[Mentat],
Actually, I didn’t realize immediately that this was tongue-and-cheek. But that’s okay. Your invitation gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own history with women, and work, and my interests both internal and external to relationships. As a result, I discovered the following: Craving may indeed be a chief source of misery as you put it. But it’s also instrumental to furnishing the world’s most intense pleasures, especially where woman lust is concerned. I have difficulty therefore, with aligning against craving because of the goodness it makes possible for us.
Forgive my dogmatism. But I have much history of indulging my craving for women. Many women. I’ve chased ‘em with just sex on my mind, where getting what I wanted from the relationship without regard for the ladies was paramount ([Peggy Sue], [Shanee]). Others I’ve loved when I couldn’t care less about sex and instead, was intensely attentive to my careers at [work place 1 and work place 2] ([Hane]). Still others, I’ve selflessly loved (like [Lenee]), when I wanted nothing from them except their happiness. I’ve noticed that as a youngling, I was more lustful, and less anxious about the practical sides of an involvement. The woman’s happiness meant less then. But with age came a heightened appreciation of the pragmatic issues. Today, I recognize that though my ultimate goal is still my happiness, I must first ensure that the woman is happy if I ever expect to achieve my own bliss. But more on that some other time.
In short, I’ve chased women while harboring varying degrees of obsession. I’ve loved ‘em when my only strong interest was them and the relationship ([First Love], [Cher], Paula, [Emeebee]), and I’ve loved ‘em when the relationship actually took a back seat to hobbies like ham radio, home maintenance, and personal growth concerns ([Hane], [Hanna] [Chrissy]). I’ve attempted many times during the 90s to dull the ache of low love by seeking unrelated accomplishments (ham radio licenses, promotions at work, Microsoft certifications, new music to listen to, et al). But through all that, I’ve found that for me, it’s best to obsessively focus on satiating the craving for intimacy, until it’s satiated.
Genuine longing for true love cannot be diminished by enthralling one’s self in a hobby, a career, a religion, a drug, alcohol, lots of friends, a humanitarian cause, or anything else. The only way to truly quench the thirst of the lovelorn, is to find true love. Nothing else will do. It makes no sense that one can increase his chances of finding true love by not pursuing it devotedly, and then devoting himself primarily to its maintenance.
Now what you say above, along with our many lengthy conversations on the subject, suggests that you feel that it’s better for a person going into a relationship, to have many interests outside the relationship – quests that are totally independent of it, and efforts that he keeps up even after the relationship intensifies. I admit that some external interests seem necessary to prevent growing tired of girlfriends. I don’t want to see them all the time or be consumed with why the relationship is working or not. In fact, as I age, I find that I need more time alone each week for reflection, reading, writing, and such, and any woman I date in the future must accommodate this. However, I’m not convinced that as a rule, love works better when the lovers have pursued (are pursuing) unrelated accomplishments.
Every degree of obsession (or devotion) to relationships to the exclusion of external pursuits, offers advantage as well as folly. Since I’ve opted to satisfy my cravings for women by focusing mainly on how to discover and attract beauties, as opposed to suppressing these cravings by acquiring many non related pursuits, it does seem that you and I have different philosophies on how to achieve happiness and minimize suffering.
Let me say for the record that I respect your view, and believe that given your unique experiences, your position is best. However, don’t be offended because I’ve devoted the rest of this writing to poking holes in your position. I only wish to communicate that your view does not work for me given my unique experiences, and to show you how I came to my view, and why.
It may be that one who nurtures many outside interests is more attractive. At least to some anyhow. Indeed, some women are drawn more to the well-rounded man than he with few other interests than to love somebody, and to be loved back. Our well-rounded fellow here, who we’ll call Worldly, might attract more women because he’s less available. After all, with lots of other interests, Worldly has less time for love. At least, he doesn’t want to make the time.
The notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder, indeed rings true in many human interactions. Some Worldlys know this well, and use this to manipulate women into longing for them. They deny their ladies the attention they want. They know that women desire Worldlys because they can’t have them as much or as completely as they would like. Here, Worldly’s claim to fame is his ability, intentional or not, to leave women wanting for more because he chooses not to completely fulfill them. He’s never fully theirs, and they know it. Though they hate this, their yearning for him intensifies because of it too. Whether or not he deliberately makes himself scarce, his lack of presence charms women. The uncertainty about what he’s doing when he’s not with them fans the fires of their passions to roaring, white-hot crescendos. This is one explanation of why worldly men might seem more attractive to women.
But this type of attraction, born from shortage and doubt, and possible button-pushing, is not what I consider valid. It is subject to manipulation and abuse by Worldly, and causes stress in the hearts of Worldly’s women. One could argue that it’s partly this self-absorption which seems to be more common today than in the past, that heightens the risks of disappointment in relationships. Relationships however, aren’t supposed to be stressful. Many are not. In fact the healthy affiliation should lower stress, rather than raise it. I suspect that the women in those many surveys, who say they like best the man who has numerous exterior interests, are themselves neglected to a degree by him. They don’t mention the lonely nights, with him away somewhere off chasing another dream, or the troubled finances because he overspends on his non-romantic pursuits. If I read your words correctly, you say that having other interests may make us more able to be attentive to a lady’s needs. But the opposite is also true, and often appears as a destructive theme in otherwise healthy unions. These studies that advocate moderate to low levels of exclusive focus on the relationship, often don’t consider this side of the story, and can mislead readers as to a woman’s true desires in mates.
Worldly’s breadth of knowledge, acquired through years of pursuing many diverse goals, can augment his desirability. Women say they like a man who can teach them new things, and in fact, much time is spent, particularly early in a new union, of lovers doing just that — teaching the other what they want to learn.
A man of breadth will probably make more money and be better able to recover from setbacks like job loss and illness. And he may be better equipped to rear children.
Worldly will likely be better at empathizing and relating to her plights, if those plights fall within the realms of his experience. In this way, you are right. Worldly could indeed be a more effective listener and supporter. Clearly, moderate focus on other pursuits does enhance the health of any romance by improving one’s ability to understand his mate’s difficulties.
But the question is: How much diverse pursuing is the right amount? And when is it too much? There is a balance between internal and external pursuing. I position that fulcrum as follows: This of course varies from person to person, and there’s no right position for everyone. But for me, top priority is to discover and hold on to a fulfilling love relationship. That’s first. First, above computers, books, self-improvement, writing, the Lions Club, the WPSBC Alumni Association, all of it. While I enjoy reading, writing, Djing, music, and so on, I would gladly trade most of these time-passers for equivalent time with my dream girl. I would swap several hours of reflection per week for time in her arms. I’d pawn all my ham radios to buy her a jewel. I’d sell most of my books to make space for her belongings in our home. Now I wouldn’t give up everything for her. Just most of it. Some of it I’d save as a diversion, for those times when we need to get away from each other. But I have no burning desire to be a Worldly. What I burn for, is to have my dream girl on my arm.
Indeed, the big reason I’ve acquired my many pursuits is because so far, I’ve been a dismal failure at the one goal I most want to achieve. You talked in another post about the value in recognizing that while we may not be good enough at meeting certain goals, that meeting other goals can still make for a happy, fulfilled life even though we can’t accomplish the original goals. I agree that, as Burns might say, it’s possible to be reasonably happy and comfortable without getting everything out of life we want.
But neither Burns nor Ellis, nor anyone else I’ve read has said that it’s possible to be maximally happy and supremely fulfilled when you’re forced to turn your back on your dream because you’re not good enough to make it come true. That goal of finding my dream girl is the most important yet difficult unfortunately. Its victories have been few and short-lived, and as we’ve discussed, numerous formidable social forces oppose me in it. On the other hand, my non relationship goals tend to offer greater success potential. There seems to be fewer opposing forces in these. Thus, it’s easier for example, to pass the next exam in ham radio, or the next level of Microsoft certification, than it is to mate with a perfect 10. My BS degree, and the four promotions at [work], though they took some time and much effort, were easier than finding true love. Easier, but not as fulfilling.
It was wonderful to get the diploma and the raises. Yet it was empty too. While I’ve achieved success in numerous self-oriented pursuits, and used their victories to manage my depressions, they never completely erased the loneliness. Oh, they took my mind off of it for periods and contributed greatly to my overall “reasonable comfort” with life. So they had overall good effects.
For a number of years, I became the classic workaholic. The job, and doing it well I made my center of existence in the early nineties. While I figured that attaining notoriety would make me more attractive and later, enable me to achieve a healthy balance between career, relationships, and personal interests, I loved the work itself too, with its many thrills of getting programs to run correctly. However, with each promotion, after the celebration was finished, and everyone went back to work, I found myself still in the same, unrelenting rat race. While I had moved a few steps further down the road toward success, and got to taste significant thrills along the way, I was still on the same road, still thirsting. Except for the bigger paycheck, I wasn’t any better off. Girls didn’t want to date me any more as a senior software engineer than as an associate when I first joined [that company]. Besides, the jobs got harder the higher I went. Greater demands, increased coworker conflicts, more blame for things over which I had no control, more harsh judgments from bosses, and with that, less job security and more stress. No fun. More money and higher status didn’t make me any happier with life.
Yet I persisted, hoping I’d find happiness in a nice home. So I bought the classic big house in the suburbs – a hallmark of a successful career. Yet a cold draft whistled down the stairs each night when climbing them to bed. No, there were no open or leaking windows up there. There wasn’t any real draft at all. No, this draft was a manifestation of a recurring thought: a reminder that though I “had it all,” something was still missing. And that something, as you’ve probably guessed, was my dream girl. The draft reminded me that though I’d worked so hard to build a good career, I was not getting the rewards promised by parents, teachers, and friends. Indeed, I was just as lonely in that big house in the suburbs as I was during the McKee Place years. What had the intervening years of hard work really gotten me? I had money, but that wasn’t enough. I had colleagues, but outside work, they weren’t around. I had lots of hobbies and spent thousands on them. The house itself kept me pretty busy for the first two years. But I still felt alone and unfulfilled. I did everything I could to make the American Dream come true. But still, there was no one upstairs waiting for me in the bedroom. No one to comfort me and make my work woes disappear for the night. No one to warm that cold air that repeatedly whisked by my face, bringing tears to my eyes frequently. So while it could be said that my career and house made me more like Worldly because they gave me numerous pursuits to focus on besides relationships, in my experience, they didn’t make me more attractive to women. At least, not more attractive enough to date the ones I desired. Nor did they eliminate that thirst for love.
No promotion ever felt as good as when [First Love] finally said yes after seven years, or when [Judy] let me give her a foot massage in the [camp] swimming pool and asked me to help her learn more English. Given my experiences, loving interaction with a dream girl is the only completely fulfilling activity there is. And I’ve tried many activities besides this, to know this. Yes. We need periodic victories, even small ones, to keep the blues away. And as mentioned, these little successes seem easier to come by when pursuing non-relationship goals. But no wins, either singularly or together, have ever filled the void of that missing romantic victory for me – lasting love. A win’s meaning is lessened when it doesn’t bring one closer to fulfilling his life purpose. At this point, my own Worldly pursuits, though by many accounts successful, have yet to bring me the relationship I so want, or to give me the degree of fulfillment that loving the right person has and would.
I would, without hesitation, trade ten promotions for ten years with my dream girl. I would swap the entire 15 years of aloneness at [work as a software engineer] for 15 years as a janitor in a dead-end job, so long as I had my dream girl by my side. These days, career and money concerns seem so trivial next to the love quest. While the Ohio years will always be an integral part of any success I achieve in the future, occasionally I look back on them as colossal wastes of time. Stopping that waste was, among other concerns, what drove my decision to finally leave, which marked the beginning of my mid life crisis. For the first 25 years of adulthood, I did what you’re supposed to do, and maintained plenty of personal pursuits – ones that had nothing to do with relationships. I went to school, got a degree, forged social connections, got a job, bought a house, did some traveling around the country, achieved excellence at that job, and went to church. I danced at night clubs, wrote articles for the local singles group, and maintained numerous platonic friendships.
But with mid life came the realization that none of this was getting me where I most wanted to be. Nor did any of it ever alter or obscure my true purpose, to love and be loved. With mid life, it became clear that time’s a wastin’ and that I’d best make radical changes in my approach if I hoped to ever love my dream girl. The change I opted for was to concentrate my focus and effort on what really matters, and give up those pursuits that don’t. In short, I tried, as you suggest, to make “other accomplishments.” It didn’t work for me.
Now, let’s explore another dimension of this. Worldly would argue that having many outside interests makes us more well-rounded, and as such, provides more interesting experiences to share with mates. The contention is that Worldly types bring more of value to the relationship than men of less breadth. But as mentioned above, selecting breadth over depth has costs. Women enjoy a man’s wealth of diverse knowledge, but won’t like him spending so much time away from them to keep it up. While they’ll appreciate his zeal toward pursuing numerous and diverse goals before they met him, they’ll probably not want him to spend as much time with that once they make him their boyfriend.
Also, while lots of initial common interests are a plus, they are by no means necessary for long-term happiness. Frequently, couples bond with very little in common. Yet they live long, happy, united lives. What they don’t share at the start, they come to share once the relationship is underway. They join clubs, bowl, and ski, read books aloud to each other, dine, and listen to the radio and watch movies together, creating some common experiences that were lacking at the start. As the union progresses, the list of shared memories grows, and that initial void of wanting commonality shrinks and eventually becomes insignificant. The longer they stay together, the more in common they have, and thus, the more they have to build upon. As I see it, the only truly necessary commonalities at the start, are dreams of dedicating their lives to a love partner, and a mutual and profound attraction to each other. If both lovers share these goals and passions, differences become less detrimental. Love indeed conquers all. M. Scott Peck touches on this point in “The Road Less Traveled.”
Now to another point: Relationships are pursuits, no more or less inherently worthy than any other. They offer boundless opportunities for personal growth, spiritual enlightenment, and the thrills of accomplishment. True, they have potential gotchas – hurt feelings, heartbreak, uncertainty, agony, danger, and bitter failure. No different than any other pursuit really. Play actors cry when they don’t get the long-sought part, just as lovers sob when their beloveds hurt them. The agony of waiting for the adored to call, is duplicated in the life of the CFO, awaiting last quarter’s financial reports. Athletes hate when their bodies don’t do as they want, sort of like beloveds hate it when lovers refuse to perform a certain way. The absence of harmful disappointments cannot be found in any pursuit, romantic or not.
Few pursuits offer immediate success to anyone, and all of them necessitate that we make ourselves highly vulnerable to failure. Liability is a cost of renown, and the better you want to be at something, the more of yourself you must dedicate to it, and thus, the greater will be the psychological bruises should you hit a setback. But people supporting a tempered approach to love believe that they’re safe from heartache, if they put just a small portion of their eggs in the relationship basket. They spread their remaining eggs among many baskets. They think that failure in one area won’t be as devastating because fewer of their eggs will suffer damage since fewer of them are invested in this one pursuit. However, in so doing, they trade the excellence of depth for the safety of breadth. They either don’t realize or don’t care that for truly exceptional performers, heartache is plentiful whether you’re courting a beautiful woman, or wooing your boss for that promotion, or attempting to climb Mount Everest. The more you desire anything and the more of yourself you invest in it, the more pain you’ll experience when things don’t go your way. This phenomenon is no truer of the search for love, than say, the search for the cure for particular cancers. All pursuits, carried to the extremes that world class superiority demands, require almost complete focus and tolerate little distraction.
Like any other quest, to do a relationship well demands lots of dedication and constant work, along with a high degree of dogmatic obsession. Most happily married couples agree. If you’re going to play the piano well, you can’t also expect yourself to be a professional golfer (unless you’re extremely gifted!). Likewise, if you’re going to be a career man, then you must trade away some ability at being a good husband and father, and vice versa. You just can’t do it all, nor can you do anything well without performing poorly at something else. Olympic athletes also exemplify the fruits of complete dedication to single disciplines. Few would make Olympic teams if they didn’t practice sixteen hours a day. They must do that in order to achieve true excellence as well as a competitive edge. But how do you avoid putting your psychical wellbeing on the line if you’re going to maintain this routine for long? Indeed, much motivation to achieve derives from an implicit knowledge that our worthiness will suffer if we don’t accomplish the goal. We fear this eventuality, and those who fear it the most often tend to be the highest achievers. They’re the wealthy executives, the world-class athletes, and among the best lovers.
The idea is that most any discipline (loving another included) demands much investment of self to achieve and preserve greatness at it. Any more than just a trifle of diversion to non related pursuits impedes one’s progress in the primary objective. So why must a man dedicated to satiating of his love lust (as I am), be any less psychologically healthy than one who spends decades training to set foot on the moon or to write the great American novel, or to become a Buddhist monk? Pop psychology often illustrates the down side of obsession and how bad it is to be overly dedicated to a single goal, relationship or other. But without obsession, great works of art such as the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, the statue David, and the symphonies of Beethoven would never have come to be. Why do we seem to regard the role of obsession in relationships with more skepticism than in other pursuits? When channeled such that no other’s rights are trodden on, obsession and compulsion are crucial ingredients in those long-lasting relationships. They are good things in this context, and so necessary to becoming an excellent mate, just as they are in virtually all other pursuits. Lessen your focus by pursuing more than just a small number of pursuits, and you sacrifice your chances of being good at any of them.
In short, I believe that neither breadth nor depth is the patently better mode of living. Sometimes, breadth is good. At others, depth works best. Now relationships don’t always require constant full dedication (depth). In fact, the best unions achieve a high degree of trust between the participants. The more mutual trust, the less necessary it is for lovers to focus on the relationship. Once this trust is achieved, then yes, it would seem healthy for the lovers to spend less time focusing on their bond, and more pursuing outside interests. But again, the appropriateness of such efforts varies as the relationship progresses.
Also, Worldly himself probably got to be Worldly as the result of a series of intensely focused pursuits. Though he has a rich history of diverse experiences, they did not come to him at the same time. They accumulated over his entire life. At any point in time, the number of concurrent pursuits is likely to be very small (say one to three). Worldly himself is more a sum of his single-minded obsessions than a master of managing large numbers of simultaneous pursuits. 
At this point in my life, I’d say that I’m a Worldly engaged in fulfilling his biggest dream so far. That may be good. It may be bad. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I can’t give up on my dream. I’ll either make this dream come true, or die trying. While The Quest has dragged my heart through many a painful trench, turning my back on It, has (and would) just replace one kind of pain for another. I’d be trading the disappointment of rejection for the laments of those resigned to the impossibilities of their dreams. You know the old saying: It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. More on this in other posts.
Tom Hesley
