Sunday, May 23, 2010

How To Hold On To Your Man: Advice Columnist Almost Gets It Right

I sometimes enjoy perusing online advice columns and shows, particularly those related to love and relationships. It's interesting to see what issues people are having, whether I identify with them, and whether I agree with the advice given.

Often I think that advice given on sexual matters actually hits close to the truth, yet still falls short. There really do seem to be certain truths written into nature, knowable by anyone regardless of religious faith tradition, that most people seem to acknowledge at least implicitly.

Like the fact that it's not the best idea to have sex with someone who doesn't care about you.

This was the crux of the advice given in this YouTube video from YourTango to a woman wondering why men tend to leave her after she sleeps with them.

The woman asks YourTango:

How can I prevent a man from leaving after sex? After dating a man for two months we finally had sex. It was really great but right after he became distant and soon after disappeared entirely. I was devastated. Why do men do this? What can I do to prevent this from happening again?

The advice from YourTango's Evan Marc Katz was as follows:

I've got a really simple policy for you if you want to prevent men from leaving after sex. Don't sleep with them until they are your boyfriend. So, how you execute this plan is, if you're getting hot and heavy with a guy, and he wants to sleep with you, and offers to sleep with you, all you have to do, in a very simple matter-of-fact tone, is say, "I would love to sleep with you right now. I would love to ravish you right now. The thing is, I don't sleep with any man until I know that he's my boyfriend and we're committed to each other." You tell him that, you're pretty much letting him know that you are interested in him. So you're not rejecting him, you're just rejecting the idea of sex right now, and so this puts him in a very simple predicament. Either: "Wow, I respect this woman, and I think I do want to see this relationship forward, to be her boyfriend," or: "Aw, man, I just wanted to have sex with her, and she's making it difficult for me, so I think I'm gonna leave." And if he leaves, and never calls you after this date, then guess what? You just spared yourself the trouble of sleeping with a guy and finding out that he's gonna break your heart. Pretty foolproof, huh?

I think the advice-giver is definitely on the right track. He at least acknowledges that there's really no point in sleeping with a man whom you know doesn't care about you. (This is something that certain avowed feminists evidently don't agree with, as I noted in one of my other recent posts.) However, I don't agree that his suggested "policy" is "pretty foolproof." As one of the commenters to the video opined:

Not that foolproof. It is not like guys are signing contracts. If a guy is a big enough creep to sleep with you and run away, he is a big enough creep to say he wants to be your boyfriend, sleep with you and then run away.

True. After all, "boyfriend" is kind fuzzily defined; it means different things to different people. And it's certainly no guarantee that you won't be left and heartbroken just the same as you might be if you hadn't declared yourself boyfriend-and-girlfriend. As the commenter said, that's not a contract.

But you know what is? Marriage. Marriage happens when a man is willing to say (not just to you, but to the whole world, including the government and - if you're religious - God), that he will love you and stand by your side as long as you both shall live. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, with his whole being, fully, completely, and selflessly. Can that promise be broken too? Sure it can. But I think that it is the best guarantee that we have (in this life, anyway) that a man truly loves a woman, and is not just in the relationship for his own sexual pleasure. I would go so far as to say that if a man says he loves a woman, but isn't willing to make that promise to her for life, it isn't really love. As Michael Voris said in a recent episode of The Vortex (and as I also quoted in another recent post):

When you love anything, you by definition love it radically. If you don't, it's not really love. It's warmth, or fondness, or affection, or nostalgia, or duty, or obligation - call it whatever you want, but it ain't love.

Here's my message to women like the advice-seeker in this video. Ask yourself whether the man in your life loves you radically. (It should be an easy question if you're completely honest with yourself.) If the answer is no, move along. You deserve to experience true love: love that lasts forever, that accepts you exactly as you are, that gives selflessly, is unconditional and unchanging. Accept nothing less.

Now that's empowering.

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