To think my H is being an asshole for saying...

[tellmesomethingtrue]

that he'd like me to dress my age, or younger, and not wear old lady clothes that no man would find attractive?

I'm 41.

I do see what you are saying but at what point does it become more about dressing to save your marriage, rather than dressing to feel sexy or for your partner to get their kicks? I think there is much more going on behind the scenes.

Hmmm, well you could tell him that you’d like him to stop dressing like a grandad and I’m sure that’ll get his back up as his personal sense of style no doubt is second to none! 😂
More seriously though, if he wants to ‘fix your marriage’ he needs to stop being so superficial and start looking inwards. His comments sound to me to be deliberately trying to undermine you and make you feel like you are the problem rather than be any genuine and mature attempt to think about your marriage and the future.
All the best.

I mean, if there weren' such people, our lives would be so much poorer, n'est pas?
How else would we know that other people aren't bitchy if we didn't have such benchmarks?
Hope you have a great day! You've made me smile!

Well, this thread went off on a bit of a tangent didn't it? 😬

Anyway, back to the original question - while I do agree in principle that everyone should be able to dress however they choose, I also think that part of being in an adult relationship is being honest and being able to speak up when you don't like something.

OP - have you always dressed a certain way and he's just deciding to be a dick, or, being honest, have you changed your style and he's just trying to say he doesn't like it? The former is one thing but I don't think the latter is as bad as people are making it out to be.

I'll be honest, if my DH started going around in tracksuits or decided he wanted a mullet, I wouldn't find him anywhere near as attractive - just as I wouldn't find it too appealing if he stopped showering or he decided to grow a beard. As much as MN may try and deny it, appearance matters and I do think part of being in a long term relationship is considering your partner - that doesn't mean never wearing what you like, of course, but if you're making a drastic change to your appearance or dress sense, they're not necessarily always going to like it.

Like someone said upthread, loving someone doesn't necessarily mean finding them attractive. There are lots of threads on here from women whose husbands have put on loads of weight and they're struggling to find them attractive - I'm not sure a change in personal style is much different, really.

I think it’s perfectly normal for spouses to dress in ways that makes them feel good and also makes them attractive to their spouse? We all want to feel attractive to our spouses, surely.

But it sounds from OP that this marriage is long dead in the water and there is massive and unhappy history to this comment, which was not kindly meant. The ‘even dress younger than your age’ bit was telling.

I was literally thinking this. If my husband started dressing as you say, I’d be having a conversation. This doesn’t mean he has to dress for the female gaze. I also think it is important in a relationship to be able to articulate if you find something unattractive. However it should be done kindly.

only the op knows how she presents herself and if there is an element of truth in this, or if he’s jush being an arsehole.

And you are exactly right. I wonder how he thinks 41 year olds should dress? I've got a nasty feeling that it involves a lot of discomfort. How does he dress?

Well firstly, yes I probably would use polite terms like ‘I prefer’ and not tell him he was unattractive to the entire female population.

Secondly, I appreciate the bald thing wasn’t a great example but my point was that everyone’s appearance is going to change over the years no matter how much effort we put in to stop it. Technically wrinkles are preventable but would you still have the same opinion if the DH was berating his wife for not using Botox and face lifts? The OPs sense of style is part of her personality and in some ways she can’t help that either.

I do think it’s important to make an effort and if the DH was just using a bit of gentle encouragement to get his wife out of joggers 24/7 I’d have no issue with it. Or if it was one particular dress that he didn’t like. But it sounds to me like he’s just trying to hurt and belittle her.

You know misandry isn't a thing.

You've buggered yourself by using that term.

You just don't get it. You keep talking about 'projection', I'd ask you to actually quote some 'Projection'.

As @Missionimprobable said, You've used some really objectionable terms here.

I have to ask why you are here?

There are plenty of men on MN, so you're not outlier you possibly believe yourself to be. And men are quite welcome in 'these parts' as long as they're here to learn, not tell. You seem desperate to tell.

You know that no-one wants your opinion. Your opinion is bad, you're not cool or helpful.

You're just a terribly boring bloke, of which there are many.

Did you have an Internet epiphany where you thought that the women of the world would just be much better if they heard your childish and reductive views?

Is that what happened? Or did you always feel that your outdated views were important simply because you are a man?

I'm interested because you came here on the attack. I don't rock up to tyre sub-reddits to give them the benefit of my knowledge because I can drive a car.

Men are welcom-ish here. If you came here to learn. Good.

If you come here to 'teach' bad.

As women, we all know how important appearance is. We know the effect certain outfits will have when we walk into a room - be it in the workplace or socially. It also affects how we are perceived by sexual partners.

Is the point of this thread to vent and have your husband spoken about badly as you felt slighted by his comment? Or for help to fix the issues of communication and attraction in your marriage?

As we have no context, we can only do the former.

Yes, his wording was poor but conducting this exercise over text would lead to these context-free misunderstandings. Try having this conversation in person.

So you can what, back him up?!

She’s not asking a bunch of internet randos to judge her dress sense, she’s asking whether it’s reasonable for her husband to say what he did. It doesn’t just ‘sound nasty’, it’s obviously calculated to be nasty and deeply hurtful.

What he actually sounds like is a wanker.

He sounds just like my ex who married me when I was 25 and then seemed disappointed 3 kids later, when I become 40. It's bizzare.

You clearly don’t like each other. What is keeping you together?

I hate the ageism of "old lady style". Just like I had the phrase "acting like lovestruck teenagers" to describe the very normal first stage of falling in love in a relationship that happens across the ages. Age is nothing to do with it. Wear what you like at all ages as an adult!

But unfortunately as MN shows us lots of people not just men perpetuate this misogynistic crap.

I would guess it's his mid life crises that he's realised that he's now 15 years older.

Doesn’t sound great, what are his redeeming qualities - if any?

Yeah, this marriage is clearly dead. Have a face to face conversation about divorce.

You were asking each other what you want for the future via text?
I think there are bigger problems here than what you wear.

You dressing younger ‘as his wife’ is his vision for your shared future? Ugh, he’s a shallow, misogynistic dick. Sorry OP.

I think it makes it worse that he did this over text.

He wrote it and read it first before he sent it or wrote it and sent it, either way he doesn’t seem concerned on how OP would feel about it and that it would hurt her.

Anyhoo @tellmesomethingtrue he's obviously a dick, I do apologise for taking your thread off point.

Your husband is an arse.

Any man that questioned what I wore would immediately be put on the 'Fuck off' list.

I'm not an adjunct, I'm a person with my own thoughts and feelings.

The only time it would be ok is if it was a symptom of depression or unhappiness, so if I started to dress very differently in a non-self-care way & my husband said 'Are you ok Liberty?'.

Anything else is not about love.

Quite.

Sick of these men subjecting us to their relentless rants and making the whole thread about them and what they think they're entitled to. The entire thread has become about him rather than the OP.

If you had asked 'what do you think of how I dress?" I can understand wanting to be honest , bur there are better ways of saying it. And it isn't what was asked

I remember one of my exes, lovely bloke but very old-fashioned, asked me what I was going to wear in the bedroom for him. I asked him.what he was going to wear for me😁

How the lady chooses to dress is completely irrelevant, if a relationship is healthy and normal, she will look good in a bin liner. The type of comment made by him shows a complete lack of masculinity and confidence, in other words a petty school boy bully.