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I bet having kids would be a challenge. We don't have any ourselves.
My husband was military, and his current job requires a bit of travel. So we get alone-time built in.
But it helps that we have the same likes that none of our friends really like. So when we want to engage in those, we have no one else but each other. So we actually want and prefer to be with each other. We don't know anyone else that wants to go to MLB and NHL games, or watch NHL games on TV but each other. No one else will really hike or bike with us, or go to winerys or breweries either. So naturally we spend our time together because we have the same interests.
DH really likes movies, not as much as me, but he has his dad so I like when they go off together. I can't imagine not wanting your spouse to go do something without you sometimes, so then you can do your thing without them. I just know growing up my dad was always buggin', didn't like my mom (or even me) being independent in any way. Any time we got to get away and have some time without him was fun, so maybe that's why I am great with my alone time. I just saw him dominate her time so much I just knew I couldn't take that sort of relationship. It seemed unhealthy to me, so naturally I wanted something different.
What you are talking about is women cooked the dinner, men ate the dinner, men went to hang out while women cleaned up. That's not anywhere near women having their space.
So outdated/segregated spaces for men and women equates to you acknowledging that women and men want the same amount of alone time?
Indirect statement placed in between negative stereotypes like:
Quote:
Originally Posted by cashrulez
I think one of the main reasons for the extremely high rate of divorce and breakups is that women cannot accept that men need their space.
Men need men time. We need to hang out alone and we need to hang out with other men.
We need this time apart to decompress and not have a woman up in our business. And the men who have women up in they bidness everyday all day eventually grow to despise them. I've seen it happen many times.
They still had their quilting circles and other various get-togethers while their kids were at school and their husbands were at work. It was actually a very ideal arrangement. Unlike the revolving door of divorce and multiple partners you have today.
Anyway, on the topic... healthy space is always a good thing when needed. Whether space in the 60's was truly healthy is debatable. Besides, it may not be revelvant anyway, considering society has changed a lot.
Some marriages fail because one or both partners change in their world-view, in their fundamental values, and what was once a partnership in consonance of spirit has become mere coexistence. The great debate is whether the dissolution of such a marriage is good or bad. The dissolution is “good” if we regard marriage ultimately as a means of personal happiness, so that if happiness is no longer advanced by the marriage, it should be dissolved. It’s “bad” if we regard marriage primarily as a means of security, so that a marriage that remains secure and respectful, but not necessarily “happy”, should endure. In the West, pre-1960, there would have been no question about upholding the latter view, the one about security. Today the tenor of our times is towards the former, towards happiness as ultimate goal.
Through the cycle of my own marriage and divorce, I’ve struggled to embrace a compatibility between vociferous individualism and charitable stands towards those close to oneself. Marriage is perhaps too close of a merging, so that even the best relationship becomes stifled through too close a forcing. Yet solitary life is irritating and ultimately untenable, save for occasional bouts of regeneration after say a failed relationship or in quest to rebuild one’s self-identity. For these realizations I ought to thank my ex-wife.
The modern quandary is that a happiness-based marriage requires great closeness for the two partners to build a joint happiness. But this can lead to smothering and gasping for individual space. By emphasizing happiness and belief that the finding of happiness is possible and indeed imperative, perhaps we ultimately become less happy, because are expectations are too great. So we berate ourselves at failure in a task that (by our modern mythology) ought to have been attainable, looking like cowardly or defeatist fools.
Returning to the OP’s point about men requiring space, and a subsequent criticism that if it’s the men who feel constrained, why is it that it’s the women who are the ones filing for divorce…. My impression is that men who feel constrained or otherwise unfulfilled in their marriages just plod along and seek their fulfillment elsewhere, whereas women who feel unfulfilled refuse to accept such predicament, and in expectation of more from their marriage, prefer to end the marriage and to pursue either a better one or a solitary life. In other words, men are OK with a bland marriage, while women are not. Men have lower standards in what to expect from a marriage.
Now the really controversial part: what the OP is essentially asserting is that men need and deserve a special and extended window of freedom, that women do not. Or more bluntly: the man needs to spend his evenings outdoors and with other men, while the woman has less need of analogous privilege of spending time alone or with other women. If the implication here is that the man should be out enjoying himself while the woman slaves at home, cooking and cleaning, indeed this is sexist and repulsive. But if the implication is that men need to develop more association with other men, whereas women are already quite adroit at doing so with other women, then I wholeheartedly agree. Marriage in modern America is a golden cage, constraining the adults within marriage from socializing closely with other adults, save as parents meeting as supervisors of their children’s activities. Means of accentuating interaction between adults outside of the golden cage of marriage are all for the best.
Yes it has. But regardless in a shifting of ideals, people are still the same. Men are going to seek ways to escape their marriages unless their wives willingly give them their space.
They still had their quilting circles and other various get-togethers while their kids were at school and their husbands were at work. It was actually a very ideal arrangement. Unlike the revolving door of divorce and multiple partners you have today.
Hmmmm women of today work, take care of children, do sports, have a ceramic group, hiking group, craft group, book group, deal with children's activies and homework.
A real man helps. And it's called a sitter for me time or each one gets a break from each taking turns.
Childless couples can do activities together or separate.
It all adds up to how much each partner helps out or is trustworthy.
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