"The Untamed Stallion" Syndrome

I've said before that Disney ruins our lives. ("I have an issue with Disney. It ruins our abilities to cope with real life. It corrupts any realistic expectations we might have had of life. Everything is perfectly timed in Disney, everyone gets married, everyone meets their true love, and the two parties involved hardly ever have to do anything to live happily ever after." Xanga, 11-9-06.) But I want to elaborate on that. Disney establishes false paradigms and destroys our inherent ability to accept and cope with real life: the beautiful people end happily ever after in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles (usually placed before them by evil, ugly people) and their whole lives are timed and executed in a perfect, inexorable fashion with little to no effort on the part of the "protagonists," especially the women's. Look at your traditional Disney heroine:

Snow White: "Someday my Prince will come." So I'll just sit around and wait. Singing about it seems to be a wise use of my time.

Sleeping Beauty: I'll just let everyone else dictate my life and while I sit up in a tower and wait for my "true love" (really, some random guy who found me singing in the forest and thought I was pretty...to whom I already happen to be betrothed to) to find me again.

Cinderella: I need my Fairy Godmother to get me out to meet the Prince and then I'll just sit around and wait for him to hunt me down with the shoe I left behind.

So on and so forth. Disney indoctrinates a pernicious passivity in young girls. (That's why Pocahontas, Mulan, and Belle are my favorites...they actually DID stuff.)

Oh, but Belle! Belle, you have something to do with the point I'm getting at right now. There is another genre of entertainment that also sets up young girls for future failures in relationships: horse stories.

Look at nearly every horse movie made. Here's a brief example of how they go (the following is an amalgamation of Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken, National Velvet, Virginia's Run, and 90% of the horse stories and collections thereof published in the 1960s-1970s, most of which I have read countless times):

There's a girl who's socially unaccepted to some degree. She meets a wild horse that no one else can handle. Somehow, the girl connects with the horse and she nurtures it and they find acceptance and fulfillment in each other's company. The girl is threatened with losing/actually loses the horse for a period of time, but somehow they end up back together at the end and live happily ever after.

(Ok, granted, not all horse stories go that way. The Black Stallion has a male protagonist. But that's a very small percentage and I'm looking at how these stores portray and affect girls.)

There seems to be, in a lot of cases, a mystical connection between girls and horses. So I don't know which came first: this fascination with the horse and then ensuing story about connecting with it, or the deeper psychological craving to nurture something that a lot of women feel and that is neatly symbolized in the horse. Either way, this is a telling connection.

When I was 10 and I first started riding horses, I was always wishing that my instructor would get some wild horse that no one could ride. I would miraculously enter its stall, it would be quiet, and we would bond and I could bring out the best in that horse. I still secretly harbored that fantasy as my mom and I shopped for our horse. A horse that is well-trained and respectful of its rider? Boring!

Women, by and large, need to feel needed. We tend to see the best in other living creatures and believe that those who are "wild and untamed" just need a gentle hand to reassure and understand them. We always believe that we will be the ones to reach out and connect with that misunderstood soul through our selfless nurturing. The more wild and dangerous our intended connectee, the better. We want to work good in the world.

And that translates over into relationships with men. We want to be the one woman who can bring the best out in a guy. "Really, he is such a good guy deep down." We can see, or delude ourselves into seeing, that potential and we set out with carrots and sugar cubes to capture his heart.

That's dangerous on several counts. For one, the girl could be taken advantage of (whether intentionally, by some predatory, misogynistic jerk, or unintentionally, by some emotionally needy yet unavailable sponge in need of constant reassurance...in either case, the girl is taken advantage of because it is an unequal partnership with her constantly acting the selfless martyr). Two, this kind of expectation precludes healthy and functional relationships with nice, respectful guys who will treat her well, who don't necessarily need her to rescue them from themselves. But where's the challenge and fulfillment in that? All the girls in the horse movies connected with wild stallions, not docile trail horses.

That's why girls always seem to be going for jerks who misuse and take advantage of them. We need to feel needed. We want to be absolutely everything for a man, and the needy ones tend to advertise it well. For example, Belle. She had to love the Beast and help him regain his humanity. She took a rough chance reaching out to this dangerous, misunderstood, needy creature, and it worked out. Again, notice that the story ends with beautiful people living happily ever after.

Solution? I don't know that I have one. But I think Beauty and the Beast could very well be onto something. They both had to compromise and let each other into their hearts. They had work at creating an equal partnership, one where she nurtured him and he protected her. Ah. An equal partnership. I turn to this month's Ensign.

"The concept of interdependent, equal partners is well-grounded in the doctrine of the restored gospel. Eve was Adam's 'help meet' (Genesis 2:18). The original Hebrew for meet means tat Eve was adequate for, or equal to, Adam. She wasn't his servant or his subordinate. And the Hebrew for help in 'help meet' is ezer, a term meaning that Eve drew on heavenly powers when she supplied their marriage with the spiritual instincts uniquely available to women as a gender gift.
"As President Boyd K. Packer, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, has said, men and women are by nature different, and while they share many basic human traits, the 'virtues and attributes upon which perfection and exaltation depend come [more] naturally to a woman.'
"Genesis 3:16 states that Adam is to 'rule over' Eve, but this doesn't make Adam a dictator. A ruler can be a measuring tool that sets standards. Then Adam would live so that others may measure the rightness of their conduct by watching his. Being a ruler is not so much a privilege of power as an obligation to practice what a man preaches. Also, over in 'rule over' uses the Hebrew bet, which means ruling with, not ruling over. If a man does exercise 'dominion...in any degree of unrighteousness' (D&C 121:37; emphasis added), God terminates that man's authority.
"Perhaps because false teachings had twisted original scriptural meanings, President Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1985) preferred 'preside' rather than 'rule.' He said: 'No woman has ever been asked by the Church authorities to follow her husband into an evil pit. She is to follow him [only] as he follows and obeys the Savior of the world, but in deciding [whether he is obeying Christ], she should always be sure she is fair.' In this way, President Kimball saw marriage 'as a full partnership,' stating that, 'We do not want our LDS women to be silent partners or limited partners' but rather 'a contributing and full partner.'
Spouses need not perform the same functions to be equal. The woman's innate spiritual instincts are like a moral magnet, pointing toward spiritual north--except when that magnet's particles are scrambled out of order. The man's presiding gift is the priesthood--except when he is not living the principles of righteousness. If the husband and the wife are wise, their counseling will be reciprocal: he will listen to the prompting of her inner spiritual compass just as she will listen to his righteous counsel.
"And in an equal-partner marriage both also bring a spiritual maturity to their partnership, without regard to gender. Both have a conscience and the Holy Ghost to guide them. Both see family life as their most important work. Each also strives to become a fully rounded disciple of Jesus Christ--a complete spiritual being.
...
"In an equal-partner marriage, 'love is not possession but participation...part of that co-creation which is out human calling.' With true participation, husband and wife merge into the synergistic oneness of an 'everlasting dominion' that 'without compulsory means' will flow with spiritual life to them and their posterity 'forever and ever' (D&C 121:46).
"In the little kingdom of the family, each spouse freely gives something the other does not have and without which neither can be complete and returns to God's presence. Spouses are not a soloist with an accompanist, nor are they two solos. They are the interdependent parts of a duet, singing together in harmony at a level where no solo can go.
"Each gives abundance to the other's want. As Paul wrote,
"'For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened;
'But by an equality, that...your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality' (2 Corinthians 8:13-14).
"Temple marriage covenants do not magically bring equality to a partnership. Those covenants commit us to a developmental process of learning and growing together--by practice.
"...equal partnerships are not made in heaven (meaning they weren't established before this world or we have to wait for them to be good until after this life)--they are made on earth, one threshold crossing at a time. And getting there is hard work--like working through differing assumptions about who was bringing relief" to the other. (pp. 26-28)

Saturday's Warrior has some good stuff in it, but it can also be dangerous if taken as doctrine. Not everyone arranged to meet their spouse--therefore, those who don't have an arranged eternal marriage must work hard to find a companion and then continue to work hard to create a relationship. And for those who have arranged eternal marriages, there IS this lovely thing called "the veil." You people still need to work to find your companion and then work to create an equal relationship. It's not just given to you. Girls, passivity only works in Disney. And don't sacrifice yourself and your happiness for the sake of being someone's personal redemption. EQUAL PARTNERSHIP. Have higher standards. Don't expect to do all the work and don't expect to do none of the work. Expect to do 100% and expect to have it reciprocated.

As our last session director counseled the girls, don't be weirded out by guys who are so clingy that they suffocate you (if he's doing it in a creepy/controlling way, by all means, punch him in the nose, though). Let nice guys be nice guys.

The most beautiful partnerships between a horse and rider come from mutual respect and trust, one in the other, not from one seeking to dominate the other. And the most important part of ANY relationship is the time spent growing into each other and working towards a common goal that neither could reach alone.

This is how it should be (I tend to relate a lot of life to horses and it works):
"When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk; He trots the air; The earth sings when he touches it; The basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes; He is pure air and fire." Shakespeare
"In partnership with a horse, one is seldom lacking for thought, emotion and inspiration. One is always attended by a great companion." Charles de Kunffy
The Horse: Friendship without envy, Beauty without vanity, Nobility without conceit, A willing partner, yet no slave. -Unknown
"Riding is a partnership. The horse lends you his strength, speed and grace, which are greater than yours. For your part you give him your guidance, intelligence and understanding, which are greater than his. Together you can achieve a richness that alone neither can." Lucy Rees

Sometimes you're the horse, sometimes you're the rider. It takes both.

Hey, so why don't we say "i-earn-ick" instead of "i-ron-ick"?