I rather enjoyed this article called, “Why Women Leave Men They Love: What Every Man Needs to Know”
I’m sure it is not going over well in certain quarters because it implies that men may bear some responsibility in their relationships and it challenges the idea that women are just nuts or psychotic or downright evil….
It commits that ultimate no no, it implies that there may be some rational and reasonable explanation for the decisions women make, a cause and effect at play here.
I’m chuckling simply because this feels like such a “duh moment,” like it has become so fashionable to simply declare women to be crazy, as if our behavior has no rhyme and reason, and to invent vague evo-psych theories like hypergamy or hormones, or worse, the curse of Eve, because obviously women just be nuts.
Some of us yes, indeed, stark raving mad, but for the most part no. We actually do require an emotional connection of some sort within our relationships and without that they die, and we die inside.
Consider this one paragraph, “Women leave for many reasons, but there’s one reason in particular that haunts me, one that I want men to understand: Women leave because their man is not present. He’s working, golfing, gaming, watching TV, fishing…the list is long. These aren’t bad men. They’re good men. They’re good fathers. They support their family. They’re nice, likeable. But they take their wife for granted. They’re not present”
I totally get that. Not “present.” It’s a form of emotional abandonment. Men often crave stability, familiarity, routine, while women crave connection, relationship and change, or movement. It’s a Divine comedy, but men and women are often the polar opposites of each other. Half the fun is figuring out how to make it work.
Should women leave perfectly good men, those the article declares are good fathers, support their family, nice, likeable? No, not at all, that’s a tragedy, but simply denying the problem and blaming women is no solution at all.
I loved these lines in the article, “You win her over first and foremost with your presence, your aliveness. She needs to feel it. She wants to talk to you about what matters to her and to feel that you’re listening to her…..”
“….She wants to feel your passion. Can you feel your passion? Can you show her? Not just your passion for her or for sex; your passion for being alive. Do you have it? It’s the most attractive thing you possess…”
“….I’m talking about five minutes a day to be completely present with the woman you share your life with. To be completely open– listening and seeing without judgement. Will you do that?….”
Now isn’t that the sweetest thing ever? This is not about asking men to be subservient, teary and emotional, or great romantic poets, it’s simply about taking five minutes a day to relate to a wife as if she were an actual human being and not just the mother of your children or your wife or a piece of furniture in the room.
Trying to explain to men what it means to be “present,” can be somewhat challenging. My hubby is wonderful, smart, charming, but even he has been confused about this. “I’m here,” he used to say, while watching football, completely baffled by the definition of “here.” He is more than content with my presence and nothing more. The thing is, for many women, “here” and “present” are not literal concepts, we are not talking about time and space, but rather an emotional connection. We have to “feel” the men in our lives.
And women, wives have to understand that men cannot read our minds, that they do not always speak our language, and we must communicate these things, we must help him to understand what our needs are, what we are asking for. We must take responsibility for our own happiness, too.
The guy who wrote this is a marriage counselor and as he says, this reason haunts him. It haunts me too because it seems like such a waste, such a tragic reason to throw away a marriage, to break up a family, because this is fixable, this is a communication problem, and there can be great joy on the other side of it.
I wrote a while back about women who are “dying inside,” because that concept was being dismissed and demeaned in some quarters. It is vitally important however, because women tend to reflect and multiply what we are given. Listen to the words this guy said once again, Can you feel your passion, your passion for being alive? If you cannot, your wife probably cannot either.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
“Can you feel your passion, your passion for being alive?” This is probably true. :-/. I mean i can see it being true, since it’s also the same vice versa, we don’t women who sit around in a huff at everything, being a misery guts. I know this is coming from a misery guts 😉 but I acknowledge this is part of relationships and how no one wants to be with a misery guts. 😛
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Well said, Matthias. “Misery guts,” I like that. I call it eating worms, but same idea.
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I spent an hour in my car on Sunday night with a woman healing from a broken heart. She said much that was like this regarding her disappointment with the man she had left. My response was along the lines of: “The great wrong of the Garden of Eden was that it broke the bond of trust between man and woman.” Without that bond, all the energy that we contribute to each other becomes linked to the question “when do I get it back?”, which opens a huge gaping hole in our hearts that allows sin to suck away the energy created in our loving.
But we were not created to care for each other alone – we were created to be stewards to the world. The question that I ask is always “How can I use my loving of this person to love the world?” Instead of a little cocoon containing the two of us, the Holy Spirit enters with all of its blessings, and Life itself persists in pushing us back together because it finds joy in our union.
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Amen, Brian, I love that. I believe the Holy Spirit does push us back together because He finds joy in our union. We find joy there too, but it’s not so easy, pride, fear, the usual things sometimes get in the way and make us miserable.
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“while women crave connection, relationship and change, or movement”
Nawww, women crave feelz. All this “connection, relationship and change, or movement”–It’s all internal to the woman’s emotions. You’re trying to assert the woman’s emotional frame on top of the man. Trying to put a round hole on top of a square peg. Doesn’t work that way. I know that you feel that it’s right because it’s right for you as a woman, due to your inherent solipsism. As a man, it isn’t right for me. You are projecting. Don’t do that.
The man needs to help the woman manage her feelz, because without feelz, she is gonna be…wait for it…here it comes…unhaaaaappy. lol The man needs to do it for his own sanity. Of course I’ve blogged about managing a relationship as a man.
All that aside, normally women should be responsible enough to manage their own emotions. But that takes training and most women aren’t trained to do that. And other women (mothers) should do that training. However, foolish and evil men often white knight for women who don’t manage their own emotions, so the problem isn’t noticed by society at large.
And women are supposed to submit to their husbands even if the husband isn’t helping her manage her feelz. But that’s unpleasant because of Empowerment ™ (You go gurrrrrl!). So the command that the woman is to submit to her husband gets twisted into the man is supposed to lead the woman by doing what she wants. In this twisted interp of scripture, the husband is really supposed to submit to the woman don’t you know? Which is nonsense and false teaching and very prevalent in churchianity.
“it’s simply about taking five minutes a day to relate to a wife as if she were an actual human being ”
This means absolutely nothing to me. Totally unhelpful and worthless. This is what Mrs. Gamer says, but not what she wants. She wants feelz. Tingles, comfort, validation, drama. That is what she wants. It’s up to the man to provide those things. Of course, Mrs. Gamer has no idea what she wants. When I provide her with the feelz, she thinks that she’s getting “connection, relationship and change, or movement”. Mrs. Gamer feelz like we’re relating. The PUA maxim to believe what women do, not what they say, holds true in this case as in many others.
Read all of YaReally’s posts on the Rational Male. They are golden.
When I’m out, I “connect” to women. I play with their emotions. They feel good and alive and like they are relating to a man.
Gamer
___________
The Autistic Gamer is a sexually deprived, misogynistic teenage boy who blogs, plays World of Warcraft, and faps to porn in his parents’ basement.
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“Can you feel your passion, your passion for being alive? If you cannot, your wife probably cannot either.”
I think that the manosphere refers to something like this as the “Mental Point of Origin” aka “Masculine Identity”. If a man feels like he should be a better woman, his masculinity will suffer and his wife won’t “feel his passion”.
Does this make sense to you?
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Did you label yourself “a sexually deprived teenage boy in his parents basement” or did someone else attach that moniker to you? Just curious. It wasn’t me.
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It was a self-deprecating manospherian joke. Typical shaming stuff I hear.
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Ah, I see, a joke. Hey that’s nothing, you should see what the manosphere calls me. 😉
Actually from reading your comment, I didn’t like the way you said, “Mrs Gamer feelz like we’re relating,” as if you are gaming her, play acting a connection that is not there. But you are a bit different, the spectrum you communicate on is a different frequency. I can pick up on it ever so slightly. In which case, I am rather impressed that you recognize Mrs Gamer’s need for the feelz, as you call it.
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IB, of course I’m “gaming” Mrs. Gamer. She feels like we are relating. We are, but not as equals. You are expecting equalitarian descriptions of our relationship from me, but I’m talking Biology.
Think of lead-follow dancing. The partners don’t relate as equals. The man is dominant and the woman submissive. The man issues physical commands with his hands and his frame and the woman obeys. The man uses his hands to lead the woman. The man manipulates the woman. Lead-follow dancing is an excellent analogy to a monogamous heterosexual relationship. See, there’s this thing called Biology…
You feel the manipulation and you project your feelings about relating onto your man as if you are relating in the same way as your man so that you can believe that your equalitarian standards are being met. It’s rationalization.
Manipulation done for the good of a relationship or a dependent is no evil. Parents manipulate their children for the good of the children and the best political leaders manipulate their populace for the good of their people.
IB, I can read women extremely well when I am focusing on them. If I am relaxed and chilling and enjoying the moment, I often miss cues.
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Okay gamer-guy, I often speak of love being like a tango, so your dance analogy works just fine by me. As to equal, I’ve written perhaps two dozen posts expressing how I feel about that.
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Love is an act of will, not of emotion. Relationships based on feeling and emotional manipulation are superficial and doomed to fail.
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Yeah, you’re right, God is an idiot for giving us an example of manipulating a woman in the Song of Songs.
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If that is how the Song of Solomon is to be interpreted, why doesn’t Church Doctrine reflect that?
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Too much damned spiritualization of the text.
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Wow, I can so relate to this as my ex and I used to fight over this very thing all the time. Once he even came right out and said, “I show up, don’t I? Isn’t that enough?” Well, no, it’s not and while I full on admit I brought my own share of issues to the relationship, his inability to acknowledge me just for 5 minutes like you said was not overcome able.
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Isn’t that interesting, Tricia? I hear this from women all the time and I myself used to go through it. I don’t know if I’d still be married if my husband hadn’t figured it out, it’s that important. For some reason it’s a really challenging concept to explain to many men.
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It is so interesting IB and it didn’t help that my ex was a narcissist so it was all but impossible for him to think about anyone else but himself. For most men though, I think it’s just what you say, they are wired differently in that aspect and so don’t think about it It’s my theory that they haven’t had to until the last 30 years or so when women started to become financially independent. The good ones like your husband do make some changes and I do believe there are many of them out there.
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Marriage counselors have some of the highest divorce rates of any career field.
When I look for a solution to a problem, I look to people who are successful at what I want to be successful at. So I stay clear of marriage counselors when it comes to marriage advice.
I’ve watched far far too many people who went to counseling because it was de rigueur (preventative counseling is all the rage these days), and ended up on anti depressants (first) and then divorced (second).
My husband is in a career field that takes him away often. He works many hours and I dont’ always get the emotional attention I would like, when I want it. A flight doctor told me that the spouses of 9 out of 10 officers (who remain married, divorces are very common) at my husband’s rank are either substance abusers or on anti depressants.
I remain healthy, and I do not agree with the marriage counselor here.
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“Now isn’t that the sweetest thing ever? This is not about asking men to be subservient, teary and emotional, or great romantic poets, it’s simply about taking five minutes a day to relate to a wife as if she were an actual human being and not just the mother of your children or your wife or a piece of furniture in the room.”
Yes, it really is the sweetest thing ever. Unfortunately, it isn’t true or based anywhere in reality. Women don’t only want five minutes of their man’s time. And most men give far far more than five minutes of time to their spouses. I could offer advice on how to really get those moments with your spouse.
I get a great deal of my husband’s discretionary time…and I do this by certain behaviors that make him want to spend time with me.
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“Unfortunately, it isn’t true or based anywhere in reality. Women don’t only want five minutes of their man’s time. And most men give far far more than five minutes of time to their spouses.”
Well, not to be unkind here, but who are you to tell thousands of women what is true? If I listened to you and your red pill friends, I’d start to believe I was some kind of sub human creature lacking a soul, who’s only purpose in life is to be a sexual recepticle for the likes of people like BGR. Let’s not forget the part where I am also delusional, menopausal, and borderline, therefore people are morally justified treating me as badly as they wish. Complete hogwash and poppycock, so color me unimpressed with what you believe is “true.”
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“Well, not to be unkind here, but who are you to tell thousands of women what is true”
Who am I?
I’m the one who looks at reality and results, rather than wishes and things that sound nice, but really aren’t true in practical reality.
Have a nice day, IB.
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“I’m the one who looks at reality and results…”
No. You’re actually the one that lurks around the broken and wounded DIVORCED men, encouraging them to wallow in bitterness and hatred, unleashing their venom on all of womankind. That is even less about “practical reality and results” than my having been married for 30 years and having taken the time to listen to what women are really saying.
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Haven’t you mentioned before that you and your husband (by very significant contrast to your online personality) rarely talk? Didn’t you say when you were dating you basically grunted at each other?
Unless things have changed very very much I doubt the longevity of your marriage has much to do with long talks and emoting. You save that for online.
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Rarely talk? No, we simply don’t debate, discuss, and argue with each other like people do on the internet or among friends. We talk frequently and communicate in multiple other ways, however. It has nothing to do with “long talks and emoting,” it has to do with taking five minutes to invest in a connection with each other. There are a whole lot of men out there, divorced men, that seem to believe their wives exist exclusively to serve them and that they are not required to create that connection that builds loyalty, trust, and genuine desire.
I mean come on Liz, if you have to drape a napkin over your wife’s medusa face in order to be intimate with her, something ain’t right in the relationship.
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It has nothing to do with “long talks and emoting,” it has to do with taking five minutes to invest in a connection with each other.”
Let’s do a reasonability test. The writer here is a marriage counselor (again, the career field with the highest rates of divorce), and it has been his experience that women need “five minutes a day to relate to a wife as if she were an actual human being” and this will make things better.
How long are his therapy sessions? If they are only a half hour long, that averages to just about a full week’s worth of time taken in one single afternoon, so everything should be swell right? Somehow it doesn’t work out that way. In fact, the vast majority of time it just makes things worse. Maybe paying him more to share more will help. Or, maybe not.
”There are a whole lot of men out there, divorced men, that seem to believe their wives exist exclusively to serve them and that they are not required to create that connection that builds loyalty, trust, and genuine desire.”
And there are far, far more men out there in pain and in the process of divorce who have taken all of these suggestions and it has only made things far worse.
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Forget this marriage counselor, I liked his words based on my own experiences and from listening to men and women speak about what ails them.
Consider his words again and reverse them and see if that works better for you. “Have no passion for your own life. Never let her see your own passion for your life. Never spend five minutes a day trying to relate to your wife. Never be emotionally present and never allow her to connect to you.”
And if she doesn’t like it, just tell her to submit and obey and to shut up about her own needs. Her only real purpose in life is to serve you anyway.
That Liz, is a recipe for marital disaster and I am not surprised that the men who hold those attitudes are now in pain and going through divorces. If you want to help them, you help them to understand what went wrong, not affirm their own pride and ego so they can just learn new forms of control, abuse, and emotional abandonment.
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Liz, I’m just curious why you would say, “t isn’t true or based anywhere in reality.” Have you spoken with every single woman on the planet? With the ones you have conversed with, did you listen with an open heart with the intention of trying to understand their viewpoints or was it only to apply your own set of preconceived notions and condemn?
What you say me say true for yourself and if it works for your marriage than all the more power to you. Don’t paint all woman though with your personal reality brush, it’s insulting.
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IB: ” That Liz, is a recipe for marital disaster and I am not surprised that the men who hold those attitudes are now in pain and going through divorces. If you want to help them, you help them to understand what went wrong, not affirm their own pride and ego so they can just learn new forms of control, abuse, and emotional abandonment.”
Well, I have to admit you are right. But you’ve set up an argument that only a crazy person would refute. Yes, if you “reverse his words” to be: “Have no passion for your own life. Never let her see your own passion for your life. Never spend five minutes a day trying to relate to your wife. Never be emotionally present and never allow her to connect to you. And if she doesn’t like it, just tell her to submit and obey and to shut up about her own needs. Her only real purpose in life is to serve you anyway.”
One is going to have a host of problems.
I think the writer is wrong about the solution. That doesn’t mean I think the exact opposite of what he espouses is ipso facto the correct action.
Men are comparatively easy to please. And they are comparatively solution-oriented. If they say they want something, typically what they say is true. Women, by contrast, often do not mean what they say they mean. They very often don’t know why they’re unhappy and it’s often best just to change their focus on something other than themselves.
Let’s look back at an old post you made entitled “It’s okay to fake it”
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2015/10/17/its-okay-to-fake-it/
I agree with everything you say on that topic 100 percent. But the interesting part that pertains to THIS topic would be this portion:
” It’s kind of heartbreaking, there are some women right now feeling bad about themselves, feeling ashamed, because they had sex with their husbands when they weren’t really excited about it. I kid you not, they are now concerned that they did not consent, therefore they have betrayed themselves, aided and abetted rape, deceived their husband’s, and let the entire Sisterhood down.”
You are so right here. But, do men do this type of thing? Not typically. Very often women feel badly because they think they are supposed to. Much like toxic forums (as you’ve implied) breed toxicity, there is a toxicity that can be cultivated in marriage. And it isn’t from discussing issues too little, it is from discussing issues too much. Divorce, like toxicity, can be contagious. I’ve seen it many many times. I’ve seen wives coffee clutches ruin marriages by “discussing problems” ad nauseum. We’ve never lived in an age where men were more concerned with the feelings and emotional needs of their wives. Yet divorce is more ubiquitous than ever.
” What you say me say true for yourself and if it works for your marriage than all the more power to you. Don’t paint all woman though with your personal reality brush, it’s insulting.”
By this reasoning, perhaps the writer of the article here is insulting others by painting everyone with his personal reality brush. I’d say anyone who feels personally insulted by his or my commentary is probably a bit too sensitive, and that level of extreme sensitivity can cause a great deal of problems in one’s personal life. I myself don’t find the article to be insulting. I do however believe him to be in error. Women don’t “leave men they love” because those men don’t spend five minutes per day listening to them.
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“You are so right here. But, do men do this type of thing? Not typically. Very often women feel badly because they think they are supposed to”
This is true, Liz, our culture, our environment, feminism, all pressure women to divorce at the slightest indication that they may be unhappy.
However, you said, “They very often don’t know why they’re unhappy and it’s often best just to change their focus on something other than themselves.”
No, they need to focus on themselves so as to find the solution to why they are unhappy! They’re telling me, they’re telling this marriage counselor, many of them are even telling their husbands what is wrong, but they are not being heard, they are being totally ignored, and they are being dismissed. Well guess what, you ignore and dismiss a woman enough times, she’s got no reason to stick around. You’re acting as if she must sacrifice herself at the alter of marriage and ignore the fact that she’s dying inside, because that’s preferable to telling men to spend five minutes a day relating to your wife and creating a connection?
“We’ve never lived in an age where men were more concerned with the feelings and emotional needs of their wives.”
Baloney.Read the love letters and poetry of old. It is only in recent history that people stopped believing in love and started obsessing over sex, entitlement, and what they’re owed from their spouse and the world in general.
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“Our culture, environment, feminism, all pressure women to divorce at the slightest indication that they are unhappy.”
That’s really what’s going on and the reason why women end relationships at 9x the rate of men. No amount of learning Gamecockery or marriage counseling is going to change things until women decide to change their misandry.
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Ah, but one of the best cures for misandry is to spend five minutes connecting and relating to a woman as a real person, flaws and all. Prove her wrong about men!
By nature, women are designed to love men, that is our natural inclination, that is what we want to do. Some of you insist on making it so hard, we simply cannot.
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Actually, women are the ones which make men hard what to do. I believe most men even spend more than 5 minutes to their wives. But saying that it was enaugh is bullcrap. It’s like saying a woman just wants a flower, but then she is not satisfied then wants a diamond. No, spending 5 minutes are not problem, but wives are the ones which make it sounds like problem because when we give something, it was not what they want actually and that’s where the problem started.
‘Ah, but one of the best cures for misandry is to spend five minutes connecting and relating to a woman as a real person, flaws and all. Prove her wrong about men!’
Oh, Ms. Insanity, that’s the earth where we live now. A man must proves women wrong about men in general but I believe you will hate when I say “you must prove a man wrong about women”. Actually that’s what you have to do to solve what is happening in manosphere now, to PROVE THAT THEY ARE WRONG ABOUT WOMEN. Maybe it’s better to treat women as hostile until themselves innocent
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“you must prove a man wrong about women”
No. Nobody in life owes you a darn thing. If you desire to be proven wrong about women, you will seek that proof. If you desire to wallow in your own misery, you will seek that proof too. Regardless the blame lies squarely on your own head.
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Btw, by seeing this advice, I can’t agree more with what all the manosphere say about most women in general
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Then go back to your comrades and celebrate your endless bitterness while I enjoy my fairy tale.
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Ms. Insanity, you wer the one who said that a man must proves a woman wrong about misandry, but at the other, you hate it when the gender is reversed. Yes, nobody owes anybode a single damn thing, and men must prove nothing to end the misandry. Misandry can be changed by the women themselves and problem solved
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You miss the point entirely. The world is not going to change to accommodate you, you have to change in order to create the kind of world you want. If you want to see less misandry in the world, the go show some women that you’re worth more than hatred.
Or not. You can continue to wallow in victimhood waiting for the entire world to change and give you what you believe you are entitled to. Your choice.
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Insanity, I don’t miss your point even a word. Ok, but by using your logic, if you want to prove there is LESS misogyny in manosphere, then go show them that you’re worth more than just earn disrespect. But in fact, you even still blame men for misandry (and also misogyny).
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Dave, I blame men for nothing except for clinging to their own misery and refusing to change.
I also have no desire to prove there is less misogyny in the manosphere. That is their problem, not mine.
As for proving that the vast majority of men are good, protective, provisioning, fond of women, I’ve already done that in my world. Mission accomplished.
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Insanity, I have seen many of your posts, most of your posts seem love rationalizing, but hate to be rationalized. In this post, you also tell Liz who she is to tell what’s true to thousands women, but in fact, you tell “what’s true” according to you to thousands of men. If this advice works to you, ok then do it. But I know many men who do more than just spend 5 minutes and the result even is much worse.
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In my world, women prove nothing but earn disrespect and misogyny from most men. I am not a misogynist, but I know the reason why they exist.Women in my world, only prove to men that they don’t deserve loving treatment, even just give more fuel to the men that they are only manipulative and do everything to get whatever they want
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Hmm, interesting, Dave. That makes sense. I’m sorry for your world, that sounds dreadful.
Men sometimes don’t deserve loving treatment either, but some of us just choose to love them anyway.
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IB:
The problem is that men who do listen and ‘be present’ for the women they care about rarely find their actions or intentions reciprocated. Women appreciate men like this, but instead give their actual love to any male who does the opposite. Most women have friendzones full of men who give them time and attention. But they give their own time and attention to any clod with his hat on backwards and his underwear hanging out who treats them like gargbage.
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Dave:
Today’s women typically don’t want more than a man can give; they want men who give them less than nothing. Men have to convince them that they deserve better than the limp-wristed metrosexuals and Charles Manson look-alikes whom the prefer instead. Following Gamecock advice and acting like a male pig is only going to reinforce their negative attitudes.
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Eric:
their negative attitudes which make men even have less respect to women these days. So, basically, this advice only see men as the problem, but in reality it was the woman who actually contributed to the problems. Women are the ones who always make something easy become worse, just like what I said before, when a woman wants A, she get that, but not satisfied, then demand B, and still not satisfied and demand C, etc. Why is that? because most women can’t see good and don’t apreciate what they have gotten. I don’t care about their negative attitudes, it’s their goddamn problem, not mine. So, when there is someone saying that problem will be solved just because ‘spending 5 minutes’, then probably has no clue at all. Like my friend who sacrificed most of his time (well, more than 5 minutes) in order to satisfy his wife, but his wife never appreciate what he had done and he didn’t get anything in return. So, he choose to divorce his wife, and now his wife is the one who can’t handle that.
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“their negative attitudes which make men even have less respect to women these days. So, basically, this advice only see men as the problem, but in reality it was the woman who actually contributed to the problems. Women are the ones who always make something easy become worse, just like what I said before, when a woman wants A, she get that, but not satisfied, then demand B, and still not satisfied and demand C, etc. Why is that? because most women can’t see good and don’t apreciate what they have gotten. I don’t care about their negative attitudes, it’s their goddamn problem, not mine. So, when there is someone saying that problem will be solved just because ‘spending 5 minutes’, then probably has no clue at all. Like my friend who sacrificed most of his time (well, more than 5 minutes) in order to satisfy his wife, but his wife never appreciate what he had done and he didn’t get anything in return. So, he choose to divorce his wife, and now his wife is the one who can’t handle that.”
I knew a couple who went to workshops and counseling to discuss their feelings ALL of the time. It was a point of pride. I was very young then, and thought “wow, that’s great they’re always sharing” and stuff. THEY would claim it was great. Then they had their first (and only) child. She was a nurse (like myself) and trained to believe this counseling was benficial so as she got more unhappy therapy sessions increased. We didnt’ see them for a while. Fast forward years later and he turns down a command position to please her (she didn’t like the military). Fast forward a few more months and now he’s DNF (do not fly status) because he’s on antidepressants (too….she’d been on them for a while). Of course by this time they hadn’t had sex in many many months. Essentially she wanted him to make her feel better before she would be willing to be a wife to him (essentially what the writer of this article suggests).
He killed his career and went into suicidal depression attempting to appeal to her feelings…however she was feeling in the moment, which would change by the day or hour. By the end he could barely function, she made his life such a living hell.
Eventually they divorced. A few months after the divorce she told him on the phone, “Why did I divorce you, again? YOu’re the perfect guy…”
Nice. Fortunately he stayed far away.
That’s not the only couple I knew in that position, just about every single couple I know that is either divorced or separated is in some variation of that story.
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Liz, most women remind me of the ‘shopping for the husbands’ joke. I don’t if you have ever read this joke, but I will write it:
A store that sells husbands has just opened where a woman may go to choose a husband from among many men. The store is composed of 6 floors, and the men increase in positive attributes as the shopper ascends the flights.
There is, however, a catch. As you open the door to any floor you may choose a man from that floor, but if you go up a floor, you cannot go back down except to exit the building.
So a woman goes to the shopping center to find a husband.
On the first floor the sign on the door reads:
Floor 1 – These men have jobs.
The woman reads the sign and says to herself, “Well, that’s better than my last boyfriend, but I wonder what’s further up?” So up she goes.
The second floor sign reads:
Floor 2 – These men have jobs and love kids.
The woman remarks to herself, “That’s great, but I wonder what’s further up?” And up she goes again.
The third floor sign reads:
Floor 3 – These men have jobs, love kids and are extremely good looking.
“Hmmm, better” she says. “But I wonder what’s upstairs?”
The fourth floor sign reads:
Floor 4 – These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking and help with the housework.
“Wow!” exclaims the woman, “very tempting. BUT, there must be more further up!” And again she heads up another flight.
The fifth floor sign reads:
Floor 5 – These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking, help with the housework and have a strong romantic streak.
“Oh, mercy me! But just think… what must be awaiting me further on?” So up to the sixth floor she goes.
The sixth floor sign reads:
Floor 6 – You are visitor 6,875,953,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. In fact, she gets nothing.
This is probably just a joke, but in reality at least most women I know are like this. They may say that they just want ‘5 minutes of their men” , but in reality, they want more than that. They can’t appreciate and be grateful what they have gotten and still demand more and more and finally it will only kill themselves.
The article that Ms. Insanity described actually shows how ungrateful the woman that the author was talking about. She has a good father, good provider, likeable, and nice, but she still feels less and less. I believe even when she gets ‘five minutes’ of her man’s time, she will still feel less. The more they act like that, the more they drive their men’s away.
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“Forget this marriage counselor, I liked his words based on my own experiences and from listening to men and women speak about what ails them.”
Lol, you complain about Liz to tell thousands of women what is true, but on the other hand i also want to say ‘who are you to tell what is true to thousands of men?’ . I agree with Liz, i also know many men who follow this advice similarly and it made worse. Their wives want A, so the husbands give A, but then their wives are not satisfied and demand B, and still not satisfied and demand C. So, maybe your advice is working only toward you and some people, but never work in general. I am sorry Ms. Insanity, but i won’t say this is a bad advice but it’s not for all men and let me assure you, actually this kind of advice make many wounded men even much worse. They will find something which is the best for them and probably you will hate that.
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I don’t know what to tell you Dave, except if you are the same Dave trying to tell us that marriage serves no purpose, that men reap no rewards beyond being divorce raped, I’m going to have to conclude that perhaps your attitude towards both women and marriage is a far larger problem? How would you even know what works in general when you’ve already written off and condemned the entire concept of marriage in the first place?
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No, Dave: what good men need are better women. Trying to compete with or appease someone with an ‘all men are pigs’ attitude will never work. The Gamehens who pretend to submit because of ‘Dark Triad’ are not really in love either.
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Insanity, I don’t say what works in general, but I do know many men which follow this advice but only give them more pain. One of them is my friend and did everything he could to make his wife happy. He did that not just in days or months, but for 8 years. But it never worked, he finally choose to divorce his wife, but actually now the wife is the one who suffers.
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As I said above, I get a great deal of my husband’s discretionary time…and I do this by certain behaviors that make him want to spend time with me.
These women are not leaving men they ostensibly “love” 9 times out of 10 because their husbands are all “gamers” who try to game them. There aren’t that many “gamers”. Gaming is a response to this problem, not the cause of the problem.
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Eric mentions above that we need to change women, not “game them”. I personally don’t like the idea of “gamery” myself. However…how does one change a behavior pattern? (we’re all the product of our environments, and we are what we do)
Every person does a mental cost to benefit analysis when they perform an action. If the cost is too great, they perform a different action. If the benefit outweighs the cost, that’s what they will do. I’ve observed human behavior in relationships and noticed patterns. One, talking about problems quite often makes them worse. Two, people generally do not respond rationally in the scientific sense. Quite often the way the person (women in the case) responds would give every indication that they WANT to be unhappy. It’s a sort of odd feedback loop where they engage in behavior that makes their spouse unhappy, and then they respond to that with deeper unhappiness, laying the blame on their (now) unhappy spouse.
Mike was with a woman for three years before he met me and she was exactly this sort of person. She was addicted to unhappiness and would attempt to generate it as much as possible. Her “reward” was the dopamine rush she received telling others about her perceived ill treatment. She prefered the commiseration with others about her misery to actually engaging in positive behaviors that would benefit them as a couple. The man she would describe would sound like a complete jerk who was impossible to be happy around, and the man I would describe is completely wonderful and has made me happy the vast majority of the time for the past 23 years. Yet they are the same people.
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“Every person does a mental cost to benefit analysis when they perform an action…”
Perhaps, but I don’t believe love is about a cost benefit analysis. In fact, it’s likely to cost you everything in the end. If I were to apply a cost benefit analysis, I doubt I would ever have gotten married, I certainly would never have had kids, I’d be in a different line of work, and I would not be a Christian.
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“Perhaps, but I don’t believe love is about a cost benefit analysis. In fact, it’s likely to cost you everything in the end. If I were to apply a cost benefit analysis, I doubt I would ever have gotten married, I certainly would never have had kids, I’d be in a different line of work, and I would not be a Christian.”
Love is definitely a cost benefit analysis, IB.
There’s nothing worth more than love (didn’t you recently have a topic on ‘Real Wealth’ that addressed this?).
Yes, the cost (and risk) are high but the reward is worth it.
It’s interesting you ‘liked’ Elizabethan’s post below.
“Wanna trash a interpersonal relationship, treat your lover like a tool, treat your wife like she’s still the same person she was 3 years ago!”
Doesn’t sound like only five minutes of a guy’s “real time” per day will do it for her.
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“Yes, the cost (and risk) are high but the reward is worth it.”
From whose perspective? Christ’s love was completely sacrificial. We reaped a reward. He reaped the suffering. Mothers often give birth to kids, amid a great deal of pain, give them all we’ve got, and then they eventually leave us. Romantic love, a life time with someone will eventually end in separation and death. Those are the harsh truths about the cost benefit analysis of love. It’s not wise, it does not pay you equal dividends, and it’s likely to break your heart. If you want to be purely analytical here, there is nothing to recommend it.
People however are complex, we do not operate on a simple system of rewards and punishment and cost benefit analysis.
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Actually intended to quote this bit, from Elizabethan:
“Number one reason I walk away is when people stop applying themselves, to who I really am, get to comfortable with the old days and are unwilling or unable to evolve with me.”
Hope there aren’t any kids involved when she gets bored because the guy is too comfortable with the way she used to be.
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Elizabethan actually makes a really good point about the nature of women. I spoke of women’s need for change and movement in this post, while men tend to crave stability and familiarity. She says she walks away when people stop applying themselves, when they are unwilling to evolve with her. Love is like a dance in which men lead, but she is the one out there doing all the movement, twirling around, changing her position, her poses. Men who know how to lead, allow for that, encourage it, direct it even.
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”From whose perspective? Christ’s love was completely sacrificial.”
In Christ’s personal cost/benefit analysis, the sacrifice was worth it. If he didn’t think so, he would have changed his mind. That is the reason his sacrifice is so significant. If there weren’t another option, it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice it would have been more like a hard luck story.
”We reaped a reward. He reaped the suffering.”
Yes, exactly so.
”Mothers often give birth to kids, amid a great deal of pain, give them all we’ve got, and then they eventually leave us. Romantic love, a life time with someone will eventually end in separation and death.”
All true.
”Those are the harsh truths about the cost benefit analysis of love. It’s not wise, it does not pay you equal dividends, and it’s likely to break your heart. If you want to be purely analytical here, there is nothing to recommend it.”
Hold your horses…that isn’t true at all. I don’t want to sound smarmy, but the payout for love, for me, has been beyond price. There is no way to put that in terms of dollars and cents, but if I didn’t think the cost was worth it, I wouldn’t have done it. Now…it is true sometimes things don’t turn out well. That’s the “risk” aspect. Part of that analysis should take risk into account as there are few guarantees in life.
”People however are complex, we do not operate on a simple system of rewards and punishment and cost benefit analysis.”
We aren’t like ants of rats, but we do operate on a system of reward cost/benefit analysis too. It’s just a much more complex algorithm.
Before you push me into that moat, IB. 😛
Here’s your cost/benefit analysis in a really great song.
It has the benefit of being true. Best fairytale EVER:
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i love this. i actually feel like it should be a reminder to myself that a guy also needs to be “there” for me, not just vice versa.
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Sure, to some extent. But you wouldn’t want a manlet who was the one mostly chasing you and someone you weren’t interested in enough to chase.
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haha well, theres two sides to everything.
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Headlights and taillights.
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If these men really applied themselves to the women they wanted to keep they wouldn’t leave. Application, Conscientious, Being present with the person as they are.
Wanna trash a interpersonal relationship, treat your lover like a tool, treat your wife like she’s still the same person she was 3 years ago!
Number one reason I walk away is when people stop applying themselves, to who I really am, get to comfortable with the old days and are unwilling or unable to evolve with me.
These traditional red pillers love the idea all women are the same, the sick part is we are all different and there is no solid simple plan to get the girl, or even be the Alpha. The effort to make a women stay or maintain social supremacy would blow minds. Everyone’s different, OMGS!
I can’t believe men buy into this mundane childish self obsession soliphistic desperation. You wanna get laid, try trying to understand women as individuals, you wanna be Mr Popular, individually apply yourself to everyone in the room. Want your wife to love you, don’t rape her, don’t see her as a thing to duck, don’t try to earn sex, talk it out like a man or leave and get sex else where, and don’t marry in the first place either! Want a friend with benefits, get one, don’t marry a girl to sex her.
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And the woman’s responsibility in all this is…be her awesome ever-changing selfie?
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Awesome shiv, Liz!
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Liz, you underestimate the complexity of taking selfies…the pic in the club with two beta orbiter chodes…the pic on the beach with two beta orbiter chodes…the pic in the bathroom in front of the mirror wearing a bra…nakie pics from various angles and showing various anatomical features…the pic with the cats…the pic with the cool car…the pic on the bike with Harley McBadboy…the pic of Alpha Rockbandrummer’s splooge on her face (sorry IB, offensive imagery and language is needed for dramatic impact)…taking selfies involves a whole lot of complex shit.
The ever-changing, empowered woman…you go gurrrrl!
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The women would also be super kind and nice and sweet and sexy to the man. I don’t get where you guys get the idea the women in the equation won’t apply herself to her man by raising his children, looking after the house, applying herself to him, not raping him, whatever. I don’t get where you guys get the idea that relationships are a one way effort and only your effort counts?
You guys are strange, thinking I would ever think only one person has to kill themselves to keep a relationship alive. I did it. It didn’t work. Both people apply themselves, be charming, be sexy, chase each other, whatever does it for you and your lover.
Its strange you read into this that only you must contribute, of course the women contributes and keeps up with you too!
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These types of discussions often focus on the extremes. I grew up with women married to men who were so narcissistic that all humans were meant to serve them – the wife, the children – men were little gods. But this was a cult consisting of about 100 people. When I was younger, I thought that’s how men were because it’s all I knew. Now I see women commenting on the internet who think all men are like that and can’t see that normal men don’t behave that way. The funny thing is, the women I grew up with would never make statements like they were “dying inside”, even though they might have been. They simply served their husbands and figured God would work all together to their good because they loved Him. I never heard any of these women trash-talking their men and they certainly didn’t divorce. They weren’t perfect people by any means, but they were deeply devout.
The thing is, no human can meet our needs, only God can. If a woman is dying inside and the man she’s married to can’t hear what she needs, she should get deeper into prayer, not focus on herself and her pain incessantly – that way leads to insanity. I don’t care who a woman is married to – he can’t meet all her emotional needs, and divorcing him because of it is a drastic sin. The people who love us generally give us what they can; if they don’t have it, they can’t give it. If a woman is getting her needs met through prayer and spiritual formation, whatever her husband can give her is a precious gift. We learn to be grateful for everything when we go deeply into prayer because we begin to see reality – that we don’t deserve anything we have – it’s all a gift. A spiritually-formed wife will understand that she’s married to a broken person just as she is broken and she’ll be grateful that he is giving her his best. The place wives learn compassion for husbands is at the feet of Jesus.
On the other hand, there are many wives with husbands who are consciously doing everything they know to husband well who are never, ever satisfied and constantly escalate their demands. In my very small town I know of several cases of excellent husbands and fathers who simply weren’t able to meet their wives’ demands (and quite commonly the women present these demands as, “if he’d only give me 5 minutes of his time” when I know for a fact he gives much, much more than that) whose wives divorced them because they were “dying inside.” You see, “dying inside” has become a meme for Christian women who choose to be unhappy with the men they married. It turns out in almost all these cases that there was a man waiting in the wings, often a Christian man with a Christian wife, who supposedly “made her feel alive” (and screw his current wife – I guess he was “dying inside” too.)
Really, most evidence points to women being horrendously ungrateful for what God has given them. There are without question some who are married to ungrateful men who don’t love their wives, but the overwhelming evidence is that women are always looking for something outside to make them happy instead of doing the necessary spiritual work to be joyful in Christ. It’s just a fact that men are generally better at accepting what they can’t change and making the best of it.
I know this is long, but one more point: I don’t know how women who dump their decent, God-fearing husbands look those women in the face who have endured very, very difficult marriages for the cause of Christ. These women wouldn’t stay married because their husbands couldn’t act like a girlfriend, but there are women married for many years to non-Christians who daily offend all they hold sacred and yet they stay married and I’d guess those women are “dying inside”. Too many women don’t see that we’re all enslaved to a monstrous voracious self that needs to be put to death, not coddled and petted. Putting that self to death is the key to joy no matter your marital situation. In other words, “dying inside” is what we’re meant to do and loving what we find unlovable is one way that death happens.
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Ah, such lovely words of maturity and wisdom, Eavan. I agree with much of what you have said, and rejoice over the part about prayer and having a spiritual life that fills you up. I often speak about how once you have God in your life, husbands become like the cherry on top of your hot fudge sunday. Yes they are awesome and everything they do is a gift, but they are not the foundation of our happiness.
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Oh, one more thing, “It’s just a fact that men are generally better at accepting what they can’t change and making the best of it.” This is true, however, making the best of things is not always God’s will. He created men and women in this complimentary fashion and as such we have the ability to create some harmony and balance in the world. Men are better at “making the best of it, ” but the more female aspect, never accepting the way things are, serves a vital purpose too. We are meant to work and create and build, and I often wonder how much of that would happen with out the chronic malcontent of women as a driving force behind it 😉
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Interesting. I love her (my spouse) dearly –
but it bothers me that she thinks I should be able to read her mind…
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It should bother you, Andrew, but there’s another way to look at it too. You’ve been assigned some superhero powers, irrational, unrealistic perhaps, but that is what is at the heart of it. Women often do put men on pedestals, we assume you are bigger and better, and more powerful than you really are, therefore mind readers. That’s not always such a bad thing. 😉
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Its not “reading her mind”, its being present to who she actually is , and if you don’t know, asking?
Why do men get so confused over the idea of being present and applying themselves to someone they share a bed with?
Even friendships need constant updates and being there and not being scared when changes do happen, and not taking someone for granted and using them for parts! But that’s another issue entirely.
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I dont represent all men here, but i think i can say, no Elizabethan, men are not confused about being present. Men are confused how ungrateful you are and dont appreciate what yoy actually have gotten. You always look up and never look down. There are many people who are not better than these ungrateful women. Instead being grateful, they complain
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Have you told your wife? These issues? No use ranting to some stranger on the internet, maybe she is an uppity witch who is ungrateful and frigid, maybe you are an unhelpful slob who doesn’t try to be sexy for your wife but wants sex at all costs? Darling it goes both ways? Maybe you both are inept and unsuited and should divorce?
Dammit, I learnt this when I was 21? Both people can be at fault. If you can’t get laid its on you, abusing people and tricking them after you won them over is wrong, and most women will see right through that.
I am just surprised you are so defensive that you are present with your wife for how she actually is and what she actually needs, RIGHT NOW! If there was no issue, you wouldn’t comment?
How she actually is! Not “OMGs She Is So UnGrateful But I Want Sex” feelings. Do you know your wife as she is? Maybe she’s tired and that leads to ungrateful frigidness? Maybe you are giving her everything in a house and as a earner, but nothing to her as a person and individual?
Its on you to fix your marriage Dave, and turning hostile to your wife or playing childish games will only ensues your eventual divorce!
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Lol, women only think that men only want sex maybe women who have nothing to offer. I even did not bring anything about sex until you bring that up and I also demand NOTHING from women. Yes, most women are ungrateful and never appreciate what they already had. In the article that the author posted actually shows an example of an ungrateful woman. She has a good husband, good father, likeable, provide the families, and still complain. I have posted the story about my friend in comment above and he used to have wife like this. He provided the family, being good husband, and even being there for his wife even more than 5 minutes with nothing in return. Then what happened? the wife still complained, because wants other else. My friend then knows when to stop, then he choose to divorce her. Women actually don’t know what they actually want and what they actually need. Even when they know what actually they need, they still have no idea what need to be prioritized in middle of time, or even they don’t know the difference between wish and need at all. The more ungrateful you are, the more you lead to your own unhappiness and drive not just your men, but your friends as well
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Men need to learn to read women better–the subcommunication of women. And women need to learn that men don’t speak their nonverbal language so well.
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It follows that if women learn that men don’t speak their nonverbal language well, then women need to start speaking more directly to men.
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IB: I agree that women’s tendency to be romantic, expect much, and build castles in the sky can be the incentive to build a wonderful relationship. Women tend to be better at taking the temperature of a marriage; it’s part of their gift of nurturing. My point, though, is that asking for something to change with the full intention to choose contentment if the change doesn’t happen will make for a happy husband and wife. Sometimes people can’t see how to change, no matter how many instructions they’re given. I don’t want my husband to make me miserable because I can’t exactly see what makes him feel admired. It’s much more comfortable if he acknowledges my sincere attempt to express admiration for him even if I don’t know the correct words. Same for a wife. So many husbands are loving their wives all over the place, but the wives can’t see it because they expect love to look one way.
Basically, we’re all broken and muddling through, and viewing each other charitably, assuming that our spouses are doing their best, makes it possible to face many marital obstacles not as he/she being obstinate, but as a communication breakdown that needs solving. My husband doesn’t misunderstand my womanly communication style on purpose and I don’t misunderstand his manly style on purpose. The best thing is to laugh at how different we are, cuddle up, and try again. This is one of the ways marriage detaches us from our selves – we have to get outside ourselves to understand this very differently thinking being. His way isn’t wrong; it’s just different, but how many women do you know that call it wrong? I know many.
It just really distresses me the number of young wives I chat with whose automatic go-to is “he’s just being a jerk” instead of he’s overworked, underpaid, bearing huge responsibility, tired, stressed, just a human, and would probably respond gratefully to some sweetness and gentleness. For example, if a husband de-stresses by watching football, why not make him a tray of delicious snacks and a cold beer, grab your knitting and study up on the game so you can have a conversation with him about it? How would this be so hard? I’m old enough (about your age and years of marriage, thus outing myself as a nasty, menopausal, useless, ugly, old thing ;-D) to have learned that if I talk (semi)intelligently about his interests I’m more likely to get the hearing and interest I need. Also, expansive generosity in bed is a common language both understand, but how many women tend diligently to that aspect? If a man isn’t feeling desperate in that area he’s physically and mentally freer to tend to his wife’s emotional needs. My basic point is that wives have a great deal of control over whether they get the time and emotional investment they need, but it’s best done by becoming a person he enjoys being around and talking to rather than a desperate, whiny, threatening nag that uses words like “dying inside”, thus implying he’s the one doing the killing. Men are people just like women. I’d like to see more women treat them as such instead of a dispenser of wish-fulfillment.
As an aside, I’m no manosphere-adherent, so please don’t hear me as an apologist for that viewpoint. However, my sense of justice is deeply offended that men are having their families ripped away from them and, as they lay wounded unto death, are told it’s because they’re defective they didn’t do better (whatever this nebulous “better” happens to be in their individual case) and so their vicious and unjust punishment is righteous and they deserved it. It’s a rank evil to do such a thing and when it’s done to women we recognize that and cry out to heaven at the injustice. Why do men not deserve the same?
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Ah, Eavan, I so hear you! My sense of justice is deeply offended, too.
It is not a one sided fix however, you cannot simply teach women to be more empathetic, to endlessly lecture them about submit and obey, when there are all these wounded and broken men who recoil at the thought of taking five minutes a day to build an emotional connection with their wives.
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Five minutes a day, lol. Five minutes of drama a day, more like. I have to use, “Hey! Quit it!” quite a lot. Then there’s the cuddling, the shopping together, the sex, more sex, etsexera, etsexera, etsexera.
Ok, enough joking. The problem isn’t five minutes a day. The problem is that men don’t understand women’s emotional needs or how to fulfill them. It’s not just spending five minutes a day together. Men don’t recoil. You simply don’t understand.
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I very much agree that it’s not a one-sided fix. I enjoy your emphasis on how we complete each other, how we dance, and step on each other and try again until we become one in the dance. I just object so strongly to the idea that it’s fine for a woman to divorce because, as asdgamer said, men are not refusing because they know what to do and won’t do it. They don’t know what to do. And he’s right. Ask just about any woman how a man can meet her needs emotionally and she really doesn’t know. He may spend time with her, take her to a nice dinner, listen, try his best to empathize, and then make one false move, and the whole evening is ruined. Women are fickle that way and we want “the perfect evening.” I’d like to see, and I know from your writings that you agree, for wives to see the intense romance in the way men fix things for their wives, even when the mess is her fault, romance in the walking out the door to a soul-destroying job every day so she and the children can be comfortable, the way they try so hard to please us with thoughtful acts, the way they shield us and put themselves in harm’s way, that they think we’re pretty after childbirth, and in the morning, and after putting on a few pounds. That’s romance, that’s love, that’s an excellent husband who’s rare, a keeper, a gem, a good soul. He’s not to be treated as an idiot who can’t figure it out and he’s certainly not to be accused of killing his wife on the inside. He should be cherished and lavished with gratefulness, food, sex, help, and love. He’s God’s creation, made in His image, and he should be treated as such.
What kind of marriage do you suppose women have who treat their husbands in such a way? Do you think women who value their husbands so highly are “dying inside?”
I give all of me to him; he gives all of him to me. My life for yours. One, meshed, melded. He’s me, I’m him.
Also, I do wonder how many men are “dying inside” because their wives don’t give a single thought to their needs?
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Amen, Eavan, it sounds fabulous to me…but I have a wonderful hubby! Then I read what some of those manosphere men say about their own wives and I’m dying inside already and I’m not even married to them. It is not that she does not value him, it is that the man is such a prideful, abusive, arrogant specimen,who does not value women, and a woman would have to be dead inside to stick around.
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Yes, some men are like that. As I said, I grew up in it. But the prideful, “abusive” (I want to know that is meant by that term before I agree a person is abusive), arrogant men are also terribly damaged, often lacking any sense of their place in Christ, insecure, and afraid. I hurt for these women now as I hurt for them growing up and I certainly didn’t marry one of them. The cause was a rejection of the basics of Christian doctrine. And yes, these men were exactly like many of the men you disagree so vehemently with. They didn’t see the Biblical instruction to live with their wives as a weaker vessel as a positive statement about women but as a negative. They despised the weakness of their wives. They were wrong and will answer for it as will the men who express such things about their wives now.
However, suffering is a tool God uses to sanctify us and I saw that up close with these women. Such long-suffering, such selfless love, such devotion can only be honored by God and I don’t agree in the least that they were dead inside to stick around – they were obedient to Scripture, having chosen these men, made a commitment to them, and believed that what God put together no man could put asunder.And interestingly, all these years later I see these couples and the women are no longer emotionally beat down – they seem to have earned the devotion of these very damaged men. The Bible instructs older women to teach the younger to love their husbands, not to divorce them. Love covers a multitude of sins.
People aren’t perfect and we all have to practice suffering long and being kind, even to the unlovable. Marriage is meant to sanctify us, not fulfill us. Only God can fulfill us and if we learn to be fulfilled in Him then we can suffer much. Who are we to say we won’t suffer when our Savior, the one we are to imitate, suffered much worse than we ever will no matter our circumstances? Really, though, do you find most people suffering for the cause of Christ or most people refusing to suffer because they’ve got their rights and the vulnerable (such as children) be damned?
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You are right, I do not see many who are willing to suffer for the cause of Christ. In fact, in the Western world itself, we seem to be plagued with people unwilling to suffer the slightest inconvenience for any reason at all. It’s a real problem and I think you see this reflected well in the decline of marriage and stable families. The thing is, the men are no different, they’re all demanding to know what they get out of marriage and speaking of cost benefit analysis and what their wife owes them. The moment you take the sacrificial nature of love into the realm of what is owed and deserved, we’ve completely left Christ’s kingdom and entered the realm of pride.
I cannot let go of this because the selfishness it reveals is just too profound. When your wife is dying inside, spend five minutes a day relating to her as an actual human being. Steer her towards Christ, acknowledge her pain is real. Instead what I get from the so called Christian men, the Dalrocks of the world, is that her suffering is not important to them, that they couldn’t care less. It’s all her fault anyway. If I were married to a man like that, I would divorce him in an instant and if that were not an option, I’d throw myself off a tower. There are somethings worse than death and being trapped with a man like that would be one of them.
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Well, based on what many men commenting on Dalrock’s site report, many women are stealing men’s stuff because of frivorce with cash & prizes and shacking up with Harley McBadboy. And stealing the men’s children by falsely accusing those men of abuse so that the men don’t get to see their kids. That would cause agony.
It’s those men who have lost their resources and children because the system is corrupt who are “dying inside” and maybe jumping off of towers. Men’s suicide rates due to divorce are quite high. http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/09/24/the-gender-inequality-of-suicide-why-are-men-at-such-high-risk/
Maybe Dalrock saves a few of those men by sympathizing with them. And here you are throwing rocks at him.
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“Maybe Dalrock saves a few of those men by sympathizing with them.”
You know what the kindest thing a man ever said to me was, gamer-guy? He said, “if I sympathized with you, you’d forever see yourself as a victim.” He was absolutely right.
Dalrock can’t save anyone, only God can do that.
By the way, your article makes a point we were trying to argue earlier, “it’s been shown that men derive more mental and physical health benefits from marriage than do women. ”
Well there you go. So maybe spending five minutes a day connecting with the woman you married wouldn’t be such a bad exchange.
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The system victimizes men all the time. It’s not simply perception. Dalrock is where the severely wounded go. Once they get over the screaming pain they can put their lives back together. I understand their agony, having experienced it for a short time. I doubt that you understand it in the slightest. So please don’t pontificate on this sensitive subject.
It’s true that women frequently unjustifiably see themselves as victims. If a woman feels bad, blame a man. First rule of the Strong Empowered Woman. Mrs. Gamer does this all the time–I know whereof I speak.
And men do save people all the time. Firemen. Police. Etc. God saves souls. Men do what we can. Talk other men out of suicide, etc.
I don’t believe any of the nonsense about marriage being good for men.
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“I doubt that you understand it in the slightest. So please don’t pontificate on this sensitive subject.”
What next? Are you going to complain because I didn’t issue a trigger warning? Start telling me to watch my cisgendered privilege?
Don’t complain to me about how you don’t believe any of the nonsense about marriage being good for men. It’s your article, your link, and it’s plainly stated.
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Pre-shaming. That’s new.
Do you keep the bathwater with the baby? Weak minds do that sort of thing.
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theasdgamer, there is a book called The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilaar. This book also saves my life though
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I understand completely that you couldn’t live with such a man. As I said, I didn’t marry one even though I had several offers (thank goodness for my protective father.) I believe, however, that when we choose a person to marry, we have chosen and that sometimes turns out to be our cross. I think it’s extremely difficult to imagine ourselves doing what God hasn’t given us the grace to do. These women apparently were given the help of the Holy Spirit and, who knows, often what other people see is not at all what a wife sees. I think there’s a significant amount of posturing that takes place in the manosphere – men bloviating about what a master they are to the old ball and chain, but who really knows how they treat their wives?
Anyway, I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and I’m most grateful to you for hosting me and hearing me out. You seem to be a very gracious person and I’m thankful for the civilized conversation.
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Also, I feel a need to clarify – I spend little time reading at the sites you do so I don’t have a firm grasp of the types of comments you read. I one time read a few comments at Rollo’s and the rank sexual deviancy advocated was incompatible with my Christian peace. I suspect the women/wives who participate with these men enjoy the deviancy as much as the men do. Therefore, we may be talking at cross purposes or about completely different groups of people.
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I appreciate talking with you, it’s been pleasant. As you said in your first comment, there are extremes at both ends that really dominate our conversations, when in truth those extremes are somewhat rare.
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As an overall comment on your site, I appreciate your very obvious love for Christ and your neighbor and your advocacy for recklessly extravagant love in marriage.
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I don’t get men, why stay married to an ungrateful wife?
I mean, take Dave, he has complained for three days now about his ungrateful wife who only contributes to his life sexually?
I mean, its not like you have a choice?
I still would rather you divorce your wife then manipulate her with a fake personality, against her best interests!
Why marry if in your mind women are for sex? Why marry someone you don’t understand and can’t please?
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No, men don’t keep ungrateful wife, most of them don’t want to stay married anyway. But, compared to women, men I know are more likely to appreciate what they already had. They don’t demand their wives to change to something illogical. Problem started when women complained everything they haven’t got just like the article in the post. Can’t you see the article ? women leave good husband, good provider, likeable man just because he can’t spend 5 minutes? It was very silly, it’s like you demand 10 birds on air but you release the only bird you have in your hand
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Btw Elizabethan, where did I bring SEX in my comment above? are you drunk? I never bring sex, you were the one who bring that up
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PS: I’m not married, marriage is a joke anyway. Marriage for men is 3 ring cycle. Engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffeRING
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Dave, are you grateful having a wife? Having a mother of your children? You don’t sound grateful.
You don’t sound very grateful, you sound like you hate her and her stupid face, so get divorced!
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Why women leave? Feminism, empowerment, support system, civil rights, human rights, personal choice, not feeling it, not being treated for as they are right now, not being listened to, manipulative abuse against their better interest, abuse, bullying, rape, having an ungrateful husband, and freedom.
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so Dave is gay?
You aren’t interested in knowing your wife, you don’t want sex from her, you don’t want marriage? Very very gay.
Good provider, likable man, life is more then that. On paper things could be great, but in real life, it could be a hot mess?
You are over the age of five right? You understand that life is complicated, humans are complex and when you think you have it figured out, you don’t?
I say this as a person who knew a person who was great for me on paper, but couldn’t get me where I needed to go!
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