Sounds like you've read this:
Posted on 08/15/2014 3:47:26 PM PDT by Drew68
Not so many years ago, married men had the freedom to live by one set of rules away from home, and a different set at the hearth. Because they held the power to distribute resources however they wished, they could decide what and when to share them. As women have become legitimate wage earners with more powerful voices, they have challenged their chosen partners to participate in a whole new kind of connection that does not accept automatic hierarchy.
In the last few decades women have slowly driven their point home. The millennial men, who are their current counterparts, are freer thinkers and they have responded in kind in their relationships as well. These men like their women strong and feisty, and have willingly accepted the responsibility to connect in a more vulnerable way. They get it that it’s sexy to help make a meal or take the kids away on a Sunday morning so their wives can sleep in. They are the androgynous guys that their women have asked them to become.
You would think that the women in these new relationships would be ecstatic. They’ve got a guy who wants to work out together, share parenting, support their parallel dreams, and make their family collective central to both of their lives. They’ve established an equal relationship of coordinated teamwork, and the guys don’t seem to miss their old need to posture for power over intimate connections.
Well, guess again. Fifty percent of marriages are still ending in divorce, and women continue to be the gender that initiates those endings. In the past, their reasons for leaving most often had to do with infidelity, neglect, or abuse. Now they’re dumping men who are faithful, attentive, and respectful, the very men they said they have always wanted. Why would women who have accomplished the female dream suddenly not be satisfied with it? Why are they leaving these ideal guys, and for what reasons?
I am currently dealing with several of these great husbands. They are, across the board, respectful, quality, caring, devoted, cherishing, authentic, and supportive guys whose wives have left them for a different kind of man. These once-beloved men make a living, love their kids, help with chores, support aging parents, and support their mate’s desires and interests. They believe they’ve done everything right. They are devastated, confused, disoriented, and heartsick. In a tragic way, they startlingly resemble the disheartened women of the past who were left behind by men who “just wanted something new.”
You may think that these women are ruthless and inconsiderate. The ones I know are far from that. More often, they still love their husbands as much as they ever did, but in a different way. They tell me how wonderful their men are and how much they respect them. They just don’t want to be married to them anymore.
Perhaps it would be even more honest to say that they don’t want to be yoked to anyone any more. At least in the traditional ways they once thought embraced as ideal. They feel compassion for their prior mates, but liberated in their new-found right to create a different way of feeling in relationships. In short, they want to live their lives with the privileges men once had.
I think I understand what is going on.
In the last twenty years, as women have found their voices and value, they have been asking more equality in their relationships. They were ready to take leadership and to disconnect from dependency. In exchange, they wanted their men to adopt nurturing and vulnerable characteristics. At first, there was an expected backlash. “Men are from Mars” and other media presentations became the cry for holding on to the differences between men and women and to keep them from blending.
Nevertheless, it became more and more apparent that quality people of both genders would be happier and more fulfilled if they could combine power and nurturing. Men would develop their feminine side and women their masculine. No longer would it be that the bad boys were sexy and the good women were virtuous. Now quality men needed to add chivalry to their power, and women to claim their ability for independent thinking and leadership. They could imagine a relationship where both were equally blended and free to be the best they could be. “She” and “he” became the new idealized “we.”
As the trend picked up energy, more of the die-hard “men’s men” started to see that the androgynous males were stealing the great girls from under their hard-core posturing, and began to wonder if their “take-no-prisoners” attitude might benefit from a little revising. Women saw their newly developed mates as their best friends, so wonderfully malleable they could take them anywhere and know they would fit in. Men no longer had to “understand and handle” their women, nor did women have to orchestrate “connection.”
Then things started to go awry. Perhaps these androgynous couples over-valued adopting the same behaviors in their relationship. Maybe the men got too nice and the women a little too challenging. Oddly, the androgynous men seemed to like their new-found emotional availability, while the women began to feel more unfulfilled. Her “perfect” partner, in the process of reclaiming his full emotional expressiveness, somehow ended up paying an unfair price; he was no longer able to command the hierarchical respect from her that was once his inalienable right.
How can a man be a caretaker and a warrior at the same time? How can he serve his woman’s need for a partner who is vulnerable, open, and intimate, while donning armor to fight the dangers that threaten his family and place in the world? How can he stand up and be a man amongst men, loyal to the hunting band that covers his back, while taking the night feeding, while not appearing less than a man? Did he blend his male energy with his female side, or did he learn to be more like a female at the price of his innate masculinity?
The women I have treated who have left their husbands for more “masculine” men believed that their new relationships would be able to both excite and nurture them. Sadly, that has not always happened. The veritable saint with balls is as elusive as ever.
When things haven’t worked out as they thought they would, several of the women I am now working with are re-thinking their decisions, wondering if they left too soon, or for the wrong reasons. They want to reconcile with the men they have left behind. Their husbands are torn between the understandable desire to reject them and still wanting them back. Ironically, because these have nurtured the feminine side of their natures, they are also able to forgive in a way few men have been able to do in the past. But because they have no interest in returning to the “bad boy” mentality their competitors brandished, they are faced with a challenge most men have never had to confront. How do they hold on to their vulnerability and capacity to nurture, and blend it with the strength and power required of a self-respecting leader of men?
None of my reuniting couples ever want to lose each other again. They’ve left the old ways behind and know that going back to what was will not work anymore. They intensely want to create a new kind of connection that blends the beauty of traditional roles with the freedom to move between them, and to blend the best of the past with an as-yet-unwritten future.
It must be a parallel path. Both men and women must separately find their own individual balance between their need for independence and their desire for ongoing commitment, not balance their proclivities on the other end of their partner. As integrated individuals in their own right, they would then have the capacity to create a relationship that is more than the exchange or sum of the parts. Committed partners who are willing to fight for that innovative solution will find the way.
Reprinted from Huffington Post
Meh. P*ssies talking to p*ssies about p*ssies.
Patriarchy and matriarchy both have power. Different, but equal, and thus has always been the case. To diminish one is to diminish the other, and neither sex realizes their full potential. Women, in insisting an equal role and participation in patriarchy have lost the power of the matriarch. And men, chasing after these very women, have ceded the power of the patriarch. Now, there is neither, but only the hapless duality of the androgen... or the meaningless sufficiency of the hermaphrodite.
What an unfortunate waste.
Apparently the author of the article disagrees with you.
No doubt she would have at least touched on your "laundry list" if it had any bearing on her thesis.
I’ll never marry again.
No doubt she would have at least touched on your "laundry list" if it had any bearing on her thesis.
Well, just open your eyes and look around at what passes for middle-aged men these days. Too many of them are fat, flabby, unfit and physically lazy. A lot of them could wear bras. They are not like their grandfathers. They cannot take care of themselves physically.
Why shouldn't their wives find them to be repulsive?
Sounds like you've read this:
Yep.
My Wife is a strong willed woman. No other would be as interesting. However, her attempts at gentrifying me to modern, effeminate, standards have failed.
I’m unabashedly Male and will remain so. Anyone else’s approval is not required.
Coming up on 18 years happily married next month.
Good grief.
Words fail me.
I did: to read the article.
You are injecting an issue not present in the article, presumably to give "women" a stronger justification than the author presents.
It's all very predictable, and it's called "chauvinism."
I don’t know about you, but I see far more obese women (both young and middle-aged) than I do men. What’s worse is that lot them wear clothes that they shouldn’t.
And I’m not a guy.
No doubt? Really? I can give you one big reason why she wouldn't have touched on it and that is because it didn't fit the point she wanted to make, that women are ditching their husbands just because.
And "laundry list"? You make my points sound like trivial complaints. Continuing to try to please your mate, not getting fat, being clean and smelling good are HUGE, for both men and women. When one side quits trying, the other side will inevitably quit caring.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s nice when the wife needs a bra more than the husband. Romance is important.
No thanks - I’m a “millennial” and I like my men strong and manly... A “man’s man” as they call it in this article. My husband is in the military and has a very interesting job.. I’m very proud and he makes me feel safe.
I work and am college educated, I could try to be an equal - but I enjoy being the woman, and being married to a MAN. None of these wimps that emasculate themselves or inflate their wives’ egos. I see it far too often with my friends and it makes me worry for their future children..
I read your link. No counter number was supplied, just a great deal of speculation on the source of the number. I went to the CDC site (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm) and it shows a 53% divorce rate as of 2011.
But fair is fair: I have to concede they gave up on me first.
Perhaps you are a FReeper atheist?
It sickens me. In the last two days I have gotten man-bashing emails. I don’t send them on. Why does this have to continue?
Opposites attract. BFD.
No doubt, but you seem to object to her point, and so contrive your own to make her observations more palatable to you.
Why do you feel the need to conflate her observations with your own?
And "laundry list"? You make my points sound like trivial complaints.
No more so than your list sounds resentful.
I'm always amused at how easily women trade in hypotheticals and unflattering generalizations about men, yet rise up in righteous indignation when one is even implied (as in this article) about women.
Please define "romance."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.