11.12.2008
How to Get Your Husband to Listen to You
The cover made me cringe, and so did much of the contents of this book, but it also had a lot of useful advice.
It's a little light in its loafers, even though it statrs off super-heavy with a description, in the prologue, of the sudden diagnosis of cancer, and death, of the husband of one of the authors.
Of course, if something like that happens, if you're a writer you can't help but write about it.
But it doesn't have much to do with the rest of the book, and is completely different in tone. The rest of the book uses the typical upbeat language and bullet-point/one-line-summary-at-the-end-of-chapter format of the genre: self-help.
But if you can get past the cover, the language (lots of somewhat creepy, Christian-evangelical God-references), the prologue, and some weird "surrendered wife"-type anecdotes (I don't want to seem hick-ist, but the two coauthors live in Omaha Nebraska, which tells the mack something) and the vast tranches of "guys are like this, whereas we gals are like that" generalizations in this book, it actually offers quite a bit of wisdom I could see being helpful if you're having the titular problem of a husband who seems to be ignoring you.
One: talk direct. I'm always exhorting Mrs. Daddy to do this. If I say something like "Would you like me to make you a fried egg?" she'll say something like "Oh, no thanks, I don't want you to put you to the trouble." Expecting me to say: "Oh, it's no trouble at all, may I please make you a fried egg?"
Which I might do, gentlemen. But if the situation is more complex and the kids are running around and competing for my attention, wailing and caterwauling and issuing their neverending litany of demands I might just hear the "No thanks" and say O.K.
And then she'll get upset! And although the above example seems pretty direct, she can be MUCH more nuanced, and I'm always telling "I'm too busy and life is too chaotic for me to try to figure out that sometimes what you REALLY mean is the OPPOSITE of what you're saying. You have to pipe up and say 'Yes please' in a loud, clear voice if you want an egg. Otherwise I've already moved on to the next thing."
And then she'll get upset! And although the above example seems pretty direct, she can be MUCH more nuanced, and I'm always telling "I'm too busy and life is too chaotic for me to try to figure out that sometimes what you REALLY mean is the OPPOSITE of what you're saying. You have to pipe up and say 'Yes please' in a loud, clear voice if you want an egg. Otherwise I've already moved on to the next thing."
One of the book's two co-authors give the example of the husband and daughter going jogging and inviting her along and her saying "Oh, no, thank you I don't want to slow you down" and the husband saying "Good point" and jogging off and then being surprised when the daughter says "She'll be hurt you didn't ask her again. She didn't think you really wanted her to come." And he's like: "If I hadn't wanted her to come, I owldn't have asked her." "She thinks you were just being polite."
And he's like: uh?
The husbands in this book do come off as a little thick-- and rude. There's one example where the wife is talking to her husband who is also half-watching TV, and then sports come on, and he holds up a finger as if to say "Wait! Shhh." So she dutifully waits until the sports is over, but then he starts talking about something else, completely forgetting she had been in the middle of a story. And she just says very surrendered-ly,
Excuse me, but if I attempted to pursue this sequence of events in my household, a team of forensic proctologists would have to remove Mrs. Daddy's manolo blahniks from my nether regions in an emergency operation.
There's a whole chapter that basically says: "Don't blather on about endless details.":
"For example, here's a sentence a man can easily hear: 'Mother and I went shopping today.' But here's how it probably came out in female-speak: 'Mother and I went shopping today, and when we couldn't find a parking place we went to another mall, and we didn't get to the store she really likes, and she didn't have a good time, and I took her to her favorite ice-cream place...'"
"For example, here's a sentence a man can easily hear: 'Mother and I went shopping today.' But here's how it probably came out in female-speak: 'Mother and I went shopping today, and when we couldn't find a parking place we went to another mall, and we didn't get to the store she really likes, and she didn't have a good time, and I took her to her favorite ice-cream place...'"
Anyway, the example in the book actually goes on and on, I had to cut it off-- it's boring. Be pithy, in other words, the authors are saying. Don't drone on and on. Have some mercy on your listener-- and some sense of what he might care about and what he might not.
And what the never quite come out and say, but which is sort of the elephant in the room when it comes to this book: Basically the way to get your husband to listen to you is the way to get anyone to listen to you:
Be interesting. And that's a whole art form unto itself. Now there's a book I'd buy: How to Be Interesting.
That's a book that would be worth every penny, and that a lot of people could use, I think.
The Sex Starved Wife
I have to be honest this pic (of Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan Holloway from the AMC channel show Mad Men) bears only the most obscure relationship to today's post, which is all about The Sex Starved Wife, by Michele Weiner Davis.
Here's the connection: Joan Holloway isn't sex-starved, and she isn't a wife, so...
I know, I know, it's a terrible stretch. I don't know why: the words "sex starved" and "wife" came up and Christina Hendricks popped into my mind.
O.K. let's just drop the whole thing and take a look at the book, shall we?
Mack was very excited to have this book come across his transom. About a year ago I actually interviewed Ms. Weiner-Davis, a sex therapist and author also of several other books including The Sex-Starved Marriage and Divorce Busting: A Step-by-Step Approach to Making Your Marriage Loving Again-- and a woman so successful and busy I had to book an appointment with her secretary a week in advance just to talk with her for half an hour on the phone.
And she told me she was working on this book and we had a lovely chat.
Like her book, my article had to do with the unknown and largely unrepresented part of the married female population who gets sex less often than they want it.
The stereotype for some time has been: the Eveready husband constantly up for it, the wife neverendingly turning him down.
But Ms. Weiner and I discussed what is apparently a growing phenomenon: Women whose husbands are always saying: "Not tonight, dear, I have a headache."
The causes of this problem are so many and varied it would be impossible for me to go into them in any kind of detail in this post (maybe next post we can run through a few of them, for those disinclined to shell out $28.99 for Ms. Weiner's book). But allow me to say if this is your case, in interviewing her and reading her book, I find Ms. Weiner to be not only imbued with "expertise" (and really experts are as common as weeds these days, aren't they?) but also what used to be called "good old-fashioned horse-sense" (much rarer) and that lends her books and all her advice an extra edge of usefulness, if I may be allowed to put it that way.
A lot of women out there aren't getting enough from their husbands-and as anyone who has ever been married for more than, say, a year, knows, sex in a long-term relationship ebbs and flows.
So how does one make sure the flow-periods outweigh the ebb-eras?
Ah, there's the rub. Ms. Weiner-Davis adumbrates a number of possible causes and solutions, many of them very horse-sensical: For one, women should bear in mind that it is the same for men as it is for women: that for a man to feel sexual he has to feel sexy. In other words, in order to feel horny, he has to feel like he's a pretty sexy and attractive guy.
Therefore, odd and counterintuitive as it may seem, in some cases if your husband isn't seeming hot for you, the solution could be for him, not you, to hit the gym.
Pursuant to that- well, I've been instructed by Ms. Daddy to cease and desist all references to our sex life in my writing, but I hope it's vague enough if I say: If someone doesn't seem as interested in someone, sexually, as he/she maybe did at first; then the best course of action is for that second someone to say, and show and demonstrate, for as long as it takes: I love you anyway; I want you anyway; I want you but I don't need you; and on the day you come around, I'll be here waiting and raring to go.
And you can actually turn it around! I'm forbidden from providing details, but ladies and gentlemen I want you to know that if you are in Ebb Territory, all is not lost. You can ride it out, so to speak. You can get back in the saddle, so to speak.
Even if (metaphorically) you've fallen off the horse and the horse seems to have galloped off into the distance, never to return.
Dust yourself off.
Stand and wait, patiently, in your jodhpurs and riding crop. Sometimes, to your surprise, it is possible that the horse will come back. And you can hop back on and gallop off together into the sunset.
So to speak.
Labels: mad men sex-starved wife michelle weiner
11.09.2008
Obama Drama
First posted Nov 7th 2008 on Mack Daddy, my regular column on AOL.
Don't get me wrong. Mack loves U.S. President-Elect Obama.
We're not even talking politics here. I may have a little man-crush on him.
I didn't at first. When he first burst on the scene, Mack thought his speeches were completely empty, hot air, curiously and unignorably content-free.
I fell in love with him when he was on "Late Night with David Letterman." He was so relaxed, natural, confident, at ease in his own skin. He cracked a few jokes-- and a couple were even kind of funny.
And a couple weren't all that funny, which in a way made Mack love him even more. Because a) he has a bit of a nerdy side; b) he's a typical Dad, hey maybe all his jokes don't work, but he's trying-- trying to amuse those around him.
I'm that way, too.
And so, yeah, I kind of fell in love with him there.
Don't worry, Mack won't be posting any videos of me wiggling around in short shorts with OBAMA written on the backside, like "Obama Girl," aka Amber Lee Ettinger, in her YouTube video "I Got a Crush on Obama."
(And if you haven't seen it, you should, the lyrics are funny: "I cannot wait/Til 2008/I know that you are/The best candidate." All over this girl-group bubblegum-type music, while Mlle. Ettinger, an actress who looks like a long-lost Pussycat Doll, wiggles around in a variety of skin-tight/short-short outfits.)
But around the house I praise him, his ability to drain three-pointers, the way he wears a suit, his calm under pressure, his command of the Internet (the Internet got him elected, kids), his amazing grass-roots campaign, how organized his campaign was, how loyal the people around him appear to be, how he amassed an enormous fortune by, in part, selling merchandise while he was on the road, what a good husband and father he appears to be.
I praise him for all these things, quite warmly (though Mack hasn't completely drunk the Kool Aid on Obama, I still find his speeches weirdly empty: I realized recently in this way, as well as many others, he's the opposite of Sarah Palin: his speeches suck, but in person he's great), in conversation with Ms. Daddy.
But I'm starting not to like the enthusiasm with which Ms. Daddy agrees with the Mack.
"Oh, yes, he's great, he's wonderful-- so smart, and loyal to his wife, and charismatic, and attractive..."
"Attractive?"
"Oh, yeah, Dave, don't you realize. Women find him really..."
"Wait, wait! Don't finish that sentence. I don't want to hear any more about your 'feelings' for Obama."
"Does that mean we can never discuss Obama?"
"That's right: for the next four years we can discuss his policies and the things he does. But no talking about how 'attractive' or 'charismatic' he is..."
That's right, gentlemen. Mack, the Daddy, aka The Man -- I'm a little nervous about this dude.
He's the ultimate alpha male, now. You know what they say about power as an aphrodisiac, right? Women even found Henry Kissinger sexy -- because he had power.
Now there's a guy in the White House who's cool, handsome, even somewhat ripped, who's a respectful, loyal husband and engaged, enlightened father who supports women's right to choose, and can drain three-pointers with effortless ease and wears his suits elegantly and appears to float as he walks?
Gentlemen, we're all going to have to buy little drool cups for our wives for when he appears on television.
It's going to be a rough four years, boys.
Don't get me wrong. Mack loves U.S. President-Elect Obama.
We're not even talking politics here. I may have a little man-crush on him.
I didn't at first. When he first burst on the scene, Mack thought his speeches were completely empty, hot air, curiously and unignorably content-free.
I fell in love with him when he was on "Late Night with David Letterman." He was so relaxed, natural, confident, at ease in his own skin. He cracked a few jokes-- and a couple were even kind of funny.
And a couple weren't all that funny, which in a way made Mack love him even more. Because a) he has a bit of a nerdy side; b) he's a typical Dad, hey maybe all his jokes don't work, but he's trying-- trying to amuse those around him.
I'm that way, too.
And so, yeah, I kind of fell in love with him there.
Don't worry, Mack won't be posting any videos of me wiggling around in short shorts with OBAMA written on the backside, like "Obama Girl," aka Amber Lee Ettinger, in her YouTube video "I Got a Crush on Obama."
(And if you haven't seen it, you should, the lyrics are funny: "I cannot wait/Til 2008/I know that you are/The best candidate." All over this girl-group bubblegum-type music, while Mlle. Ettinger, an actress who looks like a long-lost Pussycat Doll, wiggles around in a variety of skin-tight/short-short outfits.)
But around the house I praise him, his ability to drain three-pointers, the way he wears a suit, his calm under pressure, his command of the Internet (the Internet got him elected, kids), his amazing grass-roots campaign, how organized his campaign was, how loyal the people around him appear to be, how he amassed an enormous fortune by, in part, selling merchandise while he was on the road, what a good husband and father he appears to be.
I praise him for all these things, quite warmly (though Mack hasn't completely drunk the Kool Aid on Obama, I still find his speeches weirdly empty: I realized recently in this way, as well as many others, he's the opposite of Sarah Palin: his speeches suck, but in person he's great), in conversation with Ms. Daddy.
But I'm starting not to like the enthusiasm with which Ms. Daddy agrees with the Mack.
"Oh, yes, he's great, he's wonderful-- so smart, and loyal to his wife, and charismatic, and attractive..."
"Attractive?"
"Oh, yeah, Dave, don't you realize. Women find him really..."
"Wait, wait! Don't finish that sentence. I don't want to hear any more about your 'feelings' for Obama."
"Does that mean we can never discuss Obama?"
"That's right: for the next four years we can discuss his policies and the things he does. But no talking about how 'attractive' or 'charismatic' he is..."
That's right, gentlemen. Mack, the Daddy, aka The Man -- I'm a little nervous about this dude.
He's the ultimate alpha male, now. You know what they say about power as an aphrodisiac, right? Women even found Henry Kissinger sexy -- because he had power.
Now there's a guy in the White House who's cool, handsome, even somewhat ripped, who's a respectful, loyal husband and engaged, enlightened father who supports women's right to choose, and can drain three-pointers with effortless ease and wears his suits elegantly and appears to float as he walks?
Gentlemen, we're all going to have to buy little drool cups for our wives for when he appears on television.
It's going to be a rough four years, boys.
Labels: alpha male, attraction, Obama
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
