I think that the book "Elementary Particles" by Michele Houllebecq gives some startling insight into these kinds of relationships of convenience. One of the things that disturbed me most about reading it was the brutal way in which the desperation of some women leads them to take what they could get even when it meant being in relationships that left them feeling ultimately devalued. I know there are genuine May-December romances so I am not talking about that.

According to "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman", by Danielle Crittenden a poll conducted in 1995 showed that most women, 55 percent actually, hoped to combine marriage, family and career, and a further 26 percent wanted marriage and children but not a career. "The women who don't desire these things -- those who like living alone or who find perfectly fulfilling the companionship of their friends and cats or whose work eclipses their need for family -- may be sincerely happy, but they should not be confused with the average woman...."

Crittenden goes on to make several important points, among them that:

"It is at this intimate level that feminism has failed women... So long as a woman was willing to play a man's game at dating -- playing the field, holding men to no expectations of permanent commitment -- men would be around; they would even live with her! But the moment she began exuding that desire for something more permanent, they'd vanish. I suspect that few things are more off-putting to a man eating dinner than to notice that the woman across the table is looking at him more hungrily than at the food on her plate -- and she is not hungry for his body but for his whole life."

This is not something that it seems many people are prepared to offer up. I suspect it is because they themselves have not yet experienced wholeness. They are searching well into their forties. But that begs the question of why this society is producing immature adults in such massive quantities and I think the points made in this article shed some considerable light on the contributing factors. Society is changing, but people are still fundamentally the same.

What young twenty-somethings can't see now is that many of them will be unmarried fourty-somethings eventually, and it will be in their thirties that the full gravity of choices made in their second decade will be felt. Crittendon illuminates this future reality with this warning:

"Whatever she does, though, she cannot be blamed for believing, at this point in her life, that it is men who have benefited most from women's determination to remain independent. I often think that moderately attractive bachelors in their thirties now possess the sexual power that once belonged only to models and millionaires. They have their pick of companions, and may callously disregard the increasingly desperate thirtyish single women around them or move on when their current love becomes too cloying. As for the single woman over thirty, she may be in every other aspect of her life a paragon of female achievement; but in her romantic life, she must force herself to be as eager to please and accommodate male desire as any 1920s cotillion debutante.

This disparity in sexual staying power is something feminists rather recklessly overlooked when they urged women to abandon marriage and domesticity in favor of autonomy and self-fulfillment outside the home. The generation of women that embraced the feminist idealization of independence may have caused havoc by walking away from their marriages and families, but they could do so having established in their own mind that these were not the lives they wanted to lead: Those women at least had marriages and families from which to walk away. The thirty-three-year-old single woman who decides she wants more from life than her career cannot so readily walk into marriage and children; by postponing them, all she has done is to push them ahead to a point in her life when she has less sexual power to attain them. Instead, she must confront the sad possibility that she might never have what was the birthright of every previous generation of women: children, a home life, and a husband who -- however dull or oppressive he might have appeared to feminist eyes -- at least was there."

Now I am certainly not advocating that anyone just jump into a marriage for the sake of having a man or a family. This is another mistake that has contributed to the current situation by fueling soaring divorce rates. In the U.S. now I think it's at around 54%. Did you know that of the over 5 million people cohabitating (according the U.S. Census) that 55% of them will break up before getting married? And we all know that marriage statistics give just as much reason for concern. More than 80% of marriages face the challenges of infidelity.

These are the results of first, not adequately knowing and understanding yourself and secondly, of the general ignorance of relationship valuation. That knowledge is vital to selecting worthwhile relationships and partnerships. It is also critical to facing reality instead of trying to paint over or ignore it.

In the end your life will be what you make of it. Making the choice to follow one path means that many others will be sacrificed. Pretending that sacrifice can be avoided is ridiculous and immature. Just as indulging in dead end relationships with emotionally unavailable (to you) partners is an insane way to get the love you want.

Have women been too distracted by partner assisted orgasms and conforming to patriarchal inspired commercial ideals to notice that integrity and respect are vital considerations in an effective life strategy or is the problem that their lives lack any meaningful strategy?

The presence of specific qualities (honor, integrity, respect, honesty, and commitment) in abundance makes it possible for a couple to work through bumps in the road to ensure that neither party feels overly encumbered or oppressed. It is possible to have a marriage and family life where each member is supportive of all the others, and this includes the wife/mother wise enough to make a mature decision about partner selection that supports her highest ideals when viewing the family as a spiritual undertaking. I don't mean spiritual in a religious sense, but rather an experience that calls on the deepest parts of the self for maturation.

©2005

About The Author

Yvette Dubel is the founder of http://www.enhancementconsulting.net and creator of the e-consultation software line: Simple Plan System? featuring Clarity. Yvette has been happily married for over 14 years and along with her husband is raising a family of three children, their cat and English Mastiff. Enhancement Consulting publishes “Elements of Simple Plan for Success” e-zine. Sign Up at the site and get your Thank You gifts.