Charged Up Cherry

I had a woman talk to me recently about her possible pending engagement; he’s about 15 years older than she is. He brought up a prenuptial agreement and said to her that if their marriage didn’t work out, he in no way wanted her to profit from it. She was horrified; I have a different opinion…but I’ll get there.

His biggest complaint about her was that he thought that she was irresponsible. I asked her what had happened. She told me that she lives in Los Angeles and her father had had a medical emergency, so she drove the car that her boyfriend had leased for her to the San Francisco area. The problem was that they had agreed that if they weren’t engaged by a certain date, he would return the car. She agreed to the date—which happened to be the weekend that she drove the car to Northern California. He has held this over her head since.

They decided to part last August but he had tried to stay in contact. She’s told him repeatedly that *IF* he wasn’t going to show up at her place with a ring and a date in mind, that no, she wouldn’t be comfortable being in his company. Just before Thanksgiving, she agreed to see him. He gave her a bag, and in it was an engagement ring from Cartier.

She called me upset that she didn’t get the proposal that she had dreamed of and wasn’t sure of what to do. My advice to her was that she probably didn’t want to hear what I was going to say, but that HE was absolutely correct. That she had negotiated the return of the car; that it was irresponsible of her to take it to San Francisco without asking him. I told her that *IF* he were her husband, she would have had a conversation with him asking to take the new car because it was safer to drive and that she needed immediately to be in San Francisco. I told her that if you behave (within reason) like a wife, you become one instead of an adversary.

I told her to apologize to him; that she had thought about it, and he was right. If she is planning on spending the rest of her life with him, this is not a battle that she should be fighting. Hopefully with the apology and acknowledgement, it would be the end of him calling her ‘irresponsible’ forever. I also told her that should he give her the ring again, that she should be telling him that 'it is more beautiful than she could have ever imagined'. No, she didn’t get a man on bended knee, humbled and honored to ask for her hand, but the story of her engagement will always be ‘the story’ and did it really matter?

The third bit of advice that I gave to her is to accept a prenuptial agreement—but carefully. A man in his 50’s has had more of his work years behind him than in front of him, and no man would ever give up his future security for hers. That right now, when he is at his most loving, most protective and wanting to take care of her, she has a far better chance of his being generous than during a divorce proceeding. This is especially important for second or latter marriages. You should expect that a man would want to protect and provide a legacy for his children over and above a successive wife.

I’ve thought about living with a man and what might be on my
non-negotiable list. It may appear on the surface as American wealth or arrogance, but I need my own bathroom, without question. I need, not want, that sanctuary, my space that is my undisturbed, untouched, unshared, and uninvited by another; even if he is my lover. My friend Jana tells me that my ideals are unrealistic. I questioned my own feelings on this issue. It may hearken back to yesterday's blog, but what I have decided was that it was not neurotic, but erotic. What may or may not be revealed is far more exciting than what is seen. I don’t want my man knowing what I’m doing in there, I just don’t. I had spoken a few years ago with a marketing guru who told me that the availability of viewing ‘skin’ caused a numbing effect and tuning out of day to day titillation.

One hundred years ago, if a woman was in public and you could hear the rustling of her petticoat or starched dress, it was considered vulgar. The showing of an ankle was as risque as a woman dared. A man peeling back a bit of glove to reveal the skin on a woman’s hand to kiss it give a glimmer of hope to the dance of possibility. Today, what is erotic, what is piqued (because they are mostly covered), are a women’s feet. My marketing guru asked me to note the amount of TV commercials seen with women walking or sitting barefoot.

In spite of the number of men with foot-fetishes, those without such proclivities still want to look…are they pretty, are they ugly, does she have (as one TV commercial recently aired two women’s disgust) ‘toes like a sloth’. And then there is the color. My personal preferences run typically shades of pink--bold pinks—not baby soft pinks. Shmuley Boteach says that the very looking at the color of his wife’s nail polish leads to him instant arousal. I told Michael yesterday that it was pedicure day for me. He asked me what color I chose and to describe the color ‘Charged Up Cherry’ which I did as a sort of watermelon pink. And then...there it was...the request for pictures.

Statistics say that 40% of men preferred red nails on a woman. Red is the color of passion, the color of arousal.  I used to prefer it on my nails and toe nails when I was in my twenties. I wore lots of blue sapphires then, mixing sapphires with diamonds. The red, white and blue was a right combination. Laughingly, I would always say that only wealthy women wore red--to match their Gucci bags. Red is my power color, it always has been. I don't prefer it on me these days...but I can say that strangers talk to me when I wear red.

I was once at a holiday party wearing a very conservative wool red dress and pearls instead of the only color that is ‘North East socially acceptable' little black evening dress. A man that I didn’t know stopped me to tell me how good I looked. I thanked him and off-handedly remarked that there were other women at the party wearing red…his response was ‘not like you’…I sat down next to him and spent the rest of the evening in his company.