Once we remove the manipulation from courtship, and from marriages attempting to re-court, we are free to develop a wide range of relationships. ‘ T don’t think men and women can ever really just be friends. Once they see you as a friend, you either become their mother or their therapist, or they just vanish, to come back once in a while when someone breaks up with them.” This report from one of the wives illustrates the cliche about men and women relating, that it is always sex or nothing at all between women and men.
We can develop into new relationships and modify others; we do not have to dump people. Think of the friends of both genders we would have if we did not allow our sexual immaturity to dictate that male/female relationships are either hot or cold, if our courting added to our list of friends instead of to our list of failures.
We are so genitally oriented in our society that we define infidelity by juxtaposition of the male and female genitalia. If the genitals get near one another, and particularly if an unauthorized penis enters an unauthorized vagina, cheating has occurred. If we become workaholics, ignore our families, neglect our health and the health of those who love us, if we spend most of our time outside of the family and the home, that is not infidelity. I suggest we have this backward. There is probably much more unfaithfulness to marriage because of work and play than because of extramarital sex.
Work at keeping and making friends, even if you used to have a more romantic involvement with them that changed for some reason. Men and women can play tennis without having sex. Super marital sex depends on maintaining attractiveness to others, experiences with others that enrich the marriage. The same goes for courtship. Don’t dump people, save them. Keep their name and number. Keep them as friends. It may sound impossible, but it works. If you view courtship as collecting a wide range of friends, one of whom will become that one special lover for life, then courtship will lose its defensive orientation, its manipulation and pain. It will become a process of personal and social growth.
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