This isn't about men who enter marriage with a propensity to cheat. This is about men who enter marriage with the intention to remain faithful until death, and end up cheating on their wives.
Five Really Important Reasons
1. Sex was too much work.
Let's get this one out of the way first.
Not all men who take Viagra need it for an underlying physical problem. They may think they do. But often, the process of getting the wife interested, then aroused, then finally orgasmic, is too much work, and Mr. Willy is exhausted long before it's over.
The man thinks that the problem is in his equipment, and that he needs the little blue pill - until he gives into temptation and has sex with another woman. Then he finds out that he's still got it, and he realizes that the problem is not him, but his wife.
But you know what? It's not about the sex. It really isn't. Most real men will admit, honestly, that they could live without sex if they got the other things they crave most from the woman they love: respect, affection, approval, affirmation, and even a little attention once in a while.
2. She abandoned him first.
Some women are affectionate, attentive, and all that until they get married. Then when they've got their man they think they don't need to do all that stuff anymore. These women ignore their men and become obsessed with:
- a new job
- an education
- a church group, the PTA, running for elected office, and so on
- a project - from something as simple as scrapbooking to something as big as writing a new bestseller or starting a new business
- raising the kids
In every one of these cases, the fact is that the woman has physically and emotionally abandoned her husband in favor of something else. He is made to feel totally useless, superfluous, and in the way - often his presence or his needs are even an annoyance.
Any woman who makes her husband feel this way deserves to lose him.
In response to this abandonment, some men take up fishing, mountain climbing, or other hobbies where the wife will never notice or care about his absence. Don't be surprised if Another Woman is one of those hobbies.
(That last one, "raising the kids?" Yes, it hurts the man, but it causes lifelong damage to the kids as well. This idea is worthy of its own blog article, not a paragraph in this one. But a woman who has abandoned her husband for her children deserves neither.)
3. "The dog gets more love than I do."
You would be dismayed at how many times this happens.
The husband takes the dog for a walk, to the doggy wash, or the kennel. When he returns with the dog, the wife showers the dog with attention, all that stupid baby talk and petting and snuggling, and of course the dog is wagging its tail, panting and whimpering with delight, licking her hand and nuzzling her the whole time. Then when she's finished with the dog, she glances at her husband, says, "Bill called. And the kitchen garbage needs to go out," then turns and walks away.
At night, they're relaxing in the living room, watching TV. The wife is snuggled up next to the dog, caressing it, running her fingers through its fur, and kissing it on the forehead. The husband sits on her other side, getting nothing but (literally) the cold shoulder.
Call it jealousy, if you want. But such favoritism or obliviousness on the wife's part is inexcusable.
4. He's not good enough for her, and never will be.
We make fun of the stereotype. We use it to get laughs in sitcoms, and to sell products in commercials. I'm talking about the stupid husband. The clueless husband. The ugly husband. The lazy husband.
Okay, there are a lot of those. Stereotypes tend to mirror reality. But stereotypes are based on perception, not reality, and they misrepresent a large portion of the population.
There are a lot of men out there who are trying really hard to be good men and good husbands, and they cannot seem to get a break. Their wives constantly belittle their best efforts. They argue with them and correct them, even when the men are right. (I have never been able to understand why women do that.) They interrupt them, talk over them, or just talk so much that the man can't get a word in without a crowbar.
They make fun of them, tease them, and hurt their feelings, for their own amusement or, worse, for the amusement of others. Sometimes they'll try to shrug off the teasing with "I'm just kidding! You know I love you, don't you?" Bullshit.
They pick fights with their husbands, even when the men don't want to fight. They take offense where none was intended. They find fault with EVERY SINGLE THING their husbands do and say.
When a faithful, well-intentioned man starts getting attention, approval and caring from a different woman, and he realizes that not every woman in the world is like the Queen Bitch his bride turned out to be, you can bet the last dollar in your wallet that he will start spending time with that other woman, and it will turn into something more intimate and fulfilling than anything his wife can offer him.
And even though that (formerly) faithful, well-intentioned man will feel all the guilt of cheating on his wife, and will carry the weight of all that guilt on his shoulders, it is his wife's fault, not his.
What to Do About It
I have seen committed couples work their way through chronic sickness, chronic severe pain, and even Alzheimer's Disease. The men remained faithful to their wives. Why? Of course, we can credit the character and integrity of the men, but I know the women as well, and the women never let their illness or pain overpower their love for their men. One of the most faithful, committed couples I know includes a woman whose bipolar disorder is sometimes physically debilitating. Yet she always treats her husband with consideration and gratitude.
I have seen couples who have been married 50 years or more, who act like newlyweds. No, not physically. But I've watched the woman get as excited as a schoolgirl while she waits for her husband to come home from a meeting or an trip.
One of the couples I really admire doesn't fit into either of those two molds. They're a very calm, very normal couple, married for 20 or 30 years. For all those years, every single day of their marriage, she has treated her husband as a human being, as someone of value and worthy of her respect.
Women, that's what you can do. A husband isn't a fish that you can catch. You can't put him on a stringer or in the freezer, or consume him and throw away the bones, or put him on the wall as a trophy. If that's what you have done to your husband, then you don't deserve him.
Equal Time for the Women
I know that if the genders were switched in this article, it would be an equally valid article entitled "Why Women Cheat on Their Husbands." But there are a lot more good women than good men in the world, and I thought that someone should speak up in defense of the good men - even those who end up straying - before the women drive them to extinction.
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UPDATE: Here's a pingback to Matt Walsh's blog entry on society condoning the shitty way women treat the men in their lives. It's worth reading, even if you're a liberal. I posted a comment there on Feb 24 at 3:53 p.m. http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/02/22/your-husband-doesnt-have-to-earn-your-respect/
ANOTHER UPDATE: That Matt Walsh link doesn't work anymore. It looks like Matt restructured his website when I wasn't looking. The original link to the Feb 22, 2014, article is now https://themattwalshblog.com/your-husband-doesnt-have-to-earn-your-respect/. Matt did follow it up with another article on Dec 14, 2017: https://themattwalshblog.com/effective-way-destroy-husband-ruin-marriage-encourage-infidelity/, which pretty much repeats what I've said here - and in other posts I've made since this one was originally published.
I don't agree with everything Matt posts on his blog (and it's okay that we disagree, by the way), but we definitely see eye to eye on this topic.
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