Daniel Jones is the author of the novel After Lucy, which was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. His writing has appeared in Elle, Mirabella, Redbook, Stagebill, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Massachusetts with his family.

The Bastard on the Couch:
27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings
About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom

Edited by
Daniel Jones

INTRODUCTION

In September of 2002, my wife, Cathi Hanauer, published a book called The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage. The original essays she collected in the book were uniformly smart and penetrating, the truths of the contributors' lives were laid startlingly bare, and The Bitch in the House immediately struck a nerve and became a surprise national bestseller. The essays ranged in perspective from young women warily negotiating their first serious relationships to those in their sixties looking back with understanding and acceptance. But the main thrust of the book, and the aspect that garnered the most attention, was the anger and frustration of working mothers who ostensibly wanted to "have it all"--i.e., a harmonious and satisfying blend of career, children, and marriage. The victories of feminism in the sixties and seventies had led the women and men of my generation to expect that our marriages would be different from those of our parents and grandparents. Our generation would feature ambitious working mothers finding fulfillment both at work and at home, and enlightened husbands who cooked and cleaned and changed diapers--modern parents who were equal partners in the raising of children, the paying of bills, the buying of groceries, the folding of laundry, and so on.

The egalitarian marriage. That was the goal. And why not? Who could argue with the perfect equality of a husband and wife splitting everything down the middle--income, chores, childcare? Neither partner would be dependent on the other, and they would complement each other in exactly the right ways. And what a great example to set for the children! No longer would little Jason and Jennifer be raised seeing only their mommy serving and cleaning up after everyone--now Daddy would serve and clean up after everyone half of the time too. And it wouldn't just be the wage-earning and the grunt work that would be fairly divided. The joys of family life also would rain down equally on husband and wife. Because why should Daddy always be the one to miss out on those precious Kodak moments--the school plays and soccer games and parent-teacher conferences? He shouldn't! With his wife bringing home half of the income, he wouldn't have to spend so much time at the office, right? He'd get some relief from the daily grind as well. It was going to be a "win-win" for everyone. At least that was the idea.

Turns out that for many couples this arrangement has not been a win-win after all. For the women in The Bitch in the House, new conflicts reared their ugly heads at every turn. Some of these women liked or even loved their work, but their kids were being raised by strangers, and this tortured them. For others, getting the balance right never seemed to jibe with reality. The added responsibilities of trying to combine work and family, without giving anything up, threatened to drown them in Too Much To Do and Not Enough Time. And although their husbands or partners were doing their part to spend more time with the kids and in the house, their contribution was often deemed ineffectual, insufficient, or both. No, what modern women really needed in order to pursue professional lives, they joked, were not husbands but wives.

So what happened? How did such high expectations and careful planning lead to this degree of widespread frustration and disappointment, turning otherwise smart, caring wives into shrill "bitches" and their husbands into cowering oafs who could only seek refuge behind their newspapers, waiting for the storm to pass?

Parents of previous generations--mothers and fathers alike--often claim that things were easier in the good old days. Back then, they say, husbands and wives knew their roles and there wasn't constant negotiation about time and responsibilities. All this negotiation, they say, leads to conflict. And there's enough to worry about in raising a family and earning a good living without injecting unnecessary conflict into the mix.

That may be true. But it's also true that negotiation and conflict can lead to progress--in fact, it's usually the first step toward progress--which is why we signed up for the Egalitarian Marriage Plan in the first place; after all, if things were so great back then, why did so many people (particularly women) want change? And so here we are, muddling forward, trying to forge something "better" out of this creaky institution called marriage. We may not be there yet, but projects like The Bitch in the House are a healthy contribution to the progress. The twenty-six female voices in that book break down myths about sex and marriage and parenthood; they fuel a frank dialogue about women's changing roles in the home, the office, and the bedroom. As a whole, they paint a compelling, unvarnished portrait of much of modern family life.

But The Bitch in the House is only half of the story. It's her story. But what about his story? What's with the yawning silence on the other side? Don't men care about these issues? Are they just hoping to tune it out? Or is it that even now, in this age of dime-store therapy and Dr. Phil and self-actualization, most men are still unwilling to say what they think and feel and hope about the things they hold most dear?

I served as a second editorial eye for my wife's book, and as I read what these women had to say I was grateful for their eloquence and brutal honesty. At the same time, I found myself feeling sorry for some of the men, who seemed so hapless and bumbling, albeit good-natured, and who, in any event, couldn't speak for themselves. One book reviewer, in describing one of the working-mother essays in Bitch, wrote the following line summarizing the feelings of the author, a hard-charging professional woman: "Her husband can't be trusted with simple tasks." And I had to cringe, wondering what this particular man, whom I have known for more than a decade, would say to that. We are talking about an Ivy League educated man who is at the pinnacle of his profession, who coaches his son's Little League team and works full-time plus while tending to the household as best he can. How, I thought, would he respond to the charge that he can't be trusted with simple tasks?

But also I was wondering, Is this really what we've come to? Is this really the way many women view their men? Granted, some of the essays were intended to be funny, and what's funnier than men lazing around on couches while their wives or girlfriends browbeat them? (All you have to do is watch a few television ads to realize the marketing popularity of the doltish husband, as ad after ad features men acting like Neanderthals and being treated as such by their wives and kids. And these ads are for products being marketed not just to women but to men! Apparently we all feel great about ourselves, and are even invigorated to go out and do some shopping, after watching a dumb man being ridiculed on TV.)

To be fair, I should say that the women contributors to The Bitch in the House were generally kind to their boyfriends and husbands, and in some cases (including my wife in her introduction) they went to great lengths to profess how much they loved them and wouldn't trade them for the world. Even if they felt their partners were ineffectual or lazy or absent or simply oblivious, they usually gave them credit for trying hard to act in ways that pleased or satisfied.

Grateful though she may have claimed to be for my presence in her life, my wife also gave me a slight drubbing in her introduction, accusing me of failing to put items we'd run out of on the shopping list and of sneaking a few glances at the newspaper when there were other duties that needed to be performed. But these were relatively minor infractions, really, when compared to what some of the other husbands were charged with. Maybe Cathi figured that her creating the book in the first place, and immersing herself in it for nearly two years, was enough punishment for me. Because The Bitch in the House, after all, was not conceived in a vacuum. It grew organically out of Cathi's own anger and frustration and hopes for the future, and it consumed her every waking thought. For about twenty months, she lived and breathed The Bitch in the House. And so did I.

During this time, the essays streamed in--more essays than were ultimately published in the book--and although I read the pieces with excitement and offered advice along the way and enjoyed being involved in the nuts and bolts of producing such a strong compilation of literature, the process also wore me down. With each essay I'd finish, my wife inevitably would say to me, only partially joking, "See, all women are like this. I'm not the only one who feels this way." And evidently this is true, if the responses Cathi has received to the book are any indication. It is comforting for women to share these feelings and know they are not alone in their struggles.

For men, however, it is decidedly not comforting to be told that so many women share these feelings of frustration and anger and sexual ennui in their marriages and relationships. In fact, it is a little scary.

And this news comes amid a barrage of troubling developments for men. There is a burgeoning body of research and literature documenting a great cultural shift in the balance of power in western societies, and this shift decidedly favors the ascension of women and the decline of men. In The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World, anthropologist and author Helen Fisher argues that women are more capable than men in many areas of business and politics because their "natural talents" (building consensus, multi-tasking, patience, cooperation, long-term planning) are what the modern workplace demands. Another anthropologist, Lionel Tiger, in his recent book The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women, describes how modern reproductive technology has taken away from men their one true biological power--the ability to control the production of offspring--and how this single development, combined with a work and education environment that is increasingly suited to the abilities of women, is heralding the decline of males, possibly into obsolescence. Seems like Gloria Steinem's old line--"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"--has become suddenly, demonstrably true.

Increasing numbers of women are happily supporting themselves and having their own families without a man or a father anywhere in sight. Conservatives decry this development and commission study after study to prove how important it is for children to have a father and for the nuclear family to stay intact. But still, when it comes to modern family life, Lionel Tiger points out that women can have children without a man, but men can't have children without a woman. And he suggests that men are so confused and rattled and emasculated by this shift of power that they hardly even know what to make of it.

Oh, there have been some attempts to rally the troops. We've had the Promise Keepers, the Christian men's organization that asks its members to "promise" to be better husbands and fathers, an organization seemingly founded on shame. Remember the Million Man March? More public shaming, this time of African-American fathers who weren't living up to their obligations. (With an appealing theme like that, it's no wonder the organizers couldn't get the suggested million men to attend). And I won't even go into the male-bonding stuff, the naked drumming in the woods, the primal yells. At least those events are ostensibly celebratory, but please. This is really the best we can come up with?

If we men want to keep ourselves in the game, I say we had better be more charming. If we can't make ourselves indispensable to family life, we had better find a way to be useful or at least amusing. Because, like it or not, many women are doing just fine without men in their lives. And so much for the stigma of the old maid; these days, according to Lionel Tiger, women are more likely to be embarrassed about admitting they're unemployed than unmarried. The old maids of yesterday are today's corporate CEOs. Now it's men who are freaked out about being unmarried. In fact, according to one well-known study, unmarried men are the most depressed people in society, ranking just one spot below--you got it--married women.

Ah, but at least men still have control of the TV remote, one of their last bastions of power--that and the presidency. At least they can be the masters of their couches and entertainment centers and still try, in this limited way, to hunt and gather as best they can. But as they sit back and prop their feet on the coffee table and channel surf from Cops to The NFL Today to The History Channel, they'd be well advised not to ignore how the world is changing around them. Beyond men's diminishing role in family life as more families carry on without fathers, it is a matter of record that men's wages and work hours have been falling steadily as women's work hours and wages continue to rise. And this trend is unlikely to reverse itself, as today's colleges and universities are graduating far more women than men, and of course it's the same story with high school graduates. As my eight-year-old daughter, Phoebe, was already sing-songing with her friends at age five, "Girls go to college to get more knowledge--boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider." (Everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten, right?)

Increasingly, men are dropping out and tuning in--to television and the Internet, in particular, where they find themselves depressed, isolated, and sedentary. And as they sit there, growing more obese than any generation in human history, they are fueling a spectacular growth in the pornography and sports industries. It is not, shall we say, a pretty picture.

So, men. . .hello? Agree? Disagree? Anything to say for yourselves? (Cue soundtrack of deafening silence.)

Okay, I'll say something. As alarming as these trends may sound, I, personally, don't feel like my life is in a steep decline or even in a downward trajectory. The fact that women are in charge of their own birth control and reproduction may be a gigantic cultural shift, but I've yet to hear a single man complain about it. (On the contrary, I've heard only applause.) In general, the men I know love the fact that their wives work and make money--the more the better, as far as they're concerned (though there are plenty of men out there, I know, who prefer their wives stay at home). In terms of helping out around the house and with the kidsŠ well, I'm sure men differ on this as well. But there is a species referred to as the "enlightened" man who absolutely grooves on this new role. You see him everywhere--in playgrounds, in the supermarket, at PTA meetings. He can't get enough. He's doing it all with gusto--working, parenting, husbanding--and the phrase "in decline" is probably not how he would describe himself.

Of course, it's difficult for people to recognize a social trend they're in the midst of, and the conventional wisdom is that it may well be impossible for men. As Susan Faludi argues in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, men have been "mythologized as the ones who make things happen," so "how can they begin to analyze what is happening to them?'"

Well, I believe we can--despite the fact that men and women alike continue to claim that men don't talk honestly about their insecurities. Supposedly, we don't talk about our sex lives, our marriages, or our fears in any meaningful way. People love to say it's not how we're "wired." We're wired to keep our emotions to ourselves, to soldier on in silence, to say things like, "What's happened is in the past. There's nothing you can do about it." Or we're wired to just want to make everything all better, to instantly "solve" problems rather than--God forbid--talk about them.

Thankfully, the twenty-seven men who agreed to write about their lives for this book are not wired those ways. True, these men are still men, and men are not women. Confession and soul-searching is perhaps not their natural modus operandi. In fact, countless times in pursuing the topics contained herein I was nearly laughed off the phone and out of my e-mail inbox:
"You want me to write about what?"
"I'm not touching that one."
"Yeah, maybe in ten years I'd think about going there."
And then someone would volunteer a topic that was richer and more explosive than anything I'd come up with myself, and off we'd go.

Still, there's a vast, shark-infested gulf between wanting to explore something intensely personal and actually pulling it off, and each time I'd wait with trepidation, anxious to see the result. My hopes were high--they had to be--but even I didn't expect the depth of outpouring I received. Sure, I expected these guys to strip down and maybe dance around a little on the page, so to speak, but I figured they'd at least keep their G-strings on. I didn't expect them to perform the literary equivalent of The Full Monty.

But these smart, thoughtful, literate men lay it bare when it comes to their marriages, relationships, desires, and fears. From the no-holds barred sexual adventurism and partner-hopping exploits of the opening essays to the devastating indictments of marriages gone horribly wrong at the book's close, the bastards on these couches are not afraid to analyze, confess, or admit anything.

I should say up front that this collection does not pretend to reflect the state of all men. It is not a mirror image of contemporary family life, where the average meat-and-potatoes working father may still rule the roost. In this book, the majority of the men are dealing with new ideas of manhood--some of which they are going after and grabbing, others of which are being thrust upon them by a changing world. They are struggling to define themselves as the first generation of husbands and boyfriends and fathers who are, in many cases, less powerful than their wives or girlfriends in earning, influence, education, and ambition. And unlike women (who have already explored and dissected these new conflicts ad nauseum), we men are just beginning to face our confusion at the surprising roles we're playing both in our marriages and out of them.

As Vince Passaro states so eloquently at the start of his devastating exploration of why men lie in relationships: "I can see now that the long pondering I'd been doing on the subject of men and lies was a circling-the-airport approach to where I might land, which was my own conscience." And this is exactly the course charted by writer after writer--who range in age from 28 to 64--as they seek to explore the reasons for their not-always-preferred marital status, for the disarray of their personal lives, for the unexpected joys and stresses of fatherhood, for the desire to cheat on those they presumably love with those they can't stop themselves from lusting after. They drill deeper and deeper into themselves, trying to figure out why they've arrived at this particular destination and whether it's a good place for them to stay or not. Or perhaps they've already moved on from that place but are looking back, trying to understand what it meant.

And some men, like those in the book's opening section, "Hunting and Gathering," are looking ahead--walking upright and scanning the horizon in search of sex or love or companionship. Panio Gianopoulos, who at 28 is the book's youngest contributor, reveals in "Confessions of a Boy Toy" how he and his recent college-grad friends sought out successful and sophisticated (and sometimes famous) older women to date in the wilds of Manhattan, and how these independent women--with their money, swank apartments, refined tastes, and active libidos--felt free to behave with these "Boy Toys" exactly as older men used to behave with younger women, having "unshy sex" according to their own desires and agenda while the boys on their arms got to attend fancy parties and be whisked off to exotic locales. Two writers, Rolling Stone contributing editor Toure and Arizona poet and novelist Jim Paul, recount times in their lives when they pin-balled from woman to woman (in Toure's case, with cheating as the lure), but one man emerges from this experience with a sense of shame and the other with unabashed endorsement. And Hank Pine, husband of The Bitch in the House contributor Hannah Pine, is someone who has found the right woman to share his life with, but he still--with his wife's permission--seeks out new lovers to keep himself engaged in the world of women, to, as he describes it, "feel more alive in my bones." Yes, it's an open marriage, wherein his wife is entitled to (and takes advantage of) the same benefit.

As we know, first comes love, then comes marriage. . .and not long after the honeymoon the hopeful, doe-eyed couple often find themselves stumbling through the awkward waltz of trying to maintain their individuality, while also holding onto one another for dear life, as they are blasted across the dance floor by blistering conflict and an endless barrage of shared responsibilities.

Sorry--didn't mean that to sound quite so negative. Let me try again.

After the honeymoon, the hopeful, doe-eyed couple often find themselves in a place of wonder and opportunity. But once the whirlwind of those early days spins to a stop, what will they make of their lives together? Who will do what? How will men and women manage when both are working and taking care of children? How will men manage in the home when they haven't been raised with domestic skills?

Welcome to the reality of marriage and parenthood, and to the book's second section--"Can't Be Trusted With Simple Tasks"--where the same man who was so dashing, reliable, funny, and smart before marriage and parenthood suddenly, as if stricken with some paralyzing malady, becomes a burdensome lout who can't even seem to carry his own weight around the house much less help his wife. These men, my brothers in arms, routinely take it on the chin from their occasionally overbearing (I mean, "detail-oriented") wives; they are men who, despite their substantial efforts, can't seem to deliver (to their wives' satisfaction) on their end of the egalitarian promise. Christopher Russell, a ceramic artist married to a corporate executive, writes hilariously about his daily "list of chores," a list his wife "aggressively" writes for him each morning and that he "passive-aggressively" doesn't complete. Sean Elder, also married to an executive wife, describes how he feels when she's too stressed out and distracted to want to have sex at the same rate that he (or any man) does, and wonders aloud what his marriage would be like if he didn't press for some action every now and then--"A book club?" Fred Leebron, in his essay "I am Man, Hear Me Bleat," questions our generation's heavily hyped ideal that fathers should embrace their feminine side, a vague and perhaps mistaken goal that has left him unsure of how he's supposed to act as a man and a father. (One word of caution in this section: Don't let the title of Lewis Nordan's essay, "Quality Time Keeps Love Fresh," mislead you into thinking he has any advice about how to keep love fresh.)

But of course some marriages also work well (to a degree), and in such marriages men are appreciated and even needed by their wives. The book's third section, "Bicycles for Fish," tells the stories of Trophy Husbands like Rob Jackson, who details his fifteen years as a self-described "housewife," when he took care of his four stepchildren full-time, from grade school to college--as well as cleaned the house, renovated it, and cooked the meals--while his wife worked full-time. Manny Howard, after being stung by how the supposed "equality" of his first marriage devolved into distrustful (and destructive) competitiveness, remarries a woman who out-earns him and controls their marriage to such an extent that he feels like he's been handed a Fisher-Price toy steering wheel to play with. Although he tries to embrace the little steering wheel, and even sees this inequality as the key to a successful marriage, he's also haunted by the image of a man in a similar position, the boyfriend of a friend of his, whom he sees as being "a clearly adoring, sensually attuned, respectful and responsible man crouched inside of [his girlfriend's] Louis Vuitton carry-on." Rob Spillman, husband of The Bitch in the House contributor Elissa Schappell, explains their startling decision to scrap their feuding egalitarian arrangement and embrace their inner Ward and June Cleaver. But as Rob explains in his smart, funny, and unsettling (for many men) "Ward and June R Us," they've agreed to alternate from week to week who is Ward and who is June.

And, naturally, sadly, inevitably, relationships fall apart. Men want their freedom. Or, more likely these days, women want their freedom. Conflicts rage. Deals are brokered. Peace simmers. In the book's final section, "All I Need," men who are in the midst of divorce and those far removed attempt to make sense of what went wrong and why. In the cases where children are involved, the men in these pages, like many men, assume the children should be primarily with their mothers and don't even challenge it, but being exiled and without control tears them apart. As Robert Skates laments in his heart-breaking essay, "A Hole in the Window: My View of Divorce," "I knew that my son would soon be moving in with yet another guy I'd never met, and that this man would greatly influence his life. This man would be able to watch my son sleep; he would advise my son about girls; he would push certain sports over othersŠ. But my biggest worry was of course that they'd move. And if that happened, then what would I do? Tag along?" Even in divorces where the father retains primary custody--when it's the wife who walks away--fathers have been surprised to discover that the rules may not be applied evenly. This is what happened to celebrated poet and essayist Thomas Lynch, who describes how the judge in his case--wherein he assumed primary responsibility for his four children after his wife left--deemed alimony to be something only men were expected to provide for women and advised him to wise up and stop his pursuit of it. And finally there are cases of men trying to figure out why they can't stay married, can't stay in relationships--the serial freedom-seekers who find themselves inevitably but puzzlingly alone, a loneliness that Jarhead author Anthony Swofford decides is a necessary, albeit costly, fact of his life.

Among the men in this book are professors and poets, an ex-football player and a Hollywood screenwriter, a newspaperman and a software executive, an artist and an undertaker. These men fight, fish, and fold laundry. They yell, sulk, cry, and comfort. They make love and war and pancakes. And, when asked, they are even able to explain--on the side--how they feel about love, loss, fatherhood, and freedom.

So without further ado, may I present, in their own words--the twenty-seven men of The Bastard on the Couch. (Please, no video cameras or flash photography.)

--Daniel Jones