The Importance of Girlfriends When You're a Girl

This is should be short because it is B.A.'s birthday and I have to clean, shop, cook, bake and possibly get to Polish Mass because it is also the Feast of Our Lady Queen of Poland. Not being Polish, I feel no obligation to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady Queen of Poland, but I would like to anyway. (Update: Whoops. I am credibly informed that although it is the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, the Feast of her Queenship of Poland is some other day.)

When I was in Gdańsk I went to Mass every day because my hostess Marta tries to get to Mass every day, and I thought this was very beautiful. It is very easy to get to daily Mass in Poland because there are churches everywhere, and usually at least one person praying in any city church at any time of the day, and the priests show up to say Mass in such a way that you know they would show up even if nobody else did.

This was splendid and heartening, and what was also splendid and heartening was spending four days with a cradle Catholic woman my own age. I know many of my readers really prefer the company of men and feel like fish out of water when with fellow women, but I am definitely the kind of woman who enjoys being around other women. This is not to say I don't like men, but--.

Hmm. How to explain that "but"?

The wonderful thing about being in all-girl groups and activities, like Girl Guides and girls' school, is that although you compete a bit, you also work together and there is no mental adjustment for the presence of men. There is also no competition for men. You can just forget all that for as long as you are in the all-girl environment, learning how to tie a parcel or prepare a slide for the microscope. And you can talk endlessly, effortlessly obeying the social conventions around women's conversation you hopefully have mastered by the time you leave primary school.

But at the same time, for 99% of women, you pin your hopes for romance and family life on men, which means there is (or should be) a certain amount of detachment: you don't go out of your mind with jealousy when your friend falls in love with some guy. Sure, you might feel a bit neglected, but your heart doesn't snap in half. And this means women can relax around each other in a way we probably shouldn't around men. For example, you can tell a woman all about the lingerie your other friend got at her bridal shower and have a good laugh, whereas you can't tell a good male friend all this stuff without him silently asking the perpetual silent man question, "Why is she telling me this?"

From a cradle Catholic point of view, it is relaxing to be around other cradle Catholics because you don't have to talk about Catholicism so much. I spend a lot of time with convert men, including my husband, and I adore them all, but my goodness, do they talk a lot about Catholic stuff. Not usually about Our Lord or Our Lady, but about churches and liturgies and processions and what Pope Francis did and what Pope Benedict said and what convert Catholic wrote what about who.

Cradle Catholics, the ones who try to be faithful, don't have to talk so much. We can silently swim in a great sea of Catholicism, beyond words and sometimes even beyond thought, just believing and praying side by side. And this is what I did in Gdańsk with Marta. I am 100% sure it beat getting drunk with your mates and some Australian blokes on the beaches at Tenerife, the stereotypical modern British mini-break.

I do not, by the way, want to put up any kind of wall between cradle Catholics and convert Catholics. Unless they became Catholics just to please their fiances, convert Catholics have had an amazing experience, an at times painful and frightening adventure, and are often very impressive. Most of my favourite British Catholic writers were converts. There are a lot of leading American Catholic apologists who are converts. But there is something about growing up in a Catholic home and perhaps even a Catholic ghetto or Catholic society that is unique. Many of us North American Catholics are, by the time we leave home, Catholics In Name Only. But a Catholic childhood is a Catholic childhood, and Catholicism is in our cradle Catholic bones and blood and teeth and hair. (But I suppose that is also why cradle Catholics who hold heretical views are so confident in their heresies. You know the drill: "Well, I'm a Catholic, and I think...")

Then there is the generational thing, about which I felt a lot when I was with Marta, especially in front of the shipyard at Gdańsk, the birthplace of Solidarity. When the strikes were going on, Marta was right there. But I was watching them on TV, seeing the photos in Time magazine and observing the Polish priest who suddenly turned up in our parish, out of harm's way, so I remember too.

Generation is about what you remember. Generation gap is about memory as much as it is about "new" ideas and new technology.  

Anyway, it is funny to write so much about the joy of spending a long weekend with a cradle Catholic woman of my own generation when it is my convert Catholic husband's birthday. (Happy birthday again, B.A.!) But the point I am making is that even married women (perhaps especially married women) need female friends our own age who know and remember many of the same things we do.

This is why, perhaps, it is hard to make new women friends when you get older or move to another city: the majority of them, native to the city, are so busy with work and their families that when they have time to spend with friends, they choose their oldest friends, the friends who share the same background, values and memories. Childhood friends. High school friends. College friends.

Hard, though, does not mean impossible.

Obsessed with this couple...and her hair!

I want to be friends with them.  They just seem so fun!Sooo...we still don't have internet at the house.  And I have now gone over my data plan on my phone that doesn't roll over until the 15th.  Awesome. It would be such a simple fix.  All he has to do is hook up the new router.And he has to do it. Because I am not allowed to touch the wires behind the TV...I might mess something up.  Right.  OK. Why do boys men, whatever, think that we are so incapable?I lived by myself for years.Paid my own bills.  On time.Took out my own trash.Hooked up my own TV AND surround sound.Negotiated with the cable company.Hooked up my own internet.Handled all car related issues.By myself.And used my own grill!  He might be the grillmaster, but that doesn't mean I don't know how to use it. I'm not an idiot. Why do they think that all of a sudden, just because we now live together, we are no longer capable of making decisions. Oh, you're still live in lalaland?  Just wait.  It's coming.  Cohabitation. A couple is a partnership.  You are supposed to be equals. BE his equal.  Make the effort to learnhow to do the every day tasks.  Pay attention to all that it takes to run a household.  It's not just laundry and dishes. We all dread them.I hate pumping gas in my car.  But I still do it.I also hate to do laundry and will never run out of clean underwear.  He will, so we share in that task.I had to teach him that you have to read tags because not everything can go in the dryer. It is great to have roles within your home and rely on each other, but he might not always be there.and daddy can't do everything for you either.  This post is not just about the internet.  And i am not trying to offend anyone. This is due to recent events and the realization that there are still grown women out there that do not know how to take care of themselves, that cars need to have their oil changed every 3,000 miles, and that the trash goes to the road every Tuesday.  Not really sure where they thought all the trash was magically disappearing to. Sometimes, you just have to get dirty.and that is what soap is for.

When She Chooses Him Over You

Here's one of the most painful facts of female existence. There are women who will put their latest romantic/sexual relationship before any other consideration in life: before their friends, before their children, before their jobs, before their marriages, before their health, before their sanity.

Sexual infatuation is a drug, and some women become addicts. Other women are just--well--ordinary human women. Most women naturally want a special man in their lives and make him their Number One priority. Marriage is supposed to make this tendency a safe, good one.

But it does hurt at least a little when your best friend falls in love or gets married. Quite obviously she loves some guy better than you, even if she has known you for twenty years and him for six months. Whoa. Ouch. Life.

If you are under twenty-five, the tendency of women to privilege some man over their female friends may come as a shock to you. If you are over twenty-five, you may have noticed this already. If you are over thirty, you're probably used to it. Life--you know? (Shrug.) Whadayagonnado?

Pop music is full of wonderful songs about "men come and go, but sisterhood is forever." It's a lovely idea, but come on. Although women don't usually compete with each other with the same bloodthirsty gusto as men, women do indeed compete with each other, and if it has something to do with a man... Whew! Look out. Even the nicest, kindest, women-loving women can go crazy with jealous rage.

But I should stress that not all women battle or compete much or often over men. One of the most annoying things about being a Single woman is going to a party of married couples where the Married women act like a you are a vixen in the hen-house just because you are having a conversation with one of the Married men. I should also stress that not all Married women are like that, either, although few things annoy Married me more socially than watching a Single woman chase any man around a party. "Sit still, woman," I think. "If he wants to talk to you, he'll talk to you."

But I'm not really thinking about the occasional social unpleasantness between the Married and the Single. I'm thinking about young women discovering that they have been displaced in their girlfriends' affections by their girlfriends' boyfriends. I am especially thinking about the young lady whose friend is now dating her ex-boyfriend.

Treason, we howl. Treason! How dare she? How can she be on his side, let alone at his side? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Really, it hurts. It really, really hurts. But it happens. And only if you are really lucky will she discuss it with you first. She is much more likely to sneak around or lie about it because she doesn't want to hurt you or feel like a bad friend, etc., etc.

So what do you do? Well, there are a number of things you might do.

First, admit to yourself and God that you feel betrayed and disrespected and even disbelieved, if you told your friend that your ex-boyfriend is a rat-fiend from hell.

Second, admit to yourself and God that as you fell for the guy, you know better than anyone how easy might have been for your friend for fall for the guy.

Third, ponder the faults of your ex, and feel compassion for your friend because now she has to deal with them. Pray for her. Go talk to a good priest about it all.

Fourth, draw some boundaries for yourself and for her. Her love life is her love life. You don't have any right to know what she does with her love life, and she has no right to impose her love life on you. If you don't want her to talk to you about Scooter, say "Because Scooter is my ex-boyfriend, I don't feel comfortable talking about Scooter." If you don't want Scooter in your place, tell your friend that as much as you care about her and want her to be happy, you don't want your ex-boyfriend in your place. She, of course, is always welcome.

This is not forcing your friend to "choose between her friend and her man"--that staple of so many boring and painful high school and college dorm dramas. This is you choosing to remain friends with your friend, but not being forced to have a relationship with her boyfriend.

It's a tricky situation, one that calls for compassion, patience and strength. Friends respect their friends' boundaries, so if the girl who is dating your ex still wants to be your friend, she must respect your boundaries: if you don't want him in your living space, or to have to talk about him, then you must say so as kindly yet firmly as possible, and she must respect that. And you must respect that her love life is her business, not yours. It is not for you to complain about to mutual friends, and you can't tell her what to do or not to do.

Fifth, allow yourself to grieve a little--in private or with someone paid or trained to keep their mouths shut. The juiciness of "Mary's dating Anne's ex-boyfriend, and Anne is totally gutted" is too much of a temptation for the average college student not to share. "Mary's dating Anne's ex-boyfriend, and Anne seems totally cool with it" is not only a million times classier, it's too boring for others to want to talk about much.

It may be that you will never see your friend in the same light again. I know. And that's sad, and maybe she dreads that, but truth is what is, as Saint Thomas Aquinas taught. Forgive her and also remember that you have other friends. She wasn't put on this earth to be your Lifelong Special Confidante; you probably have other women in your life to confide in, women who won't tell your ex what you said about this or that. (Another newsflash: women often talk to our boyfriends and husbands about what our friends did or said unless doing so feels like real betrayal.) Meanwhile, continue to do whatever girl-time stuff you could still enjoy together: studying, watching films, going dancing, baking a cake, organizing mass pedicure parties, messing around with chemistry sets, electric guitars or fabric scraps.

So. Compassion. Boundaries. Forgiveness. Adjusting. And hope.

***
Help B.A. support his colonial wife's unpaid-blogging lifestyle by pre-ordering Seraphic's Ceremony of Innocence today! 

Mrs Thatcher

Oh dear. This is a non-partisan, apolitical blog, but I feel a need to post something about the late Baroness Thatcher. Obviously this is a view of a Canadian, and not of a Scot and certainly not of an Irishwoman, an Argentinian or even an Irish-American who gets high off  grievances borrowed from unknown third cousins twice removed.

It is this. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, and Margaret Thatcher was the only woman in public life I knew whose leadership was taken as seriously as that of a man. And, unlike so many women in public life, she did not derive her career from a man.

Indira Gandhi was the daughter of an Indian Prime Minister. Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of a Pakistani Prime Minister. Hilary Clinton, who didn't quite make PM class, is the wife of an American President. Sonja Gandhi is the widow of Indira Gandhi's son, another Indian Prime Minister.   Margaret Thatcher's father owned a grocery shop, and her husband was a businessman. Both her father and her husband supported and encouraged her, but she was not at all in their shadow or got to be Prime Minister through any legacy of theirs.

(Kim Campbell, by the way, was a short-lived novelty act who made the achievement "first female PM of Canada" meaningless. Her dumb faux-nudie photo lost her--and perhaps other Canadian women--credibility.)

As a child, it really meant a lot to me seeing Margaret Thatcher on television, and hearing her praised or excoriated as a person of real, political importance. Princess Diana was also talked about quite a lot, but not as if she were really all that important. She was gossamer; Thatcher was steel.

Margaret Thatcher had the dubious honour of being admired or hated the same way men are admired or  hated. She was not admired or despised for what she looked like, but for her political decisions. She was loved or hated for her brains and her will. She didn't try to look younger than she was, or prettier than she was, or stupider than she was, or any of those rather obvious ways in which women show our principal weakness: our longing to be loved, admired and cherished, sometimes at any cost.  Margaret Thatcher did not seem to care for that stuff. She had male friends, but the only man she seemed ever to had eyes for was her husband Dennis. There's a great strength in that, too.

And meanwhile, she wore skirts. She carried a handbag. She wore pearls. She did not attempt to deny or signal that she was anyone other than a woman, a middle-aged conservative woman with a businessman husband and two children. But she did not, as is the deplorable modern custom, borrowed from the Americans (although Canadians do this too, alas), show off her family on TV.

Here is an obit that very much resonated with me. My only observations concern the idea that she somehow neglected her children. First, English children whose parents could afford it have been raised by servants and schools for generations. Second, lots of stay-at-home mothers neglect or even sacrifice their children in all kinds of horrible ways. Some mothers drug themselves into a stupor with heroin, booze or even just TV. Others care about nothing except their latest sexy romance with their latest thuggish boyfriend.  Still others beat or belittle their children constantly. Running a G8 nation is not really in the same class.

Girl Girls

My right arm still really hurts, alas, so I will condense my "Pet" post into three sentence: I'm now officially not allowed to have a pet in the Historical House, so my baby substitute options are definitely limited. Does anyone know of a plant that is like a pet? Is there a plant that purrs, or is that only on Star Trek?

The post that I've wanted to write for days is about young men who will tell you that you are not a "real" woman for some reason, and how you should correct and ignore them.

First of all, although some young men may think they are being very objective when they formulate theories about women and femininity, they aren't. So if a man tells you you aren't very feminine, you can take this as saying more about his subjective impressions of reality than about you, even if you are a tanker trucker.

Boys' and men's irrational and subjective thoughts about women can be very damaging to the female psyche, as we naturally want to get along with men, and many of us are prone to self-doubt. The most terrible and extreme example I know of is a little girl whose inevitable but horrible elementary school nickname was, through no fault of her own, "Whore." This poor girl was one of the girls singled out for the elementary sexual experiences of the boys in my class, and was the most despised.

As I scroll through my memory for the usual reasons an innocent girl gets tarred with the "class slut" label--the first to get breasts, willingness to curse, the crime of listening to the wrong music or wearing the wrong clothes, the rumour of an older boyfriend--all I can see is the fact that this girl's nickname was "Whore." That's it. That is why, according to the spirit that ruled my classroom, she could be treated like crap.

And, incidentally, I was too wrapped up in my own problems to think very much about this girl at the time, and it was only after someone else in my class--a girl who had been treated with affection and respect by the boys--told me about seeing her years later, that it occurred to me how much she must have suffered. (In short, the first woman saw the second, turned white as a sheet, and crossed the road.)

My own painful brush with irrational male categories of femininity occurred when I was a teenager, the sort of Dumb Smart Girl who does boys' homework for them because they seem so desperate and only she can save them. I hung out with fellow baby neo-conservatives in a movement where the very word "feminist" was hated, and because I argued the feminist cause, I was considered perhaps a bit of a loose cannon. As luck would have it, my most vociferous critic was the boy I helped with his homework most. He wanted to be seen as an intellectual, and he certainly wasn't one, so I suppose it is no wonder that he hated my guts. Very irrationally, I was quite fond of him and wanted him to like me. (Sigh.)

He was the kind of boy who puts on chivalry like his older brother's jacket and one day bragged at a party that he always treated girls very well.

"But what about Seraphic?" demanded my friend. "You don't treat her very well."

"Oh," scoffed Mr Chivalry. "Seraphic's not a girl girl."

My therapist became very familiar with this story. Possibly my readers are already familiar with this story. Unfortunately, this is one of the defining stories of my life. And why, I ask, did I allow the stupid remark of a teenage dirtbag who begged and pleaded for me to fix his stupid essays to bother me quite that much?

And I suppose I must have thought boys were allowed to define who the "real" girls were, and as generations of women believed, that the greatest feminine accomplishment is to "make boys like you," and so, if you failed in this, you weren't that feminine.

How terrible. And how untrue. But that is enough for today because of my poor arm.

Friendships with Reserve

Men and women can be friends, but men can't be women friends and women can't be men friends. Let us be clear on this.

I have had some interesting correspondence about the following situations:

1. The man has a crush on a girl. He tells another girl all about it. He gets over his crush on the first girl. He develops a crush on the second girl. The second girl doesn't take him at all seriously.

2. The girl has a crush on a man. She tells another man all about it. She gets over her crush on the first man. She develops a crush on the second man. The second man doesn't seem to be interested anymore.

We could chalk this up as a tragedy of bad timing, or we could posit that there is something unwise in telling members-of-the-opposite-sex friends about our crushes.

If there is one thing I have learned about men, it is that they are not girls. And if they are attracted to girls, they do not appreciate being treated as if they were girls. Sometimes they resist this quite vigorously. But sometimes they do not because, being attracted to girls, they will cut girls a lot of slack. But, in general, they don't like being made to feel like the palace eunuch. Their semi-conscious resentment could be expressed in the parlance of the neighbourhood of my youth as "What am I? Chopped liver?"

Male friends who identify as gay do not seem to mind as much, but even then you really must understand that they are not "just some of the girls" even if they say they are. They are men, with male sexuality, and whereas their advice might be have an internal logic as far as men who identify as gay are concerned, it might make absolutely no sense for women, particularly chaste ones. Whenever men who identify as gay give me or tell me about relationship advice they have given other women ("And I told her, Darrleeng, you should take a lover"), my hair stands on end.

I like my guy friends so much, I don't treat them as if they were girls who might enjoy talking about girl stuff, e.g. my feelings. Possibly I slip occasionally, and bore them senseless, for which I apologize.

There's a fine line between treating all nice young Single men as if they were just Husband Potentials/Impossibilities and treating them as if they were girls. I call it Friendship with Reserve. It's respectful, it's kind, and, if this applies to your state of life, it keeps the options open.

It Never Grows Old

Girl 1: So what are you going to wear?

Girl 2: I don't know. Maybe my black gypsy dress again...

Girl 1: Oh, that's a beautiful dress. I really like it. It's beautiful.

Girl 2: So what are you going to wear?

Girl 1: Well, I don't know. Either my blue velvet dress or my long skirt.

Girl 2: Oh, you should wear your blue velvet. It's gorgeous.

Girl 1: Thank you! I really like it.

Girl 2: I'll tell you what! I'll wear my green velvet dress. I mean, it's cold, it's almost winter. So I can wear it. I'll wear my green velvet dress--

Girl 1: And I'll wear my blue velvet dress! That's great! Oh, that's great.

Girl 2: Yes, we can match.

Girl 2 giggles. She is on a mobile in a cafe in Edinburgh, 39+ if she's a day, and thoroughly conscious of what a high school conversation this is.

Girl talk. It never grows old.

Young Man's Darling

I wrote a novel about a woman in her mid-thirties who is romantically involved with a young man in his early twenties. Ignatius Press tells me it will be out in 2013, but I am not sure exactly when. If you wish to know exactly when, ask Ignatius Press.

This week I have had requests to talk about Younger Women Dating Older Men and Older Women Dating Younger Men, and I had to squish up my inner eye and stare into the dark shadows of my memories to try to see this all from a younger woman's perspective. For lo, I am 39+ and married, and incredibly tolerant about both situations.

If you are being pursued by an older man, and his grizzled charms make you go weak at the knees, by all means go out with this older man. If you are being pursued by a downy faced infant and you think his blushes are adorable, by all means go out with the infant.

By infant, I mean an infant over the age of 18, of course. And by you, I mean adult readers.

The older you get, the less age gaps seem to matter. When you are eighteen, it seems wrong to date a fourteen year old and worrisome to date a twenty-two year old. But when you are thirty, nobody worries if you date a thirty-four year old, and dating a twenty-six year old may seem a bit of a coup.

Incidentally, the age gap is not as pronounced in Europe as it is in North America. Europeans are just not so obsessed with age. It is not unusual for European university students to seek friendships or romance with people much older than themselves. Attractiveness is not equated with youth. Catherine Deneuve is in her 60s, and young men still fall down and worship her. Behold:



The title means "You or No-one", btw.

But even in North America young men can find older women attractive, and one of the most charming couples I know became a couple after the surprised woman decided that the younger man wasn't, as he complained, "just some kid."

Frankly, I think such younger man-pursues-older woman relationships very likely to succeed, if the woman actually does like him, because women are usually too inhibited prudent to chase men much younger than themselves. Therefore it is definitely a case of a man going after what he wants, and being determined to win in the face of a stupid obstacle, which is the woman wondering if he isn't too young for her. It is not a case of a self-deluding woman chucking herself at Mr Rapidly Being Spoiled.

That said, some women are just not attracted to younger men. I think this mad, as younger men are much better looking than older men. And as an older woman it is so much easier to deal with all their young man storminess. The sulks, the rants, the poses, the politics, the confusion that so oppress you when you're their age are much easier to deal with when you're over 30.

But I can see that a very gentle woman might want to give youthful Sturm und Drang a miss altogether and just date a kindly older man. It is not a hideous insult to be wooed by an older man, by the way. If you want to see him, see him. If you don't, say "No, thank you." All you have lost is your right to complain that nobody ever asks you out.

If he tries to make you feel bad for not wanting to go out with him, however, tell him to go to hell, gramps.

I was once in a marriage-track relationship with a man ten years older than myself. It didn't work out because he wasn't Catholic. Also, he had non-age related health problems and my mother was worried I was going to end up his nurse. Well, if you love someone, you don't mind being his nurse, but if you don't, you do. So it wasn't just that he wasn't Catholic but that I wasn't just that into him.

But a pal of mine married a man about 20 years older than herself--a big, funny guy with a motorcycle and a receipt showing an enormous bar bill taped to the wall--because she was that into him. We had a conversation about how they might not have a really long time together, given his age. She was a bit sad about that, but that's just how it was. And is. Sure enough, he got cancer five years later, but it looks like he's pulling through, thank God.

I realize that people are always jabbering on about "Is he too young for you?" or "Is he too old for you?" but once you are both ADULTS, and nobody become a really, truly adult magically at the age of 21 (let alone 18), these questions make little sense. In the case of teenage girls, everyone is terrified that Mr Older Guy is going to seduce her with the shameless lies teenage boys haven't yet figured out how to tell convincingly.

Yes, most of us westerners are adolescents until we are about 25. Girls mature faster, apparently. I didn't. But if you are a 30+ year old woman, the only thing you need to worry about is if your under-25 boyfriend is an adult yet or not. And maybe you are the patient kind who can put up with adolescent sulks and storms, and the smart one who isn't going to be his Older Woman Who Initiated Him Into the Sweets of Love, like an 18th century courtesan, only unpaid.

"I'm not going to be one of those b*itches who ruins children," said Brett, Lady Ashley in The Sun Also Rises. Words to live by.

As for older men, I could barely see them until I was over 30. I thought it was an age thing, but now I think it was a North American thing, too. But anyway, it was only after I was 30 that I would ever ever ever have considered going out with someone as old as 40.

It is traditional to complain that men always want women much younger than themselves, but I don't think this is true. Single men generally pursue women their own age, and most Single men are in their 20s. Most Single women are in their 20s, too, which may be why older Single men are so willing to try their luck with them. And I don't think older men who think twenty-something women are luscious are any less moral than older women who think twenty-something men are toothsome.

It has also been complained that playboys suddenly panic at the age of 40 and then start looking for women to have their babies. Well, more fool them. The way not to be hurt by playboys is not to go to bed with them. Indeed, quite a lot of modern misery could be solved by just not going to bed with men. Complaining because a man has had 20 years of strings-free fun and now is looking to settle down strikes me as a waste of breath and ink.

I shall end with my usual kind of advice.

* Do what you want as long as it isn't a sin. Smoking a cigarette or eating meat is not a sin. Going for coffee is not a sin. Heavy petting is a sin. When in doubt, check with your confessor.

* Don't chase men. Wait and see who shows up. Say Yes to what or who you want and No to what or who you don't want. It's your right.

*Stay rooted in reality. Don't delude yourself. If a man walks you home after dark, it is not a sign that he is that into you. Particularly not if you asked him to walk you home in the first place.

Update: I acknowledge the screams of horror from Women Younger Than I at the idea of (female) young things giving (male) old cougars the time of day. The idea is that older men are wily and experienced and wicked.

And to be honest, I was thinking of 30 year olds dating 40-plusses, since I can't imagine why a 20-something would want to date some guy with orange peel skin when she--unlike me--has access to all those toothsome 20-something hotties.

No offense, 20-something hotties. You're not supposed to be reading this blog.

Anyway, I have put up two new surveys. The top one asks "How old is too old?" and the one underneath wants to know how old you are, so that I will remember that some of you are bouncing babies.

Charm

Poppets, my hair stood on end. And I have a lot of hair, so you can just imagine what that looked like. Read this well-written article by "Lucy Simmonds" on altcatholic.net. Then read what Jeff in Sacramento wrote just beneath it. Do not tear your eyes away from the response by Jeff in Sacramento because I was profoundly moved by the testimony of Jeff in Sacramento and am going to write about it.

Go read. Then come back and read my thoughts below.

There are many reasons why men do not marry, and the comment stream is full of men saying what they are. The biggie is the absolute heartbreak of divorce, which is usually initiated by women, and the resultant loss of property, income and even children. That's what they say, so I'm not going to argue with them on that. I don't really enjoy arguing with men. There is no fun in arguing with a man you're not going to sleep with afterwards. Oh dear. Did I type that out loud?

But my principal thought, while reading Lucy's "I blame men" essay, is that the men she describes simply haven't fallen deeply in love with anyone yet. Nobody expects Western women to marry men we don't love. Well, I don't expect Western men to marry women they don't love. One might think out of sheer sexual frustration Catholic men might just pick the nicest girls they know and make the best of it, but it seems that they're not usually that sexually frustrated after all. Men, too, love love. Well, Keats was a man, so we shouldn't be surprised.

In Lucy's essay, Catholic American Manhood stands in the dock. All eyes are upon him. Lucy, the District Attorney (for the trial takes place in the USA), has accused him. We are the jury. Kerry Cronin (whom I know personally, a very sweet woman) has given her evidence. And now Jeff in Sacramento, counsel for the defense, steps before the bench and says "Is it not true that American women lack charm?"

Sensation in court.

One of the things about being happily married is that I can listen to Jeff in Sacramento without having ten thousand fits. Jeff in Sacramento could go on all day long about what he doesn't like about American Catholic women today and I wouldn't turn a hair. Even if he wound up by saying "And that goes for Canadian women, too, since I can't see much of a difference", I would merely nod and say, "Thank you, Jeff, for putting that so plainly." It's not my ego on the line. It's Lucy's. It's yours. So I will proceed cautiously.

I am on Lucy's side. And I am on Jeff's side. I am on the side of all authentic Catholic Singles and other Singles of Good Will. Fundamentally, Lucy and Jeff are on the same side, too. The war between the sexes is evidence of the Fall, not part of the Gospel message. In Christ there is no man or woman: this isn't some cockamanie argument for wimminpriests--it asserts the UNITY of Man and Woman in Christ.

"I blame men," says Lucy, and I cannot imagine a phrase more likely to lose her the sympathy of male readers. I used to blame men for stuff, too, and in fact my publisher at Novalis was a bit taken aback at some of the things I had to say about some men. But I figured out long ago that if you are Single and love men and want to marry one eventually, it is a very bad idea to sound like a Lesbian separatist. In fact, men are so battered and beaten up nowadays, the smartest thing a man-loving woman can do is tell men how marvellous they are. It is like rain falling on a wilted plant.

(Of course not all men are marvellous, but I am lucky in that all the men in my family are marvellous and that my husband is marvellous and we socialize only with marvellous men. If you're male and you're invited to my house for supper twice, you're marvellous. It's official. I should publish my guest list so that women can study it keenly.)

Another thing women should do is stop thinking men are anything like their schoolteachers. Our schoolteachers told us that if we studied hard and seized opportunities, we could be anything we wanted and could be the First Woman Blah-Blah-Blah and they would be proud of us. In fact they were already proud of us. Heavens, I can hear the words echoing from the past: "I'm so proud of you, girls!" But in general men do not give a tinker's damn about what women's grade are or what we do for a living. They usually don't care. Pretty face beats Harvard degree. Radiant smile trumps making partner. This is not to say that men think Harvard degree and making partner useless in a woman. These are just the cherries on the cake. B.A. did not marry me because I write well. But if I sell an article, he just happens to mention it to everybody.

And Lucy's schoolteachers would have loved her essay. It's well-written. It's thoughtful. It's honest, funny, and true. It sparked 47 comments. But it did not get her what she most deeply wants, and I heartily congratulate her on using a pseudonym.
However, all is not lost, because there is Jeff in Sacramento to tell her How to Get Traditional Catholic Men. Apparently the way to Get Traditional Catholic Men is to be charming.

I know a lot of Traditional Catholic Men*, and therefore I take Jeff's testimony quite seriously. But I also suspect that the Filipina and Polish women who marry ordinary white, non-Polish American guys do so in part because they are sick of the hyper-machismo of both the Philippines and Poland.

Women in hyper-macho cultures have it underscored to them every day and in every way that they are women, and they learn that they cannot take on men the way men take on men. And therefore they develop the feminine wiles men say they hate when they realize they are feminine wiles. If they don't know they are feminine wiles, men call them charm. And I bet you the Filipina and Polish women Jeff in Sacramento talks about turn them on instinctively the minute their American husbands get out of line.

Charm looks very nice, and indeed it is great fun to be charming. But underneath lies a not-so-pretty realism, the understanding that men are different and you cannot be 100% honest with them because they are men. Do you remember that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Toula's mother and aunt snow her father into thinking he had come up with a solution to a problem?




In some ways that was absolutely horrifying. But that's charm. And that's life. If you think it is absolutely terrible ever to be disingenuous with men, then you wipe off that lipstick, missy, because your lips ain't that colour neither.

Thanks to Ashley for bringing the article to my attention!

*Update: In this context I mean The-man-is-the-head-of-the-household-my-wife-shouldn't-have-to-work guys, not guys who prefer the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. These include neo-con guys. In fact, they are usually neo-con guys. Sorry for any confusion.

P.S. Here's a photo of Auntie being charming. The smile is real. The cigarette is fake. The lipstick is Russian Red by MAC.

Too Nice?

Poppets, I am a bit nervous about this particular subject. Such a can o' worms. Such a conflict between the world as it is and the world as it should be. I'd rather tell you about the party I went to on Saturday night. Apparently given very bad lighting, a dress she has to stick on with double-sided tape and the absence of her husband, your old auntie gets chatted up a lot. Of course I am way too advanced in holiness to think that was awesome, but actually it was pretty awesome. (Needless to say, Auntie mentioned Unkie when the conversation turned to "And why do you live in Edinburgh?")

Anyway, the party is still too fresh in local history for you to tell you all the amazing insights I gleaned, so I will hang it up in the cellars of my mind to be seasoned and preserved and just get on with the painful topic of niceness.

Can a nice guy be too nice?

Hitherto I have written about soi-disant "nice guys" who are actually passive-aggressive b*stards. They are easiest to spot in advice columns because they like to write letters like this: "Dear Abby, I'm a nice guy but I think I should't be because apparently all women like men who treat them badly."

Such "nice" guys lack self-knowledge, and men who lack self-knowledge are alarming. But to ignore Mr Seething "Nice Guy" and to move onto truly nice guys, is there such a thing as being "too nice"? And incidentally, by "too nice" I mean "too kind."

Frankly, I do not think men can be too kind. I think they can be boring, of course. But kindliness does not mean dullness, just as abrasiveness does not mean excitement. True kindliness includes kindliness to oneself, which is something that some men lack when they are dealing with women. Women tend not to respect men who do not respect themselves. However, putting women down is not exactly evidence of healthy self-respect.

Sorry to mention them again, but men who are involved in the pick-up artist movement believe in technique called "negging." "Negging" is paying a girl a backhanded compliment so as to stand out from all the men who pay her proper compliments and to knock her from her pedestal of self-confidence. The p.u. artist idea is that every real woman is longing for some guy to re-establish the proper order of creation in which the man is boss and the woman obeys him and thinks he is marvelous.

Yes, go ahead and make those gargling noises of disgust, but we have a eensy problem in that a lot of women are actually like that. Why do so many fourteen year old girls defy their parents to date some guy their parents despise? Why does such a girl want to please her boyfriend more than she wants to please her parents? Why do women do such stupid, shortsighted things "because I love him"? And why do I get so many letters from readers, Nice Catholic Girls who go to church and know the rules and want to live up to them, who admit to having slept with their boyfriends or now-ex-fiances? Okay, sure, they did it because they wanted to, but my hypothesis is that a big reason they wanted to was because they wanted to please those boyfriends and ex-fiances. They wanted to give that which wasn't really theirs to give yet.

Simone de Beauvoir was feminist royalty, but I read somewhere that she used to buy Jean-Paul Sartre fancy notebooks while she bought cheap notebooks for herself. She wouldn't marry her American lover Nelson Algren because she was so attached to Jean-Paul Sartre, who left control of his intellectual legacy to the mistress he adopted as his daughter. Jean-Paul never married Simone, of course. The whole "open relationship" was his idea, and apparently when he suggested it, he didn't think she'd agree. But she did and the upshot was that she spent her life as his high priestess, editing his work, and insisting on being buried in his grave despite the Algerian mistress-(ahem) "daughter," and it's all very depressing.

Saint Edith Stein wrote about both masculinity and femininity, noting that they were adversely affected by the Fall. Since the Fall, masculinity has had a tendency to tyrannize over women and femininity has had a tendency to let it. But nature, twisted after the Fall, is both healed and perfected by Grace, which is to say that the Incarnation ushered in a new order. This new order recognizes the truth revealed in Genesis that women are, as much as men, made in the image and likeness of God. Both Saint Edith and Blessed John Paul II underscore the dignity of Woman, offering Our Lady as the exemplar.

They don't put it like this, but Eve was a wimp, submitting to the snake, whereas Our Lady is a heroine, crushing the snake with her heel. Our Lady didn't listen to snakes but to God, and instead of falling for tricks, she responded to an invitation to become the Mother of God.

In light of this, I would say that to fall for negging and to admire men who push you around and to want to submit to them in whatever way to make them like or love you is to be in cahoots with the Fall and not to be in line with the Gospel.

Meanwhile, I haven't got a psych degree or anything like that--just my wee M.Div/STB--but I will go out on a limb and suggest that the women who are most likely to fall for guys who insult them are women who are emotionally unhealthy and who are so used to being insulted that they think it is normal. They might also be so lonely that they are amazed by and grateful for any masculine attention, no matter how negative. (I certainly know women like this.) But emotionally healthy women are irritated by men who insult them and will flee them for men who are honestly kind to them.

Update: I have just had a horrid memory of a woman who clearly loved the young man abusing her in public and so put up with it. The kicker is that the woman was the young man's mother. They were in front of my counter at one of my government jobs. I think the woman must have forgotten some essential paper, for the young man told his mother she was a waste of space. I snapped, "That's no way to speak to your mother" and the woman, whose head was bowed and who looked very ashamed, looked at me and then at him.

"Yes," she said. "That's no way to speak to your mother."

"Waste of space," muttered the young man rebelliously.

The woman gave an unhappy giggle.

Some women love men despite their bad behaviour. Not because. DESPITE.


Incidentally, my husband is one of the kindest men I know. And he is kind to everybody.

The Brave Women Retreat

That sounds like a pun or an admission of defeat, but of course I am talking about the "May Picnic for Women" hosted by the Redemptorists in Krakow! The theme of the retreat was "A Virtuous Woman, Who Can Find Her?"--only in Polish the Hebrew word for "Virtuous" comes out as "Brave." And it seems apt because there were a lot of brave women at this retreat.

And--sorry to toot my own horn--I was brave myself. When I discovered that I had missed my Edinburgh to Krakow flight--because I am not only brave but also occasionally stupid--I booked a flight to Gatwick, there to sleep until the first UK flight to Krakow left the next morning at 7:45 AM.

Monday Night, 30 April

Oh, poppets. The horror of trying to sleep in Gatwick. There are, in Gatwick, a few rows of seats without any arm-rests, so people can actually lie down. But the lights shine down relentlessly and old men talk without ceasing and other travellers get the good seats before you, and it is all very unpleasant. However, eventually I did manage to get a row to myself and I wrapped my head in my scarf against the bright lights and stuffed earplugs in my ears against the old men. And thus I managed to get some sleep, if not the deep, deep, sleep of the enviable Polish couple to my right.

Incidentally, the ankle-length denim skirt does have its uses. If you are going to sleep on the floor or seats of Gatwick airport, an ankle-length denim skirt is a good thing. Meanwhile, I went to sleep clutching a postcard of Our Lady Queen of Poland as a protection against Bad People.

Tuesday, 1 May

First I put in my contact lenses. Next I went to Costa coffee and had a "flat white." Then I flew to Krakow, muttering my Polish speech over and over. The correct way to pronounce the name of our beloved late pontiff JP2 in Polish is, more-or-less, Bwogoslavee-ON-ee Yan PAV-ey-oh DRU-gi.

At Krakow airport was Father Pawel, who whisked me away out-of-doors, where it was over 25 degrees Celsius, which is to say absolute heaven after cold and rainy Britain. I took off my tweed coat and wool hat and turned my face to the sky and made noises of joy and gratitude. The sun shone down, the sky was blue, the population of Krakow jammed the highway as they headed for the mountains, and thus we took a country route to the Redemptorists' house.

At the Redemptorists' house I was shown to my room and given half an hour of free time, which I used to wash and change and recover from my eight prone hours in Gatwick airport. Then I was whisked to dinner, which I gratefully munched, and where I met other people in the retreat team. Then I was carted off to an interview in the Homo Dei office, which never happened, and then I went for a lovely sunny walk along the Vistula with beautiful Alicja, who was giving a lecture on Wednesday afternoon.

Then there was a meeting in a board room, and this was very amusing because, of course, I understood enough Polish to know what was going on, but not enough to know exactly what people were saying. Which must be like how it is for some Poles in Scotland. But fortunately I never felt left out or despairing, and when asked if I had anything to say, I croaked out "Cieszę się, że jestem tutaj." This means I am happy that I am here, which was perfectly true.

And at last the retreat began in the little retreat house, which had a nice big room with windows, and it began with prayers and Praise and Worship music, led by the music team, a married couple, the wife playing the electric keyboard and the husband playing the electric guitar. I had a strong sense of "Toto, we aren't in Trid Land anymore." In fact, I had a sense that this was a natural extension of my M.Div. years. And say what you like about P&W, it's very repetitive and therefore ideal for learning theological Polish.

Then was supper. Then was Mass in the 16th century church in which JP2 used to ask for the help of Our Lady of Perpetual Help on his way to his Nazi-occupation era manual labour job. And then there was a lecture about "The Brave Woman, Who Can Find Her?" and women in the Old Testament by Dr. Kantor, who was also my translator. I stayed for ten minutes, but then I was simply too exhausted. Off I went to bed.

Wednesday, 2 May

There were prayers and P&W music the next morning after breakfast, and then it was time for me to do my thing. So I got up and looked at the seventy lovely women who had decided to spend their May vacation on retreat, and said "Dziękuję bardzo. Cieszę się, że jestem dziś z Paniami tutaj w Krakowie." And to my joy, it actually came out Polish-sounding, and the ladies were astonished and applauded warmly. In M.Div. language, I felt very affirmed. So I read out the rest of my 90 word speech and was warmly applauded again. Their generous response was reward beyond my wildest dreams for my six months of ego-squashing linguistic toil. Then I told them all about St. Edith Stein.

Dr. K translated after every sentence, so we all got 74 minutes of St. Edith Stein.

Then there was a break, and then to my relief almost everyone came back and I gave part one of "How Not to Go Insane While You are Single." This was much lighter fare than the thought of St. Edith Stein. By then I had figured out that I had two audiences. One audience could understand whatever I said, and the other audience depended on the translator. This knowledge helped me a lot in delivery.

And then there was dinner--hurrah! The Poles have their main meal in the middle of the day, which is extremely sensible. There was soup and meat and potatoes and veg, all delicious.

After dinner there was Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, confessions with Fr. Pawel and one-on-one chats with Alicja in one room and me in another. I had some very heartwarming chats. There was another short P&W service, and then it was time for Alicja's lecture about Single Life and prayer. Polish-Canadian M very kindly translated for American R and Scots-Canadian me.

Then there was Mass and a little P&W service of healing, but my Gatwick vigil caught up with me, and I didn't make it through the healing service. Zzzzz.

Thursday, 3 May

Breakfast. P&W service. Me. This time my intro was a simple Dzien dobry (Good day) and then I told us all about Mulieris Dignitatem. After an hour, I stopped and we all had a good break. Then I gave Part 2 of "How Not to Go Insane While You are Single", which I think we all enjoyed more than Mulieris Dignitatem, as it was funnier and much less brainy.

Then we went to a scheduled parish Mass in the church. It was the feast day of Our Lady Queen of Poland, and instead of P&W songs there were a lot of hymns featuring the words "Maryjo" and "Polski" and "Polska". And then there was the concluding meeting in the retreat house and delicious dinner. People began to say good-bye and to leave. And then I packed and was taken by tram to the train station, Father Pawel lugging my monster suitcase all the way, and put on the train to Warsaw.

Only when the train was zipping north-east did it begin to rain. Ahh...! I'm telling you, the weather was perfect. Okay, Thursday afternoon was a bit muggy, as there was shortly to be a thunderstorm, but I enjoyed even the mugginess because late April in Edinburgh was miserable.

So what else can I tell you about the retreat? I greatly enjoyed signing books because it gave me a chance to speak one-on-one to many of the women, most of whom were shy about their English, which was always better than my Polish, so they needn't have been shy. And I was very grateful to Dorota and Margareta of Homo Dei for they baked me a big box of kokosanki (coconut cookies) and thus, later on the week, when I was hungry and stuck on a slow train, I had something to eat.

Oh, and I am also very grateful to the porter, for when I returned to the Redemptorists' house from central Poland to spend the night before flying back to Edinburgh, he said, "Ah! Pani (Miss) [Seraphic]!" like I belonged there.

Update: I don't want to stress this, this being a blog for Singles, but I have to say that the hero of the hour(s) on Monday evening was B.A. Even though I was in floods of self-hating tears, B.A. coped extremely patiently and supported all my plans, including buying last minute flights. He came with me to the airport by bus and was cheerful and kind and observed that it was nice that we never have terrible rows in a crisis.

"That is because in a real crisis I go into a catatonic state," I said.

And as this is a blog for Singles, I will say that my dad would have done the same thing. There is something to be said for wanting to marry a nice guy like your dad, if you are so lucky as to have a good dad.

Giving Too Much

To continue the conversation begun yesterday with a passage from St. Edith Stein, I am channeling Cynthia Crysdale's Embracing Travail. Unfortunately my copy is in under a box under a lot of other boxes in a closet under a staircase in my parents' house. (When it came to shipping I made the heart-squeezing choice of china over books.) However, I do remember Crysdale's strong hint that "giving too much" is a particularly feminine sin, whereas "taking too much" is a particularly masculine sin.

We are all aware, I think, that being selfish is sinful, but we are less aware how giving too much is also sinful. But it is. It is sinful to be a doormat. It is sinful to "act like a martyr". It is sinful to be a coward. Cowardice is sinful.

Of course women are capable of being selfish, and men are capable of being passive aggressive doormats. But we women are usually quicker to ask "Oh, how can he take advantage of me like that?" than "Why am I allowing myself to be taken advantage of like that?" And the latter should be a serious question. Why do you allow yourself to be taken advantage of? What is it that you are getting out of it? What reward do you expect? And is that really fitting to you as a creature made in the image and likeness of God?

Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman (also in a box under boxes under stairs across the sea) also points to women's vast unquenchable torrents of love and need to give, give, GIVE. I seem to recall some poor granny or auntie she mentions knitting endless jumpers for younger relations who never wear them. Her hypothetical granny was not knitting for the pleasure of it or the pleasure she imagined the jumper might give to her young relation, but in order to give.*

The Rules, to add pop culture to this list of saint, Anglican theologian and feminist pundit, warns women not to give men expensive presents. Men are apparently suspicious of expensive presents and subconsciously smell in them an attempt to buy their affections. The Rules does not suggest this is a form of psychological transference, in which men impute their own sneaky motives to women. But neither does The Rules deny that women do try to buy affection with gifts.

Oh dear. The time (and money) I have wasted trying to find The Perfect Present for some male object of my affections. It makes me sad. With female friends, you don't have to look and scheme and dream. You just see something and know "Oh, that's just so Such-and-Such" and, if you can afford it, you buy it. You don't buy it as a symbol of your love or to remind her of you forever or to make an impact on her life. You just buy it because "it's so her", and she will enjoy it for itself, and that's good enough for you.

My husband hates "stuff" and doesn't read the books I bought him as symbols of our shared commitment to Thought, so I now I give him gin or whiskey and try to save for holidays abroad. So much for give, give, GIVE. Let's face it: when you're married to someone you love and who loves you, you don't have to give to get. You just get and give all the time without thinking about it much, and giving and getting are not in direct relation. Marriage is a remedy for all kinds of concupiscence.

So giving, giving, GIVING is more of a Single girl's temptation, and I'm sorry, I've been there, and it sucks. I know Single women who run themselves ragged trying to do something for everybody or everything for somebody, and I grieve for them.

P.S. There is, of course, a Golden Mean. As I write this, I am looking at a beautiful, cotton, lace tablecloth that took my mother over a year to make. It represents hundreds of hours of crocheting and is a Second Year Wedding Anniversary to B.A. and me. (We got our Third Year Anniversary present last year, as an injury slowed Mum down.) It is in the sitting-room because we wanted to show it off to our dinner guests without risking them upsetting wine on it. We absolutely love it, and as it is clearly in the family heirloom class, I have already mentally bequeathed it to my niece in the event that we have no children of our own.

I am sure I don't have to explain how it is fitting for a keen needleworker to spend a year making a tablecloth for her daughter and son-in-law's Second Wedding Anniversary but not fitting for a single woman to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars (or hours) on a similar tablecloth for her love interest.