No I wasn't annoyed with Andy. It's a good sign with him because when he's in 'off' mode about us, he doesn't speak at all and either seems not to care or gets angry with me.
This is his caring, trying to fix stuff.
If he didn't respond like that, I would think he didn't care. I would have thought something like 'This has happened to me and I feel awful and you're not doing anything to help.'
I don't actually believe in feminism all that much; I think it is responsible for destroying a lot of M's and taking away women's power and men's masculinity. If you don't have defined roles within an R then you have chaos.
I think it is natural for men such as Andy and yourself to want to fix things as that is the way men's brains are wired and I think if men try to suppress that too much, they are just trying to make themselves more like women in their thinking and that doesn't work.
The only time I would view it as 'controlling' is if it is done 100% of the time and in every convo, the man jumps in to offer a solution without actually listening to the woman. That's when it would be a problem to me, but he doesn't do that all the time.
On this ocassion it was safe to vent, and natural, but it depends on the sitch and his mood as to whether I vent to him or not. I don't always.
I do get a bit panicky/defensive when he mentions DD4 and feel sometimes he is extremely judgemental about the kids, but this is my only issue with the way he communicates with me.
I think that while men should practise listening, women also need to learn how to accept solutions as an act of love from their man.
