Why Can’t We Get Along?
December 10, 2010
by Eric Payne
The subject of marriage, relationships or some combination of both has come up quite frequently in recent weeks and months. Both in the national media and in the blogosphere. There is the ever circulating story of the shortage of available “good” black men; there is the No Wedding No Womb movement; there was the recent USA Today Poll stating that nearly 40% of Americans believe that Marriage is becoming obsolete followed by the quick and exacting response by our own Lamar Tyler and as of last week Time Magazine’s cover story ran with the ominous headline, “Who Needs Marriage?” Believe it or not, The Michael Baisdens, Steve Harveys and Hill Harpers of the world keep publishers in business because there is no foreseeable end to the very issues their books seek to fix — recognizing and escaping broken relationships for mutually satisfying and beneficial ones.
Playing The Blame Game
Based on the virtual war waged between men and women on numerous Facebook pages including this site’s Happily Ever After, and countless blogs, everyone is playing the blame game. And even in laying blame each side’s accusations paints the other as dead wrong — immature, devious, deviant, sinister — hopeless. Our children are in full view of this madness and simply line up to become the next generation of combatants in the battle of the s*xes. It is true that many a man has entered a relationship without the best intentions or any intentions at all. It is equally true that just as many women have left a trail of bodies in their wake for the sake of personal gain or because the baggage they carry around from one relationship to the next is just too much weight for the next man to carry.
These are the extremes. Every man isn’t a dog nor is every woman a gold-digging tragic figure. Yet relationships continue to be botched and the battle over who’s more wrong continues.
But What About Love? What Is Love?
I can’t and won’t speak for everyone but many of us simply don’t know what love is, to live it, give it, receive it and/or some combination of all of the above. From one person to the next love has a multitude of meanings, most of them wrong, all tainted by experience rather than affirmed by definition. I am certainly of the belief that that there love does bring euphoria and/or elation in doses. Those doses are very large, almost narcotic at first, but then it mellows out a bit until it settles into a constant and reassuring rhythm like the constant beating of the waves against the shore. But that is just the emotional component of the love package that endures, bears all things but keeps no record of faults, forgives, supports, nourishes, nurtures, replenishes and is self-sustaining by virtue of its acts, ultimately seeking no reward for it’s service. When discussions of love come up we, men and women alike, often spend valuable time chatting about our partners’ inability to do right based on what we want, always falling short of our expectations. Sometimes we even want our partners to do the loving for the both of us, to somehow magically erase our own insecurities and shortcomings that existed long before he or she entered our lives. And when that doesn’t happen, because it isn’t possible, we just keep on complaining. Then we seek out others to complain to. We dismantle “him” or “her” rather than bring self-awareness and self-love to the table. We don’t give freely. And then we wonder why we don’t get.
Normal Is The New Unrealistic
In a perfect world, or maybe even in the world God intended for us, no experience, no matter how devastating (short of death), would be our undoing. People would walk away from people who didn’t honor, cherish or respect them, relieved that they were spared a future full of misery. They’d enter new relationships armed with the knowledge of what to do and what not to do based on their past. They’d consider it a blessing to be able to love anew. There’d be little to no discussion about what is wrong with everyone else because people would be too busy trying to bring their A-game to every situation. I’m just sayin’.
Maybe this is too far fetched of a notion in 2010. Maybe it’s just plain crazy. Maybe it’s too much to ask ourselves to make the effort and take the time to learn the divine meaning of love, apply it to our own lives and then give it away freely to our fellow man and the ones we tell everyone else we love. Or maybe it isn’t.
BMWK what do you think?
Author of the now infamous, My Wife Is NOT My Friend (on Facebook), Eric talks about being a father and a husband on his blog, Makes Me Wanna Holler – Man, Dad, Husband. You can follow him on Twitter or find him chopping it up on his Facebook Page. He is the author of I See Through Eyes, a book of poetry and short stories. In his “spare time” Eric reviews autos and writes relationship articles for Atlanta-based J’Adore Magazine.
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Friday, December 10th 2010 at 12:52PM
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