Help with history question

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I am trying (wihtout sucees) to remember the names of two gentlemen of history. I though perhaps some of the teachers or other learned types could help.

There is a tale (possibly apocryphal, but I believe it was an actual happening) that one gentleman was engaged to be married, but called the happy event off (for good) after a conversation with his friend, who was rather misogynistic. In this conversation the misogynist berated his engaged friend (with some rather graphic language) by expounding on how his bride to be, like all other women, were merely vessels of un-yummy body fluids, wastes, viscuous humours and the like. After this conversation, the young fiance (no doubt grossed out and full of unhappy visual images, called off the marriage, and if I recall correctly, was unable to bring himself to marry for the rest of his life.

Can any of you Rode-Hard Scholars assist me in my quest? I appreciate any information. Quite a nasty thing to do to a "friend", don't you agree?

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), January 11, 2002

Answers

"Bachelors know women better than married men. If they didn't, they'd be married too." Henry Louis Mencken

-- paul (wprimeroselane@msn.com), January 11, 2002.

Not familiar with the story of which you speak. Would have been nice had I had a friend as that seven years ago. I could have saved the cost of a divorce attorney. My new adage of life shall be "Marriage , as strikes in a baseball game, Two is more than enough."

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), January 11, 2002.

I doubt it was an actual event, more likely a plot from a fictional story. However, in any case, it is excellent advice.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), January 11, 2002.

It isn't marriage that is so bad! It is divorce! My first marriages were nightmares but, me being the eternal optimist, decided I'd keep trying until I got it right! LOL!! I know...I know! BUT I've been married to DH number three for almoat 24 years. It isn't marriage to blame, it is bad choices!

-- Ardie/WI (ardie54965@hotmail.com), January 11, 2002.

Not only bad choices but a lack of grit among many of those who divorce.

I've seen any number of marriages fall apart not so much because there was anything fundamentally wrong with them but because of a lack of resolve on the part of one or both spouses to making a long-term relationship work. There's plenty of relationships that should be terminated to be sure but I'm convinced that most come apart because there just isn't the will to make them work.

The human species would be in a hell of a state if the majority of its members were unable to make a long-term relationship work. That way lies extinction.

.......Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), January 11, 2002.



Can't say I know the story directly, but have you read Aquinas? I am quite certain that he hated women and he was fairly influential I guess....

Oscar

-- Oscar H. Will III (owill@mail.whittier.edu), January 11, 2002.


Something weird here. Maggie and I have just celebrated our 40th anniversity, which is remarkable only because neither of us looks like we have reached 40 years of age! Learn to argue well, learn to submit when you are actually right, and learn to do what your partner REALLY wants when you don't really care that much. It's give and take. We all understand "take". It's the "give" part that too many of us haven't quite figured out! Uncle Brad, the Philosopher, but quite successfuly so! GL!

-- Brad (homefixer@SacoRiver.net), January 11, 2002.

to quote Feste from Shakepeare's 12th Night "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." Having recently celebrated our 30 anniversay you can see that I think marriage is good for me. The recent statistics that hundreds of divorces were abandoned after september eleventh certainly supports the earlier suggestion that committment is lacking in many marriages. The story you question sounds entirely fictitious

-- kirby johnson (kirbyj@deskmedia.com), January 11, 2002.

It could have been in one of many stories written by the greek author "Homer". In one of his books he has the phrase "Women, you can't live with them, and you can't live without them".

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), January 11, 2002.

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