Happiness of Pursuit

Happiness of Pursuit
Take a look at the following two news stories, both from Washington Post dated Sunday, February 10, 2008.

FRENCHWOMEN (D'UN CERTAIN AGE)
French Women Don't Get Fat and Do Get Lucky
By Pamela Druckerman
Sunday, February 10, 2008; Page B02
PARIS
If I have to get old, I want to do it in Paris.

It's not because of the dank weather, the constant personal snubs or a fetish for unpasteurized cheese. It's because, quite frankly, I'd like to keep having sex.
In the United States, my odds would be grim. Through our 40s, we American women manage to arrange romps on a fairly regular basis. But the latest national statistics show that by our 50s, a third of us haven't had sex in the last year. By our 60s, nearly half have gone sexless in the previous year. Once we hit our 70s, most of us might as well hang up an "out of business" sign. (Needless to say, men fare much better.)

So much for the gym-bodied baby boomers who promised to make 60 the new 40, using Botox as an aphrodisiac. Among today's 50-plus women, the problem of sexlessness is as bad or worse than it was for older women two decades ago.

But not in France. Frenchwomen simply don't suffer from the same dramatic, post-40s slide into sexual obsolescence. Just 15 percent of Frenchwomen in their 50s and 27 percent in their 60s haven't had any sex in the past year, according to a 2004 national survey by France's Regional Health Observatory. Another national survey being released next month will report that cohabiting Frenchwomen over 50 are having more sex now than they did in the early 1990s.

Try not to hate them: Frenchwomen don't get fat, and they do get lucky.

DEPT. OF COCK-EYED OPTIMISTS
Why Republicans Are So Darn Happy
By Eric Weiner
Saturday, February 9, 2008; 6:50 PM
After virtually ignoring happiness for more than 100 years, social scientists are making up for lost time. They're churning out hundreds of research papers on the subject each year. There are happiness conferences, a Journal of Happiness Studies, a World Database of Happiness. Happy, you might say, is the new sad.

All of this cogitating about contentment has revealed much about who's supposedly happy and who isn't. Most studies show that wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones. People with pets or children are no happier than those without. People with active sex lives are -- surprise! -- happier than those without. No single morsel of happiness data, though, is more intriguing than this: Republicans are happier than Democrats.


Can you believe it?

What to make of these two articles? I mean, here is what they told us -

People with active sex lives are -- surprise! -- happier than those without. No single morsel of happiness data, though, is more intriguing than this: Republicans are happier than Democrats.
Do you infer, as I did, that Republicans have more active sex lives than Democrats? Well, I just hope it is always between one man and one woman, as God ordained. If not, happy or not, they will be shunned – at least by card carrying Republicans.

So, a word to the wise – or at least to unmarried Republicans. Try not to look happy.
Did you also get that Democrats are not doing such bang up job, sexwise. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they be happier? But the real question is, why ever not? How come liberals are not closer to libertines?

What else can we infer? Well, there are no Republicans in France. I mean, they have the Republique, but it’s not the same thing. I mean, the French are somewhere to the left of Hubert Humphrey politically. So, if they can have an active sex life and be happy, even in late middle age, how come our Democrats cannot, even in youth? Mind you, this is in spite of the better care today’s middle agers take to stay in shape.

So much for the gym-bodied baby boomers who promised to make 60 the new 40, using Botox as an aphrodisiac. Among today's 50-plus women, the problem of sexlessness is as bad or worse than it was for older women two decades ago.

We know also that French women don’t drive themselves crazy with work outs and diets like American women do. In spite of that, they have more sex and are happier in middle age than at least half of American women – I mean the Democrats. Why is that?
We certainly don’t want all Democrats moving to France. That would end up painting the whole of our country red. And France is not a kind destination for those of us who don’t care to eat snails, drink wine for breakfast, or watch book discussions on TV during prime time.

Confused by all these thoughts, I turned to the one source I was sure could answer my questions – Dr. Albert Eigenstein, Scientific Advisor to the President (SAP). As expected, Eigenstein put my mind at ease.

He told me about a recent study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) that all love – the Republican kind between only one man and one woman, as well the Democratic kind among x humans, where x is an integer – goes through the following phases:

Pursuit – this is where someone captures your interest and you woo that person with all your charm, wit and resources.

Steady State – your feelings are reciprocated and you settle in to a series of loving exchanges.

Break up – Familiarity breeds contempt, you can’t stand each other, start seeing other people – at first sneakily, then openly – and break up with each other.
I told the SAP that I was familiar with all this, having gone around the cycle a few times already. Eigenstein interrupted me and explained that, out of the three phases, we were happy only in phase one. We were, at best, bored in phase 2; and actively unhappy in phase 3. He cautioned me that these findings applied to Americans; not enough research had been done on the French, or other foreigners, to draw any meaningful conclusions.

In other words, Americans can only be happy during the Pursuit. No matter how much sex they have during Steady State, they are not happy. So, Ms. Druckeman – forget about moving to Paris.

Now, that made sense to me. After all, we value the Pursuit of Happiness, right up there, along with Life and Liberty. So, the Happiness of Pursuit is all that matters to us.

I thanked the SAP. He said he had to get going – he was seeing someone new and didn’t want to be late.