<p>“NSM - you do have a way of taking what I write (and of many posters) and try to twist it and make yourself appear holier than thou”</p>
<p>I don’t know why you had to make a personal attack, something I certainly wasn’t doing.</p>
<p>I don’t believe in raising girls to do what I was taught to do (and what probably most moms here were taught to do): sit by and passively/manipulatively wait to somehow attract male attention. I think it’s silly, a waste of time and leads to females being overly dependent on men and also being miserable when the women could be assertive and create the situations that they want.</p>
<p>I think it’s fine for women to ask men to dance and for dates. I have never put down any girls who have asked my shy younger son for dates. There’s a big difference between asking a guy to dance or out for a date and aggressively being on the prowl for sex partners, something that I found off putting no matter whether the aggressive person is male or female.</p>
<p>“In most households, many men would still like to think they are in charge. But most wifes I know get exactly what they want, and have their husbands believe it’s their idea in the first place. Call it manipulative, but I call it a marriage.”</p>
<p>Fine for people who like that kind of arrangement. It’s not what I want, and I’d happiy choose to be single if the kind of arrangement that you describe were my only choice.</p>
<p>In my marriage of 30 years, neither H nor I is in charge. I’ve never played the game of having H think that everything I want is his idea. I don’t see the point of doing that, and I wouldn’t want to be with a man whom I needed to manipulate in that way. I hope that my sons don’t end up with women like that because I hope my sons believe that marriage is basically an equal partnership, not one in which anyone has to feel in charge and the other has to hide her needs.</p>
<p>"You could insist on living in the “should be” world or you could try to deal with “what is.” </p>
<p>I’ve been married for 30 years, and have been in a relationship with my husband for 34 years. Most of my married friends are in marriages that seem fairly equal. I don’t have friends in real life who talk about doing things so that their husbands feel in charge. The last time I had such an in person conversation was more than 40 years ago, when I was a teen and my mother and her friend were talking about how the friend used sex to get her husband to give her a trip. She called it “legal prostitution,” and my mother seemed to think that was a great idea. My silent response was that sounded like the kind of marriage that I didn’t want to have, and I have stayed true to that belief.</p>
<p>"I am a fairly senior female manager at my firm. I didn’t get here by always fighting people head on, or complaining about different inequalities. Sometimes, you just need to go with the flow to get what you want. "</p>
<p>We aren’t talking about fighting people head on. We’re talking about a girl not going to prom because she has been sitting back waiting to be asked, and she apparently also isn’t wiling to go with female friends, something that is done in many places even in the place where I live, which is in a very traditional part of the country.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I did fine in the corporate (including at a Fortune 500 company) and military world without complaining about inequalities or fighting people head on.</p>