Hey all! I guess I don't really have questions, but would like a bit of clarification. Most women (because I don't really talk to men about marriage) that I have conversed with on the subject of marriage claim that everything is "different" once the symbolic knot has been tied.
So, I would like to know what you all mean by "different." How, What and Why do you think?
The reason I ask this is that yesterday I celebrated my six year anniversary with my boyfriend, who I have lived with for over three years, and I wonder if it will be different for us when we do eventually get married.
There's nothing wrong with me Lovin' you ... Givin' yourself to me Could never be wrong If the love is true
--Marvin Gaye & Ed Townsend, "Let's Get It On"
It's been interesting for me to think this week about how popular culture influenced the ideas and expectations I have of relationships. I recall latching on to a lot of different things in what might be considered my "formative years": the portrayal of D'Artagnan and Constance in the Richard Lester-directed films The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, the letters and poetry of Lord Byron and T.S. Eliot, John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, the Archibald Macleish play "J.B.", Jane Austen, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the songs of Marvin Gaye, Elton John, James Taylor, Neil Young and others. Granted, some of that is a little peculiar to consider in the light of "popular culture," but I definitely was a little bit of a peculiar kid. And in considering them all I discovered two things. Firstly, I encountered most of these influences in roughly the same time period (1973 to 1977—high school, what a surprise), and secondly, they all seem to have a common theme: namely, Love Can Fix It.
Here are a couple of highlights.
Star Wars No, I don't mean the "franchise" of uneven quality films and hoo-hah that George Lucas eventually managed to thrust upon us. I mean the original film in all its wacky glory. I saw the original Star Wars seventeen times the summer it was released. It's an adventure story and a "coming of age" story, but most of all it's a story about all different kinds of love and dedication: Luke and Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca, Han Solo and his space ship, even R2D2 and C-3PO. Mix in a little deeply patriotic "love of home planet" and what have you got? Love to the rescue, Love can carry you through, Love can fix what ails ya, even if it's the intergallactic menace of an all-powerful dark overlord.
J.B. This wonderful play, thematically playing off the biblical story of Job, was written by Archibald Macleish and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1959. I didn't encounter this work probably until 1976, however, and was so taken with it that I used Sarah's monologue in the final scene as an audition piece for a number of years. In that scene, Sarah has left J.B.--who, like Job in the Bible, has lost everything, and is heading out into the darkness that this play-within-a-play has made of the world, no doubt to her death. But she returns unexpectedly. When J.B. asks her why she left, she replies:
You wanted justice, didn’t you? There isn’t any. There’s the world . . . Cry for justice and the stars Will stare until your eyes sting. Weep, Enormous winds will thrash the water. Cry in sleep for your lost children, Snow will fall . . . You wanted justice and there was none— Only love.
Her love for life kept her from going, she explains: "Even the forsythia beside the Stair could stop me."
Thus, J.B. and Sarah begin again through love, defeating both "God" and "Satan." Love can fix it, even when you've lost everything and even God is against you.
Pride and Prejudice I was an Austenite before it was popular to be one, absorbing all six of Jane Austen's completed novels by the time I was 17 years old, and devouring countless biographies and collections of her letters, juvenelia, and novel fragments in the interceding 30 years. Her work is substantially more complex and multilayered than the casual viewer of recent film versions of her work might believe; parody and satire can be hard to make clear on the small screen, and make no doubt about it, Jane Austen was all about parody and satire. Yet there is a romanticism in her work that makes it both accessible and attractive.
Pride and Prejudice is a particular favorite. Elizabeth Bennet suffers a ridiculous embarassing family, a wild scandalous sister, the future loss of her home (via the common practice of estate entailment to an odious cousin), and the prospect of being shunned by society in general and eligible bachelors in particular as a woman with little fortune and no "name" of distinction. Even her personality is likely to get her in trouble as she digs in her heels against those whom she is "beneath" on the social pyramid. But enter Love, and her future changes abrubtly to one of wealth, security, respectability, and the upper echelon of society, not to mention being freed from sharing the same household as horrifyingly dimwitted parents and a selection of sisters about whose future one would prefer not to speculate. (Her favorite sister, the older Jane, is also rescued from the family and a dismal future by love.) Once again, Love has Fixed Everything.
Do I still believe that Love Can Fix Everything? In a way, I think I do. Not that I have empirical evidence of that, but I do tend to think that when things go oddly wrong it is a failure of love—not enough, or the wrong kind, or the wrong time. Because if it was Right, the world would be a verse from Marvin Gaye ... it "could never be wrong if the love is true."
I have been thinking about influences TV and movies have had on me in my life so far. For me, it has turned into a sort of chicken versus the egg argument.
I am a total movie nut and when I was younger I had a few movies that I watched pretty much all the time. Enough that I still remember all of the lines. I have discovered the link between all three of them and that is why I'm wondering if my personality caused me to gravitate towards the movies to begin with or if seeing one movie sort of opened my doors to watch the others. Honestly it is probably a bit of both. For me it has been pretty interesting to reflect.
So, here are the three movies that I have memorized:
Shag (1989)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
The link is that in each movie the "unlikely girl" gets the guy in the end. Sixteen Candles and The Little Mermaid pretty much follow the same formula. The unknown girl gets her prince in the end. Sixteen Candles just happens to be a little bit more scandalous and a lot more funny. Shag is just a bit different in that a character named "Pudge" is the girl that is always the friend and never the girlfriend. But, of course, in the end we find out the guy she has liked the whole time has always liked her back, he was just afraid to say so.
So, here's the question. When I started watching these movies I was about 8 years old. Part of me believes that most of my personality had been determined at that point (atleast the core of it). I'm certainly not saying I am the same girl I was at 8 years old, but part of her still remains in me. That makes me think that I liked these movies because part of me was that girl. I don't remember feeling that way at 8 years old, but I can certainly relay tons of stories from my teen years when I was that girl. I just never got the guy in the end. Perhaps it was comforting for me at that age (being a self-conscious girl) to think that even though I feel overlooked in due time my prince would arrive.
I don't really know what to conclude here. When I told my boyfriend about these three movies he asked which guy he was, the prince, the prom king, or the friend. I replied that I couldn't have the relationship that I have with him if I were living in a fantasy world. In all honesty, in my reality, he is all three. He is my prince charming and also my best friend. And for a while he was the unattainable guy (in my eyes). But when I stopped creating fantasies in my head about "us" and lived my life for me, we became best friends and developed a strong foundation that we now live on.
I think one feeds the other and vice versa. I think that I gravitated towards these types of romances because of my own personality, but the movies created a little world in my head at the same time. They kind of gave me a bit of confidence. Watching girls that I related to develop into confident women. But, eventually I had to realize that observation and doing are two entirely different events. I had to live in my own reality.
That doesn't mean I don't believe in fairy tales, so to speak.
What do you all think? Any types of movie/tv formulas you found yourself gravitating towards at a young age?
Last weeks post seemed a little existential, so I thought I'd make a fun assignment this week. Can you think of where some of your delusions about relationships came from in popular culture? I know religion, parents, friends, and school all did too (Oh we'll get to that, believe me!) but what pop icons did you grab onto that might have left a mark on how you perceived relationships?
I'll name three from my own formative years:
The Dick Van Dyke Show This seems innocent enough back on Nick at Nite. But I was watching some episodes this week, and realize there are so many subplots in this show that flew under my radar. Sally, the quirky single writer is desperately, painfully single. And the happy wife was a housewife, who always had dinner waiting. What the hell did Laura Petri ever get to do on her own besides the shopping?
Second:
Princess Bride I've probably seen this movie more times than any other single movie. True love, and its power in overcoming incredible obstacles (like shrieking eels and the cliffs of insanity, and even death) is a beautiful notion, but this movie skips right over communication, compromise, and the real work to make relationships work. No wonder I thought romantic love would just happen without any work on my part.
Third:
Star trek (Deep Space Nine) Okay, okay, I was a big nerd in Jr.High and High School. Yes, I watched Star Trek and liked it. But check out the ridiculously costumed "seven of nine " character and the weird homoerotic "hot lesbian" subtheme. Urg. Apparently, even in the future lesbianism remains a male fantasy.
Okay, your turn. Where did some of your models of women in relationships come from?
--Heidi
p.s. there were of course several positive influences I thought about too-the Cosby Show deserves special mention for having an awesome strong female role model.
Probably no one will recognize the punch line above; it came from an 80s sitcom that I caught a bit of channel surfing one night. This is really the only thing I recall about it; Queen Latifah was in it, and she delivered the line above in response to the musical question, "Can you imagine what the world would be like without men?"
My point is not to bash men, but instead to demonstrate what I think is the extreme. It's a silly, goofy response, because it's a silly, goofy question. In my not-so-freaking-humble opinion, when we ask or are asked the kinds of questions Heidi and Lauren have raised this week, we tend to a)become far too serious and cerebral and then as a result b)miss the point altogether. My own opinion is that it's really not about men and women or codependency and independency, it's really all just about being human. From our earliest moments on the evolutionary tree, human beings were programmed to be social animals and to live in groups. In those times, the concepts of need and dependency were very literal. One person couldn't bring down an auroch or gather enough nuts, fruits and berries to stay alive. One person couldn't hunt/gather and also care for a small child. People needed each other in a very practical sense, were dependent upon each other in very specific practical ways. There was no psychology to it at all.
It's not just an anthropological early-human phenomenon. Barn-raisings, town meetings, wagon trains, military units, pirates, pilgrims, convents, covens and bargaining collectives all come out of the idea that one person isn't enough to get done what one wants to be doing.
It's only been very recently (possibly traceable to the advent of self-help books) that we've begun to question need for and dependency on other people. I think the notion that somehow we SHOULD question it is really the problem here. We're getting pretty solid programming that we, especially women, are all islands to ourselves. We're told to be independent. And we do a reasonable facsimile of that. But if you look closely at it, how independent is anyone really? You might work and make your own money and pay our own rent and buy your own groceries. But someone hired you, and you work for someone else, someone handles your payroll, someone provides the place you live and yet some other someone elses actually built it. Other people own that grocery store where you buy those eats, and furthermore, other people actually grew the veggies and packed them and trucked them in to your store or farmers' market, or worked in factories to make and package that macaroni and cheese you made when you got home from work.
No one, male or female, is really independent of all other people. All people need other people, no matter how hermitlike someone may aspire to be, because that's just the way society works. Being "in a relationship" isn't the choice here, only the level of intimacy is the choice. And it's intimacy, not relationship itself, that brings on the expectations, and the meeting or deflecting of those expectations is generally what makes people start asking obtuse questions about need and codependency.
The fact is, we all need each other. None of us are or can be "complete" without other people in our lives. We are all interdependent. How we choose to deal with that realization is up to us as individuals. This special kind of "needing" that we seem to mean when we ask "does any woman need a man?" or "am I too needful of my partner" is to a certain degree invented; in a strange way, we seem to be using that question as a surrogate for questions about our own self-worth. And once again, I get to bring out my favorite character from literature, the Fisher King. Our challenge, like his, is not so much finding the answers as identifying the proper questions.
This quote sort makes me throw up a little in my mouth. Hold off before you call me a cynic. I am a romantic down to my last cell, but I think that movies like Jerry Maguire tend to muck up the clear water a bit. At least for me.
I think this was what Heidi was tossing around a bit in her blog post. When does dependent become too dependent? I say, when it doesn't feel right. My mom told me that she and my father went on a vacation once where they met a couple that did absolutely every thing together. She wondered how the other one could survive when his/her partner had to go to the bathroom. For my mom, the life that couple had seemed like hell to her. But, she said, they were extremely happy. My mom is happy when my dad goes out of town. Not because she doesn't love him, but she loves to be alone. I take after my mother in that sense. I too soak up my alone time whenever it comes up. And I have a boyfriend who I honestly would struggle to live without.
So, my question for Heidi is (and everyone else out there)--It seems to me that you give yourself only two choices. Either independent and single or co-dependent and in a relationship. Why can't you have both (independent and in a relationship)?
Are you afraid that your identity will be smothered if you start a relationship?
Also, that was interesting what your friend said about you never finding true happiness until you are in a romantic situation with a guy. I guess this is where I would say that if you search for happiness in someone else or something else, it will always be on a shallow level.
I personally could have never found true love until I
A. Knew who I was (for the most part)--meaning I was willing to be honest with myself. B. Loved myself. C. Felt satisfied on my own.
I constantly say, and really believe, that you cannot truly love until you love yourself. So, my answer to your friend, Heidi, would be, I believe you can be completely happy before you fall into a deep romantic relationship. I just think that requires not focusing on the fact that perhaps part of you might want to be in a relationship.
I think that the only time you become co-dependent is when you lose yourself--that's why I stress the knowing yourself first. I also think that when you are comfortable with who you are and what you want you are more confident and open to receiving signals and just simply having a conversation without adding all of the questions on top of it. You just live and go with the flow. Also, knowing what you want (and really being honest about that) saves you time because you won't have to weed through a bunch of stuff you don't want.
Does this make sense to anyone or do you think I'm full of shit?
Hey, I want to hear it all.
Tell me what you think.
And Heidi, let me know what you think of this perspective.
Sometimes New Year's Eve gets me a little frustrated because of the custom to find somebody to lock lips at midnight. (Plans! One should have plans! They must involve champagne! and carefully timed kissing!). I ended up having a lovely (but kiss-free) New Year's with some friends of mine. We didn't even have any alcohol.
This got me thinking about what we want versus what we need when it comes to the opposite sex.
A friend I visited over the holidays told me she thought I would never be truly happy until I had real romantic love in my life. I honestly couldn't decide if she was right or not. I am fiercely independent at times, but I do also want a great relationship with someone. Sure I want it, but do I need it? To what extent are we dependent on other people for our happiness/ contentment? What do I actually need in relationships and what do I only think I need?
At Christmas, I try to give a few thoughtful gifts that are not excessive or wasteful. I should probably bring that mindfulness to my relationships too. It's easy to tell you what I want in a relationship, but much much harder to say what I actually need to feel loved, happy, and content.
For me,the though of being dependent on someone else for my happiness rubs me the wrong way, until I think that maybe someone could also be dependent on me right back. Is it alright to bolster each other up or must everyone be firmly planted on their own two feet. When does dependent become co-dependent? Surely there's a middle ground between wimpering sidekick and uber power woman.
INWorldZ Friends ... People Make the World.
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I had the most fun in InWorldz last night (July 24, 2018) that I've had in
a long time. And there were more people on the grid than I've seen in quite
awhi...
Let the weather be your guide
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Weather can be a wonderful point of inspiration for taking an art break.
So, let the weather be your muse and create something inspired by it. This
art bre...
wacky glory. I saw the original Star Wars seventeen times the summer it was released. It's an adventure story and a "coming of age" story, but most of all it's a story about all different kinds of love and dedication: Luke and Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca, Han Solo and his space ship, even R2D2 and C-3PO. Mix in a little deeply patriotic "love of home planet" and what have you got? Love to the rescue, Love can carry you through, Love can fix what ails ya, even if it's the intergallactic menace of an all-powerful dark overlord.
J.B.
her in trouble as she digs in her heels against those whom she is "beneath" on the social pyramid. But enter Love, and her future changes abrubtly to one of wealth, security, respectability, and the upper echelon of society, not to mention being freed from sharing the same household as horrifyingly dimwitted parents and a selection of sisters about whose future one would prefer not to speculate. (Her favorite sister, the older Jane, is also rescued from the family and a dismal future by love.) Once again, Love has Fixed Everything.
