keep yourself together. Anything you can do to relieve some of your own tension will help. Try going for long walks or bike rides.

Write down your feelings in a journal. And don't be afraid to lean on your friends. Talk to them, and tell them how you feel. Try to carry on even a small part of your normal life-it will help keep you calm and will also have a soothing effect on the rest of your family. The tension you're all feeling is very normal. Since you can't stop it, at least you can try not to let it get you even more upset. We hope that your mother will recover completely-and soon. But for now, just try to remember that all of you are coping as well as you can, and nobody expects any more than that.

Strategies for dating, dating process

2007-10-14T09:22:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you have been out of the dating world for a while, or maybe you have been dating again for some time. Either way, the rules of dating may seem vastly different than they did when you were dating earlier in life.

Fortunately, the rules only seem different. In reality, not much has changed. Below I will share my list of 10 strategies for successful dating. You may find these strategies old-fashioned or counterintuitive, but they work.

Spend more time courting in person rather than by e-mail or phone. Electronic communication has an aspect of anonymity and safety. It allows for a false sense of closeness. If this is your primary mode of communication, you may feel awkward with each other in person.

Early in the relationship, stay away from verbal foreplay. Engage in sexual-type talk only after you know each other well, at least a few months into the relationship. These types of conversations can become the central focus of your interactions, making it harder to experience other parts of your relationship.

If you are a woman who generally pursues men first, stop and allow men to pursue you. Likewise, if you are a man who waits for women to ask you out, take the first step and ask them out instead. A woman pursuing a man sets up an uncomfortable power dynamic that is difficult to change later.

In the beginning, limit your time together. See or be on the phone with each other in moderation. How is a house built? Brick by brick. How have you developed friendships? Over time. Does an intimate relationship deserve any less?

Don't have a sexual relationship until you are committed to and love each other. This may seem old fashioned; however, relationships are partnerships. Although sexuality is a part of a relationship, it is not a good foundation on which to build one. If you build your relationship on sex, it will most likely fall like a house of cards.

Be clear from the start about how you want and don't want to be treated. It is better to know how your new partner responds to your boundaries and standards.

Accept your new partner as he or she is -- or don't engage in the relationship. If your partner's behavior bothers you but doesn't bother her, you can be sure that this behavior will continue. If you can't accept how your new partner is now, rather than hoping for change, it's a sign that you should get out.

Be aware of who your new partner is. At the same time, don't automatically assume he or she will disappoint you in the same ways you have been disappointed before. Give your partner a chance to treat you well, rather than testing to see if he or she will cause you pain.

Enjoy. Have fun. Connect. Learn. Dating is wonderful. It's a chance to meet new and interesting people and do fun activities. It's an opportunity for growth. If you do it gently, without jeopardizing your emotional well-being, it will add sparkle to your life.

Be yourself at all times in the dating process. Doing so allows both of you to clearly see if the relationship will work. If you are compatible, you will discover more things to like about each other. If you are not compatible, you will be able to find out sooner rather than later.

First date Ask Questions Smile Be A Gentleman

2007-10-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

First dates are scary. Most people hate the idea of having to go on a first date. Will you like them? Will they like you? What do I talk about? It feels more like a job interview than a date. Here are some basic tips to make your first date with that special someone run a little more smoothly.

DO Smile!

Smiling always sends a positive vibe out to people you’re with, and you want your date to think you’re happy. By frowning the whole time they might see you as a negative person who isn’t fun to be with. So smile, I swear you will get a much better reaction.

DO Ask Questions

Everyone’s favorite topic for a conversation is themselves. Why? Because it’s the field we are most knowledgeable in. When in doubt about what to say, just ask them a question about themselves. They will be happy to answer, and who knows, it just may even spur a topic for a new conversation. Have a good time no matter what! There's more to dating than seeking a potential partner. You can have a stimulating conversation, participate in fun activities, and meet others through people you find you're not romantically interested in.

DO Be A Gentleman

Chivalry is NOT dead! Despite what you hear, women still love when a guy opens the door for you (this means the car door too!) You will never get points knocked off for being a gentleman, because you are showing her that your mature and know how to treat a lady. Flowers wouldn’t hurt either.

DON’T Wear A Costume

Well, okay, not literally a costume, but don’t wear something that isn’t YOU. First dates are scary enough, you don’t need to be pulling and tugging at your outfit the whole night, and wondering if your skirt is too short. Wear something that you wear a lot, something you feel comfortable in because if you feel comfortable on the inside, then you will look more comfortable to your date on the outside.

DON’T Give It All Away

Ladies, do not sleep with the guy on the first date. This is by far the worst move you can make. If you give everything at once, then what is left for him to find out? A little mystery goes a long way.

DON’T Talk About An Ex Or Past Relationship

Nobody wants to know about all the juicy details of your last relationship; that’s something you save for much, much further down the line. Talking about other people you were once with can cause jealousy, or make the other person think you’re still emotionally in that relationship, and turn them off.

DON’T Answer Your Cell Phone

I cannot stress enough how incredibly RUDE it is to answer your phone when you are with another person, especially if you are on a first date with them! By answering your phone, you’re telling the person you’re with that they aren’t intriguing enough and you’d rather have a conversation with someone more interesting. Just turn it off! They invented voicemail for a reason.

Dating questions & answers

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My boyfriend's a wicked flirt. I know he'd never cheat on me, but I can't stand his roving eyes anymore. Help!

It's ultimatum time. Looking at another girl now and then is one thing, but flirting in front of you is lame and disrespectful-to both you and the other girl (not that we care about her!). So politely tell him that you'll be somewhere else until he's sure that you' re the one he wants. My bet is that he'll came running right back to you. And if he doesn't, chances are that you'll be better off without him.

Robert broke up with me two months ago. Now a couple of his friends have asked me out, and suddenly he's interested again. Should I give him another chance?

It's possible that Robert has had a change of heart and realized you and he are meant to be-possible, but unlikely. So unless you 're sure this is the case-or unless you're a glutton for punishment-you shauld probably tell Robert to take a hike. The boy's behavior is much too suspicious: Either he values you only because his friends do (in which case when they go. away, he will, too), or he can't bear the idea af anyone else having you (even though he doesn't want you-not really). In either case, yau lose if you say yes.

I've been friends with George for a long time. Lately I've been thinking I want to be more than friends. I finally got up the nerve to ask him on a real date, but he said no, dating would "ruin our friendship." Is he right?

He might be. Two people who have been friends usually find it kind af weird when their friendship turns into something bigger. That doesn't mean you should never give it a try, if you're both game; some of the best romances begin as friendships. But realize the risk involved; after all, a good friend is hard to find.

One more thing: If he's too concerned with maintaining your friendship, he may be trying to tell you he's just not interested in anything more. That's his right, too, you know-so try not to hold it against him.

Seth and I have been seeing each other for a while, but now we've got a problem.

He's a real jock and says he won't go out with me during baseball season. He's asked me to wait until it's over. What should I do?

By all means, wait until he's ready to get back into the social scene again; in the meantime, see as many guys as you like. You don't have to get serious with any of them-not unless you want to-but there's no reason to put your life on hold while he's out there playing Babe Ruth. Let him know what you've decided-you don't want to sneak around behind his back. But your guy should know that every decision has its repercussions; if he chooses to put you after his sporting career, maybe losing your exclusive interest is one price he'll have to pay-and should pay.

Top 10 dating tips

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Join an internet dating site, post your photo, and check your mail regularly. You'll be able to practice your chatting skills and discover many other singles like yourself! The more you reveal about yourself on a dating site, the better chance there is for matchmaking. Photo personals are more effective because it makes the process faster and provides valuable online dating information.

Look and feel your best. Go to the gym, get fit, eat a healthy diet, groom yourself well. Not only will your appearance be more attractive but you will feel better about yourself and be more confident.

Be prepared for dating. Be open about yourself. Decide on what you're looking for, be ready to commit to dating, and be prepared for unsatisfactory dates. If you're rejected, don't take it too seriously and move on.

Go shopping. Find an image that you like and dress the part. You will attract others that have similar likes.

Surround yourself with positive people and goal oriented events. Do not hang out with friends that have negative views on relationships. Go to interesting functions and social events where you can find other singles, and not couples dinner parties.

Think about what your dating goals are so that you're honest with those that you date. If you're just after sex are you prepared to let your date know?

Have a good time no matter what! There's more to dating than seeking a potential partner. You can have a stimulating conversation, participate in fun activities, and meet others through people you find you're not romantically interested in.

Choose people that are realistically right for you. Don't set your standards too low, but don't set them unrealistically high.

Do not make yourself to available for dates because people enjoy mystery, and other interests suggest you have a life outside of dating. Do not sleep with someone you're interested in too early in a relationship as a true connection may not have had a chance to develop.

When you get dating fatigue, take a break and give your mind time to relax and recharge. Dating can be frustrating but it can also be very rewarding.