BECAUSE THEY’RE PUSHOVERS: Why Women Are Rejecting “Perfect” Men.
We men learned how to change diapers and cook risotto. We learned to watch for barely perceptible nods of approval before opening doors for women. We even learned to manscape, for goodness sake.
Women were supposed to be happy with the new variety of men. Yet they are divorcing us . . .
After a few years of marriage, Steve was simply not the spirited man he had once been . . .
Privately, he complained that she was impossible to please. “She gripes about everything. I just can’t win.” He was blind to the fact that his efforts to please her had created a perverse cycle of disappointment. . . .
Finally, something astonishing happened on a Saturday morning when Jen instructed him to accompany her to a baby shower: he declined. “No thanks,” he said. “I’m going golfing. Give my best to the mother.”
That’s when Steve and Jen began to rediscover the joy they had known in the early days of their marriage. . . .
In his desperation to avoid disapproval, Steve had become, as he put it, a pandering milquetoast. What healthy person—male or female—wants to be hitched to that?
Unfortunately for the author’s egalitarian framing of the matter (“male or female”), he cannot supply anecdotes of men getting fed up with women concerned with serving them. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that the problem he’s discussing is entirely a one-sided one, due to men’s and women’s different preferences for the opposite sex.