It Really Is That Complicated

By Charles E. Rawlings MD

Chas Rawlingss It Really Is That Complicated is an often personal, indeed intimate, and sometimes hilarious ride from start to finish through the byways and mazes of mens and womens relationships. He guides through the fits and startssome of the latter false startsthat characterize the dating game, especially with modern-day dating services. He lays out what he calls the horrors of marriage in the degeneration of romance and eroticism into the battle of the sexes in more mundane but often deal-breaking power struggles over control, money, and property. He elaborates on Tolstoys notion that even this supposedly most sanctified of unions is a form of prostitutionwomen dispensing sex in return for material gain and security. At the same time, he asks good old Freuds notorious question My God, what does woman want, since so many of them flee the very rewards they desire along with the generous, often attractive, and accomplished guys who proffer them. He takes us into what in Victorian times was dubbed My Secret Life, the alleyways of escorts who offer up not only sex but also the companionship and even the no-strings intimacy men crave. Well, for a while at leastuntil the courtesan gets conflicted and crazy herself. And, despite all of this mayhem, Dr. Rawlings urges us all, men and women, to take risks and hurl ourselves into the fray, implicitly asserting that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved and lived.

Good fun, a great read, and edifying to boot!

John Munder Ross, PhD

Author, The Sadomasochism of Everyday Life

Coauthor of Tales of Love, Sex and Danger

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477285275

Charles E. Rawlings MD

Charles E. Rawlings, M.D., J.D. is the complete Scorpio, and as such, he displays all the qualities one would expect from a Scorpio. From complete loyalty to an inexorable drive for perfection and of course, the legendary Scorpio need for revenge, Dr. Rawlings exemplifies them all; and all are reflected in his writing, especially in his new book, It Really Is That Complicated. Born in Tennessee, educated at Duke (in more ways than one) and evidencing real world experience as honed by a marriage of 18 years, a successful neurosurgical career, and a successful law career, Dr. Rawlings is uniquely qualified to expound upon the human condition and male/female relationships. Following his graduation from Duke Medical School in 1982 and neurosurgical residency in 1989, Dr. Rawlings went on to practice neurosurgery with an emphasis on pain and its substrates. By doing so, he quickly became acquainted with the misery of the human condition. In 2002, Dr. Rawlings graduated law school and turned his attention to helping patients, victims, of medical malpractice. Through his legal work, Dr. Rawlings has gained particular insight into the world of human interaction and especially male/female relationships. His real world experience has been expanded by the practice of law and brought into sharp focus by his children and his divorce. No longer interested in or tolerant of the mundane, Dr. Rawlings looks for the exquisite, the amazing, the sensational experience, even in everyday life. You can find more of him on his websites: charlesrawlings.com; itsnothatcomplicatedbook.com; livingshells.com; and itreallyisthatcomplicatedbook.com.

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© 2012 by Charles E. Rawlings MD, JD

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/28/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8525-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8526-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8527-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920487

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1.   I Told Her I Would Take Her Anywhere in the World She Wanted to Go

2.   A Marriage of Eighteen Years

3.   All Women Want What They Cannot Have

4.   All Women Are Prostitutes

5.   The Shaman Told Me I Would Know

6.   The Belize House

7.   I Took Her to Swim with Baby Whales

8.   The Hooker

9.   Matchmaking, Anyone?

10. You Can Never Go Back

About the Author

Midway upon the journey of my life,

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Also by Charles E Rawlings

Living Shells

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Emily Gowor, my brilliant content editor,

a woman who took a chance.

Sam Hill, my first line editor.

All the editors at Author House

who caught my other mistakes.

To all those women, too numerous to name, who helped in the education of males. More especially to those women instrumental in my education, including Eydie, Lindsay, Laura, Pam, Heather, Mary, Nicole, Jenny, Samantha, Shannon, Emily, and my own amazing daughter, Morgan.

Preface

Just so the record is clear, this is not a marriage manual, and it should not be construed as such. I certainly did not write it to be. You are reading the words of a man who was married for eighteen years (fourteen of them happily as the old joke goes). We traveled as companions and had a beautiful house, successful careers, and three amazing children together. How could a relationship like that end? Did it have to end at all?

Ironically, despite being an active partner in the play, I still do not know for sure why it ended, but I do have some ideas to share with you. I need to remind you again, however brilliant these insights may seem, they will not cure your marriage woes. You may simply come to understand them better.

Well, at least the women will.

Acknowledgments

This book is my first foray into the psychodynamics of human interaction. I wrote it from a mature male’s vantage point, and I originally intended it as a counterpoint to other works in that genre. The writing, however, developed into much more and would not have been possible without the help of a multitude of people, especially Nicole, Mary, and all those women in the book who helped educate me.

Special thanks go out to my friends Will and Jenny, who suffered through many episodes of consternation during its writing, and to James, who was essential to its transcription. My ex-wife was instrumental in the continued writing of the book, as were my children.

Finally, this book would not be what it is today without the amazing talents and writing skills of my primary editor, Emily Gowor, the Word Artist. She took a chance, completed the process and, in doing so, pushed my efforts to a higher level. Thank you, Emily.

At last the ladder,

Which had been built

Slowly, Slowly,

One hope at a time,

Reached up

To the clouds.

And the dreamer

Began to climb.

Katherine Berry, The Ladder

CHAPTER 1

I Told Her I Would Take Her Anywhere in the World She Wanted to Go

Stand in your space, and know you are there.

Mary Engelbreit

It’s true what pundits say—and what women know—about relationships. If you cannot or will not discuss the future together as a couple, the relationship is either dead or dying or was a mere figment of your imagination in the first place. Men are undoubtedly fixers by their nature (more on that later) and planners, and when they become involved in relationships with intimate partners, it brings out their innate need to solve problems and, more importantly, their need to plan a future together with their significant others.

Some men feel compelled to plan everything down to the smallest detail. One of my best friends leaves nothing to chance. He details everything, reserves rooms weeks to months in advance, MapQuests every move on every trip, uses an enema before every run (to avoid any seriously embarrassing situation in the middle of an especially long run), and uses not one but two condoms during sex—in case one fails—with his wife. In fact, he schedules every sexual encounter with her down to the day and hour. Nothing is spontaneous for him. Some men, on the other hand, are satisfied with a general plan with only specific events outlined, much like the smattering of islands that punctuate the Pacific Ocean.

Contrary to popular opinion—and regardless of the type of man involved, be he a fixer, nurturer, alpha, beta, passive, aggressive, romantic, practical, narcissistic, introverted, extroverted––all men want to plan a future with their significant others. They do this primarily out of an innate sense of pattern and order and a latent sense of fear and anxiety. By planning a future, men avoid the potential loss of that future. If there are no future plans, or if either partner hesitates when the future is brought up for discussion, the entire relationship is potentially in jeopardy.

Take one of my last relationships. We were barely two months into what many people would call a healthy relationship; we had both declared we loved each other, and when those essential details were in place, the future gaped in front of us—some would say like an abyss, but for me it was more like a featureless plain or an unending blue ocean. The truth was that there were no plans. As soon as I realized this, I asked her to pick five places she had always wanted to visit—anywhere in the world she wanted to go—and I told her I would take her there. Once she had picked the destinations, we would start planning for them that very afternoon.

Her first wish was to see polar bears—she had said this immediately, unerringly—and at that point, the future had a shape. We suddenly had a goal and I, as the male, had a trip to plan and an anchor for the relationship. Her other four destinations were Mongolia, Egypt, Bali, and Morocco. In the end, we made only two of the five locations (Mongolia and the polar bears).

My point is that we began planning that very day for something she had always wanted to do in her life—to go someplace she had always wanted to go. More importantly, the trip was set for months in the future and, as a couple, we felt confident enough to look forward together in the direction of that goal. Moreover, our shared goal—this future plan—meant that a very special thread connected us. We now had a commonality, something we could always talk about and dream about together. All our other trips and plans only bolstered the sense of togetherness that we had in a shared future.

A man’s inherent drive to plan goes hand in hand with his Mr. Fix It tendencies. In any relationship, planning for a future together involves not only travel but also other activities, from the routine to the grandiose, from the Let’s paint the bathroom/rake the leaves together all the way to having a child. Because men normally feel a compulsion to plan for the future, if the man in your life isn’t planning with you or is hesitating or refusing to make plans with you, that is a red flag that problems likely lie ahead. If he cannot or will not discuss your future together, the relationship is flawed and will probably fail.

Even if a man isn’t in a serious, committed relationship, and regardless of the level of commitment, he will have a plan. Even if he is just dating casually or even if you are friends who decided to take the relationship to a more intimate level, the most laissez-faire male will want to do at least some of the planning, arrange for a dinner, attend an event, or check on ticket availability.

If he fails to do even this simple level of planning, it is clear he has little interest in the relationship, thus the importance of the second (and especially the third) date becomes clear. If he is genuinely interested, he will need to know that the woman finds him at least somewhat desirable, and so the planning of a second date becomes more important for him. So important, in fact, that the subject may be brought up at the end of the first date, if not in the first forty-eight hours afterward. If he doesn’t ask in the first forty-eight hours, he isn’t interested. He will almost certainly want to set up the third date by the end of the second. The method and timing of these dates is a very accurate indication of the progression of the relationship, which we’ll examine later.

So, if your significant other asked you to pick any place you wanted to go in the world, what would you say? Would you pick Hawaii, Paris, Tahiti, or Italy? How about Mongolia? Yes, Mongolia—a land-locked country in Asia adjacent to Siberia, just north of China. It may not make even the top twenty most romantic places in the world, but that was her desire, and she had her reasons. So we planned to go to Mongolia and meet a black shaman; she was into the voodoo religion, had studied under a true santeros, and had read about the reindeer herders and their shamans. It would take five days

Reviews for It Really Is That Complicated

[franjacob-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Charles Rawlings, author of "It Really Is That Complicated," examines and dissects multiple relationship issues, including what Rawlings calls the horrors of marriage, the degeneration of romance and eroticism into the mundane and boring as well as the deal-breaking power struggles over control, money, and property. "In a relationship, the one who holds the power is the person who cares the least," Rawlings says; and this truism can be recognized at every level of any type of relationship. Just when the discussion turns bleakest, the book offers a glimpse of optimism, exploring the multiple attitudes that both men and women can take when it comes to romantic involvement, both positive and negative. When you tell the world I prefer to be my own person, you open yourself up to new experiences, new life events, and as a ripple effect new and seriously improved unique relationships with people...not to mention your significant other. Knowing yourself and having no fear begins to open new vistas. You become your own person. This reflection, along with many others in "It Really Is That Complicated," will help readers deal with their relationships and society's expectations of what relationships should be.