Women trying to change men

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m not talking here about “don’t get in bar fights” or “stop hitting on my friends” or other jerk-like things.

I’m talking about women who make a campaign, overt or not, to get their boyfriend/husband to stop liking Clint Eastwood movies, watching football with his buddies, slinging the children around so they squeal, browsing car parts catalogs, staring at Dodge Vipers with a glazed look, cranking Van Halen in house occasionally, lamenting the trading of Mike Piazza five years after the fact, and not really caring what color the flowers are on the china.

If you wanted this, why did you date men? Go find some sort of woman-with-a-penis or something. I realize that there are guys who don’t care about any of these things, but if you’re so insistent about your guy not caring, why did you date him to begin with?

My girlfriend and I have a saying: “Then you should have dated a girl (or man, if she’s saying it)”.

2

It’s not exclusive to women. My best friend of the last 20+ years married a man a year ago after dating for 8 years, and now he complains about exactly the things that attracted him to her all that time ago.

3

She’s impressed with me as I am, and doesn’t have any plans for changing me.

That said, I’ve had girls try and change me in the past. None of them lasted very long.

4

Ramoth tried for a time to get me to stop wearing camoflage. I wouldn’t hear of it. It came down to the arguement that she knew before we were dating that I liked wearing it, and she started dating me anyway. She’s learned to deal with it.
That arguement works on a lot of things, and it works both ways, too! So she can get you to shut up about things that you don’t even realise you’re doing! :smiley: At least, it worked when she was training me…

5

I’m always amazed at the number of people who are surprised to learn that the person they are with is exactly the person they knew they were marrying.

6

The thing I’d want to change first about you is your rampaging sexism & gender-stereotyping…

7

The OP indicates that his GF says the same thing to men who complain that they can’t change the women in their lives.

Sua

8

Sua, I’m aware of that aspect, but it also stereotypes women as:
[ul]
[li]hating sports[/li][li]only interested in the colour of the flowers on the china & other such frivolities[/li][li]hating action movies[/li][li]not seeing any reason why a hunk of metal that is sex on wheeels with good torque and handling is any different from a boring run-around to safely take the kids to school in[/li][li]never having any possible interest in mechanics/tech stuff[/li][li]not liking Metal or any other loud music[/li][li]never rough housing with kids[/li][/ul]
Speaking personally as someone who admittedly likes personal rather than team sports (climbing, scuba diving, mountaineering), wouldn’t even consider having flowers on my china no matter what colour they were, loves action/sf/horror edgy type movies, loves fast, well designed cars that are drop dead gorgeous to look at as well as being well engineered & beautifully, effectively designed, is interested in technology & tackles DIY etc without worrying about breaking my precious fingernails, loves metal & similar music styles (including Van Halen, but they’re not my favourite) and wouldn’t rough house with kids because she really, really does not like children and never wants to have any, I am offended by the OP.

Yes, newsflash, I know not all women are like me. I’m damn glad they’re not. But they are also not some shallow stereotype as was presented in the OP.

9

My wife pretty much changed me, from stem to stern. I’m better for it.

My advice is just be whatever your wife wants. It’s so much better that way.

10

Yikes, Scylla’s been assimilated !

That’s what it’s all about, Ladies. Manipulation ain’t manipulation if you see it coming! Why do I feel like I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs…

“Yes dear, I’d love to go the Mall with you for five hours on the pretext of (ten minutes) shopping for cool computer add-ons”

Get outa here! :smiley:

11

A female friend and I (also female) were discussing this… but what we were asking is “Who are all these women who are trying to change their men??” Because, perhaps we run with an enlightened crowd or somethng (snort), but the women of my acquaintence don’t seem to try this.

On the other hand I HAVE had a boyfriend who was always trying to change me (Why can’t you: be more tidy, dress more femininely, shave your legs, lose weight (still steamed over that!! I weighed 120 lbs at the time!) etc. etc. etc.) Its &^$#@! annoying, let me tell you.

12

The other day Mr. Jarbaby and I started laughing because we were watching a sitcom of some sort where the wife would not let her husband sit and watch a football game because she wanted to go antiquing.

After i threw up, Mr. Jar and I clinked beer bottles and I said,

“five weeks and we’ll be up at 10:00 am to watch football until 11:00 pm…drinking beer and eating chicken wings.”

and he said,

“that’s why I love you baby.”

jarbaby

13

Fair enough, fierra, I concede the point.

Sua

14

Allow me to quote myself:

“I’m talking about women who…”

Not all women. Geez. Let’s try to pay attention.

15

But there is a difference in trying to change your man so he doesn’t throw up on his shoes in public and trying to convince him he doesn’t really like Sunday afternoon football.

16

Would you like me to show you where you made your mistake?

(Bolding mine) When you speak of something like this as though it is a female-only trait, you’re gonna run yourself into trouble around these parts. Don’t think I’m some knee-jerk feminist or anything, but as I and others pointed out, men do it too. Saying “…people who…” would likely have gotten a ton of sympathetic responses instead of argument.

17

Also, saying to your wife “Well, then, you shouldn’t have married me” instead of “Well then, you shouldn’t have married a man!” would also have made me much more sympathetic to your complaint.

Say it together people:

Any difference between genders is dwarfed to insignifigance by the degree of difference within genders.

18

Fierra–right on!

It’s not a man/woman thing, so much as a compatible vs. incompatible interest thing.

Using some of your examples:

Dishes: My husband was as interested in our china and flatware as I was. He loves to cook and eat and entertain even more than I do, and so he cares about the stuff he uses. In fact, he was rather distressed when salespeople only addressed me while shopping, or made snide remarks about me “dragging him along.” He quickly set the salespeople straight. Anyway, we got (non-flowered) dishes and flatware that we both love and enjoy using. We had a compatible interest in china patterns.

Sports: I love baseball. My husband doesn’t. He gets frustrated when I hang out and watch games on TV and don’t pay any attention to him. He doesn’t like it when he wants to watch something and a game is on, and so I leave him in the living room and watch the game on the TV in the basement. He would rather us watch something together. He is bored when I try to talk to him about baseball:
“Yippee, the Mets traded Jerk Wendell!”
“Great. Did you feed Spot yet?”
He enjoys going to games with me, but he doesn’t really care about major league ball. This is an incompatible interest–much like many couples have. In our case, the genders are reversed.

Music: When we first met, we had overlapping, but different tastes in music. I was a classic rock girl with special interest in blues, zydeco, and a lot of non-mainstream rock. He was a metal/hairband lover. So, we influenced each other. I had always liked AC/DC, but now I count them among my most favorite bands. He had never even heard of John Hiatt, and now he’s a huge fan. There is still stuff that he likes that I won’t listen to and there is stuff of mine that he is still not interested in, but we became much more compatible in this area–not because we were “trying to change” each other, but because we learned from each other.

Maybe the women (and men) in question need to accept that in any mature and healthy relationship, both parties will have some incompatible interests, and that this is okay.

Maybe the men (and women) in question need to realize that their partner may not, in fact, be trying to change them, but rather trying to share an interest.

Dave Swaney: If you truly believe that men act this one way and women act this other, maybe you need to widen your circle of friends.

19

Exactamundo! And I am a knee-jerk femininst. So there.

20

It probably would have gotten more sympathy, but it would be a sentence that belonged in an entirely different OP. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Dave has never had a problem with one of his boyfriends trying to change his ways. So he made the title of the thread “Women trying to change men,” and further limited it in his post by clarifying which women he was discussing. Interpreting this as “rampaging sexism”, as fierra did, seems a bit overdramatic to me.