i believe it's true that behind every good man is a great woman. the value of a special wife is immeasurable. caring, trust and support from someone you love is quite powerful. when i was married i felt i had a great advantage, i had an inner strength many others unfortunately never experience.

sadly, in some ways, the nature of marriage is at basic at odds with itself. it's an emotional contract and a business contract. it's passion and practicality. the couple, ideally, emphasizes the emotional contract. the state regards marriage as more of a business contract. ultimately, marriage is a mixture and balance of desire and needs. i believe this is why marriage is so complex and divorce so wrenching. these two distinct interests become inextricably intertwined. if it were pure emotion, one could reconcile and rationalize unmet needs and expectations somehow. if it were just business, one could more easily dismiss an unsatisfactory deal. and just what is the acceptable threshold of disappointment in marriage? how much conditional love has to be recalled and disappointment has to occur before love withers? perhaps much of that centers around expectations.

the now-standard dual-career couple.
i believe this is one of the major, fundamental differences between genX'ers and boomers. the difference seems that boomer women had, as far as i have known, an option. they could make a career if they wanted, or they could go the traditional route of marrying "well" and not having to work.

for genX'ers, neither do the majority of women have those options, nor do a majority of men have the means to indulge the latter option if their wife even wanted. guys and women have always grown up just plain knowing that both the husband and the wife have to work. to atleast maintain, and hopefully surpass (unlikely), the standard of living we grew up with, there is no way around it.

so, when many of us educated, young folks were flowed out of the encouraging world of college into the discouraging climate of the 90's, and attempted to atleast live at the standards our folks once did, without any success, we got bummed.

if trust and love are the cement that bind the relationship, compromise is the grease in the gears. in a marriage we still have individual needs, but now need to meet those needs within in a partnered setting. on a plural level, there's give and take. there's compromise. on a singular level, well, just how far can you compromise before you've lost your entire self. and, as well, how much singularity can you maintain before you're being considered distant, unattached, uninvolved and unloving. it's hard to not to appear distant, unattached, uninvolved and unloving considering time required to maintain two professional careers (you both didn't each go deep in school-loan debt for nothing). with this academic / professional burden upon each, neither one of you feel you have far to bend on the issue of work. whose career takes precedence? it certainly is no longer his alone. what to do if one's career (that one has spent so much time, money and personal sacrifice to prepare for) begins to lead the marriage to the threshold of compromise for either or both spouses? whose wants or needs get suppressed now. is it his or hers? traditionally it was hers, but now it can be his, too. what if that expensive career leads to living apart in different cities? we know that long-distance dating relationships don't work. why would we think it works in marriage? how long will it be before you're being considered emotionally distant, unattached, uninvolved and unloving in a geographically-challenged marriage? in my opinion, if you're not living together - sharing all the small as well as the large aspects of life - you can't truly be emotionally together, either.

the masculine / feminine dynamics of our parents era are gone. for husbands and wives everything is out in the open now. today's marriages portend to operate on the no bullshit principle. men are required to be more emotionally acute and women are expected to be assertive. well, sorta. publicly we say so. but i sense that privately women still want strong, virile men and men still want soft, sweet women.

so, when it comes time to reconcile the balance of power in a relationship these days - how does that get done, effectively? the woman has made progress in assertiveness she now doesn't want to relinquish, and the sensitive man is now too thoughtful to be callously chauvinistic. (though, if he notices a beautiful woman, she says he's regressed [even though most women place importance on being attractive and would be disappointed if a man didn't notice them]. if she's being aggressive and shrewd, he says she's lost her femininity [even though - and some men would be wise to realize this - that in reality women do hold the most subtle control directly because of their facets of femininity] ).

not only is there inability to reconcile attitudes within each the man and the woman, but now mixed ideas become mixed even further in marriage. by no means am i pining for a return to traditional roles, i'm simply finding it intricate work to dovetail many of the current contradictory attitudes.

what i believe works best is respect. the simple, basic understanding and respect of our masculine and feminine differences. at this stage of the post-feminist game, men know what doesn't fly and what does. women also are far more self-assured about themselves and know what flies and what doesn't fly. loving acceptance can't happen when someone has even the slightest disrespect or contempt for the other's gender. i don't think misogyny nor misandry work at all - and if they're present, at even a low-grade burn in a marriage, the relationship simply won't work. any current of disrespect has lack of trust written all over it. and without the cement of trust, the marriage will fall apart.

so, why do women need men today? they really don't any longer. it seems to me that women have always been in charge of society -- sometimes in apparent ways, but always in subtle ways (from organizing social settings to meet men, to expressing their desire for marriage to the "met man", to controlling the couple's sex life, to raising the children, to giving emotional support to the husband) -- and while most "clueless" men mistakenly thought they were in charge of society, women collectively, quietly mocked men's naivite amongst themselves. in today's american culture women are finally where they wanted to be all along: openly in charge of the society. Women finally have autonomy: voting and legal power, advanced education degrees, full-fledged careers and command of their own finances, pregnancy and insemination options, and lessened stigmas about lesbianism. so why do women even want (or bother with) us men for marriage anymore? for company? (many marriages end because women say their feelings aren't understood; he doesn't understand her and she's lonely in her togetherness with her husband. or he's insensitive and "abusive" to her [constantly changing] feelings.) (women still have therapist(s) to understand their feelings.) for the money? (many women have their own educations and careers and enough money to be on their own now.) for the sex? (it's obvious nearly any woman could approach nearly any guy at any given moment and have all she needs -- and then leave.) (and with artificial insemination available why even bother with all that fuss, right?) so, i'm not sure. i guess i'm surprised most all women haven't yet simply formed a huge lesbian society with separate businesses, banks, shops, restaurants, schools, hospitals, etc. and walled off those of us with Y chromosomes. (perhaps this has already subtlety taken place in imperceptible, underground ways, and me being a guy, i'm just the last to know but will eventually find out in the next succeeding revolution, right?...)

what readers have said.