[ SECRET POST #5829 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5829 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



__________________________________________________



02.



__________________________________________________



03.



__________________________________________________



04.



__________________________________________________



05.



__________________________________________________



06.



__________________________________________________



07.















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #834.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. https://i.imgur.com/WSpixvA.png

[(Anonymous)]

This feels like it applies to John Mulaney. I'm sorry you are dealing with concerns over your IRL relationship. I honestly have no advice for you as I've always been single. I just hope things go well for you. (hugs)

[(Anonymous)]

It's John Mulaney, Adam Levine, Ned from the Try Guys... we're in the reckoning era of Internet "wife guys".

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I get this. I still like when guys say loving and complimentary stuff about their wives often. I think it's great when anybody is openly admiring or proud of their partner. But you're also not wrong that talk is cheap. Completely apart from the issue of faithfulness, I think being complimentary in a way that one's partner is aware of can be an easy, low-effort way for someone to get away with not pulling their weight in the relationship--especially in het relationships where the division of domestic labor (both practical and emotional) already tends to skew heavily towards the woman.

And when it's famous people saying this stuff in interviews and such, then there's the whole other element of it that's about optics. A famous man being really appreciative of his wife is a pretty guaranteed way for him to make himself popular with a significant percentage of a female audience, and won't generally alienate him from a male audience as long as he knows how to phrase things. I'm not saying I think famous men who talk about how great their wives are are consciously aiming to manipulate people into giving them "woke king" cookies and giving them the benefit of the doubt more readily if they mess up in some way. But that often is the benefit they reap from doing it, and I doubt that they are completely unaware of that.

[(Anonymous)]

It's because wife guys are performative about loving their wife rather than, you know, treating their wife like a person and being kind and loving *to* their wife. If your husband is telling you how much he loves you, that's great. If he's telling everyone except you how much he loves you, that's the wife guy right there.

[(Anonymous)]

I definitely get where you're coming from

But I also think it's also incredibly easy to go too far the other way and fall into total cynicism. A lot of the time the world is going to justify cynicism, but it's still not a great habit of mind to be in.

IDK how to balance this out honestly.

[(Anonymous)]

Not to sound too optimistic, but there are genuine wife guys out there who are completely and utterly in love with their wives. It sucks that there are some dudes who maybe start out as wife guys and get twisted by fame, or those who use it to mask being complete and absolute slugs, but don’t get disheartened just because a few dickheads got caught and now the internet is questioning the premise. What can assure you that ‘wife guys’ have been a thing forever and a few wandering dicks aren’t going to completely stamp them out.

[(Anonymous)]

My mother has told me more than once that a key component of what others perceive as a "good" marriage is that neither spouse bad-mouths the other outside of very private settings (like alone with your bestie with a lot of booze). They also praise their spouse to others.

These actions in and of themselves aren't going to create great marriages, but I have to say, it does seem to be a feature in most of the successful couples I've seen. My parents for example have been together for 35+ years and around me they have lovingly degrading nicknames for each other and occasional nasty spats. In public they have a sort of seamless "I am aware of where my spouse is in this room at all times and if you fuck with them you're getting your ass beat, because they are more important to me than literally anything about you" aura. In a firm but gentle way.

[(Anonymous)]

This sounds like good advice!

[(Anonymous)]

I have little to no idea what this secret is talking about. Kinda gathered - from OP - that a "wife guy" is a man who's really playing up to other people how happy they are to be married to a smart or non-traditionally talented woman. I guess that makes a nice change from the piles of men who badmouth their spouse and make jokes at their expense in public? But I don't get why the OP was recently disillusioned about this. Yeah, being all talk is bad. But what's supposedly going on? And what's that got to do with fandom?

[(Anonymous)]

A particular guy from some webshow thing called Try Guys was a "wife guy." "I love my wife sooo much" was his Thing, and then it was discovered that while he'd been raving about her on the show, he'd been cheating on her, and now they're divorced. That's what caused the disillusionment. There was also John Mulaney, but I think it's unfair to compare the two because he didn't cheat on his wife and I don't think the fact that they ended up separating means he was being insincere all the times when he talked about how much he loved her. People just fall out of love sometimes.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I see. Thanks for explaining, anon.

And yeah, I think I agree with you about the second thing. "I saw a couple do X and now they're divorced" is not, by itself, a very convincing argument when the divorce rate is high across-the-board.

[(Anonymous)]

(AYRT, above)

[(Anonymous)]

Not to mention that you can still care very much about someone but decide that the two of you just don't work romantically. Breaking up doesn't invalidate all of the positive things you said about someone when the two of you were in a relationship.

Like, my ex and I broke up because the two of us wanted different things out of life and we realized that we weren't compatible as long-term partners. He's still a great guy who always treated me right! He's married now and I can say confidently that his wife landed a good one.

[(Anonymous)]

john mulaney was banging olivia munn before his official break-up with his wife