老司机直播

Love helps us learn more about ourselves as human beings, says UTM professor Mari Ruti. (Photo by Caz Zyvatkauskas)

Men are not from Mars, women are not from Venus

老司机直播 Mississauga professor says love is not a game

UTM English professor Mari Ruti takes on the self-help industry in her book The Case for Falling in Love

Professor Mari Ruti of the Department of English and Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga has written about love for both academic and mainstream audiences. Her newest book, The Summons of Love, portrays love as a much more complex, multifaceted phenomenon than we tend to appreciate鈥攁n experience that helps us encounter the depths of human existence. This is an updated version of an interview we did with her in February 2011, about her popular book The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can鈥檛 Master the Madness of Love鈥攁nd Why That鈥檚 the Best Part. Ruti works at the intersection of contemporary theory, psychoanalysis, continental philosophy and gender and sexuality studies. The Case for Falling in Love was written for a mainstream audience and she hopes it will help women and men understand that love is not a game to be won or lost.

What made you decide to write this book?

It鈥檚 a mainstream book but it arises directly from my academic work. After finishing my PhD at Harvard in 2000, I spent four years there as assistant director of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. I taught a course on romantic love, and after many years of thinking about it, I decided I wanted to put those ideas into a book that would be accessible to mainstream readers.

Do you consider it a self-help book?

I consider it an anti-self-help book! It鈥檚 a hard-hitting critique of contemporary self-help culture. I really take on the whole 鈥淢en are from mars, women are from Venus鈥 mentality.

What鈥檚 the message?

The main argument is that the image of romantic love that the self-help industry tries to sell is based on a few misconceptions. The first is the idea that love is a game with winners and losers. The second is the idea that men and women are inherently different so that to make romance work, women need to learn to read the so-called male psyche.

I argue that there is no such thing as the male psyche and I also argue that the more we try to manipulate our romantic lives, the more we think of love as a game, the less authentically we are able to love. So basically, whoever came up with the idea that love is a game destroyed its soul.

How did we get to the point where we think that love is a game to be won and that men and women are opponents?

There was a trend toward turning love into a game via a series of books. It began in the 1980s with The Rules. And John Gray came up with his 鈥淢ars-Venus鈥 franchise in the 1990s鈥攈e鈥檚 written 15 books now. By now it鈥檚 so ingrained in our psyches, particularly female psyches, that it鈥檚 hard to banish.

One of the things that drives me crazy about the self-help industry is that the books that women read are trying to drag us back into the 1950s, into gender roles that are not applicable today in terms of how contemporary men and women behave.

Right. You argue in the book that there is some hope in that young people are thinking differently about love and about gender roles. Can you tell us some more about this?

Yes, this is one of the reasons I wrote the book. As a university professor, I teach 18- to 22-year-olds. I know from experience that their understanding of gender is a lot more fluid than what these self-help books portray.

As research for my book I read 20 to 25 self-help books. Their portrait of men in particular is really strange. Book after book tells us that men are these cave men who are wired to hunt women. They鈥檙e wired to cheat on you. They don鈥檛 understand emotions. They will forget your birthday. They鈥檙e commitment phobic. The young women I teach don鈥檛 think of men in these terms and the young men I teach don鈥檛 think of women as prey to be conquered. There鈥檚 a lot more fluidity and there鈥檚 a lot more mutual respect than these authors are suggesting. When you look at younger people you see this clearly.

There鈥檚 a whole chapter in my book on how television shows and movies that are aimed at young audiences 鈥攖een shows 鈥 often actually have amazingly progressive gender configurations. They do not perpetuate gender stereotypes, which is one reason I鈥檓 so intrigued by the fact that self-help authors are so gung ho about dragging us back into the 1950s. Why? What is their agenda? A lot of these books are aimed at young women. Why are they trying to convince young women to go back to the 1950s when the rest of the culture is moving forward? Why are television shows more progressive than self-help books? What鈥檚 in it for the self-help industry?

Do you know the answers to these questions?

In my more paranoid moments, I think that they鈥檙e quasi-intentionally trying to set women鈥檚 liberation back by a few decades. In my less paranoid moments, I realize that the self-help industry is probably caught up in the cultural machinery that it is perpetuating. They don鈥檛 necessarily realize the impact of what they鈥檙e doing.

But even so, my argument is that if you鈥檙e going to position yourself as a cultural gatekeeper, if you鈥檙e going to start telling other people what to do, then you should be aware of the implications of what you鈥檙e saying. I鈥檓 pretty hard on self-help authors.

I suppose it鈥檚 easier to write a book that offers a simple formula than to write a book that says that life is not necessarily programmable or predictable.

Yes. We live in such a pragmatic culture that we are trained to think that everything is controllable. Romantic love is not controllable. The whole point of love is to overflow all of our systems of control. It鈥檚 not meant to be manipulated.

Why are we so focused on falling in love?

I talk a lot more about this in my most recent book, an academic book called The Summons of Love. I think that there鈥檚 something about the experience of romantic love that gives us access to frequencies of our own being that we can鈥檛 access any other way. These are sublime feelings 鈥 that sensation of blissful happiness and all the problems of the world dissolving. There are very few other things in our lives that allow us to access those kinds of feelings.

Of course this only applies to new, fresh love. But I think we covet that experience so strongly because that鈥檚 the one of the few ways way we can get it. We know that. If we鈥檝e had it before, we know that it鈥檚 the only way we can get it again.

It sounds like a drug.

Absolutely!

So what should women鈥攐r men鈥攄o if they鈥檙e looking for some advice about love?

One of the main points of this book is that love鈥檚 failures are not life failures. I think that the self-help industry teaches women to think that when love goes wrong, when their relationships fail, it鈥檚 because they did something wrong. I鈥檓 saying that most times when love fails it鈥檚 not because you鈥檝e done something wrong. It鈥檚 because love is inherently fickle and capricious. Most of our relationships are not meant to last. Most people who get married and stay married had many other relationships before that did not last. That鈥檚 the whole point.

Often it鈥檚 the failed affairs that teach us the most, so thinking about love鈥檚 failures as life failures is not productive because a lot of time it鈥檚 the failure that teaches us something really important.

Maybe failure isn鈥檛 even the right word.

Exactly. Love鈥檚 mission is in some way much more expansive or much more panoramic than what we are trained to think. It may not be that love鈥檚 mission is to make us happy in the conventional sense. It may be that love鈥檚 mission is to refine our character or to help us grow. If you think of it that way, suddenly the failures don鈥檛 seem like failures.

The experience of love as you describe it almost sounds like it鈥檚 outside the norms of our culture, which trains us to believe that everything is controllable. It鈥檚 almost as if being in love is a different way of being.

People do experience love in a transcendent way. What happens is that when it fails we flock to Chapters or Amazon in search of these books because we want answers and we want those answers to be simple. It鈥檚 comforting to get some sort of formula because this leads us to think that the next time we鈥檒l be able to control things so we won鈥檛 get hurt. I think there is this tension in that, yes, we experience love in this more expansive, panoramic sense, but when it fails we want it to be simple. Of course it鈥檚 never going to be simple. We do everything in our power to make it simple but that鈥檚 completely artificial.
 

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