A Blind Man's Driver's Ed Lesson

Today I realized that years of observation and experience has given me two basic assumptions about male/female relationships:

1. A non-romantically involved guy and girl who are best friends = recipe for disaster.

2. A married guy and girl who are not best friends = recipe for divorce.

I'm 99% sure I'm right about both of those. (With a 98% margin for error). A division of labor might have been a great concept on Henry Ford's assembly line, but it's a terrible idea in matters of the heart.

And yet....I have a slight bit of doubt. Maybe it's because I've never been married so I am definitely NOT speaking from experience here. Also, so many seem to think the direct opposite--women in particular it seems. This leads us to an exciting offshoot theory from my main theses. I hope you're sitting down for the following sweeping generalizations:

1. Men hedge their bets in relationships by cheating. They want a lady on the street and a freak in the bed. But not necessarily the same lady. Or the same street. Or freak. Or bed.

2. Women hedge their bets in relationships by seeking a close emotional male friend. (And occasionally cheating).

But folks, I'm not here to judge. Here's the truth: it sucks to put all your eggs in one basket. It's terrifying. And that's what it comes down to: fear. Doing the right thing and staying faithful physically and emotionally to one person is a great idea--in theory. But walking a tightrope from 200 feet up without a safety net is also a good way to instill self-confidence and hone one's concentration skills. How about if you go first?

Of course the common cliche is that women are all about commitment, men are about whoring around. Women are genetically programmed to want to build a nest, men are genetically programmed to spread their seed, etc., etc.. Now that's another sweeping generalization if you ask me. Factoring out the DBQ (Douchebag Quotient) I would submit that guys cheat out of simple horniness and thoughtlessness far less than is assumed. Don't forget many guys live in fear of their girl cheating on them. Shakespeare is supposedly the world's greatest writer and nearly every play has some reference to a guy fearing being cheated on or actually being cheated on! Even Mick Jagger was apparently not immune to this fear. Lines from Tumbling Dice:

"All you women are low down gamblers;
Cheatin' like I don't know!"

And of course there are those unforgettable poignant lines from Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg:

"B$3%ches ain't nuttin' but ho's and tricks!"

You say misogynistic, I say insecure. Many guys deal with their insecurity by cheating. A pre-emptive strike against an attack that might never come but you're afraid it might come so you strike just in case! Picture the US attacking Baghdad in 2003--hopefully minus Wolf Blitzer's ecstatic narration---and you will start to get the idea. And why wouldn't guys be afraid? Men are dogs who sleep around--so we hear. But apparently the statistics show that women almost always average more sexual partners than men. Are women sluts? I wish! No, it's just that women don't have to ask, they just have to say yes. That changes everything, doesn't it? Forget sex, if I didn't have to ask for a beer, but just say "Okay, I guess I wasn't really doing anything for the next 20 minutes" after someone offered me one every half hour, I would probably be so hammered right now that my last sentence would have read like this:

dlcoepkieDEF LEPPARD ROCKS!!c.3ppei3pp.

So I understand.

Plus guys are idiots. I mean I really feel sorry for women. You're talking about a subspecies of mammals that actually takes the activities of millionaire strangers with numbers on their backs and jockstraps on their junk SERIOUSLY, people that devote all their spare time to lifting weights so they can go to work and lift a stack of 10 pages to carry to their next staff meeting, people that can tell you what the barometric pressure and relative humidity was last 4th Of July but can't remember your middle name, people with hairy backs, people that listen to AM TALK RADIO. I mean WTF? Ladies, I'm really sorry you have to be attracted to us. It has to be a living hell.

And one of THESE specimens of humanity is the person a woman should devote herself to completely and exclusively? Physically, emotionally, and spiritually? And pre-emptive or not, guys cheat too, so how to resist pre-emptive cheating in the event that the guy pre-emptively cheats because he thinks you might non pre-emptively cheat?

I think that made sense. Either way let's move on.

So yes while it makes sense that emotional and physical monogamy is the answer, it's a little like jumping off a diving board blindfolded and hoping to find water in the pool. Or downloading an LMAO album off I-Tunes without knowing if it sucks.

(No, I haven't downloaded LMAO because I know they suck).

But..............I still stand by my original thesis. If a person's best friend isn't their significant other but someone else, it will become a problem sooner or later. Platonic male / female heterosexual best friends? Is that arrangement absolutely guaranteed to cause trouble? No. But if Mel Gibson bought a house situated immediately between a brewery and a synagogue, it wouldn't NECESSARILY become an issue for police, lawyers, and publicists, but I don't think that would be a bet I would want to take, would you?

Mind you, men and women can be friends. In fact this blogger at this point in his life actually has more female friends than male friends. (I'm blessed to work for a wonderful social service agencies filled with countless breathtaking and charming ladies). But if chick flicks have taught us anything other than Hugh Grant is a pansy it's that platonic close friendships always lead to someone wanting it to be more, someone else wanting it to stay what it is, someone's BF/GF getting jealous, and someone playing The Fray in the background. ALL of these are very bad!

Unless the guy is gay. Then never mind.

Best friends only work when it's a relationship and relationships probably won't work unless you're best friends. I'm fairly certain most happily married couples would confirm this. Maybe that's why married people are supposedly happier than single people. Well, that and being able to have sex without needing to bother pretending you're actively involved in PETA or Fantasy Football.

But don't trust me. I'm a grumpy single guy. But I have a friend who is an interesting character who loves to play the frat boy--he's "jacked", he has a loose interpretation of the term "inside voice", and his favorite conversation starter when he's not in mixed company is speculating about the, uh, personal grooming habits of women . (I want to take the moral high ground on this one and say this is crass, rude, and immature. But mostly I found it hilarious). He had once dreamed of breeding a large family of 6'5", 260 pound middle linebackers, so he only dated women who were at least 5'10 or above. No, seriously. But I said, "Your wife is like 5'3. I think you really messed up on that one". He said, "Well, I sort of realized I was marrying my best friend".

See? Now he gets what I'm saying! He wasn't a Henry Ford wannabe who said, "Her department on the assembly line of my life is to be my best friend, but I need a future WNBA power forward to play the role of breeding my burly offspring". Sometimes the ones who make the carburetors can also make the steering wheels. And I wonder if the eternal compartmentalizes are doomed to less happy lives while those who have such epiphanies as my friend are destined to be happier. If you marry someone who isn't your best friend, you've built a beautiful house without a foundation.

Oh no. I can't decide if that sounds like a fortune cookie or a Hallmark card. Either way I better get the hell out of here.