Emotional Infidelity

Heard an interesting topic on NPR today, under the title "Emotional Infidelity", so I thought I'd do a search about this exciting new fashion!
http://love.ivillage.com/lnsproblems/lnscheating/0,,fmf6-p,00.html

OH, darn. It's not a fashion, it's a SIN - it's putting your spouse second in your life and looking for the excitement of the affair with the opposite sex without actually getting any sex out of the arrangement?

Hmmmm... wait, I'm not married! Well, I do have a sort of girlfriend, or to say I have a theoretical relationship with a woman, divorced, with 3 kids and we see each other on average about twice a month, or between an average of 1/3 times a month (not seeing each other for 3 months) and then a couple summer vacations seeing each other for nearly a full week! That's strange, but true.

I have sort of surrender here, recognizing we'll never get married, probably never live together. Just the live together idea becomes incompatible - with schedules, specifically mine which stays up until 3-4am and sleeping till noon. I mean I suppose if we had separate bedrooms, perhaps it'd work, but it ALSO means I'm at work until past the time she goes to bed! So I'll take this insanity as mine, my lifestyle isn't compatible with parenthood.

Do I expect to ever find "the right woman" whose life will be compatible with mine, or will be so wonderful that I'll magically or through sheer willpower, reform my ways? Well, doubleful I'm afraid.

So I'm left being a reject, incapable of marriage apparently, easier to confess when I'm not talking to the woman I'd hope to marry, but for this safe little point in time, I'm a loser, best kept at arms length by any sane woman.

Well, I don't know if GOD is going to send me to hell for this failure, (or if I'm sending myself to hell in my weaker moments where I remember how lost I am and how much easier it would be to be virtuous if I was married and could be torturing a woman by my insanity!)

Somewhere I read that men do much better in marriage than women. That is basically men would seem to have more to gain in marriage than women - a good woman will save a man from all his excesses and be his good mommy - always telling him how good he looks - never nagging him to take our the trash or to turn off the football game and help in the kitchen.

A good part of me has much sympathy for women. As much as I'd like a good woman to support me, I'm not 100% convinced her power is greater than my own - for getting me to accept moderation and health over excitement and power - AND I just plain don't know how to play the game fairly. I'll as likely as not end up NOT putting up my fair half of the relationship and she'll feel neglected and unsupported and she'll be right when she leaves me for the milkman or milkwoman as the case may be!

Perhaps it helps to come from a family with divorced parents to be pessimistic about marriage. I certainly have more sympathy for my mom than my dad. I'm no better a "parent" than my dad, on the nurturing side, but at least in little or big ways I can help with money. NOT the worst way to help a single parent, although I don't approve of trying to raise children alone, and basically the same gift my dad offered with child support at least - I mean continued longer than legally needed - through my college graduation. I guess useless men sometimes at least have money.

So back to the emotional infidelity THING, I just sort of wonder what it means in regards to people who never marry? AND if WOMEN actually tend to do BETTER as singles than men, then THEY must know SOMETHING about "emotional health" - something MORE than men who fall down for not being supported by a woman!

I'm sort of being exaggeratingly silly here, but serious in both the differences of men and women and questioning both the place of emotional health in both marriage and outside marriage. The evidence suggests women are MORE CAPABLE with their emotional health IN and OUT of marriage, and conversely men are LESS CAPABLE with their emotional health IN and OUT of marriage.

It's sort of funny as well, since my first girlfriend got married 8 years ago and has STAYED married, while so-implied outside my reality, is now a "swinger" - having physical and emotional relationships besides with her husband, and vice versa I imagine. I mean my overall judgement is that you gotta be pretty emotionally stable to handle that instability of multiplexes, like I imagine a couple of 30 years, after raising children, and wondering what else life is about, along with lower hormones and such, perhaps they'd be able to "explore" outside of marriage, but I don't have much faith in new marriages surviving or thriving like that. That's just my blind fear speaking.

Anyway, I don't think I'd make much of a swinger, not of the physical sort. Even if you get beyond the fears of STDs and well general Psychos, I'm pretty much more mental than physical. I just can't get very excited about sex with a stranger, or except for perhaps imagining it as a 92 second encounter. Half kidding, but basically admitting sex-drives are rather stupid and boring if that's all there is.

No, well, the interesting thing for me in friendship with women is a sort of emotional intimacy, a trust they can understand feelings and whole inner worlds that don't make a lot of sense in the bigger world. NOW according to STANDARD theory, this intimacy is reserved for MARRIAGE partners. WELL, as my mom's oldest sister, and holder of a 50+ year marriage jokes, "Why would a man buy the cow when he can get the milk for FREE?"! HEHEHEHE - you gotta love the older generations for their "wisdom"!

Of course SHE MEANT SEX, but let's get real here! MEN don't need SEX - they GOT HANDS! Men need MOMMA to take care of them, or at least HOT MOMMA!

Now think of the now old-new book "The rules", basically telling women how they gotta play hard to get to KEEP their man. Men like to chase, so you gotta keep running. Something like that.

What's I've heard since is basically it WORKS in a sort of practical sense, but it is not how women WANT to be. They don't want to have to TRICK their men to stay with them. They don't want to have to always be ON GUARD to play a seductrist role, hide everything important to them that might scary away a man.

So my take is that "The rules" are about SECURITY - the game works like this "IF YOU WORK HARD NOW AND PLAY THE GAME, someday you will be safe enough to show your real self and be accepted."

To be fair, I offer no firm judgement about the nature of marriage. My beliefs on marriage are agnostic - about the same as my belief in God. I acknowledge that such a beast might really exist outside of all the theories and advice, but I'm not willing to say I have any secure knowledge what it looks like from the INSIDE.

It is fun and interesting. Science CAN have more to say about love and marriage than GOD perhaps. Science can study love and marriage, the biology of how love works. Certainly we all would like to know more about the patterns of love and how it progresses - just like parents want to know how growing up works. They can anticipate the changes and be more ready for them than if they just let their feelings lead blindly.

Okay, back to "emotional infidelity", what's up with that? The GAME of marriage says that God gave man and women to each other and they are HALF-people alone, and a FULL person together, and "fidelity" is the name for the boundary a married couple makes to separate their inner lives as a couple and the rest of their lives.

There is certainly a practical side to this approach - time is limited, and it takes real work to find a safe emotional world between two people that allows them to "grow" beyond immature ways of relating to the world. There's equally great FEAR in facing our uglier sides that come out when we're close to someone, and some incentive to jump away back to a safer surface world where our demons can be kept hidden.

Anyway, I don't deny the "laws of marriage", at least I don't have the experience to judge from the inside. I contemplate that there's different mythlogical structures that perform the function that traditionally understood marriage offers to many people.

So back to being a lost single man. It is interesting since I know I project a sense of "emotional depth" to women. I sort of imagine visiting a woman like visiting a zoo in Africa. I know there's this huge expansive wilderness and jungle of complexity, but I just hang out at the zoo, sometimes crossing into the ecoreigions for the animals, but knowing I can quickly run back to the gate if things get scary. It's a controlled experiment.

Now I can imagine if I got married, I'd go deeper into the emotional jungle, but overall, NO I think not. I'll stick with the zoo, married or not. Let the women be the explorers. Let THEM tell me what they find, but I'll just have to listen.

Now given that silly analogy, first it should be clear - if marriage IS the jungle, then any marriage with me will NOT be BOTH of us entering. SHE will be married to me, while I am merely dependent upon her work in the marriage.

Maybe some marriages can work well like that - maybe a brave woman can finally lead the reluctant husband into the wilderness and they can build their home there. Maybe someday it'll be more than the "woman's home", and the man will build something there too. Maybe at least a husband who appreciates the wilderness can be of value to the brave wife explorer.

Well, a part of me sort of thinks this gets to be somewhat limiting. Of course it is limiting... the RULES say if you suffer now and follow the rules SOMDAY you may be rewarded. I make fun, but I don't disagree - boundaries are good - creating a safe container to grow past our dark corners and shame and guilt and fear, and all that naked eden stuff. I BELIEVE there is need for secrets - to hold the uncertainty.

LET me quickly offer a different thought. Women TALK TALK TALK. They will tell the SAME story ten times at least if it is important to them and they are still trying to figure it out. Maybe "figure it out" is a male perspective, but something like that. ANYWAY, there is the idea of SECRETS in marriage - things one partner won't share and the other will share. That's more fair, but there's a difference, and women are more trying to sort out their emotions. I've seen it, and in my utterly useless attempts myself, I know it is often guess work, and as often as not WRONG on a first pass. Perhaps women talking to women find a way to talk and listen in a way that helps in this sorting process. On a different side a husband might feel exposed if his wife is chatting casually about their inner relationships, afraid what people think of him, knowing his wife sees parts of him he doesn't otherwise show. A husband with his limited emotional understanding of his own insecurity will grab the first response he knows - and if he's clever he'll hide his fear under a big word - like fidelity - protecting the boundaries of their relationship. He'll DEMAND his wife refrain from sharing anything to anyone else, first about their relationship, or lack there of, and second about anything that HE can't share in. And in the process the promise of marriage is reduced to the least common demoninator of both people.

I fully accept the situation can reverse, and maybe it's extroversion/introversion even? A introverted wife can equally feel jealous of a husband's freedom to reach out to others while she suffers in silence.

Well, I must end, but overall my thoughts are:
(1) Fidelity is a story, a game, an illusion
(2) Stories, games, and illusions are important to help us learn.

That's not so bad. Right?

Well, I admit, I don't want to be one of those emotionally cripple men who can't survive without constant care of a good woman. I admit that I am too easily sustained these days by the magic of learning and achievement, and wonder. I accept the world may yet become stale, and I'll regret I didn't spend more time in the jungles of a beautiful wild woman who will teach me her secrets. heheheheh....

I don't like that I may be 100% wrong in everything. I'm just not convinced yet.

Evangelical Atheism and mythology

I've had fun watching some of the google videos uploaded of Richard Dawkins and his crusade against religion.

Such a noble and sincere attempt, I at least admire his boldness to challenge people's beliefs. I don't think he'll have much success in conversion, but I suppose there's always a few meekful ones out there who haven't heard the message yet "You don't have to believe" and will benefit by this permission to rebel and think for themselves, or admit what they thought in silence.

Dawkins weakest point for me is his hypothesis that religion is a CAUSE of irrationality and hatreds and violence in the world. Well, I mean I suppose it must be in the sense that rational individuals don't risk their lives or end their lives easily, and it takes a pretty good story - whether heroism or rewards in the afterlife to concince them to surrender their freedom and life for something greater.

I guess there's an idea that communism's rejection of religion offers a similar goal as Dawkins - in that they recognize the power of religion so in destroying religion, they can fill the void with patriotism to maintain their power. Dawkins isn't fighting for patriotism to country, but patriotism to the scientific process of truth.

I admit I'm "infected" by the religion of science, the romantic belief that "truth" exists and that the scientific method allows humanity to slowly move, even if two steps forward, one back, towards objective truth and understanding of the universe and our place within it.

It would be interesting to have a debate between Dawkins and the late Joseph Campbell. Campbell was a mythologist and considered the power of myths and beliefs to create meaning in our lives. He studied religions and myths creates from many cultures.

When Bill Moyers asked Campbell what he thought the meaning life was, Campbell's first answer, was that there was no meaning, or no singular meaning. Life is being expressing itself, and a will for propogating itself. Well, he said something equally weak. Campbell did not believe in a "pesonal god", so his god was at best some sort of cosmic force. WELL, it's said George Lucas's Star Wars universe and the "Life force" was taken from conversations with Campbell.

When Dawkins was asked about his belief in God in one program, he said it was equal to his belief in fairies. It was illuminating to mean since Dawkins clearly considered fairies as imaginary, while I'd take the same comparison and say I'm equally agnostic about both. Not to say that fairies exist or don't exist, just to say that experiences that have created the myth of fairies may have an existence beyond the myth, and equally experiences that have created the myth of god may also have an existence beyond the myth.

The atheists like Dawkins response to "Why not keep an open mind?" is to compare "Why not keep an open mind about the flying spaghetti monster?" The meaning is neither myth has any clear evidence or attraction so they are equally worthy to close.

The believer's evidence of God is "Why do so many believe?" Using numbers to support their cause. Dawkins would say they're all equally and self-reinforcingly deluding themselves in their closed language of their myths.

Campbell, author of many books including a set called "The masks of God" looked for similarities of the religions and myths, and was fully open to the idea that all of the myths were just different sets of language to the same truths. And by "truths" here I mean, and I'm sure Campbell would mean "inner truths" of experience, of the inner landscape of our being that helps define what we value, what we believe, what we do.

To give credit to the Atheists, I see their quest as pure-hearted, and I do see the failing of religion in that it takes too much credit for worldly truths rather than inner truths. Worldly truths show we're all different because we use different words and symbols. Inner truth says we're all the same because we all must respond to our mortality and love and desires and find meaning. I agree with the Atheists that religion always gets into trouble when it enters into the political world, the world of power over others, of judgement over others. Religion ought never to have entered that world, at least in any sort of collective way.

Individually religion defines who we are and how we act, and it will offer morality issues - like how to respond to violence and power against the weak if you're not harmed yourself. When is it right to step back and when to step forward?

Perhaps the "fundamentalism" is a sort of "blind faith" that you've identified your enemy and a belief that goodness will increase as your enemy's power decreases. It is scapegoating. The atheists risk scapegoating religion and religions scapegoat each other and atheists.

I'm sure Dawkins is smarter than me and could defend himself far beyond anything I'd say. However my best attempt would be that he has overstepped his bounds when he blames religious belief as a cause of evil. I accept it can be A cause, but it is not THE cause, not any worse than any exercise of power in the world.

Dawkins says "Religion allows people to become suicide bombers", so the CURE is to remove the religion and people will reform their erred ways. But patriotism equally can create suicide bombers. And any situation of human conflict between groups who see themselves as separate and the other side as holding their freedom down can lead to a willingness to die for the freedom of others.

I suppose, even as I am naive, I'd call Dawkins naive, for thinking he can simplify humanity into a reasoning being above all else. I don't deny the appeal, but I suppose it's like any sort of desire to outlaw vices. Even if I WISH to be rational, and trry to suppress everything in me that I don't understand (as reasonable), the expressions will find their way out, just like prohibition created a black market. The communists try to forcefully suppress organized religion.

I'm not suggesting Dawkins would support that, but I'm sure he would support ending the tax-deductible status for churches and such. Perhaps he'd also support removing all references to god from our government - our coins and bills - our court houses - our laws - our pledge.

Well, to me it just seems tiring to imagine. I always have fun thinking of my sister's religious expression - wanting the day when the lion will lay down with the lamb - wanting humanity to devote our energy to domesticating all the wild carnivores so we can feed them a vegatarian diet. Laughably outrageous in every respect.

On a last thought, before a few years ago I never knew atheists considered themselves a minority group in danger of being repressed or something. Well, they said "An atheist can never openly run for office" for instance. So they feel disrespected, even persecuted perhaps, unfair their virtues are left unacknowledged.

ANyway, I'm as long as always. I just know there's enumerable questions I can not answer to live my life well. I get pulled by passion, hurt, paranoid, sad, angry, and try to imagine a world where things are much more peaceful. I don't even have to deal with anyone having explicit power over me, except little things like earning a living and paying my bills.

Mostly I'm thinking of trust now, and the golden rule, "Do onto others as you would have them do upon you." or "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Seriously good reflective advice, no clarity of what's best, but the question. It's fun since you don't even always know what's best for yourself, much less somone else! And I think of the Camelot Musical, Arthur's song "How do you handle a woman?" And the ending is simple "Love her, love her, love her." Again no clarity of action, merely re-expressing the golden rule.

Christianity could seem to be so simple, if we just accepted Jesus's two commandments. I wonder why we have to make things so complicated? Is there any religion that would deny Jesus's commandments?

Okay, Atheists would deny "Love God" because they don't know what God is, but maybe they can just shorten it to "Love", or Leo Buscaglia's fun book title "Living, Loving, learning." Who can argue with that "commandment?" :)

Pan's Labyrinth

I saw the movie Pan's Labyrinth tonight, spanish "El Laberinto del Fauno".

I should also say don't read this if you haven't seen it yet, since I'm not into keeping secrets.

I don't know if I can offer any sort of review or organized reflection on the movie, but I'll say it was moving, and sad. It was a very convincing play between a brutal real world and a magical one, a place where you live forever and there's no pain.

The stories within the movie show the underworld, but otherwise the movie takes place almost entirely within our world. There are some trasitions - crawling into a dying old tree into a space far to large, and drawing a chalk door into some strange world with a monster frozen at a table of food. The movie is played to not be clear if anyone besides ofelia could see anything she sees - whether insects that turn into fairy people, or the faun itself - shown in a near final seen as invisible to the captain at least.

The ending is sad for me, as a nonbeliever (in any "safe" afterlife) that perhaps she's just imagined everything and she really did just die a tragic death moments before she could have lived and her murderer slain.

I wonder about her trust of the Faun, his story that she's the reincarnation of the daughter of the king of the underworld, and that she could return. A small part of me questioned if he had an agenda to trick her. The only real harm is he is willing to sacrifice her newborn half-brother to bring her to the underworld. First I wonder about this amoralism. Second in result, the baby is saved, and her own blood sacrificed allows her to enter the kingdom.

The immoral captain is shown in brutal violence - killing a young man and his father, captured and suspected as spies and after he kills them, find evidence their stories were true - they were hunting rabbits for food. The he gets angry at his men for not searching them before before bothering him. What do you do with such guilt discovering your rash judgments were incorrect? I mean certainly a strong "sample" of what real brutality looks like.

I thought the Faun's judgement on Ofelia, when she ate two grapes in the magic room after being told to eat nothing, was strange. He claimed she blew it and could never return to the underworld, and then changes his mind apparently, as if it was his own choice. I only figured she'd be in trouble because two of the fairies were eaten to defend her. Well, lots of room for guilt at least if you happen to think fairies "have souls" or a consciousness of life and death. She didn't seem to cry or reflect on their demise.

No more time tonight. A moving tale, not quite deep enough for me, but I am impressed. I mean I have a caution about magic the film did not fully take, but it pushed the limit boldly and necessarily to belief in something that I couldn't believe in myself.

The merging a hard world and myth was a worthy attempt, hard for me to imagine either world in our "advanced one", but dark corners in me wonder what horrors the future can bring, and the movie makes me think we have both more strength that we know and more weakness/darkness that we care to admit in the light.

I appreciate a movie that reminds me of these thoughts.