Love Quest Obsession
Dear [Mentat],
We’ve been talking about the obsessive quest for love; you sighting its disadvantages and wanting to stay clear of it, and me its proponent, embracing it and attempting to show why it’s necessary to the excellent man.
Continuing the discussion, I offer another advantage of serious questing (whether for love or anything else): The hunt itself enriches the soul, even if in the end, we never manage to bag the prey. It supplies meaningful reasons for living and the stamina for executing life’s many pursuits, motivating us to learn about many things while seeking our big answers. Quests, fruitful or not, advance us closer to supreme understanding and self actualization.
You know, I was musing the other day that until last year, I had no regrets. I never felt I made many bad decisions. Even with bad outcomes, I usually knew that I had made the best choice possible given what was known at the time. But lately, my history of academic laziness at WPSBC troubles me. Though I tried there, to read classic literature, history, and philosophy, I simply couldn’t stay awake through it. True, the sugary, caffeinated beverages and the late nights we kept, contributed to the chronic drowsiness. But the reading was also boring, just like algebra, geometry, and Spanish, because I saw no relevance of these materials to electronics or mating – my two biggest dreams then. What would this stuff ever be used for? Its benefits just weren’t clear when my voice was high, and the fact that adults forced us to study further closed my eyes to any goodness of knowing about X, Y, and Z, not to mention the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. If a teacher then could have connected the dots and showed how literature, history, and philosophy could help solve problems that would plague us later in life, I might have been a straight-A student. 
Naaaaaah!
Fortunately, though tardy, my Love Quest has done this. It’s made literature’s relevance clear, albeit twenty-five years after graduation. The problems posed by chasing the Big Dream (what you and I have been scratching our heads on now for some years) might well have already been solved in a great novel that I just never got around to reading yet. If I had read more books growing up, during that time of high mental pliancy, I might not today be struggling to find the answers which have eluded me for so long. If only a teacher had said back then that the more we read, the better equipped we are to tackle life’s injustices, I might have discovered my current-day zeal for reading that was nowhere to be found a quarter century ago. [My] quest instilled the reading passions lately, and this is good. The Quest is good. In this way, it has improved me.
Speaking of Dr. Phil, you’ll be pleased to know that he agrees with you on this subject, advising people not to focus on finding relationships. Like you, he says that a person should indulge his other passions first. Don’t go to bars, clubs, grocery stores, or any other mate market with an agenda. Go without hidden motives, simply because you like going and not because you want to meet a mate. In terms of The Triangle, he’s telling his audience to reach for Ego and Self Actualization needs, before they fulfill their Social ones. This sounds rather ill-advised to me.
Then, he gets too spiritual, and says to believe that if it’s meant to be, a relationship will happen, without looking for it. I agree with this partially. It really does go just this way for some people; specifically, the prettiest. Certainly, the most attractive among us need put forth the least effort to snag a high-quality mate. The prettiest girls don’t have to go to dating services or get their friends to match them up with blind dates. All they need do is walk down a street where guys are, and by the time they reach the next block, they’ll have been hit on several times. Relationships find them, and they’re sitting pretty because they never have to risk rejection.
It’s no wonder that attractive people (like Dr. Phil) advocate this wait-for-it-to-happen attitude. Why not? For them, happen it usually does, without them ever lifting a finger. Indeed, a basic tenant of evolutionary psychology is that the prettiest are most destined to mate. (Studies show that they’re the ones who most often actually do mate.) Rewording this slightly, you could say that nature means for the prettiest to be loved the most. And when nature means for you to love, it’s easy to say, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” Dr. Phil offered nothing truly profound here.
But things don’t work this way for the average or the ugly. Indeed, the less desirable the man, the fewer the women who will want him. Clearly, this necessitates a higher degree of dedication from him than from his more attractive peers, so as to find one who does. The average Joe just can’t afford to be passive here, because relationships don’t just happen for him. Not like they did for Dr. Phil. Nature thwarts rather than favors the lovelorn, which is probably why they’re lovelorn in the first place. For Average Joe, nature’s good intentions aren’t so abundantly plain. Such people learn early that nature does not intend goodness for them, and so they learn not to count on it for that. While it may still be “meant to be” for him, love is by no means as easy to achieve. So he must try and try hard, because virtually all of us, pretty or not, are subject to Maslow’s Triangle. We have a strong need to be loved by a quality mate, and unless that’s satisfied, we won’t achieve maximal fulfillment in the triangle’s higher need levels of Ego and Self Actualization. Its queer how Dr. Phil’s philosophy doesn’t seem to account for The Triangle, and how he doesn’t often acknowledge the existence of alternative rules of social engagement which the less attractive among us must follow.
It should be plain that the rules of how to get love differ vastly among people, depending on how attractive they are. Thus, there is no one patent way to approach relationships. Neither the devoted nor worldly ways are always right. Perhaps the most attractive can afford to be Worldlys and still have fulfilling unions. But this approach is often only right for other attractive people, and has little value for the less desirable, who are negotiating an entirely different social landscape. This is why I get so frustrated with Doc Phil because he often targets his advice to the most attractive, and the applause and groans of his audience tend to discount the points of view of the Average Joes. But hey, it’s his show. He’s free to run it as he wishes, of course. I only mean to point out the limits of his advice and to underscore that his “words of wisdom” work well for far fewer viewers than who actually watch the show.
Not only do effective mating strategies differ between the more and less desirable mates, but as you know, they also differ vastly between men and women, attractiveness notwithstanding. Traditionally, ladies have not aggressively sought mates. In the high school dances in the 50s, women lined up off to the sides of the dance floor, awaiting the men to invite them out. This still happens in the bars and night clubs today. As found among most species, human females tend to defer to males to make the first move – to come to them, and to take all the initial risks. Many telephone dating services employ this philosophy to get women to join by only charging the men, while the women use it for free. The more assertive, risky, and costly role has been, and will be for centuries to come, the male one. So we’d expect females to support a more passive approach to mating than men. Indeed, when Dr. Phil related his wait-for-it-to-happen view above, it was the women who were heard applauding the loudest.
So, female passivity is still true even though we’ve reached the post feminism age. Though equal rights abound today, women still largely favor The Gentleman, who opens doors for them, pays for their meals, and takes the bulk of emotional risks in order to advance the relationship. They like the man to drive and be the initiator. Yet they often say they don’t approve of his assertive antics, claiming that they couldn’t ever imagine behaving that way themselves. But the fact that they wouldn’t behave that way doesn’t explain their dislike, though they frequently offer it as such. Why should they behave like him? After all, they’re female, not male.
What actually determines how she’ll react is not so much his behavior as it is how attracted she is to him. Prettier men get away with more. They can disrespect, neglect, and abuse their women without worry of her leaving. Even if she does go, they’ll have no trouble finding another. But let me get back on track here and say that women on the TV talk shows frequently fault the male approach to relationships, sighting his obsessive compulsions as saboteurs in the relationship. And males, like Dr. Phil, buy into that, because Dr. Phil knows that he’s going home that night and sleeping with none other than a woman. For him to support anything other than his just-let-it-happen-by-itself approach, would not bode well with his wife. There are clear differences between male and female approaches and the problem with TV talk shows is that they tend to lump everyone into one pot, where one approach is right for all. Not so, as I hope I’ve made clear.
Okay, okay. I got carried away. I promise, I won’t write anymore in response to this part of your letter. Also, I guess we’ve drifted away from the central theme of this thread – about whether or not we handicapped men can do better than handicapped women. Let me say that I think we can, but with difficulty. Parker found himself a fully functional woman. And if he can do it, … well, you know the rest.
We may not have to do better though, if we find a right handicapped woman. As noted in previous posts, there are a few of them out there, though they’re quite few and far between. But whether or not we do better is irrelevant so long as we find someone we consider supreme. History proves that it’s possible for us both to find preeminence in eyes that don’t see well. You’ve loved [First Love], [your sweetheart from the late 70s], and probably others. I’ve loved [First Love], [Alandra], [...] and others. They were quite good. So even if nature restricts us to dating only the handicapped, well, given the love we’ve experienced from these women, perhaps that’s not so bad. But no matter who we seek to date, the climb is up a steep hill for us, and we won’t reach the top of this hill via half-hearted or no effort. We’ve got to focus, because with focus comes clarity. And with clarity comes clear direction. And with clear direction and a willingness to follow the path, success will likely come.
More later,
