By SHMULEY BOTEACHman and woman 88(photo credit: )
Remember the days when little girls grew up dreaming about a knight in shining armor whisking them off their feet to live happily ever after? Remember when a woman's foremost fantasy was finding the man of her dreams?
Well, that's all over now as women are abandoning men in droves and learning to find happiness completely on their own. Two astonishing studies show just how alarming the trend has become.
First, there was the study, from the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University and others, that two-thirds of all divorces today are initiated by women. These numbers beggar belief.
RESEARCH SHOWS that when a man leaves his marriage he is usually leaving for another woman. Men, especially those who have already been married, don't function well on their own. They need to be taken care of. So it is rare for a man to leave his marriage unless he is leaving for someone else.
Often he trades in the mother of his children for someone who is younger and more submissive. But for wives, the very opposite is true.
Ninety percent of all women who leave their husbands go out into the wild blue yonder. They are leaving their husbands and accepting what is often lifelong single status. They would rather be alone than stay with a man who does not appreciate them. They would rather live by themselves than with a husband who doesn't speak to them, who won't share of his inner self, and who chooses the company of the TV over theirs.
The single woman may live in loneliness. But she lives with the hope that one day she will find a soul-mate who cherishes her. But what does the married woman who is abandoned have to look forward to? In my 20 years of counseling, I have discovered that the loneliest women of all are married!
An even more shocking statistic was released last Monday by The New York Times. For the first time in American history a majority of women are living without a husband. The Times reported that 51% of all women are living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.
How could this possibly be?
SIMPLY STATED, women are giving up on men. Whereas they once harbored hope that men could satisfy their needs and make them feel appreciated, today they are finding far greater satisfaction in career over companionship and from female friends over husbands.
These are the consequences for a culture that for half a century has mercilessly exploited women as a man's plaything.
Beginning with Playboy, which coined the term "Entertainment for Men" in the early 1950s, and ending with the monsoon of smut that pours through the Internet daily, men today are subtly conditioned to see women as their subordinates. They exist to satisfy men. They have no will other than to look pretty for their male counterparts. They will starve themselves into thinness and submit their otherwise healthy bodies to the surgeon's scalpel, all in an effort to get men to notice. And when they commit the terrible crime of aging, they will inject poison - literally - into their foreheads to rid themselves of lines that were once proud symbols of experience.
Men have a sense of entitlement toward women which precludes them from making any honest effort to be worthy of them.
The net result is that the average man has no idea of how to please a woman. He doesn't even know how to talk to her. On a date he uses compliments not to make her light up, but to make her lie down. After marriage his purpose is not to attend to her emotional needs but to get her to attend to his domestic wants, as she slowly becomes his maid.
Quickly, however, she tires of this raw deal. Marital sex becomes a chore as he selfishly focuses on his own pleasure. And as for conversation, the most she can expect are boring meanderings related to practical matters, like taking the kids to after-school activities.
Now, unless women are complete toadies and sycophants, this is not something they're going to put up with for long. So they're dumping their husbands and abandoning the whole concept of marriage.
IT IS REVEALING that three most accomplished women in America - Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton - all share one thing in common: their choice not to share their most intimate selves with a man. (And yes, I know that Hillary is married to Bill, and I don't doubt that she loves him. But it's her career to which she is now really married.)
We men have to be honest. We are part of a new generation of males who have silent contempt for women. At college we use them for sex. At work we reduce them to body parts. In marriage, we push them into domestic servitude. Is it any wonder they're telling us to drop dead?
And it's not the women who suffer most. It's the men.
The Bible declares that when a man finds a woman, "he has found goodness." Women are a blessing to men. They refine them, ennoble them and deepen them, transforming them from errant boys into upstanding gentlemen. The lack of a woman in a man's life leaves him in a lonely and underdeveloped state.
So we men have to change, and here's how. Firstly, you single men: Date women. Don't evaluate them. Don't bed them. Respect them and get to know them. And focus on one at a time.
Now, you married men: Open up to your wives. Share your deepest feelings with them. Turn off the TV and talk to them. Help around the house so they aren't always tired.
And in front of your children always treat your wife with the highest respect so your sons become part of a generation that honors and respects women.
And maybe, by the time they grow up, they will find women that dream yet again of having a noble knight whisk them off their feet to a state of everlasting bliss.
The writer hosts Shalom in the Home on The Learning Channel. His latest book is Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children.
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