Recently, Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered by their deranged son, Nick.
In one of the video clips currently circulating, Reiner spotlights his belief - actually, what I would call his "empirical discovery") that women are, by nature, more complete -- more whole -- than men.
Although there is "plenty of lunacy" to go around, women (in the main) are kinder, gentler and more compassionate than their male counterparts.
A disproportionate dose of testosterone makes men notably "testy/combative" and so it is no surprise that 80.4% of violent American criminals are men.
Reflecting on his wife specifically (and women generally) Reiner observed: "The girl in the story is always much more emotionally mature. The boy is always running around like an idiot trying to catch up, trying to figure out what's going on... Basically, my wife made me a person. You're like half-formed when you're a guy. You meet the right woman and she basically helps you grow up."
In my experience, women are well aware that Reiner's observation is a bedrock fact, "plain as potatoes."
In consequence, many women take it upon themselves to "save" men from their innate inclination to be incomplete humans - and often egregious jerks - who frequently occupy the psycho-social spectrum from somewhere between "tantrum-toddler" and "mobster-killer."
But because marriage is not for everybody -- and due to lengthening longevity that has increased from 60 years (when I was born in 1947) to nearly 80 years today (despite astonishing numbers of "deaths by despair" befalling men in the last two decades) -- divorce rates have soared as a result of long-lived people having ever more "free time" to "drive one another nuts" over life spans that are a third longer than they were at the end of World War II.
My four siblings and I will testify that none of us ever heard my Dad raise his voice with Mom, but almost as soon as he retired - and in the absence of the focusing tasks of raising children - Mom would get regularly mildly irked with Dad, now that he longer "spent all his time at work" and had become a "fifth wheel" around the house.
In a society with more single person households than any society in the history of humankind, only half of adult Americans are now married, and, rest assured, that those who are unmarried are neither celibate nuns nor unfailingly pious priests.
For purposes of raising children, I do not dispute the evident fact that children thrive best when embedded in stable family structures. (In his influential 1965 report, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the breakdown of the Black family structure, particularly the rise of single-parent, female-headed households, was a significant barrier to Black economic and social progress, even amidst civil rights gains. He warned this "tangle of pathology" would perpetuate poverty and disadvantage, a prediction many consider prophetic as nonmarital birth rates and single-parent homes have since grown, not just for Black families but across all groups.
In any event, the irrepressible emotional (and physical) needs of half the adult population ensure that a huge number of people "are not now, nor ever will be," sexually "celibate."
This prelude is to make clear that the writing is on the wall: We can pretend that our species is something it isn't, or, we can acknowledge that many men - and at least as many women - are going to be emotionally and physically intimate outside the "bonds of wedlock."
I didn't marry until I was 43, and as I now reflect on my own emotional and sexual history, I am profoundly grateful to the women who "gave me shelter from the storm."
Perhaps this "advance warning" will minimize the number of prissy, judgmental "church ladies" from shifting the needle of our collective moral compass in the direction of their own frequently supercilious bone-dryness.
I say, "Thank God for all the juciness of Reality."
*****
Here is the roster of women who have "taken me in."
Nancy
Cathy Archibald - neither my sister-in-law, nor any other blood relative.
Joyce
Mary
Cynthia
Jenny
Afro-Colombian Berta, a Caleña prostitute.
Patty
Leigh
Frances
Cheryl
"The Jap"
Kat
Lizbeth
Alex
Jody
Cambridge Professor Nancy
Eileen
KC
Maggy
Denise
Later, I will talk about the individual roles played by many of these friends and lovers.
But for now, there are two inter-related curiosities to address.
One curiosity is that I still maintain emotionally supportive (non-sexual) relationships with seven of these women, a circumstance that suggests to others that I keep some kind of "platonic harem," even though "from the inside" of these relationships, it feels that we provide one another with important psycho-spiritual and social nourishment and would be diminished if not for our ongoing friendships.
There is no avoiding the fact that we are fundamentally social beings despite "Rugged Individualism's" attempt to lock us in hermetically-sealed compartments best described by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin who alleged that the motto of The Republican Party is, "We are all in this.... alone."
*****
There is also this inter-related oddity.
I consider Mormonism's founder Joseph Smith -- a so-called prophet... born, raised and (purportedly) visited by the angel Moroni just 20 miles from my birthplace -- to be a flaming scam artist and a sexual pervert who capitalized on his prophetic status to seduce women.
Similarly, I think Smith's heir, Brigham Young, was at least as reprehensible, if not more so than Smith.
But despite these two weirdos, Mormonism itself has evolved into a religion whose rank-and-file practitioners are unusually honest, trustworthy, upstanding people -- folk who, remarkably, are far better than their founders.
In the 1980s, I served as deathbed "Godfather" to a woman who, throughout her adulthood, only hired Mormons because they were such good, principled people.
A noteworthy characteristic of Mormonism that - to my surprise - I have come to approve is the Latter Day Saints' blessing on polygamy. (Originally, this blessing was "formal," and remains a "tacit" blessing among many Mormons.)
As was true in Old Testament times when a brother-in-law was expected to marry his brother's widow -- thus providing her, and her half-orphaned children, with sustenance and a home -- I believe Mormonism's enduring polygamous impulse is much the same.
By using polygamy to absorb "widows and orphans" into the domain of marriage and extended family life, Mormonism suggests a viable, albeit very problematic, way forward.
Against the backdrop of all these psycho-social elements, I find that the substance of my many ongoing friendships with women "from my past" have provided me (and them) with lasting bonds of friendship, bonds that have been beneficially life-enhancing throughout our lives.
*****
I harbor another overarching attitude about spousal relationships that I have not seen emphasized elsewhere.
Starting in early adolescence, I could "see" the crucial importance of loving one's spouse's body. Buoyant, celebratory, joyful and frequent sexual union is at least important, if not indispensable for the solidity, stability, and lasting happiness of marriage.
Of course, as an adolescent kid when this "view" of body-love took root in me, I may have been mistaken.
But I do know that one of my emotionally heterosexual relationships - a relationship I still treasure - would have been a disaster precisely because I did not love her body.
I have also had a ringside seat to this particular kind of "sexual discernment" by virtue of long-lasting psychological intimacy with a dear friend who is asexual.
Due to her (self-acknowledged) asexuality, our relationship - from the beginning - lacked the kind of juice/glue that provided far greater "relational adhesion" with other women whose bodies I loved.
I hasten to add that it is not just a question of "good sex" that contributed mightily to my most lasting intimate relationships.
At wide intervals over several decades, I was powerfully attracted to the physical delight of one woman in particular, but despite the "good sex" (which was coupled with her sexual availability), we actually made love only a few times.
Anticipating sexual intimacy with passionate eagerness makes it easier to "write off" the "emotional abrasion" intrinsic to every intimate relationship.
In the absence of such satisfying "sexual absolution" to offload the many pecadilloes and quirks that inhabit every relationship, those same pecadilloes and quirks have a cumulative "snowball effect" that becomes persistently and naggingly bothersome when there is no dependable "climactic tide" to wash them all away.
For me, at least, it is a defining characteristic of sexual climax that The Whole World -- with its cares and anxieties - is swept out to sea, and what remains - albeit for a moment - is the rock-solid certainty that all "the small stuff" doesn't matter diddly.
At a certain threshold of sexual exhilaration, it is clear that "looking forward" to the next sexual encounter with a woman whose body is a good fit for one's own, is more than enough to absolve "the next round" of emotional abrasion even before the hurt takes place.
I must emphasize my conviction that this is a Big Deal!
But if you have not experienced the "built-in forgiveness" of sexual transcendence, "just telling you about it" will be no more effective than trying to "explain orgasm" to a preadolescent child.
Ain't gonna happen.
*****
The following data confirm my suppositions about asexuality, that it is an important and overlooked area of study that must be taken into account when considering long-term "relational wisdom" and "relational strategies" for "coming together" and "staying together."
- ~1% (General): The most cited figure for the overall population, according to the Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) and various research.
- ~4% (Young Adults): A higher prevalence is often seen in younger age groups (18-24).
- ~3.2% (Australian Survey): A 2019 Australian survey of LGBTQIA+ individuals found this percentage identified as asexual.
- 5-6% (College Surveys): Some American college health surveys reported rates of 5-6%, including gray-asexuals/demisexuals, making it the second most common orientation after heterosexuality in those groups.
*****
Before closing this chapter, I must mention le petite mort, a phenomenon that has been part of my verbal and emotional vocabulary -- not to mention my life-experience -- for nearly all my adulthood.
AI Overview
La petite mort (French for "the little death") is a poetic term for the brief loss of consciousness or intense release felt during orgasm, describing a temporary surrender of the self. It signifies a moment of ecstatic oblivion, akin to a mini-death and rebirth, but the phrase also broadly refers to moments of deep emotional or spiritual rapture, like those experienced through art. The concept highlights the connection between intense pleasure, surrender, and the boundary between life and death.
Key aspects of La petite mort:
Le petite mort is most beneficial when it goes cheek-by-jowl with spousal love, and particularly, love for one's spouse's body. (If it makes my concept of corporal love easier to understand, I would return to my childhood indoctrination, and ask my fellow Catholics to recall the dictum that "our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.")
By the way, indoctrination is not a bad thing, for we either know that we are indoctrinated -- and are therefore partially inoculated against indoctrination's downside -- or, we refuse to believe we have been indoctrinated, and are therefore dangerously misinformed.
A final observation about le petite mort...
One of my intimate friends spent the front half of her adulthood tormented by her inability to "let things go" - things that she considered her birthright... things that she thought were "stolen" by cruel people who, in fact, did do her great harm.
Le petite mort is a particular facet of sexual communion which, as we see in the Old Testament's "Song of Songs," is our readiest entree to "the foothills of mystical realization."
Perhaps one of the reasons sexual communion is not often discussed in "religious circles" is that so few people fall in love with people whose bodies they also love.
And so it may become necessary to take a more universal approach to "religious centeredness" and spiritual growth by leaving the unpredictabilities of sexual love out of the equation altogether.
"How Did Jesus Come To Love Guns, And Hate Sex?" https://newsfrombarbaria.
I have loved Cynthia's beautiful body since we were kids.
And whether we make love or not, just lying beside her, loving her body as I do, we both delight in how well our bodies fit, staying entwined -- wrapped the whole night through.
When we first reunited after 60 years apart, I had the clear, unmistakable feeling that we were long-separated "littermates" - completely natural beings, but also divinely-ordained "cubs," finally come together again to occupy the primordial nest.
The 20th Century Writers Who Have Been Most Influential in the Development of My "Outlook" and Worldview are Ivan Illich, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, Neil Postman and G.K. Chesterton
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