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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Grouchy Gals: The Problem of Unwanted Sex

Grouchy Gals: The Problem of Unwanted Sex

BLOGGER: LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

In a previous blog, we discussed why some women might feel sexually frustrated in long-term relationships and might be tempted to cheat or find a more sexually desirable partner as a permanent replacement for her current partner. Not getting enough high quality sex and romance in a long-term relationship makes some women grouchy. But some women suffer an opposite problem. Some men have a much higher sex drive than their girlfriends and wives and are constantly looking for and pressuring their girlfriends and wives to relieve their sexual tensions. It is not always particular romantic as some men just want to get a “quickie” to be sexually serviced in a rather impersonal way by their partners just to relieve sexual tension. When men are single, they usually rely on masturbation to relieve their sexual tensions because most single men can’t find enough women with whom to have casual sex to relieve themselves. Some men to keep their sexual tensions down feel a need to have daily orgasm or orgasms ever other day. If they aren’t having orgasms at the frequency that they feel they require they feel consumed by the mounting sexual tension. They become obsessed with sexual thoughts and fantasies and can’t focus on other things, like their work, until they can obtain relief.

When men enter a long-term monogamous relationship, they often hope and assume that the days of having to relieve themselves through masturbation are finally behind them as now they will have a sexually indulgent partner who will relieve them on demand at whatever frequency they need. Especially if the relationship starts off as an intense whirlwind romance, their fantasy seems to come true. When a couple is caught up in an intense romantic infatuation, they can’t wait until that moment when they can rip each others clothes off and have wild crazy sex. But unfortunately once the honeymoon phase is over the frequency of sexual relationships begins to decline and tensions arise when one partner seems to be a lot more interested in sex than the other partner. When men want more sex than their girlfriends or wives, men tend to turn into whiney, petulant little boys who just keep pestering their partners for sex until they get it. Obviously, this is a huge turn off for most women. Yet women are caught in a double bind. On the one hand, they are not in the mood for sex and feel resentful to be pressured to have sex when they are not in the mood, especially when they are being propositioned in such an exceptionally off putting way. Yet on the other hand, women may feel sorry for their sexually frustrated partners, feel it is their duty to keep their partners sexually satisfied, and may be tempted to sexually service their partners just to shut them up and stop their annoyingly incessant pestering. What is a woman to do: Resentfully have unwanted sex just to relieve guilt and pestering or decline to have sex and force her partner to deal with his sexual frustrations on his own (i.e. sexual abstinence, masturbation, or some sort of infidelity).

It would seem that few men are capable of exercising sexual abstinence in the marriage in which they patiently wait to have sex until their female partners are in the mood to have sex. Men may to some degree “save it up” until their girlfriends or wives are finally in the mood for a romantic tryst. Yet most men seem to have great difficulty with delay of sexual gratification and do not handle sexual frustration very well. Especially, if they are still very attracted to their wives, it’s a huge tease to sleep every night with a beautiful and sexy woman and see her walk around naked and not to be able to have sex with her just because she isn’t in the mood. As a consequence, most men masturbate to relieve themselves, just like when they were single guys, to relieve sexual tension, but to some extent resent their partners for not being available for sex on demand. Naturally, women resent this state of affairs. It doesn’t seem fair that women should be resented for not having sex when they aren’t in the mood, but unhappily that seems to be the case. And unfortunately, the most resentful men will probably look outside of the marriage for sexual relief.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer about how to deal with this issue. Even women who don’t mind sexually servicing their husbands on a regular basis often find that it is never enough. If a man needs to have his daily orgasm, there are few women who after years of marriage, with a full time job, and a bunch of kids is going to have the time, energy, or inclination to service her husband on a daily basis. It’s just not going to happen. So my advice is for husbands to have more compassion for the no-win situation in which their girlfriends or wives find themselves. You can’t blame them if their sexual drive is just not as strong as yours, if they aren’t as interested in impersonal sex as you are, and that they often just don’t have the energy to service you even if in general they don’t really mind doing you a favor, especially if you orgasm really quickly to save them time and energy. If you are not capable of sexual abstinence to save it for when your partner is in the mood, you might have to relieve yourself through masturbation just like when you were single. So don’t take it so personally as though it’s some big sexual rejection, if your partner is not inclined to sexually service you on demand and don’t hold it against her either. In the end, you will have a much better long-term relationship and your grouchy gal won’t be quite so grouchy if you stop pestering her to have unwanted sex with you when she isn’t in the mood.

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Grouchy Gals: How Men Let Women Down

Grouchy Gals: How Men Let Women Down

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

We all know what men think of an angry woman. For most men an angry woman is a “bitch.” Of course, it’s not fair that an angry man is often construed as an assertive man who has self-respect because he stands up for himself. An angry woman is just seen as a scolding shrew, not a particularly attractive or feminine trait. It’s just one more double standard that women are subjected to. What men never ask themselves is why are women so angry at men and if just perhaps men may have done something to provoke women’s anger. Men just assume that an angry woman is a crazy woman who is irrational. It doesn’t occur to most men that they have anything to do with it, that perhaps men drive women crazy by their actions.

I’m going to do something that no self-respecting man is supposed to do, to break the “bro’ code” (i.e. the secret fraternal code of conduct that is not to be admitted to women). The “bro’ code” are the secret stratagems that men use to have their way with women, be it to get laid, to get a woman to fall in love with him, or to keep a married woman subservient. Basically, men intuit what women are looking for in a romantic partner. The basic strategy is to seduce women by pretending to be what they want you to be and once they are hooked just do whatever the hell you want, whether they like it or not, because men believe that once women become attached to them they can exploit that emotional dependency to get their way. Men assume that women are too frightened of abandonment, of replacement, and of being on their own to ever kick them out and find someone better.

What do women want in a man, nothing particularly exotic, just a reasonably handsome, healthy guy who will be loving, devoted, and caring husband and father as well as a reasonable provider. And guys know it helps a lot if you look at a woman adoringly as though she is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So you just keep up the act until a woman is hooked and then presumably you have got her over a barrel and can have your way with her. That’s why women are angry, that men seduce them with false pretenses and then disappointment them one way or another by not living up to their advance billing. It’s not that women don’t play the same game with men but that’s another story for another blog. Once women really that they have been hookwinked and bamboozled by the men they love they are pretty “pissed off,” to put it mildly.

What are the common sorts of promises men make and break, the expectations they set up and then disappoint? Men seem to be looking for a relationship but then they just want casual sex as they turn out to be a love them and leave them kind of guy? Men seem to want to long-term monogamous relationship but they really want a mother for their children while they entertain mistresses on the side? A man might seem like a kind, good natured, and considerate gentleman but turns out to be a crude, vulgar, and grouchy guy who likes to burp and fart to his heart’s content. A man might seem like a real go getter who will be a great provider but then he gambles away the family’s financial security by going deep into debt to salvage a failing business? A man might seem easy going and flexible but turns out to be stubborn and belligerent instead. The list goes on and on of men seeming to be one way during the courtship stage of relationship and then turning out to be another way once the honeymoon is over and they are no longer on their best behavior. This is why women can turn into grouchy gals or depressed dreamers who yearn for something a bit more romantic.

My advice now is really more for men than for women. If men are living with a grouchy gal and don’t like living with someone they perceive as “bitchy,” now you know why. You seduced her on false pretenses during the courtship stage and now you are not living up to expectations. If you can see that and feel at least a little compassion for her predicament and would like to live with a less irritable spouse, this is what you have got to do:

1) You don’t have to live up to your advanced billing because that’s not you. Face it, you are a big disappointment as a husband and there is nothing you can do about it. You’re really not as nice a person as you thought you were. Maybe you are a bit of loser so just suck it up and take it like a man. Don’t dump your frustrations on your wife.

2) Given that your wife puts up with you at all, no matter how resentfully, you should be thankful that she doesn’t throw you out on your aging butt. Despite women’s fears of being alone, women actually do much better on their own than men do. Men can’t really take care of themselves no matter how self-sufficient and independent they pretend to be.

3) Don’t take her bitchiness so personally, she has to let off steam given that you are really just a big baby that she is stuck taking care of, especially once you become an old fart who will probably die almost a decade before she does and need a lot of draining custodial care. It’s really no big deal to be a bit more accepting and tolerant of the fact that sometimes your wife is totally disgusted with you and looks at you with contempt. Show a little gratitude that she puts up with your crap because really living with you is no picnic.

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Grouchy Gals: Women’s Ambivalence About Monogamy

Grouchy Gals: Women’s Ambivalence About Monogamy

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

Cross cultural research suggests that world-wide men cheat more than women do. Yet it has been noticed that in more egalitarian countries women are quickly catching up to the men in terms of prevalence rates of infidelity. In addition, women are much more likely to report infidelity in anonymous surveys than in face to face interviews. These findings suggest that women may be just as sexually frustrated with monogamous arrangements as are men so frequently look for extra-marital sexual outlets. Research also suggests that on average women are more often unfaithful in search of romantic love whereas men are more often unfaithful in search of casual sex. Yet many men seek romantic love outside of marriage and many women seek casual sex outside of marriage.

Beginning in childhood, males tend to externalize their emotional upset whereas females tend to internalize their emotional upset. As a consequence sexually frustrated wives are just as likely to become sad and depressed (i.e. anger turned inwards) going through the motions as though everything is OK as they are to become grouchy gals who dump their frustrations on their husbands. If women are the more monogamously oriented sex as research suggests why are they so frustrated with monogamous arrangements? Research suggests that the honeymoon phase of a romantic relationship, when men are at their best behavior (i.e. most adoring and eager to please) rarely lasts more than 18 months. As suggested in previous blogs, once the honeymoon phase is over many men turn into grouchy guys who become sexually selfish and irritable due to their own sexual frustrations. They begin to treat their wives like slaves whose function is to service them. Naturally, women resent such mistreatment and begin to yearn for a more adoring and appreciative romantic partner. Yet even if a husband is a perfectly decent guy sex can become boring if it’s just the same old thing once the initial romance has faded. Women too enjoy sexual variety, novelty, and the thrill of new romantic conquests as well as the ego boost of still being able to evoke love and lust from new and desirable romantic partners, despite being older and having put on a few pounds.

Many women stay in sexually frustrating monogamous arrangements for the sake of the children or just for the emotional or economic security of having someone with whom to grow old. Yet many women do cheat, do seek divorce, and are even relieved when their grouchy and unappreciative husbands kick the bucket and they don’t want to get stuck providing undeserved custodial care for another old fart. Research suggests more health and psychological benefits for married men than for married women. We also know that men seem to be the more sexually controlling, sexually possessive, and violently jealous sex. Though men don’t like to admit to this issue, men do need to worry about what they need to do to hold onto their potentially philandering wives so they don’t get cuckolded or replaced by a competitor who is better in bed than they are. Sexually betrayed and/ or dumped men don’t fare too well, either emotionally or physically.

If your wife is privately depressed but pretending everything is OK or is openly “bitchy” and you don’t want to lose her to another man this is what husbands have to do:

1. Don’t be sexually selfish. Make sure your wife is sexually satisfied.

2. Don’t treat her like a slave. That means cut out the contempt and disgust in your attitude.

3. Don’t threaten her with abandonment and/or replacement when you are angry and in a punitive mood. That’s being mean since it’s going for the jugular.

4. Be affectionate and don’t reject affectionate gestures and overtures from your wife.

5. Stand up for yourself in an assertive, respectful way. Don’t be a wimp but don’t be a bully either. Try to be someone your wife would respect and admire.

Being a loyal and devoted partner compensates to some degree for the fading of romantic love and the sexual boredom that can be an inevitable aspect of long-term monogamous relationships. Men have to overcome their egocentrism and realize that just because they are sexually frustrated with and resentful of monogamous arrangements doesn’t mean that women aren’t as well. Women are more likely than men to live lives of quiet despair hiding their true feelings than are men who are more likely to stomp around the house making sure everyone else is just as miserable as they are. So men better wise up if they don’t want to end up dumped and replaced by their sexually frustrated wives for someone who is better in bed than they are.

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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: 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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