It wouldn’t be the wrong hole if she had just submitted voluntarily.
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This ^^ was the question you asked and I answered. My position is that sexual behavior does not have to inform the entire relationship. I think a great deal of what you believe about men/women could be compared to bro science. Can people put on a lot of muscle drinking a gallon of milk a day? Sure. It happens. Works sometimes. Generally, though, there are better ways.
See, I just don’t think this is true. I do stuff to my husband all the time, and I can promise you he enjoys it. Let’s take for example that I make him a delicious egg sandwich. I am providing. So you may say that I am fulfilling my feminine imperative to serve, but he also makes food and serves it. He runs for Chinese. I bring a big cookie home from work for him. In the bedroom, same. We each do things to the other, sometimes in a turn-taking way, sometimes as a here-let-me-please-you thing. I don’t enter him in any way because that’s not my jam, but I’m under the impression that this does happen in normal heterosexual relationships.
I 100% don’t mean to insult you or your dynamic or suggest you should not do as you’re doing. I do know that there have been rough spots and my only intent is that it be easier and better for you. When I ask if your wife has tearfully threatened to go to work, I’m telling you that in my opinion - and I’m older and vastly more experienced than you due to my broad exposure to couples and couple things - you should tread carefully when this happens. She is cornered and communicating this. Does she want to go back to work? No. She wants you to listen to whatever came just before. I have been in that place and have dealt with other people similarly unable to feel enough power in their relationship. Enough respect. @anna_5588 is absolutely right when she offers that many women stay because children, finances, or just the belief that it will get better and is not that bad, anyway. My goal is to give you information from the other side that you may lack. I like you because you are helpful and giving on these boards. I’m trying to do the same. Not to convince you to follow a feminist relationship frame, there’s no need for that, but to show you where your bro science may fall short. As @Njord points out in his excellent recent post, there are many ways and each of them depends on the individuals involved. Your frame is attempting to put individual differences aside.
Picture a classroom full of children. They are not the same, or even in many cases alike. In my family, just looking at the girls, we have a sensitive, bookish girl (a mini-me, though we’re not related by blood), a sniveling, shrieking future shrew (mom and the grandmother are currently not speaking after grandmother demanded an apology for poor behavior and kid wouldn’t give it) and this…like…wild girl, with a dirty face and messy hair and a sunshiny spirit unless she’s pounding her older brother. Each of these will need something different in a partner.
Fair enough.
I don’t see spirited as being in any way related to battle-ax, unless they are. In which case “spirited” is probably not the correct term…battle-ax is.
And I’m not sure what “modern feminist bullshit” has to be put aside. I just came back from vacation with my husband and a lesbian couple. One of them describes herself as “soft butch,” which is accurate, and the other is very feminine. Anyway, the femme partner bought a book of “feminist postcards” to make a framed picture grouping in her bathroom (which will be cute, the cards are cheery). Husband was off talking tractors with the other wife (or whatever they talk about) (but they both have a lot of land and spend a lot of time shopping for used accessories for their John Deere tractors) (although still, what is there to discuss endlessly?) and when he heard about the postcards sort of looked around and wondered “where are the feminists nowadays?” I was like “right here,” and waved my hand to include our group and everyone else. He just said “oh.” He’s not a social media guy and while he is on perma-outrage over politics, his problems tend to be that the dems are trying to take his guns and send his money to China or give it to the Mexicans to live here for free. Apparently he doesn’t see me as a feminist? Who knows? Who cares. I’m not at war with him (or you or anyone) and I like that he’s a boy and does boy things.
On a weird side note, I was interested to observe that he didn’t do “man things” for our friends on the trip, though in general he’s very helpful to them (installed bathroom fixtures when they bought a house, that sort of thing). But getting on and off the airport shuttle he got his bag and mine (though I’m willing to carry my own, and assumed I would in this kind of mixed group) and ignored theirs, and one of them is very small and feminine and the other around my size. So is it an ownership thing? I and my bag belong to him? I would have assumed it was a greater-strength thing, but now apparently not, or he would have been piled under bags.
I would say that “pleasing my man” offers me greater incentive to acquiesce than that he’s the leader or higher earner. He wants a camp on our land. I can’t think why he would - we tent camp there a lot, but generally in a large group. Are we going to be in a cabin while our friends and family are outside in tents? Making a bunkhouse large enough to fit them all? Or what? And most importantly to me, who is cleaning it? All of which I’ve expressed, but if he wants it, I’ll be supportive. Not because I’m setting my feminism aside but because I love the big weirdo and want him to be happy. If a dirty cabin in the mountains can make that happen, I’ll quell my misgivings, clean the place, and stay there with him. “For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people…” (But they’ll be sleeping outside on the ground, lol.)
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Talking about trucks or tractors is a communication/art form of its own.
I’m not fluent in either one. In fact, Im terrible at it. Its strange because I learned to drive a stick in a Dodge 3500 with the cummins diesel and dualy rear end, and have used, fixed and driven many different types & sizes of truck my whole adult life.
But when guys are like “blah blah, truck stuff…” I’m pretty much out to lunch on the entire conversation.
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Yeah, I suppose so. One of my sons is a big truck guy. He likes to talk about it - not to me, really, but he does like me to gaze at it approvingly. My husband is a lost cause for him, preferring trucks that are many years old and so don’t need to be kid-gloved ('98 died a couple of years ago, now he’s in a 2006).
The tractors, on the other hand, somehow stay bright yellow and green and therefore are timeless and beautiful as are their many accessories. He has, and uses, a 1947 Ford tractor to mow fields. I can’t remember how old the dump truck and excavator are, but decades. It seems to be part of the fun, and the young men who seem to flock around him love to run the equipment.
I love to stay home with Buttons and work out, which I can talk about seemingly forever (“blah blah assault treadmill”). Well, since 2007 anyway - which I think is incorrect. I believe I started posting at TNation in 2006, maybe '05.
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Theres that too. Both my wifes step father and the guy I used to work for at the frame place like to restore tractors. The guy I worked for actually has a massive collection of old Catarpillar machinery.
I won’t speak for your hubs, but “belong” is a strong term, though i know many songs with women happily/sexually describing themselves as “belonging” to a man (not all men, just the one).
I open doors for my wife and daughter. I will protect and provide for “my” girls. There is an exchange of value there. I won’t protect or provide for women whom are not “mine”. Chivalry was a social contract where men treat women well, and women treat men well in return. The second part has been forgotten these days. Mom’s used to teach their daughters not to let a man pay for food if they weren’t going to be romantically involved… there’s a statistic out there that about 1/3 of women on dating apps have used a man as a free meal at least once. That certainly isn’t all women, and not all women are on dating apps, but that is quite a large percentage.
In other words, if your hubs carried these girls bags, it would be a “simp” move. Neither will give an exchange in value with him, nor should they. Besides, there’s already a “husband” in that relationship. It would be weird to have another friends’ husband carry your bags, right?
And this is where we take different paths to the same destination. You’re putting your wants on the back burner for the wants your husband… that sounds an awful lot like a Laura Doyle-esque move, no? You’re submitting your wants for that of your husband.
Most feminists see red when they hear of women submitting to men, in any way (until they have a high caliber mate, then they seemingly forget they’re feminist). Hell, most feminists still think they’re oppressed while living in an actual gynocentric society.
In our conversations on here, you sound feminist… until you talk of your husband. He’s unaware you identify as a feminist, and tbh my outside opinion is that you don’t act like a feminist with him either.
Interjecting here, but this is where I lose the bouncing ball, and not intended as a personal attack but the thought process exhibited shades the tone of the rest of the post as almost combative towards women, from a place of insecurity.
Carrying bags is simply a nice thing to do. There doesn’t have to be a quid pro quo situation to do a nice thing for a woman, and it doesn’t mean she has put you underfoot if you do. You were just nice to her. She probably will be happy about it, and it might even boost her self-esteem a little that a person wanted to help her, but this doesn’t mean she’s dominating you, which is how your commentary comes off.
I know you’re waxing poetic a little in a cerebral conversation online but in real life do you feel threatened by women to the point that you keep score and make sure you’re one up on them to feel masculine? In my experience being the dominant partner is a natural extension of personality, and the one folding in is too. And it’s more of a macro thing, with little acts of kindness and service as a natural reciprocity under the larger umbrella of who is who in the relationship. Reactionary score keeping and balancing is anything but.
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I see it more as a respect thing. Respecting your wife by not acting as a “husband” to other women and respecting the other men. As you said:
There are exactly 0 women whom i feel threatened by. It has nothing to do with insecurity or masculinity - I’ll hold a door open for anyone.
But i won’t pay for a woman’s food if she’s but under my ubrella of protection/provision. I won’t put myself out for a negative exchange of value for men or women. Simps will do more for women than they will for men.
RE insecurity…
This word must be your absolute favorite because you see only insecurity in every post, in every thread, despite reasonable arguments from a point that is not of insecurity.
There is a clear distinction that needs to be made here, that you’ve blended together. Being the dominant partner is absolutely a personality trait, but the line of where it is appropriate to be dominant ends when the woman does not live in your house.
I don’t keep a scoreboard in marriage or in personal relationships, but a general feel of value provided is a must for either of these things to remain in my life. Sometimes that exchange of value is nothing more than a pleasant conversation, which both parties find enjoyable.
I disagree. I’m perfectly happy to do stuff for other women because women are awesome, I like to help anyone do anything, I actively put work into my relationship with my wife so there is no doubt about my intentions. My wife can see any of my personal informative, because I have nothing to hide. Bank statements, social media, emails, google maps.
But a spouse is different from a friend.
Men need to learn how to be better friends to women.
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If they were so awesome they’d have husbands who would help them.
Why would a man want to be friends with women? I know plenty of women and we are friendly however, I have no desire to spend time with them outside of work or, when I was in college, outside of the classroom. What are we going to talk about or do? I would spend the whole time thinking I could be spending time with my family, male friends or dog. If I need a woman’s opinion, I have a wife and female family members.
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I would love to see a picture of you and your husband.
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???
Not every woman wants to be married.
- Why does that make them inferior in any way. Their worth isn’t determined by their ability and desire to attract a partner
- Why should they be excluded from the benefits of having friends of both genders
Have you ever heard of this thing called humor?
Your wife wouldn’t like that.
Why? Are you guys too handsome?
More handsome than your wife.
Doubt.
My wife is a literal Amazon war goddess and supermodel. She could throw me through drywall and I’ve seen her stab a shark with a knife.
And handsome women are awesome.
That’s possible as one theory, from Palaephatus, about the Amazons was that they were essentially drag queens.
Time to play…
Name! That! Statue!
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