The Opposite Sex

Americans, of course, are terribly fond of examining in obsessive detail the damage our parents did to us and Germans aren't far off the same mark. But most Spaniards seem to genuinely like their parents. One will find children happily living at home well into their 30s, until they're ready to marry, at which point the old song seems to apply: "I want a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad". As I was escaping the heat in Madrid by visiting Rosa, we had time for several intensive days of full-out feminist thinking and arrived at a wonderful epiphany. It's the relationship one had with the parent of the opposite sex that is definitive in determining one's romantic trajectory. Thus, my close relationship with my father ensured I am capable of strongly bonding to men in extended relationships. My friends who didn't have that tend toward unsatisfactory and/or truncated flings and don't make it much beyond two or three years at most. And just think of Germany: so many men with German mothers).

I'm sorry to say, then, that things look grim for those of you who had fucked-up parents of the opposite sex. But don't think I'm home free just because I had a good father. It seems pretty apparent that I am incapable of being attracted to a nice normal son of a nice normal mother. Why? Hell if I know! But Project Mind Made Up will serve as a useful test and is already generating interesting data. In the meantime, Rosa, you and I clearly have more work to do, before we get it all figured out.