MEN how to destroy your marriage!

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This is a spin off to a link to a post in the womens forum, on an article on how women destroy their marriages. I thought I'd write an equivalent one for men..

Above is the advice for women, and below it I have the equivalent for the men.

"1. Nag your husband."
1. Don't talk through problems with your wife.


"2. Disparage him in public."
2. Disparage her in private.

"3. Keep him on a short leash."
3. Demand to know where she's going and with who and why she took so long at wherever it was she went.

"4. Be a drama queen."
4. Not talk to her.

"5. Hate his friends."
5. Hate her sister (unless she does too)

"6. Hate his hobbies."
6. Be insensitive to her concerns.

"7. Cut him off sexually."
7. Cut her off emotionally.

"8. Get your parents and/or siblings involved in your marriage."
8. Refuse to go to marriage counseling

"9. Never apologize."
9. Never apologize

"10. Look bugly (butt ugly)."
10. Be boring

Wait we have to be sensitive to her concerns? But then... does that mean we actually have to listen to her concerns and not just nod and pretend?

Sit at home and pretend not to notice while she cheats. Chicks dig a cuckold.



'Cause everybody knows every successful marriage that lasts a lifetime has been counseled, nurtured and 'fixed' by a disinterested third party, in exchange for money.

And no troubled wife has ever cheated on her husband and dumped him for that 'sensitive' Marriage Counselor who [seemingly] listened to her point of view.


Fastest way of all for someone with AS to destroy a marriage: Get married.

Just like everything else; there is no set of rules you can apply to every situation.

There is a womens forum? Why? And Chronos, I thought you were male?
I am really starting to not be able to tell males from females here.. except the really obvious ones
I kind of like it.

I have no husband, and I never would..
but this could be interesting..

Above is the advice for women, and below it I have the equivalent for the men.


"4. Be a drama queen." <--- read that soo wrong

"5. Hate his friends." <-- probably really like them..
5. Hate her sister (unless she does too) :p No family

"6. Hate his hobbies." <-- umm ok.. what if mine are the same?


"7. Cut him off sexually." <-- ... not bloody likely.. might as well cut of my fapping hand as well..

7. Cut her off emotionally. <-- go right ahead, they are NOT the same thing

"8. Get your parents and/or siblings involved in your marriage." <-- NONE


"9. Never apologize." <-- I apologise but it is programmed into me..


"10. Look bugly (butt ugly)." <-- fugly? or just bugly?



ok yea,,..

good thing this is a joke.
others were.. not so funny..

My thoughts on marriage counseling:

My wife and I actually DO have a wonderful relationship--sickeningly so, in fact. But sometimes, being married looks more like a job than a relationship. We talk often about how things are going in her workplace. They have this new guy who is just not catching on to the job, doesn't follow instructions, and so on. Get's a LOT of things right, but the few problems that exist are terribly annoying to someone else. So they've made comments to him on what and how to improve his work. Things got better for a week or so, and then it was back to status quo. The next thing that happened was after my wife tried to help him with something, he as much TOLD her (my wife, you might say, is a "senior" worker in that office) that HIS way works better. The boss found this unacceptable and called him into her office. Early the next week, a "staff meeting" was called to address "problems" in the office.

Now, if I had been the employer and things were not going well, at this point I'd start making things as difficult as possible so hopefully he'd leave on his own and we wouldn't have to go through the firing process. When it gets to the point that the targeted employee is buried too far in his work to possibly recover, I'd ask him to meet me in my office and we'd have a little chat about whether he is TRULY happy working in my office, after which I'd make some recommendations as to where he should go from there. I MIGHT give him another three or four weeks if he insists on staying with me, but he'd get his walking papers after that, with maybe another month or so to make new occupational arrangements. I have a feeling something like this will eventually happen at that office.

What's my point?

Marriage counseling is kinda like that penultimate conversation. If you make it as far as marriage counseling, it's already too late. It's only the next step before someone talks to a lawyer about "irreconcilable differences." Marriage counseling favors the woman in a relationship, and I suspect it exists that way by design. It's like taking a trip to the school principal's office. You aren't there to plead your case; you've already been found guilty.

Marriage counseling also puts unfair demands on the husband to be someone he's not. It ignores the fact that we have feelings, too, and that we are equally deserving of validation. And if it is apparent that the wife isn't truly interested in actually saving the marriage but only self-righteous, indignant, exclusive validation, the husband needs to take the initiative in the race to the attorney's office.

Personally, I'm all about preserving a marriage, and I do tend to be somewhat harsh in my attitude about this. As a husband, I'd fight so hard in divorce proceedings I'd have my wife buried in paperwork for the next 50 years (if that's what it took) until she had a change of heart. Where I live, we have alienation of affection laws, so if she were cheating on me and I had proof of it, I'd let her know that I'm prepared to make her AND her boyfriend completely miserable if I had to. And if there was nothing left to do but let go, so be it, but I don't believe in ever giving up as long as there are options.

But, yeah, if marriage counseling ever comes up, RUN.

I was less than two months away from marrying a girl once, and it got to the point that I was absolutely miserable with her and really couldn't hide that fact any more, no matter how much I loved her. She started reading the writing on the wall and begged me to go with her to a "relationship" counselor. I only went because she wanted me to, but I pretty much had my mind made up by that point, anyway. Lucky me, I was the one doing all the leaving that time, and it was the FIRST and ONLY time I ever really had the upper hand in our relationship! So trust me, I know what I'm talking about here. You should never NEED to resort to relationship counseling. The last thing on someone's mind seeking counseling is not to fix the relationship; it's to fix YOU.

I suppose there are some successes with it, but like any talk-therapy, it's hit-or-miss and our mileages vary. We tried it for 2 years - then got divorced, so it totally failed, in that sense.

A hot tip for selecting a marriage counsellor: go with the one who gives you a guarantee of "your money back if your marriage fails".


I'm intrigued as to why you think that. Not that I necessarily disagree. Somewhere in my memory, I recall reading that counselling in general has a much better success rate with women than men. Middle class white women, to be more precise. Not surprising as most counsellors seem to be middle class white women.

The question I ask myself these days is "why get married anyway?". What's the point? Does food taste nicer and the sun shine brighter when you are married? Nope. Do people lie and cheat less in marriage? Hmmm...almost certainly not. The only advantages seem to be financial, tax breaks etc

Yeah, this is a curious statement. I've never been, so I don't really know, but I'm interested in hearing your reasons, too.

I know a couple who need to get some kind of help but it's both of them, maybe more the wife actually, who have caused a lot of problems in the relationship. I know he'd go to counseling if she'd be willing.

And that part about burying your wife under paperwork if she wanted a divorce seems profoundly destructive on an emotional level. If my husband did that to me it would turn into the War of the Roses - any feelings I may have had left would be obliterated by that point. There's no way I could ever trust a man who valued his attachment to the idea of marriage more than our true happiness. If my SO doesn't want to be with me anymore I don't want them around - the relationship is over at that point.

It is not so much that either sets of advice apply in every situation, but that in a relationship, one must make an effort to attempt to understand how their partner perceives things, and be sensitive to their needs. This can be difficult for NT's to do, and it's all the more difficult for many with AS.

If a woman nags her husband relentlessly, it's likely a response to her perception of a lack of communication on his part. But she does not perceive herself as nagging and he does not perceive his communication methods as lacking.

It is a big problem in relationships that many people just don't attempt to "put themselves in their partner's shoes" and ask "What is it that's causing this person to act this way?" Many individuals focus too much on who's right and who's wrong rather than acknowledging the feelings and views of the other individual because they cannot differentiate between acknowledging and understanding, and agreeing with the individual.

In the example above on nagging, the man may think he communicates fine and the woman just doesn't listen and so concludes that the problem is not his and it's hers. The woman may think that the man intentionally keeps information from her such as input, or does not care about the things he should care about, and so concludes the problem is his.

But the above is not a thought process conductive to a healthy relationship.

The man should acknowledge that even though he thinks his communication method is sufficient, to his wife or girlfriend it is not. He needs to give some thought about what she perceives is lacking about it and why, and perhaps even ask her what he needs to do to communicate more clearly too her.

The woman needs to explorer the option that the man simply copes with situations differently than she does, and perhaps instead of nagging, ask him direct questions which will aid her in understanding his behavior, explicitly stating to him that she is just trying to understand what she needs to do to accommodate him, and she needs to trust his replies.

It is about thinking of the other person and not one's self.


If most marriage counselors are biased towards the woman, it's likely because the counseling itself, as another poster pointed out, is usually initiated by the woman and men are frequently more hesitant to be involved in the counselor selection process.


Surya: My thought process does not conform to gender norms and my physical sex is a poor indicator of my likes, dislikes, and thought processes.

One is more apt for form a more accurate idea of who I am as a person online rather than in person.

Though for those of you who need something more concrete to base your concept of me on, you might imagine me as a somewhat effeminate gay man in a not overly effeminate female body.

this is why i don't date

War of the Roses? I say bring it on!! !

In all seriousness, it has more to do with the way people's values change over time. If you try to follow the Bible, then you'll notice the importance of keeping oaths you make at all costs. You don't want to make a promise you can't keep. It's better, if marriage really is such a flimsy institution, to just stay out of it. However, that raises moral questions which are better handled THROUGH marriage. I mean, you're going to lose something either way, so the best decision is one that gives you all the pleasures of life within a committed monogamous relationship without raising the moral question. What you DON'T want to do is put yourself at risk with someone you can't stand to be with.

Marriage, to me, is making at least ONE promise and following through on it--for life. I can say without a doubt if my wife left me tomorrow and took the kids, I would never be with another woman, EVER. I wouldn't want to. I'd have no reason to. SHE'S the one I married, SHE'S the only one I want. SHE'S the one that gave me the two most beautiful children in the world. My life can't get MORE complete, and falling in love and being with someone else, in my view, simply introduces a flaw into an already perfect picture. Thus marriage is a HUGE responsibility and must be made to work, no matter what happens.

And this works perfectly if both people agree. For us, marriage is unconditional; there are no "terms" which nullify the agreement. There is no shame whatsoever in holding someone responsible for keeping a sacred promise.

The value, as I see it, has shifted in this day and age from holding a person to the promises they make to ensuring that personal happiness be fulfilled. It's self-centered. My wife and I don't "owe" each other "happiness." We aren't always happy shiny people, it's not always the other person's fault, and there's not always something the other person even CAN do. Sometimes I just want to be by myself. Sometimes my wife needs to lock herself in the bedroom and let ME handle the screaming kids. The promise has nothing to do with happiness, and we don't stress ourselves out over trying to work the impossible. Happiness cannot be guaranteed because no two people are exactly alike and circumstances don't always deliver a person's "best interests." Companionship CAN be guaranteed without regard to cost to one person or the other. Such partnerships are worthy of honor and protection, and we guard each other against possible threats to our relationship--such as friends who dislike one of us and don't hesitate to say so, "friends" of the opposite sex moving in on our "territory." We try to avoid all factors that may pose a negative influence on our relationship together. Sometimes the kinds of honest things we have to say to each other may not be what the other person wants to hear, but it's better to sacrifice momentary personal happiness to preserve unity, the joy of companionship that supersedes any personal demands.

Keep the promise, and those things which REALLY matter will follow.

The girl I almost married had more the attitude that it was my job to attend to all HER needs without regard to my own. I really loved her and tried tirelessly to make it work. Without getting into details, I came to the realization that she just wasn't a happy person, and being with me or not had no bearing on her attitude. I'd gotten so many empty promises that "when we do this" or "when we do that," I would be able to change and it wouldn't matter anymore. Well, each step that led us close to getting married only seemed to make things WORSE, and I finally had to admit to myself that there was no way I could marry a person that required MY attention for her own personal happiness. She couldn't be happy with me or without me, so I made a tough decision and cut my losses. The part that I really couldn't handle was the way she brought all our private business out in public, making me look like an idiot in front of her friends AND mine. I refused to spend the rest of my life being told I was wrong about EVERYTHING and being constantly embarrassed. It had nothing to do with how much we loved each other. We'd just reached that point at which love simply wasn't enough.

Don't let anyone fool you into believing that what you think of as love is enough. It's NOT. It's how willing you are to wake up every day for the rest of your life and decide that day that, no matter what, you WILL love that person next to you. If you have no doubts that the person you want to be with is the one you want even on their worst day, and even if EVERY day is their worst day, you're ready to get married. I believe love is an action. The only way you "fall out of love" is through your unwillingness to love. It takes work to do, and most people take the ease with which this can be done at time for granted.

My relationship now is one in which we constantly build each other up. I'm not saying we NEVER have problems, but we don't have to live with the kinds of insecurities and the insults of our previous relationships. The total commitment makes a lot of the tough issues of our marriage relatively easy. But now that we are in it, we are both willing to fight, no matter what it takes, to maintain it.

The idea that someone would be emotionally obliterated from being buried with paperwork in a divorce battle is predicated on the idea that it is each person's PERSONAL happiness that is most important. We have this idea that if we love someone, we necessarily wish them happiness and would show our love for them by letting them go. The problem is that what makes one happy is not always what is BEST. I say a husband who doesn't care will "just let it go." This is a horrible trap for a husband because it places the woman's happiness above his. In other words, why should I care about YOUR happiness if you don't care about mine? But of course, any "good" husband is just supposed to make any and all sacrifices for his wife's personal happiness, even if it means leaving her. I made my promise never to leave my wife, and I'm willing to do everything within my rights and power to stay with her. If she's tired of being "emotionally obliterated," then she can just come home. I'll sleep on my couch or in my car for a day or two so she doesn't have to look at me and then we can start talking about how to make it work. There are ALWAYS roads to reconciliation. It just depends on how willing BOTH partners are to see through their own selfish desires and work together for the good of keeping the marriage partnership intact. Simply put: If you make a promise, KEEP IT.

Maybe I don't get it but why would you want to encourage the destruction of marriages? Divorce rates are high enough as it is. Us aspies have enough trouble getting a date, let alone marriage. So why would we want to destroy that? D:

This may seem contradictory to my first response, but I place VERY high value on marriage. I left my first fiance because I knew that I'd be committing myself to her exclusively forever, and I was starting to see things that really frightened me when considering the long-term effects of it.

Speaking strictly as a MAN, I'm highly suspect of so-called marriage counselors. Here's what I DON'T object to: Seeking spiritual or secular relational counseling as a way to strengthen a relationship. Think of it like going to a GP for a yearly physical. Or meeting with a personal trainer at the YMCA. Marriages DO need checkups from time to time, which you don't necessarily NEED a third party for, but I do recognize that it can be helpful. You need to stay in shape in marriage. Third parties can be objective and point out flaws that neither of you are aware of, in which case (hopefully) the third party is being honest and not prone to some ideological agenda (I don't personally think, say, a feminist would be the right person for this kind of thing). This kind of counseling can be beneficial.

Where it goes wrong is when you have a situation in which the wife fails to see where, for example, she might be responsible for certain conflicts. The wife in this situation doesn't go to a counselor because she's really seeking an answer. She's going so she can be told that she's right and the husband is wrong. This is NOT a good way to maintain a relationship. Any husband with any amount of brains will see right through that ploy. It's the last stop on the line before you, as the husband, get thrown from the train. If things in our house really got to be so bad, even through I've tried everything and things just keep sliding down the toilet, I wouldn't trust my wife one bit if she brought up counseling.

Here's a thought I just had: It MIGHT work out if she brought up counseling and I requested she allow me to choose the counselor. That way, counseling is a mutual decision and less likely to be a trap. But if she refuses and says we can ONLY see her counselor, I know to go ahead and start packing my bags. I'd suggest that maybe, as a man, you can beat her to the punch by being the first to bring it up, but then again you have to be willing to put a lot of faith in your wife that she's not going to pick someone she knows will take her side. Willingness to take great personal risk at great personal expense shows a great amount of faith in the partner, and I think that is a good first step to reconciliation.

Now, if the relationship is already strong and things are working extremely well, mutually agreed counseling is PERFECT to keep the relationship from becoming stagnant. That means that counseling is done to enhance the relationship, not resulting from nor contributing to a conflict. But it's something BOTH parties have to be in complete agreement on.

Um...I'm a girl. So I would be the wife in this case. This may be going over my head because I've never had a boyfriend longer than 2 months so would have never thought this far ahead. I need to focus on becoming attractive enough to even keep a boyfriend for right now. XD

Chronos: It was not so much as see, but hear. When I was younger, I was told to 'hear' the peoples voices and how they fluctuate and change during conversations, in books that I read - so I still do it when I read, including forum post, but doesn't help much; I still really suck at telling if something was funny or not etc