"My Peter Pan husband is growing up at last"

What always strikes me first about these men (and call me shallow, I don't mind) is how deeply, incredibly sexually unattractive they are.

How can anyone want to actually go to bed with a man who can't function as an adult, let alone be together with them long enough to have children with them? How can any grown-up woman find that sexually attractive? The very fact that he couldn't be responsible, would just render him sexually repulsive to me - I imagine men like this as being too incompetent to put their underpants on properly and with skid marks because they can't wipe their own arses properly. I'm always astonished that other women can summon up enough desire for these incompetents, for them to ever get a shag. (OK I know they may not have skid marks in reality, but it's just the image of them being so bloody stupid that they can't function as grown adults. It's so bloody unmanly. Who fancies that FGS?)

I don't want to put all the blame for my actions at the door of genetics, but I do think that the way men and women are wired has a lot to answer for.

Stupid as well as selfish. What a catch.

Thinking a guy is magically going to transform when you get married/have kids strikes me as incredibly naive. Did they live together beforehand? Surely she knew what kind of person he was.

"... I do think that the way men and women are wired has a lot to answer for" This is the sort of thing that is not good for my blood pressure.

Confucius says you are answerable to your own actions when you are 30 (paraphrasing ). Stop making excuses.

So glad it wasn't just me who found it infuriating. Those poor children, with that doormat of a mother and childish twat of a father. Did you notice his input into the article? "I don't want to put all the blame for my actions at the door of genetics, but I do think that the way men and women are wired has a lot to answer for." How pathetic.

I agree rosabud. In denial there.

Not sure about the animosity towards the wife. It is her husband who is behaving appallingly. She has levels of cognitive dissonance and underreacts to her husbands mindblowing selfishness. But that's not unusual in an abusive relationship such as this. She on the other hand is coping with working and three young children virtually single-handedly.

Mind you she should never have taken him back once she'd chucked him out. I suspect if she'd asked MN for help at that point she wouldn't have!

This article made me RAGE. The fucking knobbers deserve each other. Shame for the children though.

it was horrifying. Felt like grabbing her and saying 'have some self-respect!'

I read this article and hated it for all the reasons already metioned. However, there is another aspect to this story which I also noticed and that is the fact that the husband's drinking was clearly very important to him. The fact that he seems to have a serious alcohol problem which is being dismissed as "Peter Pan" antics means that the whole family is living in denial, that help for that particular problem will not be sought and, ultimately, nothing in their domestic set-up will really change. Another example of partriarchal attitudes to men and women's responsibility roles leading to harm for the man in the situation too.

Stereotyping is so bloody infuriating, isn't it? Excusing bad behaviour by gender, attributing good behaviour by gender (once someone thanked me for pouring a cup of tea, saying that it's because I'm a mum - she should count her lucky stars that social conditioning had stopped me bashing her over the head and pouring tea all over her). Both are incitement to kick people really hard on the shins (and other parts).

Oh it was AWFUL! He made a conscious decision to have those children, so no amount of bollocks about being trapped fits. My DP is fun-loving and care-free but he never disappears without a phone call leaving me to look after children alone.

The way his behaviour is portrayed as some kind of joke really got to me. Why make light of this sort of behaviour, it just implies that its ok to wank about for ten years while your wife patiently waits for you...and at the end of it she says it was worth the wait. Fuck that. Infuriating.

This man's behaviour had nothing to do with 'being young' or a bit of a Peter Pan.

He wasn't fun loving or spontaneous, or any other description attempted to santise.

He was just a selfish prick who didn't care about his wife and children. End of...

I hate this normalising of men running away from their family life - DH doesn't do it, and my own father didn't do it either. It is far from natural and inevitable.

Lisa's husband sounds unsufferably selfish and unreliable, and the fact that they were only together for three months before getting married is quite telling. Over-committing too quickly is a classic red flag.

My dh came to find me to see if I'd read it and we were both incredulous that anyone would live like that and publicise the fact in the newspaper. We both commented on the bit where she throws him out and later finds out he was just a selfish wanker, not a selfish, cheating wanker. Because that's on then

I'd have packed his bags years ago.

Re: the MF article, I think that's why these pseudo-brain science business do so much damage. Justifying this sort of nonsense. One of my favourite scientific findings in Delusions of Gender is where it was discovered that men (and women) become pretty empathetic when they get paid for it. They can do it when they want to.

From the let toys be toys fb page: www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/08/05/3816216.htm

So glad I wasn't alone in finding this article depressing. I just wondered why, after her husband was such a gimboid around the birth of their first child, she went on to have more with him. Stupid article.

Also, what is Mariella Frostrup smoking? What adult women write such things? Has she been bodysnatched?

I found the article depressing and infuriating in equal measure.

I cannot bear the Men are Overgrown Boys, Women are Mean Shrews bollocks.

Just look at this piece of crap film poster: www.femalefirst.co.uk/blog/2013/05/grown-ups-2-poster-17779/

I pass it on my way to work and seethe.

Unfortunately I think she is serious uptoapoint how utterly depressing and disappointing of MF.
The husband in the first article was and undoubtably still is a total prick, she should have left him long ago.

Bling I can't work out if Mariella Frostup is serious about the male/female gaze/ability to focus/juggle etc in that article you link to. Is she??