Unlearn Vanilla Marriage: A Different Approach to a Failing Institution

By Richard Woods

Richard Woods is back! and this time the satirist and social commentator aims his high powered perception at the relationship industry. Without consideration for political correctness, Woods calls out self-help experts whom he perceives as fact challenged, greed driven, and morally suspect and openly questions their qualifications to offer relationship advice in the first place. Never one to mince words, Woods offers perspectives about marriage and monogamy that you wont hear on daytime television.

If youre wondering why certain couples always seem like they are sharing a sexy little secret while most others are trapped in habitually contentious Mars/Venus relationships, UnLearn Vanilla Marriage will tell you things that the self-help industry doesnt want you to know.

This is the definitive book for anyone who needs help repairing the damage that conventional wisdom does to a marriage.
- David Harris Harris Media Group Inc.

Rich Woods is one of todays most unapologetic and irreverent writers. His unique commentary style puts social topics under both a microscope and a sledgehammer.
- Steve Harwood, Editor, Kasidie Magazine.com

Some of the greatest thinkers of all time were those who thought outside the box, but not many have Richs sense of humor.
- Brian Sapient Founder, Rational Responders

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462007202

Richard Woods

Richard Woods is a journalist. He was a writer and senior editor at The Sunday Times for 25 years before moving to Reuters for seven years, where he ran award-winning investigations. Since 2019 he has been editing longform features for The Sunday Times Magazine and pursuing freelance projects.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1

VIRTUAL REALITY

2

VANILLA EXTRACT

3

INVISIBLE

4

SELF-HURT

5

HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS

6

HIGH INFIDELITY

7

NEGOTIATING

NON-MONOGAMY

8

MONSTERS UNDER THE BED

9

CONCEPTION MISCONCEPTIONS

10

UNLEARN VANILLA MARRIAGE

About the Author

Citations

Preface

You must unlearn what you have learned.

—Yoda

Since the time of the first cave drawings, we have been trying to reconcile how men and women romantically interact.

While we may have evolved past the point of cavemen clubbing women over the head and dragging them away as trophies, the truth is that we have yet to establish a socially accepted relationship model whereby men and women are able to achieve a truly equal partnership. Despite having opposable thumbs and the ability to walk erect—whether we want to admit it or not—our culture still forces women to endure a moral double standard, especially where it concerns their sexuality. Although women have made significant social gains regarding their standing in the workforce and politics, in matters concerning the bedroom, our cultural view on women and their right to sexual autonomy remains primitive.

As America defines itself in the twenty-first century, it suffers from ideological conflicts between the emergence of women as a socioeconomic force and despotic, patriarchal practices that were brought here from across the oceans. Many of these practices have not only contributed a bitter taste to our melting pot of a society, but have also been accepted as conventional praxis. Though the world continues to change at a rapid pace, the normal evolutionary process of bedroom equality has been exposed as being painfully slow. Despite socioeconomic power becoming more evenly distributed, the battle of the sexes continues to rage on. Yet, while the battlefield has appreciably leveled, many have yet to realize that, like most ideological conflicts, this battle need not be fought at all.

However, there is a thriving multimillion-dollar industry that capitalizes on the gender wars and the difficulty of navigating the male-female divide within marriage. It is in the financial best interests of many to fan the flames of gender contention. An entire industry has grown up around those who write relationship books, give platitude addled seminars, and host television and radio programs that have vaulted them to expert status. They reap massive profits from vulnerable men and women who are hoping to reconcile their emotions and carnal inclinations with their religious and cultural upbringings. But where people seek solace from these experts, they more often find angst and ambiguity.

This industry calls itself the self-help business.

In some ways, cavemen are still clubbing women over their heads—only instead of using tree limbs, they now must rely on male-oriented religious and cultural dogmatism. And, as women emerge as men’s equals in other aspects of society, rather than submissively allowing themselves to be dragged away, they are now able to retaliate against overly macho would-be patriarchs by clubbing them back with politically correct, self-help inspired banalities. While it may be good business for those selling the clubs to arm both sides of the gender conflict so as to fuel the need for their services, it is, at the very least, unethical. More reasonable people, those who, through evolution, have managed to achieve semi-developed frontal lobes, have concluded that, rather than giving men and women equal-sized clubs to smash each other with, equal marital partnerships would be more readily achieved by eliminating the need to bludgeon one another altogether.

Perspective

This book will offer no instant solutions for failing relationships. Like the promise of magic weight-loss pills, the secrets to eternal happiness, or the key to achieving overnight wealth with no investment capital, I find that such assurances are intentionally deceptive and usually motivated by greed. So I won’t make any promises that I, or anyone else for that matter, could not possibly deliver on.

What UnLearn Vanilla Marriage will do is objectively shed an honest light on some of the more irrational behavior patterns that men and women engage in when they are romantically involved. This book will introduce some reasonable perspectives regarding why we do what we do, so that couples might employ a more rational approach to their relationships. A few of the ideas contained within these pages will undoubtedly make some people uncomfortable. Some readers may even be offended. Nevertheless, my concern is not the delicate little feelings of anyone who could so easily feel transgressed upon. My objective is to introduce lucid reasonability so that one might be more informed before making rationalizations that could negatively impact his or her life.

So it is with great reluctance that I acknowledge that this book will probably be classified as Self-help. Ugh.

However, unlike most people who write books in this genre, I am not purporting to offer any singular truths or the key to a vault that contains wisdom or enlightenment. I will make no assertions about standardizing moral conduct or how people should or should not feel. I merely make a rational presentation of how and why alternative marriages can thrive, and I leave it up to you to make determinations about whether any of the information provided is applicable to your relationship. This book is a tool, not a doctrine.

It is said that perception is reality, which isn’t necessarily true. There is subjective reality and then there is actual reality. For instance people might believe that rearranging their furniture will cause positive energy to course through their home, but that doesn’t make it so. Although, having said that, depending on one’s subjectivity, whatever they perceive to be real is certainly real to them. Accordingly, as far as marriage and committed relationships are concerned, it would obviously be beneficial to everyone if our marital perceptions were based on honest introspection and if we made decisions based upon actuality rather than using the delusional conventional precepts we currently rely upon. Precepts that in my not very humble view greatly contribute to the failing institution of marriage.

The reality is that the state of matrimony in America is abysmal. If you don’t believe that statement to be true, I am surprised that you have the capacity to read this. Both the folks in the self-help business and those behind religious institutions would have us believe that they can provide insights that will help. Maybe, for some, they can. But I am of the mind that many are irresponsible and actually do more harm than good. I openly question anyone’s motives where a conflict of interest exists, and the truth is that both organized religion and self-help experts profit greatly from people’s discontent.

At this very moment, there are a countless number of tortured souls in committed relationships who are having difficulty reconciling their emotions with the values they were raised with. Many are made to feel guilty by traditional advice givers about their feelings, sexual turn-ons, and proclivities. This is where the term Vanilla stems from: an imposed emotional subjugation that comes at the expense of allowing people to honestly express what they feel. As much as anything else, our society’s sex-o-phobia creates an institutionalized notion that monogamy and morality are congruent, and that is what keeps couples from forming a bond of trust. Therefore, many individuals are less than honest about things that they should be confiding to their life partners.

Being part of a happy, healthy, and passionate marriage that practices an alternative to what the self-help business or conventional religion have deemed acceptable has opened a world of possibilities to literally millions of people. Through research, my life’s experience, and, of course, good ole common sense, I’ve learned that homogenized Vanilla marriage isn’t for everyone and that happily married couples express intimacy in many different ways. A multitude of people across the country have rethought the irrational platitudes of convention and dare to be honest when negotiating how they practice intimacy.

Sadly, there are millions more who spend their lives frustrated, in denial, or emotionally abandoned.

One thing that UnLearn Vanilla Marriage hopes to do is to help people in secular lifestyles develop an effective method of communicating who they are to the Vanilla world around them; it also hopes to enable the general population to understand that swingers aren’t all sex-crazed sociopaths who want to corrupt their children or who lack moral values. If nothing else, I would hope that everyone who reads this will learn some perspectives on marriage and monogamy that are different from the ones that have been rammed down our throats by religion and the self-help industry.

Faulty Convictions

There are those in the institutions of religion and self-help who gather information only to support their predetermined views. Those who seek data to reinforce their passions or their own self interests often disregard details that contradict their suppositions. Such selective fact gathering accords neither truth nor integrity. So, know this much about UnLearn Vanilla Marriage: it won’t arrive at any conclusions irresponsibly.

We often fail to recognize when our thoughts and opinions are being steered in a certain direction. A recurring theme throughout this book is an open questioning of conventional wisdom, especially when that wisdom amounts to nothing more than repackaged platitudes and trite clichés. There are aphorisms that Americans are inundated with which are not necessarily true, but many of us accept without question simply because we’re used to hearing them. I think my personal favorite of the Founding Fathers articulated this point best:

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

—Thomas Paine

Because we’re used to hearing so many vapid moral misrepresentations, many of us have never considered looking behind the words to see what they actually mean. We must go where facts lead us and make our determinations thusly… even if they are uncomfortable. I have developed the UnLearn brand to contradict some of the sociopolitical inequities I see occurring every day in the news media, religious institutions, and the self-help business. I aim it mainly at those who bastardize the idea of morality in order to make a buck.

This is the second book in the UnLearn series. The first book, UnLearn! Because Life Can Make You Stupid, was a fun endeavor, but in reality it’s a lighthearted rant about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. However UnLearn Vanilla Marriage, as you might have guessed, is specifically about, well …marriage. Go figure. But this is not a typical relationship book. It makes rational determinations about monogamy based on authenticity. It introduces many concepts that the average reader will have never heard before and might even be uncomfortable with. But I go where the facts lead me, and if that offends, so be it. Sometimes, the truth can hurt.

Being honest with oneself is the essence of the UnLearn brand; and contemplative self-appraisal can often lead us in different, sometimes uncomfortable, directions. Although this book is specifically about how people conduct themselves in committed relationships, it touches on other social issues simply because marriage is a social institution. Be sure that there are more UnLearn books to follow that will address a variety of topics.

Throughout my career, I have encountered a variety of people in various marital situations and circumstances. Many of the healthiest, happiest marriages I have seen are between couples who negotiate non-monogamy. Few Vanillas can honestly claim that they share the kind of love and devotion to one another that many swingers do. But for most people, the concept of extramarital intimacy seems counterintuitive to the institution of matrimony. This is because we have been conditioned to react adversely to our own sense of sexuality, especially when it extends beyond monogamy. UnLearn Vanilla Marriage was written to expose some of the sex-o-phobic myths we have been raised with.

So if you are picking this book off the shelf with the desire to better arm yourself for the Mars/Venus battle you are presently engaged in, then put it back and pick up something written by one of the more traditional self-help twits. If you have resigned yourself to being wedded combatants locked in a life struggle, this book can’t help you. I am simply not inclined to concern myself with people who spend their lives trying to change one another or who are too stubborn and ignorant to do anything about avoiding the Vanilla pattern of passionless, infrequent sex and combative cohabitation. Unlike normal relationship experts, I don’t make my living from people in conflict. I make my living from couples who have no desire to be part of the cycle of marital dysfunction in this country and whose first inclinations are to laugh together and fornicate frequently.

Eye Yam What Eye Yam

As for myself, I have lived on both sides of the matrimonial fence. I was in a horrible Vanilla marriage that lasted for the worst 346 years of my life, and now I’m in an amazingly constructive, interdependent marriage that seems to get stronger every day. Like many Vanilla marriages, my first attempt was a loveless, sexless limbo, with an utter lack of intimacy or emotional connection. I wasn’t entirely sure at the time exactly what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t that. I selfishly didn’t want to spend my life working seventy or eighty hours a week or to die young, never having enjoyed myself. I wanted a spouse who could be my partner—not one who was an adversary.

Eventually, my first wife and I divorced, which was like getting paroled from a life sentence in a Turkish prison. I will accept my share of the responsibility for our marital demise, but the truth is that we were very different types of people and we never should have married each other in the first place. We lied to one another constantly, and I chose to end it rather than continue the charade. I am a horrible liar, and I hated the hollow feeling that being dishonest gave me. Some people love the lying game, but not me. When I started dating again, I made one promise to myself, and I have kept it to this day: I will never lie to anyone I am involved with again.

When I began dating the breathtaking, brilliant, sexy-as-hell woman I am presently married to, my wife, Jane, in the interest of honesty I told her that I would never get married again. It doesn’t take a psychology professor to see that I was slightly jaded. Fortunately, my feelings on matrimony have since changed, resulting in both our awesome marriage and this book. This has been the best fourteen years of my life. Our marriage is everything my first marriage wasn’t, and we have become one of those nausea-inducing couples who miserable people hate. We are lovers, confidants, and best friends, and we never lie to one another about anything other than where we’re hiding the Christmas presents. We also negotiate non-monogamy.

According to most self-help experts, couples like Jane and me don’t exist. UnLearn Vanilla Marriage exposes their misrepresentations concerning secular marriages—and more. If nothing else, this book will provide a mixture of facts and perspectives so that you can formulate your own opinion as to what the best marital lifestyle is for you— whether it’s traditional marriage or not.

My background is in construction in New York City, which makes me eminently