Grouchy Guy: Anxiety in Married Men

Grouchy Guy: Anxiety in Married Men

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

There is one source of resentment that married men often suffer that isn’t a wife’s “fault” but for which women often get unfairly blamed anyhow. Men strongly feel that how successful they are is a measure of their masculinity. Especially, when men marry and have children they feel a responsibility to be a good provider and the better they are at that job the better they feel about themselves. If men aren’t as successful as they feel they should be, they begin to feel like a “loser” and get depressed. Men may defend against their underlying depression and shameful feelings of inferiority by getting angry, especially at their romantic partners.

Why do men get angry at their partners when they don’t feel as successful at their jobs or in their careers as they feel they should be, after all it’s not the woman’s fault?

Yet in a man’s unconscious mind it is the woman’s fault. He feels that she expects a certain level of success from him, that providing at a certain level is his responsibility and his duty. In his mind, if it weren’t for her implicit expectations, he wouldn’t have to enter the rat race and get beat up in the effort to make a living. One reason many men avoid marriage and family is that they don’t want to be tied down with responsibilities they worry they might be unable to fulfill. Or men wait until they are as advanced and as secure in their careers as they can possibly be before settling down with marriage and children even if it means waiting until they are forty or even fifty to get close to the top of their income earning potential.

Women sometimes have a hard time understanding how men feel about this issue. Women may feel that as long as you have got your family and enough money to get by, they don’t understand what the big deal is. But for men it’s as much about their manly pride as about the practicality of getting by. For most women, the family is their central source of meaning and of self-esteem and if the family is OK then all is well in the world. For most men, that isn’t enough. Their manly pride requires a certain level of prestige, social status, and success, mostly reflected in how much money they make. This is not to say that some women aren’t as status oriented as men and that some women do make their men feel like “losers” if they don’t make enough money. But I have noticed over the years, that this issue often isn’t as big a deal for most women as it is for most men. As a consequence, many women don’t really get or understand the way men feel about this issue and that lack of understanding just makes men all the more resentful.

Women can give men all the reassurance in the world that in their eyes their men are a great success, that they are happy with their level of affluence, and that they don’t mind that much having to work to help support the family, but deep down men don’t really believe it. Men worry that it’s all a bunch of false reassurances that in fact makes them all the more resentful. It’s almost like men are a bit paranoid on this issue. It’s like men secretly suspect that all women are “gold diggers” who only want men for their money and secretly have contempt for a man who can’t bring home the bacon to support them and their children in a grand way. And in men’s minds there is always a constant and ongoing social comparison with other men and how well other men are doing which they assume women are making as well even if they don’t say so openly.

So what is a woman to do to deal with this sort of male paranoia if everyday reassurance feels patronizing and condescending to your typical male with an ego bruised by the fact that he hasn’t lived up to his own high ambitions for himself. Once again, humor might be the only real antidote. But how do you kid around about such a touchy issue, that your boyfriend or husband feels like an unlovable loser no matter how much you reassure him. Well, first of all when ever he acts like a grouchy guy and snaps at you for some trivial or stupid little thing, you could just snap right back: “Don’t take your frustrations out on me, don’t be a sore loser just because things aren’t going so well at work. Suck it up, take it like a man.” Or “We all have to eat to shit at work sometimes so stop complaining. Look at all of your shit I have to put up with. Why do you think you should be able to go through life and never have to eat shit just to bring home a paycheck for your family? And I do appreciate all the shit you have had to eat over the years to support our family and some of it may have even been my own cooking.”

Though women tend to be skeptical, men are more likely to respond positively to this sort of blunt and crude language than more sensitive and lovingly reassuring language which is felt as infantilizing. In men’s mind, if you have to comfort them the way you would comfort a baby, you definitely must think they are the biggest loser in the whole world. You are emasculating them by treating them like a hurt little boy rather than respecting their masculinity by encouraging them to face a harsh reality like a man and stop whining about it. They need to be encouraged not to take themselves so seriously and to lighten up.

If you stubbornly insist on treating your man in a lovingly reassuring way you will probably just antagonize him and he will probably push you away for making him feel like a big baby. Then you will be feeling hurt that your love and sympathy has been rejected and you will probably get into a big fight about it. I appreciate that it might not feel natural to talk to your man in the way I am suggesting and you might resent a suggestion that requires you to do something that at least initially feels uncomfortable, but try a little experiment and if it works what have you got to lose.

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How Arguments About Stupid Little Things Turn into Major Blow-ups

The Grouchy Guy:  How Arguments About Stupid Little Things

Turn into Major Blow-ups

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

I am always surprised by the fact that couples who fight like cats and dogs all the time usually fight about stupid little things that get blown up out of proportion. Someone forgets to clean up after themselves, someone doesn’t want to take directions when driving, someone thinks the kids are being treated too permissively, someone isn’t in the mood to do something like have sex or go out to dinner, someone doesn’t want to spend money on something, etc. These are just all the little conflicts and tensions of married life that require two people with two different personalities, two different points of view, and two different sets of preferences to peacefully negotiate their inevitable differences and come up with a workable compromise. Why is that so difficult to do and why do these little conflicts become triggers of major blow-ups?

The problem seems to be that on average men and women seem to have different ways of managing conflict and angry feelings in a close relationship. When men are annoyed about something and assert their grievance, they want respect and are hypersensitive to not getting it. When women are annoyed about something and assert their grievance, they want reassurance that the relationship is solid, isn’t threatened by the difference in opinion, and are hypersensitive to not getting that reassurance. Men want to feel that their wives respect them no matter what and women want to feel that their husbands still love them no matter what, though women also want respect and men also want love. Perceived lack of respect and perceived lack of reassurance is what escalates a minor conflict about a petty issue into a major blow-up. The argument takes on a larger symbolic significance once the couple becomes insecure about whether or not they really love and respect each other. That’s the underlying hot button issue that can lead to a major conflagration.

When a difference of opinion arises and our viewpoint is questioned, it is only natural to defend ourselves by further justifying our own position while more strongly attacking our rival’s position in order to win the argument. Once a competitive mindset has been activated, that winning the argument is all that matters, the stage is set for an escalating conflict that may get totally out of control. Many men are hypersensitive to being questioned by their wives as though being questioned puts their masculine competence in doubt. To assert their dominance men start to make their argument all the more forcefully as their temper is rising. Of course, women don’t want to feel bullied into a submissive position so they too defend themselves all the more forcefully, leading to an escalating conflict. As men get more and more frustrated that they can’t get respect by winning the argument, they start expressing more disgust with and contempt for their wives and as they begin to get fed-up start to threaten to withdraw in anger. At this point, many women get alarmed that the relational connection is threatened and start demanding reassurance that they are still loved by a devoted partner who seems to be threatening hostile rejection. Of course, a man is not going to give reassurance that he still loves his partner when he is fuming inside and beginning to withdraw in anger. This is the stand-off: the man demanding respect or else to be left alone in peace and the woman demanding reassurance through some intimate gesture that brings them closer together and neither getting satisfaction. Then it’s a screaming match.

The challenge for anger management is captured by the title of the famous Rolling Stones song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Men aren’t going to get respect and women aren’t going to get reassurance once their partner is upset and angry because people have difficulty thinking straight when they are only seeing red because they are so angry. You have a difficult choice to make, give up trying to win the argument so you can diffuse an escalating conflict or keep trying to win the argument, knowing it’s just going to end up in a big blow-up. The best response is simply to say: “This isn’t worth getting in a big fight about, let’s discuss the issue later when we are in a better mood.” Since the hot button issue must be discussed sooner or later, you have to remember that you can never talk someone out of their true feelings. Everyone is entitled to their feelings or point of view so there is no sense trying to prove that someone’s feelings or point of view are wrong and your feelings and point of view are right. So you may just as well cut to the chase. The way to arrive at a negotiated solution is to accept the fact of eventual compromise and concession. So you say something like this: “I understand that from your point of view it looks this way and from my point of view it seems exactly the opposite. Let’s not waste time trying to change each others’ minds because we will just get into a big fight and just dig in our heels all the more. So let’s just figure out what kind of compromise or concessions we can each live with.” Ultimately, you can always just walk away from a fight if your partner isn’t ready to negotiate a workable compromise. A little time-out from the relationship gives everybody time to cool off and arrive at a more conciliatory attitude.

Being in a long-term relationship is about making compromises for the sake of the relationship. You can’t always have everything your way even if you genuinely believe your way is the best way, the right way, or the correct way to go. Being in a relationship means we have to patiently suffer our partner’s mistakes and errors of judgment and still find it within ourselves to respect and love them anyway. Nobody is perfect so part of being married is learning to tolerate our partner’s imperfections, which means letting your partner do things his or her way even when you know for a fact that his or her way is the absolutely wrong way to do things. We all have to learn from our own mistakes so we can’t micro-manage our partners to make them do everything our way which is of course the “right” way. So we have a choice:  We can try to win every argument and get our partner to do everything our way and end up fighting all the time. Or we can give up trying to win arguments and try instead to negotiate a workable compromise, perhaps having to suffer your partner’s errors of judgment. Yet at least you won’t be arguing all the time and your partner, following your lead, will learn to let you do things your way even when they think you are dead wrong.

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THE GROUCHY GUY: WHY GROUCHY GUYS DREAD MARRIAGE

Why Grouchy Guys Dread Marriage

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

Here is a list of men’s worst fears and how marriage or any long-term committed relationship arouses those fears:

1) Wimp: Any man who is too frightened to stand up to his wife or to other men.

2) Pussy whipped: Any man who is shamefully submissive in relation to his wife because he is afraid of antagonizing her.

3) Mama’s Boy: A man who is shamefully dependent on his wife because he would be lost without her.

4) Limp Dick: An impotent man, psychologically as well as physically, who can’t get it up, who can’t satisfy his wife sexually or otherwise.

5) Cuckold: A man whose wife cheats on him or flirts in front of him with other men and he let’s her get away with it.

Committed relationships unconsciously expose men to men’s worst fears of being emasculated. Therefore falling in love is dangerous for men. Men think marriage can be an emasculating trap because a castrating wife can turn a husband into a wimpy, limp dick, and pussy whipped mama’s boy who is cuckolded. This is a straight man’s worst nightmare, almost as bad as getting fucked up the ass by a thug in prison who is going to use him as his personal bitch. Yet many men will face these dangers because they are also hopeless romantics and fools for love who will do anything to win the woman of their dreams. So men do enter the lion’s den of marriage but they do so self-protectively to play it safe. Men enter marriage in a self-protective way that hedges their bets. Men go into marriage with a certain type of protective armor on. They will maintain as much of their independence, self-sufficiency, personal space, and freedom as their wives will let them get away with. They keep their feelings and their thoughts to themselves, not really letting their wives into their inner sanctum. They become grouchy when wives threaten that protective armor because they don’t want their hidden vulnerabilities exposed.

Men are secretly ashamed of their monogamous tendencies because privately they think that only an emotionally needy mama’s boy would choose monogamy for the sake of emotional intimacy over a life spent playing the field and making sexual conquests. A real man like James Bond or Hugh Hefner spends his entire life enjoying the pleasures of being a playboy having sex with an endless variety of young beautiful women. Men secretly believe that only wimpy men (i.e. losers) submit to having sex with just one woman for the rest of their lives. Grouchy guys look around and see that the alpha males in our culture don’t seem to be particularly monogamous. They see Hollywood superstars who never get married and instead spend their entire lives having sex with new starlets, siring and supporting children out of wedlock. Or they see captains of industry who engage in serial monogamy. These rich men, like Donald Trump, can easily afford to trade in their middle-aged wives for younger models. And closer to home are all the guys at the office who seem to be getting away with having extra-marital affairs and even have the audacity to brag about it.

Monogamous guys begin to feel envious and sexually inadequate in relation to guys who remain free to enjoy playing the field. That’s why they are so grouchy. They take out their frustration with themselves on their girlfriends and wives. It doesn’t do anything for their male egos to remind themselves what loyal and devoted husbands they are when they are beginning to feel like first class shmucks who are missing out on all the fun.

There has been great controversy in the social sciences as to whether or not men are biologically predisposed to form monogamous relationships. Yet what is not widely appreciated is most contemporary evolutionary psychologists now assume that strong but not exclusive monogamous tendencies are now thought to be biologically based. Humans are one of the few monogamously inclined primates. Chimpanzees are promiscuous and gorillas have harems. Humans are thought to have evolved towards monogamy as females started needing help raising their helpless big-brained babies who take almost two decades to reach full maturity. Monogamy evolved as children with both a mother and a father survived and reproduced more successfully than children did with only a mother to take care of them. Humans, men included, possess an instinctive tendency to pursue a quality over quantity reproductive strategy. Wanting to have sex with just one woman for the rest of one’s life in order to sire children with just one woman is a completely natural and in fact powerful tendency within the hearts of men. All men have a sense of what it means to be a “good Dad.” It means putting all your resources into raising a handful of children who will be given every advantage in life. All men intuitively appreciate that what is best for children is for them to be raised by two loving parents who function well as a team together who will funnel all their joint resources towards enhancing their children’s long-term prospects.

Men feel guilty when they fail to live up to this “gold standard” and this guilt isn’t simply imposed by society. Men know that their children are getting less than they deserve when their family life is characterized by ugly bickering, infidelity, and/or contentious divorce. Pursuing a quantity over quality reproductive strategy by siring children with different women means that none of those children will reap either the emotional or the economic benefits of a full-time devoted father. In a study I conducted at Adelphi University where I teach I discovered that over 20% of undergraduates were aware of parental cheating and those undergraduates were significantly more likely to cheat or be cheated on themselves. Thus it may be natural for men to want to cheat but cheating is not only devastating for the betrayed spouse but has real long-term effects on the future love lives of their children, independent of the impact of parental separation or divorce. What kind of example is a philandering Dad setting for his son and what is he conveying to his daughter about how a devoted woman in a long-term relationship can expect to be treated by the man she loves?

Human males invest more in raising their children than do any other primates (i.e. apes and monkey’s, human’s closest animal relatives). Even though women tend to remain the primary caretakers of children in comparison to men, in comparison to males of most other species most human fathers seem like Mr. Mom. Thus not only have human males evolved towards monogamous arrangements with women but they have also evolved to have a strong paternal caretaking instinct. Thus what men are born with is a deep-seated inner conflict, a potentially overwhelming conflict between love and lust. On the one hand, men lust for endless sexual variety with young beautiful healthy women at the height of their fertility. On the other hand, men have a deep yearning to mate for life with a soulmate with whom they will become dedicated fathers who will provide for, protect, play with, and nurture a brood of children and grandchildren. What’s a man to do?

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THE GROUCHY GUY: SECRET SEX LIVES

The Grouchy Guy: Secret Sex Lives

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PhD

The Secret Sex Lives of Grouchy Guys

To some degree all men are inclined towards what might be called “dual track” sex lives, one track in the marriage and one track outside of it. This is an extremely touchy issue in most long-term relationships that rarely gets discussed in any open manner. There is usually a “don’t ask don’t tell policy” when it comes to this aspect of a couple’s sexual relationship. Many men have a need to maintain what psychologists call “orgasmic constancy” in their lives. That means that many men have a need for a certain number of orgasms per week, whether that means daily orgasms, three orgasms a week, or one orgasm a week. If they are not meeting their need for orgasmic constancy with their partners, they will satisfy their need for orgasmic constancy in some other way, usually through masturbation. A study looking at male sexuality between ages 40 and 70 discovered that every decade men’s erectile functioning deteriorated, it took greater stimulation to get aroused, the strength of their orgasms diminished, and the volume of their ejaculate decreased. Nevertheless, the one thing that remained the same was the frequency of masturbation to orgasm. Whatever the demoralizing effects of aging on male sexual functioning, men appear stubbornly determined to maintain their orgasmic constancy to the bitter end.

This aspect of male sexuality tends to remain shrouded in secrecy. Perhaps men have a stronger sex drive because they have seven times as much circulating testosterone in their blood stream and testosterone levels seem to influence sex drive. Female transexuals who take testosterone report that their sex drive significantly increases as does the frequency of their sexual fantasies. Some post-menopausal women are given testosterone to increase their sex drive and it appears to work.   Whatever the reason, many men seemed to be obsessed with maintaining their orgasmic constancy and become grouchy when they can’t. It is not that many women do not struggle with such issues as well. Women’s adrenal glands and ovaries secret testosterone so it is possible that women with higher basal testosterone levels may also struggle with the problem of how to gratify a particularly strong sex drive.

Many women in committed relationships don’t like to think about this issue, especially if they do not experience their own sex drive as an incessant obsessive pressure to be relieved on a daily basis. Many women don’t really want to contemplate how many orgasms a week their men need to have in order to maintain orgasmic constancy or how many orgasms a week her partner is having with her and how many he is probably having on his own and not mentioning to her. Some women might like to assume that if her sex life is dropping off with her partner and she is having fewer orgasms that her husband is most likely having fewer orgasms as well. That is often a mistaken assumption. He is most likely relieving himself in some other way and not talking about it. He may even come to prefer relieving himself in some other way in order to preserve a sense of having an independent sex life outside of the committed relationship. He may be maintaining an independent sex life through masturbation perhaps accompanied by pornography to intensify the fantasy of having sex with someone other than his partner.  Or he may act out his fantasy of sexual independence by actually having affairs or using prostitutes, like one former governor of New York State.

It is not that women are not having their own secret sex lives outside of their committed relationships. In egalitarian societies women are cheating almost as much as the men but they seem to cheat more often in search of romantic love than casual sexual relief. Yet many women feel betrayed when they realize the extent of their partners’ secret sex lives even if it is only a secret obsession with internet pornography. This issue is an underlying tension in most long-term relationships and as touchy an issue as it is, it is probably better to try to openly discuss it than pretend like it doesn’t exist. Every couple has to find creative ways of dealing with differences in the intensity of their sex drives and desires for sex outside of their long-term relationship, whether it is men looking for casual sex or women looking for romantic love outside of the marriage. Women have to make clear to men what their “line in the sand” is when it comes to extra-marital sexual outlets. If the line in the sand is “you can look but don’t touch” men better understand what the consequences will be for touching or letting themselves be touched. And in an age of computer sex and phone sex, there are now all kinds of sex that don’t require actual touching that women may not want their partners participating in.  If you want a relationship in which there is trust based upon complete honesty about sexual matters, you have to learn how to talk openly about touchy topics but many people believe, rightly or wrongly, that some things are better left unsaid.

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GROUCHY GUY: TEASING AND ANGER MANAGEMENT

Grouchy Guy: Teasing and Anger Management

BLOGGER: LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

As grouchy guys privately try to manage their conflicts about sexual fidelity in long-term monogamous relationships, they sometimes begin to lose their sense of humor and that’s why they can become very touchy about stupid little things. Arguments about stupid little things then can easily escalate into major blow-ups. Sometimes such an ugly scene can be nipped in the bud by turning an irritable interchange into an amusing one through a teasing remark that doesn’t take a grouchy guy’s complaints too seriously or too personally.

Social psychologists have noted that teasing is central to social life from childhood on and can be used to bring people closer together or to bully and humiliate them. On the positive side, teasing can be an imaginative and playful way to socialize, to flirt, and to resolve conflicts. On the negative side, teasing can be used as a weapon that is used to demean someone while pretending that it’s only kidding around. Teasing can turn a tense and testy moment into a special form of intimacy, two people having a good laugh with each other as they narrowly averted a major blow-up. Nobody is taking themselves too seriously. And in a romantic relationship since teasing is such an important part of flirting, teasing can re-awaken romantic feelings in a couple whose irritability with each other has thrown a big wet towel on their romantic passion.

Yet teasing in romantic relationships can backfire if it cuts to the quick, if it pores salt into old wounds rather than let’s those wounds heal. Especially, when teasing has that sarcastic edge, it is more likely to antagonize than amuse. The challenge in long-term romantic relationships is how to enable grouchy guys and grouchy gals to rediscover the pleasure they once shared in flirtatiously teasing one another. Flirtatious teasing does seem to be the basis of romantic seduction and just might be the basis of restoring romantic passion in a relationship once it has been lost because of never ending petty bickering over stupid little things.

So the challenge is this if you are living with either a grouchy guy or a grouchy girl. The next time they are barking at you about some stupid little thing. Try not to take it too personally, try not to take the specific complaint too seriously, try not to become too defensive, and try not to respond argumentatively as your grouchy partner is unconsciously trying to bait you into an argument. Remember that your grouchy partner is probably stressed out about some deeper inner issues that aren’t really being discussed and that they aren’t quite ready to talk about openly. They are being grouchy to blow off steam, unfortunately at your expense, but it’s better not to get too indignant about that. But just maybe you could find it within yourself to respond with some flirtatiously teasing comment, the sort your partner used to like back when you were originally trying to woo and win your partner as a lifelong partner, before the demands and frustrations of a long-term monogamous relationship began to wear both of you down. Just maybe you might be able to avert an ugly blow up by turning a testy moment into a humorous interchange that just might reawaken some of the romantic passion that you shared back in the good old days when you used to share the enjoyment of flirtatiously teasing each other.

Once a big fight has been successfully avoided and romantic passion reawakened by flirtatious teasing, it might seem that staying in a long-term monogamous relationship isn’t such a bad idea after all and maybe the grass isn’t greener anywhere else. For anyone interested in a comprehensive literature review of the research on teasing see: Keltner, D. et al. (2001) Just teasing: A conceptual analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin. 127: 229-248.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?

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Grouchy Guy: Monogamy

GROUCHY GUY: MONOGAMY

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

Why are grouchy guys so grouchy? Why do they make mountains out of molehills and pick fights about stupid little things? What do they have to be so angry about when more often than not their girlfriends and wives bend over backwards to please them and make their lives comfortable? Is it simply that they don’t like their jobs and come home to take their work frustrations out on their wives or children? That’s part of it but there is often a deeper reason, one that grouchy guys don’t like admitting to their partners because it is offensive to women. Often times they don’t even like to admit it to themselves because they feel guilty about feeling this way.

To put it bluntly, grouchy guys resent relinquishing their sexual freedom for the sake of long-term monogamous relationships, even with women they truly love. In a nutshell, men in committed relationships become grouchy because it frustrates their pressing desires for casual sex without strings attached with an endless variety of young, beautiful, and sexually indulgent women. Though most men don’t get close to gratifying this sexual fantasy when they are single, once they are in a committed relationship they begin to privately blame their girlfriends and wives for preventing them from making their dreams of playboy paradise come true.

Men don’t like to admit this fact to women or even to themselves. First, men know it’s an unrealistic fantasy and that they weren’t really such studs when they were single. They are ashamed of this fact because at some primal level men believe that if a man is not a first rate stud he is a first rate loser. Getting married then seems like settling for second best, an admission of defeat that they couldn’t cut the mustard as a first class seducer of women.  Second, men feel guilty about their womanizing ambitions. Men appreciate that thinking about women as sex objects to be loved and left to boost the male ego hurts women’s feelings even when men don’t have any real intentions of being unfaithful.  Men fully understand that any self-respecting woman wants to think that she is well worth the price of monogamy and that it wounds  a woman’s self-esteem to realize that her grouchy guy resents having to be faithful to her as though marital fidelity is some huge, almost unbearable sacrifice.

Being in a long-term monogamous relationship means giving up casual sex with other women in exchange for enduring love and affection from a woman with whom you might hope to raise a family. In other words, being monogamous requires men to endure a certain type of sexual frustration that men find difficult to endure. Men in general are much more interested in casual sex than are women. In comparison to women, men want to have more sexual partners in a lifetime, want to have more sexual variety, have more sexual fantasies about having sex with someone other than their current partner, utilize more pornography, utilize more prostitution, want to have sex earlier in a relationship, have more willingness to have sex with strangers, are more predisposed to have extra-marital affairs, and are more predisposed to have extra-marital affairs in search of casual sex as opposed to a finding a serious lover.  Curiously, though girls usually reach puberty several years earlier than boys do, the average boy has his first orgasm at age 13 while the average girl has her first orgasm at age 15. And if boys don’t masturbate they start having wet dreams to relieve themselves. In contrast, some women can go years if not decades without ever having their first orgasm and without ever having one in their sleep. Many men just seem to be driven by their sexual desires in a way that many women aren’t and men’s sexual desires often have a more impersonal and insistent quality than do women’s.

This sexual difference can be an underlying source of perpetual conflict in long-term relationships and is often a touchy issue that is difficult to discuss without being defensive. Ultimately, men have to learn how to deal with the sexual frustrations of monogamy without dumping their frustrations on their girlfriends and wives. To some extent women help men do that not by learning new sexual techniques, not by giving them quickies every time they want to be sexually serviced, not by getting breast implants, and certainly not by looking the other way while they cheat. You can help him become less grouchy by not taking his grouchiness so personally, making fun of him when he is acting like a jerk, and setting firm limits on his surly behavior when it goes over the top. Your grouchy guy has to learn how to get over himself and you can help him do that by helping him not take his fragile male ego so seriously.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?

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How to Manage Your Grouchy Guy

How to Manage Your Grouchy Guy

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

            You thought you fell in love with a wonderful guy and you thought you would settle into a comfortable easy going relationship once the honeymoon phase of the relationship was over. But instead you find yourself living with a first-class grouch and you don’t know what to do about it. What is a grouchy guy? These are the defining characteristics of a grouchy guy:

1)    His mood tends to be chronically irritable and cranky. He responds with annoyance to minor frustrations.

2)    He is faultfinding about stupid little things and prone to starting arguments about trivial matters. He makes mountains out of molehills.

3)     He blames you for everything as though every minor frustration he suffers is your fault. He implies or says outrightly that you are ruining his life.

4)     He treats you like you’re an idiot if you don’t immediately get something he is saying.

5)    He gets annoyed and pushes you away when you reach out affectionately to him looking for some love and attention as though you’re a pathetically needy person.

6)    He has a generally contemptuous attitude towards you though he’d deny it if you confronted him. He’d claim you’re too being too sensitive.

7)    He may make sarcastic or belittling comments towards you, even in front of other people. If you confront him on it, he will claim he’s just kidding around and will ask incredulously what’s wrong with you that you can’t you take a joke.

8)    If you sympathetically ask your partner what’s bothering him, he will deny that anything is wrong and will respond as though that’s an irritating question.

9)    He demonstrates diminished interest in sex with you but claims everything is just fine if asked.

            You know what it is like to live with a guy like this. You are angry all the time because he treats you in such a hostile rejecting manner. But because he denies everything, he makes you feel that it’s all in your head and you must be crazy. It’s not good for your self-worth because he is making you feel like he finds himself trapped living with a person he finds absolutely insufferable. He acts like he is just staying with you out of some misguided sense of begrudging obligation. And when you finally lose your patience with his chronic but denied grouchiness and you lose your temper, he looks at you with utter disgust as though you are the biggest bitch in the entire world! Then you feel guilty as though you have probably deserved to be treated poorly all along. You can’t imagine why in the world he stays with you and why he just doesn’t go out and immediately replace you with someone nicer. You might even begin to think that maybe you should feel grateful that he puts up with you at all.

Or maybe you are wondering why you put up with him at all and maybe you should just dump the jerk and find somebody nicer, somebody who is lower maintenance.

But if at least for the time being you are sticking with your grouchy guy and trying to figure out what to do with him, I can give you some advice about how to try to make the best of a bad situation. First, I have to give you some advice about what not to do because it’s very easy to make a bad situation a whole lot worse than it already is. Firstly, you have to learn how to restrain yourself from reacting defensively to the hostile and rejecting way your grouchy guy treats you. Understandably, you feel hurt and angry and want to express your hurt and anger openly. Unfortunately, grouchy guys don’t know how to deal with women’s feelings and just become more antagonized the more you try to force them to understand how you really feel. Grouchy guys, especially when they are angry are empathy impaired. They get freaked out by a crying woman who seems wounded by their abrasiveness. Crying just makes a grouchy guy feel guilty and when he feels guilty he either becomes even more argumentative or withdraws in anger. Grouchy men see crying women as weak and then have contempt for them. Appearing hurt and wounded doesn’t get you anywhere with a grouchy guy. They think it’s manipulative.

            Maybe you get angry when your grouchy guy isn’t being nice and to assert yourself you express your anger. But the next thing you know you are have a screaming match on your hands and things are getting pretty ugly, maybe even in front of the kids. Getting angry doesn’t get you anywhere because then you turn into his scolding mother. If you get angry he will no longer see you as the sexy romantic partner he once loved because you have morphed into his disciplinarian mother who is trying to force him to be obedient. Naturally, he will become only more rebellious. You might get him to begrudgingly submit out of guilt but he will hold it against you and get even with you one way or another, perhaps even by cheating on you with someone at work who seduces him by seeming more indulgent and accommodating than you are.

            Of course, you could just try to ignore his grouchiness and try not to let it bother you and try to learn to live with it. But because he is a grouchy guy and is trying to get a rise out of you, he’s just going to drive you crazy until you lose it. If you try to ignore his chronic irritability and constant put downs, you are just going to build up resentment like a pressure cooker until you finally explode. So what do you do if you can’t just ignore him, can’t express your hurt feelings openly, and can’t express your angry feelings openly? What options are left?

            Fortunately, there are two good options left which are more likely to be effective with a grouchy guy: 1) Good natured teasing and 2) Firm limit setting.

            Grouchy guys have often lost their sense of humor. Every little thing about you is annoying to them and they have to constantly harp on the fact of how everything you do drives them crazy. The basic idea of good natured teasing is that every time your grouchy guy says something critical, insulting, or bossy, you don’t have to take it seriously, just make a joke about it. For example, your grouchy guy starts scolding you for misplacing his favorite coffee mug that he can’t find. You can argue that you didn’t misplace his coffee mug or that even if you did what’s the big deal and you’ll probably have a huge fight on your hands about a stupid little thing. But you could kid around and say something like: “I hid it on purpose because I know you can’t live without your favorite coffee mug” or “Why don’t you take care of your coffee mug yourself if you don’t like the way I take care of things around here, you’re a big boy, now so learn to take care of yourself.” To women’s ears these comments might sound too harsh, even emasculating, but this is the kind of language that grouchy guys understand. This is the way grouchy guys deal with each other, through what I call “verbal roughhousing.” Grouchy guys like to play rough, that’s the way they deal with all their pent-up aggression. Grouchy guys have to be taught a lesson: “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.” You have to show them that you don’t take them too seriously when they are acting like a first class jerk. You need to make fun of them when they are acting insufferably to show them that they have lost your respect. In cultures where there is very little male aggression, it is achieved because the men relentlessly mock each other when they get out of line until the men acquire better self-control of their aggressive impulses. Men respect sassy women who can put them in their place by a witty put down. Unfortunately, in our culture it is usually the men who make jokes and the women who are the appreciative audience for men’s humor. But sometimes in a marriage there has to be a role reversal and the women need to get their grouchy guys to lighten up and not take themselves so seriously.

            Your grouchy guy will really appreciate you if you can learn how to diffuse a tense situation with humor. But you have to understand that the type of humor that most grouchy guys like is rude, crude, and lewd, not always the witty repartee we see in old fashioned romantic comedies. If you can learn to amuse your grouchy guy with that sort of humor, you will have him eating of your hand and he will feel like he is the luckiest guy in the world. It will also re-awaken his waning sexual interest in you. Grouchy guys want to have sex with women who can make them laugh.

            Humor only works when a grouchy guy is mildly annoyed. Humor doesn’t work when a grouchy guy is really angry. Then he is too far gone to be reached by humor. Once he is really angry he can’t even think straight so you can’t really have a rational dialogue with him. So what women have to learn is to not even try to have a rational discussion with a grouchy guy once he has lost it. It’s better to tell him that he is out of control and out of line, that you won’t talk to him if he is going to talk to you in such a disrespectful way, and that he better go off by himself to cool down and don’t talk to you until he can talk to you in a calm and respectful way. Thus you have to set limits on his grouchiness by refusing to talk to him unless he can talk to you like a civilized and mature adult. First you try to diffuse a tense situation with a little humor but if that doesn’t work set a limit on him and tell him to get out your face until he calms down.

Once a grouchy guy cools down he will be nicer and more conciliatory. Sometimes, it’s hard for women to do this because they want the immediate reassurance in the midst of an ugly fight that everything is OK. Women hate it when men withdraw in anger because they feel rejected, if not abandoned, by the men they love. But it is better to let your grouchy guy withdraw in anger until he is ready to make nice. Forcing him to reassure you that he still loves you when he is fuming with anger is just going to result in an even bigger blow-up.

            So these are the basic tools of effective grouchy guy management. Don’t ignore him, don’t act hurt and wounded, don’t scold him, and don’t pressure him for reassurance. That will only further antagonize him and make a bad situation a whole lot worse. Use humor and good natured teasing, preferably a bit crude and lewd, to diffuse a tense situation when your grouchy guy is mildly annoyed. When he is really angry give him a time out until he calms down and sounds conciliatory. Good luck learning to manage your grouchy guy because you deserve better.

  Let me know what you think.

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