poemranker ::Mid Years by Dovina

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Free verse № 124608

Mid Years

by Dovina

Member since 2004 · Posted 3 May 2005 · Edited 10 May 2005 · 36 comments

After the travails of menopause and before the fogginess of senile dementia comes a lingering sourness of melancholy that mixes with sweet hours of friendship to produce the finest moments of life For men, maybe it comes after the keen edge of erectile imperative and before virility's illusion turns into a joke Then it's about relationship as we said it was all along but never believed

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mean 5.63 weighted 5.17 rank 4977 views 292 View voting details →

8 votes so far. Yours would make 9.8 votes so far

36 comments

[9] deleted user 10-May-05/7:01 PM Reply
...and it's coming closer
as we say, every day
but never believe...

[10] Stephen Robins 11-May-05/4:05 AM Reply
This is a very good piece. However I am concerned about your fascination with middle age, are you trying to make yourself feel happier about the onset of drooping and the ceasing of your monthlies?
[n/a] Dovina › Stephen Robins 12-May-05/11:23 AM Reply
Some day I may cease to be amazed and stop wondering what criteria you use in judging the goodness of poems.
Your concern over my drooping, or rather your concern over my possible concern over my drooping, is very tender indeed, and perhaps stems from concern about virility's illusion turning eventually to a joke. A much appreciated 10.
[10] Stephen Robins › Dovina 13-May-05/1:15 AM Reply
Dovina, you must have realised by now, the way I artfully swagger around leaving damp patches all over poemes, that my virility is in no way an illusion; why I only have to walk past a lady and she will be struck my morning sickness.
[9] zodiac 11-May-05/6:09 AM Reply
I find relationships a more-certain way to have sex more often, and at minimal cost. Am I just that young?
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 12-May-05/11:26 AM Reply
If relationships are merely a doorway to having sex more often, then you are among all men most to be pitied.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 13-May-05/4:34 AM Reply
Once again you've added the word "merely" to a comment of mine and then proudly pronounced the result preposterous. Of course it's preposterous. To clarify: I find relationships to be many things, one of which is a way to have sex more often (or, at least, with a greater certainty.) To clarify even further: I, as a married man, can be certain of having sex twice a year, perhaps more. You cannot.

But enough about me. I'm interested: what other things do you, Dovina, think relationships are if they're not (to use your words) merely a doorway to having sex more often? To judge from your recent poems I imagine your response being "something to support my breasts so I don't trip on them while walking."

But don't get me wrong, I am interested in your real answer.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 13-May-05/10:24 AM Reply
To answer your question: A good relationship is good because of the emotional support it provides. This, of course, is a typical female view that belittles the much more natural animal instincts and gives rise (pardon the pun) to words ke “merely.”

To support my breasts so I don’t trip over them while walking, I look to the professional services of bra manufacturers, an option you might consider in solving your animal-based needs.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 14-May-05/12:58 AM Reply
I propose that a good relationship is good because the people in it need very little emotional support. I know you're misreading this, so let me clarify: Of course I occasionally need emotional support, as does my wife. And of course we give it to each other. But the truth is that the amount of emotional support we've needed in the last, say, year wouldn't get most Californians through dinner. This despite that we live in a woman-hating desert backwater.

Women in places like the Middle East belittle the sex-instinct because they don't know any better. Women in places like America belittle the sex instinct because they think it's going to be roses and tenure and are disappointed when it isn't. In any case, it's still an oppression designed by men. Have fun thinking you're more enlightened for subsribing to it.

Don't blame your "merely" problem on being a woman. Scientifically speaking, at any rate, men should tend more then women to use and misuse "merely". Do the math.
[10] Stephen Robins › zodiac 13-May-05/1:24 AM Reply
I take your issue over the economy of relationships. Imagine, if you will, an x axis marked $ per shag and a y axis marked time. I believe that given the high initial costs in a relationship with low initial sex count that an immediate release would be cheaper if purchased at say $60 for an hour. In fact, given that relationships also require monthly management fees for dinner, initially contraception, gifts and the fact you can't actually have the filthy sex your require for at least six months purchasing sex from a professional is in fact a more efficient method of obtaining regular, and crucially - satisfactory - release, with greater variety and with professionals who are not rendered incapable once a month due to stuffing themselves with jam rags.
[n/a] Dovina › Stephen Robins 13-May-05/9:56 AM Reply
I am happy you have explained the simple economics of male sex to zodiac, thus saving me the effort. Relationship is indeed a poor alternative to the direct approach.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 14-May-05/1:02 AM Reply
Considering that Stephen's comment above is, in fact, the "simple economics of male sex", what do you think is the advantage for women of being in relationships? Is there an advantage, or all they all just colossally misguided?
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 14-May-05/8:29 AM Reply
This is a very similar question to the one you asked above and which I answered. I believe now you are saying that since I have agreed that sex is the object of relationship, what is this emotional support crap all about? It’s the old misrepresent-and-then-clobber technique. Well, I stick with it – emotional support is the single most important element in relationship.
[n/a] Dovina › Dovina 14-May-05/9:00 AM Reply
Yes, I see from your comment above, that you partly agree with this, but you wobble and merely can't seem to decide.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 15-May-05/5:07 AM Reply
I don't agree that emotional support is the most important aspect of relationshipping. Being young, I'd probably say two more important aspects are some common understanding of the nature of the relationship formed early on and, yes, sexual compatibility.
[10] Stephen Robins › zodiac 16-May-05/7:41 AM Reply
If I may be allowed to interupt and exposulate forth an opinion; The two most important aspects in a relationship are oral sex and anal sex. A willingness on behalf of both parties to willingly give the other partner oral sex will ensure a happy, lomng lasting relationship, a willingness to submit to anal sex may allow for initial excitement but will, after a period of months/year, create such revulsion as to render the relationship a disgustingly sagged Dovina.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 15-May-05/5:04 AM Reply
I don't think it's so similar. To rephrase: Would you say most relationships hinge on some nearly one-to-one exchange of emotional support for sex?

That either doesn't seem very profitable for the woman or it seems doubly profitable, I can't decide.
[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. › zodiac 15-May-05/10:07 AM Reply
Women don't see it that way. They think being in a relationship is some kind of emotional mind-meld, where they are "totally accepted" by the other person. They like this idea because their emotional spines are too floppy to support them, having been repeatedly weakened over the years by such habits as:

* Watching Sex & The City
* Thinking crying is beautiful
* Making scrapbooks
* Taking pictures of their friends in staged-to-look-spontaneous poses, and then putting them in Purple Ronnie frames
* Consuming all forms of Purple Ronnie merchandise
* Writing on scented paper with scented "gel pens"
* Believing they are special
[n/a] Dovina › -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 15-May-05/4:56 PM Reply
True, and nothing to be ashamed of.
[8] INTRANSIT 11-May-05/5:18 PM Reply
I knew that. I'll be posting a beeg wun monday morning. Make sure you have a comic book in your shorts.
It's gonna be Krrraken.

I'm.....al...most.....home....erghk.
[n/a] Dovina › INTRANSIT 12-May-05/11:28 AM Reply
Thanks for the corroboration. I, of course, am too young to know it.

I'll look at your beeg wun.
[n/a] Dovina 15-May-05/7:51 AM Reply
zodiac, I’m responding to your several comments about relationship. I disagree that “two important aspects of the relationship are some common understanding of the nature, formed early on, and, yes, sexual compatibility.” That’s such a male thing to say and ignores a woman’s view altogether. Yes, women want good sex, and yes, we want some cerebral understanding of why we are in the relationship, but these are secondary. When you say, “I don't agree that emotional support is the most important aspect of relationshipping,” you have killed the most important thing to us and replaced it with your own needs and desires. As a woman who has loved a man, I had no desire to deny his needs and desires; I wanted to meet them because I favored his happiness equal with my own. So we worked together at compromises and gratification of each other. By the way, if what you want most is good sex, and I don’t believe it is, then it’s going to be much better when she is emotionally thinking that you care a great deal about her emotions.
[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. › Dovina 15-May-05/9:58 AM Reply
You like to imagine you have a monopoly on emotions. In fact, you have a monopoly on floppiness.
[n/a] Dovina › -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 15-May-05/4:54 PM Reply
We women have monopoly on neither emotion nor floppiness. Have you not seen the old man walking from the pool, his breasts and belly flopping and tears in his eyes over the death of his cat? What we have a monopoly on, except for a few good men, is the admission that emotions are very important to our wellbeing.
[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. › Dovina 16-May-05/5:36 AM Reply
No, I haven't seen that old man. BECAUSE YOU'VE JUST MADE HIM UP.

One's emotional state is clearly a significant part of one's overall health. Nobody has denied that. But if women are so in touch with their emotions, why are all women emotional trainwrecks? Why don't you have any idea how to control them?

You've all become so obsessed with the word "emotions" that you worship it as a god. You allow your life to be totally controlled by the slightest feeling, because "it's important to recognise your emotions." You devote huge amounts of time to sentimental nonsense like making scrapbooks and quilts, attempting to nail down an emotion so you can have it over and over again, as if it were a kind of rare mystical experience.

You think of crying as a beautiful religious ceremony, because when you cry, you're in complete submission to an emotion. Complete submission isn't beautiful. It's disgusting. It's spineless. It shows you have no control over your self, and what's worse, that you're glad to have no control. You relish the opportunity to be washed away in a sea of feelings, because it means you don't have to think, you don't have to try, you just have to weep like the jellied-eel you are. And you encourage each other to do this, because it feels better to be weak when everyone around you is also weak.

Your relation to emotions is exactly the same as the relation of a hypochondriac to diseases. There is an enormous difference between recognising the role of emotions, and devoting your existence to floundering among them. You, my dear, have chosen the latter.
[n/a] Dovina › -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 16-May-05/12:30 PM Reply
We’ve had enough discussions that you know the tack I will follow. First I will point out that your two questions in Paragraph 2 contain propositions constructed to render any answer wrong. I’ve come to expect that and will answer in some roundabout way, which you will object to on grounds I did not answer your question.

So I’ll begin with Paragraph 1, because it’s so obviously bogus as to be easily shot down. Of course, I JUST MADE HIM UP, and of course you have seen men crying and seen their breasts wobble and their stomachs sway, so what’s the big deal?

I’ll try to ignore the implications of your main argument, the way it is worded with phrases like “all women” and “you think” and “ exactly the same as” designed to aggravate me, and instead get to the core of what you are saying.

The average woman is not totally controlled by emotion, nor does she worship it as a god. We devote time to sentimental activities, and think it’s important to recognize our emotions, but trainwrecks? Sorry, but most of us do control our emotions, many of us much better than men do on average.

Your argument is beautiful in a rhetorical way, but quite inaccurate.
[1] Hallmark › -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 16-May-05/8:32 PM Reply
Are all women emotional train wrecks?
Does dovina have no idea how to control her emotions?
Do all women worship emotions as a god?
What a hypochnondriac needs is a really good kicking! and they also need a really good whacking! and a good fucking over!
You will turn round and say OH MY GOD rhetorical & also ironicalisationalism
I will ask are you a homosexualist?
[1] Hallmark › Hallmark 16-May-05/10:35 PM Reply
please a,b,c me
or not!
depending on if! i'm a fuck face or not!
[9] zodiac › Dovina 17-May-05/5:38 AM Reply
Maybe I should rephrase: Two more important aspects FOR A RELATIONSHIP'S BEING "SUCCESSFUL" (that is, lasting a long time with neither partner killing himself or being more miserable than, say, he or she would be if he or she were an Aboriginal) are

1) some common understanding of the relationship's nature, formed early on, and
2) sexual compatibility.

There's no real point to having made the last bit into a numbered list, incidentally, except that it'll help me explain why.

1) Almost no successful relationship is based on a mutual exchange of emotional support. And almost no woman really expects to get emotional support out of a relationship. More than half of the relationships I know (my own, of course, excluded--see below) hinge on one partner's flinging emotional support at the other in some sick orgy of self-sacrifice, and the other knowing that's what's going on and being more-or-less cool with it. That's what I mean by a common understanding of the nature of the relationship: there's a kind of stability; both partners know one is the griping martyr and the other is useless and sitting around in his/her bathrobe at noon and not going out and getting a fucking job. To some extent, they both want it that way (cf. Crystal Lane Swift.) If it's not self-sacrifice it's something else and similar; for instance, my relationship/marriage is founded on this idea of perfect mutuality and distribution of work, decision-making, emotional support, and so on that my wife and I established in our first months together. Of course, I think something like our system is a lot better for a relationship than the martyr/lout setup, but I don't think it's a factor for a relationship being "successful". (At least, not as far as I've defined the word above. You've got a better definition? Fine, write it out. But it can't involve the phrase "emotional support"; that's a cause, not a result.)

2) Sexual compatibility doesn't mean what you think it means. It can mean something as Californian as one or both partners (nominally) agreeing to let the other fuck around with other people, and so on. Without some kind of common ground there, though, I don't care how great the emotional support is, it's not going to last.

And of course the bit about me 'killing the most important thing and replacing it with my desires' is bunk. I've already said like ten times on this page alone that I PROVIDE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT WHEN MY WIFE NEEDS IT AND HAVE IT PROVIDED WHEN I NEED IT. That is, I'm living the dream and you're just dreaming it; so lay off.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 17-May-05/11:15 AM Reply
If it is true that you, “provide emotional support when [your] wife needs it and have it provided when [you] need it,” then bravo! And if it is true: “My relationship/marriage is founded on this idea of perfect mutuality and distribution of work,” then bravo again. But I am hearing so much cerebral definition and so little feeling that I wonder. Anyway if you are “living the dream” then you are right, I should lay off.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 18-May-05/4:09 AM Reply
Um, if I expressed my relationship in a noncerebral fashion, it would probably come out something like JUASDJnASJAWEUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmm.

Forgive me for showing our readers a little more consideration.

Besides, the cerebral stuff makes the noncerebral stuff possible. Bet after godknowshowmany relationships you still didn't know that.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 19-May-05/11:38 AM Reply
Sorry, but our major difference is still over your insistence on: “the cerebral stuff makes the noncerebral stuff (emotional stuff) possible.” If that were true we could sort out all of our emotional differences logically and then proceed to a wonderful life.
[9] zodiac › Dovina 27-May-05/2:24 AM Reply
Well, I have to repeat: I'm in a stable, mindbogglingly pleasurable relationship and have been for years, while you, judging from your poems and comments, are not. I don't mean any offense; consider it in the line of advice.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 27-May-05/12:23 PM Reply
I am happy for you.
[1] Hallmark 16-May-05/8:44 PM Reply
the fogginess of penile dementia!
a superbeflous line

as are all the others
3 point 1 point 2 point 1 point 5

jesus woman!
[n/a] Dovina › Hallmark 17-May-05/11:03 AM Reply
I have no idea what you are saying or why you voted 1.