Networking

‘Social networking’ can really be such a double-edged sword.

You become friends on Facebook. You follow one another on Twitter, add each other as Flickr contacts and share your Upcoming events info. Soon you’re reading each other’s blogs, and sharing links you think are interesting, or pictures you hope they’ll enjoy. You view their private Tumblr with relish, and smile when you see they’ve posted something you suggested. They privately message you to comment about a nice Flickr picture of you. You drop hints in your blog, hoping they’ll spot the secret reference just for them; and they do. You direct message each other on Twitter and save your @ replies for other, less personal, acquaintances. You play a few games of online Scrabble and innuendo seeps into the miniature chat box. Your Facebook flirtations spill over into gmail and you end up IMing about life, love, sex. You spend months regularly chatting or messaging or DMing on Twitter or emailing or playing, and you’re flirting, and it’s fun and exciting and hopeful, and there is mutual attraction; and all these ways of communicating, of staying in contact, means you’re both interconnected, even if there are miles between you.

And it’s wonderful – until the communication ends.

Where once you’d find an almost daily email, now there is none; your inbox lies empty. They don’t log in to facebook chat any more (or they’re ‘invisible’); they’re no longer making themselves available to IM with you. You see their tweets but no private, saucy DM from them awaits you. You notice they’ve updated Flickr but they don’t comment on your photos any more. They’ve stopped sending you links and pictures and articles and now you hesitate to send them any. You drop hints about them in your blog that you hope they’ll pick up on, but they fail to react. You spot their Facebook updates but no jokey messages from them are in your inbox. The Scrabble game you created goes un-played.

Once upon a time, outside the social network of the Internet, you’d just shrug if someone dropped communication and accept that if they really wanted to stay in contact, they’d simply pick up the 'phone and say hello. But in the web of modern interactivity, where you get used to the regular loud chatter of the (false?) intimacy of the social network, the sudden distance and silence from someone you’ve connected with on a frequent and personal basis is –ironically – deafening.

Adultery And Options

I know a couple of women who are aware that their husbands are cheating on them and yet choose to stay on in the marriage, children and all. My first instinct used to be to question the wisdom of their choice - specially for what it meant for the kids. A girl who grows up seeing her mother demurely accept being abused and humiliated may not grow up to seek or demand any different from the man in her own life. The boy would likely not learn to respect women if he did not see his father respect his mother - specially if his mother did not reject being disrespected. The mother forms a very important female leitmotif in the lives of her kids whatever their sex. It becomes important then for her to become an example of what she would not regret them emulating.

As for the woman herself, once she lowers the bar that low for how far out of line her spouse can step without jeopardizing their marriage, chances are, her husband will stop at nothing - he now has caret Blanche to do exactly as he pleases without fear of consequences or retribution. How could any of those scenarios be a good outcome from a marriage, how could such a marriage be worth preserving. Seemingly contrary to commonsense, these otherwise smart women do what seems utterly wrong both for themselves and their children.

What is more, this behavior does not seem to be restricted to the ordinary and middle-class. Rich and famous women have likewise accepted their errant husbands when it would appear they had no reason to tolerate bad behavior. Maybe there comes a point in a married woman's life, when she is betrayed by her husband, any or all options she has available are wholly unfavorable to for her far more than they are for the straying husband.

If she has achieved a certain standing in society by virtue of her marriage or is at least greatly helped by it, she stands to loose that position all that it entails if she walks away without any guarantees she can do even better alone or with someone else. Past a certain age, she no longer feels confident that men will still find her appealing enough to consider marriage or she would be able to find someone (potentially even older than herself) who would appeal to her. If she walks away, the other woman walks right in to her life, run the home she helped build and share the children she gave birth to.

Sometimes, the cold math of it all just does not add up to make sense to walk away for the sake of injured dignity and hurt pride. Maybe these women stay on because it is the logical best option to remain the thorn on their cheating husband's side and bar another woman from feasting on the fruits of her labor. Ironically, it is two women working against each other over a man who is the cause of all their troubles in the first place.

Just Another Way!

Unless you are a woman all of whose girlfriends are married and “settled”, chances are that you often find yourself listening to someone who is going through relationship problems and wants to share their woes with you. Over the years, the common theme I have seen come from these outpourings is one of feeling extreme emotional vulnerability. This state of mind is particularly confusing to a woman who views herself as liberated, open-minded and a free agent doing as she pleases without being beholden to societal expectations of her gender.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, it was not commonplace for women to be in a physically intimate relationship before marriage. That has since changed. Those who got exposed to western lifestyle at the time were able to bring such change into their lives even earlier. "Empowerment" to live freely came to both only at different times in their lives.

Up to this point, it all sounds good. The girls no longer feel like their net worth in the marriage market is highly dependent on the possession of an enraptured hymen. Sadly, other problems have taken their place. In the brave new world, women are willing and able to enter into a physically intimate relationship without having a wedding date calendared. However, to alleviate the feelings of guilt associated with being in such a state, they allow (indeed require) love to lead them there.

So when men turn out not to have any serious intent or are simply not prepared to take on the responsibility of marriage but want to continue in a friends plus benefits arrangement, women start to become progressively unhappy. They are no longer sure, if what they have going on is what they really want. The happiness of unbridled freedom is soured by a gnawing sense of doubt often tinged with hopelessness. Then there are all the complications that come into play with the man morphing suddenly into Mama's boy who allows his family or mostly friends to find him a girl and pretends the relationship did not even exist. Often, that's where a girlfriend such as yours truly is called and gets to be the much needed damp shoulder.

As much as I want to be helpful to my friends in times of distress, I can't but help point out the fatal flaw in their ways. I don't say this from any kind of moral high ground at all. I have told several of them that they need to recalibrate a little and things will improve dramatically. If they feel the need for intimacy they can just have that and leave. There is simply no need to perpetuate a very temporal thing into an unnecessary relationship in order to feel less immoral about it. It is not enough to merely shed physical inhibition (which clearly they have done), it is far more important to rise above the cultural conditioning and shed the moral ones - a far more subtle and therefore insidious impediment to their desire to be free.

It's fair to tell a man that's what it's going to be - a short duration liaison with no end game and they can go their separate ways after that. It is important to end things definitively and not leave them unresolved and therefore the door open for emotional entanglement  - something I notice girls don't do so well. If someone looks like serious marriage material then this would clearly not be the way to proceed. One woman said "That's like using and throwing them". I agreed that may be a way of looking at it except when you say “no” to “such actions” for the sake of your future which are made clear from the start, the word "use" does not apply any more.

Being that men generally like women to be emotionally involved while in a "relationship", intimacy without that connection is often quite meaningless to them. Many will never agree to be part of such an arrangement. Having enjoyed the privilege of being the party that decides when and how to end things, it may be quite painful not being able to do so.

Alternately, I suggest they could go through the motions of being deeply in love with the man and keep them emotionally detached. So when the end comes, there will not be any broken pieces to be picked up. The man gets to have a well satiated ego and she is truly free. It seems to be a win-win situation (unless you count the inability to trust or become be the kind of person someone else cannot trust) even if based on deception.

If neither works then they have no choice but to become like me - a non-participating bystander watching the dating gaming shenanigans and providing acerbic though not necessarily astute commentary. It is fairly entertaining but provides little else besides. "Isn't there another way? Like two people starting as friends, being in committed relationship and then getting married" a woman asked me recently.

That is entirely in the realm of possible but the more I hear form my girlfriends about what they go through in the process of trying to find (and keep) love, the more the "another way” sounds like a modern day Cinderella story. The only difference being the women doesn’t wait for their prince to show up with the glass slipper. They have taken matters into their own hands and are willing to kiss many frogs along the way to finding their man. Somewhere in that muddle of mixed metaphors of fairy tale references, the frogs end up remaining frogs, kisses notwithstanding and the other slipper goes missing along with the prince who was supposed to find them.

Part Woman

I was walking upstairs and she was walking down when I saw her first. It was past 8:00 in the evening. Her clothes arrested attention for their scantiness. An orange bra peeped from under a midriff bearing green camisole. The low-rise jeans revealed a thong along with a tattoo on her lower back. She had the kind of body that looks great when flaunted. I wondered if this stunning woman was my new neighbor. Then I noticed her face which was as perfect as the rest of her. But even with all that make-up, I could tell she was no more than fifteen years old.

Her attire had sexualized her to the point where it was hard to see her for the child that she really was. I stood at the top of the stairs and watched her walk across the road with the air of a woman used to being provocative and noticed. It was like she was a model walking on a ramp with cameras flashing all around her. Another neighbor was walking down the road and he scoped her out like she was a woman. Since she had gone to considerable length put her body on display, I doubt if he noticed her face before she got into the car waiting for her.

Clothes shopping for girls as young as six or eight is challenging business these days. It appears that you cannot do cute and appropriate at the same time. There is always the sweat-suits, jeans and tees for those of us who cringe at the thought of dressing six year olds like tartlets. More often than not, the little girl will want more varied fare but they are too young to understand the concept of revealing or provocative.

As a parent you need to be cautious about what they are allowed to wear even at that age. If they grow up exposing a lot of skin, doing so comes comfortably and naturally to them as teenagers and adults. The notion of modesty cannot be introduced suddenly when their bodies begin to develop because they may view it as unreasonably restrictive. If a certain article of clothing was appropriate last year why should it be a taboo now?

When I saw this teenager being a woman, I could not help feeling sad. There is something beautiful and innocent about the cusp between childhood and adulthood. Awkwardness, hesitation and confusion come with the territory. Wearing make-up for the first time, the first bra, putting on a stylish dress from your mother's wardrobe are small rites of passage that make this age so special.

You try the adult role with some anxiety knowing you can slip back into the known and comfortable contours of childhood when in doubt. In a few years you acquire the physical and emotional confidence to be a woman. Young girls these days are being thrust from girlhood to womanhood without the cushion of the time in between. They are being sexualized even before they have understood their sexuality or how to deal with it.

The true essence of womanhood is lost on these kids as they come to equate it to being provocative. Even as adults they would continue to play at being women because they have not had the opportunity to evolve naturally into it. They would do anything in their power to remain physically and sexually appealing as their whole identity as women revolves around it.