Girlfriends and wifes, how do YOU cope?


I would be very interested in finding out how one manages to justify (or sneak in the home) expensive audio equipment without having to sell your soul to the Devil? It's quite a challenge for many of us I think. I heard of someone buying a Bel Canto DAC and telling his girlfriend that " Oh it's just a $ 100.00 power conditionner", or whatever. Seem like we need to get creative here if we can pursue this crazy hobby much longer! Regards All...
ampman66
Detlof, as an analyst, perhaps my answer to the question "girlfriends and wife, how do you cope?" will interest you because it relies on the difference between masculine and feminine attitudes towards listening pleasure. I can clarify this apropos of the psychoanalytic opposition between "enjoyment of drives" and "enjoyment of the other," since this opposition is sexualized. On the one hand, men follow the closed, ultimately solipsistic, circuit of drives which find their satisfaction in idiotic masturbatory (autoerotic) activity, in the perverse circulating around an object (e.g. a piece of music) as an object of drive. On the other hand, women are subjects for whom access to enjoyment is much more closely linked to the domain of other people's discourse, to how they not so much talk, as are talked about: say, musical pleasure hinges on the animated talk of the co-listener, on the satisfaction provided by speech itself and not just the act of listening in its infantile and onanistic stupidity. And does not this contrast explain the long-observed difference in how the two sexes relate to the "listening room"? Men are much more prone to use the listening room as a masturbatory device for their solitary listening immersed in stupid repetitive pleasures playing their records, while women are more prone to participate in chat in the listening room, using the listening room for exchanges of speech. There is another--more radical--point to be made here: namely, a "true woman" is defined by a certain radical act: the act of taking from man, her partner, of obliterating--even destroying--that which means everything to him, and which is more important to him than his own life, the precious treasure around which his life resolves. As the exemplary figure of such an act in my life, I will mention my previous fiance who, upon learning that I was involved with another woman, appropriated my Jadis amplifiers, my most precious possession at the time, and donated it to a Salvation Army store in Manhattan--it is in this horrible act of destroying that which matters most to her partner (whether through chat in the listening room, or through appropriating his most treasured component or recording) that a woman acts as a true woman and copes with her partner's way of enjoying himself.
Slawney, a pleasure to see you back and a beautiful piece indeed. Your analysis, though of course politically highly incorrect, is of course psychologically more than correct,if you truly reduce the whole affair down to its brass tacks. It was Chaucer after all, who about a millenium ago pointed out, that the basic interest of woman was power - benevolently wielded, if you're lucky, maliciously, if you cross the lady. Was it not Shakespeare who said, that "hell hath no fury as a woman scorned", vide your Jadis. He also speaks of them as " those empty vessels". Obviously he understood something about male projection. In that sense our systems are empty vessels as well, aren't they? (~;
the girlfriend left (not too broken up about that), never been married....just me and the mutt, and we are both happy:D

Cinepro 20, here i come!!!!
Slawney. Very nice discourse. Sounds like you destroyed her heart and she destroyed your "heartware". I'm not getting into a discussion of which is most dear. However, if we flip this around a bit, aren't many of the responses in this thread related to inclusion and sharing as the keys to coping? If a woman destroys the things you love if she is treated wrong, does it follow that she would protect the things you love most if she is treated right?
My problem is less cost justification (i've taken the cowards way out and just don't discuss how much this stuff costs) but WAF (wife acceptance factor). I came across a sort of solution by bringing home a monolithic rear projection tv. She hated that so much that it had to go (substituted by a neat little projector). With audio the biggest objection I got was bringing home a pair of kef reference 3.2's. They were way to big for her tastes. So moving to the living voice obx's has her in smiles.