HOME ALONE

Whatever the case, Stahl got sick of rolling around the big empty house -- the five bedrooms, the game room, the two dens. His low point, he said, was when an appraiser visited and he offered her coffee and made small talk ("What do you think of our home theater?") so she wouldn't leave so quickly.

"She was looking at me like I was kind of weird," he said. "It was pathetic."

The whining does not win the men much sympathy from their wives. They speculate that their husbands exaggerate their pain to get themselves bargaining chips for down the road.

"I'd love to get away from my kids for two months," said Emmanuelle Warga, speaking by phone from the south of France. "He's pretending to be miserable."

Kay Langenbacher, rung up in Tokyo, said she's not quite sure why her husband is complaining, since he can come and go as he pleases, drink beer and hang with friends.

"He gets a sweet deal," she said.

Does she worry that he will stray while she's gone?

"He's above the average intelligence, and if you think about all the disease and what you can lose, I don't think he's the type," she said.

One early evening, Langenbacher biked home from a bar to call her.

"Kay!" he said, sitting at their dining room table, launching into a blizzard of questions about their sons, Adam, 8, and Max, 4. Then he told her about a barbecue he hosted a few nights before, at which he and several pals stayed up late communing with their inner guys.

"Who gets the better of this deal?" he asked her.

"The kids?" He shook his head. "It's always about the kids, Kay. Take the kids out of it."

"It's good for both of us, right," he agreed, nodding. "It makes me cherish you more, and vice-versa, right?

"Vice-versa, right? "