I was motivated to write this by a preponderance of stories in which people of both sexes stay in relationships with people who are clearly bad news. Also by Paul Elam's Article "How to Slap Your Way to Slavery."

While I agree with Paul's line that there is great injustice in the situation where a woman drives a man crazy over a long period of time and then hits the jackpot when he finally slaps her, it would perhaps be more productive to look at ways the situation can be improved in the individual case. Though this is not to say that we should not fight discrimination against men at political level as well.

In my opinion, the most valuable skill in life is the ability to see things from the point of view of another person, particularly when that person appears to be an adversary. By doing so, it is often possible to lead the other person to see that the best way forward is always cooperation. The stakes and payoffs are particularly high in the case of a marriage with children.

Even where it appears that the law makes it easy for women to divorce and fleece their husbands, women who take their spouses to the cleaners do indeed suffer for at least the following reasons: 1. They allow themselves to be less than decent human beings and the laws of karma are very persistent B. They set a bad example to their children who are not likely to grow up the way they would want them to C. They risk the man completely disappearing either through default or suicide. The question of continued support is then null.

In Paul's article, I would suggest that there are a number of factors that are within the man's control which he can use to his advantage.

  1. Behaving with an air of authority and expressing attitudes clearly and articulately from the start of the relationship tends to stop the long descent into Hell. For example, where the woman nags the man into changing his shirt, simply making a statement such as "It is up to me what I wear, however, on this occasion I will change my shirt for you, because it is important to me that we get along with each other." is a good opener. If she continues with a constant barrage of harassment over every little detail, there will come a point at which he can either list everything she has complained about and then say, "there is a point at which it will no longer be important to me how we get along and that point is now fairly close. If this continues, we will have to go our separate ways." By the time he says this, he should have made provisions to go his own way. Invariably, she will realise that she will have to change her ways as well.

Alternatively, a list of all her petty complaints followed by a direct "What's the real problem?" will change the situation. Probably it will come out that she has a lot of vague causes for unhappiness or some simple matter that can be addressed directly or which will become completely insignificant the moment it has been expressed and listened to. She must be made aware, that she bears responsibility for dealing with her own issues and that her partner is not responsible for her happiness. No one else can do it for her and her partner should not buy into her problems.

  1. Of course many issues will pre-date their expression in the form of relationship disharmony. If partners have led each other to believe they are something they are not, trouble will ensue when the truth is discovered. (Why do guys try to impress women with their "wealth", especially in the form of cars paid for with borrowed money? Any woman attracted to such stuff is a gold digger and will demand blood from a bankrupt stone. A man who has succeeded in impressing a girl with his money - this rarely happens incidentally, most women take the freebies and move on knowing full well what the situation is - has no one else to blame when she expects the supply of benefits to continue beyond his means to supply them.) Putting limits on the relationship and what the other can expect from it in clear tones early on saves a lot of trouble later. Incidentally, this is probably the explanation of why guys who appear to deal with women carelessly are often very successful in finding them.

  2. Possibly some men are not sure they can find another woman and so stay with an abusive partner. I say better off alone than in bad company. The skill of finding partners is learnable at any age; PUA forums are a good source of info.

  3. The meme of the "alpha male" and the value of behaving like one has attracted a great deal of attention and commentary. Far less attention has been given to the question of "fluff talk." Essentially, guys hoping to get laid will often exchange information about jobs and other objective matter. All they are doing is building a formal relationship which will lead nowhere. Fluff talk should revolve around feelings. There is also a very good reason for this. The establishment of an emotional rapport is an essential for success of a relationship. If that emotional rapport is not well enough developed when conflict occurs (as it inevitably will at some point), problems will lead partners into less than ideal behaviour instead of finding intelligent and mutually beneficial solutions.

None of this should be taken to suggest that I do not believe there is serious bias against men in all legal and matrimonial matters, but I think this is a good forum for discussing how to deal with the problems that men now encounter while pushing for change on a political level.