We were asked for opinions regarding a friend of a friend’s situation.
Background on the friend of friend and his wife:
- 40ish (both)
- fancy degrees (both)
- married with kids
- wife earns more than 2X what the husband earns
- living under California family law (so if one sues the other the likely result is a 50 percent parenting time schedule for the kids plus child support and alimony profits for the man (with his Ivy League professional degree and way-above-median-income he will be the “dependent spouse”))
The husband was incompetently managing some home renovations and cost the family unit a little less than a week of after-tax (don’t forgot those 50 percent total tax rates in California!) income.
From the friend (edited to remove, um, some color):
His punishment will be two weeks of no sex. Apparently his wife uses that as means of control. I was wondering how common is the witholding as a training approach. For me this is so non-negotiable that I didn’t even know about it until like 10 years ago when my buddies began to get married.
A married-with-kids female’s answer:
He shouldn’t do anything. That would escalate the situation. He might end up divorced and that would be bad for the kids.
A married-for-decades man’s answer:
He should divorce her. If she doesn’t want to have sex, she’s a friend without benefits, not a wife.
I pointed out that she wasn’t refusing to have sex ever again and therefore the divorce lawsuit wouldn’t be proportional. Wouldn’t a proportional reponse be the following: move into a nearby hotel room in a fun neighborhood for two weeks and enjoy a bachelor’s carefree existence (perhaps punctuated with some kid sports events)? He eventually agreed that this would be a reasonable alternative.
I tested this independently with another married-for-decades man:
He should divorce her immediately. It is only going to get worse if this is the kind of thing that she does.
What if she just lost interest in sex for two weeks?
That’s different. That wouldn’t be an affirmative policy decision by the wife.
A divorced female physician:
You know it isn’t really about the money. This sounds like good material for counseling, but nobody ever goes until it is too late.
(I.e., consistent with her peers in medicine, she was curious to find out how the situation had developed, but had no actionable advice.)
We tested the physician’s it-is-all-about-the-feelings hypothesis by asking if the husband would object to the no-sex-with-wife plan if he could be sleeping with a friendly 22-year-old to whom he had no serious intellectual or emotional connection. Based on the friend’s discussions with the husband, the answer turned out to be “no objection in that case.”
Readers: What do you think?
Related:
Prisoner’s dilemma. Divorce her today before she tries to move to Vegas.
Well, for many married guys they’d be delighted to have sex every two weeks.
But her withholding sex as a punishment or tool for manipulation makes her a horrible person that he should divorce as soon as practical. Especially for something so petty as a week’s worth of extra expense on a home reno project.
She’s basically put a price on the affection (animalic or not).
And the message is that he’s a beta and should take it.
On the other hand, it might be part of their courting games, who knows.
Interesting to see how does an alfa look to her.
Maybe she’s already looking for one.
God, midlife sounds depressing. If the guy were 25 and childless, I would absolutely advise breaking up. I can’t imagine dating someone that manipulative (and also self defeating- unless the guy is obese or otherwise repulsive, she’s also hurting herself through this sex strike).
Unfortunately, kids complicate things. Hubby probably just needs to deal. I don’t have the faith in therapy some people seem to have. The wife is being shitty and manipulative but it’s not worth breaking up a family over. My 2 cents haha
Married-for-decades-but-to-different-women-man says:
Wife is obviously not perceiving hubby as very sexy or interesting.
If he accepts his punishment, there’ll be hell to pay later. She’ll respect and covet him even less if he just accepts the punishment.
Best bet is to go stay with some family or friends or at a hotel for some days.
If the mariage is salvageable he’ll be welcomed back in glory after a few days and THEY’LL be enjoying a new a better balance of power.
If his sentence is increased to one month or nagging erupts, he’d better get a better wife or harem while he’s reasonably fit.
Mind you, from her perspective he could be a boring working stiff, a slob foolishly losing money on a home renovation then running off to lose more money on hotel stays while leaving her with the kids.
Somehow he has to communicate, in a pretty detailed and convincing manner, that he’s a loving, responsible adult that’ll readily own up to his mistakes. But that he in no way is her servant paid in decreasing amounts of sex.
She’s testing his masculinity. It’s one of those “if he really loves me he’ll do the opposite of what I said because he knows what I really want” Venus-Mars things. The correct move for him is to give her good old-fashioned shagging, then get her to make him a sandwich.
As a home improvement professional I find it hard to believe she knows where to correctly place blame. And, given her response, my experience tells me she’s the one actually at fault.
If my wife were to cut me off every time I spent more money than she liked, well…
That is not a good marriage.
You people are Neville Chamberlins. Appeasement doesn’t work. Escalate straight to nuclear. Screw the kids. Sue her.
Phil: I must alert you to Saint Michael Avenatti may soon be a #metoo case! Apparently he is a victim of California family court!
I don’t think I would even move out of the hotel to make a point. I would make it clear that it’s not acceptable and she has to find a way to separate her anger over the situation from her feelings toward me, or I will divorce her next time that happens. But then again, I am definitely an alpha male and I do recognize that many betas just can’t afford that attitude. Also, there are quite a few women who prefer a beta male (despite not being generally excited over beta behavior), because they require control over the man to feel less anxious over possible uncertainties in relationships.
As Chris Rock once said “A man is as faithful as his options”. Here, one would say “a man is as assertive as his options”.
The only thing that came to my mind when I read this was, assuming the average 40+ year old woman in the States (overweight + resting bitch face), how good could the sex really be anyway? Is he really missing much? I highly doubt she is some kind of Elizabeth Hurley.
This is the central plot device of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata.
See also your previous postings on the evils of gossip.
In related news, at least he’s not this Englishman who buys a house with his German wife, then 10 days afterwards she decides she wants to divorce him (during renovations – do I see a pattern here?):
https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/378291-legal-situation-with-new-house/
According to realworlddivorce.com/international they will need to be separated for one year before one of them can file for divorce.
If I were the husband, I’d extend the wife’s sex moratorium indefinitely. One thing is nearly universal with this type of woman: the less hubby acts like he cares, the more SHE will care. What she doesn’t know drives her crazy.
And all this comes with one giant caveat:
If she isn’t attracted to him in the least, all bets are off across the board. Then his move would be to make himself attractive and continue extending the moratorium while she has to stew.
Like someone else here opined: this may be part of their weird courtship. People get off on strange stuff.
Sounds like a lot of facts are missing from this story besides the “um.” Doesn’t sound like a normal human response to deny intimacy because a spouse managed repairs incompetently and cost a very well off household a few dollars. So there is probably a lot more to the story. Like the guy is a total buffoon and she has had it up to here with him, like he hangs around the house the whole day and his big job was to manage the repairs and he even screwed that up, or whatever. But the guy is hanging around for some reason even if from the woman’s perspective divorce is a financial loser. And the anecdote doesn’t address that.
@Jack, if that’s the case, a no sex for 2 weeks is nothing and my guess is that she is the one after the sex not him. Couples at their 40’s are lucky if they have sex once a month.
My take: the guy should accept the 2 weeks no sex and as soon as the 2 weeks is up, he should ask for sex every night and stick with his wife for life!! She is the provider and he is the lazy guy around the house from what I see here based on the little info. given about this case. I would love to be in such a situation — assuming the wife is not cheating on him and she is somewhat attractive — for LIFE!! If is an easy life to have.
I’m so fortunate to be a single male.
George: Why do you think he is lazy around the house? Because she earns more than he does? Wouldn’t that more likely be a function of career choice? A physics post-doc earns 1/10th of what a same-age dermatologist earns, despite working longer hours. Would you infer from this ratio that the physics post-doc is just lying around the house?
I would suggest that the husband act as if the wife had just demanded a divorce. Start talking about lawyers, custody arrangements, who gets the house, etc.
When she catches on and says, “I do not want a divorce, I just wanted to punish you.”, don’t argue at all. Just say “yeah, I know what you said”, and go on talking about divorce logistics.
I wonder if the reason why marriages where the woman earns more than the man tend to be less stable than the converse is because, for most women, fulfilling sexual needs is trivial. Perhaps the women in these relationships really do need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, and, realizing this, have few immediate disincentives to the shabby treatment of their husbands.
A wife shouldn’t punish her husband, period. A marriage needs the utmost of grace to be healthy and happy. We all screw things up, and royally, from time to time.
Roger has given the best answer.
The wife has lost ( never had?) respect for the husband. The only way to possibly save the marriage is for the husband to at least give the impression of sleeping with a younger, better looking woman than his wife.
So even if he doesn’t want want a fling with a young thing, he needs sleep at home but care not what his wife says when he comes home at 2 in the morning wearing ladies’ perfume.
If he caves to his wife’s demands, he will prove his low value to her (paradoxically) and the downward spiral will continue.
My personal background – divorced with three kids, professional degree with upper middle class income, similar wife manipulations before the divorce during which I ‘caved’ in every way imaginable ‘for the kids sake.’ Now sex 5-6x/week with my girlfriend 13 yrs younger for the past 4 years of not putting up with manipulative behavior.
I agree with Sam.
The marriage is not necessarily lost. This might just be what the pick-up artists call a shit test. That is where the woman makes some totally unreasonable demand, just to see how the man responds. He needs to show strength, not weakness. What she says that she wants is not necessarily what will make her happy.
I’d probably just masturbate in front of her every night, and then go watch TV. Why should he give up that extra money she earns and disrupt his life for this kind of nonsense?
For the record, I’ve been married for 38 years and have been through every type of head game. Sex has it’s ups & downs (pun intended). It’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things. We’re in our 60s and still have sex regularly. He needs to just shrug it off and laugh about it.
If the guy could hold her attention in a bar long enough to get a ring on her, he can clown his way inside of her.
Lysistrata’s advice to make the withholding of sex effective:
We need only sit indoors with painted cheeks, and meet our mates lightly clad in transparent gowns of Amorgos silk, and employing all our charms and all our arts; then they will act like mad and they will be wild to lie with us.
…
Be it your task to inflame and torture and torment him. Seductions, caresses, provocations, refusals, try every means! Grant every favour, — always excepting [actual sex].
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Aristophanes:_The_Eleven_Comedies/Lysistrata
Another fun fact: the phrase “women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them” is mentioned as a well known proverb in Lysistrata, which means the sentiment is over two thousand years old!