Tag Archives: love

December 30, 2016 · 8:36 am

An Online Dating Experiment That Does NOT Bode Well For Me

I know it’s a little early to be contemplating New Years Resolution. We still have to get through the final days of 2016 without losing any more beloved celebrities. Then again, I’ve always been an overly proactive guy. I’m the kind of guy who used to turn in essay papers three weeks ahead of schedule in college. My old professors used to say setting deadlines was useless for a guy like me.

While I appreciate their insight, I do understand that you can only be so proactive with certain activities. Compared to college essays, dating may as well be an Olympic event done drunk, blindfolded, and concussed. I’ve made my recent luck with dating painfully apparent. I’m trying to change that luck for 2017.

Over the holidays, I actually set a very specific goal with my family, one that may or may not be too ambitious. I actually told some close relatives who know how dedicated I am to my craft that I want to bring a significant other to Thanksgiving dinner in 2017. In my family, that’s a big fucking deal. Bringing a significant other to a big family event is right up there with co-signing on a loan.

It’s ambitious, but it’s something I really do want to try. I’m hoping online dating will give me a chance, if only to slightly improve the long odds. Then, while doing some cursory research on the subject for my last post, I came across some very discouraging news.

It has to do with a certain kind of gender disparity. I’ve talked about that sort of thing before and it’s never a pleasant conversation. It’s like talking about taxes, dead animals, and clogged toilets. It’s not going to have pleasant details. With online dating though, I can’t avoid these details.

In this case, the disparity has actual numbers to back it up. After the Ashley Madison hack in July 2015, we learned a nasty secret about certain online dating sites. The amount of men on these sites grossly outnumber the amount of women. How gross is it? Well, according to the Washington Post, only 15 percent of the profiles on Ashley Madison belonged to actual, real-life women.

Think about that number for a second. If you went to a restaurant and you only had a 15 percent chance of getting a meal, you’d say that was a pretty shitty restaurant, wouldn’t you? Well, those are the kinds of odds that men are facing here.

I already have some direct experience with it. Last year, I created an account on two dating websites. In both cases, the only responses I got came from chat bots trying to solicit money for porno webcams. That’s literally all I got. There’s enough pornographic spam on the internet and that’s all I could attract with my online dating profile. What’s that say about me?

It’s depressing, but it’s not just me. People have done actual experiments on this disparity and the results are pretty discouraging. An Elite Daily article profiled a man who created two Tinder profiles, one male and one female. The response rate between them was pretty damn egregious. The female version of his profile got five times as many messages. In terms of raw numbers, that is not a trivial difference.

Other experiments have revealed similar results. The Daily Mail UK did a similar profile on a man from London who actually dressed up as a woman for his profile. It turns out, the men didn’t care. They inundated him with responses, some of them using language I usually reserve for my books.

This is not encouraging. This does not sit well with me. It also reveals something else that gets lost in the laughable number gap. Online dating sucks for men and it brings out the worst in them, which gives the radical feminist, overly PC types a reason to whine.

There are any number of articles where the dirty, pornographic language men use on these sites are documented. Women and the PC crowd love to screen-cap these comments and use them to say, “Look at this! Look how disgusting men are! There’s so much misogyny! All men must be ashamed of themselves and die!”

That may be an extreme response, but extremes are the new normal in this day and age. So I’m not going to waste my time confronting those issues. There’s another side to that coin that will get lost in all the whining and it comes down to this simple truth:

Men are REALLY desperate to find a lover and not having one really screws with their mind.

Think about it because I sure have. When men get really horny, they tend to make poor decisions. Women do the same, but it’s much easier for a horny woman to find an outlet. As these online dating experiments prove, they really don’t have to make much of an effort to get a man’s interest. The massive disparity in gender ensures their options are limited.

With men, however, that kind of horniness really fucks with our brain. Scott Adams even talks about this when explaining the modern phenomenon of sexting. Horny men don’t think clearly and will, in turn, do stupid shit. Remember, our brains aren’t wired for logic and reason. They’re wired for survival and reproduction.

Survival isn’t as big a deal in 2016 so reproduction occupies much more of our mental energy. When we don’t have an outlet, our caveman brains get a little erratic. That leads us to saying some of the disgusting shit that women find so offensive.

Now I like to think I haven’t sent a woman an outright pornographic message, but given the heavy erotic content in my novels, I’m sure I’ve let a few slip. I’m sure some women even found it offensive. There’s nothing I can do to apologize to those women. They’ve already formed an opinion about me and I can’t change that.

So where does this leave me? What can I do at this point if the odds and numbers of online dating are stacked against me? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m serious. I really would like to know because this does worry me.

I guess I’m somewhat lucky because I do have an outlet with my novels. I can take these sexy thoughts that fill my masculine brain and channel them into erotic novels or sexy Sunday thoughts. I think that’s a healthier way to manage my mental energy compared to sending women overtly sexual messages online.

Then again, it still only goes so far. It still leaves me alone, single, and dangerously close to creepiness territory. I still want to make an effort in 2017 to change my romantic luck, but I’m facing an uphill battle here. If, however, it means I can find a good and affectionate lover, then I’d say I’m willing to fight that battle.

3 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 29, 2016 · 8:30 am

Online Dating: Should Give It A (Third) Try?

We live in an era where people have a more intimate relationship with their smart phone than they’ll ever have with another person. Think about it. People tell their phone all their dirtiest secrets, trust it to keep those secrets, and turn to it in their time of need, no matter how serious or trivial the situation may be. In the grand scheme of things, a smart phone is a lover, an accomplice, a therapist, and a butler all rolled into one.

There may come a day when our phones and our technology will take the place of lovers. There are some parts of the world where sex robots are already a thing. Until then, though, we will continue to seek out human companionship in some form or another.

I certainly love my smart phone, but I’m not going to form an intimate relationship with it. I can’t make love to it. I can’t enjoy foreplay with it, which is kind of important to me. Maybe I’m old fashioned by today’s standards, but I’d rather have a person as a lover.

This is something I’ve talked about before as a concern. I am in my 30s now and I’m a single male. The older I get, the greater the creepiness factor will escalate. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the creepy guy on the block. I’m already the guy on the block who wears flip-flops and a bathing suit to a coffee shop. That’s the most my reputation can handle.

So as I was getting together with friends and family for the holidays, I started having conversations about my goals for 2017. Naturally, most of those goals involved being a successful erotica/romance writer and a more awesome guy in general. Those have been my goals for years now and I like to think I’m making progress in both.

That said, one goal in particular came up and I’m the one who brought it up. Maybe it was due to me seeing so many members of my family find love in their own way. Maybe it’s just the male version of a biological clock starting to go off in my 30-year-old brain. At some point, I do want to find love again and I’d like to make that part of my goals for 2017.

The problem is I have piss poor social skills. I can write novels. I can talk about comics and football for four hours straight. I can work out until I’m a big mass of muscle and sweat. I still can’t, for the life of me, find a way to properly interact with the opposite sex on a face-to-face level. I struggle to enter that mindset where I can use my words and my gestures to win a woman’s heart.

That’s a big reason why I haven’t had a serious girlfriend in a number of years now. It’s for that same reason I really want to change things up for 2017. One approach that many family members suggest is to use online dating. That’s something several family members have used to great success in some form or another. The problem is I have experience with it too and it’s not all that pleasant.

A while back, I did give online dating a try. In fact, I gave it two tries. I signed up for two popular sites and since I don’t know any good lawyers, I won’t name names. I’ll just say you’ve probably seen commercials for both of them.

I put some serious effort into these sites. I worked hard on my profile. I made sure my pictures weren’t too goofy or unflattering. I tried to paint a picture of being an awesome guy with plenty to offer a prospective lover. I must have not tried hard enough because, despite spending both time and money, I basically got zilch out of it. I probably would’ve been more productive trying to seduce a tree.

It’s not that the sites themselves failed me. I just think I’m shoveling sand against the tide with online dating. I’m a single male. There are a lot of single males on the internet looking for love and not all of it is of the healthy variety. The disparity between single males and single females on the internet is pretty goddamn staggering. If you’re a woman of average physical attractiveness, online dating is like a candy store. For men, it’s basically akin to fighting over table scraps.

That was my experience. It wasted my time and my money. It also made me feel ugly, unattractive, and unloved. It was not a pleasant experience. That said, it’s not like what I’m doing now is working any better. I need to do something different if I’m going to find a lover.

So with a healthy bit of skepticism and an unhealthy bit of frustration, I’m thinking of giving online dating a try again. I will definitely not use the same sites I did last time. I will try to use another. I will even invest some money into it. There’s no romance without finance, especially if you’re a man like me. It’s not necessarily fair, but that’s the way the world works.

Again, I’m doing this because my options just seem so limited. I’m a young single man and there are just too many of them on this planet right now and not enough women are willing to give them a chance. I need to find a way to be more awesome than all of these men. I don’t know how I’ll accomplish that, but I’d like to give it a try in 2017. Wish me luck.

7 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 23, 2016 · 8:58 am

How NOT Tell A Love Story: The Cautionary Tale Of “Passengers”

We live in an era where it’s impossible to hide a twist ending to a movie. Movies like “The Empire Strikes Back” or “The Sixth Sense” simply could not be made today and have the same impact. As soon as someone sees it, they just tweet the ending and it’s spoiled for everybody. Even those without social media can’t avoid it.

You could argue whether or not this is a good thing from now and until our robot overlords enslave us. I’m not going to have that argument here. It’s not an argument anyone can win, let alone an aspiring erotica/romance writer. However, this era of excessive spoilers does sometimes pay off, if only in the sense that it saves you a few bucks here and there.

This brings me to the movie, “Passengers.” It stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, two big time Hollywood stars that are at the top of their game at the moment. I’ve made my love of Jennifer Lawrence very apparent many times here on this blog and it’s not just because she walked around naked in an X-men movie, although that definitely helps.

Now I love Chris Pratt too for his role in “Parks and Recreation” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but I’d much rather see Jennifer Lawrence naked and covered in blue paint. That’s just me though.

So with two acting talents like this, I was naturally excited about the prospect of “Passengers.” It’s a sci-fi movie with a lot of sci-fi elements, from interstellar travel to conflicts involving how mankind goes about traveling the stars. It also is heavy on romance, which definitely appeals to me as an erotica/romance writer. After seeing the trailer, I was tempted to reserve my ticket right then and there.

Then, I read the spoilers. I found out that there’s a very important detail that this trailer leaves out. I won’t go into the full scope of that detail, but I’ll just keep it simple. This whole movie is just one big case study in Stockholm Syndrome romance and personally, that just doesn’t appeal to me.

What is the Stockholm Syndrome? Well, if you saw Beauty and the Beast as a kid, then you already know, but didn’t realize it. It’s when a hostage begins developing sympathetic, almost affectionate feelings for their captors. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, it makes perfect sense with caveman logic.

For centuries, we lived in small bands of tribes. Those tribes didn’t always get along with other tribes. Sometimes those tribes fought one another and took captives. Psychologically, this is pretty damn stressful for some people. Our brains, wired only to help us survive and reproduce, developed a mechanism to help us cope. Just being upset and terrified all the goddamn time isn’t a productive use or resources.

While it makes sense with respect to caveman logic, it also makes for a really shitty love story. This is not “Titanic.” This isn’t even “50 Shades of Grey.” At least Anastasia Steel willingly entered Christian Grey’s world of BDSM. The characters in “Passengers” didn’t get to choose shit and when they did, they chose badly.

Now based on the spoilers I read, there is a concerted effort to redeem the characters. There’s even a concerted effort to make a happy ending. However, as the Rotten Tomatoes score for the movie shows, it didn’t really work.

What happens here is that Chris Pratt’s character basically dooms Jennifer Lawrence’s character and he does it for all the wrong reasons. He just does it because he’s lonely and losing his goddamn mind. That’s understandable when you’re marooned, lonely, and lacking in some of your most basic needs as a human. However, it’s worth restating that this is a awful way of establishing a romance.

Even “Beauty and the Beast” did a better job of twisting the Stockholm Syndrome premise just enough to feel genuine. There’s none of that here. There’s nothing Pratt’s character can do to redeem himself. He effectively killed someone just because he was lonely and basically tried to lie, cheat, and justify his actions. That’s not romance. That’s making excuses.

As a result, I’m not seeing this movie. That’s not the kind of romance I care for. It sends the message that if two people are stuck together in isolation, then eventually they’ll fall in love, no matter what sort of lies and atrocities are committed behind the scene. I like to think genuine love is a bit more complex than that.

This movie sends a message that someone can just randomly pick another person and get that person to fall in love with them. I’m not a love expert by any stretch, but even I know human emotions aren’t that basic. A love story based on that premise can only ever be forced and nothing is less sexy than a forced romance.

Now there may be other factors involved in how this movie played out. The premise of the movie might not be the same as the result of the movie. I’m not qualified to speculate, but the folks at Midnight’s Edge, a YouTube channel I follow that digs into Hollywood news, do a great job of breaking it down.

Overall, it’s times like this where I’m grateful we live in a world of abundant spoilers. If this movie came out in the mid-90s, I probably wouldn’t have realized the flaws in this movie until after I bought the ticket. Thanks to spoilers, I saved myself money that could be better spent on whiskey and comics.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that my distaste for this movie is because of some radical feminist concept of men manipulating women for their own ends. I’ve made it clear on this blog that I take issue with a lot of firebrand feminism. My aversion to this movie has more to do with how poorly it handles romance.

As an erotica/romance writer, I feel like my standards for solid romance are a bit higher. Maybe that’s just a byproduct of writing about it so damn much, but it means forced romances like “Passengers” just don’t do it for me. I think Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence deserve better. Hopefully, they’ll get a chance in a future movie.

Leave a comment

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 21, 2016 · 6:01 am

Man’s Best Advice To Women (According To Sam Kinison)

Before I say anything on this post that’s going to put undue pressure on my balls, let me make one thing clear. I am not a therapist. I am not psychiatrist. I may write a lot about sex, love, intimacy, and society, but I am not an expert. I’m as much an expert on this issues as I am a brain surgeon.

I’m an erotica/romance writer. What I know about these issues is strictly limited to my own personal experience, my own unique observations, and my ability to do rudimentary research on Google and Wikipedia. With that in mind, please don’t take what I say as the words of an expert or specialist. I am an aspiring erotica/romance writer. That is the extent of my qualifications.

Why do I make this disclaimer? Well, part of it is to cover my ass legally and to protect my balls metaphorically because I’m about to do something I try not to do unless asked. I’m going to give advice.

Please keep this advice in context though. I am a single man whose success in erotica/romance is still a work-in-progress wherein said progress is very little. I understand that gives me a credibility problem. Then again, this is a world where men like Glenn Beck still has credibility somehow so that’s another context to consider.

All that being said, I’d like to share this advice to everyone, but specifically I want to share it with women. It can just as easily apply to same-sex couples, but being a straight male, it’ll apply most directly to women.

This advice actually comes from specific source and no, that source isn’t a certified therapist either. That source is Sam Kinison. Who is Sam Kinison? Well, his Wikipedia page will only tell you so much. Pretty much everything you need to know about him and his style comes from a clip in the Rodney Dangerfield movie, “Back to School.”

Are your ears still ringing? Don’t worry. That’s normal. That’s what tends to happen with Sam Kinison. He’s legendary in comedy circles for his style and the unique noise his makes when he yells. Some find it frustrating. Some find it magical. I think it’s just a damn good way to get a point across.

Sam Kinison had may points to make during his brief, but eventful life. A lot of those points had to do with sex and women. Having been divorced twice, he had plenty of material. In fact, much of his comedy involves him yelling at and railing on women, marriage, and everything in between.

That’s not to say he only ever complained. If he did, that would just make him an overly loud whiner. That was not Sam Kinison’s style. He did offer plenty of insightful tidbits, but none were more direct than this one.

Listen to it again. Wait for your ears to stop ringing and then listen to it another time. Listen to it as many times as you need to. Then, let it sink in. Let this amazing insight from a dead comedy legend really resonate in your brains.

To all the women, gay, straight, or bisexual, heed this simple advice. You want your lovers to satisfy you? You want them to do something you know will get you off and earn you beach-front property in O-town? Well, you can do that. You just have to do what Mr. Kinison advises. I’ll even repeat it since he’s no longer with us to belabor it.

“TELL US!”

I’ll omit the profanity, but if it gets the point across, please heed this fucking advice. Why is it so important? Well, here’s another little secret about men that I’d like to share. It may get me in trouble with the grand male conspiracy, but I’ll take that risk.

Ladies, men want to satisfy you. Men want you to enjoy sex with them. They want to be the awesome lovers you fantasize about.

I know this doesn’t always seem to be the case. There’s this popular, but dead wrong, perception that men care mostly about humping until they blow their load. A woman’s pleasure ranks somewhere below the condition of their car in terms of importance.

I don’t know where this perception came from, but it’s wrong. It’s dead, fucking wrong. If I had Sam Kinison’s voice, I’d yell it as only he could.

Think of it with a little basic logic for a second. Use the logic even Homer Simpson would understand. Men want sex. Men enjoy sex. If we have sex with our lovers in a way that they enjoy, then they’ll want to have more sex too. It’s the most perfect of cycles. The problem is we can’t kick-start that cycle until our partners tell us what they want.

Now I know there’s this other dead wrong perception that women have to be coy about what they want. They have to be subtle, devious, and mysterious about their sexual proclivities. I understand that some of that has to do with our puritanical, yet schizophrenic attitudes towards sex, but this takes priority over those attitudes.

We want to satisfy you. We want to make you crazy with love, lust, and everything in between. We can’t do that if we’re fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out what gets your motor humming. So please, for the good of your sex lives and ours, tell us what you want. The world will be a much better place if men know how to please their lovers and their lovers are regularly pleased.

1 Comment

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 20, 2016 · 6:37 am

Do We Expect Too Much Of Our Lovers?

When it comes to our ideal lover, most of us know what we want. In fact, what we want should be pretty damn clear, given that it’s laid out perfectly in every song ever made by Taylor Swift, the Beatles, and the Backstreet Boys.

We want our lover to be our everything. We want them to always be there for us. We want them to be 100 percent dedicated to us so we can be 100 percent dedicated to them. We want them to be the center of our world and everything orbiting around it. We want them to give us all the love, passion, and sex we want from now until the end of time. Is that really so much to ask?

Try and look at those demands without the aid of music or screaming fans. Read over them carefully. Think about them without imagining someone like Taylor Swift or Paul McCartney making them sound so sweet and appealing. Is that really a reasonable expectation to put on any human being, no matter how much you love them?

That’s a serious question that too few want to ask, let alone answer. Most people would rather listen to more sappy love songs and entertain fantasies of that perfect, ideal, completely devoted lover. Then, we’re somehow shocked and disappointed when we can’t find someone to be that devoted.

Setting aside, for a moment, that we don’t live in one big One Direction music video, this feels like one of those things where it’s impossible to see the forest from the trees and vice versa. It’s not just that popular culture has established so many unrealistic expectations about love, sex, marriage, and everything in between. There’s a certain disconnect in these expectations that seem to undermine the very concept of love.

This is one of the few disconnects that is pretty much the same for men, women, and those of unspecified gender. Men want a woman who is as devoted as Mother Teresa, but fucks like Jenna Jameson. Women want a man with status of a French aristocrat, but with the sexual prowess of Wilt Chamberlin. We may as well be asking for rich schizophrenic supermodel Olympian and there are only so many of those in the world.

This wholly unreasonable criteria also undermines some fundamental components of what love is and how it’s actually practiced in the real world. Wanting someone who is that devoted and that endowed doesn’t fit the profile of a mutual lover. It fits the profile of a super-powered butler/fuck buddy.

I know this may sound like the pot calling the kettle black because I write erotica/romance novels where some of those unreasonable expectations are explored. Some of my books deal with lovers who seem to check all the right boxes for each other. Some even involve actual superhuman abilities in matters of sex and love. I fully acknowledge that disconnect.

The difference is that my novels, as with most works of fiction, are molded in a fantasy world. These are worlds where it is possible for a princess to kiss a frog and have that frog turn into Hugh Jackman. Like pop songs, porn, and the lottery, they give others a means of entertaining this fantasy world, if only to escape from the frustrating realities of the real world.

That still doesn’t make the real world any less real. It doesn’t make our expectations surrounding sex and love less reasonable. So what’s the solution? How do we revise our expectations? Moreover, what exactly should we expect from our lovers?

To answer that, we need both caveman logic and a bit of context. In terms of context, we need to remember that up until the 18th century, most marriages and sexual partnerships were arranged and not chosen. In the same way we didn’t get to choose our parents, we didn’t get to choose our spouses either. Two family just got together, signed a contract, and that was as romantic as it ever got.

This worked fairly well for the many centuries wherein most of the human population lived on farms, barely knew anyone outside their small town or village, and were ruled by regional kings or despots. Then, we collectively decided that people should be able to choose who they marry, love, and spend their lives with. It’s actually more radical than it sounds and not in the Ninja Turtles sort of way.

Before this shift, the expectations were as low as the quality of an old Roger Corman movie. Your family picked your spouse. You’re then legally allowed to have sex with that spouse. If you’re lucky, you’ll enjoy it, but you kind of have to do it because the farm needs new workers and the local army needs new soldiers. The orgasms, if they come, are just a very nice bonus.

These being the expectations, it wasn’t hard to exceed them. Sometimes, arranged marriages do result in love. However, like orgasms, that’s a bonus and not an expectation. These days, we don’t just expect love and orgasms. We expect a goddamn superhero as our lover.

This gets even more ridiculous when you inject a little caveman logic into the mix. Out of necessity, our caveman ancestors operated in hunter/gatherer societies. One of the many key components of this society is that there could be no one superhero, white knight, or alpha male. Small bands of humans had to cooperate, share, and help each other.

This means two people and their children aren’t going to survive as well as a few dozen closely-knit groups. That two-person unit is just one stray bear attack away from being wiped out. With a tribe and a group, they’re better able to adapt and protect each other.

Why is that important? For one, it establishes a different set of expectations and those expectations extend to lovers, spouses, and children. Hunter/gatherer societies are fairly egalitarian in that one gender can’t treat another like a glorified pet and expect to survive. They need everyone to contribute. They need to be equals so they can share both resources and responsibilities.

This also means that strict monogamy isn’t always the best way to go. That’s not to say that these hunter/gatherer societies are some sort of hippie love fest that make for bad pornos and eccentric cults. It’s more likely that there’s a mix of polygamy and monogamy, but in either case, there’s a shared commitment to each other and the group.

This kind of balanced sharing doesn’t exactly jive with the “You Are My Everything” narrative that every Barry White song loves to convey. In fact, outside of an occasional X-men comic, a relationship of equals wherein neither partner does anything and everything for the other just isn’t seen as sexy enough.

I beg to differ. I believe this is the sexiest way that love and intimacy can manifest between partners. Whether they’re gay, straight, monogamous, or polygamous, a relationship of equals can accomplish more than any song, movie, or sitcom. If anything, those narratives only skew our expectations.

Look at any TV show or movie, be it animated or live-action, and the “happy” couple involved have the same problems. They can’t always deal with each other’s shit. They struggle to satisfy one another. In some cases, as in one particular sitcom, the differences are so toxic that the relationship would be downright unhealthy in the real world.

I know media tends to skew reality horribly, but it also creates the perceptions on which we build our expectations. If those expectations continue to fail us, then what are we to do? Are we setting ourselves up for romantic and sexual disappointment?

I try to take a more optimistic outlook on human affairs, even in matters of love and sex. I do think our expectations are changing, albeit slowly, and there’s only so much that music, TV, and movies can do to add luster to these lofty expectations.

The fact that there is a market for a relationships of equals, even if it is just an X-men comic, gives me hope that we as a species will find a way to improve our ability to love and be intimate in all the right ways and, most importantly, for all the right reasons.

2 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 19, 2016 · 6:01 am

The Paradox Of Traditional Romance

The more I read and write about love, sex, and the elaborate hoops we jump through in order to get them, the more I notice something frustratingly profound. When it comes to love and sex, there is no normal. There is no true tradition. There is only the ever-evolving, constantly-adapting dynamics between lovers, love interests, and fuck buddies alike.

Human beings are such complex, diverse creatures. That’s a big reason why our stories about them are so elaborate and varied. I’ve written stories about repressive religious communities that engage in ritualistic orgies. I’ve written stories about strippers who find love in the never-ending party that is Las Vegas.

In each case, there are elements of what some people, namely those who watch too much Fox News, would call “non-traditional” behavior. Whether it’s in love or sex, these people and the mentality they embody represent a standard set of assumptions that we in the Western world cling to, despite any evidence or anecdote to the contrary. They cling to it so hard that it can openly conflict with the very nature that makes us human.

Now I’m not talking about the kinds of assumptions that lead to uptight religious leaders calling same-sex marriage a cause for terrorist attacks or old men thinking granting women equal rights will turn them into lesbians. Those assumptions are the product of one too many intimate encounters between a baseball bat and a skull. They can’t be taken seriously, nor can they be effectively debated.

The assumptions here involve our standard perceptions of sex and romance. Some call it the “standard model” and since I’ve used that term before, that’s the term I’ll keep using until someone comes up with something better/sexier. We all know about these assumptions to some degree. It goes like this:

  • Boy meets girl
  • Girl meets boy
  • Boy and girl fall in love
  • Boy and girl get permission from religion and government to legally have sex
  • Boy and girl move into together, start having babies, and become upstanding members of society
  • Boy and girl constantly struggle to avoid the urge to cheat one another with more exciting sex acts
  • Boy and girl do what they can to abide by societies expectations about how a married couple and family should behave

These assumptions are a big part of the narrative in “Sex At Dawn,” a book that continues to intrigue/arouse me with each chapter. In one of the early chapters, this book makes a keen observation that even my dirty mind missed. It’s an observation that’s so painfully obvious that you really do wonder if psychic lizard people are controlling our thoughts to make us think such crazy things.

If this traditional model of sex and romance is so natural, as many traditionalists claim, then why does it need all these elaborate legal, religious, and social institutions to reinforce it. If it’s so natural, then those protections wouldn’t be necessary, would it?

Think about it. There’s no need for a thought experiment this time. Look at all the elaborate tactics that religion, government, and society uses to preserve and reinforce the traditional model of romance and sex.

They make cheesy sitcoms. They make elaborate love songs. Entire countries even create this massive web of benefits for married couples that, until very recently, were reserved strictly for couples that stuck to the standard model of romance and sex.

This says nothing about the draconian extremes that religion went to in preserving this standard model of romance and sexuality. For some, just having laws, TV shows, and legal benefits wasn’t enough. Entire religions had to make this standard model of sex and romance a matter of spiritual importance. To go against it would be to go against an all-powerful deity that doesn’t want you using your genitals in a certain way.

Combine all that together and you start to see an odd pattern. This institution that’s supposed to be so “natural” needs all these elaborate traditions to protect it. It’s almost as if these traditions are not at all conducive to mankind’s natural inclinations for love and sex. If I could say that with any more sarcasm, I would.

Now some will claim that these traditions are necessary because mankind is naturally rebellious and immoral. Hell, that claim is the basis for no less than three major religions in this world. However, if you think about it just a little bit more than any priest or mullah ever dared, you should be able to see the flaws in that logic.

Take a moment to channel your inner Mother Nature. Pretend for a moment you’re programming a successful species from scratch. Why the hell would you install a program that makes the species rebellious and deviant? You want them to survive and reproduce, right? Making them rebellious just means you’re giving them a mechanism to defy the very goals you established in the first place.

That’s not to say that some people don’t have faulty wiring in their brains and their biology. Some really are naturally deviant, rebellious, and arrogant to a point where they get their own reality show on Fox. Those individuals are a byproduct of the diversity that every species have, daring to venture into uncharted territories to pave the way for others. They’re supposed to be the exception and not the norm.

What the assumptions surrounding the standard model of romance and sex do is invert that dynamic. It creates the impression that the norm is the exception. All those powerful mechanisms that urge us to love, hump, and cooperate in ways that make Catholic Bishops cry at night are scolded and shamed. The only way to subvert them is to create entire traditions and cultures that warp peoples’ mind into believing these assumptions.

It is a romantic paradox in many respects. We claim this standard model of romance that is the basis of so many Shakespeare plays and boy band songs is natural, but it still needs all these protections and traditions to propagate.

It’s enough to make you wonder what will happen as these traditions and assumptions fade. It’s another interesting thought experiment, but one I’ll have to hold off on until I finish “Sex At Dawn” in its entirety.

It’s already giving me many interesting ideas for the kinds of sexy love stories that may fly in the face of everything Stephanie Meyer ever wrote, but these are ideas worth exploring. When our love lives and our sex lives are involved, the stakes are pretty damn high. If my erotica/romance novels can flesh out those ideas, then that’s a worthy endeavor if ever there was one.

13 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 11, 2016 · 8:20 am

Sexy Sunday Thoughts: Easing Holiday Stress Edition

When you’re trying to build a career out of telling sexy, romantic stories, you tend to think a lot of sexy thoughts. It’s part of the job description. To tell sexy love stories, you need to think sexy. To think otherwise would be like baking a cake while you’re not hungry. It helps to be vested in your work is what I’m saying.

My efforts, and all the sexy thoughts that come with it, are finally starting to bear fruit. Beyond my self-publishing endeavors, I’m finally getting the attention of a few small-time publishers. One book, “Embers of Eros,” is set for release later this month. The other, “Passion Relapse,” is poised for release in 2017.

If all goes well, these sexy thoughts may actually help me pay the bills one day. That day is still a ways off, but I won’t let that keep me from thinking about sexy things that will hopefully inspire more sexy stories. There’s always a market for sexiness. It’s one of the few recession-proof markets that doesn’t involve alcohol and I hope to carve my place in it.

As part of that effort, I want to keep sharing some of these sexy thoughts with the world. So long as I have sexy thoughts to share, I’ll keep sharing them through what I guess is my new weekly column, Jack Fisher’s “Sexy Sunday Thoughts.”

After a long week, we all need to think about something less stressful or overwhelming. The holidays make it even more challenging. There are gifts to buy, presents to wrap, decorations to hang, and eggnog to drink. I get it. The holidays are stressful. So in the spirit of the holidays, let these sexy thoughts help ease the tension.

“When we call someone a dick or a pussy, it’s an insult. But when that same person actually uses their dick or their pussy properly, it’s a point of pride.”

I’ve always found this kind of odd, using genitals to insult people. We love our genitals. We take pride in how they look and how we use them. So why use them as insults?

“Sex sells, but only a handful of people can get away with charging a premium.”

Let’s face it, not every woman looks like Kate Upton and not every man looks like Brad Pitt. I think that slogan needs to be revised. Sex does indeed sell, but only to a point. Seeing Jonah Hill drink a Pepsi isn’t going to make too many people horny enough to change their drinking habits.

“Cult leaders tend to be extremely horny, extremely jealous, and extremely reluctant to pay taxes. They’re basically every male slacker’s dream job.”

I’ve noticed that charismatic cult leaders often convince beautiful women, and even a few men, that salvation can be achieved through his penis in some form or another. Is it shady? Yes, it most definitely is. Then again, when you make sex a holy sacrament, it does cut down on the small talk so damn it if it isn’t uncomfortably practical.

“Being a good multi-tasker should be a prerequisite for seeking a three-way.”

This applies to both genders. It’s just common courtesy. If you’re going to get more people involved in your love life, at least make sure you can dedicate the necessary energy to sharing the joy.

“Orgasms are one of the few bodily functions that have been seen as both a disease and a cure.”

It’s no secret anymore. Orgasms have many wonderful health benefits. It’s the best medicine you can get without a prescription. Even so, there are certain conditions where orgasms can become a problem and the actions of uptight authority figures certainly doesn’t help.

“Words can hurt, but words can also make us horny so it balances out.”

Words have a great deal of power. Like most things in this complicated and imperfect world, it’s a matter of how you use them. Some use them to be assholes. Some use them to tell sex, steamy stories. I think I’ve made clear which one I prefer.

“The sexier a drug makes us feel, the less we care about the side-effects.”

We’ll tolerate all sorts of bizarre side-effects from the endless cocktail of drugs that flood the modern world, but if those side-effects include more erections and orgasms, then that tolerance grows considerably. We don’t care if it gives us seizures or turns our tongue black. If it helps us fuck like porn stars on crack, we’ll find a way to endure.

“The heroes and villains of every story either have too much sex or not enough. Is there no room for a healthy middle ground?”

As a comic book fan, I find this somewhat troubling. On one hand, we have Wolverine and James Bond, who get more ass than a toilet seat at Taco Bell. On the other, we have Captain America and Superman, who barely get any ass at all. I think there’s room for balance. Then again, if everyone got enough sex, there wouldn’t be many villains to begin with, would there?

“If you add the words ‘while masturbating’ to the end of every feat, it makes it all the more impressive.”

Go on. Try it! Go to any news feed. Look up any article about someone who did something amazing. Then, tack on those two extra words and let your dirty imagination run wild.

Hope this warms everyone up. Hope it gives everyone some sexy thoughts to think about. I’ll keep my dirty mind active for your sexy entertainment. It’s what I do.

3 Comments

Filed under Sexy Sunday Thoughts

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

December 8, 2016 · 6:07 am

Cheating And Other Flaws In The Standard Model Of Romance

Why is it that stories of cheating, infidelity, and affairs get us feeling giddier than a kid in a room full of puppies? What is it about these stories that fascinate/disgust/arouse us so much? We can’t ignore our reaction to it. There’s a very good reason why Jerry Springer had so much success and it wasn’t just because he’d bring out the occasional midget.

Cheating, infidelity, or whatever you want to call it has always been an obsession of sorts, both in today’s culture and throughout history. Go all the way back to Greek mythology and you’ll get philandering cheats like Zeus, whose track record of infidelity would shock even Jerry Springer.

Fast forward 2,000 years and we still have things link Brangelina, which ended recently in divorce, but for a time was its own cottage industry of sorts, having been built on a foundation of alleged infidelity. Whether we’re in ancient Athens or Newark, New Jersey, we as a society are fascinated by cheating.

That leaves us with an uncomfortable, but sexually suggestive question. Why? This is actually one of those things that can’t be explained solely within the context of caveman logic. The concept of infidelity, as well as the very concept of marriage, takes on a very different context in the caveman mind. The vastly different courtship practices of hunter/gatherer societies are proof enough of that.

As with so many other complex human traits, our caveman brains can’t be precise, accurate, or even logical. They can only do what they must to help us survive and reproduce. It is, as I’ve said before, a blunt instrument that’s prone to error. That error is compounded with infidelity, which is why there are so many theories as to why people cheat.

Our brains still don’t know that we’re not cavemen living in hunter/gatherer societies anymore. Humans, like every other species, are at the mercy of the slow pace of evolution. To be fair to evolution though, humans have been subject to some major upheavals in recent times.

According to most estimates not made by update Texas pastors, the human species has been on this planet for about 200,000 years. It’s only in the last 10,000 years or so that the agricultural revolution laid the foundation for our civilization.

It’s this major shift that laid the foundation for our current concept infidelity. It’s this system of society that helped establish the marriage, child-rearing, and gender roles of civilization that have persisted for most of human history. It’s also this system that made infidelity such a big freakin’ deal to begin with.

I bring this up because last month, I talked about a new book I had been reading called “Sex At Dawn” by Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha, Allyson Johnson, and Jonathan Davis. This book attempts to break down the standard model of romance and expose the flaws within.

I touched on some of those flaws before I even read the book, but it has been very insightful (and very sexy) in fleshing out those flaws in ways I never could. Recently, I got to the part of the book where cheating is discussed and it put the whole concept into a new context, one that can really inspire an aspiring erotica/romance writer.

First, the book lays out the standard model of romance. Anyone who ever watched a sitcom in the 1950s knows what that model looks like. It’s basically one man, one woman, one house with a white picket fence, and exceedingly rigid roles for everyone involved.

The man works to provide money for the family. The woman stays home to raise the kids. The kids get into trouble every now and then, requiring a lecture from their wise father to fix everything. Everybody goes to bed having learned a lesson. It’s basically the exact opposite of the Simpsons.

The Rick Santorums of the world praise this model. At times, they deify it the same way the entire state of Massachusetts deifies Tom Brady. They see it as the perfect ideal that must be pursued, protected, and championed, even if it means bashing homosexuals and screwing over single parents.

There are many problems with this model and even more with the uptight people who champion it, but “Sex At Dawn” singles one in particular out when it comes to infidelity. Don’t worry though. It’s the sexy kind of problem.

The book sets up a fairly standard scenario not much different from the 50s sitcom model. Picture a man and a woman together. They’re married. They’re fairly normal. They’re as typical as typical can be in a country that makes bacon-flavored lube.

The man provides a stable, comfortable home for the woman. He works a job that pays the bills, allowing the woman to stay at home to keep it in one piece. He’s not an overly exciting man. She’s not an overly exciting woman. Their sex life is the antithesis of an old Motley Crue music video. It may as well be as routine as doing the laundry.

So why is this a problem? Well, “Sex At Dawn” makes it a point to note that evolution creates numerous incentives that we don’t already recognize, let alone understand. Remember, our brains and bodies are built for survival and reproduction. The standard model does provide some of that, but it’s not entirely a safe bet.

In that model, the man and the woman are gambling with their evolutionary imperatives. The man is only impregnating one woman in this model. What if that woman has health issues that render her infertile? What if the children she has suffer birth defects? What if she’s only able to have one or two kids at the most?

The are just as many risks for the woman. What if the man’s genes aren’t that good? What if the man’s fertility is limited at best? What if the children she bears aren’t particularly talented or advantaged in any way?

That’s a lot of gambling in the game of evolution. Like immature children who try to cheat at monopoly, we humans will try to bend the rules when we can. This leads to the kind of sexy scenarios that makes “Sex At Dawn” one of the most colorful and insightful books an erotica/romance writer can reference.

For the man, evolution provides an incentive not to hedge his bets. That means the inclination to spend some extra time with their hot young secretary is pretty strong. Unlike a woman, a man can hump multiple women and has a chance at impregnating them all. Sure, those kids will be at a disadvantage if their father is not involved, but the law of averages said at least one of those kids will survive to carry on his genes.

Like I said, evolution has the maturity of a 13-year-old watching Game of Thrones. It’s basically a recipe for extra-marital humping.

For the woman, there are other incentives, but they’re just as powerful and just as sexy. A woman with a boring, but faithful husband will likely have children who share that trait. The boys she bears will be boring and faithful, still having to rely on one woman to propagate their lineage.

Enter the bad boy rebel who will hump anything with legs and a pulse. He’s James Dean. He’s Wolverine. He’s Johnny Cash. This man, for perverse reasons that evolution fuels, gets the woman horny enough to do some extra humping on the side. Sure, it requires that she go behind her hubby’s back, but as women and men alike know all too well, we do crazy things when we’re really horny.

On top of the toe-curling pleasure that comes with exciting, bad-boy sex, she may now bear a child who can hump more women and make more stud babies. Those stud babies have a much better chance at passing on the woman’s genes so she has a powerful evolutionary incentive to make sure all her sons are Wilt Chamberlin and all her daughters are Kardashians.

In light of these evolutionary incentives, coupled with the rigid social order imposed by the “Leave It To Beaver” crowd, it makes perfect evolutionary sense. Evolution forged our basic drives and imperatives. Evolution, being the imperfect process it is, doesn’t give a two whiffs of a skunks ass what laws, taboos, and Jerry Springer says. If it propagates a species, then that’s all it needs.

It’s because of these evolutionary forces and powerful incentives that infidelity makes a perverse kind of sense. For years, I struggled to understand why women wanted to sleep with the bad boys, knowing they weren’t going to stick around or be faithful. Now, when I think about it from the “stud baby” perspective, it does make sense.

It also reveals how imperfect our current assumptions about relationships and romance are, even in the 21st century. Granted, there have been improvements since the Victorian Era, but I think we, as a society, can do better. I don’t claim to have a solution, but I will definitely explore a few sexy possibilities on this blog and in my novels.

3 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 6, 2016 · 7:41 am

Romance And Reason: Can They Co-Exist?

God gave us a penis and a brain, but only enough blood to run one at a time. It’s a running joke among men, but it’s no laughing matter. We need our brains to function. We need our genitals to propagate. These are two important functions of life and they aren’t always on the same page.

Women aren’t immune from it either. Sure, they don’t need to worry about their pants getting too tight when they walk by a Victoria’s Secret, but they’re just as prone to other functions overriding their capacity for reason. That’s not a joke about periods either. Women, like men, have a nasty habit of not thinking things through while in an emotional state.

It happens all the time. It’s one of the bugs in the 1.0 beta version of nature that we’re all stuck in (for now). When we’re in an emotional and/or agitated state of mind, we don’t think clearly.

We’ve all been there. Ever go grocery shopping when you’re really hungry? It really does screw with your mind and your wallet. If you’re hungry enough, everything from stale cookies to expired milk seems appetizing.

I’ve certainly been there. Back when I was in college, there was this one winter where I was just really, really depressed for reasons that are too pathetic to describe. Then, some guy came around my dorm selling magazines and, because I was in a such a pathetic state of mind, I bought a subscript to Maxim magazine that I didn’t want, need, or care for.

My point is that we humans inherently suck at balancing reason with emotion. It’s the reason why Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock clashed so many times on Star Trek. Coincidentally, that’s also why there’s this huge fandom of them as gay lovers, but that’s a story for another post.

For me, an aspiring romance/erotica writer, I need to use both. I need to use reason when crafting a story, less my novels turn into one long incoherent string of rants, babble, and whining. I’ll leave that sort of thing to 4chan and Twilight message boards. For my brand of romance/erotica, I want to strike some kind of balance between heavy thoughts and hot loins.

That raises a fundamental question. Is it possible for romance and reason to co-exist? Are they even on the same length? Can they even exist isn’t the same universe? That’s an argument some would passionately debate. There’s an inherent irony in that debate, but it’s not entirely misguided. There is some science behind it even.

Anyone who has been on the wrong end of road rage or eaten an entire bucket of ice cream after a bad breakup understands the clash. On some levels, we know we do dumb shit when we’re in an emotional state. We even know how dumb it is. We still do it anyways. I’m sure there are times when my brain wanted to kick my ass.

However, I’m of the belief that since our passions and our higher thoughts both come from the same organ, namely our brain, they can coexist. That’s not to say it’s a perfect coexistence. That’s not even to say it’s all that peaceful. I’m just saying they can occupy the same space without the universe exploding.

Once again, this conflict is a byproduct of our caveman brains, which still don’t realize that we’re not living in caves and fighting off hungry tigers anymore. Those brains are wired in a way to prioritize certain things more than others. Survival and sex is at the top of that list. The capacity for reason isn’t even top five. Hell, for some it isn’t even top ten.

It’s still there though. Our capacity for reason is a vital tool. Some would argue it’s the most vital tool in our species’ arsenal. It allowed us to do more than just avoid tigers, make tools, and set up nicer caves for humping. It allowed us to understand our world, build cities, and forge assault rifles that ensure no hungry tigers dare mess with us.

There’s a lot of value with respect to reason. Unfortunately, not a lot of that value plays out in sex and romance. That seems to be a massive blind spot of sorts, one that leads to many wrecked relationships/marriages/drunken hook-ups.

It doesn’t help that using logic and reason in a relationship isn’t considered sexy. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in the philosophy, engineering, or science. Brad Pitt is still going to get laid more than you. From an evolutionary standpoint, he wins big time.

From a logical stand point though, his recent divorce and past breakups show that even Brad Pitt has room for improvement. Could he have saved those relationships by employing more brain power and less sex appeal? It’s hard to say, but I’m of the belief that hindsight tends to remind us of just how many opportunities we tend to miss.

I’m also of the belief that we all need to step back and give a little extra scrutiny to how we organize our relationships. We’re still going to act erratically. We’re still going to make foolish decisions. I’ve had that play out in my novels, from “Skin Deep” to “Holiday Heat.” In those same novels, though, I also allow for moments of clarity.

This is where I think romance and reason can find some common ground. Clarity is something that both value. Reason values the clarity of facts and the logical paths around them. Romance values the clarity that comes with knowing how you feel about someone and how they feel about you. It is, in essence, the scotch tape that links these two forces.

Clarity is what sobers us up when we find out we’ve made a dumb decision while in an emotional state. If that decision takes place in a town like Las Vegas, it can have some major legal implications. Hell, there are entire movies built around that premise.

That same clarity also reveals to us when we know we’ve found someone we want to love with all our hearts and without reservation. It removes any uncertainty and hesitation when we feel the urge to make love to one another. In that sense, clarity is a damn good aphrodisiac.

This isn’t just something I believe. This is something I hope to demonstrate in my upcoming book, “Passion Relapse.” Since this is the book that finally got the attention of a publisher, I feel like now is as good a time as any to start building some hype around it. I’m no Don King, but I feel like I should get people excited/horny about it.

There are a lot of aspects to “Passion Relapse” that are built primarily on overwhelming emotions and a serious lack of forethought. The characters involved in this story struggle more than most to balance their reason with their loins, even more so than Brad Pitt. However, it’s only when clarity enters the equation that things get really heated.

By the end of this book, I hope to give readers a new appreciation for the value of clarity and just how much it can improve your love life. I’m not saying it’ll be scientific proof that reason and romance can form a harmonious union that leads to passionate lovemaking and a greater appreciation of higher thought. It will be damn sexy though. That much I can promise.

1 Comment

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 6, 2016 · 6:16 am

How NOT To Talk About Marriage

Picture a scenario with a man and a woman. No, it’s not one of those scenarios. They’re both fully clothed, in public, and otherwise normal. Then, imagine the kind of outrage/public shaming that would occur if this took place in front of one too many cameras.

Woman: I’m so sad! I’m so lonely! Why does the world so cruel?

Man: Maybe it’s because you’re really fat. Were you abused as a kid or something? Just exercise more or get some surgery.

You feel that? That’s the inescapable urge to roll your eyes because you know what kind of outcry this is going to cause. You know the kind of arguments, insults, rants, and raves that’ll emerge from this topic. Human can be pretty crazy and unpredictable when it comes to certain topics. Topics that involve marriage or gender issues, though, are annoyingly consistent.

So why do I bring up this scenario and the predictable outcry it tends to cause? Well, it was inspired, in large part, by a video I came across recently. It involves a small talk show discussing recent trends in marriage, namely why men are more and more reluctant to get married.

I’ve talked about this issue before, namely the part where the legal system gives men and women one too many tools to screw each other over and not in the way they enjoy. I generally avoid talking about it because it tends to make people less horny, which isn’t good for any erotica/romance writer. However, sometimes I do feel compelled to comment on something that feels overly relevant.

With that in mind, here is the clip in question. To get to the part that really annoyed me, fast forward to the 2:20 mark. I should warn you though. You may feel the urge to punch your computer screen.

Did you see it? Is your computer screen still intact? Are you confused as to why someone who is single, in his 30s, and worried about his romantic future would feel uneasy with this exchange? Well, let me break it down in a way that I hope won’t cost anyone a new computer screen.

The argument the man in the clip makes is not a new one. They’ve been made before, the pitfalls of marriage and the reasons men aren’t too eager to participate. In fact, Fox built one of its most successful sitcoms about the ills of marriage and what it does to men. These are not new issues is what I’m saying.

Even so, there’s still this imbalance of sorts between men and women when it comes to the decline of marriage. There’s still a stigma against those who are reluctant to join an institution that has become exceedingly unjust for legal, political, and social reasons that are too complicated and unsexy to get into.

That stigma, however, doesn’t apply to both genders equally. I know this because I’ve actually felt this inequality to some extent. It plays out like this:

  • You’re a woman and you don’t want to get married? You go girl! You don’t need a man! You just need to be you! Girl power!

  • You’re a man and you don’t want to get married? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you gay or something? What kind of creep stays single all his life?

See the difference? The clip itself doesn’t do justice to the extent of this difference, but the man does get crap for making these arguments. When he calmly and reasonably lays out his arguments, the first response isn’t to take them seriously or ask more questions. The response is, “Were you hurt?”

To the man’s credit, he laughs it off. That shows he has more maturity and self-awareness than 95 percent of the people I see on talk shows these days. It’s still a very telling assessment though, assuming outright that the man is criticizing marriage was somehow hurt in the past.

Even as a man who does want to find love and does want to marry someone, I find that pretty insulting. I get that marriage has rarely, if ever, been an equal institution. I get that for most of human civilization, women had it pretty rough with respect to marriage. I’m not denying that.

However, if I’ve learned anything from all the superhero comics I’ve read over the years, it’s that you can’t fight injustice with more injustice. That’s like trying to fight a wildfire with napalm. It’s only going to make the situation worse.

At the moment, marriage is not a good deal for men. At the moment, women have more legal and social protections with respect to marriage then men. Women can divorce their husbands whenever they want for whatever reason and, in many states, get half their husband’s assets by default. They can get custody of kids, get favorable treatment by courts, and are more readily believed with accusations of spousal abuse.

Now I’m not Al Bundy in that I see marriage as its own circle of hell for a man. I believe marriage, love, and all the passion that comes with it is a beautiful thing. The problem is that our assumptions, legal traditions, and social constructs are horribly imbalanced at the moment. It’s only when marriage becomes a relationship of true equals that its beauty can be appreciated.

4 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,