Much ink and electronically generated language have been expended commenting on the oppressive and stressful nature of everyday life. We are expected to move too fast, produce instant answers to complex problems, and respond with a fax or an e-mail or a text on the spot.

Many of us travel long distances just to get to work. We hardly know our neighbors and, even if we do, don’t have the time to talk to them. Each of us has his own individualized shipping container (called a car), further separating us from each other.

We relate to gadgets more than to people — voice mail and snail mail need answering, internet sites demand surfing, our phones are always on and in our pockets — even vacations don’t place us out of reach of urgent demands and obligations.

Teacher conferences require our attendance. Our children plead for our time and a car ride to assist them in their own over-scheduled lives, already buckling under the demands of metropolitan living. The house needs minding, the lawn needs mowing — there is never any rest.

We have gone from a time 50 years ago when only doctors were “on call” to one where 12-year-olds can be electronically summoned at any moment. The machines we built to assist us have started to take us over, like the “Cylons” in the science fiction future of Battlestar Galactica.

Witness this commentary:

I cannot help but regret that I did not live fifty or a hundred years sooner. Life is too full in these times to be comprehensible. We know too many cities to be able to grow into any of them, and our arrivals and departures are no longer matters for emotional debauches — they are too common. Similarly, we have too many friends to have any friendships, too many books to know any of them well; and the quality of our impressions gives way to the quantity, so that life begins to seem like a movie, with hundreds of kaleidoscopic scenes flashing on and off our field of perception — gone before we have time to consider them.

I should like to have lived in the days when a visit was a matter of months, when political and social problems were regarded from simple standpoints called “liberal” and “conservative,” when foreign countries were still foreign, when a vast part of the world always bore the glamour of the great unknown, when there were still wars worth fighting and gods worth worshipping.

These words were written by George Kennan, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, diplomat, and scholar.

Yesterday, you ask?

No.

They were written 85 years ago in his journal, on December 20, 1927 when he was 23. They can be found in his book, Sketches From a Life, published by Pantheon.

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The top image is Tension Belt by LeonWeber. The lower photo is the head of a Cylon Centurion by ckroberts61. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. This essay is a slightly revised version of one I posted a couple of years ago.

It’s not nice to be told that you are “too nice,” especially if you are a man — a young man — trying to win a woman’s favor. Most of those who have heard this wonder why something “good” — being “nice” — is held against them. Often they observe the very same women with other males who are much less considerate, generous, and kind.

Do you have the sort of kindness that is disqualifying? Kinda’ seems unfair, doesn’t it?

Some of these women, it’s true, have poor judgment. They are drawn to men who are exciting but irresponsible or cruel. Perhaps they are unconsciously trying to find someone who reminds them of a parent who was not sufficiently devoted to them. The new prospective boyfriend now gives them a second chance at getting the type of love they couldn’t achieve from mom or dad; who were rejecting, disinterested, or preoccupied with other people and other things.

Even so, the “too nice” indictment doesn’t always really mean you are too nice. That phrase can be just a stand-in for a lack of “chemistry,” an absence of sheer physical attraction, or a feeling of being bored.

Chemistry Anyone?

Boredom doesn’t sound good, I know, but if you are a Cubs fan and the female of your dreams doesn’t like baseball, or if you are into country music and she can’t bear it, boredom or disinterest can be the result.

Kind and decent young men need to recognize that there just might be something useful in the dreaded “too nice” communication. Something in the blunt trauma of the words “you are too nice” may need to be learned — the hidden meaning behind the statement.

From an evolutionary and prehistoric perspective, consider what qualities a woman needed in a mate: physical strength, power, and courage would have been useful in protecting the female (and the couple’s kiddies) from danger. Forcefulness, self-assertion, and wiliness might also have helped her potential mate to fulfill that function. Additionally, those characteristics signaled that the man was “fit,” both physically and mentally, and therefore able to produce healthy offspring.

The woman who instead chose the “weak” suitor, the one who was passive or hesitant, perhaps found that he could not “make” a living for them or defend the home. Their children’s survival became more doubtful because of the man’s limitations. If so, evolution would not have favored his characteristics, nor those in the female that caused her to make a poor choice of mate. The genes carrying such tendencies would not have been passed on through the generations, having fallen to the law of the jungle.

To the extent that females paired with strong men increased their children’s odds of reaching adulthood, the tendency for women to choose a bold male would have increased over time. And, it is likely that the most physically attractive females (in effect, the ones who looked most “fit”) would have tended to be selected by the most assertive and forceful men, thus linking beauty and a preference for powerful males in our genetic future.

Women, like men, look for signs of vigor and health, even if they do so unconsciously in the mating game. Without these qualities, the chance of passing on your genes by producing children who live long enough to reproduce themselves isn’t that good.

Moreover, a female today may also want a husband who is an admirable role model for her children, someone to share the burden of decisions and making a life together — in other words, an assertive, capable man who can take on the world. However unfair it can be, these same women just might interpret a worshipful, uncertain, passive, overly considerate man to be a potential liability.

“Niceness” isn’t necessarily the equivalent of weakness, but it can look that way. Doubtful young men, afraid of losing favor, often make themselves less attractive by their hesitation. Meanwhile, those top-dog alpha males who act boldly, are frequently admired in spite of having an edge that gives offense.

I recently read a study with a most intriguing title that is related to this topic: Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last? The Joint Effects of Sex and Agreeableness on Income by Timothy Judge, Beth Livingston, and Charlice Hurst. It was published in 2011 in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Briefly, they found that men who are too agreeable make significantly less money than men who more closely meet a somewhat contentious male stereotype. For the purpose of this type of research, “agreeableness” is consistent with characteristics like being trusting, straightforward, altruistic, compliant, modest, and tender-minded. Those men were also less likely to obtain recommendations for professional advancement.

In contrast, the customary male is prone to “aggressively advocate for (his) position during conflicts.” These more traditional males are also inclined to push their own personal agendas relative to other people and to challenge the status quo. Such individuals tend to be seen as more competent than those who are too agreeable, as well. Moreover, agreeableness impacted “earnings more negatively for men than for women,” meaning that being agreeable hurt female income less. Based on these results, it would seem that women are on to something of practical value when they sense that a man is too nice.

What can you do, then, if you are the aforementioned nice young man?

Find ways to boost your confidence. Learn to face challenges rather than avoiding them. Build your body. Compete. Don’t be too deferential.

Lead. Make decisions. Have opinions. Take a stand. And, whatever you do, do not become worshipful of the woman you are with by the second week of your acquaintance with her.

None of this means you should be callous, hurtful, or cruel. Indeed, courtesy, romance, and thoughtfulness have their place, too, if you want to win the fair maiden’s heart.

Just don’t lapse into a fetal position.

Unless, of course, you are looking to be treated like a fetus.

—

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The top image is called Some days I just want to curl up in a ball… by Michael Dunn. It is followed by three test tubes of Cobalt Chloride in various stages of equilibration with hydrochloric acid, downloaded by Chemicalinterest. These two photos are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Finally, a 12 week old Fetus sourced from MedlinePlus.

Leo Durocher, Hall of Fame baseball manager and former player, was quoted saying that “nice guys finish last” in 1948. He was then the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and was referring to the New York Giants. Ironically, he would soon find himself managing those “nice guys.”

“That is the worst picture of me I’ve ever seen.”

You are looking at your new driver’s license photo, just after it has been handed to you.

It will remain the worst picture of yourself imaginable until you renew your license and get one that is even worse.

At some point, if you are inclined to look at old photos, you will realize that you were once actually better looking than you thought. Even though, back then, you spent enormous amounts of time considering all your visible shortcomings.

And, if you can bear it, the idea creeps up, that you look — right now at this very moment — the best you will ever look again. However low it is, you are at the top of your own personal ski-ramp of pulchritude. Gravity will have its way. The grave is at the end of the downhill run, the place where you will certainly not look splendid, although a few might comment on how life-like and peaceful you appear to be as a corpse.

The mirror is irresistible. Although a frequent carrier of bad news, it is like a siren calling you to it — beckoning, luring you.

“Look at me,” it says. “Look at me, so that you can look at yourself. See what others see before they see it.”

Even your reflection in a department store window can’t be ignored.

The scrutiny of skin texture, hair style, and unevenness of any kind can be a full-time job. How large are my pores? Were they always this large? Are my eyebrows even, my lips symmetrical? Is that a pimple? Did I miss a spot shaving? Is my hair losing its color?

To comb-over or not to comb-over. That is the question.

Unfortunately, omnipresent advertising reminds us of the importance of appearance and suggests that we are falling down on the job if we don’t look right, sound right, and smell right; if we aren’t clothed right and adorned right to the point of rewriting ourselves.

Would that one were more like Narcissus, who saw his reflection in a pool of water and fell in love. Instead, the self-conscious are the opposite of Narcissus according to John Updike, seeing the disqualifying things that others don’t see or care to look for.

Why?

Because they are too preoccupied with their own mirror-image.

Each of us may be our own main-attraction, but to almost all others, we are but footnotes; either not viewed as important enough to look at or quickly forgotten.

Despite this truth, the insecure man sees the outer world as an anticipated audience for his one-man-show, having paid dearly for tickets and expecting a star-turn. “How will I look?” the performer says to himself. Implicit in the question is, “How will I look to them?” And, more to the point, “How will I rank?”

The mirror is like a ruler, telling us whether we measure up to both friends and strangers; and rules over us, sucking away our time as we stand before it. But then, many carry mirrors in their pockets or handbags, all the better to do some compulsive checking.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others…

Marcus Aurelius, the author of those words, like other Stoic philosophers, thought it important to remind oneself of what is valuable (like good deeds) and what is not (like the opinion of others). But we seem to be automatically drawn to “making an impression;” and we hope that it is not one of the wrong kind.

Take my mother, a surpassingly beautiful young woman, but confident of little more than her appearance. When age robbed her of that singular quality, she sometimes joked about looking at herself in the silvered-glass and asking, “When did this happen?” The loss left her all the more vulnerable to and preoccupied with what others might be thinking about her.

Although self-consciousness is commonplace, I have actually met people who seem to be totally un-self conscious and unaware of who they are, how they come across, and the impact they have on others.

We incorrectly assume that people universally understand the impression they make.

To illustrate the point, think back to the very first time you heard your own voice on a recording device. It was probably shocking. You didn’t sound the way you heard yourself inside your head.

The act of looking in the mirror is not a whole lot more reliable. And the mirror changes how we behave while doing the looking: the expressions we see as we examine ourselves are not necessarily identical to those observed by passers-by in our unstudied moments.

People with Asperger’s Disorder are among those who are unconcerned with and unaware of the effect of their self-presentation. Their social interaction is significantly impaired, in part, because the social cues that we commonly get from others — and that are instructive about how we are coming across to them — don’t seem to register. They miss signals that the person with whom they are conversing might be bored, impatient, indifferent, upset, or angry. Nor will they seem to care about shaping themselves to fit the prevailing social conditions.

Adults categorized as Narcissistic Personality Disorder are equally unaware of and unconcerned with the negative implications of the way in which they are seen by the world, except to complain about the unfairness of how they are treated. Their grandiosity and exaggerated sense of self-importance leads to arrogance rather than self-reflection or self-doubt. It is as if they have a Teflon-coated exterior that prevents criticism from penetrating to the heart.

If we set aside those people who are diagnosably paranoid, the personality trait of self-awareness causes problems at both of its extremes. Too little self-consciousness and you have Asperger’s and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. On the opposite wall are those hyper-focused souls whose radar is going full-force at all times.

Members of the latter group are so preoccupied with the need to detect rejection and disapproval that they mistake casual and meaningless comments for devastating critical opprobrium. Were their personal scanners instead used for national defense, like a giant radar antenna in the photo above, they would mistake birds flying overhead for incoming thermonuclear warheads.

At the same time that their own monitoring devices are being ratcheted up, these self-conscious individuals wish to fly under the radar of others, hoping that their imperfections will go unnoticed.

And they are drained trying to simultaneously make themselves invisible while watching for all possible personal incoming data.

For them, life becomes a performance and everyone else in life becomes a potential journalist reviewing that performance, imagined to be preparing a devastating and slashing critique for the next day’s blog post or NBC news broadcast.

The over-sensitive and insecure individuals of this world have lots of company, but don’t always think that they do. They are too busy comparing their “insides” to other people’s “outsides,” a game that is played on an uneven playing field designed to cause the person making the comparisons to feel like crap.

A 2011 study led by Dr. Alexander Jordan in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, supports the notion that people tend to underestimate the negative emotional experiences of others. In part, this is thought to be due to the fact that we see friends and neighbors (by definition) only in social situations, where research shows that people generally feel relatively good and therefore appear to be doing well. Since individuals are also somewhat hesitant to express suffering in social situations, the tendency is reinforced to see those folks as more satisfied with their lives than they actually are.

Thus, all of us (but particularly the self-conscious among us) can only observe the appearance (rather than the reality) of others’ lives, but have complete access to our own internal turmoil, especially during the time when we are alone and more prone to negative feelings than during periods of social activity. Almost inevitably, the contrast between the outward sunny appearance of our peers and our own private darkness (even if it is simply the commonplace trouble to be found in any life) contributes to a sense that we are not doing very well at all.

Life for the self-conscious person is a little like wearing glasses that look exactly like regular glasses, but have a silver coating on the inside. The glasses cause an automatic inward look — a claustrophobic view of a dark and suffocating place. Life satisfaction is to be found in an outward gaze, not an eternally internal one.

The excruciating inward focus makes it very difficult for “(Self)-Doubting Thomas” to realize that he is not as uniquely deficient as he is prone to believe. And since self-protective efforts inhibit sharing one’s personal insecurities even with friends, the holding-back robs him of their commiseration and understanding; not to mention the sense of identity that he might receive from others, fellow-suffers in particular.

Still, at least the self-conscious will sometimes go to therapy, while neither the Asperger’s clan nor the narcissists see much of problem requiring professional consultation. Each, in his own way, is content with himself. If there are troubles, others are blamed, not the person’s own inadequacies.

Unfortunately, there is no “cure” for self-consciousness, per se. But therapy can help to uncover the reasons for self-doubting and quiet the self-disparaging voices inside, shroud the mirrors, still the racing pulse, and eventually come to a point of self-acceptance. Treatment can make you feel better about yourself. Equally significant, therapy prepares you for the fact that there will, indeed, be no way to impress everyone, but worry less over the failure.

After all, even a wildly successful presidential candidate must confront over 40,000,000 votes for the other guy.

No, therapy won’t change your driver’s license photo into a professional “head-shot,” making you look like a movie star, but it just might do something even better.

You will see that card-carried image in all its horrific awfulness, and care about it much, much less.

—

You may find the following related post of interest: Signs of Insecurity: Behavior That Reveals a Lack of Confidence.

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The first photo is a Scan of An Expired Diplomatic Driver’s License by Foreignaffairsinfo. Next, a Woman Standing In Front of a Mirror by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. The third image is a Statue of Venus in Mirrors by Nevit Dilmen. It is followed by Jeanette Stein (with the author, who was apparently sceptical of the camera even then) and A 50-Foot Radar Antenna at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Finally, a Self-Portrait by w.helwig. All of these with the exception of the family photo are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

In Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, the narrator describes how his changed attitude toward sex drove him to move from the city to the seclusion of the countryside:

My point is that by moving here I had altered deliberately my relationship to the sexual caterwaul, and not because the exhortations or, for that matter, my erections had been effectively weakened by time, but because I couldn’t meet the costs of its clamoring anymore, could no longer marshal the wit, the strength, the patience, the illusion, the irony, the ardor, the egoism, the resilience — or the toughness, or the shrewdness, or the falseness, the dissembling, the dual being, the erotic professionalism – to deal with its array of misleading and contradictory meanings.

The complaint is not unknown. Indeed, some men profess that they prefer sex with prostitutes because it takes care of the problems that drive Roth’s narrator to isolate himself from sexual encounters altogether. For those men, the exchange of dollars and cents does away with the “misleading and contradictory meanings” and the emotional and behavioral role-playing that they find so bothersome.

We do a lot for sex; or, at least for the connectedness and commitment that we hope comes with it. Would the amount spent on cosmetics, hair supplies, skin creams, Viagra, sex toys, personal trainers, gym classes, face lifts, breast implants, hair plugs, bar bells, watches, clothing, cars and jewelry amount to nearly so much without the hope of a sexual or romantic payoff?

How much time is spent choosing those items and activities? How much time in using them? How much time in wondering whether they have done the job intended? How much time watching to see if anyone notices the difference?

Sex is in the air in perfume and pheromones and aftershave. It is on the air of radio broadcasts and TV programming. It sells cars, shoes, and itself. But don’t, please don’t point out the obvious. In that event you would be considered crude. By comparison there is some honesty in the professional transaction of money for sex; one could argue, more than is inherent in the pursuit of a trophy spouse or the prospective mate’s willingness to become a sexual hood ornament.

But Roth’s point is more subtle than any of these things. He is referring to learning the steps of the mating dance and performing them to perfection, even when you don’t like the music. Part of it is the sheer effort involved, the fashioning of disguises, worry that you are boring, the time to make yourself look good, the forced concentration on the other person when you are stifling a yawn, the calculations designed to impress, the compromises, the things said to promote yourself, and those unsaid to hide that which is unbecoming.

Then there are the questions of strategies and tactics, the intracranial meeting of your own personal staff of generals to call the shots as if you were embarked on a military campaign: when to phone or text, when to touch, when to flatter or smile or laugh, when to be unpredictable and what you can predict about the target’s vulnerabilities and impregnabilities.

If one’s heart is aflutter, there will inevitably be some attempt to comprehend what is going on despite your flustered, pulsating state of body and mind. Your conception of the union’s status may not coincide with what the other thinks or hopes, but it consumes much time and psychic energy so long as the interaction matters to you, regardless of the accuracy of your assessment.

Curiously, Roth’s character does not mention the frank danger of sex. The dreaded way it can injure, the extraordinary vulnerability that can come with it — the nakedness in every sense, involving every sense.

He seems more concerned with the way that it captures you, throws you about, wreaks havoc with your balance and equanimity; and pitches your brain into the trash heap because there is no reasoning with all the impulses that hold sway, making your gray matter a vestigial organ. Sex presses you do to things you wouldn’t otherwise do, and experience half-crazed feelings of pre-relationship desire, early relationship passion, and end-of-relationship desperation as you hold on for fear it will slip away.

How is it that we keep up our grades or maintain a full-time job with all this going on?

Some don’t, you know. The burden of the sexual road show can’t bear it or spare the time to do those other things.

If you are young enough, the excitement of it, not to mention your raging hormones make the carnal marketplace seem the only place to be; an arena that will define you as popular, alluring, or powerful. For a few, it comes naturally. For most, it is a little like learning to skate before you’ve learned to walk; too much, too soon. But still, our genetic programming pushes most of us into the fray.

Time strips away the appeal and ratchets up the cost that sex exacts, just as Roth suggests. The hormonal flush diminishes gradually, while the desperation mounts. Psychic scars make one hesitate, but the clock is running. Not just the ticking biological time bomb, but the worry that you are gradually becoming invisible to members of the opposite sex because your shining externals don’t have the glow of their best years. Your receding hairline, or growing waist line tell you that your “use by” date is approaching much too fast. Meanwhile there appears to be no end of competitors who want to budge into line; less weathered or younger or richer or just simply smarter and better looking.

It is more than enough to make one nauseous, anxious, or depressed.

Some do, temporarily or permanently, throw in the towel — give up on the sex project. You can have a rich life without it, but it certainly is a different life than the wildly urgent existence of the sexual being, where youthful animal instinct meets the combustible allure of the primordial creature in heat.

You can find celibacy meet-up groups around the world, although not all of the folks in these are abstinent by choice. But some are like Roth’s fictional character, choosing to be free of the trouble of sex. A portion of those who opt for continence may do it as a kind of discipline or as a way to concentrate on other things and grow personally; perhaps to sublimate their sexual energies, focusing on something beyond and above the narcotic of flesh and the grip of Mother Nature’s hard-wired programming.

Resisting temptation is always an interesting and difficult project, so there is doubtless something to be gained in it, much as there is in any kind of philosophical or religious abstinence, like a day of fasting.

For how long would you traverse this solitary highway?

Well, as the tire ads say, that is “where the rubber meets the road.” Assuming, of course, that you have a choice.

But, there are as many ways to live as there are people who are living. And one such way could include a span of time without sex. The world is beautiful and forever new if you only look hard enough. Intimacy does not require some sort of penetration of bodies.

As for myself, if I were to take a break, I’d do it in winter in a forbidding place where I wouldn’t see too many winsome strangers, some of whom might want to be won.

I’d have lots to do — things of importance to me.

When spring comes and the comely shed their overcoats?

That would be another matter.

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The images, in order: Sexy Secretary Drawing by Dimorsitanos, Animated Icon of a Sexy Dancing Girl by Jochen Gros, With Reference to Sexy by Mickey esta en la casa, and Monique Olsen by Christopher Peterson. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Being the parent of talented children is a tough job.

Especially when they are performing on stage or on the field of play.

You want them to succeed, you hold your breath as they do their stuff, and are delighted and relieved when the show (or the game) is over. You want to find a balance between identifying completely with their performance and being totally indifferent.

You don’t want to pressure them too much or feel like the fate of the free world hangs in the balance, entirely dependent on a flawless effort.

And you try to remember (and remind them to remember) the quotation of a Hall of Fame basketball coach who said, “If every game is a matter of life and death, you’re going to have a problem: you’re going to die a lot.”

Then there is the question of how much encouragement or discouragement you visit upon your child if he actually wants to make a career in the arts or sports given the long odds of actually being able to make a living.

Two stories about that, the first a joke:

Question: What is the difference between a musician and a Domino’s pizza?

Answer: A Domino’s pizza can feed a family of four!

The other story has to do with Leonard Bernstein, who was the composer of West Side Story, not to mention a famous symphony conductor, pianist, and educator.

Sam Bernstein, Lenny’s father, came to the USA from Russia, where musicians were held in low esteem. The musicians Bernstein’s father had encountered in his old country were mostly “klezmers,” itinerant Jews who played at weddings and other celebratory occasions, but had a hard time gaining respect and keeping bread on the table. Thus, when Sam’s oldest son displayed an interest in this “profession,” the elder Bernstein did his best to discourage the young man’s pursuit.

Eventually, his son Leonard became world-famous. And, the story is told that a newspaper reporter asked Sam why it was that he hadn’t encouraged his son in the field of music.

The senior Bernstein answered, “How was I supposed to know he would become Leonard Bernstein!”

Then there is the problem of the audience, of which you are a part; and what people say and do while your child is doing his stuff. We all have heard or witnessed parents and fans who go a bit crazy in opposition to each other over the performance of their eight-year-olds. It is worth remembering what happened on occasion when Jackie Robinson became the first black man in the 20th century to integrate organized baseball.

Before his 1947 debut in the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson played one season for the Montreal Royals of the International League. The rudeness and racism recalled by his wife Rachel at the time of the team’s April, 1946 appearance in Baltimore is recounted by Jules Tygiel in Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy:

When Jackie appeared on the field, the man sitting behind her shouted, “Here comes that nigger son of a bitch. Let’s give it to him now.” The Baltimore fans unleashed an unending torrent of abuse. All around her people engaged “in the worst kind of name-calling and attacks on Jackie that I had to sit through.” For one of the few times Rachel feared for Jackie’s physical safety. That night as she cried in her hotel room, Rachel thought that perhaps Jackie should withdraw from the integration venture.

Fortunately, as the proud parent of daughters who have performed, I never had to deal with anything like that. Just the usual twittering, texting, whispering, program rustling, and bracelet jangling, that is the commonly experienced thoughtlessness in auditoriums world-wide.

But on one noteworthy occasion attended by me with my wife, I went beyond an occasional stern look to take on a woman who should have known better than to converse with her neighbor when my youngest child was in a high school production of West Side Story.

The lady was a senior citizen two seats to my right, nicely dressed, who was talking pretty loudly to a friend seated to her right. Because she was turned in her neighbor’s direction most of the time, it was difficult to catch her eye in the hope that “a look” might communicate my wish for her to quiet down. About 20 minutes in to the performance I’d had about enough.

I leaned as far to my right as I could (across the body of my friend Rich who was our guest) and, in one of the few moments when she was looking forward, she noticed me as I said, “Please be quiet!”

It was not said with ferocity, but I’m sure she knew I meant business. And, indeed, she was quieter for the rest of the first half of the performance.

Rich and I had to walk past this woman in the aisle as we began to make our way to the lobby at intermission. To my considerable surprise, as I passed this lady, she actually pushed me into the railing barrier to my left. I turned right to face her.

“Why were you so angry?” she said.

“I wanted to listen to the performance.”

“But I was only talking during the orchestra part, not the singing!” she indignantly continued.

“But I wanted to hear the orchestra. You know, you are not in your living room and this is not TV!”

With that, the encounter ended.

No guns were drawn, no knives displayed, no one put on brass knuckles, and no chains or tire irons were brandished — there was no “rumble” — no example of life imitating art, as in the gang fight that is a central part of the musical we were watching.

And my antagonist and her companion did not return after intermission.

Given that more and more states permit concealed weapons, I suppose I was taking a risk. I can’t recommend that you take on rude audience members, who might retaliate even more forcefully than did the lady in question.

But, it is hard to “tune out” people who create a volume of sound sufficient to compete with the main attraction.

It was another one of those situations in which different people react differently, sometimes dependent on mood, the capacity to tolerate frustration, an evaluation of the importance of the matter, and one’s ability to be assertive or foolhardy — however you happen to label such action.

In the end, I guess I should simply be glad that it wasn’t Baltimore in the 1940s and my adversary didn’t have her own set of family members handy, and a length of rope to hang from the nearest tree.

Rachel Robinson would understand.

—

The top image is from a 2003 performance of West Side Story given in Brno, Czech Republic by Městské divadlo. It is the work of Jef Kratochvil. The second photo is of Leonard Bernstein in 1945, taken by Fred Palumbo, then a photographer for the World Telegram. The third picture is a 1950 lobby card for The Jackie Robinson Story. The final image is of Rachel Robinson Accepting the Congressional Gold Medal for her husband, deceased baseball star Jackie Robinson on March 2, 2005. From left to right: Nancy Pelosi, President George W. Bush, Mrs. Robinson, and Dennis Hastert. The picture was taken by White House photographer Eric Draper. All photos are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Turning points in therapy and in life are usually seen only in retrospect.

Sometimes — many times — therapy leads to a better life. But sometimes, therapy creates pain in the process of trying to do its work. The patient can experience it as a necessary part of the process; or, as one more disappointment, frustration, failure, or betrayal in a life already filled with them.

It often depends on the type of discomfort that therapy is causing.

I’d like to describe four different categories of such therapeutic problems. Three of these involve failures of the therapist. But one (Item #3) is a frequent development in therapy that has to do with the nature of treatment and how people deal with emotional pain, rather than some shortcoming of the counselor.

1. Countertransference

Therapists can get frustrated or angry with patients, attracted to them or repelled by them, bored by them or fascinated by them. Therapists are human, so they are subject to all the same relationship issues as everyone else.

Of course, we are trained to keep a therapeutic distance and to know ourselves well enough to minimize all of the above. Unfortunately, self-knowledge is always less than complete and training can be an imperfect aid when faced with challenging relationships.

The psychoanalytic concept of countertransference was an early contribution to understanding these sorts of dilemmas within the doctor and patient dyad. It refers to the therapist’s feelings toward the patient, particularly those that may be unconscious and stem from unresolved relationship issues in his own childhood.

For example, does the patient somehow remind him of a mother who was insufficiently loving or too critical? Those are the sorts of feelings that can sneak up on the counselor without him fully realizing what is happening and why.

Therapists who are not aware of the shadow of their own past can be destructive toward the very people they are supposed to help. Similarly, healers who are themselves too needy or too stressed will not be at their best when someone else requires their undivided attention. Simply put, the therapist should be safe and stable — on land if the patient is at sea, so that he will not be sucked into a whirlpool of suffering and make things worse.

In other words, the therapist must be professional. And, if he finds that he is pulling too hard or being too critical, then damage to that person is likely.

How will the counselor react if he discovers that he doesn’t enjoy the patient’s company or thinks that the patient is too demanding or too dependent — too critical or cancels appointments too often — not improving fast enough? Will the therapist lash back, feel hurt, try too hard to win the patient’s approval? Under such circumstances, the patient can be harmed, even if he provoked the relationship complication himself.

Therapists are well-advised to reflect on their own feelings, work on their own unresolved issues, obtain advice or supervision about challenging therapeutic encounters, and sometimes refer the patient elsewhere; not to mention, get their own treatment if their issues are compromising professional responsibilities.

2. Therapists Who Cross Boundaries

There are two categories here. First, those therapists who mean well, but are not aware of their personal vulnerabilities and the necessity of inviolable boundaries between themselves and those they serve. These practitioners therefore fail to set firm limits on responding to the neediness (or attractiveness) of their patients. Second, there are those self-described “healers” who are frankly corrupt.

• Let us begin with the first of these two categories. In an effort to help, some therapists simply do too much for the patient. A few examples:

1. Discounting (or deferring) fees to the extent of feeling resentment.
2. Agreeing to schedule appointments so early or late (or on weekends or holidays) to the point of wanting to help the patient more than the patient wants to help himself.
3. Seeing patients outside of therapy in some sort of quasi-friendship.
4. Giving patients a physical contact that they crave which leads to sexual contact.

I’ve known therapists who took too many calls in the middle of the night for their own good or that of their family, counselors who brought patients who were down-on-their-luck into their own homes, and those who did not (I don’t think) intend for a comforting hug to become sexual, but who found that it did.

• In the second category, some counselors — thankfully not a great number (although one would be too many) — take advantage of the power relationship in treatment. An attractive patient can be used for sexual purposes, or for the ego-boost that such encounters can provide, without conscience; or with some sort of rationalization that it is actually therapeutic. It isn’t, no matter how much the patient provokes it, desires it, or the counselor rationalizes it. More on the problem of “dual roles” and boundary violations can be found on a previous blog post about damaged therapists: When Helping Hurts.

3. When the Patient Has Improved Somewhat and Now Has Less Motivation to Continue the Hard Work of Treatment

Naturally, when therapy is working the person who came to treatment starts to feel better. Sometimes, in fact, he feels better even when therapy isn’t doing very much. Many if not most individuals come to therapy in a crisis. Eventually such a crisis will pass or at least begin to be more tolerable, even if the treatment isn’t the reason.

Once the patient is experiencing less pain, he now has less reason to stay in therapy. The pain is what brought him in and the desire to reduce pain was the motivation to do the hard work involved in treatment. Now that there is less motivation, there just might be less cause to suffer the unsettling thoughts and feelings that therapy stirs up, not to mention its financial cost and the amount of time that it takes.

Take a look at the graph below. The red line (AB) is the pain of “life,” the distress that the patient finds outside of the doctor’s office — the upset, unhappiness, and disappointment that brought him to consult the psychologist in the first place.

The blue line (PQ) in the graph is the pain or effort required by the therapy process itself. Therapy is hard work. It is often also intense and wrenching, since it asks people to change, stop avoiding frightening situations, and face the demons that might have been covered over until the therapist worked to address them: those incompletely healed psychic wounds that are still excruciating to touch.

On the left side of the graph you will note that the red line (AB) is above the blue line (PQ). That is, when the person enters treatment, the pain of the person’s life is greater than the pain caused by therapy’s effort to make life better. But, as I indicated, at some point it is likely that the pain of life is reduced, while the discomfort (effort or difficulty) of therapy remains constant or might even increase. Why increase? Usually because the most tenacious problems are the hardest for the therapist to successfully address and might include taking the patient deeper into traumatic memories that he has tried to look past.

Once the patient has improved sufficiently (where the two lines intersect at point C), he now begins to find that staying in therapy causes more discomfort than getting out of it, as indicated on the graph by the fact that the blue line is higher than the red line (on the right side of the image). When the point of intersection of these lines is passed, the patient often wants to terminate treatment. Only those with sufficient “therapeutic integrity” or courage will stay long enough to resolve the most intractable of the issues that brought them to the doctor’s office in the first place. Or, they will wait until another life crisis brings them back to finish the job.

4. Therapists Who Haven’t Done Their Homework

It has only been in the last couple of decades that research has begun to point clearly to those treatments that are most helpful for some of the conditions therapists treat. Broadly defined, for example, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to be the “treatment of choice” for most people who suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Despite this, many therapists who claim to treat such conditions do not avail themselves of these treatment approaches or don’t familiarize themselves with the research upon which they are based.

Why?

Some weren’t trained in how to evaluate research or in how to engage in this form of therapy. Some stopped reading about progress in working with these conditions or “don’t believe” in the conceptual grounding of CBT. Some are too busy (or think they are too busy) making a living to afford the time and effort required to be up to date. Some trust their intuition to the point of rejecting anything that doesn’t match what they have come to believe is most important about how to deliver service to the people who seek them out.

The difficulty here is that therapeutic models should not be like religious beliefs, based on faith rather than evidence.

While a failure to follow “best practices” for which there is empirical evidence is not as egregious a violation of trust as sexual contact with a patient, counselors must keep learning and growing in their field of alleged expertise, just as much as they encourage their patients to grow personally.

In summary, therapists are not unique in having the capacity to do injury, but their position of authority gives them a vantage point somewhat like that which parents have with their children, making it easier to accomplish quite inadvertently.

The remedy? Obtain recommendations about counselors from those you trust. Read up on the treatment of your condition. Collaborate in your treatment, don’t just count on the therapist to do exactly what you need at every moment. Let him know about any concerns that arise. If necessary, get a second opinion. And keep your eyes open for the things I’ve described.

Not least, have the courage to stay in therapy even when the process touches on important issues that are sensitive.

As the old saying tells us, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

And, no, I don’t mean “…going out the door.”

—

The above photo is called U-Turn by Zipley is sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Intersecting Lines is sourced from onlinemathlearning.com

“Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” Satchel Paige’s words suggest that life should be lived “full steam ahead,” not weighed down by regular retrospection. Most people take the advice to heart, at least to some extent, even if having never read it or heard it.

And, past age 60, my experience as a therapist suggests that such reconsideration of one’s own history becomes less and less likely. Unless tragedy strikes, a senior citizen who is a therapy virgin is not likely to seek the counselor’s services. No, the story that we tell ourselves about our life usually becomes fixed and — one must say it — self-serving, so that one does not become overwhelmed by remorse and the things that “should have” (or should not have) been done: the failed persistence, poor choices, and chances not taken; the damage done to others, including our children, our lovers, and our friends.

It is as if our old brain knows what our young brain couldn’t imagine: that there will come a time when there is not enough of a future to redeem the past.

We are, most of us, pretty well rationalized.

Yet this is what Julian Barnes’s prize-winning book The Sense of an Ending is about: the reflection upon and reevaluation of a life of 60-some years, by the author of that life, Barnes’s fictional narrator Tony Webster. And, if you are inclined to such self-analysis or even the common speculation about why people in your life do what they do, you might just find it the best work of fiction that you’ve read in a long time.

On the face of it, the story appears to be a simple one: a tale about pre-college friends including Tony, and his relationship with his first serious girlfriend; then losing touch with all those people, one of whom suffers tragedy. Finally, a jump of 40 years and the reinterpretation of that tragedy and those relationships, as well as his second-thoughts about himself. All of this occurs because of an apparently inexplicable event that disrupts Webster’s “peaceable” way of being.

Until that new monkey-wrench is thrown into the works, Tony thought he’d “wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded.” Somehow he’d trod a course that set aside youthful ambitions and hope for excitement, settling for things (and women) that were predictable and straight-lined. Eventually, he will realize that “We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.”

What he must now face — the way in which long-ago actions have continued to have consequences — is the mystery that Tony (and the reader along with him) will soon come to know.

The book raises a number of issues:

• How much can you trust your own memory?
• How much of your memory is selective and comforting?
• How much are you responsible for what happens to you in your life?
• How much are your actions responsible for what happens to others?
• Past what point is self-reflection destructive or, to paraphrase a Jack Nicholson character, “Can you handle the truth?” assuming that it is knowable?
• How much damage to others do even the most careful of us cause?
• Is it possible to be completely honest with oneself?

Most of the time one does want to — need to — think that “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” The world would be too scary otherwise.

A simple example illustrates the complexity here:

In graduate school a friend requested me to help his girlfriend move some things from one apartment to another. Although I owned a car, I took the rapid transit and got off at the wrong subway stop, one station away from where I should have been. I didn’t realize until I walked a bit that it was in a terrible neighborhood. In the event, I arrived at my destination safely on foot.

But instead, you could have read this story on the next day’s front page:

Northwestern Graduate Student Murdered Near Cabrini-Green Housing Project

That no one did has always seemed to me a matter of pure luck.

What if I hadn’t been so lucky? Others would ask themselves, how did this happen? Doubtless, my friend would have found out; his girlfriend, too. Would they have felt guilty? Neither intended to set the chain of events in motion, yet both were a part of that chain.

As Tony Webster would say, “There is accumulation.” One thing leads to another.

Why didn’t I drive? Even I can no longer answer this question; I simply have no recollection of how I came to the decision to take the subway. Was it to save money? Was it because I thought it would be difficult to find parking? Was my car in the repair shop?

And why didn’t I walk back to the subway stop soon after I got off the train, the better to go to the next station? Shouldn’t I have been more aware of my surroundings and a little more terrified? Was I too cheap to pay another fare? And if I was, to what extent was that based on how I’d been raised, lessons learned at home about the dearness of the dollar? And if that is so, do my parents have some responsibility in the chain of events?

The example I’ve just given you might seem a bit silly, but I assure you that Barnes’s protagonist confronts a set of events that are much more compelling, involving real events and relationship complications, not things that didn’t happen, as in my illustration. But in both instances, one can ask oneself many questions: Why did I do that? What if I’d not done that? What if I’d done something different?

On the answers to these questions — really, on the actions themselves — lives can depend; at least the quality of a life.

The Sense of an Ending reminded me a bit of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. In each novel the author gives you enough information to put you in the position of an important character in the book, forcing you to live with the same incomplete knowledge that the character has of how things will end up. In Barnes’s work, this will likely cause you to want to reread the book, just as Tony Webster attempts to reread his life through letters and photos, the incomplete testimony of others, and his own imperfect and self-justifying memory. But at 163 pages, the rereading is just as engrossing as the first read-through (for me, just one day earlier).

If you believe that, in Kafka’s words, “a book should be an ax to break the frozen sea within us,” then know that this is such a book.

All of us are, or could be, like Tony or Lot’s wife, from the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot is the nephew of Abraham in the biblical Book of Genesis. Lot and his wife are permitted to leave before God’s destruction of the two famously iniquitous cities, but there is a catch. They are instructed by angels not to look back. When Lot’s wife does, she is turned into a pillar of salt.

Yet we must look back, mustn’t we? At least some of the time? Isn’t that how we learn? As a therapist, I would certainly say so.

But the biblical rejoinder comes to mind from Ecclesiastes 1:18:

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Or in the words of Tony at the book’s end:

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The positive aspect of looking back can be found here: The Handwriting on the Wall.

The two images are photos of Hamo Thornycroft’s sculpture Lot’s Wife. The first is the work of Yair Haklai. The second is the uploaded photo of Donald Macauley by Amada 44. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Life is full of the “before” and “after” of things: before and after you could walk, before and after you began school; and before and after you started to fraternize with the opposite sex.

Indeed, it is hard to remember what the “before” life was like. How was it before you had children, for example? Most parents can describe it, but life is so altered by kiddies that such a “before” seems impossibly distant, as if it happened to someone else.

Which brings me to those days prior to the time that I or any of my friends made real, palpable, serious physical contact with young women; other than, perhaps, walking into them by accident.

Life was simpler without thinking about girls.

It didn’t make a difference how you looked or who looked at you. You grudgingly talked to girls, but you really didn’t enjoy it, as you did when conversing with Ron or Steve or your Uncle Sam about baseball. You didn’t play ball with girls and when they seemed fond of you, it was creepy. Something in their saucer-eyed, admiring gaze. Just the way a girl might pronounce your name made you sprint in the opposite direction.

Yes, there were some boys who teased girls. It is even said that this is the way little guys show an interest. Some, though, were just testing what they could get away with; trying to see where their own boundaries were and what mischief was possible. Hardly a reckoning with romance or a lesson in lust.

Anatomical curiosity was present, but it didn’t require attention to body parts that were beneath undergarments. The kid who got the most playground notice from the Jamieson School first-graders enjoyed flipping back one of his upper eyelids (turning it inside out) while he crossed his eyes, thus provoking an occasional howl from a squeamish classmate. If you were his friend he would put on the show for free and even simultaneously flip the second eyelid. Others were charged a nickel. Today he is running for President as a Republican.

In my home there were only occasional allusions made to things that suggested throbbing physical attraction. My single memory in this regard, maybe because it happened every year, was viewing the Miss America Pagent on TV, an event not to be missed by my father or my Uncle Manny. When an especially curvaceous contestant sashayed across the stage in her bathing suit, my dad (at least once or twice during the show) would blurt out “Holy Criminy, hung to the gills!” in a half-humorous hoot that never occurred at any other time.

Somehow I gathered that he wasn’t talking about fishing.

You don’t hear that reference to a woman’s bosom used these days. It might even have been my dad’s invention, as he was an avid fisherman.

In fifth grade I found my eyes being drawn to a girl’s legs. One girl in particular. “What is this about?” I asked myself. My little mind found it illogical. Those female underpinnings no longer seemed a simple necessity designed to keep the girls moving forward and avoid a great reduction in height. This newly acquired attention to a distaff body part was involuntary, not to say alarming. It was the first sign that my body was taking possession of my brain. Adult women know all about this masculine flaw, but as a kid I had no idea.

It must have been about the same time, or perhaps a little later, that most of my classmates were being invited to boy-girl parties by some of the females. Spin-the-bottle was a highlight, I guess, although the darkened room to which the chosen couple repaired — the one who had done the spinning and the opposite-sexed person at whom the bottle pointed — was a pretty innocent place.

As an example, the girl with the good legs, who would soon be my girlfriend, asked me an interesting question in the dimly lit cell which we were required to inhabit for a few minutes:

“Gerry, did you know that the most beautiful girl in the world is deaf?”

I, ever the straight man, could only answer “No.”

“What did you say?” she replied.

In other words, good legs and clever.

My folks never talked directly about sex, but occasionally a question would be answered in a way that was nonetheless informative. Watching The Untouchables TV series with my father, I heard the word “prostitution” for the first time, in reference to one of the illegal activities that the Capone gangsters operated in Chicago. When I asked dad what that was, he did indeed say “It’s when women sell their bodies.”

For what?

To whom?

At the grocery?

What aisle is that?

I knew that he would say no more, so I refrained from asking.

By the end of sixth grade I think I was hip deep in the “latency period.” Freud labeled this as the time before puberty when your sexual preoccupations basically go to sleep.

Although Sigmund Freud’s thoughts on the subject are no longer the gospel, I do recall losing interest for a little while. As evidence, I submit the case of a party to which I was supposed to accompany a charming lass named Heidi, about whom I forgot entirely while riding bikes with my friend Jerry, not awakening to my faux pas until an hour after the get-together was to have started.

I also remember apologizing to the poor girl, realizing that it would be better not to tell her what it was that caused me to lose track of the time, my desire to be with her, and the obligation I surely felt.

Whatever earthy urges were bubbling down-low were sublimated into alternative activities and interests. Perhaps they fueled our school work or athletic endeavors. But one of my friends seemed more interested in lunch than ladies. He pasted a magazine picture of a hamburger, fries, and a coke on the ceiling of his bedroom so that it was the first thing he saw every morning upon opening his eyes. It was a few years before Farrah Fawcett would take its place.

By age 16, I was vaguely jealous of the two guys I knew well who had started going out with girls, particularly because these friends had no obvious appeal that set them apart from the rest of us. Their relative success, however, did reinforce my esteem for the great “Sigmund,”  who must have been as puzzled as I was when he asked, “What do women want?”

Surely not these guys, I thought. Yet the facts suggested otherwise.

To their credit, those pioneers on the route to serious sexual contact introduced me to the fact that success is often simply a matter of showing up and saying something. They’d asked some girls on dates and, at least occasionally, the female targets of these requests said “yes.” The idea being that even if you swing at a baseball with your eyes closed, you will sometimes get to first base.

Taking initiative and having relatively little self-consciousness, especially in that immature moment in all of our lives, was just about all you needed if you were male and most of the other Y-chromosome types were holding back. Of course, the alternatives for the terminally insecure were begging and pleading, but even these required enough courage to get within whimpering distance of the selected female.

But where could you be with a girl in private? Usually not at home, where curious parents and evil siblings might spy on you. My friend Alan didn’t want anybody to see the three-ring circus he lived in, certainly not someone he hoped to impress. One Saturday, nonetheless, found his date being dropped-off at his house. When he prepared to leave with her to go to a movie, Alan’s father asked “Where are you two going?”

“We’re going to a show.”

“Why you going to a show? You’ve got a show right here!”

One of my regular compatriots at the Mather High School cafeteria would bring the daily Chicago Sun Times to the lunch table. Soon enough, we were all drawn to the part of the paper that advertised movies, theater, and especially the burlesque shows of South State Street. The Rialto Theater’s ad was the most interesting, because it reported that there would be:

MIDNIGHT SHAMBLES EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT. BRING THE LADIES!

As a substitute for the actual possibility of some sort of fondling with an agreeable female, we spent many lunches pondering what exactly “midnight shambles” would involve. We discussed it so often, that for convenience we made it into the acronym MSBTL. Since none of us were old enough to attend, my buddies were left with no alternative but to think about it and talk about it. It suffices to say that had the Rialto Theater found a way to charge our group for all the time we spent fantasizing regarding the naked women who were “shambling,” it probably would have made more money than derived from its actual box office receipts.

For most of us, the premarital sex-thing remained very mysterious, impenetrable in every sense; as well as clearly immoral, since it was the part of the ’60s that hadn’t escaped the ’50s — not yet the sexual revolution. At the same time, the topic was mystical and quasi-religious, the kind of subject that hooded shamans spoke of in hushed voices while incense burned; not nearly the publicly exposed casual part of today’s daily life that is as unremarkable as chewing gum.

The actual idea of intercourse suggested lots of moving parts that you didn’t yet know how to move or where to move them — lots of tabs and slots that I already realized I wasn’t very good at when I tried to follow the directions for assembling model airplanes; for example, “insert tab A into slot B.”

It also demanded technical skill in dark places without the miner’s helmet that I was inclined to wear in order to improve my chances. Notes and diagrams might have been helpful, but without the light, well…

Why didn’t a girl’s body come with instructions written on the package, like a box of aspirin? Even better, with day-glo lettering and diagrams?

Many of us were in the dark both literally and figuratively; lacking the required touch, deft and sure, that was far more challenging to acquire than the ability to hit to right field or throw a curve ball, skills that had been tough enough to learn. Nor was it a talent that you could perfect on a public baseball diamond when it was your turn at bat.

All the while, a ten-foot-tall sasquatch-like entity named “Insecurity,” who had his own chair at our regular Mather High School lunch table, instilled whispered self-doubts in whomever sat beside him:

Aw, jeez, why did you say that?

Does your hair look OK?

Are you sure your fly is zipped?

How did we survive all this? The way most other very young men do, I suppose. The procreative urge and a little bit of courage find a way to carry the day.

We are, every one of us, after all, the descendants of people who had sex.

I have told you, friend, that last bit of information in confidence. That is, the bit about actually “doing it.”

Your forbearance would be most appreciated because, whatever you might think to say on the subject, I’m sure that my adult daughters still don’t want to know.

—

The top image is Hawaiian Boy and Girl, a 1928 mural by Arman Manookian, sourced from Wikipedia. Next comes a photo of Hanna Rose Hall, by Christian Lovenzo. The author of the bottom poster of the Follies Bergere is “Pal.” The last two items were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

I don’t watch much TV and certainly not much reality TV. But still, I find The Bachelor and The Bachelorette on ABC have their fascination.

You probably know the drill: twenty-five competitors for the affection of a single member of the opposite sex. The “star” gradually winnows the field over the course of the series, until only two remain for some sort of romantic, cliff-hanging showdown. All this is orchestrated around activities that have a Fantasy-Land, once-in-a-lifetime quality; and done in places of exotic beauty that would make virtually any honeymoon seem shabby by comparison.

Yet, cast out of paradise, the couples rarely if ever last. The undying love dies. The bloom comes off the rose.

Why?

Here are some reasons:

1. Who are these people?

We are offered competitors who are uniformly very attractive, some sensationally so. Why are they single?

As they are generally in their 20s or early 30s, is it really possible that they have exhausted the more conventional ways of finding love? Many complain of previous romantic disappointments. Do they believe that their chances will be better with 24 rivals than they were in their past history of dating? Isn’t their judgment here a little suspect? A move to Antarctica might actually improve their chances; at least if 24 other beautiful people didn’t make the same trip.

Some have resigned from jobs or left small children behind to take a flyer on a stranger who might have only been seen by them on the past season’s edition of the Bachelor/Bachelorette enterprise, where he lost the race they now hope to enter themselves. Again, what part of the decision to come on the show should make us think that this will end well?

2. Alcohol

Wine appears to be the omnipresent social lubricant during the filming. It is well-known to disinhibit people, making for more drama. But it tends to add to whatever relationship problems might exist, if not create them. Nor will romance conducted while buzzed necessarily predict a successful daily life while sober. Solid relationships tend to begin with poetry, but must survive in prose. Just so, they can start with a toast, but are sustained in moderation lest they become toast.

3. Mistaking Intensity For Love

Since the contestants are not movie stars, the idea of being a TV celebrity must be a pretty heady experience. Indeed, there is no shortage of cinematic emotion on these shows, partly because of the enchanting surroundings and dazzling events. Everyone appears stressed by the competition, sometimes by a lack of sleep, the nearly total absence of privacy; and the guillotine-like quality of each “rose ceremony,” which some of the contestants approach as they would if a real headsman were about to execute them and not simply let them go. All the internal stirring that comes from these circumstances can mistakenly get attached to the single object of everyone’s affection. Will “Mr. Wonderful” be nearly so exciting when he comes home to share a TV dinner instead of a dinner on TV?

4. Casting

Is there any bona fide attempt to choose 25 contestants who might actually be compatible with the bachelor or bachelorette; that is, beyond obvious physical attraction? My guess is that the producers are looking for people who are outgoing, quirky, and sometimes perhaps even brash or off-balance, all the more to make for watchable relationship dynamics. Not much room for the sedate or the shy. This is, after all, a real-life soap opera.

But, if compatibility were crucial, wouldn’t you want to choose people based on similar interests, well-matched personalities, geographical comfort zones, and the like? Once the final couple leaves the Disney-like surroundings, what are they going to talk about, where will they live, what will be the emotional and financial or career costs of relocation, and what kinds of activities will they share?

5. Motivation

Are all 26 people, including the star, there for what are called “the right reasons?” Surely, some come for the bells and whistles, the self-display, the adventure, or the idea of having their 15 minutes of fame. Others may see it as a means of self-promotion, increasing their chances for personal career success or for the advancement of their business.

6. Time

One repeatedly hears the suitors moaning about not having enough time with their romantic target. And, of course, the time they do get is being video recorded, creating a distinctly artificial analogue to the way the participants would be in “real-time” and real life. Even beyond that, the show is apparently filmed, start to finish, in about six weeks. While I’ve known brief courtships to lead to long-term romance, they are usually time-intensive and exclusive, cramming a lot of experience into the space of a few months. Does serial dating of multiple partners for a very few weeks favor long-term survival of the match between any two (still) strangers?

7. Supply and Demand

Consider the set up:

• Everyone around you thinks the star is terrific.

• You have nothing else to do other than talk with your dorm-mates and drink.

• There is only one available member of the opposite sex.

The scarcity of options alone suggests that his value is likely to go up, at least while those conditions prevail. Put more crudely, if you know there is going to be a food shortage, lots of people are going to knock themselves out to get to the meat counter first and stock-up; even vegetarians. But would you really care about that particular grocery item nearly as much, if the stores shelves and freezers were full of other possibilities and no scarcities were anticipated?

From what I’ve seen of these shows, there is much sadness and heartbreak on all sides. Yet the new contestants come “looking for love” with Pollyanna-like optimism, somehow thinking that their experience will be different. A few, from what they say, may already be smitten with the star, who they’ve seen get hurt in a previous edition of the show.

All are smart enough to know that even if they “win” the romantic prize, their relationship is almost certain to break down once midnight strikes and the carriage turns back into a pumpkin; where real life intrudes on dreams and a pie in the sky crashes to earth, leaving an inedible mess.

Yet they do still come.

In the course of the show, and in reflecting on it later, many appear to learn something about being open to experience, not closed off to what life may yet offer. Surely some grow, profiting from the pain and disappointment, not to mention the chance to see how they behaved when the program finally airs. In this way, each contestant is offered the rare opportunity to view himself or herself not in the mirror, but in the actual lived experience that the camera records.

I expect running the show’s gauntlet itself has the value of adding to each person’s life story — the story that they tell themselves about their lives. To have tried some things, even if you fail, is better than to be a back-bencher, rarely getting into the game. As war veterans say, nothing in their life after war compares to the intensity of the time in battle, even though that time was frequently awful; indeed, because of the nature of the awfulness.

I don’t wish to be too cynical here. I am convinced that many of the potential lovers come for exactly what they say they want, that “Thing Called Love.”

In spite of everything. In spite of the terrible odds. In spite of the likely humiliation and defeat.

In spite of the heartache.

Why?

We do so want to be loved, don’t we.

As the old song goes, “I’d Do Anything For Love.”

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The Moment of Happiness at the top is the work of Claire mono from Taiwan. The photo that follows is called The Kiss by Bleiglass. Finally,  The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Just a few random thoughts on what you might choose to resolve (begin, stop, or continue) in 2012:

I

• raise your hand
• take a chance
• diversify both your economic and emotional life: resist putting all your eggs in one basket, financial or human
• learn to say “no”
• there will always be someone better, someone smarter, and someone better looking; get used to it
• exercise
• don’t text or tweet the day away
• give up on TV news soundbites and actually read something in-depth on the state of the world from a relatively unbiased source
• look in the mirror at what is underneath the surface
• make friends

II

• when upset, imagine how you will feel in a week, a month, or a year; in other words, know that most turmoil is passing
• don’t be a doormat
• deal with your childhood
• be honest, not just when it is convenient
• work hard (don’t learn the tricks of the trade before you learn the trade)
• sometimes the rain won’t stop, so discover how to dance in the rain
• be grateful and express it
• learn to apologize without excuses
• pay it forward
• pay it back

III

• before sending an angry email, write down 40 ways your missive can be misunderstood or ruin your life; then wait some more before sending
• find some hobbies
• eat right
• beware of hopelessness, but do not became a slave to hope’s capacity for illusion
• avoid too much self distraction
• remind yourself that there is no such thing as “must-see TV”
• don’t abuse substances
• laugh
• you have a shadow; best that you get to know it since you most certainly can’t outrun it
• stand for yourself, but also for something bigger

IV

• have humility
• be careful about judging
• have new experiences and learn from them
• don’t wait until your feelings change to act (act and your feelings are likely to change)
• recognize that luck plays a part in life
• be flexible — don’t inflexibly resist change
• grieve when necessary, lest things build up
• make eye contact
• if you are anxious, learn to be less concerned about others’ opinions
• realize that money isn’t everything and that the American Dream is a fraud

V

• know that your kids aren’t all the same and that each one needs something different from you
• sample things — try them before you say you have no interest in them
• don’t wait for your savior, save yourself
• choose your battles, but don’t permanently lay down your arms
• treat your body as if you might just need it for a while
• recognize that you are not as important as you think (unless you are the President, a brain surgeon, or the second coming of  Shakespeare)
• spend less time worrying and accept that most bad things are survivable
• be an informed citizen, learn about history and vote
• make haste slowly
• don’t accept easy answers

VI

• embrace the opportunity to perform
• every committee has work horses and show horses; choose the first role lest you look like an ass
• stay out-of-the-way of people who are bulldozers; it’s only a matter of time before they run you over
• get out of the city into nature and be dazzled
• spend time with a few members of a different faith, color, religious group, or political party and get a new perspective
• As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do”
• do your best to ignore Ashton, Britney, “The Donald,” Kim, Lindsay, Snooki, and “The Real Housewives;” emptier lives are not to be found unless it is among their fans
• keep your cell phone off the dinner table and make public cell phone conversations as private and rare as possible
• don’t text while driving — ever
• remind yourself every day that (with luck) you are going to get old, wrinkled, and die

VII

• practice, practice, practice
• remember that this is not the rehearsal, this is the performance
• don’t be self-righteous
• get some rest
• consider whether those guys carrying signs that say “Repent, the end is near!” might be on to something
• ask yourself “What would Jesus do?” before you foreclose on someone’s house or stiff your waiter
• realize that being confused might be an opportunity to learn
• ask questions
• when you say you are going to do something, do it
• keep secrets when asked to do so

VIII

• don’t be a gossip
• recognize that a life of logic (without a counterbalance of feeling) is the equivalent of becoming a mathematical formula or a computer
• learn to be direct
• don’t have sex while chewing gum; and, for sure, don’t make it as unremarkable as chewing gum
• do one thing at a time, with all your attention
• don’t talk over others; listen when spoken to; be polite
• get over yourself
• trust, but verify
• find the poetry in the prosaic and the cool in the quotidian
• earn your life

IX

• have a good time
• meditate
• live with intensity
• be kind
• surrender to intimacy
• make your life matter
• live by the “golden rule”
• study all your life
• be an enemy of routine
• love someone or something

X

• make new mistakes
• test yourself
• swing for the fences; shoot for something big
• try to figure out where you are headed; it’s harder to get there unless you know
• learn to tell a joke
• take time to smell the roses
• keep a lid on the number of complaints you utter and the number of excuses you make
• get off the cross, we need the wood
• whether you are a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond, be sure you learn to swim
• and, to quote Studs Terkel: “Take it easy, but take it”

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The above photo of a New Year Streamer is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.