Is He Too Old For Me –The Manhattan Get Scale Inequity

Is He Too Old For Me –The Manhattan Get Scale Inequity

I get this question a lot, and obviously there is no one right answer. Charlie Chaplin was 54 when he married 18 year old Oona, and they lived happily to his death; Lauren Bacall was 20 when she married the 45 year old Humphrey Bogart.

But what happens most often is that the younger woman is always the more mature one and that as the relationship progresses, that fact becomes more and more obvious.

If you take a step back, this makes sense – why isn’t that 27 year old guy dating women his own age? Why is he even considering that 16 year old, that 18 year old? Why would a 15 year old choose a 5 year old as a best friend rather than someone of a similar age? It's not that the 5 year old is so mature, it's that the 15 year old is creepy.

Okay, if you’re considering giving up your youth to an older guy, you owe it to yourself to spend at least 20 minutes watching these clips from the movie Manhattan – here is Woody Allen and his 17 year old girl friend – Mariel Hemingway shows up a couple minutes in, but it’s fun to watch Meryl Streep in a very early performance first:

And what happens to young girls in this situation is usually that the relationship flip-flops, and the fact that the girl is and has always been the more mature one becomes obvious to everyone, even her – which you can see in the closing scene from Manhattan.

See how she is far more mature, even at 18? See how he doesn’t want her to learn more about the world, because he knows she will completely eclipse him if she does?

Did you watch carefully? Did you have the impulse to step into the screen, bodily grab Mariel’s arm and drag her away from that creepy older guy? In all likelihood, this may well be what your friends and even parents are seeing when they see you and your older boyfriend.

But maybe that situation is too close to make the point – watch here as an older woman works to seduce a younger man:

Now do you see the creepy? There is astonishing creepy potential in the situation!

Just some things to think about.

More on The Get Scale and Get Scale Inequities.

Paranormal Activity – A Relationship Movie Review

Paranormal Activity – A Relationship Movie Review

Here is what we can learn about relationships from the very interesting new low-budget horror flick, Paranormal Activity. Many spoilers.

#1: Living Together Without a Permanent Commitment is Confusing to Both Parties

Early in the movie we see Micah smirking that they are “engaged to be engaged,” and, from Katie’s mute reaction, that she finds this label irritating. As the plot progresses and problems arise, the fact that their relationship is unclear makes it difficult for the characters to deal. This would be true with any couple basically “playing house,” even when demons are not involved.

#2 Take Care When He Thinks He is Smarter Than He Really Is

Micah makes a good deal of money from day trading –and consequently he has a very high opinion of his own abilities. He is adamant that he, not an outside professional, is going to fix the problem.

However, almost every decision he makes is bad. He doesn’t even have sufficient common sense to close the bedroom door, or to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the door.

In real life, this is the kind of guy who decides that it’s not necessary to pay income tax and brings IRS demons into the picture, which is actually a much, much worse fate.

#3: It’s Hard to Be Assertive When You Don’t Know Where You Are

So Katie is in this dilemma – she’s in an ill-defined relationship with a guy who has all the financial power, but she has ambiguous legal rights. She realizes that she’s the smart one of the two, and yet she cedes a lot of the decision making power to Micah.

• In a marriage, a girl can have confidence that they are working together as a couple for the same long-term goals, but in this situation Katie can’t have that confidence.
• In a marriage, a girl can be more assertive about the decisions that are made that affect them both – in part, frankly, because she has legal rights – a husband can’t throw the wife penniless into the street, but a boyfriend probably can.

Katie has the worst of all worlds here – she’s put a great deal of the power over her life into the hands of a guy she’s smarter than, who doesn’t take her opinions and wishes seriously, and who could leave her homeless at any time. She yells at him, but she never really takes a firm stand.

And there are consequences – Micah thinks he’s smarter than the professionals and does the opposite of what they recommend and what Katie wants, and it all ends very badly.

Quick Note: Katie and Love’s Hinckeys

Love’s Hinckeys are the little blips on the continuing graph of a love affair -- the silent alarm system we're all equipped with to keep us from making mistakes in relationships that could ruin our lives.

Every relationship you've ever had that ended, whether it bombed or expired gracefully, you knew – and you knew in the early stages, too - how it would end, and why.

You knew because of the hinckeys – your almost involuntary reactions that are there to tell you that something just isn’t right. But you get so intent on having a great love affair that you shrug them off.

Go watch the movie again and you’ll see Katie experiencing these hinckeys – when he says the “engaged to be engaged” line we see her thinking that maybe he doesn’t plan to make a permanent commitment to her; when he talks her out of contacting the demonologist, we see her thinking that he’s not taking her opinions or her genuine fears seriously enough.

The Ouija Board Incident Hinckey. Katie says, “Micah, don’t bring a Ouija Board into this house.” Micah says, “I promise I won’t buy a Ouija Board.” He borrows a Ouija Board. He thinks he’s so clever, because he only promised not to buy one. This should raise all kinds of hinckeys -- when a boy has been raised properly, he will not go through life trying to get away with this kind of stupidity. If you stay with him, you’ll have to be the one to finish raising him.

We can see her deciding to think about it all later when things calm down. We see her never getting the chance.

Paranormal Activity Relationship Advice Summary: Just Playing House is a Bad Plan.

It's out on DVD!:

Also see About Last Night teaches the same lesson, and watch All That Jazz for the scene where the guy is in the hospital, and the live-in girlfriend isn’t allowed in to see him but the ex-wife is.

About Last Night was based on the David Mamet Play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which is worth reading as well.

My Boyfriend is Jealous and Obsessed -- But That's Good, Right?

My boyfriend is jealous and really obsessed with me, but that’s good, right?

It might be flattering in the beginning to have a boyfriend who is so intensely into you that he wants to know every detail about your day and who wants to have you all to himself.

It’s flattering in the beginning, but it gets scary very quickly.

It’s Halloween season, and the great movie Poltergeist is playing for free on television. The older daughter in Poltergeist was played by Dominique Dunne, who had a boyfriend just like you’re describing – charming, talented, jealous, obsessive. In their short relationship, he beat her three times and ultimately murdered her.

The kind of guy who gets this jealous and obsessive may seem confident on the outside, but he is very insecure in reality. He sees you, not as the fabulous person with minor flaws that you are, but as an angel who will save him, and when you slip from being an angel, it’s devastating – and justifies tantrums on his part that often include hitting.

Here is part of a letter that Dominique wrote to that boyfriend – it was read into evidence at his murder trial:

You do not love me. You are obsessed with me. The person you think you love is not me at all. It is someone you have made up in your head. I’m the person who makes you angry, who you fight with sometimes. I think we only fight when images of me fade away and you are faced with the real me. That’s why arguments erupt out of nowhere.

Dominique understood what was happening, and she understood the character of the guy, she just understood it all too late.

Guys like this are often very charming, and at first the relationship seems just like your true love has arrived – he loves you at once. ‘Course, some day Prince Charming will arrive, and things will go swimmingly – but how do you tell the difference?

First, Keep in mind always the Three Variables of True Love – in a bad scenario, the guy will be violating the Second Variable of True Love – Time. He’ll be in a rush for big, public commitments, for living together.

Second, watch for jealous, obsessive behavior – here is another quotation from Dominique Dunne's letter:

We have to be two individuals to work together as a couple. I am not permitted to do enough things on my own. Why must you be a part of everything I do? Why do you want to come to my riding lessons and my acting classes? Why are you jealous of every scene partner I have? Why must you know the name of every person I come into contact with?

Third, if any of this starts to sound familiar, especially if this person is known for having a temper, sit them down in a loving way and make this speech (not from a movie, just from a wise woman):

“You will never get a second chance to hit me. If you hit me today, I’m gone. If you hit me on our wedding day, I’m gone. If you hit me the day our first child is born, I’m gone. If you hit me on our 50^th anniversary, I’m gone.”

And then you follow through. From Dominique’s letter:

The whole thing has made me realize how scared I am of you, and I don’t mean just physically. I’m afraid of the next time you are going to have another mood swing.… When we are good, we are great. But when we are bad, we are horrendous. The bad outweighs the good.

Get Poltergeist at iTunes: