Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

you hit the road for that rush-hour commute to work, gone to
battle with your co-workers and boss for eight hours with noth-
ing but a fifteen-minute break to swallow an inadequate, unsat-
isfying lunch, and then hit the rush-hour traffic back home to
start your second job—the feeding and care of your kids. There’s
dinner to be cooked, and homework to be checked, and laun-
dry to be done, and the list goes on. By the time your man
checks in with you, the last thing on your mind is giving a posi-
tive response to what a friend of mine called “the shoulder tap.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “It’s when you
finally drop into the bed exhausted, and you’re halfway through
your favorite show you watch when you just want to zone out,
and here he comes, tapping you on your shoulder, asking for
sex. It’s just annoying.”
What that same friend of mine didn’t know, though, was
that her husband was tired of the “shoulder tap,” too. In his
mind, he’d also worked all day—just as hard as her. And though
he may not have done all the exact things she’d done during the
course of the evening at home, he, too, put in work around the
house, and, like her, needed to wind down from his day. She
liked watching television. He liked to have sex. She was always
too tired to have sex. He was tired of not having sex. So while
she unwound to her favorite shows, he unwound out of the
house—with another woman.
Now, I’m not saying what he did was right. But as a man, I
can understand the logic behind what he eventually ended up