The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb is a great book on this focussed on the Australian context. Backed by lots of research and statistics from one of Australia’s leading political journalists.
“Your husband doesn’t need to go on a “journey” to fix this” - love this line!
So many woke dudes thinking they must go on a “quest” or “hero’s journey” (eg Mankind Project) or caught up in months/years of “processing” (in therapy etc) then applying that thinking to everything else including basic human decency.
To that I would reply “Nah buddy you don’t need to go on a journey. You can pick up your socks right now.”
There’s another Weapon That Sexist Men Use: “Accept me as I am!” to avoid listening to women’s needs and requests.
Variations on this:
“I need to feel accepted.” (weaponising non-violent communication)
“Let me be me!”
“When you ask me to do xyz task, I feel worthless and inadequate because I need to feel accepted.” (weaponising Brene Brown shame-speak)
“Unconditional love.”
“You don’t really love me. You only did (all those household chores/emotional labour tasks) because you wanted me to do them in return / had stealth expectations / want my pound of flesh. That feels transactional. If you loved me, you would’ve done those things from a place of unconditional love and generosity, not expecting reciprocation. I want to know I’ll be loved regardless of what I do or don’t do.”
“You’re saying I’m bad.” (confusing behaviour with identity - doing bad isn’t the same as being bad)
“Nobody’s perfect. You need to accept me as I am - the dark and the light.”
According to Alain de Botton, part of the problem is the Romantic ideals of love - you’re not supposed to change the other person. He says the Greek view of love is much better, in that it acknowledges that love is about transformation. You cannot help but be changed by love. Love is “two people teaching each other to be better and better versions of themselves.”
Unfortunately he misses the gendered ways in which people accept and resist influence. Women understand the transformational nature of love and tend to accept influence from men much more than men accept influence from women.
Women are the ones buying self-help books, reading about therapy, etc. because they know they are not perfect and “accept me as I am” is an unacceptable response when your partner says you’re hurting them.
My ex loved to hide out behind his woo-woo need for acceptance (“I’m so vulnerable!! Please accept me!!”) to get out of the bare minimum of emotional and household labour.
Stan Tatkin, founder of a Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT) is real gung ho these days about love *not* being conditional. Tatkin says it always comes with terms and conditions and the task of a good governance arrangement (like Zawn’s family Constitution) is about getting real clear and specific about those terms and conditions. Zawn also writes about getting married being like any business transaction.
If the language of transaction makes people uncomfortable…There are notions in other cultures of “reciprocity” and “mutuality” that don’t imply “transaction” (I do something for you only if you do something for me - a kind of instrumentalist approach in Western capitalist culture), that are more relational and based on what Marshall Rosenberg calls the “natural joy of giving”.
Because in our best, most equal relationships, we’re not really giving to keep score, or get even, or for some abstract intellectual notion of fairness or duty, but out of real, raw, tender, beautiful feelings of kindness and care and concern for the other’s wellbeing and genuinely wanting to “make life more wonderful” for them.
Of course, when only one party (women) is doing this consistently, it gets exhausting and resentment builds up.
Some men when confronted with this will gaslight to the max by telling their partners: “You were never really doing all those things because you cared about ME. You were doing them so you could get me to care about you. It was all about you all along.” I.e. that women just “use” men to get what they want.
When the reverse is clearly happening: dudes using women to get what they want and discarding them at the first sign of discomfort.
If gender inequity cannot be solved at home, it will never be solved within the larger institutions that organize our cooperation in the world.
Now this message needs to be popularized, until it's a foregone conclusion. Until it's so obvious that men would be ashamed of themselves to admit anything of the sort.
Time for men to start shaming other men for this behavior.
Time to create a culture of shame around this, immediately.
Consider the social outcast man would become if he walked into a family gathering, filled with neighbors and loved ones, and he punched his wife. Open. Without apology. How might everyone react in most spaces?
Our cultural lack of tolerance for such violent behavior needs to be applied to this abuse as well. Until he loses his social capital for doing this, it will never end.
Anyone who reads this and might scoff at what I am saying, you are the problem.
I’m so glad I read this today. I was just about to go and wash his work shirts (I stopped doing it about 6 months ago) because he deep cleaned the toilet yesterday. He spent an hour on it, and it’s sparkling. But 1 hour of cleaning toilets in 28 years … naahhhhh, he can still wash his own shirts.
I’m curious what women do who are QQ? Do they just continue to do everything with the end game in mind. How do they cope?
🙏 brilliant
The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb is a great book on this focussed on the Australian context. Backed by lots of research and statistics from one of Australia’s leading political journalists.
“Your husband doesn’t need to go on a “journey” to fix this” - love this line!
So many woke dudes thinking they must go on a “quest” or “hero’s journey” (eg Mankind Project) or caught up in months/years of “processing” (in therapy etc) then applying that thinking to everything else including basic human decency.
To that I would reply “Nah buddy you don’t need to go on a journey. You can pick up your socks right now.”
Brilliant piece, thank you!
("Household labor inequity traps men in bad marriages" - was that a typo?)
I love how you always give hard truths in a way that validates and inspires change for women in bad relationships, rather than shaming us. Thank you.
There’s another Weapon That Sexist Men Use: “Accept me as I am!” to avoid listening to women’s needs and requests.
Variations on this:
“I need to feel accepted.” (weaponising non-violent communication)
“Let me be me!”
“When you ask me to do xyz task, I feel worthless and inadequate because I need to feel accepted.” (weaponising Brene Brown shame-speak)
“Unconditional love.”
“You don’t really love me. You only did (all those household chores/emotional labour tasks) because you wanted me to do them in return / had stealth expectations / want my pound of flesh. That feels transactional. If you loved me, you would’ve done those things from a place of unconditional love and generosity, not expecting reciprocation. I want to know I’ll be loved regardless of what I do or don’t do.”
“You’re saying I’m bad.” (confusing behaviour with identity - doing bad isn’t the same as being bad)
“Nobody’s perfect. You need to accept me as I am - the dark and the light.”
According to Alain de Botton, part of the problem is the Romantic ideals of love - you’re not supposed to change the other person. He says the Greek view of love is much better, in that it acknowledges that love is about transformation. You cannot help but be changed by love. Love is “two people teaching each other to be better and better versions of themselves.”
Unfortunately he misses the gendered ways in which people accept and resist influence. Women understand the transformational nature of love and tend to accept influence from men much more than men accept influence from women.
Women are the ones buying self-help books, reading about therapy, etc. because they know they are not perfect and “accept me as I am” is an unacceptable response when your partner says you’re hurting them.
My ex loved to hide out behind his woo-woo need for acceptance (“I’m so vulnerable!! Please accept me!!”) to get out of the bare minimum of emotional and household labour.
Stan Tatkin, founder of a Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT) is real gung ho these days about love *not* being conditional. Tatkin says it always comes with terms and conditions and the task of a good governance arrangement (like Zawn’s family Constitution) is about getting real clear and specific about those terms and conditions. Zawn also writes about getting married being like any business transaction.
If the language of transaction makes people uncomfortable…There are notions in other cultures of “reciprocity” and “mutuality” that don’t imply “transaction” (I do something for you only if you do something for me - a kind of instrumentalist approach in Western capitalist culture), that are more relational and based on what Marshall Rosenberg calls the “natural joy of giving”.
Because in our best, most equal relationships, we’re not really giving to keep score, or get even, or for some abstract intellectual notion of fairness or duty, but out of real, raw, tender, beautiful feelings of kindness and care and concern for the other’s wellbeing and genuinely wanting to “make life more wonderful” for them.
Of course, when only one party (women) is doing this consistently, it gets exhausting and resentment builds up.
Some men when confronted with this will gaslight to the max by telling their partners: “You were never really doing all those things because you cared about ME. You were doing them so you could get me to care about you. It was all about you all along.” I.e. that women just “use” men to get what they want.
When the reverse is clearly happening: dudes using women to get what they want and discarding them at the first sign of discomfort.
This is life-saving, vitally important framing.
If gender inequity cannot be solved at home, it will never be solved within the larger institutions that organize our cooperation in the world.
Now this message needs to be popularized, until it's a foregone conclusion. Until it's so obvious that men would be ashamed of themselves to admit anything of the sort.
Time for men to start shaming other men for this behavior.
Time to create a culture of shame around this, immediately.
Consider the social outcast man would become if he walked into a family gathering, filled with neighbors and loved ones, and he punched his wife. Open. Without apology. How might everyone react in most spaces?
Our cultural lack of tolerance for such violent behavior needs to be applied to this abuse as well. Until he loses his social capital for doing this, it will never end.
Anyone who reads this and might scoff at what I am saying, you are the problem.
I’m so glad I read this today. I was just about to go and wash his work shirts (I stopped doing it about 6 months ago) because he deep cleaned the toilet yesterday. He spent an hour on it, and it’s sparkling. But 1 hour of cleaning toilets in 28 years … naahhhhh, he can still wash his own shirts.