It's not just a 'trip with the boys' to her

Q. I want to take a golfing trip to Ireland with the boys -- my girlfriend is inexplicably fuming that I have not taken a trip with her in the year we've been together. Should I have gone overseas with her first?

New York

A. She wanted you to want to go with her first. Don't play dumb.

Please don't mistake this for an endorsement of inexplicable fuming, either. If she has something to say, she should say it.

Maybe I'm wrong about what she would say; for all I know you broke promises, or she's controlling, or had some unspeakable childhood incident in which she was brutally denied a golf trip to Ireland.

But here's the thing. There is a general power structure to dating.

Even when the ultimate goal is commitment, the person who asks someone out has, roughly speaking, two intermediate goals: getting sex, and avoiding humiliation.

This gives the quarry real power, since s/he decides unilaterally who achieves these goals.

Thanks to evolution and/or socialization (discuss amongst yourselves), men still are largely the initiators, so I'm going to assign genders just to avoid a he/she/his/hers political-propriety pileup.

So. Once a woman commits to a man, especially if the relationship is sexual, the power shifts. Now it's her turn to fear humiliation. She doesn't want to learn she has committed -- in other words, surrendered her power -- to someone who was only along for the ride. She is deeply invested in a man's investment in her, even if she has her own doubts about him.

Which is why a trip to Ireland with the boys when you've taken her nowhere could lead to fuming you don't comprehend. She might not even be able to defend it logically. She is simply off-balance, and reading your behavior for signs of how high a priority she is. And I'm guessing the ambitious boy bash was not a good sign.

Postscript (aka, the whole point): The more secure people are, the less of a concern humiliation becomes. Their power is internal, and not as heavily dependent upon their position relative to others -- and therefore they're not so invested in an outcome that they can't weather the occasional disappointment. Just a backdrop against which to view jealousy, control and other inexplicable fuming.

Q. I met my girlfriend four months ago. This relationship has been like no other. In fact, we pretty much decided during our second month together that we want to get married, and set an unofficial date for August 2008. I recognize it seems crazy from the outside, but it doesn't feel crazy from the inside.

Are there any "warning signs" that might point to this being hasty rather than fabulous and romantic? Her parents got engaged after two months and mine after six, and both couples have been married 30-plus years.

San Francisco

A. Even without your unusual family history, I wouldn't dwell on the it's-sometimes-fab-but-mostly-ghastly issue; whether it works for you two hinges entirely on you two.

You can do yourselves a favor, though, by ensuring that you -- and not "August 2008," or history -- are the only ones writing this fairy tale. It's easy to get so caught up in the narrative that you won't hear of an imperfect ending. But doubts never shut up for long.

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