In the bedroom. Tom Cruise has nothing on real men.
Caroline Overington: Primal comfort of having a real man to do the job
OPINION
Caroline Overington
July 29, 2006
I WAS as round as a planet when I was pregnant. "Look at you," a neighbour said when she saw me standing on the veranda, feet wide apart. "You're huge."
"Yes," I said, "but I am carrying twins."
"Are you?" said the neighbour, delighted. "You should go down to No.44. She's expecting twins, too."
A few days later, I waddled down there. Another girl, as round as me, opened thedoor.
"Twins?" she said. "Twins," I agreed.
We bonded over a cup of tea, the saucers balanced on the mountains under our chins.
I asked her: "How does your husband feel about it?" And that's when she confided: in the seven months since she'd become pregnant, they'd broken up.
"But how will you cope?" I said. "Oh, it's OK," she said. "I'm with somebody else now. I'm with the builder."
My neighbour had fallen in love with the guy who'd come to put on the extension, who had built the rooms for the babies she was carrying.
I was speechless. It was the first time I'd ever heard of anybody: a) cutting and running when pregnant; b) especially with twins; and c) shacking up with the builder.
Six years later, there's an epidemic under way. The New York Times last week published a story headlined, "The allure of the tool belt", and it was all about the wives - not necessarily pregnant but very definitely frustrated - who had run off with the guy who came to fix the leaky bathroom taps or replace the kitchen benchtops.
The reporter concluded that women liked builders because: a) they can do stuff around the house; and b) their husbands generally can't.
"Once a lightbulb broke and the glass part was still in its socket," one woman said. "I didn't know how to get it out and I asked my husband and he said, 'I don't do light bulbs. Go hire somebody."'
Builders also listen to women, perhaps in a way their husbands do not.
A carpenter who'd had his share of attention from wives told the Times: "Say you have a woman who's a baker. You're setting up special counter tops. You're going over what's involved in making them." The conversation can swiftly move to what kind of home and home life a woman wants, the nooks and crannies she'd like to create for the sewing machine and the children's homework: in other words, the things that are important to her. The carpenter added that in 75 per cent of projects where he dealt mostly with the wife, he could detect an element of "sexual desperation".
But perhaps it's not quite that. Perhaps it's a simple yearning for an old-fashioned type of guy.
A friend in Manhattan - she sent me the story about the wives running off with builders - is married to a locksmith.
He has many fine qualities but she particularly likes his heavily laden, cream-coloured toolbelt (which he doesn't always take off at night). Beyond the aesthetics, she says it's a fine thing to have somebody around the house to change the locks and secure the windows.
My husband is a bit like that: he's a guy with a toolshed and a hammer drill. He put up a tree house for the children, he also tore out the old fireplace. When the lights blow out, he knows where to find the fuse box. It is a primal comfort to me.
But, if best-selling American writer Caitlin Flanagan is correct (and on the subject of domestic politics she often is), too many modern husbands are too frightened to let out the lion inside - and an epidemic of sexless marriages is the result.
"Pity the poor married man hoping to get a bit of comfort from the wife at day's end," she writes in her new book, To Hell With All That. "He must somehow seduce a woman who is economically independent of him, bone-tired, philosophically disinclined to have sex unless she is jolly well in the mood, numbingly familiar with his every sexual manoeuvre and still doing a slow burn over his failure to wipe down the counter tops."
Flanagan says men should be encouraged to be their blokey selves. They should assert themselves in the household, just as builders do on the job site: as confident, responsible and strong, able to lead when life's calamaties roll in, and keep their family sheltered and secure.
In case they're no longer sure how to do that, there are groups out there to help them. This weekend, Christian City Church at Oxford Falls in Sydney's north is hosting a "Real Men" conference for thousands of blokes who want to be strong husbands and fathers.
Anecdotally, I hear women are sending their menfolk along in the hope of giving them a push towards a more masculine style. Because really, it's a bit tragic that there are all these desperate housewives out there hitting on the builder.
You may think, well, maybe it's just an American thing, bought about by television shows such as Desperate Housewives.
But my brother, who is a father of two and a roof tiler in Queensland, says that, through the years, about four in 10 married women have answered the door for him wearing only their underwear.
"And what do you do?" I asked.
"I run a mile," he said. "All I want is to lay the tiles."
Caroline Overington: Primal comfort of having a real man to do the job
OPINION
Caroline Overington
July 29, 2006
I WAS as round as a planet when I was pregnant. "Look at you," a neighbour said when she saw me standing on the veranda, feet wide apart. "You're huge."
"Yes," I said, "but I am carrying twins."
"Are you?" said the neighbour, delighted. "You should go down to No.44. She's expecting twins, too."
A few days later, I waddled down there. Another girl, as round as me, opened thedoor.
"Twins?" she said. "Twins," I agreed.
We bonded over a cup of tea, the saucers balanced on the mountains under our chins.
I asked her: "How does your husband feel about it?" And that's when she confided: in the seven months since she'd become pregnant, they'd broken up.
"But how will you cope?" I said. "Oh, it's OK," she said. "I'm with somebody else now. I'm with the builder."
My neighbour had fallen in love with the guy who'd come to put on the extension, who had built the rooms for the babies she was carrying.
I was speechless. It was the first time I'd ever heard of anybody: a) cutting and running when pregnant; b) especially with twins; and c) shacking up with the builder.
Six years later, there's an epidemic under way. The New York Times last week published a story headlined, "The allure of the tool belt", and it was all about the wives - not necessarily pregnant but very definitely frustrated - who had run off with the guy who came to fix the leaky bathroom taps or replace the kitchen benchtops.
The reporter concluded that women liked builders because: a) they can do stuff around the house; and b) their husbands generally can't.
"Once a lightbulb broke and the glass part was still in its socket," one woman said. "I didn't know how to get it out and I asked my husband and he said, 'I don't do light bulbs. Go hire somebody."'
Builders also listen to women, perhaps in a way their husbands do not.
A carpenter who'd had his share of attention from wives told the Times: "Say you have a woman who's a baker. You're setting up special counter tops. You're going over what's involved in making them." The conversation can swiftly move to what kind of home and home life a woman wants, the nooks and crannies she'd like to create for the sewing machine and the children's homework: in other words, the things that are important to her. The carpenter added that in 75 per cent of projects where he dealt mostly with the wife, he could detect an element of "sexual desperation".
But perhaps it's not quite that. Perhaps it's a simple yearning for an old-fashioned type of guy.
A friend in Manhattan - she sent me the story about the wives running off with builders - is married to a locksmith.
He has many fine qualities but she particularly likes his heavily laden, cream-coloured toolbelt (which he doesn't always take off at night). Beyond the aesthetics, she says it's a fine thing to have somebody around the house to change the locks and secure the windows.
My husband is a bit like that: he's a guy with a toolshed and a hammer drill. He put up a tree house for the children, he also tore out the old fireplace. When the lights blow out, he knows where to find the fuse box. It is a primal comfort to me.
But, if best-selling American writer Caitlin Flanagan is correct (and on the subject of domestic politics she often is), too many modern husbands are too frightened to let out the lion inside - and an epidemic of sexless marriages is the result.
"Pity the poor married man hoping to get a bit of comfort from the wife at day's end," she writes in her new book, To Hell With All That. "He must somehow seduce a woman who is economically independent of him, bone-tired, philosophically disinclined to have sex unless she is jolly well in the mood, numbingly familiar with his every sexual manoeuvre and still doing a slow burn over his failure to wipe down the counter tops."
Flanagan says men should be encouraged to be their blokey selves. They should assert themselves in the household, just as builders do on the job site: as confident, responsible and strong, able to lead when life's calamaties roll in, and keep their family sheltered and secure.
In case they're no longer sure how to do that, there are groups out there to help them. This weekend, Christian City Church at Oxford Falls in Sydney's north is hosting a "Real Men" conference for thousands of blokes who want to be strong husbands and fathers.
Anecdotally, I hear women are sending their menfolk along in the hope of giving them a push towards a more masculine style. Because really, it's a bit tragic that there are all these desperate housewives out there hitting on the builder.
You may think, well, maybe it's just an American thing, bought about by television shows such as Desperate Housewives.
But my brother, who is a father of two and a roof tiler in Queensland, says that, through the years, about four in 10 married women have answered the door for him wearing only their underwear.
"And what do you do?" I asked.
"I run a mile," he said. "All I want is to lay the tiles."
