House of Eratosthenes

The more potential maladies that are subjected to preventive medicine in one generation, the greater the number of preventive measures will be proposed in the next. And they always, always, always involve money.

It’s the one sales pitch, to which we fail to show any constructive skepticism whatsoever.

An annual physical exam and twice-yearly dental checkup are supposed to protect your health. Now there’s a move for married Americans to do the same to protect the health of their unions.

So far, 171 couples in the Worcester, Mass., area are getting a Marriage Checkup, part of a clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health.

With questionnaires and two in-person sessions, the free program provides personalized feedback to keep relationships on track and circumvent trouble, says psychologist James Cordova, who runs the project at Clark University, where he’s an associate professor.

“This is a health issue,” he told a session of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies on Saturday. Some 3,000 are attending the three-day meeting, which ends Sunday.

“Your marital health doesn’t catch your attention until it really starts to hurt,” he says. “By that point, sometimes irreversible damage has been done.”

Doctor Freeberg here, who has spent, uh (grabs calculator) slightly less than four percent of his visit on this big blue marble in a state of wedlock, and is not in such a state now…nevertheless…has the perfect prescription for coupling-up and staying coupled-up. And periodic check-ups, wonderful as they may sound, don’t have an awful lot to do with it.

It’s so easy. So simple. So perfectly in harmony with exactly what we do, when we don’t want to die from cancer.

And it seems nobody ever thinks of it. Until it’s too late.

Stay Away From Selfish Bitches.

If she recounts conversations back to you, and the conversations are all “and then I said…and then I said…and then I said…” — run like hell.

If she ever uses the word “oppressive” except when quoting someone else, run like hell.

If she treats the waitress like a lower form of human being, run like hell.

If she keeps up her house or apartment, and the clothes stored in it, the way a guy does the same, you run like hell.

If she turns up her nose when you donate to groups that help veterans, run like hell.

If she presses too hard for the subject to be changed when you talk about whether you want a Glock or a Sig Sauer, or debate the virtues of 5.56 NATO versus 7.65 Browning…run like hell.

And, of course, it goes without saying, if she refuses to “let” you do something — like, for example, go to Hooters — run like hell. In fact, run like hell if she doesn’t drag you there. With a big smile on her face.

Because women who don’t like to have fun, are walking wastes of energy and time. They are black holes for your life force. Life is not a dress rehearsal, boys. So you put some attention into who you’re choosing. Once you get a good one, you hang on to her and let her know how happy you are that the two of you met. Find ways. All the other good things will follow.

The marriage checkup is not therapy but an information service, Cordova told the nonprofit membership group of psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.

“We’re able to help them identify exactly what it is they’re doing that is keeping them healthy and make sure that whatever their areas of concern are aren’t potentially problematic in the long run,” he says.

Cordova says an estimated 12 million couples — about 20% of all marriages — experience some significant level of distress. And he says about 5% of couples who marry are already distressed. Marriages deteriorate in stages, and he says a marital checkup can catch small issues before they grow big.

Marriages do not deteriotate in stages. I know it looks like that the first year or two after things “didn’t work out”…it always does. With some more time, one sees the problem really was that all those years ago, at the time the twosome became one, both halves were somewhat ignorant about what exactly it was they wanted out of life. Separation became an inevitability once, tragically united, they began to figure it out.

The thing is, though, once the intelligent divorcee realizes this, the divorce itself is a somewhat distant memory.

By then, his or her friends are done inquiring about the possible cause of the divorce. They’re too busy asking other more recent divorcee friends, still laboring under the delusion of this “grew apart in stages” fallacy, why they think they got divorced. So this epiphany is a relatively quiet one, and the urban myth of “stages” endures.

Poppycock.

Just don’t marry bitches. Marry (or couple up with) sweethearts, and treat ’em like that’s what they are. Spend your time around someone who wants you to be happy, and you will be.

Humans. Boy, we are really good at making simple things complicated. Y’know?

It is just an excuse to go and proscribe psych drugs. That’s why all these programs like this have a HIGH rate of “problems” found with the people being checked over and consequently proscribed drugs. The video “Making a Killing” covers this thoroughly. http://www.cchr.org/#/videos/making-a-killing-introduction
- Shannon in AZ | 11/16/2008 @ 12:02
Me too, Doc. And the bitches seem to have flooded the gene pool for the last 30 years or so – I’ve known (unfortunately) dozens of women, and exactly 2 who were fun without constant maintenance. Interestingly enough, they both had orgasms with no problem as well.

I’m regularly reminded of a cynical old bastard I once knew who was fond of opining “If they didn’t have pussies, there’d be a bounty on ’em.” I hope I’m not that bitter yet, but I’m beginning to wonder.
- rob | 11/16/2008 @ 12:04
prescribed.

That’s an easy mistake to make, “proscribed” is a cool word. I got nailed on it myself, a couple years ago, at work. That was embarrassing.
- mkfreeberg | 11/16/2008 @ 12:28
“The marriage checkup is not therapy but an information service…”

The ONLY information that needs to be offered at a marriage counseling office is “Get divorced. Now.” You’re not in that office because you have some great thing that just needs a little tweak to stop grinding and start humming right along. Marriages are a 1 or a 0, on or off. We’re people, not engines – you can’t just go to a mechanic, have him reroute the plug wires and install some nice, fat headers and then voila, we’re a picture of harmony.

Of course, that last part sounds a bit like getting her tubes tied and a boob job, which just might do the trick, ha ha.

What’s your take on “If she keeps up her house or apartment, and the clothes stored in it, the way a guy does the same, you run like hell.” Because I have had female roommates, and known a few girls who lived alone, and my experience in general has been that women are much messier around the house than men. Current wife excluded, which reinforces your point, but still…
- Andy | 11/16/2008 @ 12:32
Rob, it may be hard at times to keep the cynicism at bay; just keep in mind the gals are individuals just like we are. View the opposite sex as a unified collective, you become what you hate.

Andy, I’m glad you challenged this because it’s an interesting dialog to have. My theory is that the petulant nastiness toward the opposite sex begins with the demise of “Viva la’Difference.” I think deep down in the recesses of the brain they’d rather leave undiscussed, both men and women have a tendency to think “If there’s no difference between us, what’s the point of having those other folks around?”

And my experience has been that generally, women who don’t resist doing womanly things, don’t balk at the idea of wearing their hair in womanly ways — these are the ones untainted by this toxic modern meme of “Men are the cause of war and everything else nasty.” This is an imperfect observation of mine. I can think of plenty of exceptions to it…on both sides.
- mkfreeberg | 11/16/2008 @ 12:48
Lots of exceptions, indeed. This is an area where I think you can only go so far with outward classifications. Sure, most women who tend to do “this” are more open to “that,” but exceptions do abound. But you’re right, chicks who still enjoy displaying their womanliness by doing up their hair, wearing a little perfume, admit to being a little aroused when a man fixes something for her, those are less likely to force you into some territorial power struggle in a relationship, because they are as willing as you to say “Viva la difference.”

On a similar note, I heard something on Car Talk yesterday (mixed feelings about that show) that made me think of you immediately, and I am definitely going to write something on the topic. Woman said this in reference to her husband doing some kind of repair on her car:

“Why does he have to be good at EVERYthing? Can’t we just have a mechanic?”

Ooooh, lady. I would LOVE to get you drunk.
- Andy | 11/16/2008 @ 13:02
Marriages do not deteriotate in stages. I know it looks like that the first year or two after things “didn’t work out”…it always does. With some more time, one sees the problem really was that all those years ago, at the time the twosome became one, both halves were somewhat ignorant about what exactly it was they wanted out of life.

Respectfully disagree. The Second Mrs. Pennington and I had a 23 year relationship, of which years at LEAST 21.5 were pretty danged GOOD (we both knew what we wanted out of life and got it, for better or worse). I’m still at a loss to fully explain why things went south, ten years removed from the event. But I CAN say, with all honesty, that the deterioration happened in stages. And the stages were subtle, too… so much so that the tipping point was reached and exceeded before I realized WTF was going on. I chalk that up to male cluelessness about what women are thinking at any given point in time, coupled with a dollop of denial.

My 0.02.
- Buck | 11/16/2008 @ 17:04
Yes, prescribed. My error is in never looking up what proscribe means and assumed similarity. Didn’t know that I didn’t know.
- Shannon in AZ | 11/16/2008 @ 17:20
Morgan,

Of course you’re right, and I apologize for my pre-caffeine snarkiness (PCS?).

However I do maintain that “feminism”, starting around 1970, has produced more miserably unhappy women than the Potato Famine. Not content with their own discomfort, the “Women Are Powerful” crowd inculcated succeeding generations of girls with the delicious mantle of victimhood, which is in fact what I think you’ve encountered so much of.

Even the lefties, notably Paul Krassner, recognized the fragmentary potential of “The Women’s Movement” in the early days when suddenly the campus apparatchiks no longer had anyone to pick up after them. Of course, in the ultimate triumph of Political Correctness, The “Women Are Powerful” problem was solved by teaching everybody to feel sorry for them. And now, to hardly anyone’s surprise, the OGs like Maureen Dowd are constantly engaged in what Ann Coulter so memorably characterizes as “The Nobody Wants My Vagina Monologues.”

My solution to this, ultimately, is celibacy, 10 years worth now. I’m sure anyone who knew me in the ’50s through the ’90s would be astonished by that, as even my lesbian friends recognized how much I love women. But limits are limits, and I would encourage younger men, as you regularly do, to attend to their own boundaries.

One generation of men realizing that they can, in fact, do without would go a long way towards making girls fun again.

In my opinion.
- rob | 11/16/2008 @ 22:50

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