Things change
right away
after a while
Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a man marries his troubles begin.
Nursery rhyme
Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
Congreve??
You try out your contracted role
and find you don't like the deal you made
you regret the sacrifices you had to make
there's resentment about opportunities sacrificed, regrets
lost freedom (to travel)
you're guilty about the other's sacrifices
discontent 'just a housewife'
guilt at playing traditional, unliberated role
stuck in hopeless evenings, hopeless days, months, years
He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon (England 1561-1626) "Essays"
The woman in love usually despairs because she never seems to have the man she loves before her in his totality. She always finds him somewhat distracted, as if on the way to their meeting he had left sections of his mind scattered about the world. For this reason, the man always seems to be clumsy in love and incapable of reaching the perfection which the woman succeeds in giving to this sentiment.
Ortega (79)
...that was before we got married.
--Before we drained out one another's force
With lies, self-denial, unspoken regret
And the sick eyes that blame; before the divorce
And the treachery.
W.D. Snodgrass (xx b.1926) "Mementoes" [MW]
The hunt is over
the chase-phase
now the rules change
"The chase-- men are used to it-- but once they 'catch' someone, they don't know what to do."
Hite report
Now that he's won you, caught you
he relaxes his courtship-effort
she starts to take you for granted
no longer intensely emotionally engaged
"You can't expect me to keep up that level of charm-- I'd have a heart attack!"
Woody Allen (USA b.1935) "Play It Again, Sam" (1972)
You made it too easy
she's lost all respect for you
as soon as you've got him, you lose interest
as soon as he's got you he loses interest
The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.
Balzac
...he had not ...by his jealousy, given her the proof that he loved her too much, which, between a pair of lovers, forever dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love enough.
Proust [SiL ]
We love only what we do not completely possess.
Proust "The Captive" (RoTP, Vol 5)
Disdain me still, that I may ever love,
For who his love enjoys, can love no more...
?William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (England 1580-1630)
(1612) [Ault1]
Lest too light winning
Make the prize light.
Shakespeare "The Tempest"
The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was Heaven whilst he pursued her as a star; she cannot be Heaven if she stoops to such a one as he.
Ralph Waldo Emerson [L'A]
If one is sure of a woman's love, one looks to see whether she is beautiful or not; if one is doubtful of her heart there is no time to inspect her face.
Stendhal (67)
Nothing left to refuse
..however submissive a slave may be, her company soon grows burdensome.
Stendhal (147)
As you start to feel more secure
you let your masks slip
New information emerges
the truth will out
time [reveals]
someone tells you something they think you ought to know
tries to drive a wedge between you
plays on your anxieties for his own gain
(his vanity, his jealousy)
your behind-the-back remarks get repeated to his face
confessions made after the wedding vows
little suspicions grow by themselves... somthing in the air
He's not quite what you expected
When a Man has Married a Wife, he finds out whether
Her knees and elbows are only glued together.
Wm. Blake
At every step he found that he was disappointed in his former dreams...
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 482. The quote continues,
"and discovered new and unexpected enchantments.")
...there were no such attributes in Annie Hovenden as his imagination had endowed her with.
Hawthorne "Artist of the Beautiful"
Love is the child of illusion, and the parent of disillusion.
Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish 1864-1936) [L'A]
Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.
Anon. [BQAO]
Love is not what you dream.
C.D. Lewis "The Album"
Peek behind the curtain
shock of insight, slap in the face, dreams run askew, disappointment
angel effect subverted (she's no angel)
your expectations evaporate
let down
underneath his good looks
the cupboard is bare
the honeymoon is over
the spell is broken, the magic is gone
it lasted all of five minutes, almost fifty years
love cools, passion wanes (temperature metaphor)
Then each applied to each that fatal knife,
Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul.
When hot for certainties in this our life!
...We are betrayed by what is false within.
George Meredith "Modern Love" [ELP]
If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.
O. Henry (Wm. Sydney Porter) (USA 1862-1910)
"Memoirs of a Yellow Dog"
You cease to idealize
he's a pathetic loser
'Her Explanation'
So you have wondered at me,-- guessed in vain
What the real woman is you know so well?
I am a lost illusion. Some strange spell
Once made your friend there, with his fine disdain
Of fact, conceive me perfect. He would fain
(But could not) see me always, as befell
His dream to see me, plucking asphodel
In saffron robes, on some celestial plain.
All that I was he married and flung away
In quest of what I was not, could not be, --
Lilith, or Helen, or Antigone.
Still he may search, but I have had my day,
And now the Past is all the part for me
That this world's empty stage has left to play.
Edward Rowland Sill (USA 1841-87) [OBAV]
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
Byron "Don Juan"
"Goodness, why are his ears like that?"
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 117) (Anna's first reaction on seeing her
husband again after falling in love with Vronsky)
His promises were insincere
panic
you tell yourself disaster stories
What drives me crazy in the relationship is not knowing... if he really loves me, if he wants to marry me eventually, if he is just going along... taking me for a joyride...?
Anon. "Women and Love"
Alas! that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.
R.W. Emerson "The Amulet" [OOTH]
Doubts, distrust
holding back, secrets, not giving all
cold-blooded-- lies without anxiety
He saw that the innermost recesses of her heart, always before open to him, were now closed against him.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 158)
...can wee soe farr straye to becom less
Circular then wee are now...
17th C. lyric (281)
Let not the darkness dim
Fall like a curtain 'twixt thy soul and Him.
Amir (tr. Khan and Westbrook)
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
Tennyson "Idylls of the King"
Too much faith is folly
Thomas Campion (19) ""
Out of sync
misfitting
'That Reminds Me'
Just imagine yourself seated on a shadowy terrace,
And beside you is a girl who stirs you more strangely than an heiress.
It is a summer evening at its most superb,
And the moonlight reminds you that To Love is an active verb,
And the stars are twinkling like anything,
And a distant orchestra is playing some sentimental old Vienna thing,
And your hand clasps hers, which rests there without shrinking,
And after a silence fraught with romance you ask her what she is thinking,
And she starts and returns from the moon-washed distances to the shadowy veranda,
And says, Oh, I was wondering how many bamboo shoots a day it takes to feed a baby Giant Panda.
Or you stand with her on a hilltop and gaze on a winter sunset,
And everything is as starkly beautiful as a page from Sigrid Undset,
And your arm goes round her waist and you make an avowal which for masterfully marshaled emotional content might have been a page of Ouida's or Thackeray's,
And after a silence fraught with romance she says, I forgot to order the limes for the Daiquiris.
Or in a twilight drawing room you have just asked the most momentous of questions,
And after a silence fraught with romance she says I think this little table would look better where that little table is, but then where would that little table go, have you any suggestions?
And that's the way they go around hitting below our belts;
It isn't that nothing is sacred to them, it's just that at the sacred Moment they are always thinking of something else.
Ogden Nash (USA 1902-71) [MW]
(see also a skit with Jill Clayburgh on the original
Saturday Night Live ("Warthogs...")
A woman is more responsive to a man's forgetfulness than to his attentions.
Jules Janin [L'A]
"Forgive my selfish tears!...
I knew it was that you forgot!"
But all the same, deep in her heart
Rankled this thought, and rankles yet:
When love is at its best one loves
So much that he cannot forget.
Helen Hunt Jackson (xx 1831-85) "Two Truths" [TAV]
Seeing things differently (Rashomon)
emotions/ intuition vs reason (in Western culture)
no intuition, insensitivities
just different, contrary tastes
politics, humor
The loves of two people, even as they love each other, are seldom the same.
Stendhal (117)
What he did not understand was why she should make such a fuss over such a simple thing as a love affair.
Flaubert [MB 161]
"We just can't seem to be ourselves with each other."
Hite Report III
Sexual misfitting
one hornier than the other
cycles out of sync
frigid, impotent, kinky, insensitive
selfish, impatient: she never gets to come
Shame of family [Tarkington: Alice Adams]
friends and families don't fit
pets, stepkids
inlaws (jealous of new competition)
telling your secrets to his parents
friends drop by and don't leave
Changes you'd counted on, growing together, don't happen
he bottles up his emotions
afraid to show weakness
inarticulate, unexpressive, doesn't share
shell, closing off communication, distancing, fear of intimacy
keeping feelings private
expecting him to be a mind-reader
"I can't talk to him
"can't reach him
"there's things I need to talk to someone about"
I have trouble... because I don't seem to get involved with the verbal, expressive type.
Anonymous correspondent in the third "Hite Report"
Not enough variety, unchanging sameness
beauty palls, boredom, Coolidge effect
irritation at sameness
[Romola >> Tito in Romola by George Eliot]
you turn your back on her in bed
But shouldn't a man know everything, excel in all sorts of activities, initiate you into the turbulence of passion, the refinements and mysteries of life? This man taught nothing, knew nothing, wanted nothing. He believed her to be happy; and she resented his steadfast calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she gave him.
Flaubert [MB 35]
His raptures had settled into a regular schedule; he embraced her only at certain hours.
Flaubert [MB 37]
There are men you marry
And it's so boring
There are those you don't marry
And love grows.
Japanese folk song
The boredom of married life is inevitably the death of love whenever love has preceded marriage.
Stendhal "Scarlet and Black"
Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
Jean de la Bruye're
"Les Characte'res" (1688)
[An Italian man] sees Frenchwomen with their little graces, quite charming and seductive for the first three days, but boring on the fourth, that fatal day when he discovers that all these graces, carefully studied beforehand and patiently rehearsed, are eternally the same for every occasion and for every person... One fine evening one is quite astonished to find satiety where one was seeking happiness.
Stendhal (145)
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde "A Woman of No Importance"
Serious personality defects
(she's.. a man! [Lola, As You Like It, Some Like It Hot])
criminal- Godfather
gambler, drunk, drug addict, liar
he's... weird-- neurotic, psychotic (see The 100th Boyfriend)
crazy demands
Showing unpolished side
she abandons her pose of poise, throws a tantrum, pulls a face
hypocrisies revealed, hidden life exposed
Hygiene
smells, gross habits
Inequitable personality
He's self-absorbed
insensitive, insults you without even realizing it
hurts your feelings, lacks compassion
uninterested
doesn't recognize your needs
doesn't notice a new hairstyle, new clothes
everything has to be on his terms
doesn't give you enough of his time, his attention
she won't give up her career
marriage is the loneliest place of all
"[Men] have no interest in how I feel and what I need."
Hite report
"You never wanted to know what happened to me except in relation to you."
Murdoch [Word Child 353]
...it seemed to her that if Charles had made the slightest effort, if he had been at all perceptive, if his glance had only once penetrated her thoughts, an abundance of feeling would suddenly have been released from her heart, like a ripe fruit falling from a tree at the touch of a hand...
Flaubert [MB 35]
You lose yourself in his self-absorption
"No matter how free and strong you are, when you are with a man, you start thinking how he feels, [you] lose any self, any center."
Hite report
"Although I find that I'm funny, sarcastic, and energetic when in mixed groups, 'the life of the party'-- when my boyfriend's there... boom. I'm very quiet."
Correspondent in the Hite Report III
"When I fell in love, I wasn't really happy. I felt myself becoming less and less my own self and more and more and more a part of him... I didn't want to be enveloped."
Anonymous correspondent in the third "Hite Report"
"I thought about him wanting me so much that he had made me deny and nearly forget all about myself-- about myself-- about the real person I was always meant to be... and suddenly his desire for me became... my loathing for him."
Ralph Pape "Soap Opera"
"I want me back."
Women and Love
Drawing back, afraid to be self
afraid of being a drain
He expects you to conform to his images, his expectations
locked into role-playing, status quo, brainwashed
stereotypes ("women are whores")
[Krishnamurti]
To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in another only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.
Goethe "Wisdom and Experience"
Know-it-all, ego, doesn't listen, infuriating attitudes
condescension, correcting your mistakes
not equals, not allowed to show intelligence
negating, not taking ideas seriously
The love bestowed on the great
Is ever full of toil and cares
sir Arthur Gorges (97)
...thence is my greefe for nature whyle she strove
with all her graces and devinest arte
to forme her to to bewtyfull of hew
shee had no leasure left to make her true.
17th C lyric (178)
Loving a proud girl,
I tell you, contains disaster.
Swahili lyric
Possessiveness, possessive gestures
"My husband" smug tone of voice
Charm transformed to egotism
crazy demands
nit-picking perfectionist
We were just using each other
to gratify our own selfish needs
(it's not you she goes for, it's the way you look)
Instead of enjoying the expressions of their lovers' affection, women [of pride] grow conceited, and when they do fall in love, however sensitive they may have been before, they have nothing left but vanity.
Stendhal (85)
Cruel
hurts you (on purpose, compulsively, without noticing)
game-playing, sadisms, "fatso"
curses
put-downs in public, scorn
(comedians tell insulting jokes about their wives)
compulsive little insults (how some "show affection")
competitiveness, one-upsmanship
'Because We Love Each Other Passing Well'
Because we love each other passing well
We are possessed of passing cruelty
Whose devastating powers only tell
Of our devotion's singular degree.
Your lightest gesture, your most fleeting glance,
May fill me with a dull, unreasoning pain,
The words I utter by design or chance
May be the swords by which your peace is slain,
And yet were ours the coolness of dislike
The wisdom of unconcern would bar
The selfsame things from potency to strike--
They would but seem the trifles that they are.
Wherefore to love completely is to find
That hate, despite the name it bears, is kind.
Ruth Lambert Jones (xx ) [BAV2]
...sometimes what we do [for love] could be mistaken for the work of hatred.
Rebecca West (quoted by Peter Wolfe)
Each man kills the thing he loves
Oscar Wilde "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"
Misreads your motives
sees loving gestures as duplicitous
Makes her feel worthless
"you're crazy"
"there's something wrong with you"
insecure, accepts blame
"I'd like to know if all I'm feeling is normal."
Hite report III, many correspondents
He has your passwords
And that tame Lover who unlocks his heart
Unto his mistress, teaching her an art
To plague himself, shows her the secret way
How she may tyrannize another day!
Henry King "The Steed that Comes to Understand"
Here's to woman! Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.
Ambrose Bierce (USA 1842-1914?) [PBQ]
Women shouldn't tie men down
pretending to be less attached than you really are
terror of dependent women
He's so physically dependent (men are babies)
money, job
paychecks (men still earn more)
unambitious, loser, go-nowhere job
wriggles out of check
division of labor
unloads his burdens onto you
housework: cooking, cleaning
he expects you to be the neat one
lazy slob (spoiled by his mother)
wants you always at his beck and call
dependent for entertainment
The emotional housework
Comparisons
"I have more fun with my friends
with my women friends
I can talk to them..."
Jealousy
talking about past loves
(any name he mentions appears to have been a lover)
joking about outside interests
fear of loss
(your knowledge of her loving you
enables to you to picture her loving others-- Swann)
trying to hold, clinging
emotional uncertainty
(she reads Dear Abby and her imagination goes wild with paranoia)
telling yourself disaster stories
(why are you so moody?)
reassurances
The most neglected mistress, once she shows a preference for another man, robs us of all peace and stirs our hearts into something very like passion.
Stendhal (123)
And suddenly a strange idea crossed her mind: what if he did not love her any more? ...She drank in eagerly the assurances of love, which he thought so vulgar he was ashamed to utter them...
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 551)
"If one had the most precious diamond in the world in your pocket wouldn't you be afraid of losing it, wouldn't you keep putting your hand in to be sure it was still there?"
Murdoch "The Book and the Brotherhood"
Jealous possessiveness
[Strindberg: Confessions of a Fool]
spending resources to check up on her
trusting her talking to other guys?
"dollar value" of possession (pimping)
fighting off rivals-- gorilla
mating plug in promiscuous species (ground squirrel)
cross-cultural variations in fidelity taboos
The Inuit of the Arctic share their wives with friends to cement a
friendship
who loves mee must love mee alone,
& love mee first Ile second none.
17th C. lyric (176)
...the attraction which her body held for them had aroused in him a painful longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest particles of her heart.
Proust [SiL ]
Trifles light as air
Seem to the jealous. confirmations strong
As proofs from holy writ.
W. Shakespeare Othello Act 3
...to allow so pretty a woman to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a case filled with jewels in the middle of the street.
Proust [SiL 150]
...being jealous, Anna was indignant with him and was constantly seeking reasons to justify her indignation.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 732)
...Nor jealousy
Was understood, the injured lover's hell.
John Milton "Paradise Lost" Line 442
We are ashamed to admit that we are jealous, yet we pride ourselves on having been jealous, and on being capable of jealousy.
La Rochefoucauld (Love 118)
Betrayal of privacy
challenge to sense of uniqueness
arousing of insecurity
makes you a laughingstock-- cuckold's horns
"...he talks about me to other women, I know he does, he confides in other women and discusses me with them."
Murdoch (Black Prince 42)
Narcissistic personality needs constant conquests
improves self-respect
fantasies about others (during sex)
double standard (he expects her to be faithful)
loving free, staying free
temptation
a different flavor, sexual curiosity
Coolidge effect
"There are less than twenty varieties of womankind, and once one has sampled two or three of each variety, one begins to grow sated."
Stendhal (208, quoting a Don Juan)
[This is] Cupid's curse,--
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse.
George Peele "The Arraignment of Paris" (1584) [Ault1]
Time apart [Troilus and Cressida]
someone new, someone better
...as soon as a prince came to court she would send her duke packing.
Stendhal (44)
My wife doesn't understand me
she's lost her looks, gotten fat
fickleness, vows broken
dividing emotional (financial) resources
(as we've seen, loving another is like devoting a constant stream of
attention to ballooning out their future. Infidelity splits the
stream.)
For whom was she being virtuous? Was he not the obstacle to any kind of happiness, the cause of all her misery, the sharp-pointed tongue in the buckle of the strap that wound around her, binding her on all sides?
Flaubert [MB 94]
It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.
Stendhal (219)
She wished he would beat her so that she could feel more justified in hating him and taking vengeance on him.
Flaubert [MB 94]
No one can surrender to two loves.
12th C. Code of Love
Trying to inspire jealousy (game playing)
Spirited women (femmes qui ont de la fierte') ...may be pleased by jealousy, as a new way of showing them their power.
Stendhal (117)
...we only want jealousy in people of whom we ourselves could be jealous.
Stendhal (117)
Ignorance of infidelity
your friends hide the truth from you
try to warn you but you won't hear it
you think you're invulnerable
he doesn't even try to hide it
Easy lies, denials
guilt, deception, cover stories
prolonged affair
paranoia
lying to spouse-- first lie
finding out he lied
he's been lying all along
The story of Mlle. de Somnery is well known in France; how, surprised in flagrante by her lover, she boldly denied the whole thing. When he pressed her, she cried: "Oh, I see it all now. You don't love me any more; you'd rather believe your own eyes than what I tell you!"
Stendhal (117)
One is easily fooled by that which one loves.
Moliere (France 1622-73) "Tartuffe"
Learning of betrayal (much later, immediately)
sixth sense
finding proof: an earring under the bed
coming clean
I've been supplanted by another in her breast
he's slept with your best friend
awareness-- his seed inside her now
the relationship is done for, your life is ruined
Jose kills Carmen when she declares her love for Lucas
Oh, there are many things that women know,
That no one tells them, no one needs to tell;
And that they know, their dearest never guess!
Because the woman's heart is fashioned so,
I know that he has loved another well,
Still his remembering lips know her caress...
Rosell Mercier Montgomery (xx 1874-1933)
"Ulysses Returns: Penelope Speaks"
There are many men in the world,
But only one is dear to me.
He is good and brave and strong.
He swore to love none but me;
He has forgotten me.
It was an evil spirit that changed him,
But I will love none but him.
Algonquin Indian Bride's Song [AILL]
Once I had a love, and it was a gas
Soon to find out, I had a heart of glass
Blondie
Who's that girl, running around with you?
Eurythmics
To appreciate heaven well
'Tis good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of hell.
Will Carleton (xx 1845-1912)
"Gone with a Handsomer Man"
Frankie got down from that high stool
She didn't want to see no more
Rooty-toot-toot three times she shot
Right through that hardwood door.
He was her man,
But he done her wrong.
"Frankie and Johnny"
Long-term changes
Hard times pull you apart
crisis outside
changes
you must give him up (to pitiless Death)
When poverty comes in at doors,
Love leaps out at windows.
John Clarke (fl 1639?) [L'A]
He's lost his looks
her vivacity, her charm
she's old and cross
So, so,
One woman fades, before another know
What 'tis to be in love; but in a trice
All men do sacrifice
To the latter, and despise
Her whom before
They did adore
Like lillies in their prime;
Since now her sparkling eyes
Are darkened in disguise:
Such is the sad disparity of time.
William Clerke (England n.dd.)"Song" (1663) [Ault2]
And an inner voice told him that it was impossible to patch up or put right their relationship because it was impossible to make her attractive and desirable again or turn him into an old man incapable of love.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 25]
One flatters women at twenty, abandons them at forty.
Stendhal (190)
I love him not as hee is now,
but as hee was before.
17th C. lyric (381)
'Love Not Me'
Love not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part
No, nor for my constant heart:
For those may fail or turn to ill,
So thou and I shall sever.
Keep therefore a true woman's eye,
And love me still, but know not why;
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever.
in Wilbye's Madrigals (1609) [Ault1]