He has the choice to say yes or no, which he obviously chose to say no and didn't go with the female. There is no predator here, as it's the spouse that chooses to go or not. If she trusts him and knows him, she should have nothing to worry about.

Hmmm maybe it's different for some, but smash n grap usually implies theft of property.... Oh wait, I get it. Men (Husbands) are in fact nothing but utilities.... equipment so....

Silly me.

TMOTS

Yup - a husband is simply an accessory. Like a handbag.

This is a very interesting and well-written article, & thanks zuberi for sharing it. It is a nice treat to get to read a piece of good solid writing, and this is by far not the first piece posted here on AM written by a woman looking on in dignified incredulity at some trait they see in other women. These can be very informative, and not always for what they are about, but the viewpoint they take.

Two main impressions stay with me on a first reading:

a) that the larger environment the author comments on is still a rather contained microcosm, made largely of acquaintances and associates, people in a more business-oriented and less family-oriented social and moral climate. A predictable outlook of people in this life is that it is all that remains of civilization, as if the remainder of the species - whose economic and family circumstances are vastly different from their own - were somehow less descriptive of modern human behavior than a small cadre of middle-class office workers and professionals who attend dinner parties.

b) how the author's comments suggest a kind of slippery slope in that setting into the values seen in lifestyles such as in southern California in the 50s and 60s, the constant divorcing, the wife-swapping and swinging, the wild parties, as if these so-called predatory women were a sort of vanguard to a licentiousness straining to burst into the open and take over the scene. Even if the author's own circles are not as wild as all that, there is obviously fertile soil there for at least the shock and comic value of pushing sexual etiquette and propriety to their limits. Here the threat is described as one where women's claim on men is weakened by the actions of other women, and the notion that the threat is on the increase.

Each of these influences on the author's perspective obscures an element common to all the stories she shares: that it is a man's sexuality under discussion as being targeted, that the situation is his to deal with, his motives his own to determine, the decisions his to make. Coming from a female voice the arena entered by this article is indeed, as others have already commented here, a place where men are a wife's property to be protected and troubled over. She seems to miss entirely, not so much in disrespect as mere oblivion, the imposition, the dilemma, the indignity, the affront to a man himself committed by such conduct, nor does she appear to calculate in the idea that a man may know just exactly how to handle these situations and she need not worry at all. This isn't her dog being fed under the table or her cattle being rustled in the night, this is a grown man who has chosen to devote himself to their union and he may well barely even notice the little trollop she is so obsessing over.

As an unhappily married man for fifteen years, eschewing adultery had little to do with my wife herself or any claim she held over me; it was my own integrity and the strength of my word on the line, making resisting any number of overtures and opportunities easy. Other, single men would be astonished when I didn't even notice various women trying moves on me, my attention in that realm being essentially unavailable. Yes, it cost me, and yes, that marriage ended in time, but not over my inability to remain faithful to it. I think it was how thoroughly my ex misunderstood that element of my commitment and declined to reciprocate it that led to the final breakdown. She, not trusting me for childhood reasons when I was worthy of it, decided to seize control by betraying my trust in a way that left me powerless, and the bond was broken.

I wonder how many of the women mentioned in the article as so put-upon, so outraged, so troubled for the future of western society, are utterly clueless about a man who found it insulting that she even needed to mention what was to him an annoying non-incident, and now she and all her girlfriends are texting and twittering and sharing, and publishing, about encroachments on their property they seem to find as titillating as offensive, if not more so.

To sharpen it to a point: just who is in breach of a trust here? Is it the cougar with a snootful and a low-cut blouse and a cat waiting at home? Is it the guy who loves his wife and kids trying not to humiliate the poor creature in public with a drink in his hand and everyone watching? Or the wives and girlfriends who, by expanding the pitiable aggressive flirtations of lonely women into both a personal affront to themselves and a full-scale threat to an institution that comfortably appoints them as the owners of men, raise dust-clouds of gossip and moral outrage for no good reason?

Quote from dinohip51

As an unhappily married man for fifteen years, eschewing adultery had little to do with my wife herself or any claim she held over me; it was my own integrity and the strength of my word on the line, making resisting any number of overtures and opportunities easy. Other, single men would be astonished when I didn't even notice various women trying moves on me, my attention in that realm being essentially unavailable. Yes, it cost me, and yes, that marriage ended in time, but not over my inability to remain faithful to it. I think it was how thoroughly my ex misunderstood that element of my commitment and declined to reciprocate it that led to the final breakdown. She, not trusting me for childhood reasons when I was worthy of it, decided to seize control by betraying my trust in a way that left me powerless, and the bond was broken.

I wonder how many of the women mentioned in the article as so put-upon, so outraged, so troubled for the future of western society, are utterly clueless about a man who found it insulting that she even needed to mention what was to him an annoying non-incident, and now all her girlfriends are texting and twittering and sharing, and publishing, about encroachments on their property they seem to find as titillating as offensive, if not more so.

To sharpen it to a point: where is the breach of trust here? Is it the cougar with a snootful and a low-cut blouse and a cat waiting at home? Is it the guy who loves his wife and kids trying not to offend the poor creature in public with a drink in his hand and everyone watching? Or the women later, raising dust-clouds of gossip and moral outrage for no good reason?

Dino, Your comments are always well written. Thumbs up to you.

I think this bit here has a lot more wisdom and knowledge than what is actually written in words. As your story shows, women are powerful - able to topple a family on a whim - and men are strong - able to ignore everyone but what's theirs.

To sharpen it to a point: where is the breach of trust here? Is it the cougar with a snootful and a low-cut blouse and a cat waiting at home? Is it the guy who loves his wife and kids trying not to offend the poor creature in public with a drink in his hand and everyone watching? Or the women later, raising dust-clouds of gossip and moral outrage for no good reason?

Good point Dinohip.

The article is well-written, as are your own posts. I agree with Floaty on that score.

IMHO, the most astute paragraph in your post was:

Each of these influences on the author's perspective obscures an element common to all the stories she shares: that it is a man's sexuality under discussion as being targeted, that the situation is his to deal with, his motives his own to determine, the decisions his to make. Coming from a female voice the arena entered by this article is indeed, as others have already commented here, a place where men are a wife's property to be protected and troubled over. She seems to miss entirely, not so much in disrespect as mere oblivion, the imposition, the dilemma, the indignity, the affront to a man himself committed by such conduct, nor does she appear to calculate in the idea that a man may know just exactly how to handle these situations and she need not worry at all. This isn't her dog being fed under the table or her cattle being rustled in the night, this is a grown man who has chosen to devote himself to their union and he may well barely even notice the little trollop she is so obsessing over.

Women are oblivious to how men think. His sense of honour is an alien concept to her. She assumes that he will always be vulnerable to advances from other women. Since she successfully duped him into a one-sided contract, she must assume that other women can do the same.

There are situations where men get so tired of being a pawn in women's games that they walk away from all of them.
In chess the king can only move one square. In real life he can find another game.

For me this brings into view a much bigger picture between the genders, and an area of imbalance in at least my own small field of observation, that being an apparent assumption on the part of many women, especially married and even more so mothers of sons, that they know all they need to know about men, that we can be led around by the hard cock and pickpocketed along the way, that we indeed can't help ourselves in the presence of available and attractive women, that they essentially remove us from the bazaar or the bachelor wilderness in which they purchased or captured us and lay their own proprietary claim on us, having little to do with what each of our intentions were in being a spouse, that we as fathers are unequivocally their assistant parents, at best junior partners or seconds-in-command, at worst (usually in the person of her mother) serfs and near-eunuchs in matters of child-raising.

What little they do know, misleading them into this kind of approach to men, is such a small portion of a man's own identity and views and morality that it is as the earth to the sun. How we interact with others, get things done, our strengths and weaknesses, the things we will and won't discuss, our tastes and irritants and fears, our ways and means with the opposite sex, each has a reason and roots in our own life, most of which even our own mothers know nothing about, and a role held out by one woman - with obscure complexities of her own - wherein we obey and comply and provide and never notice what or whom she would have us not see, is no place for a man. No wonder so few live up to the place of husband very well. What man who is any kind of a man could, when serving the woman's whims and judgments and shifting desires and childhood fears is at the heart of what is expected of us?

This dinner-party thing just puts it under glass for all to see, but domesticated animals do misbehave, and one wonders why they don't stop trying to own us, and why married men don't earn and show and claim for themselves the respect they need to live as men, and watch what happens when a free man loves a woman who trusts him.