I Try To Discover A Little Something To Make Me Sweeter

The professor of one of my past classes once quoted a study to the class that found that a high majority of people will not cheat on their spouse. This was followed by disbelief from most of the students. They could not and would not accept that cheating was not a norm within American marriages. Of course they didn't. These kids live in a world that does nothing but shove in their faces just how crappy people are. They are constantly being told that marriages just suck. And through all forms of media they do see cheating happen all the time. I had no problem believing that the study was valid and true. The thing is the world isn't as screwed up as some people like to think it is and others like to make it seem. Most people are still pretty good natured. That's evident in the fact that most of us aren't running around the neighborhood killing anyone we see.

That doesn't mean the world is all that great either. We are still screwing some things up. Sure, cheating isn't all that frequent, but maybe these kids had every right to believe that it was. After all, the divorce rate is getting so high marriage almost seems like a joke. Note: I know the numbers are somewhat deceiving but that doesn't change the fact that divorce rate is still pretty high. I mean, among my close friends and including me I only know of three whose parents are still together and they are siblings. But marriage isn't a joke. It's one of the most serious parts of life that most of us will have to face. We just aren't doing a very good job at facing it.

A friend of mine is going through a divorce right now. She and her pending ex-husband have three kids together. She told me she was having a tough time with it, but that it was the best thing to do. Of course she's having a tough time with it. Divorce is a sad and tough situation to go through. I had to ask myself, "Is it the best thing to do?" I've heard that before. We kids of divorced parents have all heard that. Our parents explained to us that it was the best thing to do. I always understood that, even when it was my parents. It just made sense. They weren't happy together so they had to be apart. Still, it always seemed weird to me to say that it was the "best" thing to do. How could something so hard on everyone involved be best?

Some would argue that divorce isn't best. They would never call it a solution. In fact, they would say that it was the worst thing to do. That idea I could never fully get behind or understand. While I think people should try hard to fight for their marriages, I don't think they should stay in it regardless of their misery. It's almost like telling a person with a drinking problem to target a less effective drink rather than telling them that they shouldn't drink at all. Some things can't be "dealt with" they just have to be thrown away. Many people don't get this or don't want to, and they'll shout their opinions for everyone to hear. I don't like this for many reasons but one stands out the most. They are shouting at the wrong end.

After thinking about it for a few seconds I responded to my friend. I told her that it probably is the best thing to do, and that people rarely get divorced for the wrong reason. This lead me right to my next thought. The problem can't be fixed at the divorce end, it has to be fixed at the wedding end. This is where the shouting should be taking place, because when it comes down to it people are getting divorced for the right reasons but they are getting married for the wrong ones.

Anybody who studies human behavior will tell you that there are major myths about marriage. The truth is marriage will not bring happiness, fix everything, take the loneliness and insecurities away, and make you feel better. As it relates to life and happiness, marriage is kind of like your favorite song from your favorite band, you love the song but the band would still be great without it, just like life would still be great without marriage. The thing is people buy into these myths and get married according to them.

How do we fix this problem?

Another close friend of mine is getting married this coming October. She and her fiance are about my age (early twenties). She just graduated from UCI and he just graduated from Cal Poly (SLO). They are both solid kids and they care very deeply about each other. From what I see through my friend eyes I think they'll make it, and see nothing wrong with them getting married so soon. But that's through friend eyes. What if they weren't friends of mine? Would my opinion change? Would I still support their marriage? Yes, my opinion would be different, and no I would not support the marriage. I am a big proponent of being absolutely 100% ready for marriage before you actually do get married. My logic tells me that people who are straight out of college and haven't even found a home and career aren't all that ready. If I weren't a friend I'd be shouting. And this is how we fix the problem, by shouting at the right end. We need to tell people that they have to be prepared for marriage. We have to bring forth the myths and bust them as if we were two dorks with our own Discovery Channel television show.

But notice I said "probably". There are exceptions to the rules. My friend eyes tell me that this couple is going to make it, and, well, I trust myself, and I believe in them.

I realize that a lot of what I say makes me come off as a cynical jaded human being, and it seems as though I'm taking all the romance out of life, but none of that is true about me. When it comes down to it I would call myself a romantic. It all depends on what we consider romantic. In the movie Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams' character tells Will a story about his deceased wife and how she would fart up a storm in her sleep. He explains to Will that you can love somebody with all you have and in the end it's these little things that you remember. It's the little things that matter the most. Romance isn't a life lived with the girl or boy next door who you always knew was your soulmate. It's not rooms full of flowers and diamond rings. Romance isn't dying with your spouse at an old age after reading the story of your love from a notebook everyday to her so that maybe she can recover some memory despite the dementia she is suffering from. Romance is the little things. It's the way you pulled her in closer after she gave you that cute pissed off look when you pushed her away. It's that little feeling you get when you know that the reason she is smiling is because of you. It's the feeling you know she has because the smile on your face is because of her. Romance is not the lifetime. It's the little moments that make up the lifetime.

The idea of marriage isn't a very romantic one to me, but those little things that make up a good marriage are. Maybe, one day when we're all ready, we could lock into that ball and chain...and live happily ever after.

You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman

The sociologist Max Weber is credited for the concept of Verstehen, which literally translates from German to English as "understanding". In sociology Verstehen is a concept by which those who follow it study and observe societies and cultures by taking in full account how whomever they are studying perceives the world around them and tries to understand why they do the things that they do. This, of course, is counterintuitive to how we non-sociologists observe the world and people around us. We are for the most part self-centered people. We observe any given person's actions in a situation against how we would act in that same situation. We judge rather than understand, and then we make claims that we can't understand.

Too often I hear friends tell me that they don't understand women. While I do believe that they are trying I don't believe that they can't. I, just like these and most guys on the planet, used to claim the same; however, in the past few years of my life I've realized that women aren't all that mysterious. Women are just as understandable as we are. All we have to do is look through their eyes and try to see things the way they do. This is not simply the "put yourself in her shoes" concept. It is more than that. The shoes concept only puts yourself in their situation. You need to go further. You need to go into their mind-set and personality. You need to see how everything in the world is represented to them and not to you. I admit it is easier said than done, but it also isn't as hard as we make it.

I realize guys mostly make that statement out of frustration, typically after a fight with the girlfriend or wife, or during a chase that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, or during the driest of dry spells in all the land, but it is also said casually. I don't want to take anyone's right to be frustrated at frustrating situations away. I just feel that maybe with a little Verstehen we can make things a little easier on ourselves. We can keep calm when being nagged about how we don't listen (when we know we are). We can hold back when she says she doesn't want to be in a relationship right now. We can deal with the fact that maybe the dry spell has more to do with us than it does with her. We can understand.

Just Like A Knight In Shining Armor

A friend of mine told me a story recently about an argument he had with a coworker. As he was walking by this person's desk he heard music coming from her cubicle. He noticed that the music was particularly awful so he had to go see what it was. When he asked his coworker what was playing she informed him that it was Nick Lachey. This of course was followed with disgust by my friend. After he had expressed this disgust the woman asked, "What is wrong with Nick Lachey?" He replied, "Think about what you just said." She had a blank look on her face. She had no idea what to say until the following words, "Why what do you listen to?" Now, most of my friends have at least decent tastes in music, this friend of mine has excellent taste. So he began listing off some great bands off the top of his head. The lady came back with, "I've only heard of one of those." He looked at sharply, "So?" And this is when she replied,

"WELL IF THEY'RE SO GOOD WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD OF THEM?"

aka

"If they were good they'd be popular."

aka

"If they aren't popular it must be because they're bad."

There are so many things wrong with the above attitude. The main problem is it makes your opinion dependent on the majority's opinion. It's a conformist attitude, and it's wrong. People, societies have a history of making bad decisions, and supporting the wrong things. That's right, people as a whole are just huge idiots, ourselves included. You cannot base your opinions on the masses' because they cannot always be trusted. Not to mention, you are your own person. You have your own mind, heart, and soul. Use them.

Another friend of mine drunkenly repeated a similar theory for the millionth time to me the other night,

"IF SHE DOESN'T HAVE A BOYFRIEND THERE IS A REASON WHY."

aka

"She/he is single? What's wrong with her/him?"

I admit I used to believe in this theory, but over time I've begun to see its many flaws. For one thing, it is a negative and mostly defeatist attitude being that most who hold it are those who are in pursuit of relationships but lack confidence that success will be obtained. Also, as with the music/popularity correlation, it reduces you to yield to other people's opinions. Still, there is something to be said about this theory, at least in the way my friend stated it, because there just might be a REASON why she isn't with somebody. The thing is, how do we know that reason is a bad one? How do we know the reason why somebody is with someone is good? I think it's fair to say that a very large portion of those who are in relationships are so for wrong reasons. On that note, I believe a good portion of people aren't in relationships for very good reasons. I don't believe all the good ones are taken. If you just step back and take a look at who the good ones really are I think you'll realize this too.

I Like The Masking Noise Quiet Of Your Breathing Nearby

When Nada Surf's latest album The Weight Is A Gift was released I immediately purchased it. I felt like I had to. For those of you who feel like the name of the band sounds familiar but you just can't get there, Nada Surf had a huge hit in the mid 90's with the song "Popular". Since then, in the mainstream, you hadn't really heard all that much from them. Nada Surf, however, never went away. The band released two albums between their first and this latest one; The Proximity Effect, and Let Go which in actuality had moderate success. Seemingly by chance The Proximity Effect found its way to my ears one day when I was a young high school bloke. I fell in love with the album instantly, and when Let Go was released, months earlier in the UK than it was here in the States, I ordered it through Amazon UK and found that the album was their best yet. So, yes, I had to buy The Weight Is A Gift the day it was released. The problem was I had already heard a couple of the songs from this new album, and I didn't really like either one of these songs. I was afraid that this was a bad sign. I was afraid that I wouldn't like the album. After a few listens my fears were realized. This band which had my loyalty failed to give me something that I could embrace, and so the disc that carried the album got lost in the pile of CD's on my desk that barely get touched.

The other day, as I was trying to find something to listen to in the car, I came across my copy of The Weight Is A Gift. I decided to give the album another chance. I figured maybe I just wasn't in the right state of mind to judge a new album when I had first listened to the album. As I was driving the album played, and something happened. I was feeling it, at least a little bit. This was good news. Maybe there was hope for this album after all. I continued to drive and the music continued to play. All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, it hit me. I heard something I liked...a lot. I had to replay the song. Yup, the song was great. The craziest part of the entire story, is that this song was one of the two songs that I had heard before I bought the album; one of the two songs that made me apprehensive towards the album. The song is "Do It Again". It captures everything that is great about Nada Surf and then some. It is by far the best song on the album, and one of the better songs I've heard in a while. I can't tell you what it was about the song that made me think I didn't like it in the beginning, but I can tell you for certain that this song is great. Still, it wasn't just "Do It Again" I found myself enjoying the album in its entirety. It is a good solid album; the same way Nada Surf is a good solid band. There is, however, a question to be answered: Why is it that now I enjoy the album? Either, I was just flat out wrong before when I disliked it, or I honestly didn't like it all that much , but it had grown on me to the point where I now think it's a great album.

This phenomenon isn't all that rare. We experience this many times throughout our lives. As kids we detest anything that is considered a vegetable. When we're older we find that some vegetables actually taste decent. The object doesn't always have to go from being disliked to being very much liked. Sometimes it's kind of just there. You are indifferent towards its existent until one day when you discover the beneficial qualities of its presence in your life. This is not unlike bread. You grow up and bread is kind of just there. You use it for sandwiches, occasionally you may even snack on it, but it's nothing you'd ever make a big deal over. Then one day, while waiting for your meal at a restaurant, your server brings over a basket of assorted breads. You pick one up, thinking that it can't be better or worse than the other breads in the basket, butter it up and take a bite. This is the most magnificent bite of bread you had ever taken in your life, and all of a sudden you have a new appreciation for bread and its role in your life. Sometimes you even like the object in question quite a bit. Then the switch happens and you find you love it more than you ever thought possible. This one is the most interesting to me. Why? Because the best example I can give for this is the one of the two friends who find one day that they had fallen for each other and decide to take the leap.

They say, especially for women, that we are able to decide whether or not a person would be a suitable partner for us in the very first few moments of knowing that person, with decent accuracy. In other words, love at first sight, in a sense, does exist. This makes me wonder about the couple from our example. Why is it they realize now that they have romantic feelings towards each other? Either they were wrong before that they only had platonic interests for each other, or they had grown to feel love for each other over time. My not so humble opinion is in line with the former. I think that couples who have been through this would probably disagree with me. They would tell me that they definitely had nothing but friendly feelings for each other in the beginning which grew into these fantastic feelings of love. I, of course, would argue with them. While it seems more sensible to say that the intimacy of friendship over time could have helped spark a feeling of romance rather than say that the two involved were just flat out wrong about their feelings in the first place, I would argue the opposite. To me it seems much more logical that the two had these feelings from the start. The thing is whatever it was about the two that sparked the romantic feelings of the two was most likely the exact same whatever that drew the two to supposedly become friends. It is not impossible to be wrong about your emotions. They are tricky like that. I say our couple was wrong just like I was wrong about not liking The Weight Is A Gift. They always had more than friends type feelings for each other, because everything that made them feel this way was always there. Everything that makes Nada Surf's album a great album was always there.