Yesterday’s post on Clark’s problems yielded a lot of incredibly good feedback. I haven’t had time to respond to all of it individually, as it deserves, but it was all very useful. Unfortunately, I left off one of the biggest issues: Clark isn’t yet ready to even acknowledge that there’s a problem. Until that happens, there’s really almost nothing I can do, and like many commenters I worry very much that he won’t be ready to take that leap until it’s too late. Until then, I think the best advice came from DB:
Schedule more time together….earn trust and establish a sense of comradery. Show him by example…how you deal with your wife. Throw out examples of scenarios of instances where you calmly and firmly addressed a problem and by your behavior divert confrontation….and create attraction. (For instance….”Hey the other night, my wife said this and I told her this! I don’t tolerate that…what do you think?”) Then….wait. You wait for him to ask you…..how you do it. How is it that you know so much about this subject. Once his interest is sparked…..you open the gates and let him in on GAME.
In the meanwhile, we move on to example #2 of FWS. Last week I detailed the complete disaster that is my brother Wilson’s marriage. I also mentioned how feminism had been a disaster for my sister Hillary. Time to fill in the missing story: my brother Chewbacca.
Anybody who knows him would understand instantly why I picked the name Chewie. He’s a big lovable teddy bear. He’s huge. 6’2″ and probably about 270lbs. He’s also… just the jolly green giant. Only not green. He’s one of the most truly laid back people I’ve ever met. He’s also brilliant. I don’t know his exact tested IQ, but it’s at least as high as mine (high 140s), possibly higher. He’s a big geek, big time into gaming. Especially role playing (Dungeons and Dragons type stuff), board games and card games. And he’s really good at them. Usually that wouldn’t be an alpha skill, except that his wife is just as big of a geek as he is. She’s also, not to put it too delicately, just about as big of a person as he is… almost as tall and almost as heavy. Only she’s not as good at the games, so in their frame it’s an alpha skill.
Unlike Emo Bear (Wilson’s wife), Brienne is actually pretty intelligent and pretty cool. Or, rather, she was pretty cool when they got married. The problem is, Chewie’s just too darned laid back. Brienne jumps down his throat all the time for the tiniest of things, and he just sits there and takes it. And takes it. Until finally he explodes. Then he goes back to taking it again. There’s also a big disconnect because her female status instincts are kicking in. She wants a nicer, bigger house, nicer things, more money… and Chewie really just doesn’t give a shit. If he’s got tasty food on the table and a fun game to play with friends that he likes he’s genuinely happy. He has next to no ambition at his job. He makes a decent middle class salary – higher than median US household salary, but not by a ton. He’s worked at the same place since he graduate from college. He’s survived a round of massive layoffs, and now he’s one of a very small number of people left in his division. A division, by the way, that is unlikely to ever grow much again. Yet she keeps pushing him and pushing him to go in and demand a raise. There’s nobody left who knows his job, so she thinks he’s got them by the balls. In reality, if he pushes too hard his job is likely to go away.
Unlike Wilson, at least he explodes every now and then. That somewhat keeps it in check. And also unlike Wilson and Emo Bear, Brienne has some genuine respect for him, as she should. He’s got a lot and done a lot that’s worthy of respect. But even so, their marriage is definitely sliding down the long, slippery slope toward AMC land – just as mine was before I discovered Game, although perhaps a bit faster and harder. On the other hand, he’s got an easier fight than I did. His wife, frankly, is around a 4. She’s actually somewhat cute, which is why she can manage that despite her weight. But really, he doesn’t have a high bar to meet. All he really needs to do to fix things is just to learn to stand up to her when she jumps all over him. It’s just a series of shit tests that he’s completely and utterly failing.
I haven’t yet brought up the concepts of Game to him. In Chewie’s case, I think he’d be very intellectually open to it if it were brought up in the correct way. It would, however, be very difficult for him to do. He’s just not a very alpha person. Then again, as I mentioned earlier, he just doesn’t have that big of a hill to climb to turn things around – if he catches it in time.
The main reason I tell Chewie’s story today, though, is to tie it in with yesterday’s post. Much like Clark’s wife, Brienne has gotten bitchier and bitchier (to put it bluntly) over the years they’ve been married. And as I mentioned yesterday, I believe this is a direct result of frustration with her beta husband, hence my diagnosis of FWS. As with Clark’s wife, she honestly cares about her husband. Even more than Clark’s wife she truly doesn’t understand why she’s unhappy. And, as is common with FWS, the biggest targets of her bitchiness (other than her beta husband) tend to be women with alpha (relative to her husband) partners. In both of these examples that has come to be my wife.
The alphas themselves (again, me in this case) come under fire as well. But for us it’s relatively easy to handle. Just continue to be alpha and shut down the shit tests these women lob our way. It can be much more difficult for our partners to handle.
