Xue,
As much as I wanted to save my marriage the fear of exposing myself even to my wife, like the books told me, was the one thing I knew I could never do.

So have you started "exposing" yourself and your fears to your wife? MJ had a great post about how to tell if you are being vulnerable or weak. Vulnerability is more of a feeling of fear and how am I going to do this or take care of this while weakness is fear and how is someone else going to take care of me.

Corri's quote about not feeling safe as a woman is interesting. Could you bring that quote up with your wife and see what she thinks of such a statement?

To continue with Heywyre's comments, I don't ever remember wishing I was a boy. I was kind of a tomboy but yet I still liked being a girl. I work as an engineer in male dominated settings and while I am sure there are some downsides, there are not enough to make me wish to be a man. I am happy as a woman. I know there are assets I bring to situations because I am a woman.

Women have tremendous strength and power if they just be women.

I sort of agree but the difficulty is how to define "just be women." There can be a wide range of how women act, can't there?

Also that same argument has been used in the past to prevent women from doing things. Women were not allowed to run marathons because they didn't think women could "handle" it. Turns out the longer the "race" the more competitive men and women are. In 100+ miles races women can beat men as the OVERALL winner - see Pam Reed in the Badwater and others.

God did not intend for us to be the same or he would have made us the same.

There are wide ranges even within the sexes and there is a lot of overlap too.

I am not all that stereotypically "feminine" but I do like being a woman. Also I am good at math and science. Should I not have pursued those interests because they are not "women" subjects or interests? Wouldn't that have been denying who I am? And just because I like math and science, why should that make me any less of a woman?

For me the bigger issue with women like your wife is that potentially she is actually denying her womanliness because she sees that as the issue rather than seeing it's her fear of her womanliness that might be the issue.

I'm not sure if that makes sense but I think it's any interesting subject.



But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus