Bugs Bunny:"GET ME OUTTA HERE"

[faithisbelieving]

Excellent responses. I get it. A post that cuts across DB grain:

.......One of these e-mails described a conversation that a man was having misgivings about having had with his wife.

They've been having compatibility problems - he's extremely mature and she's extremely immature, even though they are both within a year or two of 40 - and her immaturity has caused her to have no achievement in her life and hence, no self-esteem, and had become dependent on her marriage and her child for her feelings of achievement and independence, which cannot work because it makes the source of one's self-esteem something other than one's self.

This man is quite brilliant and a strong leader, recognized the problem, and loved her enough that when she left to go "find herself," he didn't beg her to come home or try to force her to come home, he told her that she needed to grow up and have a life before she was going to be able to share one with him, and that reconciliation wasn't an option until she had grown enough to feel good about herself and be able to enjoy his company instead of being dependent on it.

Months have gone by, during which she has descended to an embarrassing level of immaturity and arguing with pure fabrication and fantasy to back her up, but suddenly, over the last few weeks, it's like she's emerging from the fog, realizing that he was right, that all her machinations and fantasies have brought her nothing but trouble and hard feelings, and has become rational and responsible to a degree that neither of us would have expected for a long time. This is not uncommon when somebody bottoms out hard and realizes that the people who were thought to be their enemies and oppressors were actually the only people left who cared.

She has now set reasonable goals and laid very rational plans to achieve these goals, and has been dropping hints of repentance and testing the waters to see how much damage she's done and if it can be repaired sufficiently to ultimately allow her to return home. Hence the conversation...

He wants her to tell him in full detail of her desires, goals, plans and whether she currently wants to come back home, and when that might be, but is concerned about whether he could live with the answer. My advice: have the conversation. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

That was first said by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, a Roman statesman by name of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. Let's take a quick look at its true meaning, and you'll see why great men live by it and women find it irresistible.

"Justice" isn't about law, or necessarily even about punishment. It's about getting what one deserves - what he or she has earned by virtue of their choices and actions, good, bad or indifferent. What Caesoninus was saying was that they should do what was just, even if it upset and destroyed the natural order of things, in his case, the unseating of some powerful people, in our reader's case, hearing something that was other than what he wanted to hear. Why is this so important? And attractive?

A real man knows that no matter what happens, if it is realistic and just, he can build upon it and make improvement and progress, even if he has to rebuild from ruins. He doesn't like or try to create mayhem, but if that's the only way that he and those around them can get what they deserve, good, bad, or indifferent, he's prepared to go that route, because his word, his character, and his self-respect are important to him. This is how he sleeps well at night, and why he wakes up each morning looking forward to the day, no matter what the previous day held or this day holds. It is the guardian of his self-esteem, and the polish on the tools of his achievement: reason, character, and confidence.

Having read those last few words, is there any question as to why women would find this wildly attractive? A man with a strong sense of justice who consistently applies it defines and exerts authority in a way that inferior men can never hope to do. This is one of those places where the rules for dating differ from those for committed relationships; a woman looking for a night of fun and excitement may seldom look deep enough into a man to see this kind and strength of character, but a woman who is looking for or is in a committed relationship will home in on it from miles away. Such a man walks into a room and everybody knows without question that he owns it, and to a degree, owns them, because he will be the strongest man in the room in terms of reason, character, and confidence.

It may sound like this is a difficult way to live at first glance, but think about it, and you'll find that it's actually easier. There is no deceit to try to cover up, any messes you make are made up of facts that can be sorted through and worked with instead of having to struggle against everything to solve a problem, and women adore you, including your partner, for who and what you are instead of secretly wishing you were something else - and something better.

Strong character and a sense of justice, contrary to popular belief, is a choice, one of the most important choices a man can make, because it in turn is the foundation for most, if not all, of the rest of the choices he makes in his life. It is also one of the very few things about a man that can create both love (a sense of value) and attraction (a sense of excited desire) in a woman.

Add justice, in its true sense, to your personal code of values and watch what happens to the rest of your life, and the reactions you get from women. Those of bad character will run from you, while those of good character - and who will make good wives and mothers, or at least low-maintenance girlfriends, for those of you not looking for a committed relationship at the moment but like keeping good candidates around for when that time comes - will flock to you, and if you're already with a good woman you'll find that she'll whip a running saw mill to protect her relationship with you.

You'll also find that other people - friends, employers, employees, vendors, customers, etc. - will flock to you. The old bromide "opposites attract" is only true all of the time when speaking of magnetism; otherwise it's infrequent, fickle, and counter-productive most of the time. Good relationships require compatibility; hence, "birds of a feather flock together" is something you can depend upon.

So you didn't see that coming, huh? You would have if you knew as much about women as you should to be trying to live happily with one. Do you know what she's really saying when she says, "Fine!" and nothing else? Do you know what she's TELLING you when she's ASKING you a question? Do you know what question she's asking you any time she's telling you something?

A partial fix to your relationship problems doesn't fix your relationship. It merely slows down the inevitable break-up. No, that's not a good thing; it gives you more time to make more mistakes, become more heavily invested in the relationship, and harbor more ill feelings when it does finally blow up in your face. Think that can't happen? It is a common thing for me to be working with couples who are on the brink of divorce or who have already decided to divorce when the wife ends up pregnant - with the husband's child. When you're in trouble and emotions are high, just about anything can happen, especially if it's bad, because emotionally-driven decisions are only good ones by coincidence.

The only time that delaying the inevitable break-up is a good thing is if you have all the information you need to fix all your shortcomings in your hands and are working on learning it.

And a follow up response to a query of mine:

The message is that you should always seek and deliver justice, no matter what. When you expect or give the unearned, everybody loses. To expect the unearned labels you a moocher, and to give the unearned labels you a sap and a target. It takes guts to live a just life and to expect those around you to deal with you on just terms, but when you do it, in any conflict, there may be a winner and a loser, but both will profit from the outcome. The key that it appears you're asking about is that she earned being cut loose, and if she genuinely saw the error of her ways and made a genuine effort to work out their differences, regardless of who was "at fault" or what had to be done, then he could give her a second chance, but otherwise she had not earned a second chance. The biblical story of the prodigal son is somewhat confusing in the same way. The prodigal son screws up, but realizes he screwed up and goes home to earn his way back in. And his father altruistically takes him back just because he is his son, rather than because he deserves to be back. And the brother, who should be angry with the father for his altruism, is jealous of the prodigal son because he doesn't see that the prodigal son came back with a penitent heart and a desire to work and be faithful; he only saw his father cutting him some slack, and blamed the brother instead of the father. So the prodigal son, who started out as the philanderer, ended up being the only one in the story with a sense of justice, since the father would let him come back regardless of what he had done, unjustly giving, and the faithful brother didn't seek or recognize his brother's repentence, unjustly witholding.

Printed for your perusal.
FIB