Submitted by Zapp10 on 07/23/2016.
I found this quite by accident and think it is rather interesting. I am sure there will be plenty of agreement /disagreement but that is what dialogue includes.......and I am putting this out there with this thought......marriage is a learning experience like alot of things are. Pre-concieved ideas come from society, family and personally....for whatever reason. In the most intimate of relationships...marriage.....is it any wonder how the challenges of ADHD cause so much havoc for both parties? It is very sad to see the "effect of ADD" left behind in my H's wake when he is out socially.....but I also believe that not all of him is "controlled" by ADD.......and this is where this article is interesting to me. I am not defending nor promoting the view given by Rabbi Schmuley.....I am still digesting a good part of it and not sure of my own opinion yet. not sure I did this right......here's hoping the link works. http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/18/husbands-who-extinguish-their-wives...
Thank you for posting this
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
Thank you for posting this article. I no longer consider myself to be a woman. I don't mean that I'm a man. Instead, I mean that I feel like an unattractive, undesirable, sometimes repulsive person, and so by neutralizing my sex, I'm less bothered by my deficiencies. I think that by becoming the wife my ex-husband needed, I stopped being the wife he wanted.
Rosered, on the article
Submitted by Zapp10 on
My final analysis boils down to....if ONE man can come to this observation....it is likely that there are more like him....I find THAT a comfort.
If I see myself only through my H's eyes.....I failed as a wife. If I hear how he doesn't speak of "we" or"us" but mostly "I" it tells me.... I don't need to be here.
One thing I did do throughout our entire marriage was love him(in every definition of the word) because I simply did. And when he treated me poorly I said nothing(you teach people how to treat you). For everything I did wrong.....I did ONE thing right. ...I loved him.
I have no regrets.....I have known what it is to love......I am calling it.....good enough.
Rosered, have you read jennas post "tell a new story"?
I am thinking of you:-)
It is enough for me to know......while I made mistakes....I owned them. Loving is not a mistake......treating someone poorly....is. I choose to love.....
Troubling...Zapp
Submitted by kellyj on
I have an opinion on this but I too want to digest what he said. And in context to what you, if "ONE man can come to this...." All I can say for sure is this.
I understand from the context of religion and from his position speaking with the assumption that he represents an ideology and must support it from the pulpit as he speaks from this position. I recognize this and respect it and must take this into account from which he speaks?
But from that which he speaks and represents....there is an inherent presumption and hypocrisy that I cannot ignore. The hypocrisy in that the very faith system he represents and he enforces and perpetuates...is probably the biggest cause to the effect of the very thing he is criticizing. Namely...he's playing the blame game and in denial himself since that would actually be going against the very institution itself ...if he were to say it is the institution that's actually at fault and to blame here....along with the very construct that was designed to control the masses and tell others what to think.;.... not how to think? He's doing it right here with a bold face and unashamedly self promoting "America's Rabbi??"
Says who? Time Magazine, The Washington Post and his publisher of the his best selling books? I can see no wrong with self promotion and making a living doing it that way. But as a man of influence from the very institution that designed "marriage" (as most understand it) and created the terms...."husband" and "wife"....doesn't it hit you odd when he says that men see the person their married to as ...."my wife" instead of another name which sound awkward and formal like..."my spouse" or something else. I always use my wife's name but that's not how it's done here for example? That feels odd and weird to me just so you know? I'm just following protocol and doing it for that reason alone?
Respecting and understanding can only go so far as I see it. If he isn't starting out by stating why this condition exists in the first place....the validity of what he has to say has the ring of just more shame,blame guilt and fear to me?
As one my dearest (deceased friends fathers favorite jokes who happens to be Jewish )...I say this as one of closest and dearest friends and am as far from anit-semitic as you can possibly get)
"A man boards a night train and gets a sleeping car. He's tired and needs some rest from a long trip out of town. He's just about to go to sleep....and from the room next to his, he hears a man in distress " oy...I'm so toursty.....oy....I'm so toursty.....OY!!! I"M SO TOURSTY!!!!" This goes on for quite a while and since the man can't sleep with this going on...he finally decides to help this poor man out and get him some water from his cooler. He knocks and the door opens and it's an old Rabbi who's parched and without water. The Rabbi responds to the man and says...."Bless you my son, bless you.;...oy...I'm so thoursty!!"
The man tells the Rabbi he was glad to be of assistance and returns to his bunk to finally get some needed rest. And just as the man is about to fall asleep the man hears....."OY...WAS I TOURSTY!!!"
I think you get the point?? LOL I want to come back to this to this because I have some strong feelings about this( not about Rabbis, Jews or any more jokes since this really is a serious topic that warrants a decent response which this in not)
As I see it...I have to acknowledge and agree that it existence on one hand. On the other hand...I don't agree with it's existence at all and see this as exactly the problem to begin with. It really IS reality as I see it too which is also why you think only one man can see this. I say this since this was already excruciatingly and painfully obvious to me a very very long time ago. And what I see as the cause of what I have suffered through most of my adult life from the very thing he is denouncing but conveniently forgetting to say why it exist in the first place? Convenient for WHOM or WHAT I might add? Also...I don't think I'm alone by any means as I'm saying this?
J
Hey, J
Submitted by Zapp10 on
I find this such an interesting read because I saw him speaking on behalf(with compassion) of both sides(men/women). There is alot to disceminate here and yet underneath it all, is most likely,a very simple notion.
When I read this, of course, I have in my mind.....".now add ADHD to the mix and how much more difficult this all will be."
Because the adhd issue has nothing to do with intelligence and comprehension it is so baffling to get the response of denial. Sometimes, I think, the non ends up being in more denial ! We seem to keep hanging in there(hope?). I can't "hang in there" as far as living with it anymore.....but it is amazing to me( and kind of a relief) that I can love him at a distance that keeps me sane.
I actually saw the person who wrote this article placing "society" or simply "life" playing a big role in how our lives play out and what can happen as a trickle down effect for both genders.
I feel the same way, Rosered...working on it too.
Submitted by jennalemone on
Rosered, I have been thinking about this since you posted it. Yes, absolutely. We became their mothers reminding them, teaching them, supporting them, helping them, cleaning up after them. We resented being their mothers. They stopped loving in return....needing us to be dependable so they could be free to be their willful, impish selves. We resented the marriage/family structure that found us in the position of do everything we did or take the blame of failure in the family. We hate ourselves for letting our passionate, sexual, loving young hearts become the parental rule maker/enforcer/family protector/drone.
Without the role we have been playing in the decades of our adult life, who are we? Can we, with our aging bodies and mostly alone (since the world is mostly paired up at this age), become people who can free ourselves from what we presume are our faults, omissions, errors, guilt and shame.....and to blossom in some form of creative/expressive/communicative endeavor to redeem ourselves and be proud of ourselves?
We thought we could have accomplished so much more. Now, the energy and inspiration is not so strong as when we were naive and romantic. I think of my own mother in a time when many marriages kept a woman in the kitchen with the children and she was supposed to celebrate that domestic life of loving servitude. What could she, in her later years, have done to re-claim her self with pride? Talk, join, arrive, show up.
Isolating and criticizing ourselves (which we seem programmed to do) is not going to get us where we want to go. This is the first generation where, when a marriage fails, it is not the woman's fault. The old parental/churchy criticism is not going on in the world anymore except in our memories. I do not judge a woman for a marriage failure. Most people don't anymore. I judge the old customs of keeping women in their places through financial inequality....which still exists in many/most cases. You have permission/support/encouragement to become that exciting woman you started out to be. We get to find that person inside us. Now, without the guilt and shame we have been carrying around in our hearts. Feel free to Let it Go, Elsa!
Thanks, Zapp. A lot of the article resonated with my past life
Submitted by NowOrNever (not verified) on
Unlike J, I completely skipped evaluating traditional Judaism, which is the writer's religion. I stuck to what the writer said about the dynamics of actions in the household. And thought about what he said in my own non-Jewish mindset about what I've seen in life.
Considering the dynamics he described, his narrative of possible loss of wifely interest in sexual expression, in past relations I've seen and been in, that did NOT have a religious tradition framing in the behavior of the couple, I recognized, in some cases, the relation pattern that the rabbi describes.
In fact, women off on their own among themselves sometimes also describe it.
Although I am gratefully and proudly in love with a phenomenal man with ADHD who loves me, and he and I are tackling domestic life together, and he WANTS my wellbeing, I can tell you that caretaking, in THIS still pretty new domestic relationship...the sheer imbalance of who physically does what to make sure that the house functions, the finances function, ...nearly beat the femininity out of me. Recuperating my sense of attractiveness, which includes all kinds of desires, is currently ongoing. Lol, at my age, but it is.
I have zero complaint to or about my husband about this. It was my problem, and it is.
I can tell you it was very vivid what was happening to me as the overwork piled up, and there was no end in sight. I've mentioned the alarms of onset new health problems because of the new and to me killer work load. I haven't mentioned what this article names: that once a woman is turned into a caretaker, a sense of personal femininity tends to leave the building. How could I think I was sexy, if I was covered with dirt from the yard, or harried because things were spilling and breaking as I raced to try to keep up. How sexy is THAT? I can only place the force of my energy in one place, if I'm in extremity, and living this life, especially before I began to get the hang of it and my husband and I began finding ways out to establish our balances of activity, was a life in extremity for me. I can't scatter my psychic and physical energy across all categories of relationship engagement if I'm exhausted and racing flat out. I can't. Not if I'm so physically stampeded and exhausted that I'm trying to hold it together so as not to lose it.
I'll leave aside the fact that after the first lovely phase of the relationship, my husband went nearly mute about anything about me that he said pleased him. I had no idea, because his face didn't show, his demeanor didn't and his words didn't what he found attractive in me or whether he found me attractive any more. This is part of of sexuality for me, that I am seen and loved for who I am. Physically as well as mentally. On that one, I decided to presume that in the abstract somewhere that I couldn't see, he liked me still physically, and just set my mind to dealing with my own self view.
My hard-won, late in life found pride in my own attractiveness and sexuality....nearly got beaten out of me by the work. The rabbi is on to something.
There is a LOT riding on who volunteers or gets default mousetrapped into things that mothers do. It's not just that the person with ADHD shouldn't be treated as a child. It's also that the wife or caretaker husband shouldn't be treated as the do all fixer upper functional mommie....
At any rate, I think the rabbi is on to something, and it is not what he's saying that comes through Jewish tradition. Sexually confident adult women, regardless of their atheism, agnosticism or religion, do have needs and desires. Yes, I think that if a man in his work outside of the home has to strive hard to meet its challenges, he will want a break at home. I think he's on to something.
My husband, to his credit, doesn't manipulate me into being his mommy, either by willful default on his responsibilities at home, or by lying to me, or any other thing that a small child not yet grown up might do with a caretaker mommy. But the work and stress, yes they drained a lot of my sense of attractivenss out of me. Which I'm working on getting back. Again, this is basically my issue to deal with. I'm very, very grateful that I'm not with a man who wants to shut me down because I'm too much of a handful.
I think the rabbi is on to something. I'll take a card or bouquet of flowers any day...I love them....but what he's talking about is closer to the core of women than a card is. Weird as it is, a husband's self imposed, self designed habit of getting up from his task chair on his own, to lend a hand with something that a a wife is obviously struggling to do, is quite sexy. It says: I see you. I want to make it easier for you. I am willing to put out effort for you, on your terms, sometimes.
Sorry this turned into a long riff, but I don't think these matters are rocket science, and as I say, I'm having to bail out my own belief in my attractiveness from a very long siege of stress and to me crushing quantities of work, as my beloved husband and I tackle change for our wellbeing. He didn't "do" it to me. The astonishing workload did
Now.....Coming Back to This After Reading What You Said
Submitted by kellyj on
First....He didn't "do" it to me. The astonishing workload did. Yes....this isn't a man woman thing. It's stress for any reason. Exactly
"In fact, women off on their own among themselves sometimes also describe it." Exacta Mundo!! lol This isn't about being married. Single people experience this too. And single people not in a relationship experience this as well. In fact.....men (and I have) experienced fluctuations in on on going basis in their sexuality and their desire to have sex. (believe it or not? lol )
Separating out what I said and why I said it. What the Rabbi was saying I really agree with....unfortunately. I feel he is really on to something to and quite accurately said. I was trying to pull the language as he said it...away from blaming or pointing fingers as the source....being either a man or a woman but more from not realizing the differences in mans and woman sexuality and why they exist as being somewhat different...but not all that much different. In fact....I'm thinking not all that much different at all aside from the physiologic response being different but only slightly for some obvious reasons to each perspective sex...but not to each other. I think that's where the topic of sex and religion really do come into play and why I was saying that the source of the problem...is what we are taught and how we are taught this.
I can't speak for anyone else....but the attempts my own mother made to teach me what my father wouldn't...involved so much shame and misunderstanding on her part that it was almost a joke. This kind of puritanical tap dancing around the pleasure aspect of sex tied into with duty, possession and marriage gets this so balled up and confusing that no wonder there are misconceptions and misunderstanding about this that it makes it impossible to know what to do?
As I got the feeling the Rabbi was doing as well....he was talking in terms of the sexual desires or "the insatiable needs of a woman" as if this was some ground breaking discovery as it to tell men for the first time that it actually exists. And why is that? Because of how it's taught (or not taught) in tap dancing around the fact that as animals and with animal instincts and drives (procreation of the species) that somehow denying these urges is a good thing and only making babies is the reason to have sex. Hog wash!!! I don't think making babies is the first or last thing (that most actually think about during sex as a turn on unless you are actually doing it for that reason)
I'm not directing anyones choice in how they view sex or trying to tell anyone what is right or wrong. What I'm saying is that men and women seem to have a lot of misunderstanding about each others sex drives and where and how they originate. Getting right down to it....men have it a little different than most women...but even that is not true which is a gross misconception. There are women more like men and men more like women and everything in between. Trying to make gross generalizations and opinions about the way "men are" and women" are and trying to paint a picture as if they're all that different is already heading down the wrong road based on lot of things I've learned both from just asking and listening to women...and having this supported by different professional and literature. The moral aspect (which does have to do with religion and marriage and societal norms and values) don't always tell the entire story and there is a lot to be left desired so to speak. This is the part...that the Rabbi cannot fully or openly talk about without going contrary to his system (and mostly societies system whether secular or not) As I see it....secular is a more modern construct since non secular at one point in time depending on as I see it....was heresy and evil and meant you need to be killed for thinking or believing anything different.
The presumption I was referring to ...was presuming his audience was like he was and thinking in those terms without considreing that the things he was mentioning were not a phenomenon of being married or being the fault of a "quote" ..."unquote"....husband or wife. Straight up...people who aren't married have sex. Nothing new there? lol
And if you look at it that way....you begin to get to the heart of the problem however....marriage and the constictions that are put down by religious context can really F this up in a hurry IMHO. I also can see how the ADHD effect can go right to the heart of a woman's sexuality and can be effected more from that than any attitudes he was trying to foist on "men" as if all men are like this? That was a false presumption on his part but like I said....he kind of has to say it for the obvious reasons I was trying to point out.
And as I was trying to point out too. Shame and guilt are the main culprits in all of sexual dysfunction or sexuality problems IMHO. And you can;'t deny that organized religion can have a direct influence on this in some really negative ways. That much...I absolute agree with the Rabbi. Get rid of shame, guilt, and insecurity...and now we're talk'in. Now you can look at human sexuality and the differences and really understand each other without the moral and guilt trip thing getting in the way. Even if you are of the thinking that holds straight on course with this kind of believe system...you've still got the biological needs and desires that have nothing to do with making babies or religious moral values. If you are in denial that this exists or can't openly admit this as real....no wonder these problems exist and so much misunderstanding along with it?
It was so funny in remembering my own mother in her valid attempt to help me understand sex (too funny here).
I was 12 years old...and she comes into my bedroom with a book for me to read. I look at this book and my mom was so visibly embarrassed and uncomfortable. I open the book up and it's a picture book with artist rendering like the ones you find in health class at school. Very clinical and straight forward info. All she said was that she wanted me to read it. And i thumbed through it and said..."hey mom, I already know all this stuff". And she looked at me really puzzled and wanted to know how, when and where? I told her when I was in about 1rst or 2nd grade and learned it from all the older kids who had magazines with actual pictures of people having sex. (early porn stolen from fathers hiding spots). She was so embarassed.lol I told her it was Okay...but there was probably a few things I could tell her that she hadn't even heard of before and I was right as I found out much later when she admitted how little she knew or understood.
Thanks for trying anyway mom....I love you. lol
J
Zapp, interesting article.
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Zapp, interesting article. This eloquently states how I feel about myself after so many years of being sexually denied and deprived. My adhd husband never had a "normal" sex drive for a man, except in his late teen years when he told me he was normal back then. He's never told me what happened to change his drive and develop ED, but by the time I met him he had had ED for several years already. There is one physical aspect, which his mother never told him about, which was terrible of her. Our generation had mumps, measles, etc, and when he had the mumps it went to his testicles and caused atrophy and infertility. But, he was still able to function well as a young college guy. He told me he never had a BIG sex drive like other guys, but still had one. I think somewhere there was rejection from a girl that shamed him or something, because nothing else makes sense.
Anyway, when we got married, sex was okay but never great. The more he worked the less he wanted sex, (reaponsibility, etc.) He yearned for his carefree college days FOR YEARS, when he didnt have to worry about anyone but himself. I tried talking to him gently telling him some of my sexual needs and desires, with trying different stimulating visual things for him. (negligees, wine, other stuff) It rarely worked, and eventually we went to zero sex. He ends up having an affair, which hurt me to no end.
But, the years of NOT feeling desired by my husband, or wanted, or even being hugged or kissed did the most damage.
No, I no longer feel like an actual WOMAN any longer. I call myself a person. I do know where he got his view of wife/women, and that was from his mother. She did more damage to him than he will EVER admit, because she made him put her on an eternal pedestal without having had to DO anything to GET there.
I wasnt able to help him change that, but now I no longer care if he does. I care about his wellbeing, and hope he does well, but now I must do damage control on myself.