Can I Kiss You?

Posted on October 17, 2017 by James Riley - 13 Comments

The #MeToo Stories

Gotta say I was shocked to read some of the detail reported in the #MeToo posts I saw yesterday, by both women and a few men. When you read phrases like “friend’s dad” and “hated the locker room” and “had to fight back,” I get a better sense for why my wife always looks for the closest parking spots at the grocery store. Some men are animals, and some of them apparently hunt in packs.

It’s been thirty years since I was out in circulation, but I never really understood what was interesting about attraction that was forced. The thrill of love, and sexuality, rests in mutuality. Of all the people in the world, this one wants you. Right? Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?

I do think I know why our modern world is so full of misunderstanding and it has something to do with the way the mating dance is played. Take a look at this dialogue from the television series Mr. Robot:

Our “liberated sexuality” doesn’t come with old world introductions anymore. Your dad doesn’t send his servant out to find a Rebecca by the well. You go and find the girl on your own, and when you do, it’s considered “lame” to ask. Most men don’t ask a woman to fill out a pre-relations consent form, even though some universities are beginning to ask for that. Among normal people, someone holds a hand and it either gets embraced, or it’s avoided. A man leans in for a kiss and it’s either accepted or rejected. I can see why women get so tired of men’s aggression. They are the gate keepers and they have to guard the garden non-stop–and, if this Amazon television series is any guide, any other course is clumsy and “lame.”

Obviously, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world actually appear to get off on being rejected, but I’m guessing reasonably decent men certainly will think twice about the “next time, don’t ask” advice. As an attorney friend once observed, it’s not harassment if it’s welcomed, and it is harassment if it’s not — but to “ask” is “lame.” How would any reasonably decent man thread that gauntlet?

Maybe we should go back to Father Abraham’s way of doing things?

Culture

#MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, Mr. Robot, Sex

Hefner & Harvey

You ate a QUART of those things..

Berry J Griffin

True. Can’t argue. Hollywood also promotes the idea that the ladies don’t like the nice guys, but prefer the aggressive bad boys so every pubescent guy thinks he will be more attractive acting “bad.” I suppose there might be a bit of truth in this, I was always the nice guy and that made me a virtual leper in my junior high and high school days, but I know now that I was weird and ugly so that had more to do with it than any boyhood fantasy.
- James Riley
  
  Like most issues surrounding the female psyche, it can be strange: there was an article about Tinder this year indicating that men have to be REALLY good looking in order to do very well on that platform, (much better looking than women, who have an advantage on dating apps). On the other hand, outside the purely visual cyber world, women don’t seem to actually need good looks in their men, as long as the dude is confident. Confidence in men seems to be pretty heady stuff for women.
  - Berry J Griffin
    
    Later on life, things turned around as ladies I met seemed much more impressed with my actually having a job as compared to some of famous guys from high school. I know little of what makes today’s kids tick. I have two step daughters, one successful in her career and attached to a hard worker, another approaching 30 who, much to her credit and my and her mother’s relief, has finally figured out one has to work to get anywhere but is unfortunately attached to a guy who doesn’t work, doesn’t drive,.has never done either and shows no signs of ever changing. He kicks butt in online gaming I am told as I resist the urge to start digging a large hole in the forrest. Not really, but ..
    So I don’t have a clue about how it works today.
    - James Riley
      
      Story: we have a friend whose father was a heavy equipment operator. When she had a date, her dad would take the boy aside, unbeknownst to her, and tell him: “I have a track hoe. If you touch my daughter, I will bury you so deep no one will be able to find you.” She always wondered why none of her dates would sit very close to her in the theater and she found out years later.
      - Ori Pomerantz
        
        Sounds like a good way to make sure you don’t know your daughter’s boyfriends.
      - James Riley
        
        As I remember it, the woman in question understood why she never had a second date.
James Belna

This is a fascinating subject and I appreciate that you are exploring It in depth.

Here is the way I think this works today. The average age of a first marriage for men and women is approximately 28 years old. This seems to be a logical consequence of the prevailing social dynamics.

Women are at their peak attractiveness to men when they are in their early-to-mid-twenties, because men tend to judge women on their looks.

Men are at their peak attractiveness to women when they are in their thirties, because women tend to judge men on their social and financial status, and most men aren’t established in a well-paying job until then.

This would suggest that thirty-five-year-old men should be marrying twenty-five-year-old women; but that seldom actually happens, as these two particular demographic groups also happen not to be all that interested in marriage – to each other or to anyone else.

But an interesting convergence happens when men and women reach their late twenties. The prospect of turning thirty “wonderfully focuses the mind” of women who had previously been content to enjoy an active and untethered social life, as they know that window is rapidly closing. And so they begin to pay attention to men of their own age, many of whom have surprisingly managed to get their act together ahead of schedule.

At the same time, after years of being ignored, men in their late twenties are primed to enter into a serious and perhaps permanent relationship with women of their own age who for the first time in a decade are willing to give them a shot.

That’s a pretty small window, and the interests of men and women begin to diverge again when singles reach their thirties. Plan accordingly.
- James Riley
  
  Interesting. I was 28. My wife was 26. I can remember pretty much assuming bachelorhood, but then I went to a wedding and looked at the little bride & groom on the top of the cake, and I had this weird feeling that life was rushing past me if that rite of passage were not completed.
  - James Belna
    
    This dynamic is also changing. We have essentially flipped the curves on male and female career paths. It used to be that men were more likely to acquire college degrees, quickly attain full-time employment, and enter the professions. Today, young women outpace young men by wide margins in each of those metrics.
    
    The “late-twenties convergence” may not hold much longer, as many women value men in terms of their relative status. A woman lawyer in her late twenties, who may take home next to nothing after writing her monthly student loan check, will not easily enter into a relationship with a non-professional, much less an IT guy or a retail manager who makes good money but lacks a college degree. She is going to hold out as long as she can still hope to “do better”. Meanwhile, an increasing number of men are not in a position to get married until they are well into their thirties, and by then they are no longer all that interested in marrying women their own age.
    
    Of course most women are not lawyers or doctors, and most men have something going by the time they are thirty, but I don’t think it is getting any easier out there for young adults.
    - James Riley
      
      Reminds me of an engagement dinner I went to. One of the groom’s uncles gave a toast and he spent about two minutes embroidering on how far “up” the groom had married. It did NOT go over well with the groom’s mother.
Ori Pomerantz

“How would any reasonably decent man thread that gauntlet?”

Ask. Any woman who wouldn’t approve of you trying to protect both of you is probably not somebody you should want.

Disclaimer: This is coming from a man who saw nothing wrong with premarital sex, but who was still a virgin when he was 26 years old and met the one woman he had ever had sex with – and was married to her at 27. Prudence probably makes you miss out on enjoyable physical sensations, in return for letting you forgo emotional (and today, possibly legal) drama.
- James Riley
  
  I think the safest way is the oldest way — begin courtship formally, even though a modern version of the “courtship movement,” in evangelical circles is going down in flames. The secular world, however, has a very difficult problem of its own making. “Seduction” seems to be part of our sexual psyche. Some women who get asked for sex, including wives responding to their husbands, find overt conversations demystifying. The hapless man who is told “it’s lame to ask” proceeds at his own peril. If it’s welcome, the seduction continues. If it’s not welcome, he needs to lawyer up.
  - Ori Pomerantz
    
    My wife objects if I verbally ask now, but this is in the context of married life committed to each other. It was a different thing when we got started. Then again, she’s probably more prudent and wise than most people.