I know with my happy life that the scientific principles of Aesthetic Realism can enable husbands to be proud and kind.
I learned that the biggest mistake a husband makes is to dislike the world. As a result, he can: 1) try to have a cozy, exclusive nest with his wife, apart from the world; 2) try have a victory over the world that she represents, by managing her, feeling superior to her. These are contempt, they make for hell in marriage and great shame in men, and learning about this is liberating.
If a man does not like the world I learned, doesn’t want to know it deeply, he can’t do any better with his wife. In his 1949 lecture, “Mind and Husbands,” Mr. Siegel writes:
Aesthetic Realism accuses the husbands of America of not wanting to know their wives….He will try to be gallant, bring her presents, will smile, make a living, but is not trying to know her. The wife also doesn’t want to be known, but the husband could cut through the superficial appearance of [that] and say, “Darling, I insist on knowing you, and if you see me get lazy on the subject, please pinch me, because once I sum you up we both might as well be dead.”
Why Don’t Men Want to Know Their Wives?
Aesthetic Realism taught me that along with the tremendous desire in a man to be swept, head-to-toe, by a woman, he can also feel it is a terrific insult to be so affected by someone other than himself, and can look to find things wrong with his wife in order to feel he is justified in needing her less.
In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Ellen Reiss writes:
When a man looks at a woman or a woman at a man, we are seeing a drama of sameness-with-and-difference-from ourselves. We are looking at someone whom we need yet who, in…[her] difference, comes from and represents that larger needed difference, reality as such. If we don’t like the world, we shall punish, conquer, play with, hide from, despise a man or woman whose very being tells us, You need reality different from yourself.
When I began seeing Meryl Nietsch, I was very much affected by this thoughtful, energetic, beautiful woman. The more we talked, the more I felt I needed to be with her.
Yet after we began to live together—something I had wanted very much—I found myself getting irritated. One night as I was brushing my teeth, I looked up and saw a large hair bow of Meryl’s on the bathroom shelf. I muttered under my breath, “What is this damn bow doing here?!”
Meryl, who happened to hear me, was good-natured about it. She suggested that I might see this bow as standing for the world different from me but also friendly, and as a criticism of that feeling which Ellen Reiss once described: “I’m swept and it’s not by me?—the hell with this!” The next day when I opened my drawer to get a pair of socks, there was a green bow. I opened my briefcase at work and there was a purple one! Meryl’s imaginative criticism then, and since, has had a deep good effect on me, and I love her for it.
The years we have been married have been an exciting, rich, happy education in what it means to know and care truly for another person. I have been learning about a mistake men have made throughout the centuries: more than I knew, I wanted a woman—and life—to be uncomplicated and not ask much of me.
For example, one night I came home from work looking forward to sitting on the couch, complacently reading a catalogue. When Meryl wanted to talk about things that happened during the day and what she felt about them, I told her in an annoyed tone that she was interrupting me. In a class Ellen Reiss got to the source of my annoyance:
Ellen Reiss: Do you think by now you should understand Meryl Nietsch and have her behave to suit you?
Bennett Cooperman: Yes. I do get puzzled if something comes up I don’t understand.
Ellen Reiss: Do you think it’s better to have a person puzzle you, or to have her under your thumb? Do you think you are more important managing Meryl Nietsch or feeling you will spend your life trying to understand her?
I am so happy to say the answer is the second. One of the great things about Aesthetic Realism is, it can have you see, as education, what you don’t like in yourself and change.
For and Against, Kindness and Criticism
Two of the biggest opposites in marriage, I have learned, are for and against, kindness and criticism—and husbands have made terrific mistakes about them. Today, books on marriage are replete with techniques in how to be both supportive and to stand up for yourself with your spouse, and I will discuss passages from two of them.
The Husband’s Manual by Teri and Andy Murphy tries to deal with issues that affect husbands very much—money, in-laws, “alone time,” fights. But we can see the mistaken way men are encouraged to be for and against women when the authors write:
For many men the ideal wife is active, interesting, attractive, and has just the right touch of independence. She’s sensual to her husband’s touch and attentive to his moods and needs in a lighthearted, often whimsical way. She looks great in her clothes…
We’re attracted to these ideals but in…life there’s always something missing. We feel cheated and sometimes resentful when she doesn’t measure up. Sometimes we compare her to other men’s wives or even to our mother. We focus on what’s missing, instead of what’s there.
In the first place the woman presented here as a man’s ideal, what he should be “for,” is not a real person. She is an extension of male ego, serving and soothing him, “attentive to his moods and needs.” With that as the basis of what a man wants, he will inevitably feel “cheated and… resentful.” Men need to know what Eli Siegel says in these beautiful sentences from “Mind and Husbands”:
We marry people; and a person happens to have millions of blood cells and hundreds of aspects. We marry complete representatives in miniature of the flourishing universe. We don’t marry consolations.
In one chapter titled “Compliments” the authors say, “Compliments can be a source of joy and support in your marriage,” and they give husbands three levels of what to compliment in their wives:
- Good: Something she has little or no control over: e.g. height, gorgeous hair or skin, eye color, figure…
- Better: Something she has added to her external self: e.g. make up, jewelry, clothing, hair style.
- Best: Something she has accomplished; e.g. her skills at listening, dancing, sharing…cooking, making love, singing, caring for you…
From beginning to end this list is disgustingly patronizing and encourages the biggest mistakes a husband can make. Certainly a man should praise what he honestly cares for in his wife as a means of strengthening her. But there is no sense of what I have learned a woman values most in herself—how she uses her mind, whether she is fair to the world and people—and that she wants honest criticism in order to do better. My wife, Meryl, me that is what she wants from me and I love her for it.
Here, it’s all on the surface—how your wife looks—and I think a woman would be right to be furious at this. Then, the thing in this list that most has to do with a woman’s mind is put so condescendingly—”her skills at listening”—as if it were a mechanical procedure, not arising from a true desire to know.
The other danger for a husband here is the clear emphasis on how the wife is to him—the way she is at “cooking, making love… caring for you.” There’s practically no sense of a wife’s relation to the world, of what Eli Siegel explains in his essay “The Furious Aesthetics of Marriage” when he writes that through marriage both a wife and husband hope to come to “authentic terms with the world.”
A little later, the authors explain that if you compliment your wife often, “she’ll probably respond by complimenting you,” and “What could be better?” they ask. This is catnip to something in every man, but it is debilitating. What we want is our wives’ encouragement to be fair to things, and that includes her criticism of our conceit.
In another book, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, author John Gottman says his “expertise is in the scientific observation of couples,” and tells how for twenty years he observed husbands and wives in a laboratory setting, complete with electronic equipment to measure heart rates, facial expressions and how much each partner wiggles as they argue.
The author is affected by ideas of Aesthetic Realism, but because he has not studied it, he presents corrupt, inept versions of these ideas. The matter of contempt as the great weakener of marriage, which has been presented in public seminars here for over twenty-five years, is throughout this book as though Gottman discovered it. For instance, speaking about “love and respect,” he writes:
These are the direct opposite of—and antidote for—contempt, perhaps the most corrosive force in marriage.
Later he says, “Whichever partner is prone to speaking with contempt, needs to replace that habit with the ex-pression of genuine validation and admiration.” Gottman has no idea what contempt is! Contempt, Aesthetic Realism shows, is no “habit”—it is a ferocious drive and one doesn’t simply replace it with “validation” as though you flip a switch. And just what Gottman means by “valida-tion” is clear in this hypothetical conversation he gives between husband and wife, presented as “affectionate” banter in which the husband encourages the wife:
Wife: I’ll never get that promotion. I’m just not aggressive enough.
Husband: I think of you as a short barracuda myself.
Wife: With you I am. But that Roger Priestly will beat me out….No one notices what a jerk he is but you and me. [My boss] Fred never has seen that side of Roger.
Husband: Okay, let’s hatch a plan to destroy Roger. I’ve got it. Every day you come in and you subtly build up his ego, get him talking about himself, and tell him that Fred will find that story fascinating. Pretty soon he’s spending all his time bragging to Freddie.
Wife: And Freddie hates that. It might work…
Here, being for your wife is equivalent to egging on her contempt—seeing people as jerks whom you will defeat. That feeling, you and I are smarter than those other fools, goes on between husbands and wives all over America as they talk about people, and it poisons their marriage. There is really no bigger mistake; and the fact that this hideous attitude is actually recommended is shameful. This husband and wife will inevitably hate each other because they have used each other to sell out their most beautiful and urgent purpose in life—to like the world.
Aesthetic Realism says definitively that the one thing that enables a person to be for and against someone in a way that makes him kind and also proud is good will. And good will, Aesthetic Realism shows, is a rigorous, intellectual pursuit. It is a oneness of criticism and encouragement, for a person’s deepest desire—to like the world, be fair to it; and against whatever in her interferes. This is the same as kindness.
Men Learn This in Aesthetic Realism Consultations
Early in his consultations, Gary Daniels, a classical guitar player from New York City in his mid-thirties, spoke about what had occurred in a tumultuous marriage of three years which had ended in divorce. He told us it got to the point where he and his wife simply didn’t speak to each other, there was a constantly dark, morose atmosphere in their home, and he didn’t know why.
Mr. Daniels was deeply affected as he began to learn what Aesthetic Realism showed him about the mistakes he made with his wife. He told us she had cared for music and the theatre and, at first, he had admired the way she was both energetic and studious.
But soon after the marriage, he became cool and increasingly fault-finding. We asked him such questions as: Do you think you were angry you cared for her so much in the first place? Did you want to show her up—show her you were smarter, better than she was? Did you want your wife to know you, or did you hide from her?
He told us later, “I have seen that I spent the better part of my marriage to Sandy Russom trying to dismiss her. I feel very ashamed that I actually treated a woman I cared for in such a way.” We gave him the assignment to write “Ten Mistakes I Made in My Marriage.” These are some of the points he wrote:
- Not asking my wife Sandy Russom why and what she cared for in the theatre. I had no interest in knowing.
- I looked to find faults with her physically.
- Not having respect for Sandy’s parents, both of whom are well-educated and regarded highly in their fields. But I made fun of certain mannerisms they had. Her father has a care for music which I regarded as limited in taste.
- Not encouraging Sandy to express herself. I would “shoot down” her opinions or ask her questions with a very superior attitude. After a while of doing this, she stopped talking about things.
What emerged from this assignment—and Mr. Daniels had never seen it before—was a picture of a man angry at caring for a woman and the world she represented. Gary Daniels was so regretful and so relieved, and he was even able to express some of this regret to his former wife, who was very glad to hear it.
“I am very grateful for my last consultation,” he said, “and look forward to going much further and deeper into these questions.” He wrote assignments such as “Five pairs of opposites in the guitar and how they are in women”; “Read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and comment on how they strengthen each other.” In Aesthetic Realism, he met what men everywhere, reading current books, going to marriage counselors, deserve to know, and I want them to get it.
A Husband’s Mistake about Intimate and Wide
In the class I quoted earlier, in which I told about my desire to sit on the couch undisturbed, Ellen Reiss asked, “Do you think there’s anything in you that would like to rest now that you’re married?” “Through love,” she said, “we should feel more ambitious to be fair to things.”
I am grateful to study what that means together with my wife. And I am tremendously moved by Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman’s world meaning as a published author and speaker on the subject of eating disorders and how they can end in a woman’s life through the study of Aesthetic Realism, and by seminars she has given here on the questions of women.
In one seminar, Meryl spoke about the life of the Indian princess, Pocahontas. There is a line about this important Native American woman in Carl Sandburg’s poem Cool Tombs which beautifully puts together intimacy and width, body and thought, tenderness and strength—and every husband can learn from it. For an Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry class taught by Ellen Reiss, I wrote about this as an instance of a line I liked. Sandburg writes:
Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw
in November or a pawpaw in May,did she wonder?
does she remember?…in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Ellen Reiss said the line “does have loveliness and wonder in it.” I wrote, in part:
I love the way earth, a woman’s body, and her thoughts and feelings mingle in this line. The vowels go out wide, and there is something like softness—paw-paw—and yet they are trees, rooted in the earth. All through the line there is something like earthiness and delicacy.
The phrase that begins the line, “Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar” is simply put, and the feeling is rich. Sandburg compares her body to the poplar tree; it is surprising but it sounds so right. There is something like thrust and yielding in the rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables in the phrase—”Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar”—which is like the way a man can feel about a woman, assertive and affected, impelled and yielding at once.
I am moved too by the way Sandburg asks, “did she wonder? does she remember?” He is affected by Pocahontas’ body and also wants to know her thoughts. You feel he wants to be at the center of who she was in her specificity, and at the same time he is at the beginning mystery of who a woman is.
That feeling is what every husband needs to have as he makes the morning coffee and speaks with his wife across the breakfast table. I am a happy, learning husband and I know that in Aesthetic Realism is the explanation of themselves and marriage that men need, want, and deserve!