My husband of two months has always treated me very well, and is usually thoughtful. But, one week before our wedding, he broke a promise. I hate the whole stripper thing, so he agreed to a coed party at a dueling piano bar. There was a strip club next door, but he promised he wouldn’t go in. All was well until I learned that he and his brother (who’s nothing but trouble) were at the strip club. I went over and went crazy and tossed an ashtray at his head. I was kicked out, they followed, and his brother yelled at me. I wanted to call off the wedding, but we still got married. Since then, I keep bringing this up and he keeps begging for forgiveness, saying he’d never been so drunk, and he didn’t know what he was doing. I just can’t understand how he could hurt me this way.
--Still So Angry Inside
If your husband tossed an ashtray at your head, do you think he’d be describing himself as “Still So Angry Inside” or “Still In Court Trying To Get The Charges Reduced”?
It doesn’t take much for domestic violence against men to be taken seriously…usually, just a chalk outline where a man’s body used to be. The rest of the time, people tend to shrug it off or even find it cute: “Well, well, well, she’s quite the firecracker!” Granted, male abusers can do much more damage with their fists, but put a heavy object in a woman’s hands, and good morning brain damage! (Just wondering…has your husband gotten the ashtray out of his skull, or does he have to hang around smoking areas with his head bent down so people have someplace to flick their ash?)
But, he broke his promise! Bummer. Human nature happens. If your husband’s a cad, why marry him at all (couldn’t get the catering deposit back)? If he’s a good guy who got drunk and slipped (maybe after his bro gave him a little push), why make him sorry he married you? Sure, if he keeps slipping, say, by tucking your monthly mortgage payment into some stripper’s g-string, that’s one thing. But, come on…two-plus months later, are you really reacting to what happened -- or just acting out as a means of controlling him? Consider what you’re doing to him and to your marriage by showing him that nothing he says or does makes the slightest bit of difference. As a friend of mine likes to say, “Your proctologist called. They found your head.”
You can stay married to your grudge or your husband, pick one. Frankly, you each have a lot of work to do in therapyland, individually and together. You have to deal with your uncontrollable anger and the underlying issues -- probably insecurity and fear of being ditched -- and get in the habit of expressing your fears instead of weaponizing them. Your husband needs to start standing up for himself -- for starters, by doing a Senator Craig and withdrawing his guilty plea. The correct response? The one your girlfriends would be pushing on you if the tables were turned: “There’s no excuse for domestic abuse!” (Physical or emotional.) Finally, the two of you should attend one of Dr. John Gottman’s research-based marriage weekends (gottman.com) and learn to have a partnership instead of a monarchy. Marital harmony can be yours, just not by getting your husband to “agree” to like what you like: stag parties featuring your fat, fully clothed co-workers burying their heads in plates of cake instead of some hot young thing leaping naked out of one.
I love my girlfriend of four years; she’s awesome. We’re in our 30s, both divorced. Neither of us wants to remarry, and she doesn’t need my money. Yet, she’s given me an ultimatum: Move in with her or it’s over. I’m completely committed but want to live separately. Beyond preferring living alone, I feel I value her more that way. She argues we’re not “moving forward,” and feels “humiliated in front of (her) friends.” She accuses me of being selfish and wanting everything my way. The last time she brought this up, I said I can’t give her what she wants and she should find someone who can. Nevertheless, she’s stayed with me and is “waiting” for me to change my mind.
--Stuck
Maybe you and your girlfriend should have a practice run at how living together can play out over time. Invite her over, but forget dashing around cleaning the house and putting out nice wine, fresh flowers, and those little cheese puffy things. Instead, brighten up the place by tossing around shiny beer cans and colorful Cheetos bags. Don’t bother dressing up -- let her get to know the real you, beached on the couch for days in boxer shorts and a pair of unmatching tube socks. When the doorbell rings, put on your party manners -- just long enough to grunt “it’s open” -- then go back to your near-catatonic stare at the game.
People who argue in favor of couples living together often see it as a sort of petty issues Olympics -- like, you don’t have a “real relationship” until you’ve put in long hours hammering out an agreement about the correct position of the toothpaste cap, and you’ve caught some minimum number of glimpses of your partner straining on the toilet. Thanks, but like you, I’ll take the unreal relationship -- meaning, when my boyfriend comes over, I always look nice, smell nice, and show interest in him beyond his ability to lift heavy objects and open jars. I understand cohabitation works just groovy for some, but the way I see it, a little absence not only makes the heart, but a few lower organs, grow fonder.
Where your girlfriend goes wrong -- besides bowing to peer pressure like a seventh-grader on a hunger strike ‘til her mom buys her $260 jeans -- is in her passive-aggressive “waiting” for you to change your mind. (Maybe give her a bunch of those thick ladies’ magazines and stick her in the lobby?) The woman does get points for shamelessness for calling you selfish because you won’t bend to her will: “So what if you’re unhappy, as long as you meet my needs!” Ah, love -- in her eyes, not so much an act of giving as an act of wearing you down until you give in.
In other words, if you’re looking for love, maybe keep looking? Or, if your gut tells you this is just some girls’-night-out-induced attack of the needies, you might help your girlfriend think her position through by posing a few questions: How would getting you to do what makes you unhappy be “moving forward,” and besides not living under the same set of shingles, how are you not giving her what she needs? Frankly, if anyone should be humiliated, or at least insulted, it’s you. It’s not enough that you’re the man of her dreams, the love of her life, her honeypookiedear -- you also have to be the deer tied across the front of her station wagon.
October 17, 2007I recently married a wonderful man. A few of his friends who could be described as "anti-marriage" attended our wedding, but everything was perfect -- until the next day when we opened our gifts. Inside one box, badly wrapped in gold paper, was a little white plastic shovel and a note: "Beth, I know it's not gold, but you get the idea." Someone was calling me a gold digger! FYI, my husband makes a modest salary. I make slightly less. When we viewed our wedding video, one of the anti-marriage guys, "Rob," had the box in several shots. My husband called Rob, who claimed "some girl had (him) hold it while she took a picture." He couldn't describe her at all -- not even her hair color. My response: telling my husband Rob wasn't welcome in our house, and that I would never socialize with him. Am I justified? Should my husband still talk to him?
--Outraged
The least "Rob" could've done is give you a real gold shovel so you could pawn it, since you married a man who's unlikely to ever buy you Breakfast at Tiffany's, but who can probably spring for an afternoon snack at that cheapo mall jewelry store, Claire's.
Some people's happiness really makes other people hurl. So, the guy's "anti-marriage." Frankly, so am I. But, when friends feel differently, I somehow manage to get my happily unmarried self to their weddings, carrying only a slim satin purse, and leave my soapbox in the car. Being anti-marriage isn't quite the same as being, say, anti-war. But, let's say it is in his tiny little mind. Why didn't he print up signs -- "Millions wed. How many more?" -- and enlist Cindy Sheehan to join him in picketing the church? Well, I guess some men stand on principle, and others prefer to sit down (all the better to enjoy the free dinner and open bar).
At the moment, you're giving the guy exactly what he wants: a job as the unofficial provider of the rain on your parade. It's not like you'd ooh and ah upon discovering he gave you an attack editorial instead of a gift, but can't you find your way to a few laughs at his pathetic expense? This leaping loser is actually accusing you of being a gold digger. Now, either you're so fabulous the guy couldn't muster an insult that actually hit the mark, or you're totally lame at gold digging. Hint: You're supposed to mow down the guy with the Ford Focus to get to the guy in the Ferrari, not the other way around.
Of all the outrageous appliances you must've gotten as gifts -- the remote-controlled napkin holder with WiFi, the sub-zero riding lawnmower/lemon zester -- the most powerful one of all could be that 85-cent plastic shovel; that is, if that's all it takes to turn you into the cliché nagging wife handing down the banned buddies list to her henpecked husband. Go ahead, tell your husband what you won't stand for. Just leave what he won't stand for up to him. If you married a good guy, he probably won't be feeling too chummy toward ole Robbo. In fact, it's likely that yet another wedding has turned out to be an elaborately catered prelude to divorce -- not of the bride and groom but of the groom and his alleged friend. I'm guessing your husband will be big about the breakup and grant the little man custody of the little shovel; ideally, without giving into the desire to deviate his septum in the process.
I'm 25, and I recently married an incredible man. He satisfies me in every way imaginable, and our marriage is everything I'd hoped for. Yet, I'm often plagued by illicit dreams about my exes. Sometimes the "star" is a man I haven't thought about in years (although, thankfully, it's sometimes my husband). Is this normal? I wake up feeling like a filthy cheater, and like I should confess.
--Dirty Dreaming
Let's say your head takes the night off from naked ex-boyfriends, and you find yourself dreaming about the aliens and their probe. Oh, no...does that mean you aren't truly over the guy with the one big purple eye? Or, could it just be a message about your choice of nightcap: that you might try swapping in a glass of warm milk and "Goodnight Moon" for your regular mug of absinthe and hour of late-night vintage sci-fi?
Thanks to Freud, you're prone to believe your dreams are repressed desires for your exes when they could just as easily be X-rated mental lint. A growing body of evidence suggests Freud's famous book, "The Interpretation of Dreams," might be more correctly titled "The Misinterpretation of Dreams," or "I'll Make A Bunch Of Stuff Up Because I'm Sex Mad, And Get Real Famous, And Make A Fortune."
Even now, nobody can say conclusively why we dream or what dreams mean, but in a 2005 lecture to sleep disorder patients, Stanford's Dr. Scott Leibowitz gave an overview of various theories: Dreams may be "a 'virtual reality' testing ground to simulate threatening scenarios in a safe place." They may integrate stuff we learn while awake, and/or help process negative emotions. They may contain extraneous information we need to dump -- or essential information we need to keep. My favorite theory, however, is by Harvard psychiatry prof J. Allan Hobson, who speculates in "The Dreaming Brain" that dreams "may occur, in part, to amuse us" -- and with none of the pesky legal ramifications of scaling the neighbor's chimney and tapping into his HBO.
Free entertainment? Of course, there's a catch. In Dreamland, there's no such thing as the remote. And since you can't change the channel, maybe it's dumb to feel guilty that you ended up watching "Sex With The Exes" instead of "Killer Klowns From Outer Space" or "How To Decorate With Dried Pasta." But, is it "normal" to fantasize about other men? Boringly so. In a study by Drs. Thomas V. Hicks and Harold Leitenberg, 98 percent of men and 80 percent of women got it on in their heads during their waking hours with people other than their partners. Whaddya wanna bet 100 percent of the rest were lying?
You say you're satisfied "in every way imaginable," and call your marriage "everything I'd hoped for." Excuse me, but what's the problem? Face hurt from smiling too much? It is wise to live an "examined life," just not an examined-to-death life. You can read something into anything -- just as Freud decided patient "Dora" must've overheard her parents having sex (an incident she never recalled), and out of devoted love for her father, reproduced his heavy breathing by giving herself asthma. Why not concentrate on what you can control -- how you conduct yourself when you're awake? Should you feel the need to spice up that nonstop bliss with a little raging jealousy, go ahead and tell your husband Mr. Sandman's been pimping you out to your exes. Do, however, try to wait until he wakes up -- lest you come between him, your sister, and your best friend.
October 3, 2007I love my girlfriend, including her small breasts, which are nicely proportional to her small body. But, the sight of big breasts does more than distract me, it makes me reconsider everything with my girlfriend. Not being 16, I recognize that giving in to impulses to get close to big breasts will probably be far more complicated than it's worth. I guess I'm a victim of Playboy and the rest. Is there a way to dial this impulse down a notch or two?
--Breast Stressed
There’s nothing like trying very, very hard not to think of big breasts to get you doodling them in the margins of your invoices at work. And then your boss wants to know why all your zeroes have little dots inside them. “Uh…leaky pen?”
Do you really think you’d be into small boobs if only the ones Playboy featured were a little less melon-like and a little more like two Red Hots on a wall? There’s actually a good chance a desire for big breasts predates Hugh Hefner by, oh, 10,000 to 1.8 million years or so. That’s when men evolved to go for the features they still go for today -- based on which women would be the healthiest, most fertile candidates for passing on their genes. Maybe that’s why some of the biggest honking hooters you’ll see are on a Paleolithic statue of a woman estimated to be roughly 250,000 years old.
“Barbie--Manufactured by Mattel, Designed by Evolution” is a chapter in the new book on human behavior, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. In it, the authors, evolutionary psychologists Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, reference research that suggests women with big breasts are more fertile, and women with both big breasts and small waists are much more fertile. In fact, data from the study, led by Polish researcher Grazyna Jasienska, showed that women with the latter shape have about 30 percent higher levels of the reproductive hormone estradiol, which could mean these women would be “almost three times as likely to get pregnant as other women.”
Unfortunately, being able to say “Evolution made me do it!” won’t get the elephant in the red satin push-up bra out of the room. I called Kanazawa to discuss your question, and he advised, “I think it’s more mature to recognize that there’s no perfect mate…and if she has 90 percent of what he wants, he’s doing better than most people.” Well, yes, but knowing what’s mature and being satisfied with what’s mature are two different things. The reality is, nobody spots somebody from across the room and wants to have sex with them because they look like they’d be kind to puppies.
Of course, in society’s eyes, you’re shallow and horrible for caring about a woman’s breast size -- unless you’re one of those guys who finds big boobs vulgar and unattractive, in which case you have a “preference” for smaller ones. I’m guessing you wanted to be “better than that,” and to buy into the idea that physical attraction shouldn’t be so important -- and went on your first date with this woman as the person of higher consciousness you aspire to be instead of the hooterhound you are. Cutting back on your exposure to big boobage may help, but since you say a mere sighting makes you “reconsider everything,” you need to be honest with yourself about exactly how big a thing you have for bigguns. You can love your girlfriend’s beautiful mind, and appreciate “the little things,” but this isn’t going to end well if, for you, the cup is not just half-empty, but filled with wadded-up Kleenex.