{"id":705,"date":"2014-05-12T00:02:30","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T05:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=705"},"modified":"2026-01-01T22:16:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:16:49","slug":"content-guy-who-doesnt-want-be-typical-guy-some-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=705","title":{"rendered":"The Guy Who Doesn’t Want to Be a “Typical Guy” (but in Some Ways _Is_)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For anyone<\/em> who knows me well, it will probably come as no surprise that I was quite<\/em> relieved when I came up with a reason why this whole situation is (mostly) my fault<\/em>. For those of you who don’t<\/em> know me well and, yet, are still interested, I hope by the time you finish reading this “book”, you’ll have a general idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I had a bit of a “self-revelation” this evening, and ever since then, I’ve felt Calm\u2122.\u00a0\ud83d\ude09\u00a0You see, I’ve been\u00a0fooling myself<\/em>\u00a0for a long time now. As a result, I’ve been (unintentionally) misleading others along the way. There are probably a number of my good friends who will read this post, shrug their shoulders, and think, “I\u00a0knew<\/em>\u00a0that already.” Well,\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0didn’t. However, now that I think more about it, it makes\u00a0perfect<\/em>\u00a0sense. To get to the point, the simplest way I know of to say it is that\u00a0I am<\/em> a feminist<\/a>, but I\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0have\u00a0a lot\u00a0<\/em>more “stereotypical Southern male” preferences and habits than most male feminists have. I’ve mentioned this several times publicly during my recovery, but I don’t think I realized just how far it went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, when I think about a married male feminist, my picture is of a guy who splits the household chores pretty evenly with his wife. I think about someone who doesn’t require much in the way of “stereotypically female” comfort and reassurance. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true of me. I think one of the reasons Amy and I got along so well is that we were both raised in very<\/em> traditional Southern environments by very<\/em> traditional Southern parents, but we both rejected the “Southern marriage playbook”. It turns out, though, that I (without even being aware of it) soaked up a lot<\/em> of those behaviors, preferences, and habits. In many ways, I was “talking the talk”, but I wasn’t “walking the walk.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, there were some<\/em> things I did quite well. It’s not that I was a full “typical Southern husband”. Also, I really think the main reason I’m just now figuring all this out is that Amy<\/em> soaked up a lot of that “playbook” from her<\/em> family. As a result, both of us “fell back” into the habits with which we were familiar. For all I know, though, Amy was quietly resenting<\/em> that for all those years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel like I need to say something here. It wouldn’t be at all<\/em> unusual for someone, like me, who has suffered a TBI<\/a>, to experience a personality shift that includes a thing like this. However, despite what she claimed<\/a>, I don’t think my basic personality<\/em> has changed much at all (permanently). I truly<\/em> believe that everything she believes is a personality change is either something that will continue to improve as I recover, or<\/em> it’s something that I wasn’t willing<\/em> to do, because I wasn’t feeling the comfort from her to which I had become accustomed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had to really think hard<\/em> about how to write that last sentence. I have no wish to “paint” that as a deficiency on her part. Actually, that’s a big<\/em> part of my “self-revelation”. I think it probably would<\/em> be considered a deficiency for a wife who had “signed up” to follow the “Southern marriage playbook”. Amy didn’t, though, and I neither asked nor consciously expected her to do so. However, I think my “unconscious conditioning” had taught me to expect things that most<\/em> feminist husbands wouldn’t<\/em> expect from their wives. In the months I was in the hospital and rehab clinic (combined with the ill will created by the circumstances around my wreck), I think she had become no longer willing to “humor” my expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I have developed a somewhat unusual combination of feminist basic beliefs and a few “typical Southern male” preferences and habits. Though they are<\/em> few, they’re deeply enough ingrained that I really don’t know how successful I’ll be at getting rid of them. I’m also absolutely<\/em> not willing to go “full Southern male” and go against most things I believe about the rights of women (and also<\/em> give up polyamory). However, I’m really beginning to think that my current particular combination might alienate basically all<\/em> women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For anyone who knows me well, it will probably come as no surprise that I was quite relieved when I came up with a reason why this whole situation is (mostly) my fault. For those of you who don’t know me well and, yet, are still interested, I hope by the time you finish reading this “book”, you’ll have a general idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,2,25],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amy","tag-deep-thoughts","tag-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1807,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}