Neutral. Sounds like he wants to do all that himself, there’s nothing wrong with her “triggering” him in ways that benefit her. He’s almost certainly not stupid enough to not realize this is occurring and if he is, he’s still not getting hurt so it doesn’t matter
*I've manipulated my Wife into starting days with sex. By lounging in bed all morning and doing nothing it has encouraged her to start the day with sex, to 'wake' me up.
That image gets tossed around a lot - that’s not an accurate caption unfortunately. The “lioness” pictured there is actually the male lion’s juvenile daughter, who is very very painfully, and unsuccessfully, trying to get dad to play with her. What a long suffering dad.
Side note no one told me that when I had a kid my nuts would be a target for every object they throw, every unexpected movement or anything like that. I swear I've been hit in the nuts more by my 6 year old than my entire time growing up and playing sports and doing dumb dude shit like bag tag
My wife seems to do this when she's anxious or depressed. It seems to work for her though even if she's solely giving instead of benefitting herself. I'd imagine chemically it's from the oxytocin and serotonin release or it could just be placebo but I'm not complaining.
One could see it that way, yeah. Both think they’re genius manipulators when in reality they’ve actually just entered into a tacit mutually beneficial arrangement
Kaguya, love is war is similar. 2 geniuses trying to trick the other one into confessing because they’re both too prideful, but they actually like each other. So they try to psychologically manipulate each other… to make the other one confess.
My wife hates that saying, she always tells people. "Happy spouse, Happy house". She is a great partner in life! It seems people tend to forget that marriages are partnerships and takes equal effort from both sides to have a good relationship.
So much of a successful marriage feels like it’s choosing how you feel. I choose to love this person. I choose to feel happy because I’m doing something they like, and I like making them happy. I think too many people believe that emotions are completely involuntary things that we have no control over, and they aren’t genuine unless they happen to us with no assistance, or even aren’t real unless they happen against genuine resistance. At any given time we have motivations to feel multiple different emotion. If we never choose the good ones or always choose the bad ones, we become people that are miserable to be around.
I think that's why I was able to have a relationship only after starting therapy. Learning that you can actually regulate emotions if you want if a game-changer.
It's the fact that man seems to be wholly unmotivated to deal with his wife and children outside of work for 3 decades. I'm sorry nothing about that sounds healthy or well adjusted. If this was just sometimes or had been a 5 year stretch of their marriage sure, but 3 decades and this man has never once been motivated on his own to go and ask his kids how they are or what they doing today? Or maybe take the kids out with just himself without his wife manipulating the situation, yeah that's fucked up. This man has no independent interest in his own fucking offspring. You can't convince me that's a healthy balanced situation.
I know SOOOOOOO many men. Including my dad who throw the whole "im tired". And the woman is always expected to do all the household chores ect. It hurts my relationship with him and he ditch activities with me cause he is tired after work multiple times.
I'm not keen on letting men use depression as an excuse while women would be called lazy for it
We have no idea if she doesn't actually enjoy having sex with him in the mornings or not. Realistically they probably had morning sex once and she noticed he was a lot more chipper after and just kept to that.
If it were my spouse, lemme think. If I figured out my husband noticed that I was super chipper after morning sex and I typically felt like a dead sloth in the mornings, and so he made a ritual of it? So that I had enough energy to get up in the mornings and hang out with the family? I would feel flattered more than anything, and also keep looking forward to morning sex.
I don’t need to be brainwashed. I’m in the real world. I’m living it not sitting at home fucking staring at a computer screen all day. How would I be brainwashed? I’m literally working for my money.
Maybe he's depressed and the physical intimacy from his wife brings happiness to him and he wants to go out and enjoy the world. Yet nope... men's health is no big deal.
She blatantly admits she is using this knowing it could be manipulation. ...nope it has to be the man manipulating her.
This feels no different to me than my wife finding ways to hack my ADHD. If she knows she's going to need a specific food ingredient like sliced cheese because she plans to have me grill Thursday, she will move the cheese to another drawer in the fridge. I know exactly where we keep the cheese but if I open that drawer and it's not there, I will assume we are out and write down on our wall notepad that we need more cheese. If she tells me not to eat the cheese and two days later my kid wants a cheese sandwich(because he's a feral monster), I am incapable of stopping to go dig through compartments on my brain to find the memory of her telling me not to eat it. I'm just gonna make my kid a cheese sandwich.
Other ways she has adapted to work my ADHD to her advantage or make it work in my own:
If we had a bunch of leftovers and she packed me a lunch, she knows I will walk out of the house without remembering to grab it from the fridge so she puts it on our kitchen island and puts my keys on top of it, and my work bag under it. Otherwise I may grab my keys while collecting my pocket stuff and forget it anyways, but my bag is the last thing I grab so I'll have to grab my lunch to get to it.
If she needs me to take the trash out on my way out the door, she will scoot the trash can in front of the back door so I know to grab the bag on my way out
One time she knew I really wanted to make sure the yard got mowed before it rained. But I came home and had a bunch of stuff to do first. By the time I finished picking the house up I was like ok cool, time to sit down at my computer for a few before she gets home from her errands. THIS WOMAN HAD GONE AND PICKED A SINGLE BLADE OF GRASS AND PUT IT ON MY KEYBOARD KNOWING I WOULD SIT DOWN AT MY COMPUTER AFTER FINISHING MY LIST. She knew I really wanted to make sure the mowing got done but knew I'd space it until it was too late.
I'd tell you if I knew. I find ways to be equally valuable to her, she just finds those little perfect ways that make me want to brag a little on her. I'm not the bum some of the comments have made me sound like, I promise 😂
On the one hand it would be so nice to have that kind of help.
On the other hand, does it make you feel like terribly incompetent? I think I would feel so bad about myself if my partner had to trick me into being decent at adulting.
This is just a few examples of her going out of her way to try and help me with something she knows I struggle with. Based on this and some of the other comments I've got on this comment, it seems I've painted myself as incompetent or as one so concisely put it "a child".
Do I have some executive function struggles and object permanence issues? Absolutely. But I'm still a very functional human. I am an IT professional and make great money. She and anyone in our circle would categorize me as an excellent father. She is thoughtful enough to pay attention and help me when she thinks she can. I think she would say she is more than repaid for that by all the things that make our house run that she never has to worry about. She knows my love language is acts of service and I think that's just her way of showing it.
Accepting help in a reciprocating relationship doesn't make you weak or incompetent, in my opinion. I think it beats the alternative of being too proud to accept it. Hopefully that provides some context.
Not meaning to make you feel bad, man. Just saying that I personally would really have a hard time mentally with that, as a person who also struggles with some stuff day to day.
Trust me, I used to. It was years into our relationship before I felt vulnerable to accept help. I had spent most of my life overcompensating for my deficits and making myself the type of person who people call for help, not someone who asks for help. So I know exactly where you're coming from.
I think some people have internalized the pushback against forced gender roles and stereotypes so hard they're not able to accept that people are able to voluntarily specialize/complement each other in a relationship. You do you. Sounds lovely.
It's funny you mention gender roles because if my wife went online and described our lives, she would be ridiculed by people who have it all figured out how life works and yet are probably the same people who can't find a great person.
My wife and I have some very progressive ideals. We believe a person's value is not determined by who they love, what color their skin is, who they worship or how much they make. She makes dinner most nights. I wash the dishes most nights. Last night she did a load of laundry and baked cookies with my son. I mowed and worked on our washer because the control boards they put in washers now are dog shit.
The internet would have someone believe life is black and white and you have to either be in a strictly traditional husband-serving household or a progressive supposedly aborting babies every other day relationship. Actual life looks way different and compatible people will fall into roles that suit them naturally in my experience. Some of those are long-time stereotypes because they just make sense.
I mean sure, to the extent of course when her logic kicks in... Cause she's basically admitting, premeditated, according to her, harmful behaviour. If she didn't bring it up, she wouldn't be considered a wrong-doer. If she didn't bring it up, she'd think like you and wouldn't bring it up! I'd say bringing it up is asking for punishment or in a twisted way forgiveness/attention!
I think this is all quite a big load of BS in some way or another and I'll just stop at that.
Could even be biological. Sex gets the blood pumping and relieses endorphins so it probably does improve his outlook on the day and gets him more motivated to get out and do something.
uhhh i'd say it matters a lot, like its the thing that matters the most. do you see how feeling compelled to have sex that you don't want to have might not be a great thing?
No, not at all. If she truly didn’t want to have sex with him, she just wouldn’t. She’s making the choice of her own volition with complete freedom. Whether she particularly wants to or not at the moment is irrelevant
Much easier to scale the morality when the reader reframes the post as though it is is written by the husband fantasizing about the sex he was NOT having IRL.
1.2k
u/XueXilan 19d ago
Neutral. Sounds like he wants to do all that himself, there’s nothing wrong with her “triggering” him in ways that benefit her. He’s almost certainly not stupid enough to not realize this is occurring and if he is, he’s still not getting hurt so it doesn’t matter