Looking for a suitable partner can drive you nuts. Even once we do find someone, the euphoria quickly fades as conflicts soon emerge. As a result, marriage rates are dropping, and nearly half of the couples that do marry eventually divorce. In a reality where the roles of men and women are blurry, and one’s gender changes on a whim, it is very difficult to know how to conduct ourselves in relationships. Instead of confidence, our relationships increase our anxiety and insecurity in all aspects of family life, from child rearing to sex-life. To regain confidence in our relationships, we need to understand the essence of love, sex, and the natural roles of genders. Then we’ll see how veering off from the natural way of things, we feel out of place and insecure.
To understand the nature of things, we need to look back a century or two. Until not long ago, people conducted their lives by the dictates of Mother Nature: Mothers stayed with their babies, nursed them until they became children, then boys joined their fathers and girls joined their mothers. Watching their parents and learning by example, children learned how to relate to everything in life.
At that time, relationships between men and women were natural. With the exception of the upper class, who did not have much else to do, people did not pay much attention to sex. Men wanted a woman who was healthy, fertile, and able to maintain the household, and women wanted men who could provide for them and tend to their and their children’s needs. Sex and appearance were marginal considerations when looking for a partner.
In the 20th century, sex and sexuality suddenly became important. We began to develop fashion, and an entire culture evolved around sexuality. Sex became essential in everything, both overtly and covertly. Literature, theatre, films, television, internet and social media all employ sex to lure in people. Even cars need to look “sexy” or attractive.
Animals, on the other hand, do not need dating sites; they do not have Tinder and do not occupy themselves with sex at all. When mating season comes, they follow their instincts that tell them which partner is right for them, and copulate. They do not make mistakes because they flow with nature’s rules.
In the previous century, we completely abandoned nature’s rules and began to develop our own ideas and ideologies concerning what is right and what is not. As a result, we no longer know how men and women should communicate. Additionally, decades of influence from Hollywood completely warped our perception, and sex consultants have destroyed what was left of our common sense.
Once natural relationships became obsolete, there appeared operations to design and redesign our organs to meet ever changing standards determined by bellwethers who are themselves products of a lost society. This is how we have come to live in a society where everything is possible and permitted, yet everyone feels empty and disconnected.
But the great chasm that “progress” engendered has spawned a new era. Out of the cold void of loneliness and depression, people are beginning to realize that they want to build proper, natural connections, where things make sense and feel natural.
Such natural connections require something of a middle line, where people accept who they are and bond above their differences. They no longer try to change themselves or others, but strive to connect above their differences.
Today, it is far more difficult to rise above differences than in previous centuries because we are far more selfish and narcissistic than our ancestors. Nevertheless, if we do not strive to follow our whims, and focus on enhancing our connections without trying to change one another, we will build far deeper and more meaningful connections than our ancestors could have imagined. The experiences of our failed attempts at changing our nature will make us appreciate the restored simplicity, and we will be able to enjoy and appreciate healthy, solid relationships like no generation could before us.