On Handling Hypocrisy

A suggestion for dealing with the inevitable

One of the unavoidable results of female solipsism, Delta narcissism, and Gamma/Omega self-pity is hypocrisy. This might not be apparent to everyone, but if you think through the logic, it rapidly becomes obvious that things could never be otherwise.

If, after all, you, your responsibilities, or your feelings are paramount, then by definition, absolutely everything else is of lower priority. And therefore, you quite naturally expect everyone else to put you, your responsibilities, or your feelings first, and to sacrifice themselves, their responsibilities, and their feelings if there happens to be any conflict between the two.

Women, in particular, tend to be shocked to be informed of their natural hypocrisy. It can be quite funny, in fact, to listen to the various rationalizations and justifications for why they merit the special treatment they expect, and why they cannot reasonably be expected to treat everyone else the way that they demand to be treated themselves.

Here are three questions for the benefit of all the women whose eyes just bugged out and took a deep intake of breath at this heretical observation:

• how many times per day do you ask your boyfriend or husband to do something for you, however minor the request might be?

• what is your normal reaction when your husband asks you to do something for him, however minor the request might be?

• what is your justification for any imbalances in this context?

Learn to expect the “oh, yeah, and since it’s on your way…” and roll with it.

There don’t appear to be many studies about this, but my new best friend was helpful in this regard, and summarized the limited information available for me.

Average range: Spouses likely ask each other for help 5–15 times daily, including small and large tasks. Gender asymmetry: Women often make more direct requests, especially in domestic labor.

That corresponds with my estimate of 5-7 daily female-to-male requests and 0-1 daily male-to-female requests. One thing I’ve also noticed is the divergence in reactions when a man fails to perform a requested task versus when a woman fails to do so, which can be summarized as justifiable anger in the case of the former and rationalized unaccountability in the case of the latter. This is particularly noticeable when the man actually performs the task, but somehow performs it in a manner deemed to be incorrect. Another thing worth noting is the fairly high probability that the woman will “forget” to perform the task.

“Why did you buy skim! I need whole milk for this recipe!” “Because we always drink skim and you told me to ‘pick up some milk’. Which I did.”

This is, of course, pure hypocrisy and I have yet to observe a single woman on the planet who doesn’t behave this way on a daily basis. I’m sure there must be a few fearful women married to demanding alcoholics in wife-beaters and living in fear of them who don’t, but I don’t move in those social circles. And I suspect if one were to set one of these women up with a nice, helpful Delta that she’d be happily ordering him around in no time.

There is no need to take my word for it. Test it out for yourself. When your wife or girlfriend is heading to the grocery store, ask her to pick something up for you from there, and “since it’s on the way” to also make an additional stop to buy something else from another store she wasn’t intending to visit. What are the probabilities that she’ll say “sure, no problem” versus coming up with some excuse why she can’t do it?

So close… I was so close to getting out the door…

This sort of asymmetry isn’t a big deal for most men, I merely cite it as an easy example of demonstrating the natural hypocrisy to which most women are blind. More serious, however, is when women insist on holding men to behavioral standards they refuse to apply to themselves. That’s the primary point I wish to address.

The way I see it, a man has two options. He can either focus on the intrinsic unfairness of her attitude and the situation or he can focus on himself. And what I mean by the latter is asking yourself if her expectations of you are materially helpful or harmful to you.

Take, for example, the fairly common situation of a very overweight woman married to a moderately overweight man. It is obviously hypocritical and unfair for Mrs. Fatty McFatty to tell Mr. McFatty he should put down that doughnut because he really should lose some weight. But is she wrong? Is he better served by taking or ignoring her advice?

My contention is this: if it helps you, if it makes you an improved version of yourself, just roll with it. Who cares about the source? A wife is supposed to be a helpmeet, not a hypocrisy-free zone, and if her sound advice to you also happens to be hypocritical, unfair, or even massively ironic, so what? Life isn’t fair. It never has been and it never will be.

So, if life hands you a situation where you have the opportunity to advance and better yourself, why not take it and forgo troubling your mind over the purity of the source? After all, it’s not as if the aging martial arts master can always still perform the high leaping kick he’s teaching you to throw.

Now, accepting hypocrisy does not mean that a man should ever submit to a woman’s verbal abuse. If she’s being both hypocritical and abusive, do not tolerate that shit for five seconds. In such cases, don’t merely point out any hypocrisies on her part, also point out that if she can’t give you proper instructions, any failure to accomplish her objective is entirely on her. If she wants it done her way, then next time she’ll have to do it herself.