Oh, no. There are plenty of men of that generation who are worthy of admiration. That could really go for any generation, however.

Men are disgusting pigs. The species will be better off when we figure out how to do without them. Well, at least until the space aliens arrive.

Mrs. Hold had lunch yesterday with a friend from the rape counselling center. The friend is age 60 and never goes to the dentist alone. Why not? When she was a child, her dentist molested her. Then he extracted one of her teeth - without anesthesia. He said if she told anyone about the molestation, he would do that to all the rest of her teeth.

No wonder Mrs. Hold wants nothing to do with me.

Right?

My dentist slapped me for groaning.

Men are not disgusting pigs, disgusting pigs are disgusting pigs, male or female. It just happens that I've met a lot of them that are male and of a certain age. Thanks in part to marriage builders and to a greater extent, my husband, I have learned this is not a natural male state. When I look at the females of my parents generation they are just as messed up, its just less obvious because they're quieter about it and it has never been directed at me. It takes more time to see the unpleasantness when its directed at others not yourself but believe me I see it now.

Dentists are disgusting pigs, though.

Your point that I supposedly supported all highlighted in red is that chest thumping neanderthal men don't cheat on their wives??????I don't support that point at all because I don't think that a "lack of maleness" has anything to do with cheating. It's a lack of character and that would apply to both genders. May WS lacks character. There is definately a change in our society that has occured with gender roles both in the workplace and at home. Technology places a part in that change as well. We can never go back to the place where I believe you are suggesting we should be. Life changes, roles must change as well. If you believe that men cheated less when they acted, as you suggest with more maleness, then you are wrong. Cheating happens for so many reasons.

What? Why not?

I absolutely believe that a chest-thumping neanderthal would be faithful.

After all, it's hard to club the second one while you are still dragging the first.

To be serious, I would bet more often that a "machismo" type male will cheat every time, because they overemphasize and overcompensate to prove their "masculinity."

What NG is referring to is being a real man. A man of his word, and a man of integrity.

However, the Neanderthal male would still have the same problem, i.e. his wife complaining that he hadn't dragged her anywhere in years!

What NG is referring to is being a real man. A man of his word, and a man of integrity.

Yes. And yes. But also a man willing to fight for what he believes is right. No one "fights" anymore. Hands are wrung, heads are shaken, "tsk, tsks" are uttered, but increasingly NO ONE says "This cannot be - I will at least start the effort to fix it."

Sadly, we're increasingly seeing that this lack of experience in "fighting" leaves men woefully unprepared when it's necessary to fight for their marriage and family.

I agree 100%. This was my experience at the end of my marriage and in a dating relationship that recently ended.

There's an 'acceptance' of how things are and a very firm unwillingness to try or change or fight for a better way.

It's just this passive surrender that I don't understand. It's extremely frustrating.

I think a big part of the problem is that many men are socialized from childhood that doing anything that displeases women, that gets women upset or mad at them, is bad and therefore should not be done. Men get this from boyhood from their mothers, from (mostly female) teachers, and from their girlfriends as they become teenagers.

On the other hand, the thing about a decent exposure of an affair, is that it usually makes the wayward spouse upset, in fact it often makes them FURIOUS. Interfering in a wayward's affair in any way may bring the wayward's "wrath" upon the BS whos' only trying to save their marriage. Many men are simply not prepared to deal with a raging, raving woman threatening horrible consequences and/or saying how much they HATE the man they once professed to love. Many men can guess (or fear) this will be what they'll have to deal with, and they don't want to, because their strongly socialized don't-piss-her-off instincts tell them that this will end their marriage for sure, that this will drive her into the arms of her OM forever, never to return (and sometimes that IS the result of exposure).

They don't know how to fight, they only know how to argue.

Don't know how to make a point, only know how to make noise.

Or that fighting and making a point makes no difference in most cases.

I fought. I exposed the afffair. I sought custody. Yet I still ended up divorced and a visitor dad.

Why fight when your own pastor blames you for your wife's affair? When your state supreme court rules infidelity has no bearing on custody?

So I simply finished the nutering so I have no more kids and live my life. I tried to enlist help for my fight and was left alone to lose.

Why bother?

Or that fighting and making a point makes no difference in most cases.

I fought. I exposed the afffair. I sought custody. Yet I still ended up divorced and a visitor dad.

Why fight when your own pastor blames you for your wife's affair? When your state supreme court rules infidelity has no bearing on custody?

So I simply finished the nutering so I have no more kids and live my life. I tried to enlist help for my fight and was left alone to lose.

Why bother?

But your anecdote does not negate the scads of marriages that were saved via exposure over on the SAA forum. Exposure is no guarantee, but it often works. It makes no sense to not even try just because some lose.

And secondly, we know several men who won primary custody of their children and possession of their homes and very favorable financial arrangements by fighting their adulterous wives. They won because they fought like hell. They would have lost if they gave up without trying.

I am somewhat alarmed at the outdated social stereotypes being flung around about men on this thread. Men are "pigs?" huh? Surely we have moved beyond the mindless bumper stickers that came out of the brainless, heady old days of the 60's where women in jackboots really were pigs? For every male "pig" aged 50-60 I can show you an equal amount of women who are just as bad, if not worse. The point is that there are an equal amount of pigs on both sides in all age groups and I DO NOT think it is an accurate or fair generalization to define men in that age group as "pigs."

Nor were they "oppressive." That characterization drives me insane because it says that women are weak and silly and dependent upon MEN to give them liberty, jobs, whatever. If they are that weak, then they can't very well claim to be EQUAL. I would suggest that weakness is your problem and not men if your equality is contingent upon being given something by a man. Men didn't need permission to be free so I don't know why these silly broads did.

And lastly, men need to stop whining about being oppressed and start standing up for themselves. They are no better than the weak, silly harpies of the 60's who complained they were being "oppressed." Stop being a pansy. If you choose to be a pansy, then don't whine when people walk over you.

I am sure its fairly limited to the area and social class I grew up in so I don't generalise anymore, but I did very much grow up with the idea that men were unpleasant creatures with no sensitivity towards anyone else and no capability of feeling love or anything other than anger. I'm guessing thats because the men around me were conditioned to only show anger.

I was trying to use this as a way to show how my attitudes have changed, in part because of marriage builders and understanding more about men. I love my husband more than I can say, more than I could ever imagine, so that there was a pretty big knock to my old ideas about men.

But I do believe my anecdote reflects the typical results.

You can present your "results not typical" outcomes in the same fashion as those diet commercials you see on TV, but that doesn't change the outcome.

Most guys when they fight, end up just I did when I fought, in the very same place as those who didn't fight.

If I believed the fight would make any difference in a majority of cases where the fight was fought, I'd advise folks to fight.

Now I simply advise men not to have children. They can't make you a visitor to kids you don't have. I really think things have to reach a critical point before folks are going to say this isn't working. It will take even more men refusing to marry and more women realizing that it's not just men who are the problem and let the pendulum swing back.

It will take more than your anecdotes to convince me to change my mind on this. When I see the majority of those fighting actually winning, I'll believe it's worth the fight. Right now, that's not the case. Now it may be in other states, but here, as I've said, a stay at home mom who chooses to have an affair will be the primary custodian of the children. An affair is not going to make someone an unfith parent in the courts. Since courts are about keeping things the same or as similar as possible for the children, the working dad is going to lose every time to the stay at home mom if she wants to be the primary custodian and affair participant.

Has Dr Harley ever come on here and said that WW's typically return home when a BH follows his plan? Has he ever said what the typical outcomes are when his plan is followed?

I believe it's possible. My question as always is, what is the typical outcome WHEN the plans are followed? When there is a WW and a BH and the BH follows the plan, what are the results in the last 100 such cases? How many BH's experienced a return of the WW, and how many ended up divorced and visitors to their children?

So you will only fight if a majority wins? Then your premise simply becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. A majority seem to surrender before the battle, so of course, if the majority surrenders, then of course, the majority will lose. I doubt that the many BH's who WON their marriages back or won a favorable settlement in divorce feel it was not "worth it."

I don't know how many do lose, but I do know that those who don't try are guaranteed to lose. A majority will lose if a majority don't try.

If everyone used your philosophy of only try something if winning is guarateed, then no one would ever win. And nothing would ever change. I sure would not be sober for 26 years this April if I believed that since only 1 in 10 alcoholics die sober. Most never remain sober longer than 5 years.

I gotcha. I was raised with similar attitudes towards men. The men I was exposed to in real life, though, didn't fit the demonic portrayal given by my radical feminist mother. The men were kind, caring and rational, the women were angry and bitter. i don't know where my mother got these notions about being "oppressed" because all my female ancestors going back to my great-grandmothers were self made businesswomen. They were not weak women like these 60's radicals.

In my intercollegiate athletics class one of the things we're discussing is Title IX which has become a discrimination against mens sports.

Related to this thread, I wished the courts would come out with a marriage clause taht stated whomever has an affair loses everything in the case of divorce.