Valentine’s Day Follow-Up

For those who didn’t feel sufficient love from the first Valentine’s Day post, let’s look at what it takes to be a successful husband in progressive urban America. “How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me” (New York Times, February 4, 2025, by Daniel Oppenheimer).

Marxist-Leninism has been replaced in the U.S. by Transferism, but the Marxist-Leninist emphasis on self-criticism remains:

“I tell myself: ‘I try really hard. I try to be a good person. I try to be thoughtful about Jess and what she needs. Maybe I don’t get to everything, but it’s not because I’m not a good person.’”

“Instead of looking to Jess to top me off with love, I need to take on that responsibility myself.”

Jess was so much more capable — and demanding — of love and intimacy than I was. This was part of the attraction but also the problem. I was an ambivalent fortress, always defending against her siege while secretly hoping she would breach the walls.

Assuming that “Daniel” identifies as a “man”, masculinity today seems to have drifted quite far from what the Stoics had in mind:

The diagnosis comes after I relate the story of a tantrum I threw at my 48th birthday dinner. It involved me storming out of a restaurant, in front of our kids and friends, and coming back only after a solid 15-minute sulk. It’s not a flattering story, and I don’t try to render it so. Jess and I argued beforehand about what restaurant to pick, which left us tense for days. One of the kids was being difficult. Jess wasn’t as affectionate as I wanted her to be. I wasn’t getting the birthday I felt I was owed. I blew my stack.

We’re informed that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness requiring therapy (only surgery), but going through what used to be considered normal day-to-day life does require therapy:

We’ve both been to a lot of therapy before. As a couples therapist, Jess has been guiding people in this kind of work for years.

Therapy is not for those whose attention spans are short:

[The therapist] Real keeps me in that space, eyes closed, talking to my inner child, for about 30 minutes. … At the end, I put my inner child back inside myself and open my eyes. Real tells me I did a good job.

“No pain, no gain” is not just for the gym:

The box of tissues next to me, which Real asked Jess to get before we started the exercise, remains unused. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.

A reader comments that women will like men better when the men become women:

@Tim Thank you for sharing. I also think you have illustrated the widening gap between Millennial women and men, at least in my own social circle. My female friends and I read self-help books, go to therapy and even talk about how we can break the patterns of our parents through personal enlightenment and self-improvement…whereas the men in our lives are staunchly against the idea, at most willing to placate us women by providing lip service in a passive, surface-y couples therapy session or two.

It’s creating a widening gap between the genders and, in my view, resulting in ever increasing misunderstandings and resentment. I’m hoping that articles like this (thank you Oppenheimer!) and guys like Real can de-stigmatize this emotional work for the men that we love and desire a healthy connection with.

(Is the above comment tainted with hateful gender binarism? If we accept the Science of 74 gender IDs, the correct phrase would be “gap among the genders” not “gap between the genders” (implying just 2).)

Here’s the author of this NYT confession (eating a child’s meal of bread with artisanal jam?):

Very loosely related…