<p>
</p>
<p>Wow, that’s a pretty heavy dose of fear about what he could become. Chances are he won’t – and if he does, you can call him out on it. It might not stop him – but it may make him think.</p>
<p>I know my S would never do this, and I think there are many, many young men who wouldn’t. Of course, there are some who would, but that’s why I think we have to stress resilience. Girls/women can be resilient and learn from experiences.</p>
<p>As Mae West said, “Every one always wants to protect me. I can’t figure out from what.”</p>
<p>D has been hurt, but she has learned from it. She doesn’t want to be protected from life.</p>
<p>This isn’t an easy place to be, earth, but it’s the only place we have, so we can’t hide in our rooms from life. We just have to make the best choices we can.</p>
<p>I was talking with a writer friend last weekend . . . our MFA class had been unexpectedly cancelled and we were in a coffee shop with snow coming down outside. Anyhow, we were talking about (what we feel to be) the surprising incidence of college girls who sleep around randomly, usually after a great deal to drink (all of this reported with concern by college daughters), and how these girls are the daughters of the feminists. . . why such low self-esteem? blah blah blah. I commented that so many in our generation didn’t want to believe that men and women are different, so didn’t advise our children in that way. Well, the discussion wasn’t making a lot of sense, but finally she said, “Well, men and women are WAY different, in my opinion. Men are sluts, and women want to be loved.” I thought that was a memorable line.</p>
<p>understand that a child in the room may not be convenient to a therapist, but the therapist is to be there for me, not the other way around.</p>
<p>Im starting to see more of the inaccuracies about “therapy”
Therapy is not at its most helpful when you expect the therapist to pat you on the shoulder and commiserate.
Therapy is work- it is work that the patient/client must do, not the therapist.
It is actually very ethical for the therapist to remind you that taking your money to watch you talk about your day and watch you watch your kid is not what she is there for.</p>
<p>Well, men and women are WAY different, in my opinion. Men are sluts, and women want to be loved." I thought that was a memorable line.</p>
<p>actually suna- I have found the opposite.
I have found that as the creators of life- women are * very* powerful.
Some of them are afraid of that power as are some men, but the power is still there.
I have also found men who aren’t so afraid of life that they allow themselves to be vulnerable, to be much more romantic than women.</p>
<p>If you don’t believe me, you should sit in on my book group one day ;)</p>
<p>My mother always said “Guys use love for sex and girls use sex for love.” Self respect and the ability to uphold one’s principles/values are tall orders for young people today. I realize that there is no one major contributor, but I personally believe that the media has played a huge role in the “state of things” that SuNu describes. Our kids are constantly bombarded with sex. The amorality of our society and it’s obsession with sex permeates every form of the media. Where can you go without being slapped in the face with sex on billboards, in advertising, on television, in movies and in songs. These images lie to us and tell us that good sex is only for the beautiful, the thin, the young, the sculpted. They tell us that if we don’t want sex all of the time that we have something wrong with us and that sex is always exciting, and fabulous. It’s such a bunch of horse manure!
I think that if kids are going to be fed a regular diet of this crap, we need to be around to temper it with the truth. Unfortunately, many people are either not around when their kids are watching TV or movies or they think that kids need to be “exposed to the real world,” at an early age. (As if the sex saturated world that the media projects is the real world!)
Ok, I’ll get off my soap box now… Sorry.</p>
<p>My kids don’t have that image at all.</p>
<p>The world is a pretty amazing beautiful place and yes you can choose to let Madison Avenue decide what you spend your money and time doing.
But why would you?
I think what people notice & what bothers them always says a lot more about them- than what they are complaining about.</p>
<p>We are who we are- & like they say- " when you are ready, the teacher will appear" but we don’t have to sit on our Barcalounger and read Vanity Fair until he gets there.
:)</p>
<p>I also don’t subscribe to gendered understandings of sexuality; this is not true for all cultures, and not even true for everyone in our culture. And one thing that studies have shown is that men stay in love longer when a relationship ends and they have much more difficulty moving on.</p>
<p>
But in another post you said that this is what your marriage is like now – you said that your husband was loving and hard working, but insensitive to your needs, and that he comes home at night and eats the meals you cook, then lets you clean up while he plays video games.</p>
<p>If you “blame the women” and are worried about how you raise your son, why do you allow this to continue? You could have a talk with your husband and ask him to start pitching in a little more – it doesn’t have to be 50/50 – maybe he could just take on the job of preparing the family meal one night a week, do the dishes two nights a week. Just enough to give you a break and also start to provide a better role model for your son. </p>
<p>It seems that you have a lot of anger and frustration… but don’t have the will to do anything about it. </p>
<p>By the way – I grew up in a family where my dad did most of the cooking. My mom & dad cleaned up after meals together. When I got married, I married a guy who also did most of the cooking. Now my d. has a boyfriend. Over the summer, they decided to rent a room in an apartment together near her job, so for the first time they lived together. He did almost all of the cooking, but she cleaned up. So the world does have a lot of men who cook in it. The downside of this upbringing is that none of the women in our family ever learned how to cook. On the other hand, my adult son is a great cook and whenever he is home visiting he always cooks big meals for me.</p>
<p>The point of my previous post and the way that it relates to the issue of your daughter is — if you expect people to behave in a certain way, then very often you find what you expect. I think this is probably because you overlook or tolerate things that maybe others wouldn’t. I probably ended up married to a man who cooks because without thinking about it, I probably gravitated toward men who like to cook. (My college boyfriend also cooked). If I was dating a guy who didn’t cook or help out in the kitchen, and who sat around expecting me to wait on him while visiting at my house… the relationship probably wouldn’t go anywhere. On the other hand, since I don’t do much cooking, and am the type of woman to say, “go get it yourself” if I don’t feel like fetching a beer… men who expect that sort of coddling from a woman probably wouldn’t have much use for me. Hence, I never was really in a long term relationship with a guy who didn’t at least try to help out with housework and chores.</p>
<p>I guess if I were to post my life experiences, it would be full of slightly built, unathletic men who enjoy symphonies and operas and who don’t even bother to flip on the t.v. when the Super Bowl is on. I’m sure if I tried to generalize based on my experiences that others would laugh at me. </p>
<p>But the point is, whether we intend to or not, we as parents do tend to project our attitudes on our kids, and we can perpetuate various attitudes and expectations by our own behavior. </p>
<p>I disagree with some of the other posters here on 2 major areas. One - therapy. I think therapy for other people is wonderful, but I think therapy is a complete, total waste of time if the person doesn’t want it. So it was an o.k. suggestion to make, but since the answer is “don’t want it”… there is no where to go with that . </p>
<p>The other area: Some people have suggested that your daughter lacks the maturity to go away to college. I would agree that your d. clearly has some attitudes that are very immature, but I think she absolutely needs to get away from because that is the only way she will grow and change. She needs to live in a dorm with kids who have different world views and different attitudes, and she needs to develop the confidence to know that her future choices are not dictated by the past choices and experiences of other women in the family. It may be a difficult transition for her, but I think that is necessary for her to break free of the attitudes and outlook that have perpetuated unhappy marriages and relationships within the extended family. I don’t know if she will succeed, but I don’t see how she can begin to make those changes while living at home. (I’m not talking about virginity – which is almost trivial when it is compared to the bigger issue of expectations about men and relationships – she really needs some other, different models in her life).</p>
<p>calmom, as I was reading your last post, I thought, ‘This could be me.’ I was quite surprised at our similarities, down to the ‘Go get it yourself’ part! Hehe. I also agree with what you had written in your last paragraph.
OP, I also think that a change in environment is what your daughter needs. Perhaps when she is actually on her own, she will be able to see the world in a different, more positive light. She is bound to meet people with dissimilar backgrounds, and through friendships and discussions with them, her eyes will be opened to different perspectives and she will be exposed to people that have had a good life- women and men that are genuinely good, decent human beings.</p>
<p>Ooof. Some of the cliches being tossed around here really bug me. “Men use love to get sex; women use sex to get love.” It would be disingenuous to pretend that has no relationship reality, but it is waaay off the experience of most of the people I know well. I agree completely with emeraldkity: the men I know tend to be more romantic than the women. That’s certainly true in my immediate family, where the men are perpetually starry-eyed, and the women quite cynical. </p>
<p>My son is definitely of the “no sex without love” persuasion. I suspect it’s not that hard for him to fall in love, but at least so far it demands a fairly substantial relationship. My daughter, on the other hand . . . if she subscribed to that idea, she might as well be a nun, and I don’t think she is. I hope she falls in love some day. </p>
<p>One of the things I remember very clearly about college was coming to the realization that all the men I knew secretly wanted to fall in love and get married, and the women not so much.</p>
<p>I do most of the cooking, by the way. And I’ve only missed a couple of the Super Bowls ever played. I also go to the opera – often with my son, because the women don’t like it. I watched a lot of TV with my kids, too, when they were younger, for precisely the reason Sarahsmom gives: I wanted to make certain that they looked at it with a critical eye, even as they enjoyed it. But I didn’t keep them away from stuff at all. The mistakes I made were in the other direction entirely. (And in that regard, it’s not all about sex. Perhaps our lowest moment as parents came when our son, at 9, became the first person in the history of the world to see “The Diary of Anne Frank” without knowing in advance that it had a sad ending.)</p>
<p>These cliches speak alot of truth IMHO. Starry eyed romantic in college? Never came across one in college. Maybe they’re there now. Hope so.</p>
<p>I also wanted to mention that while I have been through therapy ( although not psychoanalysis which is an entirely different ball of wax), I don’t necessarily attribute therapy to my view that life isn’t fair, but we can love it and make it work anyway & that we have choices always but it varies in how we percieve those choices, but to extensive reading.</p>
<p>However- while I have been to about 9 ( doctors or therapists) different practitioners I also would be the first to agree that the style and personality is very important & if someone has credentials from the Mayo Clinic and has worked with Woody Allen for years ( 
) it won’t matter much if he reminds you of the uncle that gave you the creeps.</p>
<p>Finding someone that you can work with isn’t easy but it is very rewarding and can be the catalyst for real, meaningful and lasting changes you make in your own life.</p>
<p>Wow, this thread moves fast. I do agree, Emeraldkity, many men are willing to be vulnerable, and do seek emotional involvement. In fact, in my parenting experience (kids 20 and 23), I have seen more guys than girls get extremely upset when love affairs end. Among the sons of our friends there has been one suicide and (at least) two other attempts. It really makes an impression when a fine, handsome, athletic young 20-year old shoots himself in the head because he is so distraught over losing his girlfriend. Are kids allowed the freedom and privacy to get too serious too soon? </p>
<p>Maybe this gets back in some way to popular culture: many of the girls I know seem rather “hard,” kind of like the female characters on Sex and the City or perhaps Friends. I’m not advocating a return to dewy-eyed innocence, but it does jar me to see the ease and almost flippancy with which they go from one serious relationship to the next without seeming to reflect on the emotional consequences. </p>
<p>We are all struggling to interpret and understand. . . this is a good thread.</p>
<p>“These cliches speak alot of truth IMHO. Starry eyed romantic in college? Never came across one in college. Maybe they’re there now. Hope so.”</p>
<p>I dunno dke, maybe you didn’t run across guys like that because a majority of women, didn’t want that. They wanted the bad boy or the guy they could nurture and fix…</p>
<p>All I remember during college years was if I was a inconsiderate jerk, many women found me attractive and when I was caring, considerate and a gentleman, they found somebody else… Women often say they want one thing and pine about another… </p>
<p>If you didn’t try to get to a “base” usually the girl was offended, because it was the old “what’s wrong with me, he won’t even try to touch me there…”
A girl wanted to tell you “no”, if you never put them in that situation, they ended up kinda mad… as if they felt you didn’t think they were good enough to desire… everybody wants to be wanted… </p>
<p>but you could be a horses butt and be all touchy and they might say “no” but they also say, “I want you to meet my parents”…huh?</p>
<p>It was a confused message then and probably still is… </p>
<p>I ended up tired of the game in college and married someone 4 years older. We both had tired of the gamesmanship that goes on…</p>
<p>We clearly live in different worlds.</p>
<p>I won’t bore you with an inventory of the men with whom I lived when I was in college, but of the 13 of us, there were maybe one and a half who were in any way callous and predatory towards women. I was the half. I was callous a couple of times, mainly out of confusion and immaturity, felt really guilty about it, hated the way it made me feel, and stopped. Some others talked a hard game, but didn’t actually play it. The one guy I would count as actually a jerk, sexually, was a nebbishy scientist who saw himself as a future Nobelist, and more or less looked down on everyone. He didn’t believe women could actually attain his level of intelligence, so he figured they were mostly there to relieve his stress when it built up. I’m pretty sure he has grown since then.</p>
<p>When I look at my children and their friends, I don’t see any hard cases a la Sex in the City. I see people who look exactly like the people I knew when I was young: vulnerable, confused, sometimes blustery, some cynical and some not, working by trial and error to figure out their sexuality and their emotions. (For that matter, with the exception of the Kim Cattrall character and the Bat Mitzvah girls in that one episode, I’m not so sure I see anyone all that hard on Sex in the City, either. I might give you Gossip Girl. But, in TV land, I see my view of the teen world reflected pretty well in Friday Night Lights.)</p>
<p>“I see my view of the teen world reflected pretty well in Friday Night Lights.)”</p>
<p>We’re watching the same stuff and I see it too. So explain why Landry, an obvioulys nice, caring kid, kept losing to Riggins? </p>
<p>Got ya… </p>
<p>And coach’s Daughter dumping QB1 mainly because he’s too nice and caring, and going for the swede? got ya again… </p>
<p>that show is spot on my point… not to mention smash williams…</p>
<p>My experience in college parallels JHS’s: within my circle of friends (i.e. singing group) the bad heartbreaks happened among the men. Several were treated quite heartlessly by girls they were madly in love with. I got my heart broken very badly sophomore year and cried for three weeks, but the guy who dumped me changed his mind and cried for three months when I wouldn’t take him back. None of my female friends in college took a breakup that hard. As for callous and predatory towards women…maybe I was going to the wrong (right?) parties, but I didn’t encounter those men.</p>
<p>Dating in the adult world conforms much more closely to the stereotypes. But it was nothing like that in college.</p>
<p>That being said, I don’t mind saying that I have a very high opinion of the men I went to college with, and I am open to arguments that other schools have a higher ratio of jerks.</p>
<p>There is a guy that I know, very professional, who went to Holy Cross for college. He told me a story of how his roommate brought some girl back to the room, and “attempted” to have intercourse for her. What in fact happened was that he missed the “correct place”. All of the sudden, the girl started running around the room, saying “Oh my God. Oh my God”, where she then proceeded to squat over the garbage can and take a dump. The inexperienced male roommate ran out of the room naked, down the hall. </p>
<p>Now he was laughing his butt off telling me about this. I could not help but think “And this is a top religious college”? And this man comes from a “good family”? </p>
<p>Add to this stories of being in the military, how he and his fellow soldiers would use women, watch each other making time with them. </p>
<p>When he wants to settle down, he looks out of the country for the youngest, most innocent, and from the most hard up countries that he can to bear his kids. Hasn’t had any luck with that yet, though.</p>
<p>I also want to say that it is confusing on “how to be”. For example, I had a friend who was abused as a child and ended up living with her grandparents. </p>
<p>The first time that she had sex, she picked up some boy at the mall, and got pregnant. Her grandparents paid for an abortion. She went on her own. She is very attractive. She cheated rampantly and the men salivated over her like dogs. These guys did not want one night stands either, they wanted her to love them! And she had something like 3 abortions before the age of 20. And at one point, she was pregnant and did not know which guy had done it, so she hit them all up for the abortion bill, pocketing the difference. This woman went on to “have it all”. She’s married, now has 2 children, and has a great job in Florida. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I know a lot of “nice girls”, which I can say honestly that I was until 17, who wanted to be someone’s girlfriend. And the guys would see you for a few days and dump you for the girls that put out. </p>
<p>And there is truth to the fact that a lot of women do gravitate toward the “bad boy”. The fact is that women are attracted to evident virility. Unfortunately virility usually goes hand in hand with other negative traits of aggressive males.</p>