How to tell if your husband is really committed to change--or just appeasing you (paid subscriber bonus)
Is he really going to change this time? Or is it just more bullshit?
Abusive men, pretty much by definition, don’t want their partners to leave (and I include non-physical abuse, including domestic labor exploitation, sexual coercion and entitlement, emotional abuse, and weaponizing the children, in the definition of abuse). These relationships serve them well. No wonder so many men kill their partners when they attempt a departure. Men who exploit their partners’ domestic labor will do just about anything to keep their partners, since delaying the end of the relationship means access to more free labor.
They’ll promise to change over and over, buying them a few more weeks or months, only to yet again let their partners down.
But I’ve spent a lot of time talking to these men, and I’ve learned the tricks and tools they use.
Men email me all the time. And the contents of the emails are virtually identical. It’s as if there’s some template somewhere they’re all copying from. The template, of course, is patriarchy. Men are indoctrinated into the cult of patriarchy early, causing them to have strikingly similar views about women and relationships, whether they identify as feminists, conservatives, or something else entirely.
One thing the men who email me all seem to agree on is this: They’re the real victims.
Over and over, men contact me to tell me their wives have been co-opted, that feminism has made them abusive, that sure, maybe they have bought hundreds of hours of leisure with their wives’ suffering, or failed to care for them during the most vulnerable moments of their lives, or called them names, or emotionally abandoned them, or inflicted centuries of patriarchal abuse on them, but did I realize that their wives won’t have sex with them? How very dare they?
Patriarchy is profoundly damaging to men. It blunts critical thinking, saps them of empathy, and makes it very difficult for them to care about anyone’s emotions but their own.
These men literally always think I’m going to take their side; that’s how crazy they think their wives are, and I guess, how weak they think my ability to think clearly is. When I reject their arguments, they inevitably become aggressive with me.
Meanwhile, they’re telling their wives they’re going to change, pleading with these poor women to stay, to keep trying, to just give them one more chance. They never intend to change, as evidenced by their whiny emails to me. They just want to buy time to reel their wives further into the relationship trap. This is happening as their wives give it another try, hopeful that this time the abuse will stop for good.
So how can you know if he’s really committed to change, of if it’s just more bullshit? All of the following have to be present.