orbit -a undocumented male-female dysfunctional relationship

ORBIT: an alternative theory of the romantic cosmos [by an anonymous author]

      Forests have perished to produce the women's magazines which endlessly chronicle the "madonna/whore" syndrome and other male malfunctions in romance. But no one ever talks about an ordinary phenomenon which leaves victims of both genders digging the medicine drawer for their emotional Dramamine: one that I call ORBIT.
    Even if you think otherwise, it probably has happened to you at some point in your life, but you just weren't aware of what was going on. It goes like this. You're a guy who's smitten with some sweet thing who keeps giving you hopelessly confusing signals. That's because she IS confused. You realize later... and maybe she does, too... that her attraction for you, while it was a genuine boy/girl thing, was emotional and intellectual -- but not, on its visceral level, sexual. For women, the scenario is the exact, mirror image opposite. He's taking you to bed, and the sex is great, but he's exasperatingly aloof and emotionally distant. What both "victims" have in common is that the object of their desire keeps them at just the right distance to satisfy their emotional (female) or sexual (male) needs... without doing things that the manipulator believes would signal a deeper commitment. For men, that means remaining emotionally disconnected. For women, it means if there's no sex, the relationship is "safe".
    The net result is that you are in orbit around this person... for months or even years. In fact, this situation might continue indefinitely if it weren't for one problem: the orbit must be adjusted, often with increasing frequency. That means when you start getting too close for his/her comfort, he/she will push you away. The idea is to lift you into a higher orbit, without losing control of you. Ah, but what happens to an object in space when force is applied? It keeps going and going and going...
    That's when he/she reels you in. And that's when the whole thing gets really dicey... and painful.
    For a guy at the center of her universe, when he senses Susie Satellite (a generic name for the female variety of this besotted archetype) is reaching escape velocity, it means a gesture of tenderness or thoughtfulness, like sending flowers for no reason with an ambiguous message like: "thinking of you". See? He really does care!
    For a woman at the center of his universe, when she senses Matt Moon is getting frustrated and may be thinking about a higher apogee, it means a tantalizing gesture which suggests hang in there baby, you might get it someday... a tender embrace, a squeeze of the hand, or some other spontaneous display of physical affection, for example.
     Penalty flag. Illegal use of hands. Fifteen yards and loss of down.

        While orbit relationships can exist in isolation, it is critical to understand that instead, they very often play out in an odd 'marriage' of complimenting couples. It begins with the woman who's being torqued around by the cool, good-looking guy who is nailing her (Susie). Then, the second and corresponding "orbit" relationship forms when she seeks solace by pulling some nice, caring fellow (Matt) into her asexual orbit, filling the emotional void left when Studley (or "Cocksure Carl" as I call him) gets off, pulls on his jeans and disappears for three weeks without a word.
        The problem stems from (but plays out in different ways based on gender) the way we are sexually programmed. Male animals, from insects to homo sapiens, have evolved to be programmed to pass along their genes at any possible opportunity... and to the healthiest females in their universe, at that. The result is that men were, and are, visually oriented. Women may be less so, but they have their biases, too. With the same urge to perpetuate their DNA through a healthy mate, coupled with the survival-driven, millennia-old need to find a reliable hunter/provider, women still favor the tallest, strongest, most aggressive male for the purpose of procreation and its requisite activity.
      The problem is that the sum of human knowledge has exploded exponentially in just the last hundred years -- a mere blink of the eye in the continuum of time and evolution. The world of today bears little resemblance to the society of 1898... very little resemblance to, say, 98 B.C and no resemblance at all to 1,000,098 B.C. Our genetic programming, however, has not kept pace with the revolutionary changes in society wrought by technology. At the onset of the third millennium A.D., many women are just starting families at an age when the typical human female who lived thousands of years ago would be long dead. But girls still start to menstruate at the age of 11 or 12. Today, the ability to reproduce at such an early age only causes problems. But it was only a short time ago, in evolutionary terms, that it was vital to the survival of our species. And another result of this lag between societal revolution and genetic evolution is that what we intellectually believe -- or want to believe -- that we are attracted to is often not what we are genetically programmed to be attracted to.
    And so, many women muddle through life, believing that their priorities are straight; they're looking for good things in a man, they just can't find any good men. Meanwhile, genuinely good guys stagger through life, bewildered by all the women they hear droning that very mantra, only to find that these same women adore them as friends, but keep 'putting out' for the very same alpha-males they deride as insensitive jerks.
     The sad reality is this: women complain bitterly that men don't want commitment. That is simply a canard. It is not true that men don't want commitment. What is true is that many, many women are just not attracted to -- or are afraid of -- men who want commitment. This warped thinking is often manifest when women say things like "I need 'challenge' or 'mystery' in relationship". It's an attempt to rationalize the conundrum about which these women are in deep denial. I have seen situations where women are utterly contemptuous of men who've been "too nice" in dating situations only, in the next breath, to lapse into a lovesick whine over some guy or guys who strung them along for months or years or otherwise treated them badly.
     Yet these women will refuse to see themselves an anything but victims. Indeed, to say these things is to invite the persecution of those who ferociously guard the notion that men are entirely to blame for the sorry state of male/female relationships today. But these assertions are not an attempt to shift the blame entirely to women. They are simply to make people understand that the dynamic of dysfunctional relationships is much more complicated than some make it out to be. And, as I have already alluded to, the male component of that dynamic is already well-documented, while the powerfully mixed messages women give men, and the role they play in creating their own unhappiness, is almost completely ignored -- or suppressed.

      And so it is that a Susie Satellite will blow off decent men all around her, and will instead piss away the best years of her life while some Cocksure Carl keeps her in endless orbit. All the while, Susie clings to her fantasy that she will change this guy and he'll become sensitive and committed. Susie rarely confronts Carl, because "that could scare him away". Every time she starts to drift away, he relents and shows a glimmer of warmth and caring to make sure he doesn't lose her. And she makes excuses for him while she in turn hears a litany of the following excuses: "I just need some time"... "just let me get through 'X school' or 'Y career trauma' before I can think about our relationship"... "I can't divorce my wife right now"...
     Carl gets what he wants -- some nookie on a reasonably regular basis -- with no strings attached, all the while keeping himself available for something better, should it come along. Often, this guy is more than just 'unable to commit'; he's a sociopathic, abusive loser. But he's also arrogant and self-confident -- or at least he's able to project that aura -- and that appeals to her anachronistic genetic programming. If he senses that she's getting too close, he adjusts her orbit by being more of an asshole or more unavailable. If he senses that he's losing her, he dangles a carrot; some empty words or gesture that implies things may change. Her raging insecurity fans the flames of the delusion that deep down, in his heart of hearts, he really does care for her and will make that emotional commitment.
     And, by the way, there is perhaps no better example of this contradiction about what women want in men than the attitude of American females toward the Predator of the United States, Bill Clinton. Here is a man, like so many others, who talks one hell of a good game about women's issues and about how women should be treated, while actually treating the females in his life like sexual tchotchke; he says one thing and does quite another. So many men run the same scam: "Yeah yeah, baby, I'm a feminist. Sure, women are equals. Respect. Dignity. All that stuff. Now, get over here and suck my..."
       But even when confronted with the possibility that Clinton sexually assaulted a woman (Kathleen Willey), women rally behind him. Even if Willey is telling the truth, the polls tell us, he's still ok with us. Here is a powerful man whose hypocritical personal behavior is a stunning betrayal of his lofty 'policies' regarding women, and the result is an entire nation of females offering him doe-eyed adulation, more in love with him than ever. What's the point of having laws to protect women from male abuses if the very men who write these laws flaunt them and get approbation instead of retribution? The debasement of rational thinking in this situation is staggering. Bill Clinton is a predatory, male sex addict with 125 million 'enablers'.

     Meanwhile, back in the suffocating miasma that passes as the dating environment for Guys-Who-Aren't-The-President, Susie Satellite is still in orbit around Cocksure Carl, while her male counterpart, Matt Moon -- the truly nice, stable guy in orbit around Susie -- is hemorrhaging emotional commitment to her. Susie needs Matt to supply the male support and approval she doesn't get from Carl; she soaks up his adulation all the while refusing to admit that their relationship is neither healthy nor purely platonic. She never comes right and admits to him (and often, not to herself), "sorry... my mom loves you and I know you'd make a great father to my children... but you drive a Taurus and you can't dance and well, you just don't me make me feel......." And so, Matt remains hopelessly in the grip of his desire for Susie, nursing a bad case of blue balls while hanging on her excuses: "let me work through my current relationship (with help from you)"... "my last relationship was painful, I'm not ready for a new one"... "can't we just be friends for now?"...
     [A word here about that word italicized above. Let this treatise serve to enlighten women once and for all about why the phrase "let's be friends" strikes terror in the hearts of some men. These men know on some level -- conscious or unconscious -- three realities: 1) that many, many women are not and never will be attracted to men who make good friends for them, 2) that they (men) don't get laid because of this, and, 3) because of the loneliness and frustration caused by the first two factors, they can and will fall in love with these friendship-seeking females and end up in endless orbit around them.]
     The same way Carl tosses Susie an emotional bone, Susie gives Matt the occasional boner... a squeeze of the hand, a playful kiss, or even the excruciating lets-sleep-together-with-our-clothes-on-and-not-doing-anything-that-could-be-construed-as-a-sex-act. Matt's delusion is based on his inability to counter-intuitively grasp that bad is good and vice-versa; he believes that if he keeps on showering her with kindness, she'll see the light and dump the knuckle-dragging half of her tandem. He cannot understand that what seems to be a lovelight in her eyes is really a craving for approval that can best be expressed as: "I don't want you... but I want you to want ME."
     In both cases, Susie or Matt, it's a pathetic, humiliating relationship built on denial and wishful thinking. The satellite wastes months or years, passing up opportunities for what could be complete relationships, while the source of the gravitational pull rationalizes that he/she is playing fair because he's not offering verbal commitment or she's not offering sexual intimacy. If there is a solution, it must begin with the satellite coming to grips with his/her situation and igniting an engine burn, heading off for deeper space. And women must to come to grips with role they play in perpetuating the worst aspects of male behavior if they ever want to be equals with men, either in corporate boardrooms or under the roofs of their own homes.

This page is found at:
http://www.phact.org/e/z/orbit.htm

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