site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25945 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The issue of modern divorce was discussed here last week in the context of yet another round of wider discussion about the Sexual Revolution. (It's pretty much becoming tiresome at this point, but anyway.) Everyone who bothered to chime in seemed to agree with the notion that divorce is usually a net negative for the wife, both romantically and economically. It appeared to me that there's mostly a consensus about that here.

Fair enough. However, I've seen online data indicating that a) roughly 40% of all marriages end in divorce b) roughly 80% of divorces are initiated by the wives c) in cases where the wife is college-educated, that figure is 90%. In other words, in cases of marriages that fail, modern women are more likely than not to voluntarily put themselves in a disadvantageous life situation.

So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?

Relationship therapist Esther Perel has a famous line that "The victim of the affair isn't necessarily the victim of the marriage." In the same way, the person that initiates the divorce isn't necessarily the person that ended the marriage. For a variety of reasons, I speculate that is more likely for men to "quiet quit" on a marriage, in a way that is less possible/likely for a woman. The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing.

Rarely are divorces truly "out of nowhere," more normally divorce filings formalize the death of a marriage that has already broken down completely. Long processes of fights, counseling (secular or religious), compromises, deals, fights, betrayals, and failures precede the actual legal process. The actual filing often reflects a situation where there is no marriage going.

A man will stop doing anything around the house when he checks out of his marriage. Men typically do fewer chores around the house to start with, and have a greater tolerance for mess/disorder/eating trash. Absent any care for his wife's feelings, most men will have no real interest in doing laundry, doing the dishes, cleaning the bathrooms. Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

In my own marriage (which is great and nowhere near divorce), my wife and I have a regular fight about chores that goes something like: she thinks I don't do enough chores around the house, I think that I would totally do them if she would stop doing them first. She's home more than I am for a variety of work reasons, and she has a lower tolerance for seeing dishes in the sink, for seeing a full laundry bin, etc. I'm at work later, left to my own devices I will happily spend a few hours doing all that, but I won't reflexively do it when I get home from work, while she will sit there during the day working and see the dishes and they will bug her and she'll do them.

Because I'm out of the house more for work, as is typical for men, I could also just do another common thing men do and just...stop coming home after work. I'd be perfectly happy eating three dollar egg sandwiches from the local store, spending my time out drinking with friends, showing up back at ten or eleven at night and going to sleep before leaving in the morning.

Keep in mind that men typically control more of the finances. Both in terms of assets and income, and servicing debts and taxes. I would have vastly more ability to mess with marital assets than my wife would: I make more money, I know where the assets are, I would know how to move them around.

This is before we get into things like Exit Affairs, when an extramarital relationship is just a tripwire to make her file, or physical abuse.

So the dynamic is often that a man stops doing anything around the house, stops substantively being a husband, and then a wife files. So the decision these women are making when filing isn't "Happily Married Woman vs. Divorced Woman" it's "Abandoned, but legally married woman with no legal tools to control her spouse's use of marital assets, still expecting divorce vs. Divorced woman, with legal tools to control spouse's disposal of marital assets."

In the same way, the person that initiates the divorce isn't necessarily the person that ended the marriage. For a variety of reasons, I speculate that is more likely for men to "quiet quit" on a marriage, in a way that is less possible/likely for a woman. The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing

The problem I have with this response is that it essentially encourages one to disregard hard empirical evidence and then advocates for the exact opposite of what that evidence suggests. Now i understand that marriage and divorce are extremely complicated and also deal with two human beings that can never really be quite understood through sheer empirical analysis, but your point essentially boils down to "majority of women file for divorce, men to blame".

My problem with your comment is the idiocy of identity politics evident in it. My comment doesn't blame men for the breakdown of marriages. It points out the characteristic ways that each gender reacts to a marriage that has already broken down.

My comment doesn't blame men for the breakdown of marriages.

The comment in question:

In the same way, the person that initiates the divorce isn't necessarily the person that ended the marriage.

I speculate that is more likely for men to "quiet quit" on a marriage, in a way that is less possible/likely for a woman.

The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing.

A man will stop doing anything around the house when he checks out of his marriage. Men typically do fewer chores around the house to start with, and have a greater tolerance for mess/disorder/eating trash.

Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

I could also just do another common thing men do and just...stop coming home after work.

This is before we get into things like Exit Affairs, when an extramarital relationship is just a tripwire to make her file, or physical abuse.

So the dynamic is often that a man stops doing anything around the house, stops substantively being a husband, and then a wife files. So the decision these women are making when filing isn't "Happily Married Woman vs. Divorced Woman" it's "Abandoned, but legally married woman with no legal tools to control her spouse's use of marital assets, still expecting divorce vs. Divorced woman, with legal tools to control spouse's disposal of marital assets."

Yes, and?

Let's compare this to the list of statements offered in the comment that suggest women could play a role in the conditions that lead to divorce:

Does it get exhausting finding things to get offended by?

she thinks I don't do enough chores around the house, I think that I would totally do them if she would stop doing them first

This reminds me I should finish my "mental load" effortpost. I got derailed when the war started, so it's almost 2 years old overdue.

Makes sense, too much mental load on you.

Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

I don't know that many single dads, be they widowers or divorced, but that seems like an unfair accusation in a comment I mostly agree with. Most dads don't bother with those things because they expect, fairly or not, that their wives will take care of it. The lone dads I know won't let their kids fall sick without treatment, or leave them wearing tattered/undersized apparel. In terms of schooling, well, the bare minimum is making sure their kid is attending one in the first place, and while I do expect they won't be as engaged in the finer details of performance in class, I don't expect them to not care at all.

"Often" is not the same as most or every, but my point still stands.

Dude, read the comment. The comment does not, CANNOT, apply to single dads. This comment is about parents in a collapsing marriage. To be weird about how I'm not inclusive of single dads when talking about dads going through the early stages of a divorce is just...so damn politically correct.

But you do agree with my point:

Most dads don't bother with those things because they expect, fairly or not, that their wives will take care of it.

Exactly. When he's checking out of the marriage, he can safely stop helping out with things like that and assume they will still get done, while putting pressure on his wife at the same time. He doesn't schedule doctor's appointments, but neither does he feel that endangers his children's health, he merely assumes it will inconvenience his wife. A wife is much less safe making the same assumption, and is much less likely to.

A man will stop doing anything around the house when he checks out of his marriage. Men typically do fewer chores around the house to start with, and have a greater tolerance for mess/disorder/eating trash. Absent any care for his wife's feelings, most men will have no real interest in doing laundry, doing the dishes, cleaning the bathrooms. Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

It is not at all obvious to me that you're still talking about "checked out dads" after you get to the section where you say that men are doing fewer chores to start with. Most widowers don't care about their wives ongoing feelings (because they're dead), but they do that nonetheless because they care about the kids.

And more than that, most dads, even before they're in the process of divorcing, aren't doing that stuff in the first place! Stating the obvious can sometimes makes a reader implicitly assume that you're trying to make an argument that isn't so.

Of course, now that you've made yourself clearer, I can't say I disagree with your thesis.

Fair enough. Glad we cleared that up.

If the statistics were the other way, nobody would even bother doing all this rationalization and theorization to explain away the reasons one party is much more likely to want a divorce than the other. This is all coming from a strong prior of "there's no way it could be meaningful in a way that reflects negatively on them that women usually initiate the divorce".

Not only could it be rationalized, "Men are worse off than women after divorce but file anyway" would be explained quite easily, @faceh already did: their wives stopped having sex with them.

Which is justified by repeating the housework/mental load justifications. In the end, you must remember that women are wonderful.

Because I'm out of the house more for work, as is typical for men, I could also just do another common thing men do and just...stop coming home after work. I'd be perfectly happy eating three dollar egg sandwiches from the local store, spending my time out drinking with friends, showing up back at ten or eleven at night and going to sleep before leaving in the morning.

I feel that.

I used to live in Japan, where what you describe is pretty much the stereotypical "salaryman" lifestyle. it's often held up to show how men are so miserable in modern society. But I always thought... it's not that bad. It gives them a lot of freedom and independence to do guy stuff, while also heavily focusing on their career. Guys don't necessarily want to come home at 5PM sharp so that we can cook an elaborate meal, clean the house, and have "family time" watching Disney movies on the couch for 4 hours. Once in a while, sure, but doing that every single day sounds like a nightmare to me.

I can vouch that the pressure/requirement to come home, as opposed to rolling directly into a workout or after-work drinks, sucks.

I also don't think it would be fair to live a salaryman lifestyle. Being a parent from 6:30 AM to 5:30 PM is already pretty tough. Getting together as parents to split the mental load from 5:30 on, most of the time, is worth the investment.

The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing.

This is going to be very hard to quantify because I'd wager it's always a slow spiral that eventually takes such a sharp downturn that one party finally pulls the chute. Who pulled away first? What was the first defection? I don't think you can draw a strong conclusion as to who pulled away from whom, especially from the outside.

Is it the man 'checking out' of marriage for entirely internal reasons, or is it partially a response to the wife being less sexually available, or putting less effort into housework (esp. if housework is shared,), or has the wife become openly and constantly critical of him even if not directly abusive?

I would sincerely believe that if two people spent 10 years or more together, the ultimate destruction of the relationship is due to the two parties each reciprocating in small wounds which go untended and thus slowly kill the coupling rather than one side unilaterally having changed feelings out of the blue.

What I would guess is that the man is the one who more often wants to fix it rather than throwing it out and buying a new one, vs. a woman seeing no reason to repair what is damaged when it's easy enough to find a replacement.

Is it the man 'checking out' of marriage for entirely internal reasons, or is it partially a response to the wife being less sexually available, or putting less effort into housework (esp. if housework is shared,), or has the wife become openly and constantly critical of him even if not directly abusive?

Probably. I'd bet from each perspective they are justified in their actions. The point I was making was less that either side is more or less likely to be a bad partner, or more or less likely to fix it if its broken, than that men typically have an easier time disappearing on the job, where women draw more benefits from formally filing for divorce.

So for something like this

I would sincerely believe that if two people spent 10 years or more together, the ultimate destruction of the relationship is due to the two parties each reciprocating in small wounds which go untended and thus slowly kill the coupling rather than one side unilaterally having changed feelings out of the blue.

the man is going to tend to take more informal steps (spending less time at home) and covert steps (my paycheck stops going into a joint account without explanation), where the woman will benefit more from an overt step like filing for divorce.

That's a good clarification.

I think the incentive is for the man to hedge bets by trying to avoid the divorce while preparing for such an event given how disruptive it would be.

For the woman, that time is spent working up to the point where she actually decides to do it, then doing it without much preparation for afterwards.

I know that most studies on divorces and breakups show that they're rarely impulse decisions, but more often something the person has done a lot of thinking on but of course appears impulsive to the partner who was not privy to that thought process.

I would also guess that the woman puts more effort into fixing the marriage in the first round or two of counseling then concludes it can’t be fixed because her husband won’t put in the effort.

Assuming counseling is highly effective. I’ve never seen someone start therapy graduate from therapy. I have seen people with illness stop going to see the specialist once cured.

I think therapy is a racket.

Anecdotally, I've started therapy and been discharged a few times. First time, college counselor kept asking me if I was suicidal in a way that started to seem like she was encouraging it, then when this led to no changes after several sessions, said to just stop coming. (The South Park script for this one basically writes itself.). The most recent happened because the medication seemed to be working and the therapy side of things was just kinda coasting.

Basically, college counselors suck. Male therapists are more likely to try to problem-solve, if you can find one who wasn't trained specifically not to problem-solve (Dr. K of Healthy Gamer has videos on this, but he puts out so many videos it's a pain to dig up one in particular when commenting from my phone). And a therapist/psychiatrist team is better than either separately. Also, Dr. K's recommendations are better than any therapist I've ever dealt with (the only one that came close, I lost because of losing my insurance for a few months).

I plan to become a psychiatrist, and I think therapy is overrated, at least when considering the vocal segment of the Overly Online who think everyone should be in therapy.

But it is possible to overhype something that is good for some people, some of the time, and the research I've read shows that therapy is pretty effective for many mental disorders, often being considered the first line intervention, such as for depression, anxiety, and so on.

And there are many different types of therapy, from the bullshit Freudian and Lacanian kind to the much better validated CBT. The thing is, even the shittiest forms of therapy that exist, such as the former two examples that are built off pure pseudoscience, work empirically, being better than placebo (or at least no therapy at all), though CBT is usually better. I wager much of the benefit in any of them is purely from the simulation of a helpful, non-judgemental "friend" who'll let you vent to your hearts content and won't tattle on the pain of their friend-card being retracted, and while you could substitute that for an actual friend, apparently those are getting harder to come by and have scheduling conflicts.

Besides, most reputable therapists (especially the ones who aren't into the Freudian crap) at least pay lip-service to the notion that their clients should always be temporary, and that they should be directed elsewhere if several sessions show no benefit. And if the client is showing up to sessions after they're satisfied it's not working, then I lay the blame for their stupidity on them. If they still want to go, well apparently they're getting their money's worth somehow. People go for haircuts and manicures even when the damn keratin just keeps growing back, and barbers aren't a scam.

Don't discount the value of "Freudian" psychotherapy. Part of this is driven by the usual "all the good ideas associated with this have been stolen and become core tenants of the successors" bit. You'd be surprised how much of his stuff is still present and useful.

The other piece is that the "true successor" actually works great. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is probably the most direct on that front, and if you talk to someone who knows CBT, DBT, and Psychodynamic therapy well they'll point out it is mostly all the same shit just with different words for the same concepts.*

The thing CBT primarily does differently is that it attempts to operationalize things by adding in components of homework, written self reflection and so on, but the fundamental insights are essentially the same.

It's tempting to think they are "different classes" but it's more like going to a calculus lecture, and then doing another course with the same content but you get problem sets afterwards.

There are purists out there, especially in Europe but generally people just roll their eyes at them.

Care to share those studies? How many of them are longitudinal?

I originally read that on the Wikipedia page, and when I tried to hunt down the citations, linkrot has eaten the Google Books excerpt that was supposedly cited, at least the one supposedly claiming that metanalysis showed they were all equivalent. However, after some hunting, I did find that claim in a different, well cited meta analysis down below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotherapy

Large-scale international reviews of scientific studies have concluded that psychotherapy is effective for numerous conditions.[8][22]

One line of research consistently finds that supposedly different forms of psychotherapy show similar effectiveness. According to The Handbook of Counseling Psychology: "Meta-analyses of psychotherapy studies have consistently demonstrated that there are no substantial differences in outcomes among treatments". The handbook states that there is "little evidence to suggest that any one psychological therapy consistently outperforms any other for any specific psychological disorders. This is sometimes called the Dodo bird verdict after a scene/section in Alice in Wonderland where every competitor in a race was called a winner and is given prizes".[151]

Further analyses seek to identify the factors that the psychotherapies have in common that seem to account for this, known as common factors theory; for example the quality of the therapeutic relationship, interpretation of problem, and the confrontation of painful emotions.[152][153][page needed][154][155]

Outcome studies have been critiqued for being too removed from real-world practice in that they use carefully selected therapists who have been extensively trained and monitored, and patients who may be non-representative of typical patients by virtue of strict inclusionary/exclusionary criteria. Such concerns impact the replication of research results and the ability to generalize from them to practicing therapists.[153][156]

However, specific therapies have been tested for use with specific disorders,[157] and regulatory organizations in both the UK and US make recommendations for different conditions.[158][159][160]

The Helsinki Psychotherapy Study was one of several large long-term clinical trials of psychotherapies that have taken place. Anxious and depressed patients in two short-term therapies (solution-focused and brief psychodynamic) improved faster, but five years long-term psychotherapy and psychoanalysis gave greater benefits. Several patient and therapist factors appear to predict suitability for different psychotherapies.[161]

Meta-analyses have established that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy are equally effective in treating depression.[162]

The bolded section is the one I can't easily verify, at least not when it's 9 am and I've been up all night studying.

Specifically regarding CBT, I found the following metanalysis-

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23870719/

Results: A total of 115 studies met inclusion criteria. The mean effect size (ES) of 94 comparisons from 75 studies of CBT and control groups was Hedges g = 0.71 (95% CI 0.62 to 0.79), which corresponds with a number needed to treat of 2.6. However, this may be an overestimation of the true ES as we found strong indications for publication bias (ES after adjustment for bias was g = 0.53), and because the ES of higher-quality studies was significantly lower (g = 0.53) than for lower-quality studies (g = 0.90). The difference between high- and low-quality studies remained significant after adjustment for other study characteristics in a multivariate meta-regression analysis. We did not find any indication that CBT was more or less effective than other psychotherapies or pharmacotherapy. Combined treatment was significantly more effective than pharmacotherapy alone (g = 0.49).

Conclusions: There is no doubt that CBT is an effective treatment for adult depression, although the effects may have been overestimated until now. CBT is also the most studied psychotherapy for depression, and thus has the greatest weight of evidence. However, other treatments approach its overall efficacy.

And when speaking of CBT as applied to more psychiatric conditions:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/

We identified 269 meta-analytic studies and reviewed of those a representative sample of 106 meta-analyses examining CBT for the following problems: substance use disorder, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, depression and dysthymia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, insomnia, personality disorders, anger and aggression, criminal behaviors, general stress, distress due to general medical conditions, chronic pain and fatigue, distress related to pregnancy complications and female hormonal conditions. Additional meta-analytic reviews examined the efficacy of CBT for various problems in children and elderly adults. The strongest support exists for CBT of anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, bulimia, anger control problems, and general stress. Eleven studies compared response rates between CBT and other treatments or control conditions. CBT showed higher response rates than the comparison conditions in 7 of these reviews and only one review reported that CBT had lower response rates than comparison treatments. In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong. However, additional research is needed to examine the efficacy of CBT for randomized-controlled studies. Moreover, except for children and elderly populations, no meta-analytic studies of CBT have been reported on specific subgroups, such as ethnic minorities and low income samples.

Addressing the specific claims of similar efficacy to the forms of therapy based on pseudoscientific principles:

CBT for depression was more effective than control conditions such as waiting list or no treatment, with a medium effect size (van Straten, Geraedts, Verdonck-de Leeuw, Andersson, & Cuijpers, 2010; Beltman, Oude Voshaar, & Speckens, 2010). However, studies that compared CBT to other active treatments, such as psychodynamic treatment, problem-solving therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy, found mixed results. Specifically, meta-analyses found CBT to be equally effective in comparison to other psychological treatments (e.g., Beltman, Oude Voshaar, & Speckens, 2010; Cuijpers, Smit, Bohlmeijer, Hollon, & Andersson, 2010; Pfeiffer, Heisler, Piette, Rogers, & Valenstein, 2011). Other studies, however, found favorable results for CBT (e.g. Di Giulio, 2010; Jorm, Morgan, & Hetrick, 2008; Tolin, 2010). For example, Jorm and colleagues (2008) found CBT to be superior to relaxation techniques at post-treatment. Additionally, Tolin (2010) showed CBT to be superior to psychodynamic therapy at both post-treatment and at six months follow-up, although this occurred when depression and anxiety symptoms were examined together.

Compared to pharmacological approaches, CBT and medication treatments had similar effects on chronic depressive symptoms, with effect sizes in the medium-large range (Vos, Haby, Barendregt, Kruijshaar, Corry, & Andrews, 2004). Other studies indicated that pharmacotherapy could be a useful addition to CBT; specifically, combination therapy of CBT with pharmacotherapy was more effective in comparison to CBT alone (Chan, 2006).

Anyway, therapy seems to beat placebo, and works synergistically with drugs, even if you cynically notice that therapy based off nonsense does much the same thing as more considered approaches, but it's not in dispute that it works. At least I have the consolation of being able to throw drugs at people instead of just talking at them if/when I'm a licensed shrink, for all the quibbling about if SSRIs work, ain't nobody claiming their ADHD isn't being helped when they're zooted up on stimulants.

You should consider that the sample you are looking at to make you believes this is abnormal. People graduate from therapy all the time. Most people with mental illness have some form of stressor(s), if that stressor goes away (mother in law, college, law school, better control over a chronic illness, they age into a better frontal lobe or coping mechanisms) then they may no longer need therapy.

People who are doing ok to well and get therapy anyway are less likely to stop, as are people who are doing really poorly, but plenty of the middle wraps up and moves on.

I think you may be seeing what you want to see here, given how commonly therapy stops.

I have graduated from therapy, and I know many others who have.

I wonder how much of this dynamic is the systemic fault of counseling being female-coded: highly subjective, no rules allowed for assigning blame except the “yes, dear” dynamic, no logical framework undergirding the conversations, etc.

Once I discovered a mental health paradigm which worked due to being the opposite of the above, I dove in with both feet and have never regretted it.

If by "fixing the marriage" you mean "making unilateral demands" I can buy it. Otherwise I've literally never heard of a single story of this ever in my entire life. I've never had a friend, man or woman, relate one two me. I've never heard one second hand. I've never seen it written in any sort of blog/editorial. By all means, if you've got anything you can show me, any anecdote no matter how poorly sourced, so show this has happened to anyone ever and been documented, please share.

I'm surprised by this. In every couple I have known that ended up getting divorced, it was the wife who was putting in more effort in order to try and repair the relationship. Now that is only perhaps 5 or 6 couples, and of course I am an outsider, so it's possible things looked different from inside the marriage, but from the outside this was the appearance at least. It was pretty evenly split as to which partner was the one I was talking to, but pretty unilaterally the wife was the one pushing for counselling etc. As far as I know none of them were ended by cheating, but form the "grown apart" perspective. Of those, I think the wife was the one who filed for divorce in one and the husband in another and I am not sure on the rest.

In every experience I have personally had, the woman has always been the one doing the most to maintain the relationship, though, so I think it's likely from the repair perspective as well, which makes sense. Maintaining and repairing a relationship is emotional work which is much more likely to be feminine coded.

Where the wife is having an affair I can see this changing however as the emotional target of their work may well be the other guy. But where the wife maintains an emotional attachment to the husband it seems highly likely she will be the one working most to fix it.

I keep trying to write a thoughtful and well-balanced post recounting my own experiences on this matter, but it always turns into me venting about the wife. So I'll not post anything substantial, but I do have to make a post to stop myself from constantly writing more text only to scrap it again.

Sorry.

No need to be sorry! Sometimes things hit too close, and sometimes a rant is what is needed. Not even high decouplers can generally decouple from everything.

Don't tempt me, lest I spill tens of thousands of words on the subject, to nobody's benefit and everyone's detriment.

it was the wife who was putting in more effort in order to try and repair the relationship.

Describe this effort. Was she sucking his dick more? Giving him more space for his hobbies? Encouraging him to spend more time with his friends? Noticing he needed another beer? Offered to watch his favorite show with him and not ask a million questions because she wasn't paying attention on her phone?

Or was she dragging him to couples therapy so she and the therapist could harangue him that he needs to whittle away even further at the 15 minutes he gets to himself in the shower to hear his own thoughts to fulfill her needs more.

In every relationship/marriage I know of, the man is working more hours doing 50% of the housework, watching the kids, keeping the budget and investing. Their wives are consistently reducing their hours or quitting entirely to be stay at home moms, while still expecting their husbands to go 50/50 on housework and childcare, and still complaining that their "needs" aren't being met.

The number of things their husbands do that "don't count" is astronomical. Only female coded housework like cooking, cleaning and laundry goes on their mental tally. Yardwork, repair, maintenance is all invisible. I rebuilt the wall of our garage that was rotting out and my wife complained that I didn't do anything that weekend. It's a ubiquitous experience among the men I know.

My wife got chickens. She tells everyone she does all the work. I let them out, I feed them, I top off their water, I get their eggs, I put them up at night. I even built their coup and set up the fence for their pen. Lately she's been wanting them to free range, but I've gotten stuck with letting them out, putting them back up, and checking on them from time to time.

Once or twice a month she cleans the chicken crap out of the coup. Now she wants a dog and promises she'll do all the work. My reticence is causing her to invoke a lot of therapy language about her "needs".

A buddy of mine's wife constantly complains that he's not doing enough, when he changed jobs out of his dream career so she could be a stay at home mom, with the house she wanted, and the new car she wants. He moved across the country like she wanted so they could be closer to her family. He sucked it up and had more kids than he wanted because of how she felt. And it all amounts to zilch to her. It's just expected. The bare minimum.

The only world where a man isn't putting in enough effort is a world in which all his contributions are profoundly devalued or ignored. As is often the case I see around me.

Jesus, dude, the marriages you say represent every relationship/marriage you know of sound positively miserable.

I have known of relationships like those you describe, even been in at least one with a woman who would probably fit your personal model of all women (i.e., unreasonable, harrowing, emasculating Void) but I have personally been in, and seen many other, relationships that do not follow that model at all. And yes, I've also seen relationships that fell apart because the woman was putting in the effort and the man had checked out.

That you think "Putting in the effort" means "sucking his dick more and bringing him beer" tells me the problem may not be exactly what you think it is.

If your couples therapist is ganging up with your wife to tell you to cut down on your shower time, you have a truly crappy therapist.

That you think "Putting in the effort" means "sucking his dick more and bringing him beer" tells me the problem may not be exactly what you think it is.

This is kinda antagonistic and unworthy of you.

This whole series of exchanges reminds me that everyone, myself included, is reasoning from first principles that we derive from our own lives and relationships. Check, as it were, our privilege; and set aside our resentments.

In every relationship/marriage I know of, the man is working more hours doing 50% of the housework, watching the kids, keeping the budget and investing.

Then you are in a very different bubble to me. Someone joked up above about how given she does all the households paperwork she would have to file a divorce for him as well, and that rings true to me. My brother's wife is the one who organizes the bills, and the bank accounts, same with my cousins wife and so on and so forth. I don't know a single relationship where I am familiar enough with it, to see those things where the woman is still not doing the bulk of the housework/child rearing and working.

If the work you do is not being valued then you need to make sure your wife understands it and values it. If she doesn't then that is a shortcoming of hers. If she says you didn't do anything, tell her you spent 8 hours fixing the garage. Tell her you spent 2 hours cleaning up and feeding her chickens.

I've been married twice. My 1st wife was a stem cell scientist , my 2nd wife is a lawyer, from different backgrounds and continents. Both of them value (or in the case of my first wife valued before she passed) the work I did for the household and vice versa. I have never ever in my life in any serious relationship not felt valued or that they did not have my back. But part of that is setting and enforcing your own boundaries early on. Your wife doesn't need to give you space for hobbies. You're a grown man. You certainly have to be cognizant of how much time you are spending gaming or whatever, but she doesn't get to tell you no on that. My wife came out the other day while I was raking up the leaves. She told me I had been working for too long, she had made some hot chocolate, that I should come in warm my feet in front of the fire and then go play "your barrel game" (otherwise known as Baldur's Gate 3), so I could relax for part of the weekend. But even if she hadn't it is up to me to make time and space for the things I want to do. You are not responsible for fulfilling ALL of your wife's needs and she is not responsible for fulfilling ALL of yours.

What you are describing are unhealthy relationships where your input and work is not being seen or valued. But that is in my own experience not the norm, either in my own relationships or the majority of those I see around me. If your wife isn't doing her share of looking after the animals she wanted, then tell her she has to. Create, lay down and enforce your own boundaries. Because no-one else will do it for you. Now ideally you should have been doing this from day one. You're complaining essentially about being walked all over, but you are the only one that can change that. Say no when you need to do so. You have to value your own time and work before anyone else will. You are not a martyr. You're the head of your household. In my experience almost every woman responds well to having control taken in a protective and confident way. Draw up a rota and tell her, tomorrow is her turn to feed and clean the chickens and stick to it. You don't take a turn until she does. When she minimizes your work, correct her. In private at first, but if she keeps doing it, simply state the truth to whomever you are talking to. People wanting pets and then not wanting to spend time looking after them is a cliche, everyone knows someone like that. Don't let her make you smaller than you are. You're a fucking rockstar and she is lucky to have you!

For whatever it is worth, I am sorry your work is not noticed and valued in your relationship. I am sorry your wife doesn't have your back in that way. That sounds like it must be a miserable and isolating experience. You sound like you work hard to look after and provide for your family, and to improve their living conditions. I know that takes a lot of work and dedication, and I applaud you for it, even if no-one else does.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats