Thread by @Delafina777

don't marry cis men

they can't handle having successful wives

https://twitter.com/S_Insley_H/status/1463129848310906880

True story: friend was married to a guy who, on the surface, seemed like a Wife Guy.

I mean, if you hung out with them for long, there were tells, like how she was constantly getting up to get him another glass of water or whatever, but he never returned the favor, but...

...if you didn't hang around with them at their home, if you were relatively casual friends, you would have been like "this guy really loves his wife and is proud of her."

She's successful, brilliant, gorgeous. He's none of those things.

Boy, did he like to brag about that.

And I started noticing I was having this weird reaction--I would get really frustrated and annoyed when he touted her accomplishments.

And I was like, whoa, am I jealous/threatened by her? I've never felt this way about a female friend before.

Like, I've sometimes had a sort of wistful envy about female friends' success--like, oh, I wish I could have an opportunity like that--but it's always still in the context of being proud and happy for them, not annoyed.

So I was a little shocked at myself, and worried.

So I was like, ok, I don't understand why I'm feeling this way, so I need to pay attention to what's actually *happening* when I feel this way.

And after about 6 months of observing, I noticed something very interesting:

The only time my friend's husband bragged about her accomplishments was when someone else mentioned having accomplished something.

If we got together to celebrate someone's new job, he spent the whole time bragging about her.

If I mentioned I was proud of something, or someone complimented me on something, or we were talking about a win at work, he'd start bragging about her.

Here's an important piece of context that helped me figure out what was going on:

He was *so* competitive at board games that none of us would play with him.

I started talking quietly to some other friends and we had all reached the same conclusion:

He was the sort of guy who had to one-up you all the time. Couldn't handle hearing about anyone else's successes, had to top it.

But he was married to a successful creative, who had a social circle of successful creatives, and he had no professional or creative accomplishments of his own.

So he was using hers to one-up the rest of us.

Eventually they got divorced, and we found out that whole time that he was using her successes to put down the rest of us, he was an abusive fuck who was denigrating her in private and wanted her to quit her job and be his stay-at-home wife.

I've seen it happen a lot, in less extreme fashion, with men who probably aren't abusive behind closed doors, and who have professional successes of their own, but do the same thing with their wives' accomplishments when talking to women.

Like, I've met a few husbands who actually seem to be comfortable with their wives' accomplishments as well as their own, and mostly are just chill about both, not ignoring them or trying too hard, but they're far and away the exception.

anyway, get yourself a circle of friends who can handle your successes and not be weird about it, because husbands are a sketchy lot in that regard