'Do you live with your mommy?' No, I don't. Like it actually matters...
I was watching a re-run of some banal TV sitcom... in it, the female character was being hit-on in a bar by a male character who seemed to be kind of an annoying loser. As a response to his entreaties, she retorted snidely: 'Let me guess: at eleven you have to get back to your parents' basement?'
I hear this sort of put-down quite a bit in pop culture... In quite a few sitcoms, female characters who are confronted with 'loser' males quip something along the lines of: "Do you live at home with your mom?" Or "you still live with your parents, right?" This gets a laugh because it's hinted that the male is somehow really lame because he hasn't moved away from his childhood home. So, a 'loser' man doesn't have a place of his own. A 'real' man obviously doesn't live with his parents.
I started to wonder: what's the big deal? I mean, since age 18, I've been living outside my parents' house and it really hasn't seemed to make me more of a boyfriend prospect. I went to college and lived in dorms or apartments (including an academic year in Taiwan). Over the 3-month summer breaks, I admit I lived with my parents because I couldn't afford a place of my own. But 9 months out of the year, I was normally out of my parents' house, out of town or out of the country. I worked a series of crappy part-time jobs to get spending money in-between classes. In grad school, I got a crummy efficiency apartment and I lived there. After grad school I got a nicely-paying job and rented a somewhat nicely-appointed apartment in a city far from my parents. In short, 8 of my 26 years have been spent mainly OUTSIDE my parent's house (with the exception of the 4 summers when I was in college.) For about a third of my life, I've been fairly on my own. In rented places, yes, but that's very typical for most people who've just gotten-out of their parents' homes.
I've cooked for myself for the last 4 years, I've done my own laundry since I was twelve- I know how to keep light and dark clothes separate. I vacuum weekly- NO woman ever has to clean-up after me if she's willing to put-up with the amount of dirtiness that I'll tolerate. When I dress myself, I know that black shoes don't go with brown trousers. I can make a bed, I can sew buttons onto a shirt, I even scrub the toilet on a regular basis. But does that make me less of a loser in a woman's eyes? Does that make me a better man? Does it make me more desirable that I don't live at home with mommy? Well, based on the number of dates I get, NO it doesn't! Apparently, I'm NOT less of a loser because I don't live at home with my parents and know how to take care of myself! Maybe it's because I've mostly rented? Maybe a man has to own his place before a woman will consider him as being good enough for her? I just don't know. A 'real' man has to have property in his name- so that the woman can have a place to become a squatter in if she chooses, I guess.
Now, why is it so darned shameful for a 28 or 29 year old to live at home with his parents? Housing can be expensive in many cities. The only real way to get an apartment in Manhattan nowadays is to inherit it practically. If you look at the housing ads in the newspaper, there are lots of people who want specifically female room-mates, but hardly any at all who ask for male room-mates. Ladies: say you meet a guy who lives in his parent's basement? Maybe the guy in question lost his job and can't afford to have a place of his own any more? Maybe he got divorced and his ex-wife took the house? Maybe his house burned-down and he's in the process of rebuilding his shattered life? There could be a dozen perfectly reasonable circumstances through no fault of his own in which he could be living with his parents. But no, you ladies automatically assume that he HAS to be a loser. You don't even TRY to understand the guys' circumstances before you'll judge him as 'loser'.
And this seems to be very much a bias belonging to American women: there are plenty of countries with housing shortages or where alternative housing arrangements are commonplace.
Sometimes, It's Considered Okay To Live with Mommy
For instance, in historically traditional Japanese rural families, the eldest son would live with his parents throughout his life... Even when he got married, his wife would move-in with his parents (thus, setting-up TONS of potential conflicts between the hapless new wife and the domineering, territorial mother-in-law). This situation existed because the eldest son would inherit the dad's land and he would live on the estate to help learn to manage it until the father gets old (the youngest son, on the other hand, would have to leave home to seek his fortune). When the parents get too old to farm, it was the eldest son's responsibility to support them, too. In a lot of cultures, it's perfectly acceptable for a grown man to live with his parents. But American women seem to think it's somehow shameful.
I have been away from my parents for the last 8 years and it hasn't seemed to make a bloody difference in how women have perceived me! I'm not considered any more of a boyfriend prospect because of my independence from my parents. Seriously, Shirley Moocher was for the longest time totally stuck-on a 32 year old bad-boy with no real job and who lived with his parents. Miriam's husband-to-be lives at home with his parents. I mean if both of these guys are getting laid by hot women despite living at home with their parents, then what does that tell me? It tells me that there is absolutely NOTHING to be had by living on your own! Living with your parents is just one more thing for the female to add to her complaint pile! It's really a non-factor until she needs one extra humiliation to hurl at you when she rejects you.
Easybake Oven? More like Neverbake Oven
Furthermore, I know too many women who have NO clue how to do household work. Cooking, cleaning, sewing. Oh, they'll pretend that they know how, but it doesn't get reflected in their performance by any means. It's like a bunch of American women said to each other one day in typical passive-aggressive fashion: "hey, let's guarantee that we'll never have to do any of that menial crap by never learning how to actually do it!" Seriously, it seems like there are damn few women out there who really know how to cook or clean with any skill. And their dream man is always someone who knows how to cook and iron for them. (And even if the guy does all the cleaning, only the woman can ever say how clean is clean enough. She'll still retain that privilege.)
My Ex- whenever she felt like cooking, it would always be a thoughtless, rapidly thrown-together affair and there would usually be at least one common-sense thing that she'd completely screw-up (like putting a wicker-covered pot in the oven, for instance! Who the hell in their right mind would put a pot in the oven with its wicker casing still on?!?! I'm a guy and even I know that you're not supposed to put wicker in an oven! Would she put wicker in the dishwasher, too?)
And she'd never do the dishes. Never. I did the dishes every time regardless of who cooked. Every day, I'd come home from work to see the dishes in the sink from her lunch. On weekends, I'd have to vacuum-up the spilled junk food around the couch. I did the laundry with her on weekends, too... in fact, she wouldn't do the laundry if I wasn't home to do it with her. "We share the chores, NiceGuy." Yeah, just like we 'share' the bills. If I had to work on weekends, then the laundry would not get done. There was this one high-demand period at the office in which I had to work every weekend for five weeks straight- sure enough, the laundry never got done during those five weeks. We began to accumulate a pile of dirty laundry that took-up half the bedroom, and she began to complain that she didn't have anything clean to wear. (How many ridiculous behavior modes can one person possibly have to choose from?)
In fact, she'd sometimes call me at work to remind me to come home and clean that night- I swear, the instant we got engaged, she turned into Peg Bundy! What did she do with her free time all day? I don't know! I just don't know! She showed every sign of doing squat all day while I was at work and she always denied any non-action.
She called me once: "NiceGuy? I just woke-up and I'm bored." I look at the clock. It's noon.
I tapped my finger on my desk, hiding my irritation. (I had to hide it. Slept till noon? If I ever accused her of doing nothing all day, she'd fly-in to a fit.) "Well... um, well, you know I have something that I'd like done. My car's in the garage and I haven't washed it in a while. Why don't you wash the car if you're bored?" Washing the car is kind of fun, even, I think.
She hmmphed. "I don't want to wash the car. I'm bored. I want to do something else."
Why don't you go get a fucking job, then? But no, no if I ever brought that up, she'd be angry at me for days. It was my job to work, apparently. And it was my job to 'share' the chores. It was her job to spread her legs for me. (And she didn't even do that on a regular basis, either.)
The Poster-Child for Useless People
I dunno- she swore up and down that she cleaned while I was out of the house and that she was working her fingers to the bone to look for a job, but I didn't see too many signs of it. Maybe she'd wash one cup from time to time. Maybe she'd scrub the bathroom sink once in a blue moon. But she spent nine months living with me like this. When I quietly said something about this to her sister, her sister replied "Yeah, mom and dad have complained how lazy she is. When we were growing-up, she was always trying to foist chores onto me..."
And I try to decorate my place, too... I have a few pieces of tasteful Asian art that I've hung on the wall (calligraphic pieces and the like). I have a middle-eastern rug. I have a few pieces of rather nice furniture. When Whorebag moved-in, naturally she considered decorating to be her exclusive domain, and she threw lace doilies and potpourri centerpieces over every flat surface without ever asking me. And she brought-in a few pieces of cheap particleboard furniture. That was her contribution to the apartment.
I had to accept it, because she said I didn't have enough 'taste' to decorate. She was in charge of determining what taste is, I guess. She had to be the décor police.
To Serve Woman
Whenever I cooked for my Ex, she acted like it was a massive imposition on her to sit through the dinner that I laboriously made for her. All the while she'd moan "I don't like this. I don't like that." She never had any constructive criticism for me. And there was never anything in my kitchen that she'd like to eat- even though she was the one who would always insist on making the grocery list. She needed complaints more than food.
I don't expect a woman to do all the cooking and cleaning for me, okay? I don't call domestic work 'women's work'. I'm more than willing to share my part of all that necessary stuff... but, it's quite a different ball of wax when the woman doesn't do hardly anything all day and doesn't help with any of the expenses to boot! That wasn't a relationship- it was welfare. It was free housing. It was free food. It was free entertainment. All for her. And if I ever said anything about how I felt that she wasn't contributing to the relationship, then she'd scream that I didn't love her enough if I was going to have the nerve to say that.
Some of my best male friends are pretty good in the kitchen, by the way- who says men can't cook? (When you see the Food Network on cable, the chef is often a man.) One of my close friends, David, he's always got something good on the stove when I come over. (David kind of looks like a rotund version of Thor. With the beard and hair and everything. He's not great-looking, but he's also a nice guy- massive strikes against him, I suppose.) He cooks everything from pasta to ox-tail soup (yum!). Last time I was over at his house, I had the most delicious home-made gumbo and jalapeño bread I've ever enjoyed in my life. My first sip of his gumbo- I dropped my spoon and shouted "Holy fucking shit!" It was so good, it felt like my mouth had a spicy orgasm. I don't know what he put in his recipe... some mixture of chicken, shrimp and Cajun sausage... but it was astounding. And I had the chance to admire his gleaming-new kitchen that he installed with his own hands. Can he get a girl because he's a good cook and handy home-improver? No! He doesn't date hardly ever! I mean, how the hell much do women expect from us?
I swear, women nowadays complain about men who live at home with their parents and men who can't cook or clean. At the same time, a lot of them can't cook or clean themselves. They'll expect that a man will have his own place to live and will at least know how to do all the domestic stuff in order to 'help'. And when men do have a place of their own and know how to cook and clean, they're still not given serious consideration as a boyfriend if he's not a good-looking bastard! Just more proof the American female can't be pleased no matter what- there's always something lacking for her to bitch about.
Do women honestly expect to find a good-looking, home-owning bastard who'll bring-home a paycheck and also clean and cook for them?? I don't know too many bastards who are willing to cook and clean for their woman. If she really, honestly expects to find this kind of relationship, then she's truly living in her own little fantasy land! What man has a need for such a fundamentally useless person?
Why doesn't any American woman ever come-out and actually say that she wants a servant, not a husband? It would be a smidgen more truthful.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In this 'man's world', there are two kinds of men: 'real' men, and inconvenient men. A real man is one whose economic power, social status or virility makes him sexually desirable to women. Such men feed and sustain both the good and bad elements in women's myths and fantasies. But inconvenient men only get in the way. They have nothing to offer but themselves -- their love, attention and nurturance... Things most women seem to value in rock stars, but not in janitors... This is a problem because most women truly do want nurturing men in their lives. Their real problem, however, is that with so many skeletons of rejected and ignored 'nice guys' rattling in their closets, it's difficult to make a legitimate claim to victim status -- guilt has a way of interfering with their ability to enjoy their victim power. The most effective way to mitigate this guilt is to convince the world -- and themselves -- that nurturing men don't exist." -- Rich Zubaty.
Return to NiceGuy's American Women Suck