Posted on 02/15/2007 6:34:03 AM PST by woodbutcher1963
When a man fails to help out around the house, his poor performance might be related to a subconscious tendency to resist doing anything his wife wants, a new study suggests.
Men and women are sure to argue about this one. In fact, the man and woman who led the study disagree on the meaning of the results.
Psychologists have long known about "reactance," the tendency to do the exact opposite of what's requested by a loved one or boss.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Human Body Center.
The new study aimed to find out whether the phenomenon might occur at a subconscious level.
Participants were asked to name a significant person they perceived as controlling their lives, and another who just wanted them to have fun.
Then they were asked to discern words from jumbled letters on a computer screen while the names of the people they had mentioned were flashed subliminally. The names were flashed too quickly to be registered consciously.
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Serious question (and it's none of my business): does she know you feel this way? Have the two of you ever talked it out? Respect has to flow both ways in a marriage. I've only got twenty years of experience with it, but at least I've learned that much!
It is like the fable story with me. I will go and treat her to some things that she likes. Flowers, going out to eat, rubbing her feet, cuddling, etc. Then I could say one thing that she does not like, and all the stuff I did previously for the week will not matter. She will trump on that one mistake, however small it might be, for hours on end. I have seriously considered just being single because of all the drama that unfolds.
I explain to her about what is going on and to me, it goes in one ear and out the other. She hates politics, she hates sports, it almost comes across that she does not like any of my activities.
But when it comes to her many activities, I have to like it or else she rips my head off.
I would seriously consider being single, too. Sounds like you two need to talk to someone before it gets to that point. :(
That's when I get this glazed look in my eyes and my mind
goes elsewhere....
My wife says that my favorite phrase is "get to the point".
How is she at joke-telling? My own observation has been that women who meander like this in story-telling can't tell a decent joke, either. There's no timing, no sense of making the punchline stand out; they wander around in the joke, "Wait... was it a priest or a minister?...." and by the time it ends you're bleeding from the ears.
You have a marriage - they have an arrangement of convenience based on mutual neediness. The frequent posts from men who are actually afraid of their own wives and think that is a normal state of existence (as does the standard TV sitcom) are disheartening - because I know these guys don't have the social tools to fix a situation they would otherwise have never gotten into in the first place.
Whenever she wants to go somewhere, she says she wants to go out. I ask her where she wants to go, but she has no idea. I tell her that I cannot read minds. My usual comment is that I did not attend telepathy school. She expects me to have some idea when I had no idea that she wanted to go somewhere in the first place. I have told her time and trime agian that if she wants to go somewhere she needs to tell me where she would like to go or what she would like to do. But it never fails. Or she will want something from the store while we are laying down and relaxing and getting ready to go to sleep. That is the real tick-offer.
This is getting scarily familiar. this thread is like a men's support group.
Horrible. No timing. And meander is a good word for it.
That being said, we're a good balance. I'm the engineer/lawyer and she's a great wife and mother....
some marriages are doomed to fail.
I hope mine does not turn out that way
"No. Women just want the floor mopped differently"
When my son got married he told me that his mate was always on him about how he did the floor and other wifely duties. He asked why. I told him this was the way women established control. Furthermore, they expected you to like it. He's still not caught on, but what can you expect after 15 years or so? He got hardwired wrong. :-)
This sounds like such a mismatch of expectations; you can each predict the other's behavior, but not modify the behavior so the results ever come out differently. :( How long have you been married?
"how he did the floor and other wifely duties."
I still can't figure out how mopping became a sex-linked trait. I thought "wifely duties" was a euphemism for having sex! ;-D
1 year earlier this month
LOL! We will be married 27 years in May, we are way beyond the BS. :)
Yes, some are.
Others will always be "interesting". Others will have situational friction. Some will be perfect. Some will change over time.
I hope you can find a way to make it work.
Or in relating an episode of TV or a movie. It literally takes longer than if I had watched the dang thing. It is more akin to reading the screenplay complete with stage directions and camera angles.
Bring it up, and things go straight to "red alert, all hands battle stations".
Tackle box? Uh, I haven't seen your tackle box (in the last 5 minutes)........Rapalas? Yeah they're nice.....No, I haven't seen them either........(in the last 5 minutes).............
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