There's something missing there.
It's about manliness. We're talking about marriage. Those are two very, very different things, though they are not mutually exclusive. Hey, I just took a vacation that was all about manliness. I went to Indianapolis, the original cathedral of speed, gasoline and absurdly loud noise, and spent four days straight immersed in car racing, eating too much meat and generally behaving like that picture of me with the turkey leg (which was taken at Indy, BTW). I had a grand time.
Guess what? My wife didn't come along. Good thing, too.
How long would most guys stay married -- really -- if they behaved that way all the time at home?
A lasting marriage is all about subverting your own personality, wants and needs to a certain extent in service of the marriage. This goes for both man and wife.
It's just that we have to do it to a greater extent than our wives do. <ducking> Honey, put the frying pan DOWN, okay?
I realize the article wasn't about marriage, it was about manliness. The posting of that article was in response to the Pirates article, which basically says the same thing only in a more tasteful manner. I know that the EB Forum is NEVER guilty of derailing threads, so sorry about that...
I think the point here is that *both* sexes are tired of being pigeonholed into the roles that They in Society tell us to identify with. Frankly, I'm tired of the "oooh, better watch out, she's an 'Empowered Woman' and better duck when she has PMS" crap -- just as I'm sure all you men are tired of the "men need to suck it up and be emasculated every day in order to please women" crap. I'm actually tired of men NOT standing up and taking the reins of power and control when the time calls for it. More and more these days you see a blending of the interests and identities of women and men, which is a good thing. I think it enables us to better understand each other's personalities as first humans, then men/women, and then as the individual. However, as the article states, this doesn't mean that we should stifle these differences, but rather celebrate them -- and manage not to rub them in each other's faces.
I think that understanding the larger group of your husband's/wife's sexual identity as a male or female is a huge part of marriage. And so there is the full circle. It wasn't a complete derail after all...
