"Saved by the love of a good woman"...do you think it really happens?

[Berry Cool]

This is something that's been nagging at my mind the past few days...especially after today's coverage of Ted Kennedy's funeral. It's not so much about him as it is about people in general.

It seemed to me that I heard over and over again praise for Ted's wife Vicki. Nothing wrong with that, obviously. But what I heard over and over again was that part of her wonderfulness was that "She SAVED him." In other words, at the point of his life when they got together, he was going off the rails, and she singlehandedly transformed his life and got him back on track and made him what he was from that point onward.

The more I heard this meme--repeated over and over, primarily by men--the more it began to bother me.

It seems that we as a culture are very fond of and very attached to the idea of the Man Saved By the Love of a Good Woman. We adore the story of the guy who is falling apart, headed for a disastrous end, until finally he meets the smart, loving, capable, got-it-together female who picks him up, dusts him off, straightens him out and makes him fly right. And, after he does, the man spends the rest of his life in deep gratitude to the woman who "rescued him from himself."

Our books are full of it. Our movies are full of it. And I didn't hear a male announcer on TV say it today without a sweet wistful tone of admiration in his voice. As if each one of them either fancied himself that same kind of man, saved by his own woman--or longing to be, anyway.

Yet, in reality, my understanding (I admit I haven't been there myself) is that the Myth of the Man Saved by the Love of a Good Woman has done untold damage to women over the years...smart, loving, capable women who thought that if they just loved a desperate and foundering man enough, they'd be able to "save" him...only to find that he was going to go down the tubes anyway...and then blamed themselves for not being loving enough, or smart enough, or capable enough, or no-nonsense enough to succeed at being one of those heroines of which we sing the praises over and over when we say: "You know, she SAVED him."

I thought I'd ask those on DU with more experience of this.

Are you a man who was Saved by the Love of a Good Woman? Do you think it was all her doing, or did you contribute to your own salvation? Are you a man who a Good Woman once tried to save, but it didn't work?

Are you a Good Woman who ever saved a man with your love? Or did you try and fail? Do you think you failed because you weren't good enough, or because he didn't want badly enough to be saved?

Do you think a "Good Woman" is ever really enough to save a man? And should it be a woman's job to "save" a man, anyway? Doesn't all this just sort of play into the old idea (Reaganesque, I might say) that men are boorish uncivilized creatures, and it's a woman's job to tame them and clean them up and make them decent people, but a man can stumble along for years making a mess of things by himself until he meets the one "right" woman who can fix him up?

Mind you--this isn't to knock Vicki Kennedy or any other woman who ever had a positive influence on a man's life. I guess I'm just trying to see beyond the romantic haze of the "She SAVED him" fairytale.