Goodbye Old Friend

One of our favorite German restaurants is closing today.

We happened to stop in today for lunch, only to find that the place was bare, and the menu was limited, but the food was good.

According to our waitress, the removal of troops from Fort Knox was a blow from which they could not recover.

Goodbye Caroline’s Alpine Haus, you will be missed.

Choices, Changes and Consequences

I don’t normally comment on a book without reading it, but one of my founding values is to “never reward incompetence with your purchasing dollars” — and the lessons drawn from this one made it too good to pass up.

The story began here, and was featured in the New York Post. This led me to a book review in the Washington Post (I was tickled at the title: She took a year off from her marriage to sleep with strangers. What could go wrong?) which summarizes thusly:

• After eighteen years of marriage, she’s bored, suddenly decides that she wants a baby
• Her husband doesn’t, and never has.
• He does what any self-respecting dude would do when his wife gets “baby-rabies”, and gets a vasectomy.
• She goes off and has sex with twelve strangers over the next twelve months — two of whom were women.
• At the end of her “year off”, their marriage falls apart (surprise!).
• Then she writes a book about it.

Lesson 1: Women change, men don’t

Let’s start by looking for the genesis of this debacle.

Over time, Rinaldi decided a baby would add purpose to their lives, but Scott wouldn’t change his mind. “I wanted a child, but only with him,” she explains. “He didn’t want a child but wanted to keep me.” When Scott opted for a vasectomy, she demanded an open marriage.

Let’s read the salient bits out loud, shall we? She decided… he wouldn’t. “I wanted”… he didn’t. He opted… She demanded. Seeing a pattern here?

Here’s how I think it played out.: When they married, neither of them wanted children. Twelve years later, her biological clock goes BOOM! and suddenly she changes her mind and wants a baby. But that’s OK, because it’s always a lady’s prerogative to change her mind. He’s expected to go along with it, because happy wife and all that, but for some strange reason he doesn’t (consistency being a masculine virtue). But in her mind it’s his fault. Because.

But wait! There’s more! Evidently he knew or suspected that she was not above getting “accidentally” pregnant in order to get her own way regardless of his feelings, because he had a vasectomy (the bad, bad man is bad, bad, bad!) and there go her nascent dreams of mommyhood. But Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so out come the “demands” and off she goes on her “voyage of discovery”.

He supports her (like he has a choice in the matter?), but at the end of her “year off”, their marriage collapses under the strain.

Lesson 2: It’s different for girls

The biological truth is that a high number of partners is not generally good for women. It has been proven that the more partners a woman has before marriage, the less attractive she is to men and the higher the chance of divorce. One reason for this is that sexuality and emotions are more tightly integrated in women than in men, who are far more capable of separating their sexuality from their emotions. Double standard? No, two completely different standards.

Lesson 3: Sauce for the goose?

What amazes me about this is not what she did; men and women do stupid stuff for the flimsiest of reasons all the time. No, what surprises me is that instead of hanging her head in shame, she wrote a book about her stupidity and loudly trumpeted it from the rooftops.

Imagine if the situation was reversed, and it was the husband who had a mid-life crisis instead of her. Then when he couldn’t get what he wanted, decided to “take a year of to explore himself”, presumably with a dozen women who were younger and hotter than her. Somehow I don’t think that publishers would be lining up to offer him a book deal. No, men and women (but mostly women) would be lining up to call him out on his behavior and smite him with locusts and frogs.

Does that sound like equality to you?

Lesson 4: Women can rationalize anything

It is comical listening to a person trying to rationalize a mistake, but women seem to be past masters at it. I have yet to hear a woman admit that the failure of their marriage was her fault; it was either a mutual decision, or she was the long-suffering heroine and some man was the villain of the piece. But at the end of this particular day, when all is said and done, it was she who blew up a good marriage because she was bored. They will both have to live with the consequences. And I suspect — nay, hope — that she will be the one bears the brunt of those consequences.

Because, as Oprah was wont to say: “Karma’s a she-dog”

Trademark Mania

• You “Xerox” your documents
• You reach for a “Kleenex” when you have a cold
• You put a “Band-Aid” on a contusion.
• You put “Gasoline” in your car

And yet you snicker when I “Hoover” the house.

Arguing with Biology

Stumbled across this story a little while ago: Why are older men looking at women half their age?

Ah yes… yet another variation of the age-old lament of the older woman: “where have all the good men gone?“.

The first mistake that I noticed was in the headline: “Why are older men looking at women half their age?” The brutal truth here is that it’s not just older men, it’s *all* men. The following pair of graphs (compiled by OKCupid) show that while women are generally interested in men about their own age…

…men, irrespective of age, are fixated on women in the 20-24 age range – from the adolescent whose hormones just dropped to the ninety-six-year-old geezer wheezing out his last breaths on his deathbed.

Blindingly Obvious Fact #1: Mother Nature gives most girls *awesome* power over men at about the age of sixteen. However, Father Time takes away that power about twelve years later, presumably in an attempt to preserve balance in the universe.

Blindingly Obvious Fact #2: Men mature later than women. The following graph (source) shows that while the attractiveness of women peaks between about 16 and 28, men peak much later, and keep their attractiveness into their fifties, as long as they keep themselves in good physical shape. This may also explain why some women who were uninterested in marriage suddenly become desperate for a husband at around the “magical” age of 30.

This is because a man’s attractiveness has less to do with his looks and more to do with power – confidence, competence, charisma, and the ability to provide, protect and determine his own destiny, while a woman’s is mostly physical (“I can bear you many fine sons!”), as the multi-billion-dollar cosmetics, fashion, cosmetic surgery and other “turn-back-the-clock” industries can attest.

So when a woman over 40 gazes longingly at a “Silver Fox”, she is deliberately ignoring the fact that he is in his prime, while she is past hers. One money quote from the article says it all:

Another said I sounded nice, but added: “Though unfortunately I have stringent physical criteria.”

Translation: “I can do better. And by better, I mean younger, hotter and tighter than you“. That is the voice of a man with options. And she wonders why he isn’t interested. As the old saw goes: “Men age like wine, women age like milk.”.

Blindingly Obvious Fact #3: Women do not get to determine what men should find attractive: Take a look at this quote from the article:

“I bet you were gorgeous when you were young,” I was told recently, via message, like that was supposed to be a compliment. Yes, I was gorgeous, ish, for a while, and self-absorbed, and shallow, and inexperienced, and over-sensitive and dull. You’re right, mate, you’d have much preferred me then.

The elephant in the room – and the slingshot that brings down her argument – is that a man who marries a young woman gets to enjoy the obvious benefits of her youth, and then look forward to her growing out of her “shallowness”. He can have the best of both worlds, while she, with her youth well and truly behind her, offers only one. Sounds like a bad case of sour grapes to me.

The author has committed the sin of projection on several fronts: She has made the assumption that his definition of “gorgeous” is the same as hers. She is mistaken. She assumes that because she is older and more mature that she is somehow more worthy of his attention. She is mistaken. She then gets upset by the implication that she was more attractive when she was younger. Women will howl and yowl and try to shame men for looking at younger women but one of the fellows said it better than I ever could:

“These are just facts. Men like youth. They like long hair. They like colour. They like slender, as well. Sorry. You’re going to have to lose weight and grow your hair and wear red if you want the silver foxes to see you.”

Her reply is telling: “The question is, should I be prepared to change?”

The answer is equally telling: Lady, we don’t care. Men want what they want. You get to decide whether or not to show up. The awful delusion here is that women believe that maturity and experience make them more attractive to men. This is absolutely untrue – unless they are shared experiences.

Blindingly Obvious Fact #4: Beauty equals Fertility plus Love. A man’s perception of beauty in a woman is based on two factors: her physical attractiveness (which peaks between the ages of 16 and 28), and the history and experiences they have shared together. The best approach is therefore for a woman to marry young and give her husband the benefit of her looks and her youth. Then, as she matures, he gets the benefit of that maturity and wisdom. To the man who has savored and enjoyed his wife’s youth and beauty, she will be forever young in his eyes.

So… let’s answer the million-dollar question: Why are older men looking at women half their age? Because they can.

Here’s the counter-question: Why should a never-married or divorced woman who has hit the wall think she deserves a Silver Fox who can clearly do better? She doesn’t.

The bottom line: Ladies, don’t wait. Use the power while you have it, and use it wisely. For once it’s gone, it’s gone.

And then you will be reduced to writing plaintive screeds arguing with biology.

Survey Says…

Women who lost their virginity as teenagers are ‘more likely to divorce’

Women Take Almost 50 Percent More Short-term Sick Leave Than Men

Excessive Tattooing and Piercings are evidence of Self-destructive behavior(PDF)

Scientists Link Selfies To Narcissism, Addiction & Mental Illness

Addition of testosterone reduces lying in men

Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage
Why men shouldn’t do housework – Dividing work in the home along gender lines = more sex. (PDF)

Couples that delay sexual activity experience higher quality relationships

Slimmer Women’s Waist is Associated with Better Erectile Function in Men Independent of Age

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness
“By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.” (National Bureau of Economic Research)

The bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage

Attractive women get more job interviews than unattractive women. Attractive men have no similar advantage.

Correlation between tofu consumption and low brain function.

The Gender Pay gap is due mainly to women choosing lower-paying jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics PDF)

Sexual assault on College Campus is not 1 in 5, more like 1 in 165 (Bureau of Justice Statistics)
And remember, sexual assault != rape!.

College Students Are Actually Less Likely To Be Victimized than those outside of college (DOJ)

70% of domestic violence incidents were started by women and the men were defending themselves (which a man has the common law right to do, just in case you didn’t know). (APHA/CDC)

Outstanding student loans reduce a woman’s odds of marrying