A few weeks ago I started a thread in the "considering divorce" forum that drew polarized comments. Since then my wife and I have started counseling, and while I maintain that she's been irresponsible and very childish, I have to take a good look at myself if I really want things to improve. I'm doing that, and I now realize a lot of my problems come from my wishy-washyness. If you look at the sticky thread at the top of the Mens' Clubhouse, I am the poster child for everything those references tell you NOT to do. I am the sensitive, carefully-listening, sexually passive, honey-let's-just-not-fight husband to beat them all. I've always been like this due to a combination of personality and upbringing.
And I realize that if I want to do anything about it, I have to get some things off my chest. I'm posting this here rather than the mens' forum because I already know what they'll tell me. "Man up." Well, for someone like me, that's like telling a lifelong evangelical Christian "there is no God, deal with it." I'm hoping women might have a more nuanced opinion.
My parents' relationship was sexless, loveless, and communication-less. They were a terrible match. Both had been divorced previously, and I suspect they just wanted to still feel attractive. Whatever interest they had in each other was dead by the time I was born. My dad was a taciturn, cold, distant man obsessed with his work. He only expressed opinions when my mom prodded him for so long that he got frustrated and yelled at her or us kids. My mother, for her part, was a chatty emotional wreck who was full of bitterness, especially sexual bitterness. Sex was mentioned in my house only when my mother was complaining about it with her sisters or friends. She could go on forever about how awful it was that men want sex all the time, how men are always staring at women, how men have single-track minds and can't do anything useful except earn money and donate DNA. And my dad seemed perfectly okay with proving her right (except for the sex part; he was outwardly asexual, though I later discovered he had a healthy porn collection). My dad rarely did chores or cooked. My mom has a picture of him feeding me as a baby...she took the picture because it was apparently the first and last time he ever did that. My dad saw his role as making money and staying silent about my mom's constant griping. My mom set all the household rules and did essentially all the disciplining of the kids.
So that was my home situation. Internally, I've always been a sissy. I never played rough as a kid, I always hated sports, and my instinctual response to conflict has always been to run away, not to fight. I've always had the urge to explain myself, rather than just stand up for my feelings (hence, this long post). Not surprisingly, other boys had little respect for me as a kid, and they don't have any respect for me now. And that's fine, because the feeling is mutual. I want nothing from other men and have no male friends, because I can't relate to them.
But things get tricky when it comes to relationships with women. My mom and her friends (the main female influences in my early life) openly hated men acting like men, hated sex. And then there were all the cultural talking points of the late 80's/early 90's when I was coming of age...all women want is respect, flirting at work is BAD, pornography leads to violence against women, etc. Who were the archetypal bad husbands of the time? The abusers, the deadbeat dads, and the sex-crazed cheaters (just look at the movies and TV shows of the era). So what did I learn going into the age at which I was attracted to girls? That sex is bad, wanting women to do things is bad, standing up for yourself is bad because it puts you in league with men who want sex and want women to do things. That the only respectful way to solve a problem is by talking. Indeed, this was one of my mom's many complaints about my dad: "he never listens to me." (This may or may not have been true). Ye t I learned at an early age not to discuss my feelings with my mom, because anything negative would be answered with "oh, stop whining. If you were a girl, you'd have real problems". So it seemed to me that a man becomes a good man by NOT doing things: not complaining, not wanting sex, not expecting anything, not yelling, not hitting, not doing "guy stuff." Just bring home the paycheck and do as many chores as possible, and otherwise stay out of her way. Don't question her, because she's female, and therefore has troubles that you could never possibly understand or appreciate. That's how you show respect.
Surprise, surprise, it doesn't work that way in practice. I didn't start trying to date until college (I was put under a lot of pressure to succeed in school...gotta bring home that paycheck, you know) and never understood why women didn't like me. I got the old cliche "You're such a nice guy, but..." routine and it drove me crazy. Isn't that what women want? Isn't that respect, being nice? What, you want me to show sexual interest, like Clarence Thomas?
Still, I never learned anything from these experiences. I was set in my ways by this point, and I rationalized that I was just dealing with young women who had some kind of battered wife mentality. Especially as regards sex. The women in my family had already shown me that women hate sex, that if women ran the world sex would not exist. My mom once caught me watching porn when I was 13 (one of my dad's tapes) and blew up--she said "nobody really does this kind of stuff" and "you must really be sick if you think this is exciting." So I suppressed my desire for sex until it barely existed. It's easier than you might think. I was also (and still am) taking psychiatric drugs that are notorious for killing one's libido, so that helped.
I had relationships in my twenties and they were mostly short-term. Everyone thought I was arrogant and disinterested at first, weak and mealy when they got to know me better. They wanted me to initiate sex, which I almost never did. I told them I didn't want to impose, because that's what I thought it was. Even my psychology-major feminist girlfriend, who used to say things like "that's such a cis-normative portrayal of queer attraction", called me a p***y.
It didn't change. I spent all these years "knowing" women want sex and strong men in the same sense that someone deathly afraid of flying "knows" that air travel is safe. The thought was there, but it never felt real enough for me to change anything. Things finally changed when my marriage started to collapse (both my fault and hers) and I found this group and a couple others.
In the few months I've been lurking, TAM has been a complete game-changer for me. I think this community is big enough that we've got a decent cross-section of personalities, beliefs, politics, ages, and backgrounds here...and yet the opinion about men like me is virtually 100% you need to toughen up. It's not even controversial. The opinion here is all but unanimous that men like me are not being sensitive, or caring, or considerate...we're just being sissies (self-serving sissies, in many cases). I could always rationalize that thought away when one person (my girlfriend or wife) was saying it. Seeing hundreds of women say it makes that much harder to do. It just blows my mind...I've spent my entire life thinking I was doing the right thing.
The other thing I noticed is the number of women complaining about lack of sex in their relationships, which is something I never imagined really happening. And many of these women have children, to my amazement (I always viewed giving birth as a one-way ticket to permanent disgust with sex and one's own body, if one wasn't there already...this is one of the many reasons I vowed early on never to father a child). Again, when it was just my partner I could always say their complaining about lack of sex was just manipulation. Seeing hundreds of strangers say the same thing changes everything.
To top it all off, this past fall my 70 year old, sex-hating, man-hating mother announced that she'd been having an affair (she and my dad have lived apart for many years, but remain legally married). Even this woman who told me I was sick for finding scantily-clad women attractive, who would w(h)ine for hours with her sister about how gross it was to have to share a bed with my father, apparently needed something.
If you've read this far you probably think I'm a clueless, selfish idiot, and you're exactly right. I'm completely stupid. I'm also angry, and I can't decide whether I should be angry at my family and society for sending me so many ambiguous signals, or angry at myself for misinterpreting them. Every thing I said above is true, about getting the message that sex is bad and strong men are oppressive, but I know there must have been other messages as well, which I somehow filtered out when they didn't match my idea of what a man should be like. How could I have not seen those? Especially when I was hurting my partners so much? I now realize there was a fair bit of misogyny in how I rationalized my actions...when it comes right down to it, I was acting out of fear. I was so afraid of disrespecting women in the stereotypical ways that I disrespected them in unexpected ways that nobody ever told me was possible. I was too dumb to see it happening.
The problem is, like I said at the top, this is essentially a crisis of faith for me (I'm not religious, so I can't say that with certainty, but it's the best analogy I can come up with). In the space of a couple of months my core beliefs about my world have been shaken to the ground. I know I have a problem, but it's not easy for me to change overnight. I'm now in my late thirties, and having to correct decades of habits that I should have given up at 18. Maybe I now know (in a real sense) that it's not oppressive or controlling to want sex from a woman, but that doesn't make me want sex. I now understand that sometimes I have to make tough decisions and stand by them without first talking it over with my wife for six hours, to get her feelings about it...but that doesn't make it easy.
What might make it easier is having some idea of where that line is drawn...where does strength become abuse, and where does sexual desire become sickness/control? That's why I started this thread. Ladies, where do you draw that line, and which side of the line would you rather have your partner err on? Those of you who identify as feminists, how do you square your need for strength and intimacy with your partner (assuming you have that need) with your desire to be in control of your own life?
Just so the record is clear: I'm not trying to whine or to push an agenda with this post. I'm honestly asking for help here, and I sincerely appreciate anybody who has a comment. I'm supposed to be working right now so I may not respond much in this thread, but I will be checking it. Thanks.
And I realize that if I want to do anything about it, I have to get some things off my chest. I'm posting this here rather than the mens' forum because I already know what they'll tell me. "Man up." Well, for someone like me, that's like telling a lifelong evangelical Christian "there is no God, deal with it." I'm hoping women might have a more nuanced opinion.
My parents' relationship was sexless, loveless, and communication-less. They were a terrible match. Both had been divorced previously, and I suspect they just wanted to still feel attractive. Whatever interest they had in each other was dead by the time I was born. My dad was a taciturn, cold, distant man obsessed with his work. He only expressed opinions when my mom prodded him for so long that he got frustrated and yelled at her or us kids. My mother, for her part, was a chatty emotional wreck who was full of bitterness, especially sexual bitterness. Sex was mentioned in my house only when my mother was complaining about it with her sisters or friends. She could go on forever about how awful it was that men want sex all the time, how men are always staring at women, how men have single-track minds and can't do anything useful except earn money and donate DNA. And my dad seemed perfectly okay with proving her right (except for the sex part; he was outwardly asexual, though I later discovered he had a healthy porn collection). My dad rarely did chores or cooked. My mom has a picture of him feeding me as a baby...she took the picture because it was apparently the first and last time he ever did that. My dad saw his role as making money and staying silent about my mom's constant griping. My mom set all the household rules and did essentially all the disciplining of the kids.
So that was my home situation. Internally, I've always been a sissy. I never played rough as a kid, I always hated sports, and my instinctual response to conflict has always been to run away, not to fight. I've always had the urge to explain myself, rather than just stand up for my feelings (hence, this long post). Not surprisingly, other boys had little respect for me as a kid, and they don't have any respect for me now. And that's fine, because the feeling is mutual. I want nothing from other men and have no male friends, because I can't relate to them.
But things get tricky when it comes to relationships with women. My mom and her friends (the main female influences in my early life) openly hated men acting like men, hated sex. And then there were all the cultural talking points of the late 80's/early 90's when I was coming of age...all women want is respect, flirting at work is BAD, pornography leads to violence against women, etc. Who were the archetypal bad husbands of the time? The abusers, the deadbeat dads, and the sex-crazed cheaters (just look at the movies and TV shows of the era). So what did I learn going into the age at which I was attracted to girls? That sex is bad, wanting women to do things is bad, standing up for yourself is bad because it puts you in league with men who want sex and want women to do things. That the only respectful way to solve a problem is by talking. Indeed, this was one of my mom's many complaints about my dad: "he never listens to me." (This may or may not have been true). Ye t I learned at an early age not to discuss my feelings with my mom, because anything negative would be answered with "oh, stop whining. If you were a girl, you'd have real problems". So it seemed to me that a man becomes a good man by NOT doing things: not complaining, not wanting sex, not expecting anything, not yelling, not hitting, not doing "guy stuff." Just bring home the paycheck and do as many chores as possible, and otherwise stay out of her way. Don't question her, because she's female, and therefore has troubles that you could never possibly understand or appreciate. That's how you show respect.
Surprise, surprise, it doesn't work that way in practice. I didn't start trying to date until college (I was put under a lot of pressure to succeed in school...gotta bring home that paycheck, you know) and never understood why women didn't like me. I got the old cliche "You're such a nice guy, but..." routine and it drove me crazy. Isn't that what women want? Isn't that respect, being nice? What, you want me to show sexual interest, like Clarence Thomas?
Still, I never learned anything from these experiences. I was set in my ways by this point, and I rationalized that I was just dealing with young women who had some kind of battered wife mentality. Especially as regards sex. The women in my family had already shown me that women hate sex, that if women ran the world sex would not exist. My mom once caught me watching porn when I was 13 (one of my dad's tapes) and blew up--she said "nobody really does this kind of stuff" and "you must really be sick if you think this is exciting." So I suppressed my desire for sex until it barely existed. It's easier than you might think. I was also (and still am) taking psychiatric drugs that are notorious for killing one's libido, so that helped.
I had relationships in my twenties and they were mostly short-term. Everyone thought I was arrogant and disinterested at first, weak and mealy when they got to know me better. They wanted me to initiate sex, which I almost never did. I told them I didn't want to impose, because that's what I thought it was. Even my psychology-major feminist girlfriend, who used to say things like "that's such a cis-normative portrayal of queer attraction", called me a p***y.
It didn't change. I spent all these years "knowing" women want sex and strong men in the same sense that someone deathly afraid of flying "knows" that air travel is safe. The thought was there, but it never felt real enough for me to change anything. Things finally changed when my marriage started to collapse (both my fault and hers) and I found this group and a couple others.
In the few months I've been lurking, TAM has been a complete game-changer for me. I think this community is big enough that we've got a decent cross-section of personalities, beliefs, politics, ages, and backgrounds here...and yet the opinion about men like me is virtually 100% you need to toughen up. It's not even controversial. The opinion here is all but unanimous that men like me are not being sensitive, or caring, or considerate...we're just being sissies (self-serving sissies, in many cases). I could always rationalize that thought away when one person (my girlfriend or wife) was saying it. Seeing hundreds of women say it makes that much harder to do. It just blows my mind...I've spent my entire life thinking I was doing the right thing.
The other thing I noticed is the number of women complaining about lack of sex in their relationships, which is something I never imagined really happening. And many of these women have children, to my amazement (I always viewed giving birth as a one-way ticket to permanent disgust with sex and one's own body, if one wasn't there already...this is one of the many reasons I vowed early on never to father a child). Again, when it was just my partner I could always say their complaining about lack of sex was just manipulation. Seeing hundreds of strangers say the same thing changes everything.
To top it all off, this past fall my 70 year old, sex-hating, man-hating mother announced that she'd been having an affair (she and my dad have lived apart for many years, but remain legally married). Even this woman who told me I was sick for finding scantily-clad women attractive, who would w(h)ine for hours with her sister about how gross it was to have to share a bed with my father, apparently needed something.
If you've read this far you probably think I'm a clueless, selfish idiot, and you're exactly right. I'm completely stupid. I'm also angry, and I can't decide whether I should be angry at my family and society for sending me so many ambiguous signals, or angry at myself for misinterpreting them. Every thing I said above is true, about getting the message that sex is bad and strong men are oppressive, but I know there must have been other messages as well, which I somehow filtered out when they didn't match my idea of what a man should be like. How could I have not seen those? Especially when I was hurting my partners so much? I now realize there was a fair bit of misogyny in how I rationalized my actions...when it comes right down to it, I was acting out of fear. I was so afraid of disrespecting women in the stereotypical ways that I disrespected them in unexpected ways that nobody ever told me was possible. I was too dumb to see it happening.
The problem is, like I said at the top, this is essentially a crisis of faith for me (I'm not religious, so I can't say that with certainty, but it's the best analogy I can come up with). In the space of a couple of months my core beliefs about my world have been shaken to the ground. I know I have a problem, but it's not easy for me to change overnight. I'm now in my late thirties, and having to correct decades of habits that I should have given up at 18. Maybe I now know (in a real sense) that it's not oppressive or controlling to want sex from a woman, but that doesn't make me want sex. I now understand that sometimes I have to make tough decisions and stand by them without first talking it over with my wife for six hours, to get her feelings about it...but that doesn't make it easy.
What might make it easier is having some idea of where that line is drawn...where does strength become abuse, and where does sexual desire become sickness/control? That's why I started this thread. Ladies, where do you draw that line, and which side of the line would you rather have your partner err on? Those of you who identify as feminists, how do you square your need for strength and intimacy with your partner (assuming you have that need) with your desire to be in control of your own life?
Just so the record is clear: I'm not trying to whine or to push an agenda with this post. I'm honestly asking for help here, and I sincerely appreciate anybody who has a comment. I'm supposed to be working right now so I may not respond much in this thread, but I will be checking it. Thanks.
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