DH is a old fashioned male chauvanistic pig...but he is also kind, caring and a good father. How do I deal with this?

[oneplusone]

DH is generally a kind, caring, easygoing, reasonable kinda guy. He has had a lot to deal with due to me trying to sort myself out after a lot of buried and forgotten memories of childhood abuse were triggered for me after having my DC's. We are through the worst of it now and have somehow managed to stay together despite the nightmare that has been our lives over the last few years.

So he is a decent man at heart. BUT he has some extremely old fashioned and chauvanistic views which really bother me. Eg. If I get a bit aggressive during an argument he thinks it's not feminine. I do have anger management issues due to my childhood but even so, i all i ever do is sometimes shout a bit at him and fight my corner. He seems to think women are always all sweetness and light and never get angry and if they do it's not feminine.

The other thing that he said that has really annoyed me is that i mentioned a while ago that i would love to have my own room in the house, a bit like his office. We don't have the space anyway so i know it would never happen, but i think he is so lucky to have a really lovely office at the top of our house where he can go and read, watch tv, work, in peace and quiet, away from the DC's. I'm a SAHM so don't need an office as such, but i would in an idea world, love to have my own little room, where i could read and just get away from everyone for a while, get some peace and quite to do what i want. And he thinks again, that is not feminine! As if for some reason women don't need time and space for themselves.

I know where he gets his views from, his parents are very traditional, dad does NOTHING around the house, mum does it all etc. But DH is, I thought intelligent enough to realise he and I are not living in the 1950's, that times have changed and moved on and whilst I am not a career woman, i am happy mostly to be a fulll time SAHM, nor am i a 50's style housewife.

Am I the only one to be married to a relic from the 1950's, who at the same time works in developing the latest IT solutions for a living?

Hi Oneplusone,

I had a few questions that you might want to think about.

"He equates "feminine" with "not contradicting a man" or "not having a point of view" or at least, not having a point of view he has to take account of..." YES

So he doesn't think he has to take account of your point of view. But he is not the judge and jury about your point of view, you don't need him to validate it for you. You know your point of view is valid, just as much as his is. So what if he says you are unfeminine? And why does he have the sole right in dictating what is feminine and what is not?

What happens when he says this to you? Do you feel belittled? Do you back down and stop fighting your corner? Do you think it is just a distraction he uses to get you to do just that? If so, what would happen if you just ignored it? If you don't argue and don't engage with this argument about whether shouting is unfeminine or not, and just keep on with whatever you were shouting about- which is the real issue.

"I think he is a decent man...as long as he gets his own way." TOTALLY

So what happens when he doesn't? Does he always get his own way?

"Perhaps he is scared you might develop a personality that doesn't pander to him." DEFINATELY SCARED

So he is scared that he might not get his way all the time. Again, what happens when he doesn't? Is his behaviour so bad that you can't live with it and have to give in? Or is it a bit unpleasant but something you feel able to stand your ground about?

"the view that somehow women are totally defined by their availability to do things for their family" THAT'S HIM AGAIN

But that is his view, not yours. You can reject his definition of you. Easier said than done when you love and respect the person that is defining you, but if you let him define you then you lose your sense of self and can become a shell of a person, totally dependent on someone else for your sense of self. Try and be clear in yourself that this is only his opinion, it is not fact. Only you know who you really are and what you're really like.

When you start to realise that the man you thought was great actually has dubious views about women, needs to put you down because you are threatening these views, and therefore his authority to impose his views as the truth, needs to get his own way all the time and spits the dummy out when he doesn't, thinks he is better than you and can't even entertain your point of view, then it is very difficult to retain respect for him, however kind and caring he might be.

It sounds like this might be the problem for you? And also for him, I imagine that he would find it very difficult to comprehend that you might have lost respect for him, because I'm sure he sees your respect for him as a given, based on his gender and role, rather than about how he conducts himself.

Ah, you see...I worked in engineering, then IT for the last 20 years and as jobs they are a tad male dominated and I think, as a strident independent female, that I have clashed with this type of man SO MANY TIMES.

I can recognise these men just from emails now, I'm afraid they are of a type. And they are in IT becasue they like conrolling stuff and a computer always does as it is told and never ever challenges them or answers tham back or makes them think at all and certainly never challenges them on an emotional level. A lot of socially and emotionally challenged men are in IT becuase it is a profession where emotional intelligence is not a requirement and you can get away with very little "face to face" stuff due to emails and instant messaging.

From my long experience of these types they tend to suffer from a complete fear of emotion, and thus women, who of course, are a bit emotional and therefore, in their eyes, incomprehensible and scary. They are also the type who just want to "fix" you, so any issue is your problem, and, if it does not affect them, it is totally incomprehensible to them, empathy not being their strong point.

Whenever I have worked with such men I have just been direct and to the point, don't plead, or cajole or ask nicely, just plain statements: "I am doing X, you need to do Y", "to accomplish this you need to X".
Amazingly, my standard "that's a load of rubbish" statement which I often use in meetings does actually work as they are so shocked they go away like little baa-lambs.

I once worked for a man like this, and the only answer was to leave and get another job as he wanted to completely control my work life which drove me nuts.

Thus the advice I can give you is: take emotion out of the equation as much as possible.
Write down a chart of all the household stuff and how much (in %) you do compared to him. Present it to him as something that needs to be solved, sort of together, but possibly his bright idea first (ego soothing). This sort of problem approach will appeal to his managing nature.

If he has changed since he was promoted it is probably because he has moved into a different set of cultural norms. My company next layer up is very male dominated and I have refused promotion as I don't want that kind of hassle (I am disabled now, I think if I did not have this condition I would have gone for it).

As soon as the "unfeminine" word appears, challenge him in a quiet way. Ask what this means. How is he being masculine to your feminine? Practise not shouting, but saying things calmly like "and how did you decide that?" and "in what way?" when he starts stating his views.

I think he does have deep rooted fear and anxiety which has manifested in very set views. Going outside these views will whizz right out of his comfort zone, so he probably won't be able to have very long talks to begin with.

His mindset will also be strange to you...I remember the most sexist bloke ever in the engineering lab, he referred to one of the women as "it" for instance but if he started on me I told him to get stuffed. One day, after a year or so, he said "you are ok" and so I said "but you hate women" and he replied "you are not a woman, you are a honorary man". This was the only way he could acknowledge his having a woman as a friend, and maddeningly illogical though this view was, it was the way he coped with liking me when his "world view" was that "all women are pains in the arse" (which he said often).

Another way to deal with men like this is make them think it's their idea, even though it is yours. Although I'm too direct to use this technique my friend (a secretary) did it to her boss for years. This way she was never a threat to his ego (which was huge).

Also, it has to be small steps and an evolution rather than revolution approach. He will have to shift how he thinks which is hard work, and he has to acknowledge his behaviour is contributing to the situation and it is not all your "fault". His knee jerk reaction to you getting upset will be "what is wrong with her?", he won't consider that he would have contributed to your unhappiness.

And yes, stand your ground, quietly and calmly and just grind him down with logic and reasoning. At the moment you live in your house, but he is acting like a visitor, and he will need time to work through that.

hottiebear, thank you for your very thought provoking post. As always, with me, the problems always go a lot deeper than it first appears. I have realised that his comments about me lacking femininity in DH's eyes, because of the way I go about doing certain things, actually tapped into a deep insecurity I have had for years. It originates in childhood and my abusive father. Because of him, and his incessant verbal attacks on me since i was a young child, I know I became outwardly very tough and aggressive with a 'don't care, nothing can hurt me' demeanour. Unfortunately, this childhood survival mechanism became ingrained, I became that tough, aggressive person in situations where i felt under threat, when actually it's not the real me at all, i had to become that person in order to defend myself against my dad.

I continued that type of behaviour with DH almost without realising as it was so ingrained in me and I realise now that it is because of this type of behaviour that DH has felt I do not act in a feminine way in certain situations. For many years whilst growing up I used to notice at an almost subconscious level, that I was different from other girls and that people treated me differently from my friends. Not in an obvious way, as I looked like any other girl and i tried to act like a typical girl, but deep down inside i could see that somehow i was different. All those years I had no idea why or even how I was different but i realise now that because of my abusive father and the tough outer shell i had developed to protect myself from his aggression and abuse, i was giving off a 'keep your distance' vibe to other people, and without realising it, i think i came across as prickly, tough and aggressive to other people, ie probably like a tough young teenage boy. My dress sense even became boyish as opposed to girly.

So, in my long winded way, i guess I am saying that when DH pointed out that I came across as unfeminine ie masculine in some ways, he tapped into a deep seated, long insecurity i had always had about myself, without realising. If I was completely secure in myself, about who i was and my feminity, i doubt if any comments by DH or anybody else would affect me so much.

All of the above is one of the issues i have with DH. But the others, eg. about him thinking i should not have an opinion that contradicts his or if i have i should not voice it, relate to his insecurities I imagine.

miggsie, thank you for your post and i have actually started using your line "That's a load of rubbish" to DH when i think it is warranted and like you said, it seems to work like magic! He is stopped in his tracks and even he is not silly enough to try and press his point as he knows himself it is a load of rubbish. The difference is that before i had worked on myself, i simply did not have the confidence in myself and my own opinions to dare to tell DH that what he was putting forward was rubbish but I am gaining in self confidence all the time and it is manifesting in my ability to now tell DH when i think he is talking a load of rubbish.

I never thought when i started this thread that this issue would be so deep rooted, but i should have known really, as all my other issues of whatever nature seem to originate in my problem childhood.