"Here's what my son wants out of life: macaroni and cheese, a video game, and Kim Kardashian. Have you ever seen Kim Kardashian angry? I didn't think so. You've seen Kim Kardashian smile, wiggle, and make a sex tape. Female anger terrifies men. I know it seems unfair that you have to work around a man's fear and insecurity in order to get married -- but actually, it's perfect, since working around a man's fear and insecurity is big part of what you'll be doing as a wife."
From a weirdly hateful HuffPo piece called "Why You're Not Married," by TV writer Tracy McMillan, who "lives in Los Angeles with her 13-year-old son." You know, get a life, so you don't have to talk about your teenage son. Or just shut up. He's not your husband or anything like a husband, and if you think he is, just shut up.
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105 comments:
It's really hard to write good invective. This is (as you say) just hateful and embarrassing. That's about par for the course, but I don't think I can think of a woman who is any good at this. Has there ever been a female Mencken?
Why should anyone care what this loser thinks?
I think the piece answers the question "why you're not married", but not in the way the writer probably intends.
The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them.
The bastards.
Wow. That woman has some personal problems.
I echo Palladian's sentiment.
"Here's what my son wants out of life:..."
Yes, as do most teenage boys. Younger boys desire the same, without Kardashian.
The question is what does the mother desire for the son? I'm not so sure she disagrees.
I think men in particular should read this article before judging the author.
It's easy to see why she would put off feminists. She's basically saying to women: It's not the guys in your life -- it's you!
What's not to like?
Men of character are, by definition, willing to commit.
That is so untrue. Men of character who want a wife are willing to commit. Men of character who do not want a wife are willing to say "I'm not interested in a long-term commitment".
The problem, of course, is that with a lot of women the words "I'm not interested in a long-term commitment" enter the ear canal, but by the time they reach the cerebral cortex they have been translated into "deep down I *do* want to marry you, and if you just stay in the relationship with me a while longer eventually I'll admit that". Cut to a few months or years later and the woman is ranting about how the man has been stringing her along, and the man is wondering exactly how the whole thing is supposed to be HIS fault.
Ladies, if a man says "I'd like to be married one day" and then never gets around to popping the question, he's stringing you along. If he says he doesn't want a long-term commitment, he's doing this little thing we men like to call "being honest with his girlfriend".
All that needs to be said about Kim Kardashian.
God damn it.
Peter
Female anger terrifies men.
I disagree, babe. You are cute when you get mad.
It's true, woman's anger is terrifying. I don't know what makes stating that "hateful."
Its not the anger, its the Crazy.
When I was young and naive, my criteria for finding a mate was
1) smart
2) funny
3) attractive
By the time I reached my mid-20s, I had added another
4) sane
And most the women I dated couldn't meet that last standard.
Has there ever been a female Mencken?
I'll see your Mencken, and raise you a Dorothy Parker.
followed the link
actually a good article.
@Kent. No. No! Parker was not a female Mencken. She was a female Wilde. The closest a woman ever got to Mencken was George Eliot's piece, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists."
I also had the same thought as Palladian.
I also feel very badly for the son in many dimensions.
I thought it was a pretty good article. maybe that's because I've been in a 23 year, on and off (No pun) relationship. Early on, she would tell me I treated her like s**t and I would say, "Ok. Let's go our separate ways." That never worked. We've talked about marriage but she never wanted to do the things you do to get married. Then came the baby. That was 20 years ago. She's almost as angry as her mother but she doesn't understand what has happened the past 20 years. She thinks I haven't been as good a husband as I should have. She doesn't know the story.
I could have written that article, including therapists.
and that is worth 380 ?
I just think about how it must suck to be Tracy McMillan's 13-yr-old son.
I've always thought that one of the most bizzare things about single parenthood is the way that single mothers tend to convert their sons into some sort of psuedo-husbands.
Yeah, no. Tracy, doll, teenage boys do not resemble husbands in any way. If you find that your husband resembles one, that makes you a tool. It means your husband is an oaf who's been holding out for that special woman (you) who would treat him like a child, make him macaroni & cheese, roll her eyes when he checks out other women, and have only empty threats when he plays video games too long.
Most people--the proverbial "you" in your piece "Why you are not married"--understand that the relationship between wife and husband is not maternal but symbiotic. Until you figure this elusive detail out, you'll keep racking up husbands like munch-n'-punch frequent eater punch cards.
But what do I know? I don't live in LA or write for the most boring fucking show on earth.
Read the article, thought it was fairly good, but she should have left her son out of it.
I don't believe men are afraid of a woman's anger, we just don't want to deal with it day in and day out.
Life is too short to spend every day married to a perpetually angry woman. As a matter of policy, I avoid negative people as much as humanly possible, and I certainly wouldn't marry one.
Women are so fucked-up. My teenage daughter for example...
I just think about how it must suck to be Tracy McMillan's 13-yr-old son.
I think it sucks to be anyone's 13-yo son.
Anybody who reads websites for advice on how to get married or how to stay married is truly and completely fucked.
Try religion. If your mom and dad provided a good example, run with it.
If you look to feminism for advice on marriage, then you're just a junior high school ditz and you deserve the beating you are guaranteed to get.
Men fear female anger the same way we fear homosexuality. A respectable man simply has no way to deal with it through either reason or force. We are all homophobic gynephobes and incredibly stupid handcuffed brutes. Sorry you couldn't find one to love you.
The tragic end result of an otherwise ordinary woman being bitten by Amanda Marcotte, during a full moon.
Methinks most commenters did not click through...
I didn't really want to comment but the word verification was too good. I'm rooting for the woman's son.
wv: prefoxer
Methinks most commenters did not click through...
I read the first couple of paragraphs and didn't want to waste any more time.
What I read was an immature, easily led woman bitching about how life didn't conform to her feminist indoctrination. Despite her indoctrination, she wants to get married... and some man is supposed to put up with her.
That's supposed to interest me? Why would I read beyond two paragraphs of that shit?
Comparing your son to your husband does not speak well of your idea of the proper relationship with either.
All her points, save for the swipe about her boy, were pretty standard recommendations for women to take personal responsibility if they're not able to find a husband.
I didn't agree with them all, but found them pretty bland ideas gussied up with snark.
"The bottom line is that marriage is just a long-term opportunity to practice loving someone even when they don't deserve it.
...But as you give him love anyway -- because you have made up your mind to transform yourself into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving, and most of all, accepting of your own dear self -- you will find that you will experience the very thing you wanted all along:
Love."
Not bad.
Hey! Speaking as a knuckledragging, sexist neanderthal (*cough*Roissy*cough*), I thought that piece was pretty decent. The one bit you quoted was annoying, and the first few paragraphs are annoying boilerplate to establish herself as the kind of annoying person HuffPo readers will take seriously...
But then the rest did a 180 and was thorougly sane and decent, and surprisingly pro-male for HuffPo. I especially liked the part about how women shouldn't try to marry up. They can't help trying, of course, but they'll never be happy until they get their expectations within the bounds of sanity and learn to put some effort into what they've got.
That one paragraph really was weirdly hateful, but it was unfair to characterize the whole piece in those terms.
It strikes me that the author never learned that key advice to writers: to pick the sentence of your piece that you just love, and delete it.
The "protozoa" comparison was that sort of error, one that a good editor would have excised.
Life is too short to spend every day married to a perpetually angry woman.
Life is too short to spend it with anyone who is perpetually angry.
Having reduced her son to the level of a single-celled organism, it's surprising she doesn't say she wishes she'd had said organism expunged.
It's the only insult she has yet to deliver on the kid.
OTOH, one can forego the article and ponder the succulent Christina Hendricks.
3 time loser.
How could a man stay married to a woman who does not respect and love him? And vice versa.
What I read was an immature, easily led woman bitching about how life didn't conform to her feminist indoctrination. Despite her indoctrination, she wants to get married... and some man is supposed to put up with her.
Yes, you should read further. Trust me on this one thing, and you will be rewarded.
Why bother with live women at all?
Coitus upon a cadaver
The ultimate way one can have her.
The inanimate state
Means a man needn't wait
And eliminates idle palaver.
Peter
Sounds to me like that pretty much explained why she is not married any longer.
Once you get over her initial characterization of men as teenagers (often true, I'm afraid, especially these days) (but then, I'm a codger. Or maybe curmudgeon.) you might find that she has a better opinion of men than women, even though her three strikeouts seems to indicate she has trouble following her own advice.
Freeman Hunt said...
Methinks most commenters did not click through...
Well, first, it's Huffington Post. I try to avoid that.
Second, it references Kim Kardashian. Now I confess that physically, Ms. Kardashian is just about my ideal. But she strikes me as so intellectually vapid (and morally, too) that I can't work up even the slightest interest.
So no, I had no interest in clicking through. But just for you, I did.
Then I immediately sent the link to a friend with a teenage daughter who probably needs to read it a lot more than I do.
The author still has some hangups and bitterness to work through, but her blunt statement of facts is the antithesis of PC BS.
My father always reminded me....
"Don't EVER get into bed with someone that has more problems, and less money than your self"
He also said....
"If you ain't gonna lick it, then don't dick it"
Yeah, Ann!!!
Freeman, you are absolutely right. Not what I thought it was, and of course our host would have more interesting taste than that, so I should have known better, but she played me with her lead in by calling it "hateful". Now why would she do that?
It was a good article, thanks.
Yeah, Ann, I don't see why that article was hateful to you. Many of the observations were spot on.
I do think it's interesting that men become more realistic about marriage as they get older, while quite a lot of women are stuck in fantasy world. Every young guy thinks he's going to marry a supermodel, but guys who are actually in the marriage market are very realistic. Many of my friends, despite being successful and attractive, ended up marrying somewhat plain-looking women (not ugly, but not the stunners they might have dated in their early 20s).
On the other hand, I know way too many 30-something, pining-for-marriage women who reject guy who doesn't meet their exacting, Prince Charming standards.
I've never been married, but I've never looked for a wife. Are there any straight women who simply don't want to be married, ever, or are there just self-deceivers?
shoutingthomas:
I read the first couple of paragraphs and didn't want to waste any more time.
What I read was an immature, easily led woman bitching about how life didn't conform to her feminist indoctrination. Despite her indoctrination, she wants to get married... and some man is supposed to put up with her.
Yeeeaaaah, you should read the whole thing since it's kind of the opposite of what you assume it is. The author is roundly castigating modern women for stupid/crazy/ignorant/unrealistic about marriage.
Come on, her problem with the article is obvious: Ann doesn't like it that there are women who write better and more entertainingly than Ann.
Heck, the more I read it, the more wickedly anti-feminist it really is. I love this part:
3. You're a Slut.
Hooking up with some guy in a hot tub on a rooftop is fine for the ladies of Jersey Shore -- but they're not trying to get married. You are. Which means, unfortunately, that if you're having sex outside committed relationships, you will have to stop. Why? Because past a certain age, casual sex is like recreational heroin -- it doesn't stay recreational for long.
That's due in part to this thing called oxytocin -- a bonding hormone that is released when a woman a) nurses her baby and b) has an orgasm -- that will totally mess up your casual-sex game. It's why you can be f**k-buddying with some dude who isn't even all that great and the next thing you know, you're totally strung out on him. And you have no idea how it happened. Oxytocin, that's how it happened. And since nature can't discriminate between marriage material and Charlie Sheen, you're going to have to start being way more selective than you are right now.
Talk about un-Pc! It's spot on, but good luck telling an orthodox feminist that.
I know men who are stuck in fantasy land. "She's must be incredibly smart and poised and ambitious and accomplished and young and always the hottest woman in the room!!!"
"Hot" is probably the most worthless quality in a wife. If you're both long-lived, no matter how "hot" she is in the beginning, you'll have thirty plus years of "wrinkled, old lady." Marry somebody you'd still want to marry if she looked like a prune because someday she probably will. (And so will you, so you're even.)
I did click through. she doesn't know what she is talking about.
Does she really think that bitchy. slutish. self-centered, shallow, etc., etc., women don't get married?
She is angry and nasty and hurt and tormented, but she really doesn't have a clue.
She does need a good therapist. but she would be a very tough patient. Seems like borderline territory.
Her father was in the federal pen and she was raised in foster homes. All the king's horses and all the king's men. After such a childhood, if you concentrate real hard and keep on trying, you get three unhappy marriages and counting. Maybe she shouldn't apportion blame between herself and her partners. It's more a matter of luck than of skill or of character. If you even survive a seriously screwed up childhood, you never get it all straight. She has a successful career and a kid. She's done some things right. She should call it a day and pocket her winnings. Happy marriages are overrated.
The gorgeous Freeman Hunt, taking her own beauty for granted, wrote: "Hot" is probably the most worthless quality in a wife.
I wouldn't quite say worthless. There are other factors that are also or even more important, but that doesn't make beauty unimportant or worthless.
I assume I'll never get along with any woman I meet, so I don't bother:
Whether they go crazy today, or 20 years later, either way, no thanks.
Annie, you're wrong on this one. To whom is the article hateful? Not to men; avoiding constitutional anger, e.g., is eminently rational.
In fact, the woman is positively conservative. Character matters, stop blaming outside factors, and look in your own bosom first (although I'm willing to lend a hand).
Oh look, it's a man-hater being all cunty about men, while already diminishing the masculinity of her only male child which she views as a giant parasite on her body politic. Hey lady, how in the name of fuck did you ever get the nerve to get on your back, spread your legs, and grin and bear it to the father of your child to make a deposit of his demon spawn into your dante's inferno? Was it the candle-lit massage?
If you married a man you think is an asshole, then you didn't do your due diligence in thinking that he might end up being an asshole, but only with you. I despise women like this.
There are other factors that are also or even more important, but that doesn't make beauty unimportant or worthless.
Meh, I'm with Freeman on this one. "Hotness" fades quickly after the first few years.
I got lucky. My wife is a changeling. Something about her facial features. She gets a new hairstyle and I feel like we're on a first date all over again.
Put another way, husbands were once thirteen year old boys with just three things on their minds. Which I cannot argue with. It's a wonder I could focus on schoolwork at all
I know way too many 30-something, pining-for-marriage women who reject guy who doesn't meet their exacting, Prince Charming standards.
They've rejected so many men for so long, what's a few more? The bin has been so picked over that they suddenly realized they should have "settled" years ago.
I followed the link thinking I'd hate the article and her, but I think I found it more interesting that hate-worthy.
Don't get me wrong, I think her beating up on her 13yo as a proxy for what she thinks is wrong with men is a pretty crappy thing to do. And she certainly sounds like run-don't-walk-away relationship material herself.
But I think her basic premise of "If you claim to be aiming for goal X and it isn't happening, it's a good time to take a hard, unflattering look at your behavior and expectations" is a good one for both men and women.
I thought the article was awesome. I want to forward it to my ex wife.
"Hot" is probably the most worthless quality in a wife. If you're both long-lived, no matter how "hot" she is in the beginning, you'll have thirty plus years of "wrinkled, old lady." Marry somebody you'd still want to marry if she looked like a prune because someday she probably will. (And so will you, so you're even.)
Yeah but the first 5 years are really INTENSE fucking, just UNREAL.
Freeman, I was married to someone who looked just like the Sonja the Red character. Drop dead gorgeous, dumb as a box of hammers. Didn't last, but from this vantage point -- it was Sonja the Red.
wv: gropo - axiomatic
Issue Dynamite #33 to be exact.
Fen said...
Meh, I'm with Freeman on this one. "Hotness" fades quickly after the first few years.
I got lucky. My wife is a changeling. Something about her facial features. She gets a new hairstyle and I feel like we're on a first date all over again.
Here, Here. My wife is the same way. She is ageless and still as hot as the day I met her. Even more so.
You know, that was a terrific piece, and I'm so glad that Freeman Hunt chimed in to encourage us to go over there and actually read it.
If you haven't, you should.
@Freeman Hunt
I took your advice and went back and finished the piece - initially I gave up on it because really you can hear that kind of streetcorner self-analysis anywhere.
I found the last part actually made the first 5 or so parts worth the slog. She speaks many truths, namely that marriage IS about giving and that if you get into one thinking this is going to complete you on a personal level, you'll be disappointed. I think she said something about being the same person, only with more laundry - how true.
My 18 years of marriage have taught me many things. One of the biggest is that love and marriage are conscious decisions, not fashion statements as pop culture philosophers would like you to believe.
I can see where some began reading it and closed the web page before getting too far, it started as new-age navel gazing.
Yep, good article. Not sure what people are blithering on about here.
@Blue@9
"On the other hand, I know way too many 30-something, pining-for-marriage women who reject guy who doesn't meet their exacting, Prince Charming standards."
Truer words have never been spoken. My wife's one girlfriend (2nd marriage about to collapse) is a serial attention-seeker. The attention she seeks is from any man except her current husband. They have 2 little girls, its very sad, its become increasingly clear that this woman (in her 40's and very attractive) has major issues and is in complete denial.
I saw this phenomenon often as a younger man while I was still single. I dated many women that didn't meet the 'sane' standard that Fen pointed out earlier; many seemed to be suffering from some sort of 'emotional vacuum' malaise that revealed itself as insecurity. Many of these women bought the Prince Charming/White Horse meme hook, line and sinker.
Anyone that is or has been married knows this is a joke; just wait until the first time your partner gets sick and you get a unique look at the unpleasant side of things.
The fact is, in order to survive your marriage you and your spouse need to weather some trials together. That is what strengthens it, ultimately. The 'hotness' factor I agree is fleeting and becomes less important as time goes on.
"Methinks most commenters did not click through..."
I did, expecting to find what usually gets posted at HuffPo. But that's not what I found.
It's a remarkably good article explaining what it takes to get married - from a woman's perspective.
The writer expertly put forth the theory that female HuffPo readers aren't married in large numbers because they are angry, selfish, money-grubbing bitches and sluts.
That makes for a great fuck ... but that's not marriage material.
And that's going to leave a mark.
I got married to have kids, and to hopefully pass my name to the next generation. She could have her name, but the boys had to have mine (and they were boys, or that would have put a monkey wrench in the deal).
She could have her life, her career, her friends, her own bank account.
The ONLY reason to get married is to have kids. The rest is a roller coaster ride, and a compromise.
Men ARE perpetual children, and I think the one telling indicator of character is how they loved, and were loved by, their mother, because the wife will be a reflection of that. There is the reason for the Oedipal Complex. The author's problem is that she is looking for someone to be a better father than the one she had. If she wants to be the little girl, but men of character are looking for a mother, then there is a roadblock. Candidates may also sense her antipathy towards the son, which, if they are looking for a mother, is a big turn off.
I thought the article was good, except for the Palin comment. Why are so many women angry at the embodiment of a strong woman? To me she is the ultimate feminist, and the picture of a woman comfortable in her own skin, and strong, and that's sexy.
A weirdly hateful HuffPo piece,..."
"Growing up in foster care is a big part of it."
Amen. Sorry, Ann, but we ain't your shrinking violets - and, seriously, the rest of you look weird. You behave even worse. And I'm talking about the "nice" ones. They're the worst.
I don't know, this article makes me think there might be a chance for my kind yet - me being "a man of character" and all. I could marry anyone sane and make it work, because issues like "hotness" never mattered.
Finding someone who's sane, though, that's a toughie,...
Yes, you should read further. Trust me on this one thing, and you will be rewarded.
Thanks, Freeman. Last night, I stopped reading comments because it was starting to feel as if I had wandered into Dr. Helen's area. When you encouraged people to read it, the comments started to turn around. I don't know why Althouse didn't have something more positive to say.
it was starting to feel as if I had wandered into Dr. Helen's area
LOL. There's a lot of that around here lately. Cabin fever, maybe.
It's really too bad the author made the comment Althouse highlighted. As the mother of a son, that got my back up, too. But the rest of the piece has an awful lot in it that an awful lot of women need to hear.
The crux of it is: men aren't the high-maintenance ones, we are.
I read the article and don't see it as "hateful". The woman has some issues but don't we all? I didn't see anything really terrible.
She knows how to get married, been down the aisle 3 times. She didn't seem to know how to marry well. On the other hand, she does seem to have figured it out.
I see no problem with most of the advice.
Even calling her son a protozoa husband is not that far off the mark. Look at her comment in the sense that living with a 13 year old son is similar in many respects to living with any other man, including a husband.
I went expecting to snark, came away thinking she made some good points.
John Henry
Fe: nmy criteria for a mate has been threefold:
big boobs
big boobs
big boobs
now that I am pushing 70 those criteria havent changed
/I kid I kid
Bob_R, re "female Mencken," I nominate Florence King.
Michelle--great choice--I loved Ms King
I was the father of a 13 year old girl, which was like living with the single cell protozoa of a wife.
Here's what she wanted out of life: lots of chocolate, access to my bank account for clothes shopping sprees and had the hots for someone that wasn't me.
I could go on but I am too bored with it.
The main problem with this article is that it's boring.
It's the kind of relationship advice you might get in Good Housekeeping dressed up in hipster garb.
Here's the best "how to keep a man" advice I ever heard from a woman: "Learn to give a really great blow job and don't make him ask."
Go read the article. I'll second and third that.
Instead, you are looking for someone tall. Or rich. Or someone who knows what an Eames chair is. Unfortunately, this is not the thinking of a wife. This is the thinking of a teenaged girl. And men of character do not want to marry teenaged girls. Because teenage girls are never happy.
Touche.
actually, after her gratuitous slap at her son, she goes on to really give women the hammer for their selfishness.
It turns out to be a good article, and Freeman, to borrow an overused phrase, really does "win the thread." That is, she changed the thread from snark take-offs to something more edifying. Good on her.
The last idea that could have improved the article is one that I don't think the author is quite ready to accept. That idea is, "Men are worth it." If a woman can get that in her head, her chances of a happy marriage skyrocket. Don't know if this author can believe that in time to marry again, but I hope she believes it enough in time to finish raising her son.
Bob_R, re "female Mencken," I nominate Florence King.
One of my favorite things is her takedown of John Updike. Delicious.
It's the kind of relationship advice you might get in Good Housekeeping dressed up in hipster garb.
It's stuff women need to hear, banal or not.
If you're not married because of your anger at Sarah Palin, please just put your head in the oven and improve the gene pool.
Cinderella: the great crippler of young women.
I'm skeptical about the prospects of this 13 year-old boy, no matter how intelligent the story's author ultimately appears. A) she assumes 13 year-old boys are somehow improved by watching internet porn starring Kim K; B) she is inherently condescending toward him, and men (per any magazine feminism rant); C) she has major control issues. Such frustrated females struggle mightily with the concept that they just might be living with a separate human being.
The woman I'm dating had me in the first conversation when she said, "I think marriage is an obsolete institution." This insight seems to be related to the fact that she, as a surgeon, is supposed to pay alimony and support to her ex-, who is also an M.D., but hasn't been as successful. (I was ordered by a court in an ERA state to pay support to an ex- who is an investment banker and makes 5-10x my income -- when I have physical custody. So, obsolete? Yeah. Unless you want to empty your net worth every time you get divorced.)
But do women of a certain age maintain this indifference to marriage? Not so far as I can tell. I have yet to meet one who is content with love, honor and monogamy -- and separate houses.
Perhaps the author of the HP article is angriest that she cannot transcend her impulse to marry.
Other than the stuff about her son, it was actually very good. Character does matter over all else. Knowing the person also matters - every potential mate is going to have some characteristic or habit with the potential to piss you off. The trick is finding out about these sooner rather than later, and then figuring out if it really does piss you off, or is just an endearing quirk.
Years ago,over beers, a mixed group of friends (i.e. guys and girls) were trying to come up with some rules for relationships that would apply to men and women. The one that always stuck with me was "Never live with someone if you don't think that you could marry them, and never marry someone without having lived with them." I've only lived with two women. The first revealed herself to be a disaster of the first magnitude. Still very happily married to the second.
I thought it was pretty anodyne. Calling it "weirdly hateful" seems, well, weirdly hateful.
@prarie wind
I don't know why Althouse didn't have something more positive to say.
Um...I think you miss the point of Althouse's blogging.
Holdfast, in my family's experience the couples who didn't live together first stayed married while the live-ins split up.
As a substitute shakedown cruise I recommend a two-week camping trip. If you don't want to kill each other after two weeks sleeping on the cold ground, and washing up from a pot of heated water, your marriage should prosper.
knox,
One of my favorite things is her takedown of John Updike. Delicious.
That was the one with that Southern literary resource, the "Ol' Factory," in it, yes? "The man smell, the woman smell, the sex smell [...]"
Also, enough harping on "moistness" to make you wonder about your own gynecological health.
(Three months after a move and I still haven't got that book out where I can see it, so this is from memory.)
the couples who didn't live together first stayed married while the live-ins split up.
I think everyone is going to have some habits that drive you nuts. But when you marry, you commit to staying together despite the craziness. (Normal craziness, that is, like toothpaste habits and political differences.)
Even calling her son a protozoa husband is not that far off the mark. Look at her comment in the sense that living with a 13 year old son is similar in many respects to living with any other man, including a husband.
Horseshit.
A 13-yr-old boy is a BOY. He isn't a man yet, and he shouldn't be expected to be.
He hasn't had the opportunity to learn how to be a man, and he certainly won't learn such from the lovable Miss Tracy.
FLS - the trick is to live together long enough to make sure the split happens pre-marriage :))
I don't get the hate. Men are easy as hell to figure out and easy to keep happy. I thought her advice was solid.
Once again, I wasn't planning on commenting but the word verification was too good to pass. What I like is the authors acceptance of men as men not men as a project needing further modification in a female direction. I think the bit about her son is tongue in cheek recognizing that he is a smaller and simpler version of the adult organism.
wv: "fixanape"--don't try it. Just leave 'em alone.
Even calling her son a protozoa husband is not that far off the mark. Look at her comment in the sense that living with a 13 year old son is similar in many respects to living with any other man, including a husband.
Horseshit.
A 13-yr-old boy is a BOY. He isn't a man yet, and he shouldn't be expected to be.
Horseshit. A 13-year-old is a proto-man. In a different age that 13-year-old would be considered mature enough to marry or go to war.
The fact that modern society considers him a child doesn't change certain fundamental things about sexually mature males and the fact that he's probably got it in spades. His mind is on girls, food, excitement, and more girls. He's got the id portion of a mature man's brain, just not the responsibility bits.
I wonder how many people that choose not to read it and just respond are already married, thus didn't feel compelled to seek the additional advice?
I suspect those that are married with children would tend to focus on the "gratitous slap" at the son (I like that) and not on the otherwise known (if you are happily married) and understood advice.
He's got the id portion of a mature man's brain, just not the responsibility bits.
Precisely, and isn't it [at least in large part] those responsibility bits that separates men from boys?
"women,of course,have no fears or insecurities..just those dumb and dirty sperm donors do...and when they are young they are just annoying little pieces of protoplasm. why can't these dumbass jellyfish love me for my misandry?!?"
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