Thanks.
Bedroom Boredom
Nobody was less shocked than I to learn that 87% of workplace professionals bring PDAs into their bedrooms and that 35% of them would choose these devices over their spouses. This is the finding of Sheraton Hotels & Resorts in a survey of 6500 execs from Australia, China, Germany, the UK, and the US.
Why are so many people literally in love with their BlackBerrys? Dysfunctional relationships and bedroom boredom abound, and people are choosing inanimate objects for companionship. Essentially, men and women loathe talking directly and frankly to each other and, consequently, become sexually entangled for the strangest reasons and in the wrong ways.
If you don’t believe me, just sit in the back row of a divorce court one day. Listen to the parade of parties, allegedly once in love, excoriate each other. This all-too-common downward spiral occurs when spouses cohabit without ever experiencing emotional intimacy, from avoiding more issues than they discuss.
When boys are raised never to ask women their ages, ask them to pay, or tell them off-color jokes, they are, in essence, taught avoidance. Correspondingly, girls are trained never to challenge men directly, never to pay, and to be demure and indirect. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone when, as adults, men and women possess no ability to establish trust or open communication with each other.
It’s no wonder, then, that the BlackBerry — a communications device totally dedicated to its owner, who can program and switch it on or off at will — is more appealing to an uncommunicative person than another human being he cannot predict or control.
Designated Pursuer
Ask your friends why they became involved with their significant others; you will hear some bizarre answers such as, “I don’t really know; it just kind of happened.” Or, “We met online and started seeing each other and never questioned it.” Hookups often are pursued because of convenience: “She was ‘there’ when I was looking.” How about, “He was so aggressive in asking me out, I couldn’t say no.”
Can you articulate clearly and in great detail why you are with your paramour or spouse? I’ll bet you can’t; I say this because of e-mails from disillusioned readers, calls from radio audiences, and clients of my relationship coaching. Most men and women never give much thought to what brought them together. So, the first problem with relationships is why they formed.
Next, let’s examine how these lovebirds got together. Despite all the talk about equality and powerful women, especially with the rise of Sarah Palin, men and women, in most situations, prefer old-fashioned courting, where the man pursues, wines & dines, and “lands” the woman — the first stage of the Estrogen Express.
There is no rational reason, no financial excuse, and no sexual justification for the man to be the “designated pursuer” of the woman. Worse, everything about this unbalanced, inequitable scenario leads eventually to anger, resentment, and emotional distance on both sides.
No man ever will respect a woman he had to chase and purchase, and no woman ever will respect a man who emasculated himself to endure such nonsense — even though she was happy to benefit from it. Yet, this mating dance is precisely how most relationships are formed, and that is the problem.
Given that 50% of marriages end in divorce, that women bring 70% of those divorces, that at least half of all men and women cheat on their spouses, and that 35% of participants in Sheraton’s survey choose their PDAs over their spouses, let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the relationship mill is broken.
Psychotherapists would urge spouses to put away their BlackBerrys and talk to each other, face to face. Unfortunately, these mental-health professionals are missing the point: PDA-addicted people don’t like their spouses and never will, and they are unskilled in the dialog of human intimacy — the chief reason they chose their undesirable spouses. Their preferred companions have LCD screens and lithium batteries.
The NoNonsense Bottom Line
In an age where women have the freedom to pursue whatever educational, professional, and personal endeavors they wish, men must insist on full equality — both benefits and costs — in relationships with them, or nothing at all.
If a man feels unilaterally required to make his woman happy through dating, the engagement, and her wedding day, he will find himself subordinated and unhappy in marriage. Then, he will cling to his trustworthy BlackBerry for companionship — and, unfortunately, for communicating with his divorce lawyer. Instead, by simply rejecting chivalry and all female entitlements, he can spare himself this pain.
If your life boils down to a choice between sex and the BlackBerry, pick the latter: it’s all you’re equipped to handle.
About the Author
Marc H. Rudov is a globally known radio/TV personality and author of 90+ articles and the books Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze, or Jumper Cables (ISBN 9780974501727), and The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth (ISBN 0974501719). Mr. Rudov, the 2008 recipient of the National Coalition of Free Men’s “Award for Excellence In Promoting Gender Fairness In The Media,” is a regular guest on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto and The O’Reilly Factor.
Rudov’s books, articles, blog, and podcasts are available at TheNoNonsenseMan.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.
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tom of covent garden said,
I’ve just been checking out an author called Dick Masterson, who wrote a book called Men Are Better Than Women. He has appeared on Dr Phil, branding himself a chauvinist, and saying women are good for one thing, having babies, and they’re not even any good at bringing them up. This guy is hardcore, calling ALL women whores, but he’s on TV, and his website is inundated, and his book is selling well, and I think it’s because people can relate to his standpoint. He’s playing the worst of women at their own game, and by all accounts, winning.
Hopefully now, with a very articulate and funny ‘chauvinist’ like Masterson coming through, Marc’s demands for equality between the sexes will be accepted or even seized upon by women as the way ahead, reasonable and progressive as Marc’s gender-related demands have always been, in the face of the alternatives. For this reason, I think Masterson’s position is helpful, as he presents the antifeminist no woman could publicly support, so women might rise up, and couph up, as they started doing for the first time during the heights of second-wave feminism.
September 17, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Zorik said,
I’m not convinced. Wasn’t there a time when men pursued women and yet they still respected each other?
September 17, 2008 at 8:48 pm
amfortas said,
In the old days, of course, when the divorce rate was small and only a little troubling, there were a host of unwritten, barely spoken understandings about courtship and marriage. The one-sided pursuit and catch strategy was accepted out of ignorance and reciprocated by a certain grace and modesty. Power was shared far more equally than today.
Society changed and all the rules were exposed. A superb explanation is provided by George Rolph at http://antimisandry.com/general-blog-chat/deserting-dads-deadbeat-politician-problem-14846.html
It would make a grand ‘maiden Speech’ for any new member of a legislature.
Marc and we have benefitted by default by having our traditional blinkers taken off. But we mustn’t simply put another lot on.
Communicate, Marc? To access emotional intimacy? Guru- speak, Sir. Codswallop.
One can barely talk to a modern woman without coming away severely depressed. When I was a lad it was when they opened their mouths that the woman-bubble burst. Awful voices and awful accents were common then, not that the Palin Screetch is any better. But the total lack of grasp of sense today is far and away worse than 40 years ago.
Today, even with an educated, savvy, successful, executive woman one can barely get through a minutes conversation without her landing three cliches on your ear. Women talk in a very limited intellectual vocabulary. In a short day with a woman one can hear her go through 12 cognitive distortions and at least 25 informal fallacies without her noticing any of them. They have no idea what they are saying. They are on auto-mouth most of the time and when not they are repeating lines from sit-coms.
Emotional intimacy? God almghty a bit of authentic emotional content would be a friggin’ miracle. It is all sentiment and inflated outrage over trivia md lauding of other trivia.
There are only 14 women left in the world who are over 25. I don’t want to have conversations any more, let alone intimacy, emotional or otherwise, with demanding children who masquerade as adults and cannot atriculate a toothache without resorting to Depak wossname.
And Marc. Mate. What was that aside; almost overlooked; sneaked in. You do ‘Relationship Advice’? Gordon friggin’ Bennett. There’s a slippery slope waiting for you arse, there Sunshine.
September 18, 2008 at 4:53 am
Marc H. Rudov said,
Yes, I provide fee-based relationship advice — to men and women. All the info is at my Website.
Yes, it is possible to experience emotional intimacy with women. Women, not little girls occupying adult female bodies. Huge difference. The key is to screen out the noncommunicators upfront. By asserting, in the first meeting with her, what you want and what you’ll give, your chances of succeeding skyrocket. Alas, most men keep their mouths shut and their wallets open to avoid “ruining” their chances of getting laid. That’s why they end up with merchant maureens.
September 18, 2008 at 5:08 am
Marc H. Rudov said,
This section is only for comments on the specific topic of the article above. It is not for personal dialogs, which you must take offline, nor is it for personal affronts. I will delete any comments that do not adhere to these principles.
September 19, 2008 at 4:50 am
Virtue said,
“with women. Women, not little girls occupying adult female bodies.”
That’s the problem Marc. The little girls in Women’s bodies outnumber women 1000 to 1. Now that could be due to the fact I live in Southern CA but still……every where I look almost every woman I speak to….All have massive princess entitlement complexes. I have yet to meet a woman who is under 30, who is not morbidly obese, who is not already married, that doesn’t fall into the category of a little girl in a woman’s body.
September 19, 2008 at 6:23 am
Marc H. Rudov said,
The reason most women act like little girls in adult female bodies and behave like merchant maureens with PMS (princess mentality syndrome)? Men recruit, enable, tolerate, and fund them.
Until men grow a pair — open their mouths and close their wallets — women will continue demanding, and getting, all the meals, trips, homes, and bling they want.
September 19, 2008 at 9:23 am
Virtue said,
September 19, 2008 at 9:47 am
Marc H. Rudov said,
You confuse girls and women. Women don’t play games and don’t ask to be supported. Girls do.
September 19, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Marc H. Rudov said,
This section is only for comments on the specific topic of the article above. It is not for personal dialogs, which you must take offline, nor is it for personal affronts. I will delete any comments that do not adhere to these principles.
September 19, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Dabir Dalton said,
For myself it has been a battle and a march since my wedding day because I absolutely refuse to put up with the nonsense of my wife’s unreasonable demands to make her the absolute center of my life…My father made that mistake and paid for it with his life and with the more than likely possibility of being financially raped of their children, home and hard earned income in a divorce…I can certainly see exactly why many men would turn to their PDA as a refuge of last resort even as that hope in vain that the girl they married won’t divorce em…
September 20, 2008 at 5:06 am