Men and Women Shouldn't Live Together
The woman I’ve been seeing for almost a year and I were sat next to each other in a corner booth at one of my favorite local spots.
It was a mellow Saturday evening, with the atmosphere winding down after the busy weekend dinner rush.
“I want us to have a life together!”, she protested.
“I want to know that we are working towards building something, not just “hanging out”.”
I watched her intently for a moment, without speaking.
I bent forward to take another bite of my entree. I chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed.
“We have a life together”, I said calmly. I rested my fork on the table and leaned back.
“We make dinner together.
We go on trips.
We have sex, walk the dogs,
…we do everything together.”
She was insistent.
“I want to LIVE with you. I want to be your girlfriend…”. I watched her face flush red, and her soft eyes well up with tears.
She was pulling at my sympathy, but I held firm.
As I learned in high school Latin, the words of Cato:
“Struit insidias lacrimis cum feminia plorat”
or,
“When a woman weeps, she is setting traps with her tears.”
(Write that down.)
“We’re lovers.” I explained.
“I want us to be excited to see each other.
You’re talking about playing house, arguing about laundry, and yelling about leaving the toilet seat up.”
I held eye contact to make my point, “I don’t want that".
My date blinked to hold back tears, biting her lip.
She barely said a word as we finished our meal.
I Don’t Ever Want to Live With A Woman
I care about this woman, so of course I didn’t like seeing her upset.
However, I also understand that monogamous relationships do not work.
At best, couples get 1- 2 years of enjoying each other.
After that, the situation quickly devolves into bickering, nagging, and hating each other, sometimes for YEARS, until one person can’t take it anymore, and leaves.
I have known many married men, and men in long term, live in relationships, my entire life.
Nothing about that lifestyle, complete subservience to a woman, appeals to me in the slightest.
Men and women are different animals, not meant to live together.
It never works.
In marriage, the man of the house may be paying the majority, if not ALL, of the bills.
In return for his hard work, he is exiled to some dark, unwanted corner of the house, separate from the woman, and all her tacky, floral shit.
Only in the “Man Cave”, can he decorate the way he wants to: his favorite sports memorabilia, car posters, a huge tv and a beat up, but comfortable reclining chair.
If men and women could truly cohabitate, you would see married couples blend their tastes together to create the home, but you don’t.
The woman decorates the entire home the way she wants: pastel colors, lace, and throw pillows.
The man’s prized possessions are locked down in the basement, or out in the garage without a second thought.
You have never walked into a married couple’s home and thought,
“Wow, sure looks like both people had an equal say in the decor in this place.”
If I’m going to be forced to store my ping pong table, vintage movie posters, and military trophies out of sight anyway, while paying for everything, I might as well keep them in my own separate house.
Men and Women Want Different things in a living space.
An average man can live almost anywhere.
Many men who earn enough money to live in expensive accommodations find that they are just as happy with spartan, minimalist living spaces.
When single men do have well-appointed homes, it’s often for the primary purpose of impressing women.
I advocate that a bachelor should invest in creating an inviting and comfortable living space, for himself. See my post “30 Mindset Shifts for Men in Their 30s”.
However, that entails painting the rooms in appealing tones, getting high quality, soft bed sheets, and springing for nice towels.
If you’re following my advice on this blog, you’re working hard in your fitness, building a business, and creating a life for yourself.
When you’re home, invest in the little things that make you feel comfortable.
Where women are concerned “comfort” can mean thousands of dollars in expensive furniture, baubles, and wooden signs instructing you to “EAT” in the only room in the house where food, dishes, and eating utensils are stored.
1. Men are more organized than women
who have a tendency to leave cosmetics and hair products strewn everywhere, not to mention clothes, bras, and shoes.
This is also a byproduct of men having less stuff.
Women account for 80% of all the consumer spending in the United States.
They have more junk, and that junk ends up all over the place.
2. Men want to be alone.
The most remote places in the US, for example vast wilderness of Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana, men outnumber women sometimes 17 to 1, or more.
Men can be alone, for long stretches of time, and be perfectly content, in a way that would drive women, who thrive on social connection, mindless chatter, and gossip, crazy.
The man is going to want to be alone, in silence, or watching a movie.
His live-in girlfriend will find him to chatter on and on about her girlfriends, or some meaningless conversation at her office job.
3. “Relationships last best when you keep each other at arms’ length” -Rollo Tomassi
I am a proud US Air Force veteran raised by a US Army vet.
My house is almost always inspection ready. However, when my lady friend is coming over for the evening, I vacuum the rugs and clean the beard hairs off the bathroom sink.
I go out for a nice bottle of wine, and look up a recipe online to make us dinner.
We’ll usually vibe to good music, kiss and tease each other while we chop vegetables and set the table.
We have wine, a delicious meal, then go for a walk or play table tennis in my living room. We end the evening rolling around in bed, then she falls asleep in my arms.
The next morning, she rushes off to work, and I spend the day writing, or working on my other businesses.
I love our time together, but as an introvert, I thrive on my time alone.
The best part of a relationship is the anticipation of missing each other when we are apart.
As Psychologist Chris Canwell wrote,
“Attraction grows in space.”
Men and women who live together transform from lovers, to roommates, who gripe at each other about the household chores.
Fighting over the minutae of daily life makes a couple more like bickering siblings than a passionate couple, who feel genuinely excited to see each other.
Living with the same woman day in and day out is boring, and boredom is the finishing move of a romantic relationship.
The woman becomes controlling and bitchy.
She’ll lie around the house in sweatpants and hair curlers.
She will start wearing Crocs.
She’ll get fat, clingy, and opinionated.
She will never be satisfied.
In Conclusion
Since we our conversation about never living together, the woman I’m seeing has been distant.
(She broke up with me the next week.)
She understands that she will never get the white picket fence and little house in the country from me.
I know enough to know that you never break up with a woman, you let her break things off with you. (Read my post “How to Dump Your Girlfriend”.)
I wish her all the best.
-Solitary Beast