I love you....who says it first?

My boyfriend (I shall refer to him as "B") and I recently said those three little words to each other for the first time; "I love you". This was even after B bravely met my family for the first time at my brother's wedding last weekend (no pressure there!). But, I digress....

I found it interesting that my female friends, both Christian and non-Christian alike, universally agreed that the woman should wait for the man to say "I love you" first. The reasons for this included:

• The man should lead in the relationship.
• I would be embarrassed if I said it first and he did not reciprocate.
• He would feel "pressured" if I said it first.
• And, other variants thereof.

One friend suggested I "plant the seed on the sly" by signing an email "Love, Learner" and see if he noticed and said anything. I opted not to do that because I figured I was either going to tell him so or wait, not go half way or be "sly".

In the end, even though I knew that I loved B for a while, I decided to wait for him to say it first while doing what I could to express my love to him in ways that did not include just saying the words. I decided to wait because since we started to get to know each other he has had a good feel about when to move forward in our relationship, and I trust his judgement and want to follow his leadership. I later told B about my friend's opinions that I should wait for him to say "it" first and his response was something like "hmm, interesting".

After thinking about this some more I have wondered about another possible reason for waiting for the man to say I love you first. Given the masculine ability to separate emotions from thought and logic better than many women seem to be able to, myself included, perhaps it is prudent to follow the man's lead for when is the right time to say "I love you"?

What do y'all think?

*************************************************************

In other news, I just recently noticed I had a follower named Jody! Hi Jody and thanks for following my blog :)

Female-centric assumptions in academia

One of the courses I teach this semester has a lab component where I work with groups of 10 or so students on specific skills. These lab courses are conducted in a fairly informal manner and there is a lot of casual conversation going on as skills are practiced. I have the opportunity to hear and participate in some interesting and sometimes disturbing conversations among the students. Mostly I just ask questions to hopefully encourage them to think about what they are saying.

A few weeks back I alluded to one such conversation where a female student claimed a young man who was a neighbor of hers in one of the student apartment complexes was a “loser”. She made this claim following a few minutes reporting how he helped her move heavy objects and how he gave her back rubs. He had asked her if she would knock on his door and wake him up the next morning when she left for class. She said she told him, “No, I’m not your mother”. Apparently asking her to do something helpful for him after doing helpful things for her was just too much to ask and thus earned him the title “loser”. I asked her, “So, what exactly makes him a “loser” and she had no answer to my question. Other young women in the class did proclaim her “mean” but most of them (not all though) still laughed.

This week I also had a conversation about the ever present myth that men are unfairly paid more than women. One of the young women was talking about when she worked at a local Halloween haunted house/ hay ride type of attraction last year. During the conversation she mentioned how cool all of the make-up effects were and that going through the attraction was so scary that she was scared when she went through it even though she worked behind the scenes regularly. She talked about how during the hay ride young men dressed in black with scary masks etc run out of the corn fields and chase and actually jump up on the hay wagon and grab at the people in it. She mentioned that the owner only hired males to do this job. Later in the conversation she mentioned that it was common knowledge that the owner paid the men more than the women. Another female student agreed that was unfair. I asked, “Do the guys do different jobs than the girls?” She answered, “Um, well, yeah I guess they do, they do the chasing the wagon where they stay outside all the time and have to run after and catch the wagon and jump up on it.” I asked, “Are there no women that earn more money too?” She answered, “Well, yes, the make-up artist is a woman and she earns the most.” Hmm….that is always an easy conversation to have, as such it is amazing to me the “it is unfair that men get paid more” myth endures because it is so easy to refute that any difference is due to different types of work and or lifestyle choices made.

Today, a female student was talking about her out-of-state internship this past summer where she dated a medical student she met. She was joking with one of the male students who was also on an internship in the same state who came to visit her one weekend had “chased off” this medical student. “Thanks a lot , he was going to be a doctor!” she joked. “He kept asking me ‘Is he your boyfriend’ and I said that you were just a friend.” She then went on to relate the last conversation she had with the medical student. “He invited me to the lake. He said ‘You’re so pretty, let’s go to the lake. The atmosphere will be perfect.’ Isn't that creepy? Ha ha! And I said, ‘Um, perfect for what?” I asked her “Did you really say that to him?” and she said she did. I said, “Hmm, maybe it wasn’t your male friend visiting, maybe he didn’t take kindly to your assumption that he had some nefarious purpose in mind?” She seemed stunned at the thought, for a second, and then laughed.

Not that the news is all bad on that front. Some of you may recall me mentioning a student complaining to my boss that I had insulted her when I was attempting to give her some feedback about immature behavior. I have not had much more contact with that student until this semester when she is in two of my courses. She has remarkably matured and is taking constructive feedback very well. I am impressed. I guess the threat of my being “reported to social justice” was worth it.

I am following Professor Hale's advice...

...and doing a short post.


Do you ever see bumper stickers or emblems on cars that drive you crazy? I do.

This one for example:

Apparently women need to "misbehave" to make a difference. I guess that goes with the "bitches get things done" attitude.



Or this one:

I dislike this one because it kind of smacks of the "I'm in the club and you're not" mentality.

I don't like this one either:

I have God along for the ride to help me out!

Or this one:

As though evolution was a theory that could be tested through experiments like gravity.

On the subject of evolution, here is the latest installment in the "Christian fish" vs "Darwin fish"
emblem battle:

I guess I just don't like things based on mockery. I've never seen the symbol of another religion such as Judaism or Islam treated in this manner.

Why my blog is pathetic

Dear blog readers,

Hello, it's me, Learner. I know I have not been around here much here lately. Life has become rather busy since the semester started and I have not had much extra free time to write here. I have been rather occupied with some increased teaching responsibilities (14 graduate credits, yikes!), professional writing projects, dissertating (yes, it is a verb, as in to work on a dissertation), going to help my dad care for my mom who is home after spending 3 months in a nursing home and daydreaming about a certain wonderful gentleman.

I have had ideas for posts such as:

• a rant about going through the review and publication process for a journal article (which I am sure most of y'all would find mind numbingly boring)
• a discussion of a recent conversation I had with co-workers where a family court judge was described as "biased toward fathers" because they tended toward 50/50 custody arrangements more often (er....isn't 50/50 kinda unbiased?)
• recounting a conversation between several of my female students about why a male neighbor of one of them was a "loser" (made no sense to me)
• describing a conversation from my single women's Bible study where a sermon one of the women heard was shared which the pastor specifically said was for "single men" though everyone was invited to "listen in". The subject of the sermon? Sexual purity. Yeah, no one but single men need to learn about sexual purity.
• a list of verses from the Bible about how God wants us to live as men and women outside of marriage, children, and sexuality for Catwoman since she doesn't seem to know where any of them are.
• a post about why some women don't seem to able to be happy for you when you meet a great guy (to quote one of my friend's after I said I had a wonderful time with the previously mentioned gentleman, "Gag")

Yet, none of these posts has come to fruition. At the moment I don't think any of them will. I also have a few more C.S. Lewis quotes I'd like to share, but that doesn't seem to be happening either.

So, if you'd like to read an interesting post, may I recommend this one over at Imonk about how to talk to Christians of other faith traditions or this one from Terry at Breathing Grace about the difference between falling in love and living in love, because you likely won't find one here! :)

Love,
Learner

Love, marriage and politically correct research

More on love and marriage from C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis has interesting things to say on love and marriage in the The Screwtape Letters. Senior demon Screwtape writes letters to his junior demon nephew Wormwood on how to take humans from "the Enemy" being God, toward "Our Father" being Satan:

Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as 'one flesh'. He did not say a 'happily married couple' or 'a couple who married because they were in love', but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes 'one flesh'. You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of 'being in love' what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that whenever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear and desire which they call 'being in love' is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy. The error is easy to produce because 'being in love' does very often, in Western Europe, precede marriages which are made in obedience to the Enemies designs, that is, with the intention of fidelity, fertility and good will; just as religious emotion very often, but not always, attends conversion. (emphasis mine)

When we come from the place that elevates "being in love", a temporary feeling which should not be confused with love, to the pinnacle of human experience, we create an environment where the loss of the feeling of "being in love" can be used as an excuse for all sorts of behaviors destructive to marriage, including infidelity. After all, God wants us to be "happy", right? Right?

************************************************************

Politically correct research

You never know when you are going to run into examples of political correctness when it comes to the differences between the genders. I attended a dissertation defense on Friday in preparation for my own defense one of these days. The study being defended examined a certain type of knee injury in sports that is more commonly experienced by women than by men, the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL tear. The researcher outlined the anatomic and kinematic differences between men and women related to this injury. Basically, men tend to land from a jump in more knee flexion than women due to different factors, not the least of which is better balance between the quadriceps and hamstring muscles (ie; women tend to overly rely on their quads resulting in greater knee extension upon landing). And, the ACL is more at risk for injury in extension.

The researcher then went on to describe the study she carried out which involved a way to change landing kinematics such that the women in the study had more knee flexion when landing. After her presentation the audience had the opportunity to as her questions and one of the female anatomy profs asked the following question; "In essence aren't you trying to masculinize these women's movement patterns?" I thought to myself that was true, and that it would make sense to do so to a certain degree if the goal is to prevent ACL injuries among female athletes. But, the researcher answered, "Well, I suppose you could look at it that way, but I prefer not to. It is, in a sense, true, but it isn't appropriate to consider the findings in that manner". The prof who asked the question nodded her approval and from the back of the room I could observe several other profs shaking their heads a bit. Brilliant! Never mind the truth if it makes you uncomfortable to think of it in that way or you find it "inappropriate". We can't imply that men in any way have any inherent superiority to women, now can we?

A milestone

10,000 Visits here at Learning to Balance. Who'da thunk it?

Love and competition

In 1942 Christian writer C.S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters. The book is a series of “letters” between Screwtape, a senior demon and his nephew Wormwood, a junior demon about how to ensure the damnation of people. Lewis makes some chilling observations in the book about many subjects including love and marriage. In this passage “the Enemy” is God and “our Father” is the devil.

The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy. Ever since our Father’s first great victory, we have rendered the former very difficult to them. The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing up as a way of escape. We have done this through the poets and the novelists by persuading the humans that a curious, and usually short lived experience which they call ‘being in love’ is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent, and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding. This is our parody of an idea that came from the Enemy.

The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses….’To be’ means to ‘be in competition’.

Lewis seems to have nailed the basis of the struggle in the current culture with marriage 67 years ago.