by Patsy Rae Dawson
Fifty Shades of Grey is about the naive 21-year-old virgin Ana who thinks she can rescue the rich, powerful, but defective Christian Grey. She’s not the first woman, or even man, who has 
foolishly thought she could change someone. Especially someone who doesn’t want to change.
Three thousand years earlier, the 14-year-old Shulammite virgin faced the same dilemma, who she should marry. Over and over in the Song of Solomon, the rich, powerful King Solomon wooed the maiden by telling her how beautiful she was. He ended the three-day whirlwind romance by taking her to the palace to meet his wives.
Unlike Ana, the Shulammite had grown up in a healthy, loving home and slowly her eyes opened to see how emotionally defective Solomon was. To quote the modern cliché, it was all about him and what she could do for him. He never spoke of loving her and enjoying her companionship. He never admired her intellectual skills or valued her opinion on important matters. In fact, he found her delay in accepting his sensuous proposal to join his harem extremely annoying.
And certainly, he never voiced appreciation for her take-charge attitude. When Solomon first saw her working in the vineyards, did he assume she was a common laborer? Did he think her brothers should have brought in a man to oversee the vineyards while they were forced to spend three months working on his building projects in Jerusalem? It was she who hired the laborers. It was she who would pay them when the harvest was over. And it was she who would share the profits with Solomon--the landlord.
Solomon imposed his sense of entitlement on her and did not even consider asking about her life and her dreams. He just assumed she would be honored to sacrifice her own life to fulfill his sexual fantasies. (Song of Solomon 8:11-12)
When Solomon introduced the Shulammite to his wives he paid her his highest compliment. He waved his hand over 140 of the most stunningly beautiful women in the land from kings’ daughters to slaves to peasants like the Shulammite and numerous maidens waiting for their chance to marry him. Then Solomon brought his hand back to his chest promising from his heart:
Song of Solomon 6:8-9: “There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, And maidens without number; But my dove, my perfect one, is unique: She is her mother’s only daughter; She is the pure child of the one who bore her….
In essence, Solomon said, “None of these beauties could hold my attention for long. But you, My Dear, are different. Their beauty pales beside yours. You are perfect—even your sisters—daughters of your mother—cannot compare to you. After you, I’ll stop searching for the perfect feminine body and settle down.”
Even though the Shulammite had seen through Solomon’s shallowness and lack of emotional involvement with her, the temptation for her and many women would be to believe his pledge, "It will be different this time." Indeed, the whole kingdom could crumble because Solomon was often distracted. Rather than taking care of state business, he spent his days searching for a new wife.
Already, the people were gossiping about Solomon’s excesses, especially after he divided them into twelve groups. Each group was responsible for providing food for all his wives and servants for one month of the year. He even forced them to supply hay for his growing herd of horses. Maybe if the Shulammite married Solomon, he would settle down and become a family man and everything would be well with the country.
But could the beautiful Shulammite maiden really make Solomon happy? Can any person really make a defective person happy? Fortunately, the Shulammite had more common sense than many people of both her time and today. She fled from Solomon and the palace to marry the Shepherd—a man who loved her emotionally—a healthy man capable of giving love as well as receiving it.
This same story of whether to rescue a defective male plays out in Fifty Shades of Grey with Ana. Book 1 ends with her eyes opening as she flees Grey’s house and his sickness of getting pleasure out of hurting her. The parallel ends there. Her low self-image makes her emotionally vulnerable. We instinctively know she will go back in the later books to try to make it work. She will cut herself off from healthy suitors in an attempt to save Grey.
Solomon eventually married 1000 of the most beautiful women in the known world in his deluded attempt to find sexual satisfaction. This averages a new wife about every two weeks over his 40-year reign. This included courtship, marriage, deflowering the current virgin, and moving on to pursue the next raving beauty.
Book 3 of Fifty Shades of Grey ends with a flashback to the first time Grey met Ana and his overwhelming compulsion to hurt her—to hurt her as much as she could stand. Both Solomon and Grey never worked to overcome their lack of respect for true femininity. The reader is left to wonder what future sequels will reveal about Grey’s tale of sadism and masochism that fake love by inducing leather-flogging pain.
If you are a man or a woman who believes you can rescue a defective person through courtship and marriage or in any relationship, I urge you to take Dr. Karyl McBride, Ph.D.’s survey. It will help you analyze your upbringing. If you grew up in a defective home like Ana, then you may be living in a world of denial in which you think you can fix others, even when they don’t have any desire to change. Take the survey—it may well be the most loving thing you’ve ever done for yourself.
Survey: Is This My Mom? Use this survey to assess if your mother or father has narcissistic traits. It is applicable for men as well. http://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/is-this-your-mom/ Dr. McBride’s book Will I Ever Be Good Enough is on my recommended reading list. You can order it at my Amazon eStore under personality disorders.
Permission to Reproduce Beware of trying to rescue defective suitors like Solomon and Grey
Beware of trying to rescue defective suitors like Solomon and Grey by Patsy Rae Dawson. Copyright © 2013 Patsy Rae Dawson LLC. All rights reserved.
Beware of trying to rescue defective suitors like Solomon and Grey by Patsy Rae Dawson is available at PatsyRaeDawson.com. It may be copied for noncommercial use only, provided you do the following: 1. Retain all copyright, trademark and propriety notices; 2. Make no modifications to the materials; 3. Do not use the materials in a manner that suggests an association with Patsy Rae Dawson LLC; and; 4. Do not download quantities of materials to a database, server, or personal computer for reuse for commercial purposes. You may not use this material in any other way without prior written permission. For additional permissions, contact Patsy Rae Dawson LLC at Patsy@PatsyRaeDawson.com.