A Modern View of 'Courtship':
Good Husbands for the 21st Century
By Peter A. Olsson M.D.
DIALECTICS OF WHOLENESS
Boys insecure struggles seeking manhood.
Girls waging brittle wars to be women.
Both gropings began at tender breasts.
Cessation in warm Earth---called Mother.
A cycle pervades all lonely searchings.
RAGE, of rebellion---to get freely away.
POWER, sought externally---later within.
DIGNITY, found in the courage to search.
ENIGMAS, of separateness and oneness.
FREEDOM, to risk a dark aloneness.
LIGHT, at the end of two long tunnels.
PROCESS so lonely, this whole -becoming!
THE BASIC MALE DILEMMA
Every man, from the most intellectually and physically powerful to the most frail, has spent nine months in the uterus of a woman. Then, he has been controlled and taken care of by a woman for many years thereafter. Beneath and behind the power, brilliance, kindness or profound cruelty of all men, is a struggle. It involves the effort to reconcile the need to become securely separate from, but to still feel loved by and care about a woman. Biology and anatomy have powerful influences on personality, but they are not destiny. Glaantz and Pearce in their fascinating book, EXILES FROM EDEN, describe the powerful evolutionary forces that form biological imperatives in the behaviors and relationships between men and women. It takes strong moral, spiritual and psychological effort and insight to channel and transcend our in-born biological-evolutionary imperatives. A good modern man does not just seek to have sex with as many of the most attractive women he can locate and seduce ' for the sake of survival of the species' . A good modern man seeks to respond to higher imperatives that fascinate him with raising his selfconsciousness and the evolution of his spiritual domain . A good man and husband must also stand tall and strong against societal pressures towards mediocre 'Male' stereotypes portrayed in movies and on TV. The success of this spiritual and psychological hard work, is the core issue behind becoming a good husband in the twenty first century. Only psychologically liberated men become good husbands. A special life-partnership occurs when such a man meets a woman who has struggled with her parallel journey towards her own psychological and spiritual independence and wholeness.
I---BEFORE COURTSHIP : EARLY LIBERATION WORK
(1) LEARNING ABOUT DECISION-MAKING and INTUITION
Few high school courses or counselors really help a young person search for a way to make mature vocational , career or other important life decisions. The derivation of the word decision comes from the root, "To Cut". Good decisions are difficult. Even a good decision always narrows some of the range of options. Good decision-making requires intuition. No easy educational process leads a young person to trust in, value and cultivate their intuition. Usually intuition acquisition is arduous, because it involves too many unlearned-from- mistakes. Lost marriages, poor job and career choices, and allot of neglected children, pave the road toward a confident formation of an individual's sense of accurate intuition. Often, intuition is never found. As Clifford Anderson in his challenging but profound book, THE STAGES OF LIFE : THE STEPS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL MATURITY, observes----Intuition, is truly the Sixth Sense. It implies an ability to listen to one's inner body sensations, mental fantasies and inner perceptions. Intuition involves the ability to sense what other people and oneself are really saying and capable of doing. Learning from mistakes involves some trial and error, but feedback from trusted friends helps this process. A course in the meaning and making of good friendships would be valuable in any high school or college curriculum. There are no mature Robinson Crusoes ,without good men Fridays. Hollywood and TV movies are often worthless guides. They emphasize sexual, social and cosmetic attractiveness and excitement. The pornography of violence in movies is as unhelpful as the celluloid sexuality there portrayed. Violence is occasionally necessary. But, movies rarely explore important alternatives to violence. A rare movie helps a young person look inward and listen to their intuitions. Many adolescents assume and sometimes are actually told by narcissistic adults, that they can do anything if they work at it hard enough. That is untrue. Recognizing one's limitations intellectually and athletically is an important step in achieving wisdom and maturity. Reading James Joyce and exploring one's own genealogy and figurative "ULYSSES" can be helpful. Curiosity about other people's heritage, religious and social/cultural values, paves the way towards empathy and intuition. Learning humility and tolerance is as important as learning math or grammar skills. Bullying, "Trash-talking" and taunting of peers, flows from ignorance, psychological emptiness and insecurity.
Young men that learn humility and empathy for peers, are a long way towards being good husbands, fathers and citizens. A good high school English teacher can bring students` thinking and intuitions to bear on these themes as they read good books. A recent book THE LAND by Mildred Taylor, goes light years beyond the narcissistic emptiness of A CATCHER IN THE RYE , when Salinger is read in isolation.
(2) LEARNING EXPERIENCES IN THE FAMILY OF ORIGIN
The most fortunate place to first learn about friendship is from one's siblings and parents. All parents squabble, but if they have a friendship with each other, it can rub-off on their children and their children's` friends. My best childhood friend Larry has recently shared with me that he still remembers after fifty years, the kindness, considerateness and affection my parents showed for each other. Larry told me that he thought of my folks and our family many times as he tried to be a good husband and father. He says that he learned to try to be a friend and partner to his wife and not to treat her and his kids like chattel.. Larry knew many men who seemed to see their wife and kids as "Possessions" or extensions of their career climbing.
Some psychologists see sibling rivalry as normal. I do not. The rivalry and competitiveness among or between siblings can be channeled into sibling love and cooperation.This requires the price of being a good parent. That price to pay the piper of parenthood is TIME. It takes patience and time for a parent or older sibling to teach the younger ones about empathy for others, cooperation and moderating one's own selfish concerns. Even when the piper of parenthood is paid in full, it doesn't always work out. The effort is worth it. For example, the case of my own brother and me, our parents efforts did not work. We have had a bad relationship for forty years. My parents efforts were however, enormously helpful to my best friend Larry as mentioned previously. Before any woman agrees to marry a man she should carefully observe the quality of relationships he has with his parents and siblings. If he has been married previously, she should question and listen in depth about why the marriage failed and most of all, what the man learned about himself in the process of the divorce. A good relationship with siblings is readily observed if one makes enough observations of a prospective spouse and their siblings in enough situations. Some of these situations would best involve adversity. Adversity allows character to be evaluated. If a person gets very defensive about such a discussion about their siblings, parents or ex-spouses---end the relationship promptly. The best learning a man can get about marriage and family relationships is what he gets in his own family; or resolving in his own heart to be very different from a bad family of origin.
II---BENEFITS FROM PICTURING ONE'S OWN TENTATIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Many good high school English teachers have their students write an auto biography about their life as if they were forty five years old and looking back on their imagined life. How important was money in their life? How much money really mattered in the long haul? Will they have traveled?; Had they given careful thought to have remained single all their life?; especially if the career sought was highly demanding of time? Will they have been married? How many times?; If married, how did money then fit into the marriage plans?Any children? Had they freely considered to chose to remain childless? , How many children? What will have been their career? How many careers? Did they honestly think about whether a marriage and family commitment fit into their career plans before they had married? Did they plan to retire? What will they have planned to do in their retirement ? How much had they talked about retirement with their spouse? What activities had they planned to do with their spouse when their was no job(s) to go to each day? What really is retirement and how early did they give serious thought about it? What will have been their recreational activities? Will some of these activities involve their life-partner? Their children? How will they have found solitude? Will they have had time planned to read, reflect and meditate or pray? Will they have had time allotted for friends? Will they have attended formal church services? If not, how had they met their spiritual needs? What had been there commitments to their community? How many of these above activities had they shared with their life partner or spouse? How had they renewed the vitality of their marriage and important friendships? Had they sought therapy or psychiatric treatment for mental illness or just as important, to deepen the richness and domains of their self-awareness or effectiveness as a friend, a spouse or a parent? What further questions should they have asked themselves before their autobiography began rolling?
A good husband in the twenty first century will have hopefully thought about all or most of these issues raised?
III---COURTSHIP : SOUNDS 'OLD-FASHIONED' ?
For various reasons, 'modern' couples often live together before they marry. Many couples never marry or only after many years. Many men see woman as mindlessly, manipulatively or stubbornly "Pushing" to get married. These men usually have never considered the ideas presented above. Some of the live-in women have not given thought to them either. One "Parachute" fantasy of couples who live together is that they can , "Always get out if they need to, or have to". This conscious or unconscious assumption is usually folly.
The usual mildly sad consequence of "Parachute Fantasies" of living together is, serial live-ins. They "Never quite find the right person". The reason for this is that they have not done the psychological work involved in I and II above.
The ghastly consequences of ignorance of I and II above, are the frequent cases of child abuse, child murder or partner murder / suicides that grace our TV and Newspaper headlines. The ignorant and intuitionless live-in partner takes out his frustration, dissatisfaction and personal sense of insecurity and failure on his live-in partner , the children, or both.
Perhaps the "old-fashioned" idea of a good courtship could take place if people could reflect and experience elements of I and II above whether they live together or separately. WHOLENESS is worth the effort.