(Most) Women As Romantic Nihilists: What Is "Life's Greatest Prize?"

I'm writing the life of my lover Joan Allman, and in the process I stumbled across the topic of "life's greatest prize."

When I was 59 years old, I believed that most women observed a "no-lie zone" within precious or intimate relationships.  There may be some truth to this, but it is limited.  In the 8 years since, I have learned to believe that women lie all the time when it comes to making things look good, especially involving love, and to avoid hurting people's feelings. I used to think females as a group respected the truth, but not now. They want things to be nice, so they fib. They want to avoid conflict, so they fib. They want to look sexually abstinent and respectable, far more than they want to stand for truth. So they fib.

True story:  I dated Sally S. of Tucson about 15-20 times across four months, stayed overnight at her house half a dozen times, mated with her, and then wrote her a Dear John for reasons I have yet to discover. Yet, a few months later, with her new boyfriend listening, she said to me, "But we only went on what--two dates?"

Such a blatant lie for the ear of the new boyfriend, who was a close enough friend to know how long we dated. Sally herself said the first night we took off our clothes together, "We could have been doing this for months!"  I was tempted to say, "So we did it at least three times on nondates, then?"

The "two dates" lie was what Sally wished was the truth at that moment, so she let it become something she was willing to say in a certain situation, to achieve a certain result.

Suppose a woman loves a man for a year and he disappoints her, and she leaves.  She will soon say it never amounted to much, and believe it. He was her joy and refuge while the Earth went all the way around the Sun once.  That's something.

Yet, because it didn't amount to Everything, that makes it Nothing in most female hearts. I call them emotional nihilists, romantic nihilists.  If a dating relationship doesn't change a woman's whole life, it's worthless.

We didn't come to Earth to have another human change our whole life. We came to learn, nay, to recall the Divine Spark Within, or the heart's own repose, if you prefer, and have IT change our whole life.

I knew this when I was with Joan, but didn't focus on it much because it wasn't her reality. There's a woman making, understandably, a lot of money talking to the public about how to obtain "life's greatest prize," the good, long relationship and love we all crave. Perfect example of the good turning out to be not the ally of the great, but its enemy, its counterfeit. Life's greatest prize is, most simply, Inner Peace--finding the Grand Love inside you, love for yourself, for others, and for the whole Universe. You can have a physical lover right there with you from age 19 to 82 and not have true satisfaction in life. Thus if you are greatly lucky, in that situation, there with your life's companion, your cup of happiness just may be half full. Probably less. 

On the other hand, you can live out life alone, every night at home by yourself, and come to gain Inner Peace, and if you get advanced enough in your experience of it, you lack nothing. Nothing! Guess what: you have life's greatest prize! Divine Mother's unwritable, indescribable bliss in your heart. It does not rise out of romantic love. Romantic love can form one certain part of such inner peace--no more.  

The wonderful romantic love, lasting over decades, that some small percentage of us experience--17%?--is a great treasure.  It is self-deception to call it life's greatest prize, and just as well, since such a small percentage of us end up with it.  I estimate that I myself have received this Valuable Mortal Gift--the good relationship--about 25 years.  I'm 48 years past age 20, so please don't think I speak here of theories I have not lived.

There are organized methods for exploring and developing inner peace, love-wisdom within.  And new ones are appearing among us in this age of the world--look up Alice Bailey, Lester Levenson, Byron Katie, or Leonard Orr on the Internet for examples.  Maybe even Joseph Smith and Donald Walters qualify here.  The most time-tested ones seem to come from the meditation traditions of the East, originating in India.  Other religions have variants of this, whether Christianity, Ba-hai, Mohammedanism, Christian and Religious "Science," so-called.  

More, there are systems not requiring belief in God that point inquiring humans in this same direction, with the oldest and biggest being Buddhism.  Or read Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and philosopher who 2000 years ago knew romantic love, so easily taken from us by death or life's surprises, was not life's greatest prize.  Life's greatest prize is something that, once we get hold of it, cannot be grabbed away by any human force, or, for that matter, any demonic one.  That's another reason it's the greatest prize.