Julia, you state this much too strongly. I understand EXACTLY what Jamesash was talking about in describing his wife's inflexibility. I think mature, decent, sophisticated people (and there are many in this world) have a little voice in the back of their head, even during an argument, saying "hmm...am I biased here? Am I being fair? Is there more than one way to see this issue? I'm not being a selfish bastard am I?" Usually this voice is wrong, but it serves a necessary "Editor" function. Even when I am in an argument, I try to bend over backwards to see things from her perspective. What I have grown to resent is that my wife makes no such effort, has no internal Editor, never questions for one nanosecond the feelings that come straight out of her superego (or is it her id?). As my Dad would say, she has no filter - it's just brain --> mouth. I resent that I take the effort to be so careful in what I say, and she makes none. It increasingly seems to me that this is the typical pattern of arguments in modern marriages (in vivid contrast to our parents' generation)- feminism has beat in to me and other men that we should be ashamed of our crude, base instincts, yet women have a mandate to express every little desire as a demand as if straight from the mouth of God.

And finally, Julia, it is typical of a woman to denigrate a man's decency and good manners in the setting of an argument as a lack of the All-Important CONFIDENCE, which apparently is to women what big tits and blonde hair are to men.

What I was trying to say, and will repeat here, was that a pretty firm confidence in one's own opinion is something we all share (including you, obviously, or you wouldn't have been so sure that you saw an insult that I never meant or skirted so close to outright offensiveness in your reply).

But what I was trying to get across was that Jamesash's wife's (possibly extreme) outward surety might be indicative of her actually feeling MORE unsure and unconfident than people usually do, on the inside. I'm sure you've heard of inferiority complexes, which are usually compensated for by infuriatingly "superior" or intrusive behaviors.

Perhaps her defensiveness is too vigorous for anyone's general standard of "decency and manners," and apparently it's at least too vigorous for Jamesash himself to tolerate, but there's really no way for outsiders like you and me to take the data offered and make any strict judgments about the extent of her sins against The Universal Moral Order.

I don't deny that some people are TOO confident of their inherent rightness, but I'm sure you'll understand why I hestitate to agree that it's only women who have this problem today, or that it's caused by feminism, for pity's sake.

Women have been assertive, aggressive and even downright abusive in defending their opinions or thrusting their (uncensored) complaints on their husbands LONG before Betty Friedan came along.

And vice versa, needless to say.

Back then AND today the involved parties on both sides have had to decide to either cope or quit. And back in the days of more difficult or more highly condemned divorce, people were more-or-less forced to cope.

But in any case the odds for all of us are better in attempting to cope if we at least acknowledge (if not approve) what could be going on in the "too defensive" or "too opinionated" person's mind and heart.

Signed,

Typical Woman

Patrick: I really liked the description of a filter between your brain and your mouth. I have that same filter installed. Another interesting filter is the one between my wife's ears and her brain. I can ask in a straightforward way for a kiss or a hug and she hears it as whiny or pitiful. She says I should just kiss her or hug her, not ask. Yet, when I do go ahead and initiate the hug or kiss, I often feel like I am hugging a lump, or I end up kissing a cheek where the lips were initially the target. Which is worse...the cold shoulder when I take action, or the accusation that I'm whiny when I ask for something? Or is it all just kind of bad?

As for the initial blow up, followed by an apology a day or two later, yes, it's very common. I deal with it all the time.

Some people take this idea and imagine the extreme, that you have to be nice to everyone all the time, that you then have to undertake the burden of always being your best, of always being a light shining in this world. Ain't true. Every decision in life trades helping one versus hurting another. Can't be avoided, don't worry so much about it.

But you can and should be happy in your nearest and dearest relations. You should not be unhappy with the person you sleep with, with the family that you share a home with.

It may be that you're married to the wrong person, that your motives and hers were a too confused when you wed (or when you had kids). It may also be that leaving is still not the right answer.

How willing are you to go through the mating process again? Are you willing to settle? To take on a different woman's baggage - maybe her ex, maybe her kids' problems?

Many people look in the mirror and ask themselves, "What happened to me? How did I get here?" The person you live with sees you much more clearly than anyone else can.

You already know this person. You may not like her. She may not like you. But you know each other. The simplest truth of all is that there's a fine line between hate and love.

Hmmm. Perhaps we're just not understanding each other.

Let me try again. I was saying that these wives' apparently outsized assertiveness might be just a higher degree of the kind of basic confidence we all have in ourselves. Even people who are not AS confident as these women appear to be still have that basic confidence, because if they didn't, they would be total basket cases. You guys have at least enough confidence in yourselves to stay out of the loony bin. You're talking to me in a forthright manner and standing up for yourselves quite well. Therefore you are normal, and clearly don't need to be institutionalized!

I'm also saying that the very ferocity of this assertiveness in these women might be a defensive over-reaction to their more fundamental LACK of confidence in themselves, their situations, their needs, etc. It's the "fight or flight" thing again. They're fighting back like this and being "too aggressive" because they're scared or unsure in some very basic way.

Harry, I think that asking for expressions of affection is pretty clearly not the way to go with your wife, but maybe you could pick your "moments of action" better to get a more welcoming response. Can you give me some more specifics about the times when you tried to hug or kiss her and didn't get the reaction you wanted? What else was happening at the time? Was she doing something, like washing the dishes?

Maybe in her mind just allowing a hug or a cheek kiss (not totally, overtly pushing you away) is "enough." I know it isn't for you, though. If she let you kiss her lips but was still a "lump" would that be okay with you? If not, what would be?

You have to know what you really want before you can figure out how to get it. What exactly do you want in the way of a response from her when you go to hug or kiss her? Does she have to melt in your arms and return a big soul-kiss for her response to be satisfactory, or would something less be okay?

One reason I ask this is because she may have sensed that nothing short of the soul-kiss scenario will satisfy you, and she's not prepared/able to instantly react that way whenever you happen to "request" it. So she just allows the contact and doesn't actually respond because she knows anything short of total surrender will somehow disappoint you anyway, so it's simpler and less trouble to just let it happen.

That's why I'm thinking that finding more relaxed moments might be helpful. A move for a hug when she's bringing in the groceries will be more likely to be refused (or merely tolerated) than pulling her into a hug while you're sitting on the couch laughing at a movie together. Make eye contact first, though. Smile. Maybe say something nice. THEN move in. An unconnected "dive" at her out of the blue is likely to startle and dismay her, and remind her that you're (supposedly, to her) too fixated on the Merely Physical.

Who wouldn't bet that those wonderful qualities are still there? Probably displayed more frequently to those friends and relatives with whom his wife seeks support and understanding. I even venture to guess that on occasion, these pleasant qualities are shared with Jamesash. Sometimes we just slip unconsciously into niceness. Maybe that provides the hope which has sustained Jamesash for ten years. Maintaining an unforgiving, constant hostility toward the person whose face you see on the pillow next to you every morning works better in literature than in life.

While I agree with Julia that the best chance for change comes from the person who most badly wants that change, we may also agree that doing nothing in a special way can open channels of communication. As the folks in Alanon suggest to the spouses of people with serious drinking problems, you have to let go and put your attention and effort into building your own life. You need to accept the idea that you are powerless to change another person.

Somehow when the partner is no longer being badgered by someone else's desire for them to change they are freed from being constantly on the defensive. Then, with no one to resist and as they see their partner beginning to build a more satisfying life, they may wonder why they are being left out. When that happens in education it's called learning readiness. In marital relations maybe it's jealousy.

In any case, Jamesash wants it to turn out differently than it has so far. In despair he sends email to WYW instead of walking out the door. For most of us, hope is stronger than memory. But there is no guarantee that by letting go the alcoholic's spouse has found a better tool to stop the drinking. That wouldn't be letting go, would it? At the bottom, it is our own life that we can put together, and that is hard enough.

In the forty plus years of our marriage neither my wife nor I have been able to change the other to match our vision of the perfect spouse, the one we thought we were getting when we lived in that rosy glow at the beginning, and we have tried. The significant changes occurred when we both were independently motivated to change.

We do change and we should adapt if we can. It sounds like there is an impasse to the adaptation. It sounds like the thing that is missing most is the thing that keeps Jamesash's foundation solid. Without the brick of sex, and intimacy, the wall only crumbles. He sounds like he has adapted and learned to live with it. My point was merely questioning why anyone should live with it? Mrs. Jamesash will either concede to his wants, or Jamesash settles, or neither. In my first marriage, I settled, and lost. Thank God.

We still share many interests and enjoy doing some things together, although it is hard for us to be together for more than a couple of hours without friction (relaxing vacations together do not seem possible). Sex is definitely not possible. I think our mutual commitment to the kids is what keeps us together, not leaving my kids is very important to me, more important than sex.

But the kids are almost out of the house, and the idea of being involved in a sexual relationship again is very appealing to me. What I have totally given up on is the idea of having sex with my wife, she is an attractive, fit person, but after all the sexual rejections I have experienced, the only way I have been able to sustain my own sanity is to no longer see her as a sex object, she's become more like a sister or something. Plus, there is the anger.

I am an upbeat person though, I am thankful for my family's health, thankful we have the roof over our heads and for the food we have on the table. It's just that it would also be nice to get laid every now and again.

Patrick, I also misunderstood JG's intent in the passage on "confidence", but I understand it better after reading her follow-up comments.

I too think Confidence begets a response. There is of course a fine line between Confidence and being a jerk. Some women actually like jerks.

Frank, I'm so sorry you feel this way. Truly. It breaks my heart.

I understand what you are saying, though. You see the changes you would have to make as "emasculating" and "slavish," whereas I, being who I am, see them as the kind of thing that can actually empower and elevate a man as a human being, making him more confident of his own worth and happier in his life.

But you can't help the way you feel. And feeling that thinking/acting in a certain way makes you a "doormat" means you're pretty much stuck, I guess. I disagree with your take on these things, but then, I would, wouldn't I? <smile>

I don't think we believe that you have to sacrifice your self respect to experience love, do we?

Absolutely not! Respecting yourself is crucial to a genuine relationship, and insecurity, desperately hidden fear and self-hatred are the real sources of many people's inability to really love others. If you are, for example, so worried about your basic human value that you must always be in a position of greater overt or APPARENT power to maintain your "self-respect," you do have to give up on intimate love and and real adult-to-adult partnership. You can't have both. That is just a fact.

But if you can stand the pain of your situation, Frank, I guess you'll be fine. *I* wouldn't want to live that way, but, hey. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice. We all have to make our own decisions about the inevitable trade-offs in life.

Good luck!

(And stop back by when you can...I'll be talking more later on about defining and maintaining -- even DEFENDING -- real masculinity later on. Believe me, it isn't going to consist of exhortation to be a Woman With A Penis. Yuck. That is NOT sexy!)

"As miserable as this situation makes me, when I weigh all the pros and cons of staying married (especially given that there are two kids now), I have decided I can eat the pain and stay with it and just let this aspect of my life be very unhappy."

Why, is my question? Have you given up the battle, or is the war already over? I think that you should be the man you are wanting to be, and you should work out these problems, because I think that over time you will only have each other. The kids will grow up and the rest of your life will go away, and now you are left standing in an empty house with a roommate not a partner.

My sense is that from the woman's perspective, with the onset of domestic life together, comes a sharper awareness of all the annoying habits and behaviors of the male partner (belching, never washing the dishes, leaving the toilet seat up, whatever). As the woman's annoiance builds, it ultimately manifests itself as a diminishing of the woman's sexual interest in the male.

The man sees this lessened interest as a rejection of his person, the woman sees it as a stuburn reluctance of the man to "grow" into the behavior required for a successful long term relationship.

Interestingly, I know a few divorced people (men and women) who say the best sex they ever had with their spouse was at the end of the marriage! Probably not the case for anyone reading this.

I'm not quite sure what in Julia's advice inspired the talk about not wanting to be an emasculated emotional slave; somehow I suspect that what Frank sees as emasculated slavery would be something I'd see entirely differently.

Actually, my husband does belch, never washes the dishes, and leaves the toilet seat up, and that's fine, since belching and leaving the toilet seat up don't happen to be on my particular list of dislikes, and as long as he puts the dishes in the sink, I'm happy to move them to the dishwasher. But I do expect respect from him on the things that do matter to me; I sure wouldn't be a happy camper if he saw that as meaning sacrificing his self-respect.

Yes.

The kids will grow up and the rest of your life will go away, and now you are left standing in an empty house with a roommate not a partner.

You've got to be kidding. When my children grow up and no longer need me to "take care of them" in my half-assed way - which, as far as I can tell, is probably, maybe, all in all, a small bit better than if I weren't moping around and paying them bills, then again maybe not, who knows... anyway when that day comes, and there's a specific day I have in mind too, the youngest one's high school graduation, the very next day I'm gone, absolutely one hundred percent for sure. If at that time I can't afford to rent a dump of my own, there remain razor blades and high bridges, and think of the old-age medical bills I'd elude! But there's no way I'll stay with this horrible bitch who has smashed my life one second longer than my duty to my children demands.

How can you hope to come back from this situation?