Maybe I sorta got it....but maybe you are sorta getting it also...I do tend to ramble...so bear with me here for a second..
We do fall in love with our girl/boy friends...not the bread winner or homemaker...we agree so far...
I'm just saying you're wrong about the simplistic way you say things should and can be.
We women also miss our boyfriends after the rosey glow has gone by the wayside...I'm just saying that sometimes medical problems raise their ugly heads and there are men whose egos are so great that they think nothing can be their fault, so they assume it's their wife's or girlfriends fault that the rose has lost it's bloom and they start looking for someone else to stroke their egos. As you said.." if we've become jerks as husbands, it's because we see no reward for doing our husbandly duties."
I ask you this...what about our rewards? Why must we be thrown away because the man can't preform his husbandly duties?

here's the rub viv. it just aint fair but you see, you with all the power have to make the move. sad but true, you have to be the good girlfriend before we will be a boyfriend. you ladies are just to complex and we men will never figure it out. we're the simpletons remember. you have to power. use it and we'll lay all your desires at your feet. wait for us to redciprocate and you're done. history. it really is all in your hands.

take the proverbial towel we left on the floor for example. you can nag us to pick the damn thing up or you can sit on our lap and say you love us. do the former and our ego and arrogance kicks in. do the latter and see if we don't melt. yes a week will go by before we finally hang the towel on the rack. but we will hang the towel on the rack. you've given us all we need you see. we love you on our lap and there's simply nothing more that we want from you.

That does seem to simplify things... if all we gals should do is sit in your lap, and hang the towel up ourselves...there wouldn't be so many of us out there, here.

LOL...so you say...and it may hold true for a while..until your eye starts to roam...
Aww I remember well, what you speak of....how it was. What fun to sit on your lap and tell you I love you and stoke that ego...
Who cared if you picked up the towel...I didn't care..I gladly picked up after you, brought you your first cup of coffee every morning to bed and woke you with a kiss. Never said goodby without telling you I loved you. Bragged on you to all who would listen. You were my hero, you saved me!....You let your ego get in the way and found another woman...and threw me away....so who had the power?

ah you're fighting me ladylid. spend time on his lap and see if the towel still appears on the floor after a time. won't happen immediately ofcourse. we simpletons do take some learning but we do learn eventually. me bets that if girlfriend had never left in the first place, a towel would never have hit the floor.

this is an example of how you pretty things relinquish your power. you can nag all day about the towel on the floor. has it worked? if so then i suppose you can say you've gained some equality as far as work picking up towels is concerned. but did it work because he chose to be fair or was the nagging wearing thin?

of course this approach with affection will not work with every man. some men are jerks. when you think about it, we're brought up to be jerks as we've watched this war of the sexes being battled by our parents. that just requires that you choose your mate wisely. look at the senior couples we see often holding hands and displaying affetion in public. they've been bf/gf since they met decades ago. i'll bet you'd find that they don't squabble over towles on the floor because towels don't end up on the floor. are they affectionate because he doesn't drop towels on the floor or does he hang his towel on the rack because they share such affection? point being, it's very hard to force a man to change his habits by nagging. so why not try affection? if the towel disapears great. if not, is the affection not worth picking up a towel? loosing does not always mean not winning.

i'd have to blow suds off a few cold beers with the guy to give you a fair answer. two sides to a story you see. but i will say this. you never have power when you make bad choices. not every man recognizes, or should i say admit, that he is such a simpleton. many are fighting the battle of the sexes with as much vigor as many women do. takes two to tango as goes the cliche.

Wasn't me.......just wondered what you'd have to say....

now you know what i had to say. lol.

This is America, It's time the male and female whores come to terms with Courting, Caring and Love before sex.

We aren't Monkeys!!

of course we are not monkeys and this IS amrerica; a country where people can adopt societal practices as they individually choose as long as they choose within the law. who are you to decide that "it's time the male and female whores come to terms" with anything? like you said, "this is america". well is it?

Hey I'm a Republican So what I say is the way it is!!

Tallandslender has a way with words! I like him!

I think it's a pretty good shield to hide behind, gentlemen, that Simpleton Shield. "It must be something you women are doing because, gosh, we just want a sandwich and some sex."
The dryness problem with post-menopausal women can be easily remedied if her man would be a good lover and work up some spit for the ocassion instead of saying, "You changed and aren't the same woman anymore."

Lap sitting? How about when the man has health issues and hurts all over and doesn't want you on his lap and says so? Also, it's stereotypical to use the towel-on-the-floor example. That's something a woman would ***** about in her 20's-30's. More mature women over 50 will pick the towel up, wash it, dry it and fold it and put it away to clear the arena for some lovemaking with her man.

Use our air miles to see other countries? No thanks. I don't give a rat's behind about what some society who still wears birkas(sp) and buries their women up to their neck and stones them to death for alleged adultery.

well if you do think you have men figured out better than we men and you're content with your past relationships and how you view men then it would make sense for you to disregard all i've said regarding the shield that we hid behind. afterall, why accept what a man actually is when you can change him into what you want him to be huh?

I have read all the posts and my perspective is a little different.

I agree that men need the physical and that women need the emotional. We all start out in love with our bf/gf and then get married. In most relationships, roles are formed.

When we were growing up, wives stayed home and took care of the family. Men went to work and provided for the family.

Then the 60's happened. Sex became open. Women went to college and started careers. But the wives' role at home didn't change. It just grew to include part of the husband's role. Men still believed that taking care of the home was the woman's job. After all that is what their mothers did. With the stress of working and taking care of the home, the husband was put on the back burner.

So men started looking elsewhere and women became resentful. So what is the solution?

If men want women to be more attentive then they need to free up our time to be attentive. Pick up the towel, put the dishes in the dishwasher, cook a meal and fold the laundry. If a man does these little things without being asked they will have their girlfriend back. These little things say to a woman that the man understands how much she has on her plate and only wants to make her life easier.

If you surveyed the women in their 50's that are walking down the street holding their husbands hands, I bet most of them would say he helps make her life easier in any way he can.

Treat a woman like a lady with genuine love and respect and a man will have more sex than he thought possible.

absolutely agree. but you left out exactly half the equation. survey those men and see if they don't say the great sex and praise that he gets from his lady is the very reason he makes her life easier in any way he can. you're fighting the same battle. give me what i want and THEN i'll give you the sex and praise that you want. call it unfair if you choose but it will not work that way. love and intimacy is a two way street. some take to it easier than others. as a women wants to be treated like a lady with genuine love and respect so a man wants to be treated like a man with the things he desires. often that means a woman treats him like the man he is for some time before the towel gets picked up and she starts feeling the love and respect she desires. but does giving up on the jerk help? have you found something that works better than treating him like a man? if you made a bad choice you made a bad choice. move on. but if you really think the relationship can be saved why not put effort into the only technique that can possibly save it. and stick with it. don't give up. you have power over your actions. you have no power over his. i keep saying it and you ladies keep missing it. a good man is hard to find, but he's easy to keep.

So why does it have to be a battle of who does what first? Why can't the man always "pick up the towel" and the woman always " give him attention"? Somebody had to stop doing something first. He either started leaving the towel on the floor which she resented or she stopped paying attention to him which he resented. So, as in all conflicts, someone started it.

If you leave the towel on the floor and I let you know it bothers me and you continue to do it, are you not showing that you don't care about my feelings? As a woman, who is an emotional being, I have now lost the desire or interest in being loving towards you. Any affection would be a lie. Now instead of realizing that picking up the towel will bring back love and affection, you turn to another woman for that attention. A relationship is over and we end up divorced. You should have picked up the towel when I told you it bothered me.

I'm game to that Idea,

of course, i agree with all of this. someone had to wrong the other first and someone has to begin to set it right first. it will never be that both will see the light at the exact same moment and begin to give the other person what he/she needs to be happy. it's a mutual effort eventually we hope but it never becomes mutual if one person begins to do what's right and gives up before the other person also participates in the new relationship. that's what happens normally as i see it. a man finally realizes that he get's more with honey than with vinegar but gives up the honey and goes back to the vinegar before the woman finally gets it and reciprocates. or the woman sits on his lap, kisses him an tells him how handsome and sexy he is and goes back to her nagging ways because towels keep dropping on the floor after a week goes by. what if eight days later you hit him with nagging about wet towels when he comes home from work and on that very commute he realized that he could at least pick up his towel in return for all the great sex he's been getting? but he comes home to find that that nag is not gone afterall so she can damn well kiss his a$$ if she thinks he's going to pick up any towels.



bingo. your relationship is already toast if any offer of affection would be a lie. if the two of you are that far gone that a show of affection would be anything less than genuine then why stay together? i'm suggesting ideas for keeping a relationship that you love. my method will not a relationship make nor will it spark a flame when the flame has died completely. here's the point. you fell in love with your boyfriend. he fell in love with his girlfriend. you both loved the itimacy, flirting, sexiness, compliments, praise, caring, etc., etc., that went with the courtship. neither of you knew that the other would become a spouse or parent of your children so you could not have fallen in love with your future husband/wife or mother/father of your future children. at the moment you fell in love you fell in love with your boyfriend. he fell in love with his girlfriend. that your roles changed over the years has nothing to do with it. the question is, do you miss your boyfriend? would you like him back? do you think he misses his girlfriend? are you willing to come back? you control your actions only. you've no control over his. you can act like a girlfriend or you can act like a nag. if showing affection would be a lie then you cannot act like a girlfriend so will you be happy as a nag? do you think he'll respond to the nagging? have you ever seen such nagging work?



yep. in more than half of all marriages. the same battle of the sexes rages without an end in sight. women feel they are terribly mistreated and misunderstood. men feel that they are terribly mistreated and misunderstood. both think the other needs to change or it will never get better. both take action to help or make the other change. both continue to fail in their efforts and the divorce rate continues to soar because both can only take action to change themselves but still they insist that it's the other who must change. so he witholds respect and caring about towels on the floor, she witholds sex and affection and neither side ever runs out of such deadly ammo. if it works for you, great. me? i'm going to find me a girlfriend and be the best boyfriend i can be. if she fails me at being a good girlfriend i'm going to be the best boyfriend i can be. when she has a bad day and nags me about the little things like wet towels on the floor i'm going to say oops "girlfriend" and go back to being the best boy friend i can be. when i'm not getting sex i once got i'm going to be the best boyfriend i can be. i can only control what i can be. now if i can just find a lady with only that one thing in common with me who'll be my best girlfriend ever.