Story and Symptoms of WAW/MLC Part 3

[SteveLW]

IHC, I can agree with much of what you wrote. Yes societal pressures have turned gender roles on their head. No doubt about it. Whether it is PC to say or not, feminism in its purest form is ANTI gender roles. However, I do not think going back to when women couldn't vote is correct either. Nor going back to when it was impossible for women to make it in the workplace. I think there can be a happy medium.

But I will lay some blame on we, the men's feet, too. For instance, let's take your situation. You've admitted you can't afford the house by yourself. That you need your wife to work too. You have a 1 year-old. 50 years ago you would have lived within your means, as a SIKs family, your W would have stayed home to raise your D. That is very rare these days. But guess what. It can be done, because my W and I did it. In 2004 we decided to make it so she could stay home with our new baby girl. We got rid of cellphones. We cut back to basic cable. I sold my sweet 2002 F250 and started driving a 1993 Taurus that was paid for. We refinanced the house from the 14 years it had left on a 15 year mortgage back to a 30 year traditional mortgage. We gave up eating out except a couple of times a month, I packed my lunch to work, we didn't take expensive vacations. Over time we were able to add some of those things back I my income grew, but the point is that people CAN make it today as SIKs, if they give up keeping up with the Joneses. If they make a stand against daycare as a way to raise their kids. If they get their priorities in the right place.

And you site the 70% D started by women. But not all of them are because their Hs were great, or made small mistakes, and grew unhappy. I'd say at least half of that 70% is because the H stepped out of the marriage and had an affair. I would put the figure at women just growing unhappy and giving up on their marriages at, and I think this is a liberal number, at 35%. Yes it happens. But you could look at the other half of those sitches and say it was the man that grew unhappy and couldn't keep it in his pants.

The termination of marriages has grown in our society for a myriad of reasons. Feminism is part of it, but I would put good old fashioned selfishness and greed at the heart of it. And selfishness and greed are genderless conditions.

You continue to avoid the IC question. Are you in IC?