Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My friends all have DHs 44-48, and they’ve all lost their damn minds. Affairs, mental health crises, lost jobs, wanting to randomly move abroad, alcoholism, you name it and some guy has done it since turning 44/45.

Someone said this is biological and is male menopause. Seriously? If it can be explained that easily, why aren’t we medicating them to the gills the way we do for erectile dysfunction?

I really want to believe this is a biological thing that we can fix so families can be saved. I don’t want to think that most of my friends’ husbands have turned into irrevocable overnight disasters.

DH here: I think it’s generally circumstantial rather than biological, although low T is a meaningful factor for some. That is a stage of life where careers plateau, when you kind of run out of steam work-wise but are looking at needing to grind out another 20 years even so. For many, sex in their marriages has declined to a low ebb. There can be a lack of acknowledgement from one’s spouse about the sacrifices that have been made to provide economically, and many marriages seem to get trapped in the “who has given up more”/lack of affection/mutual recrimination spiral. It’s a time when the reality that you are basically trapped by the results of your prior choices and there is little to be done really bites. Rather than deal with these feelings constructively, some men just crash out instead. Obviously, that’s bad.

But there is no pill for “stuck in job I hate for jerk boss and need to do that for another 20 years to manage college bills.” What most of these men need is to lift weights and read Marcus Aurelius, but not everyone finds that. Religion would help many, too. At root, I think this is not a biological problem, it is a philosophical one. These men don’t need a pill; they need a philosopher or a priest.

Man here, age 50, this is a very accurate description. I have a successful job that I don't mind, but I can totally imagine the depression if I was stuck in a job I hated but felt obligated to do, all the while married to a woman I wasn't having sex with (I am "stuck" in a marriage that I am barely having sex in, and that alone, over time, can make a man question whether he can tolerate going the rest of his life without ever experiencing passion again - I am sure women feel similarly).

A lot of what women describe here about their andropause man is basically a man feeling like he is a victim. It's an ugly characteristic, and one that also is fueling political extremism (on both the left and right) but that's another topic!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My friends all have DHs 44-48, and they’ve all lost their damn minds. Affairs, mental health crises, lost jobs, wanting to randomly move abroad, alcoholism, you name it and some guy has done it since turning 44/45.

Someone said this is biological and is male menopause. Seriously? If it can be explained that easily, why aren’t we medicating them to the gills the way we do for erectile dysfunction?

I really want to believe this is a biological thing that we can fix so families can be saved. I don’t want to think that most of my friends’ husbands have turned into irrevocable overnight disasters.

DH here: I think it’s generally circumstantial rather than biological, although low T is a meaningful factor for some. That is a stage of life where careers plateau, when you kind of run out of steam work-wise but are looking at needing to grind out another 20 years even so. For many, sex in their marriages has declined to a low ebb. There can be a lack of acknowledgement from one’s spouse about the sacrifices that have been made to provide economically, and many marriages seem to get trapped in the “who has given up more”/lack of affection/mutual recrimination spiral. It’s a time when the reality that you are basically trapped by the results of your prior choices and there is little to be done really bites. Rather than deal with these feelings constructively, some men just crash out instead. Obviously, that’s bad.

But there is no pill for “stuck in job I hate for jerk boss and need to do that for another 20 years to manage college bills.” What most of these men need is to lift weights and read Marcus Aurelius, but not everyone finds that. Religion would help many, too. At root, I think this is not a biological problem, it is a philosophical one. These men don’t need a pill; they need a philosopher or a priest.

Man here, age 50, this is a very accurate description. I have a successful job that I don't mind, but I can totally imagine the depression if I was stuck in a job I hated but felt obligated to do, all the while married to a woman I wasn't having sex with (I am "stuck" in a marriage that I am barely having sex in, and that alone, over time, can make a man question whether he can tolerate going the rest of his life without ever experiencing passion again - I am sure women feel similarly).

A lot of what women describe here about their andropause man is basically a man feeling like he is a victim. It's an ugly characteristic, and one that also is fueling political extremism (on both the left and right) but that's another topic!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My friends all have DHs 44-48, and they’ve all lost their damn minds. Affairs, mental health crises, lost jobs, wanting to randomly move abroad, alcoholism, you name it and some guy has done it since turning 44/45.

Someone said this is biological and is male menopause. Seriously? If it can be explained that easily, why aren’t we medicating them to the gills the way we do for erectile dysfunction?

I really want to believe this is a biological thing that we can fix so families can be saved. I don’t want to think that most of my friends’ husbands have turned into irrevocable overnight disasters.

DH here: I think it’s generally circumstantial rather than biological, although low T is a meaningful factor for some. That is a stage of life where careers plateau, when you kind of run out of steam work-wise but are looking at needing to grind out another 20 years even so. For many, sex in their marriages has declined to a low ebb. There can be a lack of acknowledgement from one’s spouse about the sacrifices that have been made to provide economically, and many marriages seem to get trapped in the “who has given up more”/lack of affection/mutual recrimination spiral. It’s a time when the reality that you are basically trapped by the results of your prior choices and there is little to be done really bites. Rather than deal with these feelings constructively, some men just crash out instead. Obviously, that’s bad.

But there is no pill for “stuck in job I hate for jerk boss and need to do that for another 20 years to manage college bills.” What most of these men need is to lift weights and read Marcus Aurelius, but not everyone finds that. Religion would help many, too. At root, I think this is not a biological problem, it is a philosophical one. These men don’t need a pill; they need a philosopher or a priest.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, both andropause and blue balls are real. I’ve experienced both myself and blue balls almost made me go to the ER. Lol. In hindsight Inwonder if she did it on purpose.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question: for the men who behave this way (grumpy, hostile, leaving, personality change, etc) how many are moderate to heavy drinkers? Wondering if there is a correlation.

Mine doesn’t drink at all. He does take adhd medication. It makes him more grumpy and hostile but more functional, so I don’t know how to decide between the tradeoffs. Not that I have a choice.

I do think there are a lot of varieties of self-medication or actual medication going on and a lot of hormone imbalances, dopamine deficiencies, and depression.

I wonder about this and if DH has low testosterone. Starting HRT has been a game changer for me. I thought it would just be to address things like hot flashes, and was shocked at the difference it made in my overall mood. It makes me wonder if testosterone is the same for men. Men’s hormones don’t decline as precipitously as women’s, but there is still decline in the 50s. I wonder if this could be the root, or at least part of the problem.

I've been on TRT. There is a honeymoon period where your body adapts to the increase in T that affects mood, but over time you more or less regress to who you were before. There is only so much chemicals can do unless you're addressing or taking care of the things that truly make you happy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question: for the men who behave this way (grumpy, hostile, leaving, personality change, etc) how many are moderate to heavy drinkers? Wondering if there is a correlation.

I actually think there is another culprit — consumption of internet porn. This is not talked about very much openly and hasn’t even been mentioned at all in this thread but it is a very real issue.

I know this first hand as I was completely consumed by porn up until 2 years ago. And it fostered all of the traits being described in these posts. I had tons of resentment towards my wife because we weren’t having the type of sex that I was watching in porn (even though it was completely unrealistic and abusive in many instances because the women and men working in the industry come from broken backgrounds). Because I would stay up late at night watching porn, I wasn’t sleeping well and would be irritated in the morning. I would have porn “hangovers” that were just as nasty as anything I have seen with booze. There would also be times when my wife would ask me to do various things and I was in the middle of a porn binge and I would react in an awful way because I would rather watch porn than do whatever she was asking me to do. On top of all of that, I felt incredible shame and horror at what I was doing. I wanted to stop and tried stopping but nothing seemed to work. That only made me feel worse about myself and sent me into further spirals of despair, shame, and depression — none of which resulted in me treating my wife well.

Thankfully, I pulled out of it due to religion. It was the most unexpected development in my life. I thought I was locked in a prison and now I have freedom. My posture in my marriage has changed completely. I now eagerly try to find ways to serve my wife. I no longer harbor resentment towards my wife. I have developed realistic expectations towards sex. I don’t use other people as sexual objects for my own selfish gratification. I get a good nights rest and I don’t have horrible porn hangovers anymore. And I no longer loathe myself which has resulted in renewed self-esteem, self-respect, and confidence. My wife has noticed all of these things too.

To the person who posted and said that her husband left and is now hanging out at their second house — I can almost guarantee you he is watching porn there. Probably lots of it. He isn’t sitting around being a monk and contemplative about life. If he was, he wouldn’t be treating you this way.

We have conducted a massive social experiment over the last 25 years around porn — unfiltered access to the most hardcore porn imaginable. I feel like the results have completely messed up an entire generation of men. I feel so fortunate that I found a way out, but many men are suffering in silence and killing their marriages in the process.

Absolutely. My husband’s porn habit killed our marriage. It makes men so entitled to something they could never have and disconnected from their spouses. And it made me so repelled by him. It’s not just hurtful, it’s really unattractive. I can’t look at him the same way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question: for the men who behave this way (grumpy, hostile, leaving, personality change, etc) how many are moderate to heavy drinkers? Wondering if there is a correlation.

Mine doesn’t drink at all. He does take adhd medication. It makes him more grumpy and hostile but more functional, so I don’t know how to decide between the tradeoffs. Not that I have a choice.

I do think there are a lot of varieties of self-medication or actual medication going on and a lot of hormone imbalances, dopamine deficiencies, and depression.

I wonder about this and if DH has low testosterone. Starting HRT has been a game changer for me. I thought it would just be to address things like hot flashes, and was shocked at the difference it made in my overall mood. It makes me wonder if testosterone is the same for men. Men’s hormones don’t decline as precipitously as women’s, but there is still decline in the 50s. I wonder if this could be the root, or at least part of the problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question: for the men who behave this way (grumpy, hostile, leaving, personality change, etc) how many are moderate to heavy drinkers? Wondering if there is a correlation.

I actually think there is another culprit — consumption of internet porn. This is not talked about very much openly and hasn’t even been mentioned at all in this thread but it is a very real issue.

I know this first hand as I was completely consumed by porn up until 2 years ago. And it fostered all of the traits being described in these posts. I had tons of resentment towards my wife because we weren’t having the type of sex that I was watching in porn (even though it was completely unrealistic and abusive in many instances because the women and men working in the industry come from broken backgrounds). Because I would stay up late at night watching porn, I wasn’t sleeping well and would be irritated in the morning. I would have porn “hangovers” that were just as nasty as anything I have seen with booze. There would also be times when my wife would ask me to do various things and I was in the middle of a porn binge and I would react in an awful way because I would rather watch porn than do whatever she was asking me to do. On top of all of that, I felt incredible shame and horror at what I was doing. I wanted to stop and tried stopping but nothing seemed to work. That only made me feel worse about myself and sent me into further spirals of despair, shame, and depression — none of which resulted in me treating my wife well.

Thankfully, I pulled out of it due to religion. It was the most unexpected development in my life. I thought I was locked in a prison and now I have freedom. My posture in my marriage has changed completely. I now eagerly try to find ways to serve my wife. I no longer harbor resentment towards my wife. I have developed realistic expectations towards sex. I don’t use other people as sexual objects for my own selfish gratification. I get a good nights rest and I don’t have horrible porn hangovers anymore. And I no longer loathe myself which has resulted in renewed self-esteem, self-respect, and confidence. My wife has noticed all of these things too.

To the person who posted and said that her husband left and is now hanging out at their second house — I can almost guarantee you he is watching porn there. Probably lots of it. He isn’t sitting around being a monk and contemplative about life. If he was, he wouldn’t be treating you this way.

We have conducted a massive social experiment over the last 25 years around porn — unfiltered access to the most hardcore porn imaginable. I feel like the results have completely messed up an entire generation of men. I feel so fortunate that I found a way out, but many men are suffering in silence and killing their marriages in the process.

Uhh that is an extreme addiction right there. Most guys just watch a little here and there because their wives would rather listen to Kristin cavallari podcasts or whatever the hell than touch their husbands.

This is an extremely naive take about how many men are lost in porn. Porn web sites routinely rank as the most visited in the world every single month. What do you think is driving that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a dumb question, but with cell phones, how would you even know if your DH was consuming pornography? I suspect mine is but don’t know for sure. And I can’t imagine how I could ask that would result in an honest answer if he was consumed by porn.

Bit of a spinoff here, but I don’t think a little porn use is necessarily a bad thing or something that really needs to be discussed. I love my wife. We do it once a week or so which is totally fine. She likes to lie in bed scrolling through Instagram to relax before bed. I might rub one out on the couch downstairs while watching super vanilla porn. What’s the big deal? Life is busy and everyone is happy. It’s not like this is something we’d ever discuss, and I doubt she would really care so long as it’s discreet and the kids won’t find it, etc.

She can surf her instagram looking off to the side while you’re pounding away at her, and everyone would be even happier.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a dumb question, but with cell phones, how would you even know if your DH was consuming pornography? I suspect mine is but don’t know for sure. And I can’t imagine how I could ask that would result in an honest answer if he was consumed by porn.

Bit of a spinoff here, but I don’t think a little porn use is necessarily a bad thing or something that really needs to be discussed. I love my wife. We do it once a week or so which is totally fine. She likes to lie in bed scrolling through Instagram to relax before bed. I might rub one out on the couch downstairs while watching super vanilla porn. What’s the big deal? Life is busy and everyone is happy. It’s not like this is something we’d ever discuss, and I doubt she would really care so long as it’s discreet and the kids won’t find it, etc.