Theme: How to minimize the effect when wife convinces herself that husband loves his job more than her!
The subject calls Ben Franklin to mind. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In spite of how women wish it, a woman can’t be a man’s ONLY love. She can prevent anguish and pain by extinguishing that expectation. She can prevent rather than cure self-inflicted wounds. It helps if she better understands the male nature as explained here.
A couple’s common interest splits over their different prime motivators. He seeks to satisfy his yearning for self-admiration, which crowns his desire to be significant. It’s the male nature in action. Self-admiration comes mostly from competing with and achievement among men. Some men compete with themselves such as more diligently doing a good job just for personal satisfaction. Many others find satisfaction working around the home such as yard care, repairing things, or upgrading the house.
A woman’s prime motivator urges her to satisfy her need for self-importance, which crowns her desire to live better with people. When he’s present, she feels important. When he’s absent, her sense of importance goes down, while his self-admiration goes up by tackling his goals elsewhere. Consequently, she can’t be his only love because he has two.
Husband’s first love is his work. Life in the workaday world came before wife, so work has first-born status and obligations. Whether at the job or something else that provides opportunity, such as competing with sports buddies, he seeks self-admiration through work and competition with self or other men. The greater his need and opportunity to satisfy that yearning away from home, the more likely he spends time away from her. He doesn’t love her less; but he may love something else better when she doesn’t urgently need him at home.
If not first, his second love is for HIS woman, the one he ‘owns’ and to whom he’s devoted. Unless she’s sick or otherwise justifies absence from his job, his normal providing and protecting enables her to do without his constant presence. Also, his work much more effectively makes him feel good about himself. So, he tends to favor it. (You can imagine how wife’s nagging, unpleasantness, and needless worry tend to enlarge the attraction of outside interests and magnify husband’s competitive spirit outside the home.)
He earns little or no self-admiration in her presence if she pushes him to achieve goals that he didn’t set or finds fault with what he accomplishes. If she mostly sets the goals for him to achieve, he has much less opportunity for self-admiration at home.
(When faced with wife’s accusations that his job comes before her, a man’s instinctive reaction is proving her wrong. So, he makes love to her. He achieves sexual satisfaction, which in his mind proves that she comes first. Admittedly, some men may do it disingenuously but it’s contrary to their nature.)
Without his first love of accomplishing goals, a man is ill equipped to provide and protect for himself much less wife and family. It’s the power behind producing, providing, protecting, and problem solving. WADWMUFGAO. We all do what makes us feel good about ourselves, and a man’s work plays a major and often critical role.
Nevertheless, when women sense they are unloved by their man, they often blame his job. She can’t be his one and only love and perhaps not his first. It’s his nature more than her.
NOTE: Men do have a primary weakness. It’s the subject of post 1834.
