2. "The good-guy presenting husband." He does everything he's asked to do and is no trouble at all but is the source of no ideas about getting anything done.
#1 is, we're told, the key to a successful marriage, which I think is believable if you understand it the right way, which is that both partners are simultaneously conceptualizing the other as a ghost. Each is stepping up to do 100%.
#2 is someone you may think is not bad enough to leave, but, we're told, he is. I note that the "good-guy presenting husband" does not fit into the "ghost" concept, and the wife is not treating him like a ghost. She's asking him to do things, and he is doing them. Now, I wonder, if either the wife of the good-guy presenting husband or the good-guy presenting husband (or both) were to switch to pretending their partner has died and is now hanging around with you as a ghost, their mediocre marriage could become a success.
@cntrtnr is this a thing
♬ original sound - Contra Tenore
@abbyeckel The good guy presenting husband is often the hardest for women to leave because they don’t feel like they’ve endured anything worth leaving over. #marriage #divorce #marriedlife ♬ original sound - abbyeckel
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43 comments:
Good guys finish last.
Back in the day, the wife ran the house and was insulted if the husband tried to get involved. Most husbands didn’t, because left to their own devices they would just drink beer and watch tv. I suppose if both spouses are working, the wife doesn’t need the added agita of planning an active happy family life.
What if the wife and husband both acted like a traditional husband and kept their home life at the beer/tv level? They wouldn’t even have to organize the beer logistics these days, what with GrubHub &c. CC, JSM
Ephemeral presenting spouses are a phantasmic evolution.
How disappointing for her to be deprived of the opportunity to leave her husband and take half his stuff, every young woman's ambition.
'....'Why it's so hard to leave the "good guy" husband'...'
Attention Ladies ! Fed up with your marriage? But having trouble thinking up reasons to walk out? Need some helpful excuses for trivializing your life commitments? Looking for a 'source of ideas to get it done' ? ?
Geez, they're both nightmares. Spouses as disposable accessories, dehumanized and 'othered', implicitly. Heaven forbid acting like a committed life partner and devoting the attention to making sure it's a reciprocal relationship.
Women need to bring something into a relationship besides their needs & wants
What is wrong with these people?!
1. In my view both videos are talking about the autistic pathologicals.
2. Good-guy presenting is a code word for an asshole and/or loser.
3. There is nothing hard about leaving both of these scenarios, just do it. I highly recommend it. And yes, take the money and then some, you earned it.
Do they ever address that flaw in their philosophy—implicit in #2 is that neither spouse is ghosting their partner, but it’s the husband’s fault the marriage isn’t working out.
A ghosting wife and a good-guy-presenting husband should have a perfectly successful marriage; i.e., the author is being disingenuous when they encourage spouses to be the ghosting type. Probably they just want the husband to be a ghoster.
The guy in video 1 is crazy. Pretending people are ghosts. What? Sounds screwy.
The woman in video 2 is crazy as an absolute loon. Imagine telling people what to do and they actually do it. That’s not draining, that’s my version of heaven. OMG that’s a dream come true. You have to be a serious nutter to complain if that’s your situation.
I hope these 2 are married to each other because they certainly deserve one another.
How does any intelligent being find drek like this, let alone take time to watch and then vacuously opine on it?
The things that aren’t blogged about are more interesting.
Just give ‘er a couple tugs on her nipple rings and she’s yours, Sunny Jim!
If a husband suggests "ideas about getting things done" but does so while walking alone in the woods, is he still wrong?
1 sounds like it could work in theory but in practice I think is difficult to pull off. Sure if one assumes, "Hey I have to do all this stuff on my own anyway, so any assistance from my spouse, no matter how little, is still a mathematical improvement in my situation," then yes I guess any help is a positive, but most people really resent being taken advantage of. I think maintaining that mindset would be tough for most people long term.
2 feels like the rhetoric of an immature and untrained mind. The woman is feeling upset and instead of questioning whether her emotional response is actually giving her accurate feedback as to the morality/etiquette of the situation she is just cooking up rationalizations for why her emotions are right and how she should be justified in doing whatever else her emotions prime her to do in that situation.
"If you loved me, you'd know what I want without having to be told."
Why would any rational person take marriage advice - or any advice for that matter - from random people on social media? What the fuck do they know? Who made them experts?
What's missing in all these videos, especially #2 is a question wheter there is something wrong with themselves.
During a visitation from his bishop the parish priest was examining a first Communion class. "Now Johnny what is the sacrament of matrimony?" "Matrimony is a period of temporal punishment prior to everlasting bliss in Heaven", says Johnny. "No, no, that's purgatory Johnny". But the bishop interrupted "Let him be father, what do either of us know of that?"
I've seen some couples in scenario #2. In all cases, the husband stopped volunteering and just did exactly what he was asked to do because the wife always criticized or denigrated what he offered or volunteered. The men stuck around because they didn't want to lose the house or the kids. Awful.
What a bitch.
Biff beat me to it by a few minutes. What he said.
@Meade, watch your back, man. She’s planning to get rid of you.
Is there any scenario where the woman does anything hard or disgusting like cleaning out the clogged sewer or killing the rat in basement?
If my spouse was a ghost what could they possibly need from me?
"I've seen some couples in scenario #2. In all cases, the husband stopped volunteering and just did exactly what he was asked to do because the wife always criticized or denigrated what he offered or volunteered."
A number of years ago on one of those newsmagazine shows (20/20, Primetime Live, I don't remember) there was a story about husbands/wives with differing ideas about how to do chores around the house.
When asked by the reporter, the men said they'd do just a minimum because when they did stuff, their wives complained they did it wrong and would do it over.
Because we both worked, my first wife and I would alternate evenings cooking dinner. But she would complain about my cooking, which I was eating as well. That's one of the reasons I had a second wife.
I know enough about marriage to know these people do not.
My experience comes from never being married - twice.
“@Meade, watch your back, man. She’s planning to get rid of you.“
She gets rid of me every day but I always come back. Always cheerful, always friendly. I’m like a good ghost presenting.
We never denigrate or criticize. Life is too short and we’re both too old for that.
I have never had an argument with any woman about who does what around the house.
Reasonable men and women can negotiate and reconcile.
The "good guy presenting" husband thinks that he is himself a ghost. But apparently, that's not enough. Women who think they could do better don't consider that their husband's behavior may be a response to their own personality and demands.
@Meade, just crackin’ wise. Just yesterday I told my wife I was way smarter than her — because I married her, but she married me and after 51 years she’s stuck.
Strange rh is not here. Wellness check?
I grew up in a family with nine kids. I was the fourth child, oldest boy. By the time I was in ninth grade my mother had taught me cook, sew by hand and machine, starch and iron my shirts, simonize oak floors and overall housekeeping. Married a gal who didn't how to cook or keephouse. She made strait A's her whole life thew graduate school, was a state debate champ, piano and sax player. She did know how to fix french cut green beans and mushroom soup casserole. On Thanksgiving early in our marriage she attempted a turkey to surprise me. The damned thing was beautiful sitting in the middle of the table. When I cut into it, it was frozen inside. She cried, I gave her a hug and we laughed about it that evening.
Mac, what a wonderful story!
And to the lady in the video: not the slightest need to wonder -- You. Are. CRAZY.
This reminds me of what's been going on with James Lileks as recounted M-F on his blog, where his long time wife is dumping him, he wants the marriage to remain, she's making him sell the house, making impossible demands on him daily - it goes on and on ad nauseum. But the readers only get one side of the story.
Re: Lileks, who I used to read regularly. OMG, Gnat must be what, 33 now? Crap I'm old.
I think I figured out once, that Gnat is the same age as my middle daughter, 26.
As for the "good guy presenting" video, I suspect he really is a good guy: He's invisibly doing the things he thinks are necessary around the house and he's also doing all the useless shit, his harridan wife asks him to do. His wife never wonders how the kitchen trash can never gets full, how lightbulbs never burn out, drains never get clogged, the grass doesn't grow, the driveway is always clear of snow, the cars never break down, never need their oil changed, or get dirty.
"The good-guy presenting husband... does everything he's asked to do and is no trouble at all but is the source of no ideas about getting anything done."
Is communication by speech acceptable or is it too much exhausting 'emotional labor'? If so, I guess the disappointing 'good guy' is just supposed to read his wife's mind.
Soon after we moved in together, my late wife went through a period of domestic dissatisfaction followed by housewifely epiphany. As she told a friend (who passed it back to me), she was genuinely unhappy with the way I did certain chores -- folding towels, changing the sheets, that sort of thing. But then she realized that the towels were getting folded and the beds were getting change -- just not in precisely the way she would have. So her options were:
1) Do those chores herself, ab initio.
2) Follow along behind me and re-do what I'd mis-done.
3) Accept that these chores were getting acceptably done without any further input or effort on her part.
She chose 3). My late wife was a very smart woman.
The third approach is to do nothing and be a slob and expect your partner to do everything. That is much more fun.
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