Equality: 2-15-10

I was watching a DVR of the Sunday CBS national news on TV. There were couples who had been married between 50 and over 60 years there. They all had different reasons(variations on the same theme) for their good luck. It made me think I should write about equality between men and women in this context.

Ever since there were men and women relationships between them have been based upon one fact. What will men put up with from women and what will women put up with from men.

So, I think looking at this whole thing between men and women from this context is much more useful than trying to look at it in terms of equality.

Besides, men and women are not equal because they are fundamentally different. To say that men and women are equal is an insult to women. And this is coming from a man.

Men are not equal to women. They are just very different from women. In fact, I have always thought all my life that men and women are almost like two completely different species of creatures that need each other. I think this might be a useful starting point.

I was very lucky in that my mother and grandmother were a wonderful example of womanhood to me. My mother and her mother lived with my father and I from my birth until I was about 22 years of age. My mother and her mother were very spiritual and calm people and very intuitive. I didn't know that they both were also dyslexic until my mother was 82 years old as people didn't talk about such things publicly in her era, not even to children because too much could be lost.

So I grew up believing that women were intuitive and spiritual and had common sense. And that fathers were scary and protective of their wives and children and family members and one should always respect their father if they didn't want to get beaten up. My father was born in 1916 and was extremely intelligent and intense. My mother was very intuitive and had a high degree of common sense and self preservation so they were perfect for each other. They married in 1946 and stayed together until my father died in the summer of 1985 when I was 37.

To say that my father and mother were equal wouldn't be correct. They each had their own domain of stuff that they were in charge of and there was very little overlap for them as they used the more traditional method of the 1930s through early 1960s as a model for their lives.

Now, as people try to reach equality something meaningful has been lost.(a sense of place and order). So as we move into this new more chaotic world where no one really knows where they stand about anything anymore there is bound to be confusion(and there is). It is not that I want to bring the old ways back.

No. My generation that came of age in the late 1960s(I was 21 in 1969) didn't like the double standard that men used that had affairs and lied to their wives. So, my generation started a system of honesty. If you were going to have an affair you couldn't lie about it and drive your girlfriend insane with your lies just to keep her with you. This was a change we all believed in. All of us then knew mothers of friends who had been driven insane or onto valium and alcohol(a bad combination) by a husband who kept having affairs and lied about it. So, my generation tried to change all this with a certain amount of success. Many younger women have benefitted from all the work my generation did regarding keeping them sane and not lied to.

However, in some ways those days are gone and once again many men seem to be regressing back into the dark ages where (anything goes) and lying is okay once again.

If someone is worth living with whether you are married to her or not then she is worth telling the truth to. Without trust there is no relationship! Without trust all you have is a bomb waiting to go off (the relationship). Eventually, people find out one way or another and if you have kids it is awful.

So, equality is having your girlfriend also be your best friend. Even in my case I might find it hard to be faithful to a wife. However, if she is my best friend(in reality) I have no trouble at all being faithful to my best friend in the world. This is what equality is all about in real life.