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• Monday, February 6, 2006 10:04 AM

  Women-bashing isn't the answer.

  Once again, the letters column is filled with people who are pushing their own personal agenda about the topic. You don't even know this woman, but you assume the worst out of her.

  Maybe she is intentionally manipulating him. I don't know. There's really not enough information there to say.

  Now here's my agenda: I've been in one or two relationships where I've been accused of "withholding sex." (I've also been in one or two relationships wherein *I* was always the sexual aggressor, so don't go painting the picture with such broad strokes, creepos.) And in every case the man was doing a LOT OF HIS OWN MANIPULATING. Men think it's a game, and I suspect that's half the LW's problem in the first place, because marriage and partnership is not a game. By the LW's own description he obviously believes himself to be either winning or losing. If he's "won" then he is not beholden to her. And if she's "won" then she's the partner with the golden prize, meaning she's still the one with the vagina. That's awful and I'm sure it makes his wife feel swell to be reduced to that equation. It sounds like he's not trying to engage her or her feelings. He's just trying to MANAGE the situation. Well, nobody wants to be MANAGED. We want our full humanity engaged.

  And, again, it's hard to say because we don't have all the facts. But I wouldn't assume that the husband is blameless. Why would you want to keep having sex with someone who you feel is manipulating you anyhow? If that's how he really feels then that makes him complicit in what basically amounts to prostitution, by his own description. So why is everybody feeling so sad for him?

  —drinkwater
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