I have revived Kobra Khanoom’s advice column because the older I get the more ups and downs I experience, the more like her I become. So if you need a naneh to help you with a problem ask Kobra Khanoom and she will try her best to answer your question. It is, after all, up to you to listen. Email me at MsKobra@yahoo.com
Question: Do women need more love and attention than men? Too often I see wives who look sad. They are worn down and you can see it in their spirit and body language. Is it lack of love and sex? Is it repetition of daily activities? Is it the inevitable product of long-term relationships and ageing? What can these women do to lift their spirits?
Kobra Khanoom’s Answer: Funny how I am starting to get some more philosophical, rather than the usual personal, questions. This one from a reader sounds better suited for a women-studies college essay. But I am addicted to answering questions so let me give it a shot:
I think that if you look carefully you will see the same signs of fatigue and low-spiritedness in men. Only men feel more responsible for their own happiness so they tend to hide their disappointment with their lives. Women blame men, men blame themselves.
Men think their pleasure is their own responsibility while women expect to be handed it on a platter. Women need to learn to seek their pleasure. That I think more than any qualitative factor is the difference and why you see more unhappy women than men. Women are also just freer to show their unhappiness and feel less responsible for it. Men, poor things, still tend to hide their feelings.
I think also often people are unhappy because they expect too much from their lives. This comes from a certain arrogance that we Iranians particularly share. We think we are so smart, so great that our lives should be better. We think we deserve better than the rest. It is a sometimes productive but mostly paralysing sense of entitlement that Iranian woman especailly possess. I think men and women can be happier if they expect less, spend more time trying to satisfy each other and take the persuit of pleasure more seriously. No one is going to just give you a good time you have to plan for it and work at it. Most important is to approach one’s own goals, life, happiness and need for pleasure with a sense of humor. Who says life has to be “happy”. I will settle with “interesting”.
Kobra Khanoon
MsKobra@yahoo.com
