Despite the general disappointment, the movie had some clear messages (like “if he doesn’t call you, he just doesn’t like you”), which I found very fair and true. I haven’t read the book that the movie is based on, but I started thinking about male and female psychology afterwards.
The fact that most women prefer lying to themselves about their relationships and feelings is obvious. Its obvious to others, but not to yourself, when you in that kind of a situation. Women invent various signs and actions which men are supposed to perform to demonstrate their love or interest. And here I’m talking about all women in general.
And I know that some feminists and other independent and mature females would confront me here and say: “Many modern women don’t want to get married and have children. They don’t get desperate when they are 34, but they still don’t have kids and family.”
But emancipation is one thing and biology is another. And you cannot fool nature, unless surgery and hormone therapy are involved. Feminists, sportswomen, pianists, lesbians, tennis players and porn stars – they all still have periods once a month and they sometimes get moody and at 34 their biological clock is still ticking, no mater how independent, rich, beautiful and mature they were at the age of 25.
You probably know many couples who live together but never get married. They might say that the stamp in the passport doesn’t make a difference. But if you dig deeper, it’s probably the man’s initiative to stay kind of together but still kind of apart.
I’m not saying that all women want to get married. But when they fall in love and their biological clock tells them that it’s time for reproduction, emancipation and independence vanishes. I agree that marriage is not important for a family, but what if it’s the only way to prove that someone really cares about you and is not just passing time while waiting for someone better?
I know several couples in which the women are all about independence and career, but only because their men haven’t proposed. So their girlfriends prefer to live together with no guarantees just because they are afraid of being dumped. The fact that he stays single means that he is just not committed and that’s she is the wrong girl. Or that he is just a bastard.
In the movie, Ben Affleck plays a guy who resists his girlfriend’s desire to marry. In order to prove his point, he says: “Friends don’t need stamps to prove that they are friends, why should couples have a stamp to prove their love?”
Marriage is an old-fashioned tradition, but if one partner wants to follow it, the other has to agree, if they really care and love the other half. There is no real “moral” principle of refusing to do so if it’s really important for someone you really love. Every woman who wants to get married should question herself before getting into a long-term relationship with a guy who says that he is anti-marriage. It might happen that he is just anti-marriage with her.
The same thing happens with children. It’s like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. They were together and said in interviews that they were concentrating on their careers and that they were not ready for kids. In a couple of years, it turned out that Pitt just wasn’t ready to have kids with Aniston, but was happy to make three babies with Angelina Jolie as soon as they started dating.
The fact that many men are cowards when it comes to telling the truth is also obvious. How many times have women heard “we” instead of “I” when a guy breaks up with her? My aunt was desperately in love with her husband. The fact that he wants a divorce came totally out of the blue for her. Obviously, he didn’t love her any more. But instead of telling her the truth, he tried to put all the responsibility on her. “We were not happy together,” he said, instead of telling her: “I wasn’t happy with you.” (They were married for 20 years and have two kids).
In the modern world, women are fooled by men. Women really think that they are emancipated and independent, but are they really? My friend’s sister was dating her ex-boyfriend for seven years. She never questioned why they didn’t get married after being together for such a long time. When she turned 30, he broke up with her for a younger one.
She always dreamed of a wedding and children. But after such a painful breakup, she didn’t know what to do. She was 30 and had only few years ahead to have a child without any risks for health. She also realized that she didn’t have another seven years to waste on a relationship that may end as abruptly as the previous one.
So she met another guy who wasn’t her Prince Charming, but who was nice enough to propose after she got pregnant. Even though she didn’t love him, she said yes because, to be honest, loneliness is one of women’s worst fears.
If she lived in a less emancipated world, she would question her previous relationship status a bit earlier. And probably she would have realized that the guy stayed with her because it was comfortable and not because he really wanted to create a family with her.
Finaly, my own example. I had a boyfriend a couple of years ago. He was (and still is) a workaholic, so we did not meet that often. Since we never discussed the nature of our relationship, as an average woman, I assumed we were dating. Later, I discovered, that he assumed that we were just friends with benefits.
So, he worked really hard and sometimes didn’t pay enough attention to me, which, of course, pissed me off. And since I thought that I’m not just anyone for him, I wanted him to be more attentive and caring. So one night we had an argument and I said that if his work is more important than I am, we probably should just stay friends. And of course, I didn’t really mean that. I just wanted him to regret what he did and change his attitude.
So in about three weeks, we met and he told me: “You were right. I guess we should just stay friends, just like you mentioned.” So, basically, he put all the responsibility for the breakup on my shoulders. And, like any average woman, I was sad and pissed off, my ego was hurt, but I kept telling myself that it was my choice and that’s what I wanted and not what he wanted.
Two years passed and we are still good friends. But now when somebody asks me why it hadn’t worked out with the two of us, I don’t answer with the trivial “because we are different” or “because we wanted different things.” I don’t know if I ever loved him, but what I know for sure is that it didn’t work out because “he never loved me.”
Alina Rudya is a Kyiv Post columnist who can be reached at [email protected]
