Anti-Climacus

LINK: Hugo Schwyzer, whose orientation on a number of issues concerning male-female relations is very close to my own, on male jealousy:

For so many of us, are greatest challenge in any romantic relationship is to learn what it means to trust. Trust is the sine qua non of real love; fear and control are its greatest enemies. To love another adult is to do more than trust that their own intentions are good; to love another adult is to honor their own capacity to set boundaries and protect themselves from harm. Men in particular do well to learn that lesson. As for women, they do well to become very clear that there is nothing romantic, sweet, or honorable about jealousy or the desire to control. The sooner that lesson is learned, the greater the potential for joy, and the lesser the potential for misery.

I remember once having a conversation with a number of conservative evangelical women on the topic of male-female friendship. They all thought there was something vaguely untoward about maintaining close friendships with men. I thought they were all crazy. Their thesis, as I recall, was that too-close friendship with a man will either scare off potential future dateable men, or else engender some confusion about what the status of the relationship was. The practical result was to re-enforce the 'myth of male weakness,' as Schywzer calls it; men must be kept at a distance because they cannot be trusted to patrol that boundary themselves. But it also had a second clear effect, which was to make it difficult, if not impossible, for men to learn to close emotional distance with women. The guys these women met were clearly making mistakes, which resulted in their exile from continued friendship, without any clue of what had happened. (This is not to excuse them, because some of the mistakes were pretty basic; the misogyny that results from not recognizing where you went wrong is an equal problem). How exactly is a man supposed to learn to love, to trust, and be open if not in the context of friendships that allow for that level of growth and development? All this is to say I'm very, very grateful for my female friends.