Repost: "Like a Fish Needs A Donut?"

Question to the readers of this blog:
Are you in, or do you want to be in, a love relationship with an equal? Are you, in other words, or do you want to be, experiencing love-Eros-sex with someone who meets you in those areas fully, and who also meets you intellectually, spiritually and emotionally?
Hold onto your knee-jerk "yes" answer for a moment, and take a deep breath. Look at your current relationship and circumstances, and look at your history, before you answer.
Are you the type of man who's mostly attracted to younger women, or are you the type of woman who's mainly drawn to men with money? Or do you perhaps "need" flat stomachs, big tits, a six pack, a certain height or weight, hair of a certain color, or at least hair? Are previous marriages or kids a deal-breaker for you? Have you been a "caretaker" type who's chosen a needy, immature or high maintenance partner, so you can feel both wanted and deprived at the same time? Or are you an aloof, introverted type who's drawn to someone who "chases" you, so you can feel both special and harrassed at the same time? And here's one full of conflict: Do you feel satisfied and met sexually by your partner, and do you know if your partner feels that way? If you answered "yes" to any or all of the first 6 questions in this paragraph, and/or "no" to the last question, then reconsider the answer to the original questions in paragraph one.

Judith Warner, in a NY Times piece, "LIKE A FISH NEEDS A DONUT!", bemoans the superficiality of "men Out There" who "dated women multiple decades younger than themselves, prized them for their looks and their fecundity and fell in love with the magical rejuvenating mirrors they found in the women’s adoring young eyes," rather than prefering to date "contemporaries, women who’d lived, matured, grown wiser and more human with the experience of parenting." Yet, ironically, it seems to be exactly women like Judith who choose the very kind of men she's complaining about. (Remember that book, "Women Who Love Men Who Love to Hate Women?")
And rest assured, ladies, the men who choose younger women under the illusion that they're going to be hotter in bed and better eye candy are in for a big let-down. Once you get over the novelty of tight skin, not only do you realize it's just... skin! But it doesn't stay tight indefinitely anyway! And when that craving for the good daddy overtakes her youthful passion, that little Candy Apple isn't going to want hot sex anymore, as much as she'll want ego stroking and shoes.

Having sadly fallen prey to the depressing, and erroneous, belief system that comes from compulsively, and unconsciously, choosing partners from one's character defenses and unmet needs from childhood, instead of from one's adult self seeking a mutually gratifying experience in love-Eros-sex, one is left to only find comfort in shared misery. Judith, like many people I've known, describes the billions of people of one sex or another as if they were truly a monolithic group - MEN with a capital "M" and WOMEN with a capital "W." Only by believing that there are "no good men OUT THERE" (or "good women"), that "they're all the same," can one continue to avoid the reality of facing the choices one is making. In therapy sessions, some of my patients have at least been bold enough to consider that there "might be" some more evolved members of the gender in question OUT THERE, but then, they will often retreat into "Well, there can't be that many!" To which I usually respond, "Well, how many do you need?!" Get it? This is not a statistical problem, folks. And there's no such thing as MEN with a capital "M" and WOMEN with a capital "W." This is a - forgive me! - law of attraction problem. As in, you get what you seek, especially what you seek unconsciously. If you are stuck focusing on getting from a partner what you didn't get in childhood - emotional caretaking, validation, and recognition - you are guaranteed to have a lousy, ungratified adulthood. This is relationship physics, and it is as certain as the law of gravity.
Listen up, Judith, and anyone else who's really pissed off at the opposite sex right now (or the same sex, as the case may be) - take care of yourself emotionally, validate yourself, see yourself, get whatever guidance you need and do whatever it takes to take the loss of your childhood and move on into the great world of freedom and gratification of adulthood. It is so worth it!
PL