Maggy Scarf remarks in Intimate Partners that three-quarters or so of American marriages follow a curious scenario: the woman wants more intimacy and the man flees from that; she runs after, but not quite fast enough to catch him, and he flees but not quite fast enough to get away. This game can go on for years. The passive man may not say what he wants, and the girlfriend or wife has to guess it. As a compensation for passivity at home, he may go into robot production at work, but that isn’t really what he wants either.
