We think we are, but we are really not so different from all the generations before us.

Maybe we’re still living there.

For two weeks, she used every trick in this very popular book on the young men in her high school classes, in Seminary, and at MIA.
She looked forward with glee to writing an essay debunking Helen Andelin’s view of the relationship between the sexes.

Perhaps you’ve guessed the outcome. It all worked.
The boys began to flock around Alice, heretofore not heavily booked for social events. I don’t believe she’s recovered from the shock and its ambivalent emotions even now, decades later. Nor do I know if she’s shown her grown daughter the book, or the excellent, sardonic essay she wrote about her experiment.

To make my point, imagine that a researcher were to ask you, “What things about your wife do you not like?” People generally don’t like to complain about people they love (especially if the other people might hear about it), so if it were me I’d probably pick a relatively “safe” criticism. Such as “She wears too much smelly hair product” or “She takes too long in the bathroom”. These are relatively innocent criticisms that the wife probably wouldn’t be that upset about hearing. (By the way, these are hypothetical criticism, just in case she’s reading this, and of course I would not have any “un-safe” criticisms.:))

Conversely, when people compliment each other on doing something (like taking kids to church), that’s not to say that not doing that things makes them bad. I might say to my wife, “You look very nice in purple.” That doesn’t mean I would think less of her if she wore a different color.

So if the researcher then took those things and generalized them into a list of things that make for a bad wife, well that’s the researcher’s fault, not the husband’s.

Today, it seems like such an excess but then again my mom was a perfectionist with a capital “P”. She still arranges at age 85 to have her beautician do her hair. Once a perfectionist . . .always a perfectionist. She’ll be disappointed if the utensils in the celestial kingdom aren’t 24k gold!

Husband: “You wouldn’t believe it. She wears red nail polish and the seams in her hose are routinely crooked.”

Counselor: “Hmm.. you make some good points. What do you have to say, Maam?”

Wife: “Well I can play the piano. Isn’t that worth anything?”

Counselor: “Yes, one point exactly. Now let’s get back to you sir. Does your wife go to bed with curlers in her hair?”

Wife: “How did you know that? Did you tell him that, honey?”

Counselor: “I see… suspicious… ah yes, minus five.”