Boys Will Be Boys 

I was backing up. I would have fallen over the barbell on the floor behind me had Paulo, my trainer, not stopped me.

I asked him, “As a kid, in Brazil, did you ever play that prank where you keep backing someone up until he falls over another guy who’s on all fours behind him?”

He had. It was common practice.

“In Brazil, too,” I said. “That’s funny.”

He asked, “Did you ever do that thing where you hyperventilate for a few seconds and then one of your friends gives you a bearhug till you pass out?”

“We did that,” I admitted.

“There must be other dumb and dangerous things that all boys do,” I said.

“Like jumping from a bridge when you don’t know how deep the water is below?”

“Exactly.”

“What the hell were we thinking?” we wondered.

My guess: We weren’t thinking at all. We were playing the kind of games that adolescent boys have been playing for hundreds – even thousands – of years. Stupid, semi-dangerous descendants of ancient coming-to-manhood rituals that have been practiced since Homo sapiens became sapient.

Becoming a man originally meant learning how to participate in dangerous things like hunting and warfare. It required not just bravery, but fierce loyalty to the clan – and, thus, to the survival of the species.

Girls must always have had coming-to-womanhood rituals. Note to self: Find out what they were.

Loving, Loyalty, and Pragmatism 

I came across this the other day: According to research by Dr. Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist from Stanford University (as well as numerous other studies), women initiate more than 70% of all divorces.

That surprised me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Does it surprise you?

I did a bit of digging and found other facts about women vs. men in matters of marriage and divorce. For example:

* Did you know that, after the divorce, women move on to other relationships much faster than men? I didn’t.

* And how about this? According to several reports, women are more likely than men to have love partners before the divorce. It not only surprised me, it reminded me of a story I heard about a colleague of mine: By the time she told her husband she was divorcing him, she had already purchased a house for herself and her until-then-secret boyfriend!

* Here’s another thing I discovered: According to one survey, 98.7% of women surveyed a year after being divorced said their lives were “better” or “much better” than they were while married.

I’ve been thinking about why I was surprised by these facts. I suspect it’s because I’ve always assumed that women are naturally more loving and loyal than men, whereas men are naturally more pragmatic than women. I guess I’m going to have to rethink those assumptions.

And here’s something that any young man planning on playing house-husband in an upcoming marriage should know: According to a University of Chicago study, when women earn as much as or more than their husbands, the marriages are 50% more likely to end in divorce.