This is a doozie of an article that I just read in The Atlantic. We all like chatting about this stuff: the disconnect between men and women today and the peculiar place both single men and women in their 30s are in. It’s such a HUGE issue and we all try to grapple with the reasons, the ways forwards etc. Wondered why it’s such a barbeque stopper? Read on…

Image by Tierney Gearon

I’ve written about this stuff many times before, how women give away their feminine power and some other discussions here and here on the current relationship biso.

The Atlantic article by Kate Bolick is worth a read in full, but I thought I’d pull out some points that sparked debates in my own head. Take a deep breath:

What’s happening now on the relationship landscape is monumental, just to be sure:

“The transformation is momentous—immensely liberating and immensely scary. When it comes to what people actually want and expect from marriage and relationships, and how they organize their sexual and romantic lives, all the old ways have broken down.”

Bolick outlines in great detail how women’s wages are increasing more than men’s (in the US), are more educated etc than men, and cites the various reports on “the end of men” (which is a bigger issue in the US where the GFC hit male professions mostly):

If, in all sectors of society, women are on the ascent, and if gender parity is actually within reach, this means that a marriage regime based on men’s overwhelming economic dominance may be passing into extinction.

Or to quote Gloria Steinham: “We’re becoming the men we wanted to marry.” I see this everywhere. But I don’t know that it’s doing us any favours – it’s defeminising women and emasculating men and confusing the whole equation. But Bolick provides this:

Now that women are financially independent, and marriage is an option rather than a necessity, we are free to pursue what the British sociologist Anthony Giddens termed the “pure relationship,” in which intimacy is sought in and of itself and not solely for reproduction.

Now that we can pursue our own status and security, and are therefore liberated from needing men the way we once did, we are free to like them more, or at least more idiosyncratically, which is how love ought to be, isn’t it?

One would think so, but….Behold “the new scarcity”:

American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity. Even as women have seen their range of options broaden in recent years—for instance, expanding the kind of men it’s culturally acceptable to be with, and making it okay not to marry at all—the new scarcity disrupts what economists call the “marriage market” in a way that in fact narrows the available choices, making a good man harder to find than ever.

Today. This. Dedicated to Pete.

I saw Gotye play live a few months back. The most sublime experience. He played about six or seven instruments during the gig, dancing between each one. It was a dance, I tell you! More than six million people have viewed this on Youtube, so apologies if you already viewed it. But I reckon it’s special. It’s my soundtrack to today.

This song is drenched in the kind of sadness we all know. Rejection. With a double coat of (feigned) apathy.

The sadness of when the other person looks like they’ve “won” in the hurt game, because they seem to just not care – sending a friend to get the records, treating you like a stranger. You don’t see it as their hurt playing out. You see it as them moving on without you. You lost. They won because you were nothing. We never see it clearly in the moment.

Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember

Definitely an ache I still remember…we convince ourselves of all kinds of things when we don’t want to be left behind in love. This spoken as someone whose experience flies in the face of the “it’s takes half the length of a relationship to get over a deep love”. I take double.

What do you think? Is the pain of being “somebody they they used to know” about feeling like you lost? And because they won, they somehow know more than you about life and love and everything, and always did, and so now you’re left without their “knowingness” on TOP OF IT ALL…on your own?

I’ve been thinking about this a bit. In part to understand what I’m seeking. In part to understand my friends’ relationships…some of which I don’t fully…get.

Pic by Javier Lovera

I used to believe there was a One.

I now believe arranged marriages can often produce better relationships than when we’re left to our devices. We create our love, once we decide. For a VERY interesting discussion of this see Sheena Iyengar’s book The Art of Choosing (she compares different relationships and finds the arranged ones are far happier 20 years down the track. It’s a terrific read.) I’ve put her TED.com talk below…as a sideline.

So the point is…we choose love. We choose to make the relationship work.

I used to believe relating was about facing each other and seeing each other in each other’s eyes.

I now believe relating is about travelling side by side, looking in the same direction. Every now and then we look across at each other and prod each other on with a kind smile.

I used to believe we found our match.