Ask a Stand-Up Comedian
Have you always wanted to know the secrets to life? To a happy relationship? How to drive the big rigs and experience the fulfilling career you've always wanted?
No one affiliated with this Web site knows any of those things, but if you send in your questions, we'll be glad to answer them in a completely useless and at times cosmically insulting way. WARNING: These columns get raunchy sometimes. Read at your own risk.
I've read that in every relationship one person does
the majority of the loving, and the other is the
recipient of most of the love. Is it better to love or be loved?
--Brian Clark Jr.
Basil White: Lemme guess: you feel that your love is unrequited, that the love you're making is greater than the love you're taking. You're right. Anyone who wonders whether it's better to give or receive love is getting the short end of the love stick. But there's hope.
These days, everyone's a burnt Croissan'wich (tm) away from shooting up a mall, so the myth of sincere pair-bonding is pretty much dead. To get what you want, you have to manipulate, control and promote your worth. This may involve doing things you don't want to do. Get over it. You think the guy from Blue's Clues (tm) got the job by being nice? Satan still has knuckle marks on his casting couch for that one.
Successful relationships follow Basil White's patented Rule of Love: He who makes the love makes the rules. Associate every positive thing you do with a behavior you want to reinforce. An example: "I brought you a salad. See, that's what you get when you don't gnaw at the restraints." It's about give and take, the carrot and the stick. Mostly taking and the stick, but you want to mix it up. Hope is the best way to control the behavior of the people you pretend to love in order to get what you want. Ask any TV evangelist, if you can catch them getting in and out of the limo on their way to luxury "fundraisers." Pimpin'!
In every nurturing relationship there are two roles: the dominant and the submissive. Stop thinking about love as an exchange between two people and cherish it for what it really is: a way to fulfill your needs, at least until crotch-mounted interfaces become the norm for the Internet.