My husband’s father beat his wife regularly to a bloody pulp. My husband’s mother chased the father with a meat cleaver. We make a lot of jokes about meat cleavers (and now you know why) but other than that out relationship isn’t thwarted by fear that it will be anything except what we make it.
The guy in the tweet is a wuss. He might very well be apocryphal but the thousands of guys who are tweeting about how he was right are not. They are all exceptional pussies.
My Dean has no secretary or receptionist and has to do his own secretarial work. And he’s too much of a wuss to protest, take a stand, and demand that this travesty end.
A friend of many years built a cabin in the woods and moved there for a foraging lifestyle because that’s what his girlfriend always wanted. He is so not a foraging wooden cabin guy. He’s a “sitting in a cafe in Paris with a new Gallimard book” type of dude. After a few years of forced foraging, I was afraid we were going to lose him prematurely. He looked bereft and bedraggled, it was heartbreaking. Of course, the girlfriend eventually dumped him for a guy with a better wood cabin. My friend is now free to be who he always was. Last week, he showed up in a new fancy suit and told me about this new really cool cafe in St Louis where he goes every morning with a book. I almost cried.
You can say no, you can have some agency, you can figure out how to do the bloody dishes to mutual satisfaction. Yesterday I had a very confrontationional situation at work. Verbally confrontational, no cleavers. It was a serious issue and we both felt very strongly. After 1,5 hours of debating in very strong terms, we found a compromise and were hugging before we left. If I can do it with a woman I’ve met exactly twice before in unpropitious circumstances (she’s the one who has a dream that there should be no white people on campus), surely one can manage to discuss who’ll do the dishes or express a reluctance to work without a secretary / forage in the woods instead of crying in the corner.
Obviously, most men are not like that. My husband is the opposite of that. He makes reality his bitch, and I love it. But performative wussiness exists, and I hate it.
Clarissa's Blog 
OTOH, it’s 2025, if they’re engaged they’re probably already living together, and he may have seen the endpoint of an already-familiar pattern there. How far off was the wedding?
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“He makes reality his bitch, and I love it.”
Proactivity is the most attractive quality in a person.
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True. People often get together to list the obstacles instead of concentrating in what can be done. It’s very annoying.
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for some of us, personal relationships that require too many boundaries are not worth having .
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How about your children? Parents? Siblings?
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Want to make a small wager on whether this person has *any* relationship with biological family?
(I know, I know, no way to verify)
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Boundaries are important in any relationship but between children and parents no boundaries is a recipe for dysfunction. As mothers, most of us have had to carry our infant children into the toilet with us but we don’t do that with older children.
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Learning to establish adult boundaries has done wonders for my relationship with my mom.
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Same.
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Washing the dishes is not a problem, but her shouting about his speed, especially when company is present, is most definitely a red flag. That is not just a mere foible between the sexes, the usual good natured bantering about natural differences. Her mother has trained her to openly disrespect her father, do you really expect that will not creep into her future behavior with a husband? Run Forrest, Run ;-D
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My in-laws’ addiction to physical violence didn’t creep into my husband’s behavior. According to this logic, I should have rejected him on sight because he was from a violent, messed-up family. I didn’t because it’s strange to punish people for the sins of their parents.
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You are fortunte and your man is exceptional, but you know that. And I am being logical, divorce and spousal violence, often run through generations.
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fortunate ;-D
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