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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