Commenter Know How isn’t yet married, but this didn’t stop him from explaining that I and others have it all wrong in his response to my post Romance 101: How to stop frustrating your wife. As with another recent comment in response to that post, I pulled it to moderation to avoid derailing the discussion on that post. However, since I don’t have a new post handy and in the interest of allowing Know How a platform to share his armchair husband wisdom I’m posting it here.
“Cooking breakfast and getting into bed” is not what makes a wife. When a man makes the statement about “discussing her feminity”, that sounds like he intends to change her. We don’t want women to change us, why do we expect them to allow us to change them? According to what many women will tell you, they are not created to cook, clean, and have sex. They are our helpmeets, not our slaves. My dad is a marriage therapists with 47 years of practice. I grew up with a house full of sisters and one brother, so the two of us, have heard and seen it all and certainly admit that we can be at fault a lot more times than the woman.
Many of you here are somewhat skewed in your attitudes. It is not the way real men would approach the problems in relationships. Some things that we should not fall into the trap of is, making bad jokes, demeaning them, and expecting them not to react, to our demeaning and belittling. This is some of what gave rise to feminsts. They got tired of us limiting them and being too dominant. Women are people, not animals. Omit the jokes about spanking and the attitude about a woman wanting a career. I love my girlfriend and try to keep check of my behavior and expect for her to check herself, but I certainly do not want a passive woman without goals. We will be married after Christmas.
Everything in the relationship is not about her, nor about me. We both want to be respected and romanced. A decent balance is needed and the only way you will keep the relationship working is to be fair to her and not expect for her to bow down to you.
