Slow Havamal: 91

[kylec]

The 91st verse promises to speak plainly, since Odin knows men and women alike: men lie. Their biggest lies are their mot eloquent, and they seduce even wise women with these lies.

Much ink has been spilled on the demerits of dishonest women. At last, we arrive at the corollary. Men are credited with being excellent liars—more so when the stakes are higher. We will tell women anything in order to seduce them, and women who are often clever in other ways can still fall victim to the right spin.

It’s safe to say in matters of love and lust, both sexes believe what they want to see rather than what stares them in the face. In the case of lies that maintain relations, it strikes me that these are born of a discrepancy in what two people desire. One desires sex while the other wishes to remain chaste, for example; or one desires love while the other only wants sex; or both desire the love of one another, but one also desires loveless sex with additional partners. Were both lovers entirely on the same page, a lie would be unnecessary.

The lie also requires an asymmetrical level of awareness. One party recognizes what the other wants, as well as the fact that it doesn’t align with what they want. The only way to convince a woman to enter into relations is to appear to align with her ideals. Granted, I don’t necessarily believe that when men or women lie their way into relationships that they later ruin, they do so with complete awareness and a high degree of manipulation. We often convince ourselves that we want something more honest than what our nature actually demands, and of course, even good intentions can change along the way. A lie may arise to protect the ideal of a good relationship that has ceased to correspond to that notion in practice.

Since we’ve spent a fair amount of time criticizing women, one of the most important takeaways from this verse is to dispense with a shadow projection. Men and women alike can be guilty of hurting the other. There is no evil sex, only minor variations in the stereotypical ways they operate. The challenge seems to be to know with absolute courage what it is you want, to find someone who also knows and wants the same, and to keep your wants aligned over the course of a changing life, even if that means changing in stride. And it probably does. Few people will have the same desires and the same opinions of one another after forty years of marriage that they had when they first fell in love.