Ross and Robyn Brundrett are a married couple [could you guess that from the names?] and they wrote a column in the Sunday Herald some time ago, called "He says, She says".
The concept was good - take an issue and give the husband's and wife's perspective on it but the problem was that things got a little too willing. Below are their reactions to the time he had nasal surgery [sorry - I've searched but can't find it on the net].
First, his side of the issue:
If she goes down though, it's a different matter:
She says that when men are sick, women suffer the most. Men are wimps when it comes to any form of sickness:
I have one lady who comes to me and she is balancing a working career, an academic career, a dissertation for a doctorate, two children, one supportive husband and a young sister in her 20s who demands constant attention. In our hour together, the phone must ring at least eight times, wanting some issue solved.
I have enormous admiration for mothers and their toughness whilst maintaining their femininity and have had some good role models. So sorry - I shall not jump on the male bandwagon. I think the guy above must have given her some cause for the vehemence of her words and probably, as she said in another part of the article, milked the debilitation for what it was worth.
However, her reaction is unbelievable. How does she hope to hold onto her marriage with an "I'm the only martyr round here" attitude and that level of intolerance?
What we have here is the fundamental danger between husbands and wives. The wife married him because she felt he would be strong for her, would love and support her and so on. And so he should do - I have little time for weak men.
On the other hand, every human being needs softness in return, even a husband, especially as he married her partly for this aspect of their relationship.
As for him, perhaps he should pull his weight a bit more and not give her the ammunition to be able to say "ironing done, floor cleaned, house painted".
It's hard to know what to do. They're both so entrenched that it's the children who will suffer and each parent would blame the other. When will men and women accept that they are different species and have entirely incompatible aspects to their viewpoints, their mental sets?
And it only takes one side to start the rot.
The vultures will swoop and claim that this supports the modern notion of perpetual and damaging promiscuity in lieu of marriage but that's rubbish. Father, mother and children have been and always will be the only sustainable variant but the two sexes really must step back and take stock of all aspects of how they get on and where they're trying to go.
A first step might be to live within their means, remove the financial yoke of credit debt and to hell with their detractors for doing that. A man and a woman with mutual affection and a common goal for "us" can work near miracles together if they'll be tolerant of each other and the load is split pretty well 50/50.
The concept was good - take an issue and give the husband's and wife's perspective on it but the problem was that things got a little too willing. Below are their reactions to the time he had nasal surgery [sorry - I've searched but can't find it on the net].
First, his side of the issue:
"Oh, you poor thing". That's what my No. I daughter said. And workmates. Even strangers in the lift. Just about everyone. Except my wife. When I get sick, she has all the bedside charm of Maggie Thatcher. Someone remarked that it must have been painful. "No, no," she insisted, "childbirth is painful".
It's not as if she is a cruel or hard person, quite the opposite. She is the first to offer an ailing friend or relative some comfort. If one of our kids is sick she is Florence Nightingale, Put when I go down in a screaming heap, well I go down alone.
If she goes down though, it's a different matter:
I'm not saying we [men] are more caring, I'm just saying we are smart enough to realise that the quicker they are up and running the better for everybody. So we care for them as best we can - anything to get them off our couches as quickly as possible.
She says that when men are sick, women suffer the most. Men are wimps when it comes to any form of sickness:
He had a 24-hour bug the other day. Well it is a 24-hour bug in men, In women we have to get over it in 24 minutes. True! We don't have the luxury of lazing in bed for an entire day, pathetically whimpering for a drink, begging for something to eat, pleading for a form guide to read. For us, staying in bed when we are sick is not worth the effort.
So excuse me if I am not too patient when he is the patient. I am sympathetic, to a point, but I quickly tire of the moaning and groaning and that is just to get him out of bed. The sympathy in his fellow men, it was nothing short of amazing ... and when they heard that he had undergone this lifesaving surgery on his own - well the blokes were shocked.
The women understood that I did not know he was going to have such a deep incision, that the children had to be picked up, dinner prepared, ironing done, floor cleaned, house painted, so I could not be with him in his hour of need.
I have one lady who comes to me and she is balancing a working career, an academic career, a dissertation for a doctorate, two children, one supportive husband and a young sister in her 20s who demands constant attention. In our hour together, the phone must ring at least eight times, wanting some issue solved.
I have enormous admiration for mothers and their toughness whilst maintaining their femininity and have had some good role models. So sorry - I shall not jump on the male bandwagon. I think the guy above must have given her some cause for the vehemence of her words and probably, as she said in another part of the article, milked the debilitation for what it was worth.
However, her reaction is unbelievable. How does she hope to hold onto her marriage with an "I'm the only martyr round here" attitude and that level of intolerance?
What we have here is the fundamental danger between husbands and wives. The wife married him because she felt he would be strong for her, would love and support her and so on. And so he should do - I have little time for weak men.
On the other hand, every human being needs softness in return, even a husband, especially as he married her partly for this aspect of their relationship.
As for him, perhaps he should pull his weight a bit more and not give her the ammunition to be able to say "ironing done, floor cleaned, house painted".
It's hard to know what to do. They're both so entrenched that it's the children who will suffer and each parent would blame the other. When will men and women accept that they are different species and have entirely incompatible aspects to their viewpoints, their mental sets?
And it only takes one side to start the rot.
The vultures will swoop and claim that this supports the modern notion of perpetual and damaging promiscuity in lieu of marriage but that's rubbish. Father, mother and children have been and always will be the only sustainable variant but the two sexes really must step back and take stock of all aspects of how they get on and where they're trying to go.
A first step might be to live within their means, remove the financial yoke of credit debt and to hell with their detractors for doing that. A man and a woman with mutual affection and a common goal for "us" can work near miracles together if they'll be tolerant of each other and the load is split pretty well 50/50.
Oh, you could start me off here! First of all, Jill Tweedie, in "In the Name of Love" says that men behave like children when they are ill because they start off wanting to be like their mothers, then realise they have to be tough like their fathers and so the only chance they get to be "soft" is when they are ill, poor things. Now I am a right softie when a man I care about is ill - I go into full mothering mode, fuss, cuddle and make soup and stuff - and it has never done me any good at all. Women are probably "better" at carrying on through illness because we carry on through menstruation, the change and all the rest of it. [Oh, I do miss being able to blame a bad day on my hormones!] As for what is really going on in someone else's marriage, how can we know?
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