Blubbering

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Warning: This is a post that contains murmuring and complaining by me about other things. Sometimes you just have to vent...

Sometimes, it's very difficult for me to sit at church and swallow what they say. Today, some guy got up and blubbered about how his wife is so much better than he is, and that he'd be hopeless without her. As he blubbered on, I grew angry. I felt like it was impossible to be a good man without a woman at my side. I am surprised, having heard so many of these stories, that I achieved anything at all with my life. I am surprised, having heard so many men say this, that they don't fall apart at the seams. I am surprised, having heard this so many times, that women aren't interested in me at all. I mean, come on, I have so many things they could "fix". They say that behind every great man was a woman, but they like to assume coincidence is causality. Even if it is, that doesn't mean she changed a man for the better.

The woman wasn't necessarily related directly to a man's changes or success. I credit my ex wife for a lot of what and how I am today. She didn't do any of that on purpose, and she certainly didn't act to help me become a better man. Her idea of improvement was to browbeat me into submission, and when I decided that if I was going to be damned anyway I would be damned for who I really was, she left. Similarly, another woman I dated told me when she broke up with me that she didn't mean to hurt me. I told her to do something that would heal me, and she proceeded to ignore me completely for months. That healed me, but that's not why she did it. She did it to be selfish. People rightly correlate the broken behaviors of men to the reticence and resistance of women, but men are not the only ones who make promises they do not intend to keep. I've been mocked, belittled, ignored, dumped, and all sorts of things, and my response has been to become a better man than they thought I was and prove them wrong about me. Some of that is to essentially say, "you missed an opportunity", but it's also to prove to myself that sometimes it's the girls.

The woman isn't necessarily the one you expect. It's obvious to draw correlations to a spouse for things; you see it constantly in thank you speeches when they credit their spouse for support and encouragement. However, there are other people who participate who often go uncredited, and sometimes the women in our lives are not so helpful. My late friend Tracie had a mother who was awful and a spouse who was absolutely hellish, so sometimes the people who help out aren't related to or involved with you at all. My mother is the only woman in my life to whom I can accredit any success. During high school, she persisted when I resisted to make sure that I applied for as many college applications as possible on time and the best that I could. When I served as a missionary, she's the one who reminded me to dry clean my suits and helped me find a potential religious convert.

The woman isn't necessarily always a good thing. Some people are really lucky to be with a good woman. There are some men I envy because they have great women. However, just because a person is a woman doesn't mean they are good or helpful or part of the solution. Sometimes they are just arm candy. Sometimes, they are problematic. I have a cousin in town who married a cute young gal who made sure that he never spends any time with his friends or his own family any more. I don't know if it's on purpose, but she's made it hard for him to keep his old life. The outgoing dean of our department is a woman, and she doesn't like me one bit. I am not sure if it's because I have a Y chromosome or because of my religion or because she just has a chip on her shoulder. When problems arise that deal with the college's mission, she jumps into action; when problems arose for me, she jumped to help other people. I'm not validating her worth, and she doesn't like that. Several women I tried to date took similar attitudes when I didn't validate their worth, cutting off all contact when I wouldn't join their gym, when I called off a hike for bad weather because I wasn't "adventurous enough", and when they discovered my religion. What I achieved in my life I achieved in spite of women rather than because of them. Many men achieve more because their wife lives a life that demands increased success. Sometimes, it's something simple and worthy like the addition of children that motivates them to advance their career, gain more education, and move to a better place. In my experience, however, it's usually because the expenditures grow, necessitating that the man earn increasingly more to keep up with the outcome of his income. It's no secret that many women marry lawyers and doctors because they want a certain standard of living rather than they care about being well matched.

Women are not always a benefit, and all too often in modernity they become a burden. Women used to come with a dowry, but times have changed, and now they come with expectations. They expect all too often to leave their parents house and start their own new one with no lapse in living conditions even though it took their parents 20 years or more to achieve that comfort and luxury. Equally often, they take very little thought to what they bring. I am glad these men think that the women they know added to their lives and made them better. I attract women with children, women with financial problems, and women who will make my life more difficult. They say that opposites attract. I am glad these men I hear speak at church found different outcomes and found good partners, well matched mates, and supportive wives. I don't know how they did it. I am amazed I amounted to anything at all without a wow woman, but I have. Maybe it's not as much as they have, but to hear them blubber they would be hopeless without one.