Leaving around those books on the birds and the bees — good idea. Nice work.

I haven’t seen such a book in decades. But since boys and girls haven’t changed much in thousands of years, I doubt that the books have changed much since I last saw one!

So, I have to guess that the books still concentrate on simplistic aspects of the plumbing of the biology. Okay, that’s important but darned easy and not nearly enough or for good relationships even what is the most important.

I have to believe that your son got BRC’s lessons from you, not the books!

But the crucial, core, tough Big Problem is that for people of Western European descent, the birth rate is too low and the divorce rate, too high. In the baby business, we are really low on quantity and usually too low on quality.

Bluntly, and rock solidly true, Darwin is having his way with us — we’re going extinct, as in dead and gone with the wind.

So, when I say there’s a problem, I’m on very solid ground — there’s a Big Problem.

Sure, as this Big Problem applies on average over people of Western European descent, it necessarily also must apply to many individuals. So, many individuals are struggling with the Big Problem.

And the Big Problem starts, sure, maybe at birth but is starting to get serious by age 10, impossible not to notice by age 12, more serious by age 16, and a darned serious threat to the good lives of individuals and the future descendants of Western Europe by age 20.

So, at least for the boys, we need a suitable book Girls 101 for Dummies — Boys.

For this, sure, need to cover the biology and plumbing, but those two are simple enough that all the mammals and birds and essentially all the fish and insects get it right. So, poor knowledge about that plumbing is not the cause of the Big Problem.

In more detail, the cause of the Big Problem is not below the neck but above the neck and, in particular, between the ears.

In first-cut, simple terms, the problem is psychological and social, not biological or plumbing.

Far and away, the best source I ever found on the Big Problem and its causes and solutions was E. Fromm, The Art of Loving. The book is for between the ears, not below the neck and is about psychology, not plumbing.

So, quickly let’s consider some of the examples of the lessons to be learned. In all cases, the lessons are super tough to discover, especially for one boy on his own, but easy enough to learn if well explained. Here I am being brief, not writing a book. Some of the lessons I describe briefly and the others not at all:

Lesson 1: Anxiety.

It can be tough out there: There are many dangerous, even life threatening, even hostile, forces out there.

Some of the forces are from society, e.g., economic depressions, wars, crime, political revolutions, terrorism, falling buildings, bridges, airplanes, sinking boats, wrecked cars, etc.

Some of the hostile forces are from nature, e.g., diseases, epidemics, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, wild fires, blizzards, etc.

Humans with their intelligence are aware of and, thus, feel vulnerable to such hostile forces of society and nature and get worried, that is, encounter anxiety.

One of the best ways to respond to this anxiety is to have beneficial, effective coalitions with other people.

Then for each human, drawing from Fromm’s book, the Fundamental Problem of their life is to get security in the face of the anxiety they feel from their realization that alone they are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society.

The main productive and effective reason human males and females — boys and girls, men and women — come together in pairs is just to get this security. Yes, it is much less common for a couple to realize this fact and be able to explain it.

So, from Fromm, a serious romantic relationship is more about psychology and security than biology and sex behavior.

Lesson 2: Love.

Lesson 3: Four Pillars of Love.

Each member of the couple readily and essentially completely gives knowledge of themselves to the other member and cares about, respects, and responds to them.

Lesson 4: Girls’ Non-Verbal Communications.

Girls, from right after birth, are masters at non-verbal communications, and for decades they get better and better at it. The main means of such communications are facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. Nearly all mothers easily understand those communications, but boys have a difficult time understanding but to get along well with girls very much need to understand.

Yes, some video clips showing and explaining good examples of girls using facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language should be good teaching material. Many Hollywood actresses are grand masters at such feminine communications.

More generally, right from birth, girls heavily pay attention to people and boys, to things. This difference makes communications between the sexes difficult.

Lesson 5: Girls and Sex.

Lesson 6: What Girls Want.

Lesson 7: Girls Are …

Girls are much more emotional than boys.

Commonly girls are much more afraid of things than boys. In particular, one of the main problems of girls and women in modern society is fear; that is, too many girls are seriously afraid.

One of the main ways a boy can help a girl, which she might highly value, is to help her be less afraid, i.e., to have her feel quite secure with him.

Girls have better verbal talent than boys.

Girls are better socially than boys and more concerned about being rejected socially.

Lesson 8: How to Please a Girl.

Lesson 9: Explain to the Girl.

A boy should work to encourage his girlfriend to say what she has in mind for them and to have her feel safe doing so. To have her feel safe, there are some lessons and techniques available.

The boy should carefully and gently explain to her what he has in mind for them. In particular, he should not leave the girl to guess what he has in mind or depend only on what she gets from elsewhere. Some of what she might get from elsewhere could be wildly wrong and, if not countered, devastating for the relationship.

E.g., he should emphasize that he will never hit her and will never force her except maybe in some emergency situation where he is acting to get her out of danger, say, grab her, pick her up, and get her out of a burning building.

E.g., he wants the relationship to be good for both of them. So, they can be less lonely, have more affection, and come to care about each other. They can help each other understand the world. They can help each other be motivated and, then, successful socially, in academics and athletics, etc.

E.g., he does not want them to go “too far”. If she and/or her parents will say what “too far” is, then he will guarantee that they will not go there, even if she tries to.

E.g., he should emphasize that he is on her side, cares about her, wants her busy, productive, healthy, happy, and safe, doesn’t want her hurt in any way from any source for any reason at any time, wants to protect her from being hurt, never wants to hurt her, and will never knowingly hurt her.

E.g., he should confirm that just as Mother Nature wants, he will without hesitation risk his life to protect her.

E.g., he should emphasize that he wants all concerned always to conclude that their relationship has been good for her and that he wants to build and keep the trust of her and her parents.

And more, e.g., meet his family at Sunday dinner at his house, go to the youth group of his family’s church, get the best books they can find on couples and read them together, go with her to a minister who counsels couples, tell him that they are thinking of going steady, and seek his advice, learn how to cook together, how together they can get good at giving parties with a few guests, how they might do school science projects together, play musical duets, get started in business, etc.

Lesson 10: Boys’ Leading and Guiding.

Lesson 11: Little Things Can Mean a Lot.

Lesson 12: Common Disasters to Avoid.

Lesson 13: A Happy, Effective Wife and Mother.

Lesson 14: A Good, Productive Marriage.

I haven’t seen such a book in decades. But since boys and girls haven’t changed much in thousands of years, I doubt that the books have changed much since I last saw one!

So, I have to guess that the books still concentrate on simplistic aspects of the plumbing of the biology. Okay, that’s important but darned easy and not nearly enough or for good relationships even what is the most important.

I have to believe that your son got BRC’s lessons from you, not the books!

But the crucial, core, tough Big Problem is that for people of Western European descent, the birth rate is too low and the divorce rate, too high. In the baby business, we are really low on quantity and usually too low on quality.

Bluntly, and rock solidly true, Darwin is having his way with us — we’re going extinct, as in dead and gone with the wind.

So, when I say there’s a problem, I’m on very solid ground — there’s a Big Problem.

Sure, as this Big Problem applies on average over people of Western European descent, it necessarily also must apply to many individuals. So, many individuals are struggling with the Big Problem.

And the Big Problem starts, sure, maybe at birth but is starting to get serious by age 10, impossible not to notice by age 12, more serious by age 16, and a darned serious threat to the good lives of individuals and the future descendants of Western Europe by age 20.

So, at least for the boys, we need a suitable book Girls 101 for Dummies — Boys.

For this, sure, need to cover the biology and plumbing, but those two are simple enough that all the mammals and birds and essentially all the fish and insects get it right. So, poor knowledge about that plumbing is not the cause of the Big Problem.

In more detail, the cause of the Big Problem is not below the neck but above the neck and, in particular, between the ears.

In first-cut, simple terms, the problem is psychological and social, not biological or plumbing.

Far and away, the best source I ever found on the Big Problem and its causes and solutions was E. Fromm, The Art of Loving. The book is for between the ears, not below the neck and is about psychology, not plumbing.

So, quickly let’s consider some of the examples of the lessons to be learned. In all cases, the lessons are super tough to discover, especially for one boy on his own, but easy enough to learn if well explained. Here I am being brief, not writing a book. Some of the lessons I describe briefly and the others not at all:

Lesson 1: Anxiety.

It can be tough out there: There are many dangerous, even life threatening, even hostile, forces out there.

Some of the forces are from society, e.g., economic depressions, wars, crime, political revolutions, terrorism, falling buildings, bridges, airplanes, sinking boats, wrecked cars, etc.

Some of the hostile forces are from nature, e.g., diseases, epidemics, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, wild fires, blizzards, etc.

Humans with their intelligence are aware of and, thus, feel vulnerable to such hostile forces of society and nature and get worried, that is, encounter anxiety.

One of the best ways to respond to this anxiety is to have beneficial, effective coalitions with other people.

Then for each human, drawing from Fromm’s book, the Fundamental Problem of their life is to get security in the face of the anxiety they feel from their realization that alone they are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society.

The main productive and effective reason human males and females — boys and girls, men and women — come together in pairs is just to get this security. Yes, it is much less common for a couple to realize this fact and be able to explain it.

So, from Fromm, a serious romantic relationship is more about psychology and security than biology and sex behavior.

Lesson 2: Love.

Lesson 3: Four Pillars of Love.

Each member of the couple readily and essentially completely gives knowledge of themselves to the other member and cares about, respects, and responds to them.

Lesson 4: Girls’ Non-Verbal Communications.

Girls, from right after birth, are masters at non-verbal communications, and for decades they get better and better at it. The main means of such communications are facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. Nearly all mothers easily understand those communications, but boys have a difficult time understanding but to get along well with girls very much need to understand.

Yes, some video clips showing and explaining good examples of girls using facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language should be good teaching material. Many Hollywood actresses are grand masters at such feminine communications.

More generally, right from birth, girls heavily pay attention to people and boys, to things. This difference makes communications between the sexes difficult.

Lesson 5: Girls and Sex.

Lesson 6: What Girls Want.

Lesson 7: Girls Are …

Girls are much more emotional than boys.

Commonly girls are much more afraid of things than boys. In particular, one of the main problems of girls and women in modern society is fear; that is, too many girls are seriously afraid.

One of the main ways a boy can help a girl, which she might highly value, is to help her be less afraid, i.e., to have her feel quite secure with him.

Girls have better verbal talent than boys.

Girls are better socially than boys and more concerned about being rejected socially.

Lesson 8: How to Please a Girl.

Lesson 9: Explain to the Girl.

A boy should work to encourage his girlfriend to say what she has in mind for them and to have her feel safe doing so. To have her feel safe, there are some lessons and techniques available.

The boy should carefully and gently explain to her what he has in mind for them. In particular, he should not leave the girl to guess what he has in mind or depend only on what she gets from elsewhere. Some of what she might get from elsewhere could be wildly wrong and, if not countered, devastating for the relationship.

E.g., he should emphasize that he will never hit her and will never force her except maybe in some emergency situation where he is acting to get her out of danger, say, grab her, pick her up, and get her out of a burning building.

E.g., he wants the relationship to be good for both of them. So, they can be less lonely, have more affection, and come to care about each other. They can help each other understand the world. They can help each other be motivated and, then, successful socially, in academics and athletics, etc.

E.g., he does not want them to go “too far”. If she and/or her parents will say what “too far” is, then he will guarantee that they will not go there, even if she tries to.

E.g., he should emphasize that he is on her side, cares about her, wants her busy, productive, healthy, happy, and safe, doesn’t want her hurt in any way from any source for any reason at any time, wants to protect her from being hurt, never wants to hurt her, and will never knowingly hurt her.

E.g., he should confirm that just as Mother Nature wants, he will without hesitation risk his life to protect her.

E.g., he should emphasize that he wants all concerned always to conclude that their relationship has been good for her and that he wants to build and keep the trust of her and her parents.

And more, e.g., meet his family at Sunday dinner at his house, go to the youth group of his family’s church, get the best books they can find on couples and read them together, go with her to a minister who counsels couples, tell him that they are thinking of going steady, and seek his advice, learn how to cook together, how together they can get good at giving parties with a few guests, how they might do school science projects together, play musical duets, get started in business, etc.

Lesson 10: Boys’ Leading and Guiding.

Lesson 11: Little Things Can Mean a Lot.

Lesson 12: Common Disasters to Avoid.

Lesson 13: A Happy, Effective Wife and Mother.

Lesson 14: A Good, Productive Marriage.

Those are some interesting thoughts. I will think about them. Your idea about the book may be much better as some kind of immersive AR game. There actually are quite a few good books out there about sex for boys. I bought them all and left them sitting around my house for my son and his teenage friends to read.

Thanks for your responses: I didn’t know any of those details. I just saw — as BRC did — the clear evidence that you are being a good mother.

The BRC post was about being a “man”. Well, I tried to respond and contribute to that.

Long a project of mine on the far back burner has been to write a book Girls 101 for Dummies — Boys to tell boys age 13, 12, 11, maybe even 10, certainly by 16, and they are in deep trouble if they wait to 18 or 20, what I wish I’d known when I was in those years.

My view is that (1) the lessons are so surprising that without good help nearly no boys will figure out the lessons on their own until middle age if then and (2) with reasonably good explanations the boys would understand the lessons quickly. Explained at all well, the information is quite easy to understand.

The lessons are not difficult to understand, just difficult to discover.

But the subject is “sex” as in the old advice “Never talk about sex politics or religion”. So, the subject is seriously repressed. Most of the information out there from authority figures is some combination of wishful thinking, brain dead political correctness, fantasy, guilt, shame, concepts of sin, propaganda, religious preachings, etc. while carefully avoiding a lot of the real “facts of life”. At best the advice is to scare the kids in an effort to try to keep down STDs and unmarried pregnancies. But what is missing is anything like reality — emotional, psychological, social, romantic, even some of the biological, even about some of the simple plumbing, etc. Heck, the advice fails to recognize even affection and contact comfort. The idea that some of the kids actually fall in love, and especially that some of them very much need love, is avoided.

Heck, nearly all about the nature of love is omitted.

E.g., bluntly, while I’m no expert, apparently Mother Nature is convinced — although most definitely currently the more developed countries very much, and correctly so, are not — that a well fed, healthy 13 year old human female is ready, willing, able, and eager to be a good mommy.

By a good mommy, she is able to carry the baby to term and deliver it safely and successfully. Sure, she may deliver when she is 14. Then she holds, comforts, nurses, cleans, her baby. She connects with her baby with eye contact, facial expressions, tones of voice, etc. and has the two of them strongly bond, commonly for life. She is devoted to her baby, loves, protects, cares about, pays close attention to, responds to, etc. her baby.

Lots of good mammalian mothers — cats, dogs, elephants, whales, and more — do very similar things with their babies. Some of what I have seen for domestic cat mothers is astounding good mothering.

And I can believe that anytime in the last 40,000 years commonly such a — healthy, well fed — 13 year old human female would have been a good mommy except for the last 100 years or so in the more developed countries. I can give a short, simple, solid argument that we haven’t changed hardly at all in the last 40,000 years. So, net, essentially all the advice from the authorities is in strong conflict with nearly all of the last 40,000 years of what a lot of human females actually did.

It is true that now in the more developed countries we do need for the young women to delay marriage and motherhood until they are 18, 20, …, 24 or some such, but those years from 13 to 18+ need some careful information, explanation, and consideration; and those are way too often seriously missing.

So, I’ve wanted to write a book to tell the boys the truth actually important to know and not easy to get otherwise.

So, in my posts to this BRC thread, I described some of my ideas that might go in the book.

I can understand that some people, male or female, just don’t want to get married, ever. This has to be true if only because Mother Nature creates “all kinds”, and there may also be more specific reasons.

But when a person goes through a traditional marriage ceremony, rehearsal dinner before, reception afterward, weeks, maybe years of planning, the ceremony with solemn vows, in front of both families and lots of friends, in a religious setting, I totally fail to see why they would so easily change their minds.

The behavior after the ceremony too often makes the ceremony look like just a fictional costume comedy/drama stage performance.

It’s easy to guess that a significant fraction of the people, some years before they get married, have come to believe that in our society the marriage ceremony, the love making within the marriage, and essentially everything about the relationship “doesn’t mean anything”.

When I got married, I meant every word of the ceremony, in letter and spirit, and until she died always did. I never lied to her, deceived her, manipulated her, cheated on her, forced her, etc. I meant the marriage vows. I regarded us as no longer two separate people but as one couple. So, my devotion was to us as a couple and, thus, cared about her life as much as my own. I no more wanted her hurt than I wanted myself hurt. I thought that vows and being “joined with the bonds of Holy matrimony” were just part of the bargain.

But I was shocked to learn that it is a really common “fact of life” for one or the other of the spouses, before, during, or after the vows, to regard the vows as meaningless.

In simple terms, too often in the ceremony one or both of the spouses is, in a word, lying. Bummer.

It took me a very long time to start to understand that “fact of life”, and I still don’t understand it at all well. I have some ideas about the reasons for that fact of life, but they assume a lot of powerful emotions and a minimum of rationality.

Some of these irrational emotions are strong: Generally two spouses hang together or, in significant ways, hang separately. Yet, the emotions can drive one or the other of the spouses out of the love, caring, and security of their marriage into what is clearly a dangerous hell that might kill them.

A bad marriage is, in one more word, expensive, and in more detail expensive in time, money, effort, emotional problems, psychological problems, medical problems, legal problems, financial problems, career problems, and more. When a marriage is destroyed, commonly much or all of a family is also. It’s no fun to give solemn vows to someone and devote much of the best of your life to them when from the beginning and through out they believed that they should lie to you and did. Bummer.

Boys need to know these things, in particular, that they can happen.

When I look at the marriages I have seen, well over 50% have some really serious problems, running on flat tires and about to crash. The marriages that should be good, just as in the if only superficial promise of the marriage ceremony, are about 10% of the total. Boys need to know these things.

I suspect that there are some ways for a well informed young man to lead and guide their marriage to make the odds of success quite high, but nearly no young men know this, and boys need to be told.

I was not a Tom Boy.

I liked dresses and pretending I was magic (I believed I could fly for quite some time). I played with dolls (but in ways that confounded my friends. I didn’t really care about taking care of them like they were pretend babies. I used to create whole worlds for them. It was more like puppetry and play writing).

I also spent a lot of time fishing and catching fiddler crabs (my Dad didn’t care if you were a boy or a girl, you were going to learn a few salt water things like: how to fish and catch any kind of seafood, how to spear an eel then cook it on the grill, how to captain a boat, how to read a compass and a map, how to navigate on water by stars, how to check the depth of water without instruments, how to tie a few knots, etc & etc)

I also was a book nerd whiling away hours in pages of whatever books I could get my hands on. I read stuff like Hemingway and Nabokov while other people were reading Sally, Dick and Jane. We had a house full of books so I just read whatever was laying around. (An interesting side note is that my Dad is functionally illiterate but also a mechanical genius.)

I used to play Peter and the Wolf on my Fischer Price turntable and scare the bejesus out of my friend Michael, who would climb under the bed to hide.

Here is the secret to understanding women (and all people, for that matter): don’t assume you know who they are or what they were like in the past. Instead, listen and ask pertinent questions to find out who they are.

This strip of photos from my Mom’s photo album says a lot about me. Not only about who I was but also who I would become.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/62eb11e65c21ee01e3a5243696a2894959c2bf024facf622e280d47bc07a47e8.jpg

Marriage is difficult but also incredibly rewarding. It takes both dedication and passion. But if both partners are not deeply committed to it, it will fail. I’m not entirely sure marriage is the greatest way to parent. Some marriages are intact but deeply broken. Other marriages break but the partners remain friends and work toward good parenting. Then there are other marriages that we are all envious of. (But, beware! We never really know what is inside someone else’s marriage. Only those two people know. And sometimes they don’t even know.)

In my case, my ex and I did our best. We are both flawed human beings so it wasn’t always smooth. We made mistakes. But we also did a lot of things right. My ex gave me the greatest gift in the world by leaving me. It enabled me to chose a path that I would have never been able to take had I still been married to him. I’m grateful for that.

Also, my son ended up with a really cool, hip step-mom and extra grandparents due to my ex getting remarried right away. Children benefit from a large inclusive group of people who care, not just a traditional nuclear family. Just a few generations ago, children were raised by a community, not by a nuclear family. Maybe the secret to successful marriage with children is having that inclusive, caring community.

I very much wish all marriages worked really well, as in the traditional marriage vows. I still can’t understand why that isn’t always the case. I JUST don’t ‘get it’ why a marriage would fail. Why something that starts as in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBBL-t7CKbU

wouldn’t be perfect for life is totally beyond me. The day I got married I assumed that we would be totally happy for life.

You have my sympathy, and it’s terrific that you are doing so well as a mother and, likely, also well at at least some of being a father.

Everyone does their best. Including our ex-spouses. By not undermining them, we allow our children to see and know the best of them. In the end, we all win.