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Walter Watts
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Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
  
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An Ideal Husband
« on: 2008-07-08 18:31:24 » |
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Young, marriage contemplative Virian males, I'm thinking this works both ways....
--Walter
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The New York Times
July 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
An Ideal Husband
By MAUREEN DOWD
This weekend, we celebrate our great American pastime: messy celebrity divorces.
There’s the Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook fireworks on Long Island and the Madonna/Guy Ritchie/A-Rod Roman candle in New York.
So how do you avoid a relationship where you end up saying, “The man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was” — as Brinkley did in court when talking about her husband’s $3,000-a-month Internet porn and swinger site habit? (Not to mention the 18-year-old mistress/assistant.)
Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some “mostly common sense” advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness.
“Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work,” the twinkly eyed, white-haired priest says. “But you can be deeply in love with someone to whom you cannot be successfully married.”
For 40 years, he has been giving a lecture — “Whom Not to Marry” — to high school seniors, mostly girls because they’re more interested.
“It’s important to do it before they fall seriously in love, because then it will be too late,” he explains. “Infatuation trumps judgment.”
I asked him to summarize his talk:
“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. Since, as the Hebrew Scriptures say, ‘Iron shapes iron and friend shapes friend,’ what are his friends like? What do your friends and family members think of him? Sometimes, your friends can’t render an impartial judgment because they are envious that you are beating them in the race to the altar. Envy beclouds judgment.
“Does he use money responsibly? Is he stingy? Most marriages that founder do so because of money — she’s thrifty, he’s on his 10th credit card.
“Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.
“Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings? When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he consults his mother. (I’ve known cases where the mother accompanies the couple on their honeymoon!)
“Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins. My mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — my father, brother and me. Her answer, delivered with awesome arrogance, was: ‘You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.’ My father fell about laughing.
“A therapist friend insists that ‘more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.’ The strong, silent type can be charming but ultimately destructive. That world-class misogynist, Paul of Tarsus, got it right when he said, ‘In all your dealings with one another, speak the truth to one another in love that you may grow up.’
“Don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He’s a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he’ll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.
“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women. Kay made a monstrous mistake marrying Michael Corleone! Is there a history of divorce in the family? An atmosphere of racism, sexism or prejudice in his home? Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to yours? I remember counseling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim, whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later.
“Imagine a religious fundamentalist married to an agnostic. One would have to pray that the fundamentalist doesn’t open the Bible and hit the page in which Abraham is willing to obey God and slit his son’s throat.
“Finally: Does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous? Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious of you, to be secretive?
“After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: ‘But you’ve eliminated everyone!’ Life is unfair.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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Fritz
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An Ideal Husband but Sexual harassment okay
« Reply #1 on: 2008-08-07 18:39:37 » |
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Quote:| [Walter[<snip>“After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: ‘But you’ve eliminated everyone!’ Life is unfair.” |
Seemed like a good compare and contrast 
Cheers
Fritz
Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules
Source: The telegraph.co.uk
Author: Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Date: 30 Jul 2008
A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.
The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.
She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.
"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.
Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.
According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.
Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.
Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.
Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.
Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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An Ideal Husband and One in four Italian couples indulge in wife swapping
« Reply #2 on: 2008-08-07 18:46:47 » |
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Just to round out the global persective ....
Cheers
Fritz
One in four Italian couples indulge in wife swapping
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
Author: Chris Irvine
Date: 05 Aug 2008
A report from one of Italy's most respected broadsheet newspapers suggests one in four of all Italian couples regularly take part in wife swapping.
According to yesterday's front page of La Stampa, an article entitled "The Lunch Time Swingers" suggests an estimated 500,000 Italian couples are swapping partners at private sex clubs.
Thousands more are taking part in the activity in a more informal fashion, doing it in car parks, specially designated beaches, and even cemeteries.
The article said wife swapping had increased everywhere "at a rate that makes you dizzy", primarily thanks to the internet.
The one-in-four figure comes from their source, a Rome-based body called The International Federation for the Protection of Rights and Freedom, or Federsex, for short.
While 500,000 members meet in 200 private clubs across the country to swap, they believe that figure is only the start, and the real figure is closer to two million, a quarter of Italy's eight million sexually active citizens.
The average age of male participants is 45, compared to 35 for women, and is no longer seen as a seedy activity, but one that can "even take place during one's lunch hour."
An employee of the Club Malizia in Milan said: "We see all sorts of people... the thing that links them is that they have no money worries - accountants, doctors, even footballers and politicians."
The La Stampa investigation came after the death last month of 27.-year-old Dejan Delijevic, who was found hanging from a metal fence by a studded dog collar by the Magic Nuar club on the outskirts of Mantova - seemingly a sex game gone wrong.
The revelations suggest Italian's are taking their lead from the behaviour of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.[Fritz]Do Americans take any leads from G. W. Bush ?
In 2002, in response to suggestions his wife Veronica had an interest in the former mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, he jokingly suggested he would introduce her to the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
He said: "Rasmussen is the most handsome Prime Minister in Europe. I think I will introduce him to my wife because he is even more handsome than Cacciari."
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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