Smart Women--Smart Men

American Online’s Health feature recently ran an interesting interview with Drs. Daniela Drake and Elizabeth Ford, authors of “Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream—And How They’re Paying For It.”
The title has apparently caused a bit of a flap—but these two ladies are on to something terribly important. The “Romantic Dream”, the modern notion of Romantic Love is indeed a trap—but women have not been duped into it alone. Our entire society is victimized by this very silly fantasy.
Dr. Drake quotes a biological anthropologist, Helen Fisher from the University of California, San Francisco, who has done a lot of research on “falling in love”—or romantic love. Being in love, says Ms Fisher, doesn’t last more than 18 to 24 months. By this she refers to that rush of emotions, the state of intense desire—the state that causes people to go “loopy”.
Then comes reality. He or she is just another person. Babies need diapers changed, dishes need washing, lawns need mowing, houses need vacuuming—as well as to be paid for. Someone else in the office or down the block can suddenly look much more attractive, interesting and romantic.
At home, there’s only the same old, same old. Other researchers have discovered that when you see someone who excites and attracts you, a chemical is released into the brain that keeps you fired up for only a matter of months—long enough to get divorced and wreck your life, but not long enough to build anything solid.
“Romance” as a basis for marriage (it has for millennia been a reason for an affair, a fling or a new mistress) has only been an acceptable notion since the first hippies hit the road after 1815. That was after the terribly long and painful Napoleonic Wars—just like the period toward the end of the Vietnam War.
Suddenly, in music, art, poetry and life, the mind became suspect; feelings were all that mattered. We call it the “Romantic Period” in literature and art. Never allow anything as tawdry as reason to interfere with a beautiful feeling. If it feels good, do it; do it in the road. People began to marry that way, somehow imaging that an enduring relationship could be built that way.
Thus everyone, male and female, was “duped into the Romantic Dream”—and many would up having to pay for it!
The problem was that a lot of people didn’t pay attention to something the ancient Greeks understood. There is more than one kind of love. (The Greeks differentiated six kinds; we’ll deal with three.) There was “erotic love”—which is still best translated as feeling simple lust.
This lies at the root of “Romantic Love”. It is a transitory impulse that has no lasting power—but is extremely, irrationally powerful when one is under the impact of the feeling. This feeling—without thought—is what dupes so many people. This kind of “love” can cost people jobs, political offices and marriages—or lock them mindlessly into marriages that have no other real basis.
This is the love that Helen Fisher said lasts, at most, about two years. Then there is the love called “Philia” or brotherly. (Think Philadelphia.) It may involve feelings, but it is essentially non-sexual. It often has a real component of duty involved—this is my family, I MUST love them.
Last, and the highest form of love to the Greeks, is “Agape” love. This, too, should involve feelings—but when the feelings go away or hide behind a cloud, there is still something left. Agape love continues even after someone feels he has fallen out of Romantic love. Without some form of it, no good marriage lasts.
Smart women—and men—marry because of it. Agape love involves the mind—very, very much, because to contract an enduring relationship there needs to be THOUGHT and CALCULATION. Does this person drag me down, leave me discouraged from my dreams, or does he/she inspire me to go on. That’s a calculation, a vital one.
Are we going in the same direction? Is he/she going to drive me nuts with his/her habits, behaviors, attitudes, thoughtlessness, ways of handling money, religion and problems? Can I really stand the thought of him/her staring blindly into the TV for a few decades? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Agape is fundamentally not a feeling. In fact it isn’t at all. It is ultimately an act of the will. Marriage is a CONTRACT. You are a fool indeed if you enter into a contract only based on feelings. (If you buy a house on nothing but feeling, you can fall out of love with it in that same two years—and you’re stuck with a mortgage you cannot divorce.)
No should enter marriage (or any other legal contract) with the caveat that I’m here only as long as the feeling lasts. Then you might as well lease instead of buy.
If the feeling goes, the contract still stands. Many couples have looked at “loveless” situation and been able to regenerate a much more enduring feeling. In any case, you still have kids to raise; debts to pay and promises to keep.
Finally, when necessary, agape—lasting—love must involve a spirit of self-sacrifice (it obviously has to go both ways) and, above all, COMMITMENT.
Irrespective of whether or not I get a thrill of sexual excitement when I look at you, I am committed to stay with you “for better or worse, in sickness and in health”.
That’s scary. So is signing a thirty year mortgage or business contract that hocks all you own and commits you to succeeding whatever it takes.
That’s what Drake and Ford are coming to understand. Smart women—and men—take their interests and needs into account before committing, not just their raging libidos. (That can include financial needs and desires.) That’s what makes them smart.