That's dating not fucking. Fucking, I don't know: I'm not Cooke or McNair, my options are limited. Still, I like to think that I respect myself enough--and control myself enough--to stay a man even when a belated boyhood beckons.

.......

Nothing more to say. I see my father in this line. Thanks Mr. C.

I think that's an important point. Everybody has been so quick to judge without having a clue has to how the McNair's relationship works. I won't even begin to speculate, but I've seen people suggest that McNair had this coming. The guy obviously made a HUGE mistake in judgement, but to suggest death is an appropriate punishment for having sex with someone that isn't your spouse? There should be a lot of worried people in this world if that's the case.

I also don't know if there's any parallel Phil Hartman lesson; after all, the perpetrator of the murder-suicide there was his actual wife, with whom he had been broken up and reunited with multiple times.

Having a condo with a friend? Surely his wife must of known about it. Did he have more than one? Do all married atheletes have this arrangement?

I know if I had a condo with my buddy I'm pretty sure my wife would know what's up.

Occasionally things go terribly, horribly wrong, as they did in this case. The point is that taking frequent risks, and not accounting for what you're doing increases that chance. It doesn't make it just, nor does it make it less tragic.

I'm a young, single, female living in the city. My perspective is different, though I have a brother and tons of male friends, but I am still a woman so that is my disclaimer. I constantly have to deal with the persistent worrying of my parents (mostly my mother) back home about protecting myself both physically and emotionally and being careful about the sort of men I date or bring home or let into my life period. We always hear the same adage growing up as young women, "there are some men that are just crazy." We've all heard the stories, or in my case, know someone personally whose life was taken by a crazy and obsessive ex-boyfriend. There are some that are abusive and some that are just plain no good. She always begins and ends with "There are some crazy men out there, especially in the city" (Nevermind the fact that she lived in the city, younger than me for over 15 years in the 60s and 70s). The kicker here though is that the same applies for women. I can't tell you how many of my male friends have gotten caugh up in similar situations to the ones you are repeating in your second to last paragraph. I've dated guy railing about crazy exes or even crazy mothers of their children and always thought, "okay at what point do your blame yourself for getting tied to such a crazy in the first place" It's easy to rail against them after the fact and label them the "crazy woman", but where was your common sense when you had a child with this nutcase and therefore tied your life to her.

The signs are often there, but the thought process to get out of it isn't usually. I don't want to blame anyone for being harmed in these situations, especially physically harmed. I definitely don't think McNair had "anything coming", that's ridiculous. That sort of saying like a women with a crazy ex had it coming to her when he killed her. Not true. But at what point do we start taking responsibility and protecting ourselves in order to prevent getting in these situations in the first place. Most young women are somehow taught this (or are supposed to be) and trained to see the warning signs if they are there, it just doesn't seem like men are. nearly enough. Maybe I'm wrong though. I'm interested in reading what the guys have to say.

Maybe he still had extensive business relationships in Tenn.

Whatever. I know my spouse would have told me to lose that place.

No, I know you weren't suggesting it. You explicitly said you weren't. I've just seen it in other forums.

As far as the condo, I know his family lived in MS, but he had a number of business ventures in Nashville, which is why he had the condo.

The responsibility men have to take for themselves really casts a wide net, because whatever happens has a profound effect on everyone in your life.

Maybe feeling old. Trying to recapture youth...

A 20 year old would help him out here. Both physically and more importantly mentally.

It is an interesting thing though - we don't know what their arrangement may have been, but does it really matter? Won't it be society that judges, for the public, his actions and their consequences?

And the general consensus, as far as I can tell, particularly in light of the recent spat of adulteries (McNair, Sanford, Ensign), is that it is wrong to cheat on your wife. And the current perception is, that is exactly what he was doing, perhaps with more than one woman.

But to the broader point of your post - it is about responsibility, not just for our bodies or sex lives, but our lives in general. Our sex lives are not separate from the rest of our life, it is part and parcel. Particularly when you consider the consequences of your choices. And anyone who thinks that they won't ever get caught, and/or have to face some kind of consequence, is a fool.

Sanford has lost his wife, his family, the respect of, well, everyone. His career is essentially over, in my opinion. And that is the consequence of the choice that he made.

And while I do not say that McNair deserved to be shot - that is the consequence of the choices that he made.

So not only is it about responsibility, it is also about thinking with the head on top of your shoulders, as opposed to the one between you legs.

As a woman, I felt the same way instinctively about McNair. The man was reckless, in a deeply pragmatic sense. Did not understand the vulnerability of mortality, especially his own. Nor the incredible vulnerability of Kazemi and what that could prompt her to do. To my mind this was a lack of consideration and attentiveness that cannot simply be blamed on a man's general lack of sensitivity. His radar was shut the hell OFF.

And I'm shocked in a more personal sense as to how he, as a lover (philandering and moral judgments aside), could fail, on a visceral level, to understand his lover's state. And FALL ASLEEP in her presence. Just because she didn't let it show doesn't mean that as a grown-ass man he couldn't objectively see that her life really had taken a bad turn. A DUI is NOT something to shrug off - if she did, he should have called her on it. (And the doubling rent, or the UNBELIEVABLE gift of an Escalade that SHE WAS THEN REQUIRED TO PAY OFF. How is that a gift?! She's 20 years old! What 20 yr old is gonna be banking like that, working at D&B?)

You certainly got the woman's perspective right too, but we all know people who just don't listen to those inner voices. And I have to say in defense of better judgment, that Kazemi did not use hers in this situation. But then, she was 20 years old, involved with a far older man. Too old herself probably for her family to intervene, but young enough to fall into depending on McNair's judgment and feelings rather than her own. And clearly leading an edgy lifestyle.

What I end up bemoaning, aside from the warning you elicit from the whole mess, is the general lack of appropriate role models and examples that girls as a whole face today. That could make a young woman like Kazemi think that any of that was somehow going to WORK OUT for her. As much attention gets paid to the troubles of young men in today's world I wish as much would get paid to how much this society continues to let its young women down.

I like this post because I hope thoughts like this coming from a man open dialog about the responsibility everyone has for their own actions. The same way that young women are constantly warned that their actions will have repercussions, we need to be doing the same thing with young men. And not just about avoiding violent encounters with other young men. Some serious discussions need to happen so that guys (and women) can clearly see the warning signs when someone they're interested in is unstable; why regardless of what birth control method someone says they're using you need to always have condoms; and that parenthood is the most serious job in the world and not to be taken lightly.

The bottom line for guys is don't ever pass by a Steve McNair story, a babies daddy on Maury, or your coworker whose ex won't let him see his kids and think for even a second that that can't happen to you.

I imagine that one reason why this is unaddressed is objectification, though. You don't fear emotional vulnerability to an object--that's just weak. And so perhaps in some cases, those men who objectify more also have a more difficult time evaluating consequences?

Then there's the orientation of young male sexuality in general, which is largely focused on sex without regard to the aftermath. I'm not sure how of that is due to successful reproductive strategies over an evolutionary timeline, and that discussion seems to always leads to more heat than light in comment threads, but I'd be surprised if it weren't one factor, however minor.

Sadly, I wouldn't worry about brothers not having a drink with you after this one, TNC. I'd worry about why it just slipped out their ears, off their backs.... The conversation around this post just doesn't seem as thoughtful as it usually is.

I like the take that TNC gives on it here: that men should learn to be a little more cautious with themselves. I'd love to flip it and say that women shouldn't have to learn that fear, but let's face it, the world isn't getting less dangerous. There's crazy people of both sexes out there, but somehow men have never learned that fear for self that even privileged or wealthy women learn by about the time they're eight.

Not that gays and lesbians don't face many of the same issues, but casting this discussion of heterosexual relationships in terms of how "men" and "women" behave seems pretty blinkered.

I like what dmf had to say about playing with people's emotions and hopes, and not taking responsibility for what we're doing. We don't know anything about McNair's relationship with his wife (and he most certainly didn't deserve to die, whatever the case), but it seems apparent from what her acquaintances are saying that he was letting her believe there was a future there (while there doesn't seem to have been). Or at least, he would have known she was wanting/expecting more, whatever he might have thought he was communicating. She was an adult and you've got to take your disappointments in life, but he just looks so dishonorable in the thing, and that's a real tragedy, that his family can't see him any longer as the honorable guy (I'm presuming) they had seen him as before his death.

No doubt, the old "gentleman's honor" construct was fraught with abuses, and likely honored more in the breach than in the observance, but I think we would do well to put more of a focus on our own integrity in our relations with people, and not just what we can get away with, what we can put over.

Co-signing on an Escalade for a 20 year old who is not your daughter strikes me as incredibly stupid. Perhaps it started as an act of charity on his behalf, but it shows that he wasn't thinking normally. He may have been smitten, who the hell knows, but on some level, this woman believed that they were going to be together. The car, the vacation seem to suggest this. Perhaps his wife, as many people in Nashville, turned a blind eye to it all because he was 'taking care of home'.

I guess what this means is that men need _more_, not _less_ training than women, to learn the same lessons. But also that those lessons are more difficult to teach. (Speaking generally, of course, as one must speak when discussing 'men' and 'women'.)

This isn't quite fair, I'm betting there's a big market for it, but the drug companies don't seem to think so for this reason. They do have products that have shown to be reliable thus far, but the technical difficulties of male birth control are much higher than female birth control.

While a lot of people don't like the radio guy Tom Leykis, one of his more redeeming thoughts is that men must take control of their own birth control. To him, that means wearing a condom every time you have sex if you don't want to have kids. He also talks a lot about red flags in women and what you should avoid. The problem is, there isn't a guy who isn't a complete dog with women that's talking about these things. I mean, any woman who would date a married man is not a woman you should be seeing.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/celebrity/sam_cooke/index.html

And in depth in Our Uncle Sam (www.OurUncleSam.com)

Erik Greene
Great-nephew of Sam Cooke
Author, "Our Uncle Sam: The Sam Cooke Story From His Family's Perspective"
www.OurUncleSam.com

And it doesn't just happen to star athletes. It can also happen to guys who've been laid off. It also happened to Buzz Aldrin, who pretty much fell apart in the early '70s after he retired from NASA.

But I also have to consider instances where cultural fabric has provided an equally strong counterweight to the natural tendencies of human nature. And this is what the McNair story has shown to be so profoundly lacking. There IS NO cultural sensibility (you can call it honor, caution, respectability, or whatever) that provided a counterpoint for either McNair or Kazemi's mind. I suppose in this country such counterpoints might come from one's religious community, but as recent events have shown (Sanford, Ensign, etc), such communities are not always strong, well-knit, or self-aware enough to provide genuinely counterbalancing forces.

I'm not overlooking that such a cultural fabric wouldn't come with its own problems - repression, abuse of power, etc., but it seems like we as a society tend to swing on the opposite end of the extreme, where it's pretty much nonexistent. And that is equally dangerous and damaging.

Commenters are following right on TNC's post and saying "McNair should bear some responsibility for creating this situation." I gotta call bullshit on that. You don't know anything about his life, and saying any reasonable person would ever think any relationship would lead to a murder/suicide is just foolish IMO.

You are really trying to have it both ways, saying "I"m pretty libertarian" and "I don't know what arrangements" but then condemning McNair's "recklessness". When in fact you have no idea what was going on between him and his wife. And frankly, if you were really pretty libertarian, you'd think it was none of your business.

Anyway, somehow I think there's a big prudishness coming out, older guys with older girls looking down on 20 year old woman as somehow less than worthy of attention. All this fucking vs dating stuff. You got no right to judge, no right to throw stones like that. The man didn't die because he went out with a younger woman. Let's just get off that meme right now, because it's pure bull.

Sometimes crazy shit happens, isolated incidents of craziness, and the idea that you are gonna pull life lessons from it is ridiculous. Call it for what it is - randomness, craziness - and not implicate every person in a relationship that you clearly don't approve of morally, regardless of talking about how we are "pretty libertarian". Because condemning a dude for going out with a 20 year old girl without knowing any details is not libertarian, but puritantical, age snobbery at it's worst. If the girl was Scarlett Johanssen, or some Princess, and not a waitress, you would never go there. Never.

To be clear, I'm not promoting abstinence as a birth control method, I'm just saying we can resist if we want to. I, as a man, am just tired of hearing men "can't help themselves."

I mean no disrespect, but blaming McNair for not being responsible is not the same as blaming a woman for wearing skimpy clothes. The two things aren't equivalent. The guy had responsiblilities, a wife, kids, a mortgage, whether he should have seen it coming is irrelevant. The fact is that he walked out on his responsibilities. Saying so isn't sexist. It's real.

A friend of mine who I saw for the first time in 3 years this last week is raising his kids with the help of his mother because his girlfriend walked out. Saying that she was irresponsible isn't victim blaming. You're right McNair didn't die because he went out with a younger woman, people do that all the time. If anything he died because he was irresponsible, and people die from being iresponsible all the time too.

No one deserves to die, but if a person abrogates their responsibilites, then they actively choose to suffer the consequences. The victim in this isn't Steve McNair it's his family who now have to pick up the pieces, and no one is blaming them.

Anyway, somehow I think there's a big prudishness coming out, older guys with older girls looking down on 20 year old woman as somehow less than worthy of attention. All this fucking vs dating stuff. You got no right to judge, no right to throw stones like that. The man didn't die because he went out with a younger woman.

Please show me where I said Steve McNair died because he went out with a younger woman. Your post is filled with these sort of strawmen. Maybe you're just pissed-off, and don't actually want a response. That's fine too. But there are all of about two words that I've actually written in your post.

Who says he walked out on his responsibilities? Was he not supporting his children? Was he not seeing them on a regular basis? I agree with The Foulness on most of his points, and am not quite sure how McNair died because he was irresponsible. The clothes analogy might not be perfect, but would it be fair to say that a woman who went him with a stranger from a bar and got killed died because of her irresponsibility? I don't think so. Not at all. McNair got killed because this 20 year old girl was a fucking nut. McNair might be dumb, but that doesn't mean he actively chose to suffer the consequences. The victim in this is Steve McNair AND his family.

I also wanted to comment on this point: "I know for a fact that some of the everyday precautions that are second nature to me personally will never show up on the radar of my brother, or my male coworkers. It's a privilege most men will never realize they have that they can walk to their cars at night from a movie theater without two different weapons close at hand and an eye on every shadow that moves."

And really, what I was struck by is how sadly ordinary it is for men to kill women in murder-suicides and NO ONE starts claiming conspiracy theory there. What unsettles people, what powers their disbelief is that we don't expect 20 year old women to be violent. We absolutely expect - to the point of being utterly unsurprised - when 20 year old men act in the same manner.

Moreover, one thread I've noticed with coverage of the McNair story (not TNC's, I just mean in general) is that men are quick to say, "I'm not judging." But my sense is that if the story were about a woman, who was cuckolding her husband, ended up being murdered by her lover, there would be much deeper moralizing (and a lot less apologizing) for her behavior. I'm not suggesting McNair deserves greater condemnation for creeping on his wife and family. I do think, however, this story is a perfect illumination of the inequalities in gender, media, and social opinion.

In it, the author insists on referring to murder-suicides as “extended suicides,” since he opines that the killer selfishly considers his or her victim an integral part of their worldly existence. He also notes that roughly three-quarters of such extended suicides are due to “amorous paranoia”—that is, love affairs gone bad due to delusions of jealousy or betrayal.

Though it is pure speculation, that sounds a lot like what went down with McNair. Seems that the "you are my world" and "who is the other woman" kinds of crazy are the ones you've got to be on the lookout for. Unfortunately, that is also the kind of "crazy" that we tend to consider "romantic."

The whole romantic ideal has been in western culture for awhile now but there is a reason that romantic love tends not to end well in literature. At some point we need to recognize that Romeo and Juliet are something to avoid rather than enact for real.

Like you said, we don't know McNair's family arrangement so we don't know that he was necessarily being irresponsible. The gun and the fact that the women he was involved with was willing to murder him in his sleep were x-factors that responsibility won't necessarily cover. Its entirely possible that this woman showed no signs of the direction in which she was headed. Sometimes people get fooled and it goes very badly for them.

The man paid the ULTIMATE cost for his 'irresponsibility' - his own life. Is that not enough?

Sad indeed.

You can tell me you aren't putting the girl down by saying she worked at Dave and Buster's, but the condescension seems clear to me. And you did feel the need to point out the woman's age in a post talking about how men need to up their level of personal responsibility in relationships. So no, you didn't say McNair died becaue he went out with a younger woman, but to me you certainly implied it was reckless to go out with a young girl with a not-so-elite job, which sounded as if you were distinguishing it from say dating a 30-year old law associate. And I don't see how the distinction is important.

I will admit to being pissed off, it pains me to see another athlete dying young no matter the circumstances. But I'm also sort of ticked off by what seems to be a double standard because McNair is a man.

If we were discussing a "Jody Foster in the Accused" situation and people were saying how reckless she was to go to that bar, in that outfit, and act that way...we would all be screaming that we were blaming the victim, and rightly so.

Yet somehow with McNair, we can say why was he dating that girl, who worked at that restaurant, and say how reckless it was, which to me sounds like saying "he should have known better"...when I just say NO, he shouldn't have known better. Mark Sanford should have known better, he fucked up his marriage, he should have known that was gonna happen. And if that was all that happened to McNair, I'd have no problem with what I see as these accusations. But the man was murdered. I don't see much causation between his behavior and his murder, except that he got involved with a one in 10 million chance woman who thought the best thing to do to end it was a murder/suicide.

Anyway, I respect your interest in promoting stronger values among men, but doing it on the back of a man's murder seems unnecessarily harsh.

I accept the risks of commuting by bike, living in a high crime neighborhood and practicing martial arts. In the past, I worked a high risk job (bike messenger).

I'm well aware I might die or be injured from any of these, but I choose to do them anyway. The rewards outweigh the risks. Similarly, I sleep with women without knowing them very well. I'm fully cognizant of the risk of crazy chicks. It's not completely safe, but to me, the reward is worth the risk.

Or "Da Bears" guys on SNL pitting Jordan vs Ditka:-)

The stranger analogy doesn't quite work either. I'm having trouble describing what I mean. At 36 a person should know better and should be more responsible than to hook up with a 20 year old woman, and cheat on his wife. Just because people do it all the time doesn't make it ok. No he didn't deserve to die, but, his wife deserved better treatment than she was recieving.

I wish I could describe it better.

On the one hand, TNC, I agree. On the other hand, hasn't this pretty much always been true here? And how do we make a change? This statement struck me as empty moralizing.

Then you got into what brothers should do, and I'm wondering if this is a post about black men or men in general.

End of the day, I thought the most interesting point was about the crazy chick mythology. But I didn't get the Denzel reference, and I'd like to hear more about the crazy chick piece. I think it will be interesting to see the narrative around his girlfriend develop. I don't think it will be pretty.

No, I'm with you. His behavior isn't necessarily excusable, and I'm probably pushing back a bit harder than I should based on conversations I've had away from this site. I just don't know if it is necessarily irresponsible for a 36 year old to hook up with a 20 year old. In this case, it certainly seems that way, but again, we don't know the circumstances of he and his wife's relationship.

What I am NOT questioning is why McNair and Kazemi were together. I frankly don't care to delve into the whole adultery/cheating/sleeping around issue. Like others have said, not our business. There is more to McNair and his wife, but that is beyond the scope of decent speculation at this point. I also made it clear in my original post that I am setting aside moral judgments.

What I WAS questioning though was the lack of sensibility to the general situation that was displayed by both parties, but particularly by McNair. And this too is what TNC I think was trying to write about, from a man's perspective. I was trying to extrapolate, wrongly or rightly, a more general state of affairs that the stories we've been seeing lately seem to indicate: that often times, cultural mores provide us that moment of pause or self-reflection to say, uhhh what is REALLY going on with me... but no such moment seemed to have occurred here.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that the self-ironic examination is an endangered species of awareness. And it is not a skill many people have naturally at all. It is something learned from observation, from the cultural mix. Sanford doesn't have it. Neither did Ensign, or McNair, or any of these people.

On the other hand, this uses the Mc Nair tragedy as an example, as a cautionary tale, but insofar as being alert to danger is concerned, I also think one must consider this: if you make a living with 250-350 pound men coming full tilt at you with the intention of hitting you with all their strength and athletic skill; if you make a living in a position whose only success is to remain unmoved in the face of violent pressure from such athletes, then is it really likely that you are going to consider a twenty year old woman with whom you are making love a threat to your person?

The main people I've noticed who seem to oppose it are feminists who want women to be completely in control of reproduction.

The main people I've noticed who seem to oppose it are people who want women to be completely in control of reproduction (note: this is a small minority, even among feminists).

As we've discussed, men don't generally have a physical fear of their partner and they tend to objectify women's beauty attributes, which leads to:

To Woman: Why'd you stay with that crazy mofo dude?
Answer: *eyes cast down* He beat me and told me I was worthless.

To Man: Why'd you stay with that crazy mofo chick?
Answer: *eyes light up* Omigod, she was totally hot and amazing in the sack!

In my opinion, we have spent a whole lot of time talking about Sarah Palin here and elsewhere, but when it gets right down to it, a huge segment of the populace including highly educated men and women have been charmed into believing that an ignorant and incompetent politician should be the standard bearer for their philosophy and ideological beliefs, trusting the fate of the world and our nation to her hands even when she publicly drops the ball again and again--you tell me why.

Most guys who do that stuff end up with a keyed-up car, or a broken windshield, or F___ YOU CHEATING PRICK in bright red paint all over their front door, or a call to the wife, or a number of things.

Occasionally it spirals into this level of a tragedy.

But his risky behavior opened a Pandora's Box of unknown contents.

If you engaged in that same sort of risky behavior as your boy I'd be telling you the same thing--'Take these words home and think em thru / Cause the next post I write might be about you.'

Men throughout history have been seduced via their sex drives and egos, or better yet, have let their appetites short-circuit their risk assessment.

Thats why sex is such a major part of espionage, for example.

Some men always have crazy girlfriends or girls around (like one of my friends) because I honestly think they like the drama. Same thing goes for women. My whole point was that sometimes (not ALL the time) men know damn well that these women are crazy as some women know their men are crazy and wait until after the fact (usually after some boiling point of nuttiness) to comment on it. This goes back to my statement...at what point did you figure this out? If you knew before you went THERE and you still went THERE, you really should have known better, regardless of how hot she was or amazing the sex is.

Still, I agree that Sam was only scratching the surface and left us way too soon.

OH YES. This, I agree with -- have seen it often, and it crosses gender boundaries with ease.

You're kidding, right?

But everytime people say McNair "put himself at risk" it sounds like they are saying he asked for it, or he should have known better. And I think that's nuts. There is no rational lesson to be learned here. It was an insane incident and should be treated as such.

Which is why the Accused analogy works for me. And the argument around that film, where people would say "She put herself at risk" for what happened to her by her actions, which I and I imagine you and Coates and most if not all commenters on this blog would say BULLSHIT to. I mean, we all put ourselves at various risk everyday by walking out the door, driving in our car, falling in lust or love with someone...but the idea that somehow we should know it might lead to a Fatal Attraction type murder or a rape just strikes me as wrong, as subscribing to reverse causality. It puts the burden on the victim, which is just wrong to me.

Women can be pretty calculating about romance and sex; its why for example women have the reputation for being much more skillful and subtle cheaters than men, although these are all generalizations.

Eddie George talks here about Steve searching for something.

I think this may have a lot to do with why Steve was in this situation.

It was never about "getting a little"...

It was about being a human being and going through life.

I'm still waiting for them to reveal that she was pregnant.

Then again, maybe she was just a delusional 20 year old who thought she had hit the jackpot, only to be told, "We're just having fun."

I know I sound like a broken record, but the class and money thing is real, here, too. He was rich. She was barely scraping by, from what it seems. This is a huge power-imbalance. This is the other side of so-called "gold-digging;" there's a lot of pathos locked up in it. I don't know details at all, but it has the elements of what I consider a rather under-told, for how common it is, tragedy.

The older I get, the more I see socioeconomic aspirations as the real steamy underside of a lot of dating and sex practices.

Sorry, I just shivered - the ghost of The Great Gatsby just entered the room. I have an open question for readers: the person who broke your hearts the hardest, whom it took you the longest to get over, were they higher on social and economic ladders than you? Or were they lower?

But my real issue with all this is that, as a culture, we seem to have forgotten a lot of what dating is for. It's not just about driving the man up the wall and forcing him to spend money when he really just wants sex NOW. And it's certainly not because women are such shrinking violets that we can't go out without men to take us. Dating is supposed to be about finding out gradually, under controlled circumstances, whether some total stranger is someone you want to get to know a whole lot better. Under uncontrolled circumstances.

The risk of getting murdered is pretty low, for both men and women. But the risk of being entangled with a nut job is the same for both. People who insist on sex on the first few dates seem to end up with this problem a lot.

(Of course, waiting for marriage to have sex has the opposite problem. You want to find out if you're compatible with a partner both mentally AND sexually, so you have to put both to the test at some point. But it's probably a good idea to rule out the most obvious mental incompatibilities before moving on to sexual compatibility. Not just to avoid crazies, either. You don't want to be mixed up with even a sane person if you hate his/her guts.)

"And when she gets all that sleep wiped out of her eyes, look her right in eyes and tell her..."

And, based on TNC's disclaimers about being a libertarian and not knowing McNair's home life, this advice is true regardless of a man's marital status or marital arrangement. So far so good. But then, McNair's death is used as a cautionary tale illustrating this point. hmmmmm?

McNair's death as cautionary tale doesn't work for me. What steps could McNair, or more importantly, the single or married guy who is supposed to learn from McNair take to avoid a similar fate? Is it to not date 20 year olds? Iranians? Dave & Buster employees?

To me the whole post and many of the comments are premised on the fact the girl was "obviously" crazy because as one poster stated "many 20 year olds are." Really?

McNair dated this girl for 6 months and felt comfortable enough to sleep in her presence. I haven't heard any reports that their relationship was volatile, violent, etc. I haven't heard any reports that the girl had a history of violence or mental instability. I just don't know if there ever was a reason for a "what the f#@k am I thinking" moment for McNair before he got shot.

The relationship may have been age inappropriate and most likely a betrayal of his marital arrangement. But a foreseable threat to his life that could be avoided with introspection....I just can't make that leap.

Also, I find that there is an incredible amount of victim blaming in the comments (seemingly because he was married), but that's already been addressed by another poster.

Considering the relative cost of paternity vs plumbers, I'll continue flushing.

Straight men seem to remove both sex and romance from the context of the rest of life more easily.

Before I get thrown into tank, I am NOT saying that the man deserved to die. The girl was clearly unstable (yes, unstable, stable people don't usually murder people.) But I think TNC has a point - men do have to take responsibility. No one believes that cheating on your wife will lead to murder, no one should have to. But it leads to all kinds of other crazy stuff that men just chalk up to being "worth it." And that's okay?

If he was with his family when he met her, then where is his sense of responsibility? Am I supposed to feel sorry for a man who is scoping out a side piece on family night?

In most cases, you are only 'calculating' about romance and sex when you actually give a damn and/or are more emotionally invested.

For most of the men I know: comfort and stability.

Gotta agree.

I think the generalization that is at work the most, when both sides of a straight couple really are looking for a spouse (rather than just hooking up, building a harem, competing with other women, etc.), is that men believe "long will conquer all" - perhaps because in most situations, the woman's efforts are not going to elevate him to a new social class, and because they don't expect material support from their partners. This is materially and financially less true than it used to be, but I don't expect to stop being true at some level on the average; for most middle-class couples, the woman's income is important but supplementary, and the fortunes of the family ride, ultimately, on the man's career. Advancing beyond one's station is still, for the most part, a man's game. When a woman is in a situation to advance on her own, I think she is still likely to make sure that her partner will not bring her down.

Possibly, however, men will select their partner less as an aspirational choice, and more as evidence of an accomplishment already-achieved.

This is horrible generalization, and I can already think of thousands of possible circumstances which complicate it. I hope that there's a grain of insight in it, however.

Right, I was trying to make this point to thefoulness.

Its a pandora's box of unknown contents.

At that point you dont know what drama will crawl out, but nothing good.

You folks are struggling with that fact. McNair's actions makes things so very, very ugly. You can't paint him as a complete good guy because he did something absolutely lousy to his family. Steve McNair paid a horrible, terrible price for wanting to have his cake and eat it too. Marriage is for adults, there should be nor such thing as "arrangements." If he was unhappy he should have said so and got some help for his marriage or got stepping. One or the other.

It doesn't matter the age of this woman or if she was crazy. Hell, if she's crazy, so was McNair. What in the hell was he thinking? Quite frankly, she would have still murdered him even if he was single, she was that gone. Further, it is quite clear that McNair told her something that made her believe they had a future, so getting crazy doesn't come without somebody helping you get there.

The simple truth is we didn't know Steve McNair the man. He was a great athlete that is what most folks knew, period. I am damn angry he was murdered, but I am also damn angry that another black woman has to stand around and be strong for herself and others. If we can step back from the deaths, Steve McNair's double life raises some serious questions about relationships between black men and women and their views on marriage.

Not really, but if you are referring to me, I said

he did put himself at risk by fooling around with an emotionally unstable 20 year old (which is pretty common among 20 year olds

So yes, its pretty common that a 20 year old, only a year away from being a teen, is still learning emotional stability.

Then again Im not sure who you are quoting or referencing.

The steps McNair could have taken (or any single guy)--dont fool around with a 20 year old with a jealous thug rapper ex, with a history of abandonment issues and violence in her own past (her mom was brutally murdered in Iran), whose emotional and financial struggles were such that she was thinking suicide. And definitely dont make her one of several mistresses and then flaunt the whole thing like its not gonna blow up in your face.

Again, not blaming the victim for what happened, but for engaging in a risky situation that wasnt worth it rewardwise.

Athletes, celebrities, politicians and the very rich also get into these situations, because there is sometimes an understanding, implicit or explicit, that that's the price you pay to marry a rich/powerful/famous/successful partner (and can even be taken as a perverse badge of pride: "of course, my husband has mistresses... he's a very successful man!") Unlike the Nicolson/Sackville-West relationship, these are very asymmetrical relationships. In the case of athletes like McNair, however, it gets more complicated, too, since they are often people of modest backgrounds elevated to lofty heights (the Beckhams are now being called the "chavoisie".) It has to make things messy.

My personal view is that these open relationships are only ethical between people of comparable means, resources, etc. I also wouldn't consider it emotionally realistic for myself, but different people process these things differently.

By the way, bribery occurs between two consenting adults. Got no problem with that? Drug addiction and alcoholism also involves a consenting adult, and I'm quite comfortable judging it all day long.

I don't get this idea that people don't have a right to judge each other. Of course we do, all the time, and it is how we examine and articulate our own ethics.

I don't care whether or not McNair was a good guy or not, but your statement really doesn't say anything about what McNair's relationship was like with his wife. They could have been separated for all you know. Most likely, yes, he was cheating, but I say 'we don't know' because well, we don't know.

"Hell, if she's crazy, so was McNair."

Come again? Her being crazy doesn't say anything about McNair being crazy. I think the most accurate thing you said was 'we didn't know Steve McNair the man.' I agree wholeheartedly, but the rest of your post makes it seem like you think you do.

My longstanding rule is "Don't sleep with anyone you don't want to wake up with."

One rule I've always followed, but only recently formulated: Would having sex with X make my and her life better afterward?

I wouldn't say polyamory is impossible to do well, but its hard, very hard. We're too inclined to jealousy and insecurity. It's hard enough to make one person happy.

the mcnairs have kept a home in mississippi but have continued to live in nashville because their sons go to school in town. mechelle never lived in baltimore and steve would come home every week after the sunday games

i met them together at a couple of charity events and they were both really nice people though she was easier to talk to than he was in my opinion

for years it was known around town that steve was dating a bartender at a particular bar down and would hang out there on a regular basis - no one bothered him there and he could just hang out with this cute girl who wasnt his wife and have a couple of drinks and from there we never knew what happened

i have no idea when he quit that bartender for this new waitress but the man was obviously not the most faithful of men which might help illustrate tnc's point - their marriage obviously had some issues/arrangements that we will never know or understand

nashville isnt huge but alot of us have seen several of the football players out with women who they werent married to - it was just one of those things we took as standard for the nfl players which was sad in its own right

to me dating a 20 year old girl isnt the smartest decision and a large part of her "crazy" or whatever you want to call it could be based on the fact that at 20 (and when you were orphaned at 9) you dont necessarily know how to process things like perhaps a break up, which is rumored to be what he was thinking of doing, so well

her bills were piling up her roommate moved out of her place she had just gotten a dui she thought he was seeing another woman as well - in her mind her world was in pieces and at 20 she did what she thought was the only way out -

steve at 36 probably knew better but he was asleep when she reached her conclusion and couldnt tell her things will look better in the morning

My goodness, this isht is getting out of hand.

Repeating: the man is DEAD. D-E-A-D.

He has paid the ULTIMATE price for whatever 'sin' people believe he committed. For whatever 'vow' he broke, disrespect towards his wife and kids, or act of 'irresponsibly' that put his in this position, he took two bullets to the dome and two in the chest while he was sleeping for it.

At some point, that HAS to be enough. Let the man rest in peace. No need to stand on his grave railing about his 'double life' as a proxy for Black folks' relationship/marriage issues.

I try to view the whole thing, perhaps naively, from the perspective that all involved were by and large decent people, humanly flawed. That McNair fell for this woman, even if it started as a foolish dalliance, at least to keep it going longer enough for some serious business--serving as a cosigner to an expensive car, not just having sex but seriously doing things together; that Ms. Kazemi, whatever her initial predatory interests might or might not have been, fell in over her head in a way she would have never predicted; that somehow Mrs. McNair would be unaware that her husband was being unfaithful for months; that friends of both who saw this going on did not take it to be a dangerous situation for either of them (or take it seriously enough to be called upon to intervene even in the final days when Ms. Kazemi apparently "spun out of control" and threatened to "end it all").

Like I say, maybe I am being naive--but the cautionary tale I get from it is that all of the above were true and still it went down.

For the people who are really involved--the families and friends close enough to call family, maybe there's some blame to lay out, lessons that will come hard earned, but up and down this post what I hear is what other people ought to be doing in light of this, while of what number one might be coming up with, I don't really hear much.

And unfortunately he was blindsided by death.

I dont mean to be so critical about a QB I had tremendous passion and respect for, but its such a shock and a waste...and it reminds me of why Ive tried to avoid making those sorts of decisions in my own life, because aside from the immorality of it, Im paranoid about the unknown unknowns that can blow up in my face and I hate regretting things or being controlled by mistakes.

And quite frankly, if the discussion ends with the man is dead - don't talk about - then why do so many people have something to say on the subject? That's why folks particularly black folks struggle with learning anything. Difficult subjects become taboo and something not to talk about. Wasn't one of the original points of this post to have men take more care, so there will be no more Steve McNairs in the future?

Crazy stupid, perhaps. Crazy crazy? No. Crazy would be shooting somebody four times while they're sleeping. You clearly said that if she's crazy, then Steve McNair is crazy as well. I just don't understand that.

As far as making excuses, I'm not making any excuses. I already admitted the guy made a huge, fatal error in judgment. However, I'm not going to comment on what this means in regards to the relationship with his wife, because again, we have no idea. And I'm not sure what you mean by saying, 'everyone would lose their minds' if he was caught cheating without dying. Who would lose their mind? The gentleman above said is was fairly common knowledge in Nashville that McNair was seeing somebody else besides his wife. Not this girl, but previously.

I apologize if you thought I was lecturing because that wasn't my intention.

People have the "right" to judge each other all they want, but I would you ask you, instead, to consider the possibility that there are some areas of life, -- among them, classically, the sexual practices of consenting adults -- which exist well beyond the purview of your ethics.

Indeed, your attitude is a precondition (though not, alone, a cause) of homophobia and other nasty things. Shouldn't that at least give you pause?

Yeah, a'ight den.

Like I said before: this isht is getting out of hand.

I'm not sure if we're reading the same thread, but I don't see anyone denying McNair's part in this, and no one is excusing his behavior. But the point still stands that we don't know what the specifics of his marriage were. She may not have known about THIS particular jumpoff, but it's been said that she's known of past dalliances. We don't have the right to dictate the terms of other people's relationships. That's ridiculous.

I do agree that he was wrong to sell this girl the dream knowing full well that he had no intention of dealing with her on a long-term basis. It's been MY experience that when a man chooses a lover 15-20 years his junior, it's more about control than love. Can't help but think that that's the case here.

Anyway, this has been a great conversation to watch, and I thank TNC for approaching this topic with a lot more thought than OTHER cats (I'm looking at YOU, Jason Whitlock.)

Jason Whitlock severely challenges my respect for that verse, given that I find myself fantasizing about someone calling him out on his trolling and beating his...well Im doing it again, sorry guys.

"I GOT A RIGHT TO BE HOSTILE!

MY GENDER'S BEING PERSECUTED!"

Women dont have the luxury of being as careless with their bodies and safety as men do, although maybe its a false luxury men enjoy.

It would take a special kind of human being- perhaps a not-human type of human being- to say, in the wake of having been abandoned and betrayed by their lover, that the open relationship was fine. Because if your lover is taken from you, the relationship is no longer fine. McNair's wife was betrayed even if she had known all about the 20-year old- betrayed because McNair (involuntarily) left her. He's gone, she's abandoned. A boundary has been crossed. It looks like it was NOT okay with her that he be dating a 20-year-old- but let's say it was. I think, still that though dating a 20-year old may be okay with your wife and kids, getting shot by that 20-year-old will never be okay with your wife and kids. That is, no matter how generous your boundaries, I can't imagine a person who would be okay with their lover sleeping with someone else crazy enough for murder-suicide. It's the responsibility thing.

Maybe I just repeated all of what TNC said less coherently...

I'm not with you there. I'm a 34 year old woman, very, very happy to be married to a 57-year-old man, and I know the danger of generalizations, but age matters. One can overcome the difficulties, and there might be reasons why the different-age match is a good one, but I've heard people (well, mostly on the internet) saying that age is no obstacle to true love, and I disagree most heartily. It is an obstacle, just as big class differences are an obstacle. Two people who recognize that obstacle, who talk about it, who deal with it, who understand the problems it will bring to their lives and are willing and happy to deal with those complications, could be well-matched and happy. Two people who say or think that it doesn't matter- they are headed for tears.

So, okay, maybe there's no judgment in store from the outside, because we as observers don't know whether the couple has grappled with the issues, just as we don't know whether a given interracial couple are prepared to face the extra challenges of that type of relationship. It seems pretty clear from what I've read about the McNair situation in this thread that McNair and his lover either hadn't realistically faced the challenges of the age difference (much less the difference in marital status...) or were facing them with a callous disregard to each other.

Calling on men to take more responsibility for their sexual behavior isnt victim blaming. He doesnt say McNair is responsible, but he suggests he was unaware of the dangers he could face, b/c nobody ever tells men the real consequences. There are bad people out there; thats not scare tactics, thats real.

also, I think youre missing the point wrt class here. It would be less dangerous w/ somebody established like ms. Johanssen b/c those kinds of people can be background checked. Also, as a fabulously rich person, you are more vulnerable to psychos/ those who take advantage.