At base, we are animals and our animal natures are in direct opposition to our socialized natures: what we are supposed to do, think, feel and be like - for ourselves, our spouse, our kids.
As animals, we have drives and appetites. Eating and sexual desire are both appetites, which cannot be ignored for long. Sleeping and elimination are likewise necessary.
As animals, we also have the nesting urge - the urge to settle down.
If we did not do all these, humanity would die a quick death.
As socialized creatures, we are led to believe various things, many of which lie in direct opposition to a happy marriage.
Women are taught to believe in such things as:
Never run after a man or a train because another one will soon follow. Though this seems like solid advice, it has one fatal flaw: The focus is on what the WOMAN should do regarding the MAN.
Focusing on the MAN instead of on ourselves, makes us WEAKer than we would be if we focus on ourselves.
Women should focus on making themselves independent and the best they can be; men should do the same.
Women are taught to GET a HUSBAND, to depend on a husband for various things, emotional and financial support. Men do NOT like to provide much financial support over the long term; some do not like to provide it at all, whereas some tire of it after years. Men actually have TROUBLE with the idea of providing financial support - even though the realities of family life make this a necessity.
Women and men should care about each other and care for each other, but they should not take care OF each other.
When we take care OF someone, putting their needs first before ours, it makes both people weak. Sure, we have to take care OF pets, and the young and the aged, but it exacts a toll on everybody.
It is well documented in the mental health field that marriages with no children are happier than marriages with children.
Marriage is a social construct, and is in opposition to our animal natures.
Imagine this scenario:
Husband: I will love you forever because you are sexy.
Wife: I will love you forever, too.
The relationship without kids is not complicated. They can make bunnies all day and all of the night, which helps a relationship. But even that may not be enough if they do not have the fundamental trust and respect and friendship as a basis.
Imagine this new scenario:
New baby has arrived:
Husband: Wanna do it tonight, honey?
Wife: Uh. I cannot stay awake and I have spit up all over me. (And besides, she tells herself but not hubby, you have been REPLACED. I am more in love with the new baby than with you.)
It is true that women love their new babies more than their husbands. This is the animal nature taking over. If moms did not love their babies more than anything in the world, babies would not be well taken care of.
The husband's animal nature still wants sex from his wife.
The wife's animal nature has shifted abruptly from lover to Mom. She has replaced her husband with the new baby.
New mom to self: Oh I don't want to appear too sexy. What would people think? Besides, I don't have time to take care of myself now. I am too tired.
New dad to self: Oh I miss those days when we did it all the time. She acts like she doesn't even care about me. How long can this go on? How long must I live like this?
I was at a modeling agency with one of my ESL students the other day, and the agent (the best agency in Boston) said that this young woman (she is 31 but looks 25) is lucky because she does not have kids.
"After a woman is in her 30s, modeling often fades away because either she is busy in business and does not have time, or because she has children, and then modeling as a career often fades away because she has children."
That says a lot.
I know women who have said that chubbier moms are the best becauase they are chubby.
There are moms who live in some of the trashier neighborhoods and sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between who is a mom and who is a ho; sometimes, there is no difference.
On the other hand, there are some suburbs here around Boston (some of the wealthier suburbs) that subscribe to the wealthy-ugly wife theory - that the wealthiest wives are the ugliest.
What in heck's name is wrong with this? We are a society based on Puritanical values.
In France, the bourgeois women have household help and take care of themselves, but in America, the middle class homemaker wife is often regarded as a drone.
Most women at a health club are either young and childless or women whose children are grown.
Every human society has an incest taboo; it is this incest taboo that takes over when people are married with children.
This exists in all the cultures of my ESL students, too - Northern Europe, Asia, Brazil, South America.
Sex? Oh let's not talk about it. The kids' virgin ears might hear about it. We must have a G-rated household here.
There is a lot to be said for that.
And it is all necessary. The institutions that foster raising healthy kids: Church, Scouts, Sports, Little League, Dance, and other neighborhood organizations, are all G-rated.
Little time (or interest) for moms to be interested in SEX.
Men, however, are more in touch with their animal natures and miss it a LOT.
Much has also been written in the mental health field that after the second child, sex in marriage pretty much disappears. They often ascribe this to fatigue, but this exists in cultures which have household help.
The incest taboo. Do not talk or think about sex while your kids are young.
The mental health field also writes much about "after enduring the very difficult child rearing years and after the children have left home, couples will often find a renewed interest in each other and in the romantic relationship."
Dr. Oz stated on Oprah months ago that there are more than 40 million sexless married couples in the US.
Studies have also stated that the sex drive decreases in women after marriage, regardless of whether or not they have children.
People are predators by nature. Look at the history of aggression and wars. Cats and dogs are predators. If you give a cat something to play with, he or she will play with it, then will become bored.
Frequency and availability is the opposite of desire.
The problem is compounded when couples have too many pressures, which all couples in North America have.
Husband: Usually the major bread-winner; desires communication, affection, love, attention from wife; as parent, helps with early childhood, and with child rearing; and wants time for himself and communication with spouse;
Already, this is more than 24 hours in a day.
Wife: A bread winner but often not the major one when children are young; desires communicatioh, affection, love, attention from husband, does most of the early childhood child rearing and much of the household tasks, and child rearing; and wants time for herself and communication with spouse;
This is more than 24 hours in a day.
Coupled with fatigue, lack of time and money for personal needs, and coupled with a woman's lowered sex drive during the child rearing years and possibly the wish not to be as sexy looking as before, well this marriage is headed for the tubes.
Many millions of marriages have suffered through this period. Most have not survived.
Friendship and trust for months BEFORE sex go a LONG way in creating a relationship that might last. But we of the post 60s era have forgotten that.
***
I have decided to give my husband one more chance. We are going out on Saturday night because our last child will be elsewhere. First time alone together in I don't know how many years; I cannot remember.
We will talk. And no, I will not report back on what happens afterward.
That should be obvious.
We don't have kids in the house.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 146
And I could not agree more on the topic of focal shifting when a baby enters the relationship.
I wish you all the best and will support you in any decision you make. =)
And when people meet someone new, they always feel the new person is the best in the world.
And Utah. Mormons divorce but rarely. And we KNOW the Christian Right does not include Mormons, even though the Mormons are puzzled by this.
Sometimes at night, often at night, insights occur to me before I am sleeping or sometimes WHEN I AM DREAMING.
and LEAVE HIM THERE.
I always made most of the decisions, because he never made any.
The kids need to see a very loving and happy couple. Because when they grow up, they model their parents behavior subconsciously.
And, leading by a good example would be to put the loving relationship first and kids second.
Kids should never be put up on a pedestal
They fall too hard that way.
We need to show them that to love one's spouse is to respect them. To give them affection. To expect mutual cherishing. And, to have a wonderful love/sex life.
If you don't tend to your relationship, you will lose it. Period.
My sister has been married almost 25 years and a lot of people think she should have left her husband at this point but, again, she made a commitment and meant her vows. I admire her for that.
I think that the main reason marriages fail is a lack of commitment and work on both sides. For some idiotic reason, people think relationships should just magically work and that's absurd. You're dealing with two different human beings with two different personalities and there are always going to be issues. If you make the commitment and don't see divorce as an option, it makes it easier to work at it.
Now, if someone is being abused, I don't think they should stay in that type of marriage because the abuse in and of itself is betrayal. And, if you have a spouse who consistently and repetitively cheats, I think that's not a marriage and I wouldn't stay with someone who did that to me.
I just think that people have made it too easy to end marriages and give up instead of put forth the effort and the commitment and to quit going by how they feel all the time. Emotions change constantly. Making a decision based on them is stupid.
My second wife was the opposite and or marriage lasted 25 years till her death and was so much more comfortable.
EVER WONDER what sort of advice columnists we men would make?
Dear Walter,
I hope you can help me here. The other day I set off for work leaving my husband in the house watching the TV as usual. I hadn't gone more than a mile down the road when my engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt. I walked back home to get my husband’s help. When I got home I couldn't believe my eyes. He was in the bedroom with a neighbor lady making mad passionate love to her. I am 32, my husband is 34 and we have been married for twelve years.
When I confronted him, he tried to make out that he went into the back yard and heard a lady scream, had come to her rescue but found her unconscious. He’d carried the woman back to our house, laid her in bed, and began CPR. When she awoke she immediately began thanking him and kissing him and he was attempting to break free when I came back. But when I asked him why neither of them had any clothes on, he broke down and admitted that he'd been having an affair for the past six months. I told him to stop or I would leave him.
He was let go from his job six months ago and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but ever since I gave him the ultimatum he has become increasingly distant. I don't feel I can get through to him anymore. Can you please help?
Sincerely,
Sheila.
Dear Sheila
A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Start by checking that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it is clear, check the vacuum pipes and hoses on the intake manifold and also check all grounding wires. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburetor float chamber.
I hope this helps.
Walter.
Good article ~ sorry Kathryn - I am not going to be of much use here. I hope you like the joke there is a lot of truth in this.
Women can have children & still be sexy can't they if the husband helps out? The word MILF seems all the rage today. Someone out there must be having fun..
I encouraged my daughter to develop her own interests, make her own choices and take consequencs. I gave her more respect when she was ten than my mom gives me now.
I think marriages fail because people have conflicting expectations. They give up too easily, too. Marriages fail because the spouses fail. I really believe engaged couples should have at least six months of counseling and be paired up with a young married couple for mentoring benefits.
When we still had children living home we found that when they went out, we finally got a chance to nap.
I just mentioned this to somebody else. In September, we will be married 45 years. Something worked, but I'll be dammed if I can explain it.
Perhaps it is because every morning, the first thing I do, is apologise for everything else I will do wrong that day.
Renee, that is the most important.
Especially true with mothers and boys, who as everyone can plainly see in 90 percent of the cases between moms and boys, the moms use the love they feel for their sons and the love the sons feel for their moms as subsitutes for the love they should be feeling for their husbands and vice versa, which only raises a weak son, and an even weaker husband.
The middle class is the only class that truly believes in institutions by which to raise children by.
I think a lot of trouble is getting married too young and having children too young and then you have sacrificed all that you could be to be a mother and father. I am glad my parents marriedlater in life and had me late.
on the other hand, you can't be 'brother and sister' doing everything together and not having a different opinion about anything, how boring.
I met my now ex-husband at 16, I gave him my virginity and then went out to explore the world and all life had to hold, good and bad, then 29 years after I last saw him, we hooked up again, he left his wife and married me, then when I was no longer what he was looking for he went off with yest another girl he had met and de-flowered in the 60s! seems he is running out of his 'firsts'!
He married his first wife after meeting her years before and defowering her as well. I guess once we aren't virgins anymore some guys don't wnat to know! LOL
Good luck, you guys will probably make it this time, with no distractions but cats!
Georgie, I just love the story of you and Gordon, when you met and that you married later, and yes, some guys really have a lot of issues they bring to the bed and basically are JUST NOT THE MARRYING FOREVER or FOR A LONG TIME kind of guy.
Cheddar and Mao take up a huge part of the bed.
Gee.
I never believed that marriages can last forever and told him so. I gave him 20 years. I knew he would be a ton of work.
And I told him people can not be 100 percent monogamous.
Sort of like the dumb blonde joke:
A blonde gets pulled over by a female blonde cop. The cop asks the blonde for ID. The blonde pulls out her compact and holds it up to her own face and says, Yep, that's me. Then the blonde gives it to the blonde cop who looks at it and says, "If I had known you were a cop, I would never have pulled you over.'
hahahahahah.
I was too stupid to do that.
3 dates I thought. That is a long time, right? Ha, in the early 80s after the 60s and 70s, what else would people think?
Gee.
Friendship first.
I raised my daughter to be independent . . . ok degree from great univ. good job. . .
very pretty, bought her own house. . . . has had the few long relationships. . . not married.
She is not willing to marry just to have a husband, but now wants children.
Not many men really want a smart successful independent woman for a wife.
Ok everyone,
My son does help with chlidcare, cleaning, cooking and shopping.
That must be why they are still doing ok even though they sometimes have troubles.
I do think that the biological clock that ticks so loudly for a woman and also ticks for a man, can really interfere with the natural process.
It was so for us. I met him when I was 30, he was 31. Mine was ticking loudly. Although we thought it was slow, it was very fast. Dated a few months and assumed we would marry. A year apart due to school commitments. A year back together and engagement. Then marriage the next. Then a child the next. Then a year later, another pregnancy. A year after that, the second child. 10 years after we met, 1 year old and a 3 year old. It seemed way too fast.
His was ticking, too. If we had waited on the dating for a few months and just remained friends, maybe it would have had a better foundation.
But this was right after the 70s.
My daughter has struggled with this exact problem! But, I believe she has FINALLY found her match by dating another doctor who understands the life of a doctor!
But my daughter excells in it, too bad she says she wants fashion design instead. She got the only A+ in her Anatomy class, the college textbook (high school class) with Venus Williams on it.
I do agree with Doc, Ken and Disciple's comments, but not Spartan's.
Maybe my late husband (of 18 years) and I had such a happy marriage because we chose to treat each other the way we wanted our children to be treated by their spouses when they got married. We set the example of how they should expect to be treated, with love, respect, mutual decison making, compromise, consideration, affection, helpfulness, and friendly disagreements.
I had to hold my parents' house together from the time I was 12, so I am done.
A good sign, and yes we had fun while she and her brother grew up.
O I forgot my own marriage. 30 years, then I literally ran away. . .
Sometimes marriage is very oppressive for one partner.
I had finally concluded that the only long term marriages I knew, including my parents.
required that one of the partners give up their identity. My ex's Mother was a widow at a youngish age and did not remarry.
I probably won't re-marry, the ex has.
And
Yes even though my children were adult when I left, this was very difficult for them, still is.
The war was over when I left, so we have not engaged in any battles since I walked out the door. The children are very happy we have not engaged in a divorce war.
I am not "friends" with the ex's wife, but we can do family events and not snarl.
A recent study has shown that a woman's housework increases by many hours per week when she marries.
Single mother hood can be good. We knew several whom we believe never married the dad. Everything worked out fine. Was impossible to tell the difference those who never married and those who were abandoned or divorced early.
50 years ago, it was different. My father's boss' secretary, married at 16 and had two children by 18, but her husband left before the second was born. She became a single mother secretary to the chairman of the department and raised both single handedly. She did marry but not until the youngest was 18. Of course, she was not even 40 by that time.
I suspect if childcare, wage earning, housekeeping, errands, homework, jobs and decisions aren't shared, the chance of a marriage working decreases exponentially.
I think you cover some of the nuts and bolts of why so many marriages fail.
A long time ago, I had an interesting conversation with a friend who also was a 20+ year marriage and family counselor. In the course of much debate, we approached the notion that it's not DIVORCE that's too easy, it's getting married that's too easy. Diana (my friend) pointed out that SO many people pay more attention when hiring a roof contractor than to choosing a mate. We're blind to GLARING incompatibilities in potential mates, the likes/parallels of which we would NEVER tolerate in someone we were hiring.
And so-- lots of marriages fail, because they should never have been a marriage in the first place.
I think it is biological destiny that women turn to child rearing and the sex drive goes out the window.
My daughter and I were talking (not about this point) about points she is learning in Anatomy about the many subtle differences between men and women
Women have a stronger and subtler sense of smell, and many other differences that are necessary actually for survival as a woman and mother. I am not explaining this well, but women are built for procreation, child bearing and child rearing and men are built to seed that operation.
We forget as socialized beings the basis for our being here; To seed the operation by which we women can bear fruit and raise that fruit.
And so, men have to be more interested in sex during a relationship and women have to be more interested in child rearing than sex.
Back to we are animals.
Does this help us keep the babies safe?
Grrrrrrrrrrrimafemaleanimal
--------wink-------
Today, the main locus of production is the factory/office. Marriage and the husband / wife relationship exist mostly for psychological and emotional support. Affection is the most important aspect of the marriage. But our norms and rules for conducting a marriage and family relationships are still based on and rooted in that family farm. Yes those norms are changing, slowly, haltingly, and imperfectly. But they still don't meet the needs of our marriages. In fact, now, they don't meet the needs of the family farm either.
So long as our society continues to change rapidly the norms for family living will be inappropriate until we learn how to adapt and change our family norms more quickly. In short, the conservatives (those who don't want the norms for living to change) will hurt millions of marriages by their refusal to accept change. Liberals (those who want to change things) will hurt millions of marriages by making inappropriate changes that don't really solve the problems. But despite the pain of making the wrong changes, we must change for the institution of marriage will change whether we accept those changes or not.
Fortunately we human beings have no instincts (no complex, involuntary responses to events, just simple things like reflexes such as closing our eyes when we sneeze) we are able to make the changes necessary to succeed. But having no instincts, we have no built in ways of succeeding. We have to think for ourselves and try a variety of things and learn from other people's errors. But we can do it.
after childbirth, a woman's maternal urge takes over, leading to a lower sex drive. The fatigue takes over, too, and then anger, resentment, and other issues add to the problem.
But the woman's animal nature (being a mother) takes over, and is in direct conflict with a man's animal nature (to seed the population), thus leading to difficulties.
With one child, it is not nearly as difficult as with others.
When there is love and understanding, resentment can be resolved, and there will be less anger and less weight gain resulting. But so many have this same issue.
And you do so much around the house.
I do think that the woman's maternal instinct takes over (one of her animal drives) after childbirth, and depending on how a woman is raised, how much 'female' socialization and expectations she puts into a marriage has a great bearing on a woman's sex drive and such, which plagues most marriages.
I am glad to be rid of the last 20 years, though I loved all the kid stuff.
Relationships based on long term friendship first are stronger than too quickly to bed. And a man's biological clock of wanting to settle down plays a part in rushing into marriage/children almost as much as does a woman's.
Off to run.