MEN ONLY

Let's say that you were the kind of guy who can get paid without going to work. But after about seven months of living with you, watching you sleeping till noon for 95% of the time, and not going to sleep until 3-6am the same 95% of the time, your wife becomes frustrated to a level that makes her want to just plain kick your ass. Let's say that you have easily held down a job in the past. You went to work by 8am for 5 years without much of an issue. If you went to work on a regular basis, you would have unlimited upward mobility, you would earn commission that would make your family's life easier, and you would learn something new everyday. Your dad, who is the greatest guy, would be your boss.

Instead you stay up late on the internet looking up stuff like pictures and movies and music. You play video games online into the wee hours of the night. Your wife has begged and pleaded and cried to you to please go to sleep. You are keeping her up. When you come to bed at 5am, you wake her up and she can't get back to sleep for those last couple of precious hours that she needs, especially after she stayed up late to try to spend time with you and persuade you to sleep.

When your wife goes to work, you tell her goodbye from your burrow under the covers, and as soon as she leaves you go back to sleep. When she calls you at noon you don't answer the phone because you are still asleep, or on a rare occasion you have just woken up and are in the shower. You are just getting up and around when she is getting ready to end her day. You end up leaving the house for the day when she is getting home, usually you see her for a few minutes or not at all. But you aren't going to work. You are going to help a friend with his car, or to go to Wal-Mart, or to go pick up the newest DVD or game or CD that was released. You get home and it is past your wife's bedtime. She has eaten supper by herself. She should be asleep by now but she stayed awake hoping to see you. You talk to her for a little while and then resume your post on the computer or in front of the video game. The whole cycle starts over.

When she asks you for a favor, like going to the bank to make a deposit, you answer that you will "try to get there" because your schedule is just SO busy.

Your wife has had episodes of being sad, angry, upset, all a reflection of what is going on with you and the strange hours you keep, and the fact that you don't go to work. You aren't doing housework either. You are living the good life, taking advantage of the situation... Because you can. You are blind to the upward mobility and the increased income that would be yours if you would apply yourself and go to work. You are blind to the pain that you are causing your wife and the wonderful relationship that you are destroying. To you, everything seems fine. Why wouldn't it? You are living "every man's dream." You don't have to do anything and you get everything. A paycheck, a house to live in, a wife who loves you and takes care of things. Why should things change?

You don't even see this as being selfish and cocky, as being lazy and unhealthy.

Now- from a man's perspective..... If you were this man's wife. What exactly would you do to get your husband to see what is going on and to motivate him to do the right thing? What would you do to get out of this 7 month slump, to make him go to sleep, get up and go to work, and be a more caring and unselfish man?

The only power that you feel you have left, as a wife, is the network administrator. You could, with the push of a button, turn off the wireless network in your home at exactly midnight, effectively cutting off all internet and online gaming activity. Would you do it?

What else would you do to make your husband see what is right in front of him?

Men only please. That's all I ask. I don't need womanly opinions here. At all.