After early and sporadic resistance I found myself seeking her advice on pretty well everything, and I realise now that I was really seeking the benefit of her bossiness. Occasionally I would choose not to accept her advice or follow her instructions, and much of our conversation these days consists of her pointing out the awful results of that resistance and me offering my sorries. It may be a matter as mere as the position of a tree in the backyard.

So, in just a few years, I find that I have moved from appreciating my wife's advice to depending on her instructions in pretty well everything I do beyond my daily routine. That includes, of course, planting a tree or even a shrub, choosing a rostered day off, positioning the tent on our campsite, buying jeans and choosing the colour of my pizza oven's render. And I do as I'm told when she tells me to turn the heater on or off, up or down, to put her car away, to roll over in bed, to come home immediately because I've had enough to drink.

It is, I gather, an emasculation common among men in their 50s. What's going on?

Well, I wonder if it is just part of the wider empowerment of women evident now in women being installed as Governor-General, NSW Governor, Prime Minister and NSW Premier. Or might it be a leaching of confidence in men as they move from the supreme confidence of their testosterone-rich years to a maturity that allows for self-doubt?

Perhaps, but I rather favour the theory, my theory, that men become redundant to women after they've fathered the children, provided the bread, paid for the house and laid the nest egg. Sure, some wives as a gesture of grudging gratitude will allow us to stay, so long as we do as we're told, but we have served our purpose, we are spent.

Can you offer an explanation and condolences?