Reader getalonghome asks regarding women who punish with their presence:
“Yet the concept is so illogical and foreign to men’s thinking that few men will recognize it.” I don’t recognize it, either. I know you don’t make things up, but I’m having a hard time with this. What kind of detestable creature is this?
…Again, what kind of woman is that? I know none like this!
Women who do this are all around us, you just have to know how to spot them. The thing to keep in mind is very few women who do this are aware of it. When my wife originally asked other women how they handled the impulse, every woman she asked said they had no idea what she was talking about. Yet my wife had witnessed many of these women doing exactly the same thing.
While the woman in smartphones ruin everything was surprisingly open about her desire to make her husband miserable, this isn’t what you will normally observe. Such women almost never come out and state that they want to make their husbands miserable. What they say is:
My husband never wants to spend any time with me!
When women complain to you in this way*, gently ask them if they make it a point to be sweet and nice to be around when they are with their husband. The reaction you will get will either be a look of pure hatred for challenging a sacred birthright of the sisterhood, or a look of sudden perplexity, as the woman tries to understand not only why she expects her husband to want to be around her when she is being a bitch, but why something this obvious never dawned on her before**. However, most women will fall into the former category, so be prepared for a look of unbridled hate.
Assuming the woman is interested in solving the problem, the solution my wife has found is to simply resist the urge and get busy doing something else for a short period of time, after which the urge tends to rapidly go away. Even better, by doing this over time, the frequency and severity the urge will also diminish.
*There is a similar common complaint “My husband never has time for me!” or “My husband is so boring and lazy all he wants to do is sleep when he gets home from his third job! He so selfish, he never has time for me!” In that case the woman in question almost certainly spent the previous 30 min bragging about her conspicuous consumption in the form of automobiles, travel, housing, and name brands/fashion. In this scenario the hate inspiring Titus 2 question is “Have you considered trading down in house/car/fashion/etc, or getting a job so your husband doesn’t have to work so many hours?”
**This isn’t logical, but when the desire to drive the husband away is accomplished the wife tends to feel a deep sense of loss/abandonment. The complaint is as heartfelt as it is absurd.
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