I am in Costa Rica this week, on a quiet vacation with my children. I'm not supposed to be working. But thinking is my past-time so this blog erupted.
The blog started to bubble and hiss during a conversation with a young guide who helped us zip-line across the rain forest canopy. As he snapped hardware around the crotches of myself and a girlfriend, he grinned flirtatious directions like, "ladies, please spread your legs for me." I thought this was a good time to ask if he was married. He shook his head and looked down. I took my cue and followed up with the other intrusive questions I have ready for evasive males. Children? Girlfriend? Fiance? Common law wife? In the end I discovered that this twenty-four year old has been living with a woman for the last five years and they have two children. But he has no plans to marry. This surprised me. In largely Catholic Costa Rica it appears that the no-rules-relationship-revolution is here too. I had thought this trend was exclusive to America where currently 40% of babies are born out of wed lock, my own included.
My thoughts came to a full boil a couple days later as I lay in a hammock under a palapa reading a biography referred by a friend. It is the story of the double life of author Alice B. Sheldon who found freedom in expression in the late 60's and early 1970's using a male pseudonym. A frustrated feminist, her work in the science fiction genre railed with themes of female oppression and female anger, all safely tucked inside the bodies of space aliens. This made me think about where I am today. Where we are, as women, as men, and children.
For years I have wrestled with questions destined for women of my generation. Unlike Alice, we were born liberated women, saddled with career goals (and identity!) Some of us are more like paycheck toting wives with economic parity on the home front but that's still important. My mother, a sidelined feminist, never burdened me with a Cinderella dream of a prince and a castle, but instead noisily stuffed her unused ambition into my tiny head with words like "independence" and "...don't need a man." So many of my girlfriends were spoon fed the same m...
The Girlfriend Test is the ultimate guide to being a better date and a better mate. It is a chance for women to look at their own dating blunders on the road to commitment.
The Boyfriend Test is the definitive tool foir any woman intent on choosing the right man to be her best friend and lover.
Dr. Wendy Walsh's interest is Attachment Theory, a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory for understanding interpersonal relationships. Dr. Walsh's mission is to help people find true emotional intimacy, have satisfying sex lives, and raise healthy children, in a world where the shape of families, couplings, and communication styles has changed dramatically.
The Girlfriend Test is the ultimate guide to being a better date and a better mate. It is a chance for women to look at their own dating blunders on the road to commitment.
The BoyfriendTest is the definitive tool foir any woman intent on choosing the right man to be her best friend and lover.
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