What Men Want From a Wife

The dialogue could have been in a scene in Reservoir Dogs.

Two old pals in a den. One recently divorced, the other in the throes of a separation. A bottle of bourbon was on the table and cigar smoke was in the air. There were no women in the house.

“I gave her this house, this life. I have worked 50-60 hours a week for decades,” said Tim just after his wife moved out to live with another man.

We all nodded.

“I never touched another woman,” he continued. “My eyes did sure—I am a human being—but I never did.”

We all let his pause breathe.

“I like to work, to provide. I supported her efforts to go back to school, to do whatever she wanted. I am what we used to call a feminist.”

We again let his pause breathe as we sipped bourbon and looked upon the common dilemma like it was taking shapes in the cigar smoke.

“I broke my back for her, but every evening when I’d come in it was all drama. All complaints. All talk about some soccer game I missed or swim practice I was not there for. And she threw so many derogatory remarks to let me know she does not have same fashionable brand I have never heard of. I gave her a big house, two cars, beautiful things, vacations ... but it was not enough,” he said.

This time Mike stepped into the pause. He has been divorced for two years now and says no woman will ever get him back down an aisle.

“Mine was a variation of your theme,” said Mike. “I left her for a peaceful life, not for another woman. She has a career—she is a doctor—which I loved, but it was never enough. My job makes me travel, which I love and hate, but it resulted in so much friction. All I wanted when I came home was a smiling wife. Maybe we could watch a movie together. Hopefully we’d have a little fun in bed. But, nope, she just gained weight and became unhappy because she didn’t have it all. But she did have it all. She just needed to balance it better. She was trying to be a man and a woman and resented that I could turn work off when I came in the front door.”

Tim was nodding. “A good man will work himself to death for a woman who is nice and fucks him once in a while. That’s it. That’s what we want.”

“Well,” I said, “I am the old married guy here now. Twenty five years in now and things are great—not perfect all the time or anything—but pretty great.”

“Fuck you, Frank!”

We all laughed and then Tim summed it up. “American women are told today that feminism means having the career and then, if they want one, suddenly getting a man who is subservient to them and, in fact, a man who is guilty like a bad child is guilty all the time. The feminist is supposed to manage all of this with matriarchal strength and then to somehow be happy with their glasses of chardonnay and weak men. Idiocy.”

“My ex,” said Mike, “lost 40 pounds and became nice to men within months of our divorce. When she found another real relationship, though, she gained the weight back and got bitter again.”

“Someone needs to tell them,” said Tim, “that trying can’t stop. That men and women are partners, not adversaries. American women need to figure out that, if they do marry a good man, they should not spend the proceeding years belittling him and all he does for her. He is her man. She needs to back him, to support him, to sleep with him, not to put him down in public, and so on, just as he must do for her.”

“I wonder if their friends ever tell them that,” I wondered.

“Never,” said Tim. “All of Gloria's friends are divorced or waited too long to start a family. They’ve all lived the modern feminist’s playbook, yet have failed to learn anything from the pattern of failure. The trouble isn’t men, not today, it is the crushing ideology women are so often taught by their unhappy teachers, books, and films.”