Preface

I didn’t really know where to put his so I decided to make a second introduction of myself.  It is my take on relationships based more on my years working with couples of all ages and makeup than my education.  For the record, observation and common sense beat education all to hell.  Formal education is greatly overrated.

WHY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Good question.  Miss Emma often states that people were not meant to be monogamous.  They are wired so that they are predisposed to breed and seek as many partners as possible to do it with.  The “Go forth and multiply” thing.  But she also concedes that monogamy also makes sense because it fills a need for bonding and security.  Humans need to feel love and have a need to give love.

Please note that everything I say about people and couples is generalized.  It applies to the majority but no two people are alike and there are exceptions. 

When humans reach puberty their world and everything about it changes.  Life becomes about sexuality for the girl and about having sex for the boy.  These can be difficult years for both as they try to negotiate life.  Society gives them a ton of rules that don’t come close to synching up with their hormones.   This typically lasts well into their twenties.  At some point in time they meet the one they want to spend the rest of their life with.  This is good but it presents a whole new set of problems.  The man actually becomes less self-centered and about wanting to please the woman.  He becomes less secure the deeper he falls in love.  Men have a very strong need to bond and to be loved and cared for.  Sex is still very important to him but it is no longer his driving force. The man becomes very conflicted because his motives are to provide for and protect his woman.  He needs to be strong and be in charge.  At the same time he is afraid of disappointing her, being inadequate in any way, or hurting her.  He is actually frightened of losing her.  He develops a degree of submissiveness to her so she won’t ever leave him.   The emotions in his poor little brain are at war with one another and he isn't even allowed to talk about it.  Living in his brain would be hell.  The woman on the other hand at this juncture actually becomes more selfish.  She wants everything to be about her needs.  She needs to feel loved every minute of every day.  But society tells her she is supposed to be the submissive one when really she needs to be the one taking charge.  She needs to be telling her man what makes her happy but she has been taught to be obedient to her man.  She knows it is her obligation to provide him with sex whenever.  Our female brains are no more fun to live in than his is.  In the early years they have a lot of sex and it is new and exciting but they don’t learn to make love.  By the time they get to anywhere between year 2 and year about 5 the pressures start to erode the union.  They haven’t learned to communicate their feelings.  They haven’t told each other how they really feel and what they really need.  Their sex life starts to suffer and life gets in the way of their love.

Now we add to this the coming of children.  The man loves his children but he loves his wife even more, partly for giving him children.  The woman, on the other hand, still loves her man but her children become who she is about.  They become her first love.  Her love for her man is becoming more about her need for him as provider and helper than as a lover.  It is getting harder and harder for them to be on the same page.  Is it any wonder that almost 1/2 of all marriages fail before year ten. 

If you make it this far, the children grow up and leave the nest.  The woman is now starving for love because her first love, the children, are gone.  She turns to her husband and after all these years she is developing her first truly unselfish love for him.  Unfortunately, the man at this point has become centered on his career because it was so important to have a good job and income to raise his offspring.  He may be cold and distant at the very time she needs his closeness more than ever.  We lose that next 10% of marriages in these years.  It is usually the woman looking for some way to satisfy her need for love and attention and the husband’s almost indifference.  He still wants to have sex but it is not about making love.  It is about his physical satisfaction.  You can guess where this is leading and you won’t be wrong.

If the couple makes it through all of this, the next phase is the golden years.  The wife hits menopause and the man’s sex drive starts to wane.  They are looking at retirement together and finally all the stars begin to align for a change.  All the changes are at last taking them in the same direction.  This is that old couple you see walking hand in hand down the street.  He picks a wild flower and sticks it in her hair and she smiles.  They actually talk across the table at the restaurant.  When they hug and kiss it is a gentle loving kiss.  They still have sex occasionally but it is gentle love making.  It is almost like their reward for their love having defeated life.  As I say less than 1/2 the couples ever last to live the reward.  This makes me sad. 

In my practice, the couples came to me because they had come together in love and now they were struggling.  It was my goal to make sure every client got to live the reward.  Once in a while I would have a couple that was too far gone, or maybe they hadn’t loved each other in the first place but I had to tell them it was time to break up and move on.  That always broke my heart and it seemed to happen more in the recent years than in the early years.  I truly believe that pressures on relationships are greater now than they have ever been.  We call it progress. 

This is what I think we all need to know about relationships.  They are hard because men and women are not only different but they have different pressures and goals that tend to drive wedges where we really could use connecters. The common thread that seems to separate the couples that make it from the couples that fail is communication.  The couples that make it learned somewhere along the line how to let each other know how they feel, what they need, where they want to go with their lives.  Unfortunately, it seems no one ever teaches meaningful communication skills.  It is left up to people like myself who get involved after they are in trouble.  Sometimes it is already too late.  I believe that sites like this need to teach this skill.  It is especially important in non-traditional relationships.  I wish Miss Emma would do a blog strictly about communication.  No chastity or polyfriending or FLR, just how to talk to each other.  Not just with our voices but with our faces, our body, our tone.  All the little things that help your partner understand you a bit better.  I am sure that she and I will have some differences on this subject as you know if you read my initial introduction and response to her.  But she is the one person with the skills to teach every one this important skill.  

I’ll come down off my bully pulpit now and tell you where I am going from here.  I am almost finished with a piece on cuckolding that I hope to post later today.  Then I will have said everything I have to say about relationships.  I will probably not start any more threads after that.  I don’t want to wear out my welcome here.  I will, of course, continue to follow Miss Emma.  As I said I truly appreciate the works of someone so skilled at her craft.  She has the combined skills of a marketing expert and a writer.  She could have been a great politician if she had chosen that field.  I read most of her blogs before joining the site but I never paid attention to the comments by forum members that followed the blogs.  I just read a few yesterday and found them to be very interesting.  A few comments disagreed with her once in a while but often it appears that her goal of encouraging couples to expand their activities and explore deeper into their relationship was being met.  More reason to believe that she is the one who needs to write a lesson on communication.  There I am beating the dead horse again.  LOL 

I expect that I will from time to time join in and comment on Miss Emma’s blogs, not just when I disagree with her but when I think she has said something very poignant.  I may also add comments to threads started by others here from time to time. D’s and my version of FLR and chastity are not at all the same as most members here so if I get out of line please gently remind me to mind my own business. 

I hope I have added to your understanding of relationships and how they can be very difficult.  But at the same time I believe they are important because human beings truly do need each other.  We do need love, security, and a feeling of giving back.  That is the real reason why monogamy works. 

Thank you for listening.