The Thirty-One Flavors Theory of Relating

B"H

We "modern" women are emasculating our men with all of our complexity and liberatedness... and we're ruining ourselves in the process. I like to call it my Thirty-One Flavors theory of relating, and it goes both ways, by the way. I can only tell like it is from a woman's perspective.

Without Torah, we look to society around us to tell us what is desirable. It's good to be self-sufficient, independent, educated, professional and beautiful. Hey, after all, we're living in modern times. Operating on this logic, we become worldly and fascinating creatures to behold. Life is one huge playground.

These are all surely Good Things to cultivate. The problem comes when we become overly-complex and demanding. It gets difficult to find someone smart enough and strong enough and fill-in-the-blank enough because the bottom line is that we don't need any of it for survival. We grow up and get past the age where we actually have to be taken care of by anybody. We make our own money, travel by ourselves, meet our own friends and manage our own time.

It's good to have a man around for moving furniture or for having the kind of fun that our girl friends can't quite compete with. Sure, it can get lonely without men, but not so lonely that we have to put up with their negative aspects. After all, we're women. We have ourselves, what do we need them for? It becomes all about finding that next deep yet non-committal romance.

There is something very bad about knowing too much.

It's like walking into a Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors ice cream store and getting your hands on 31 (disposable) pink little plastic spoons. Each flavor is it's own experience. After that, how could you possibly know ice cream without having tasted french vanilla, rocky road, pistachio and cherries jubilee? Each one is so good, each in its own special and unique way. That's the beauty of it. The bad thing about it is that we can become impossible to satisfy. Face it, even world-class pistachio ice cream isn't worth trading in all the other 30 flavors.

How do you think it makes a guy feel to know that he's just one of many possible flavors? Instead of helping to build one man, today's urban, modern woman with her "Sex and the City" mentality is contributing to the presence of guys who are satisfied with very little. They have to settle for being just another flavor. Ew! (Where is their dignity? Where are the men?)

All I can say is that any guy who sees past all the crap (and stays out of the ice cream shop, himself) and who is bitul to Torah deserves to find himself a very bitul woman!