Long term committed

With so many marriages ending in "I don't want to anymore", one wonders whether when women talk about being in long term committed relationships they are making an observation on how long the relationship has, as a matter of fact, lasted so far, or whether they set out with the intention of ensuring things got to that point.  It's not that the men are off the hook in this state of affairs.  After all, if men can't commit or won't commit or both at the same time (it makes little difference; the result is always the same), it is triumph even for women to achieve a long term committed relationship, something more traditionally guaranteed by prisons and mental hospitals.  Impolite are inmates--those who rate a life sentence--who talk amongst themselves about having "got the bitch".  What must their women make of them?  Some bargains are not worth having.

The smart money has always been on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and proto and post anthropologists everywhere: it is incumbent on women to secure the cooperation of their men to stand by them for the raising of their young.

The only certain thing about offspring, Rousseau tells us, is the mother.  Paternity, he thought, is a mug's game.  Not surprising come from a man who was himself a serial philanderer with several illegitimate children, none of whom did he raise or support in any way.  Of course a man other than Rousseau might be swayed to "do the decent thing" and settle down with the mother of a child on the way by some regard for his reputation, if he were at all motivated by other people's opinions.  If not, there was always the chance that a woman might appeal to his vanity after the fact--announcing that the child looks like the father.  Or when things got really promiscuous in the 1970s, there was the paternity test that could add credibility to the name recorded as that of the father on a birth certificate.  But if he is without morals, even an order of child support can't ensure that his progeny will be looked after.  Where have we heard a man say "The kid is not my son!"?

And to Dr Paterniti, with whom I had a fateful interview, I took the test, and, guess what?  Oh those dead beat dads!