Why buy the cow...

Over the years my ideas about men and their relationships with women have been defined by the men in my life. Most of them feel the same way as the old adage "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" and it has made me a bit bitter. However, my lovely step dad is my beacon in the night and is the one exception to the rule that I chose to use as the validation that there will one day be a guy who gets me without being told how to.

When I was 17, my parents were divorced and I was living in Alice. My mom moved to Corpus with my little sister and my dad was overseas every other month or so. On one of his trips back, we were spending some quality time one evening. He was making margaritas, his girlfriend was somewhere around the house entertaining the friends of mine from school who would come over since my house was the least supervised, and I was listening to my dad's drunken words of wisdom. We started talking about boys and how retarded they were ;-) and how I didn't really understand them sometimes. He explained that men look at women as if they are buying a car; they want to test drive it before they take it home. And they are going to test drive quite a few before they settle on one so, if I ever needed any condoms, they were in the top draw of the table beside his bed. As you can imagine, I was mortified about the condom comment. My young mind analyzed the information that I had collected so far about men from what society told me (the cow story) and what my dad had told me (the car story) and thought, well, at least some guys are buying.

A lot has happened to me since then, I have had my feminist awakening, etc., etc. and I think that my society's and father's conditioning have made me very uncomfortable with men paying for anything for me. I know that my decision to pay for my own meals or foot the bill for my boyfriend and I to go to Las Vegas will never be adopted by women as a whole or bring down the whole 'paying for sex' system, but at least I have a clear conscience by tipping the scale back the other way just a little. (I do realize the contradiction in the previous statement and I do try to achieve equality in my relationships for the most part.) What angers me is that men create parables like the one my dad taught to me and teach their daughters to buy into the bartering system and then get pissed off when they have to pay for everything. My dad does it every time he hooks up with a new chick and after about 2 months (during which time he has moved her into his home, bought her a cell phone, and encouraged her to stop working) accuses her of being a gold digger and drops her like a stinky diaper. I even have friends who bitch about this same thing without realizing the possibility that not all women want them to pay for everything, especially if the women are going to be expected to put out.

And that brings me to the latest profound words of wisdom given to me by a guy in my life. Me and a couple of friends were commenting on the games that men and women play with each other. I was trying to sum up how women look at relationships and was having a hard time doing it since I am not like all women and therefore can not speak for them, but my friend really nailed guys (and I begrudgingly admit, a lot of girls too) on the head. He said that "women want their men to change and men want their women to never change. I have to tell you that I was dumbfounded and impressed with this comment at the same time.

I embrace change for the most part. I am frightened by it and drag my feet through it, but go through change nevertheless. I think that changing is done in small ways everyday until all of those little changes create a big change. I think that is how most couples grow apart, they wake up one day and--even though my friend wouldn't admit it--realize they have both changed and in opposite directions. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that we are living longer than we use to. We use to be dead by the age of 30 and hadn't really gotten the chance to really annoy each other yet.

So, what is the solution? I don't know, maybe get married later in life. Or, make sure that the person you are with is really on board with your life plan--don't be blinded by passion. I am not saying 'don't have passion', by all means have it in spades, just don't let it romanticize the person you are with. Or, don't get married at all. One of my very best friends just celebrated her 10 year anniversary with her male life-partner. (I thought I should specify that it was a heterosexual relationship since many homosexuals refer to their lovers as life-partners.) But then how do you know that the person you are with will stay with you? Well, you just have to trust in the love and that is probably why we humans created law in the first place. A way to make people do what we want...kinda like religion. And weren't men the ones who came up with law in the first place? I knew it! They have been trying to make us stay the same with legalities all of this time. HaHa. Wishing you the best year ever...Mel.