After 16 years of marriage, Gerald Rogers finalized his divorce and wrote down some advice he wished he had received a long time ago. His Facebook posting went viral, with over 10 000 likes and 100 000 shares at last count.
I’m not divorced, nor do I have any plans to be, but I thought I would give my perspective on Gerald’s advice, and then offer my own advice for married women who would like to stay that way.
MARRIAGE ADVICE I WISH I WOULD HAVE HAD:
Obviously, I’m not a relationship expert. But there’s something about my divorce being finalized this week that gives me perspective of things I wish I would have done different… After losing a woman that I loved, and a marriage of almost 16 years, here’s the advice I wish I would have had…
1) Never stop courting. Never stop dating. NEVER EVER take that woman for granted. When you asked her to marry you, you promised to be that man that would OWN HER HEART and to fiercely protect it. This is the most important and sacred treasure you will ever be entrusted with. SHE CHOSE YOU. Never forget that, and NEVER GET LAZY in your love.
Oh dear. Courting, dating and taking for granted are all different things. Life doesn’t always leave room for courting and dating, neither of which has anything to do with taking someone for granted. You should not be asking your husband to PROVE his love to you, over and over again. He has already proven it. It happened the day you got married. What you SHOULD do is be grateful. Say thank you. Acknowledge all the little and big things he does for you. And make sure you reciprocate. Don’t keep score. Life is long and it will all balance out in the long run, which is what you are in for.
And most importantly, understand that men and women show their love in different ways. Women tend to like to talk about it. Men tend to show it. Neither is better than the other. Don’t try to bend him to your way of communicating. Listen to the love, even if it’s silent.
2) PROTECT YOUR OWN HEART. Just as you committed to being the protector of her heart, you must guard your own with the same vigilance. Love yourself fully, love the world openly, but there is a special place in your heart where no one must enter except for your wife. Keep that space always ready to receive her and invite her in, and refuse to let anyone or anything else enter there.
Okay, sure. Protect your own heart. But at the same time, don’t make the mistake of thinking your husband will be the one person to fulfil all your needs, and all your desires. The only person who can do that, ultimately is YOU. There will be many passions in your life that come and go, and some of those you will share with your husband, and some you won’t. That’s okay.
http://judgybitch.com/2013/04/05/husband-%E2%89%A0-friend/
I think one of the biggest myths we cherish about love and marriage is that there is one, and only one person meant just for us. That really doesn’t make any sense. There are 7 billion people on the planet! The idea that only one of those humans is the perfect match for you is nonsensical. You are both going to meet people with whom you feel a spark, a connection, a sense of compatibility and mutual attraction.
So what? Accept that there are many, many people with whom you could create a happy, harmonious life, and then let it go.
You’ve made your choice. Whatever problems you are experiencing at any given time, whatever part of you is going unfulfilled or unsatisfied, understand that trading in for a new partner won’t change that. You’ll just have new problems.
3) FALL IN LOVE OVER and OVER and OVER again. You will constantly change. You’re not the same people you were when you got married, and in five years you will not be the same person you are today. Change will come, and in that you have to re-choose each other everyday. SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU, and if you don’t take care of her heart, she may give that heart to someone else or seal you out completely, and you may never be able to get it back. Always fight to win her love just as you did when you were courting her.
No. I hate this. Marriage is not and should not be conditional on how you happen to feel at any given moment. Yes, you will both change. People change. Marriage vows are about navigating those changes together. As one. Even the not so great changes.
…to have and to hold from this day forward, forsaking all others, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part
4) ALWAYS SEE THE BEST in her. Focus only on what you love. What you focus on will expand. If you focus on what bugs you, all you will see is reasons to be bugged. If you focus on what you love, you can’t help but be consumed by love. Focus to the point where you can no longer see anything but love, and you know without a doubt that you are the luckiest man on earth to be have this woman as your wife.
Again, I disagree completely. Make a list of all the shit that drives you absolutely nuts about him! The things you want to kill him for! The stuff that makes you scream and want to tear out your hair! The things he does that makes you take stock of just where the knives are.
And now, for every item on your list, write down the shit that YOU do that makes him go insane. For every irritating, annoying, infuriating, frustrating thing that he does, I guarantee you, you do something equally exasperating.
And then laugh about it. Humans are annoying. Everyone has their own quirks and foibles and idiosyncrasies and all those things tend to annoy the shit out of the people they have to live with. That’s just life. You don’t need to ignore the fact that your husband irritates the shit out of you on occasion. Just keep in mind that you yourself return the favor.
No one is perfect. There is no need to pretend they are.
5) IT’S NOT YOUR JOB TO CHANGE OR FIX HER… your job is to love her as she is with no expectation of her ever changing. And if she changes, love what she becomes, whether it’s what you wanted or not.
Yeah, I agree with this one. Don’t expect your partner to change, but at the same time, know that he will. It’s not up to you to decide how or when or in what direction he changes. And if you don’t like the change, talk about it with him, but understand that the tables will turn soon enough, and it will be him not terribly happy with how you have changed.
6) TAKE FULL ACCOUNTABILITY for your own emotions: It’s not your wife’s job to make you happy, and she CAN’T make you sad. You are responsible for finding your own happiness, and through that your joy will spill over into your relationship and your love.
These things are not mutually exclusive. Yes, it is your husband’s job to make you happy and he most certainly CAN make you sad. And yes, it is YOUR job to make him happy, and you most certainly can also make him sad.
But that’s not the same thing as saying ALL your happiness will come from your partner. It won’t. A marriage in which both partners are devoted to making the other person happy is a joy indeed. That’s really the key to how you make a marriage work. You make your husband’s happiness YOUR priority and he makes YOUR happiness his. That’s how the whole deal works. That doesn’t mean you turn yourself into a self-sacrificing martyr dragging the burden of other people’s well-being like a cross through life. Nonsense.
Making the people you love happy is what will make YOU happy. It’s not just true for the people you love, either. Making other people happy is what makes us happy. It makes us human.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/helping-others-happy-altruism-work_n_3672477.html
7) NEVER BLAME your wife If YOU get frustrated or angry at her, it is only because it is triggering something inside of YOU. They are YOUR emotions, and your responsibility. When you feel those feelings take time to get present and to look within and understand what it is inside of YOU that is asking to be healed. You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them… when you heal yourself, you will no longer be triggered by her, and you will wonder why you ever were.
You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them
Yikes! Well, that certainly wasn’t the reason I chose my husband, and I’m almost sad to read that Gerald chose a woman that brought back all the pain of his childhood. I understand how the wounds of childhood can be painful, and that relationships can indeed help to heal them, but I personally found that I let go of all the pain of my own blighted childhood by being the kind of mother I never had.
I can understand marrying someone like your opposite sex parent if that relationship was principally loving and affectionate, but on the whole, I don’t think I would advise anyone to marry someone who triggers pain and a sense of being wounded.
8) Allow your woman to JUST BE. When she’s sad or upset, it’s not your job to fix it, it’s your job to HOLD HER and let her know it’s ok. Let her know that you hear her, and that she’s important and that you are that pillar on which she can always lean. The feminine spirit is about change and emotion and like a storm her emotions will roll in and out, and as you remain strong and unjudging she will trust you and open her soul to you… DON’T RUN-AWAY WHEN SHE’S UPSET. Stand present and strong and let her know you aren’t going anywhere. Listen to what she is really saying behind the words and emotion.
This is really beautiful, and absolutely true for women, too. When your husband is upset, it’s your job to hold him and let him know that everything is okay. Sometimes you will need to be the pillar on which your husband can lean. All too often, I think women don’t truly appreciate that men can be floored by an emotional reaction. Men can receive staggering blows. Men have all the same emotions and reactions and feelings as women, as sometimes those will be overwhelming.
Don’t run away or act disgusted when confronted by your husband’s emotions. Don’t be afraid of anger or physical expressions of inner states of being. When women get really angry or upset, they tend to cry. When men get really angry or upset, they like to kill things in virtual reality. One isn’t better than another. And both are felt with equal depth. Don’t sneer at how your husband expresses his emotions.
9) BE SILLY… don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Laugh. And make her laugh. Laughter makes everything else easier.
Absolutely. But if your idea of a laughter filled weekend involves a Benny Hill/Three Stooges marathon, maybe give your wife a pass to go to a period costume drama at the theatres with her friends?
Just a thought.
10) FILL HER SOUL EVERYDAY… learn her love languages and the specific ways that she feels important and validated and CHERISHED. Ask her to create a list of 10 THINGS that make her feel loved and memorize those things and make it a priority everyday to make her feel like a queen.
Aww. This is sweet. Make sure you do the exact same for your husband. He will have a love language all his own, and a list of specific things that makes him feel loved and cherished. Be the Queen. Absolutely. Don’t be a Princess. A Princess is a spoiled brat who thinks Daddy should give her everything she wants by simple virtue of existence. A Queen knows that she has a job: she rules a realm with a King at her side. She has privileges and rights, and she knows they come with responsibilities and obligations. You can’t have one without the other.
That’s a marriage.
11) BE PRESENT. Give her not only your time, but your focus, your attention and your soul. Do whatever it takes to clear your head so that when you are with her you are fully WITH HER. Treat her as you would your most valuable client. She is.
Oh god no. This comes across as way too much attention. Life has so much drudgery and routine and things that just need to get done and sometimes the loveliest feeling in the world is just getting through the work knowing the other person is there. He doesn’t have to be the sole focus of your whole life, nor do you have to clear your mind so you can focus only on him, him, him.
And please don’t think of your husband as your most valuable client. Your marriage is not a transactional relationship. Viewing your partner as a client to whom you are obliged to deliver services reduces the whole relationship to one of functionality. And when the relationship doesn’t function any more?
You replace it.
Marriage isn’t a commercial relationship. Don’t turn it into one.
12) BE WILLING TO TAKE HER SEXUALLY, to carry her away in the power of your masculine presence, to consume her and devour her with your strength, and to penetrate her to the deepest levels of her soul. Let her melt into her feminine softness as she knows she can trust you fully.
Ladies, be willing to be taken sexually, to be carried away in his masculine presence, to be consumed and devoured with strength, to be penetrated to the deepest levels of your soul. And be willing to return the favor.
Again, make his pleasure your primary goal, and let him make your pleasure his. It reinforces how the whole relationship works.
13) DON’T BE AN IDIOT…. And don’t be afraid of being one either. You will make mistakes and so will she. Try not to make too big of mistakes, and learn from the ones you do make. You’re not supposed to be perfect, just try to not be too stupid.
Yep. Good advice. Just try not to be too stupid.
14) GIVE HER SPACE… The woman is so good at giving and giving, and sometimes she will need to be reminded to take time to nurture herself. Sometimes she will need to fly from your branches to go and find what feeds her soul, and if you give her that space she will come back with new songs to sing…. (okay, getting a little too poetic here, but you get the point. Tell her to take time for herself, ESPECIALLY after you have kids. She needs that space to renew and get re-centered, and to find herself after she gets lost in serving you, the kids and the world.)
Yes. Very true. And remember that sometimes your husband will have those moments when he feels like nothing more than a walking wallet. Like an ATM machine whose purpose in life is to grind out cash and hand it over. Of course, you are all living in the same life, and all benefitting from everyone’s work, but that doesn’t mean he won’t occasionally feel like his usefulness boils down to a number on an IRS form.
Be sensitive to those moments. Make sure your husband knows he is more than just a tool the family uses to survive. Set aside money just for him to spend on what he likes, and make no comments. Give him time and space to go and be the man he is, and not just an instrument you find particularly useful.
15) BE VULNERABLE… you don’t have to have it all together. Be willing to share your fears and feelings, and quick to acknowledge your mistakes.
Yep. Every one screws up. Say you’re sorry. And when it’s his turn to fuck up and ask for forgiveness, be gracious, accept the apology and then let it go. Don’t bear grudges. You screw up, too. If he screws up big time, consider it money in the bank for some future transgression on your part.
(I’m kidding!)
16) BE FULLY TRANSPARENT. If you want to have trust you must be willing to share EVERYTHING… Especially those things you don’t want to share. It takes courage to fully love, to fully open your heart and let her in when you don’t know i she will like what she finds… Part of that courage is allowing her to love you completely, your darkness as well as your light. DROP THE MASK… If you feel like you need to wear a mask around her, and show up perfect all the time, you will never experience the full dimension of what love can be.
Again, the alternative to wearing a mask and pretending to be perfect is not complete transparency. I don’t need to know everything going on in my husband’s mind. Jesus. I don’t want to! And I’m pretty sure he would go insane in about five minutes if I shared everything going on in my mind with him.
Somethings are better left unsaid. Somethings are just things you THINK. No need to share. Again, think about his happiness. Will telling him X or Y add to that happiness or detract? Make his happiness your priority and text your girlfriends about your frustrations.
17) NEVER STOP GROWING TOGETHER… The stagnant pond breeds malaria, the flowing stream is always fresh and cool. Atrophy is the natural process when you stop working a muscle, just as it is if you stop working on your relationship. Find common goals, dreams and visions to work towards.
Yes. This. No matter what life brings, what changes come your way, you find a way to work together. Til death do you part.
18) DON’T WORRY ABOUT MONEY. Money is a game, find ways to work together as a team to win it. It never helps when teammates fight. Figure out ways to leverage both persons strength to win.
Well, you can worry about money, but don’t fight about it. Fights over money are apparently a huge source of conflict in a lot of marriages. I would seriously consider NOT marrying someone if you can’t agree on the ground rules for how to manage money.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/money-fights-predict-divorce-rates/
19) FORGIVE IMMEDIATELY and focus on the future rather than carrying weight from the past. Don’t let your history hold you hostage. Holding onto past mistakes that either you or she makes, is like a heavy anchor to your marriage and will hold you back. FORGIVENESS IS FREEDOM. Cut the anchor loose and always choose love.
This is probably the key thing Gerald gets right. And of course the biggest thing to forgive in any marriage is infidelity. Some people consider infidelity a deal breaker. Have sex outside the marriage and the marriage is over. I don’t take that stance at all. My principal interest would be in what motivated the infidelity.
Sex on the side, as a little entertainment, is annoying and I wouldn’t be especially pleased about that, but I wouldn’t end my marriage over it either. I have made it clear to my husband that if he IS going to have sex with someone other than me, he chooses a professional. For one thing, the risk of disease is considerably lower.
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/dirty-whores/
And the risk of pregnancy and other emotional complications is also much, much lower.
My strategy for keeping my husband faithful is to have a lot of sex with him. Leave him with no energy or desire to consider professional alternatives. Seems to be working.
Sex with another woman he loves would be a much bigger problem. I personally would still not end our marriage over that kind of infidelity, because we have children and I am not going to punish them because I have neglected my husband to the point that he has a full emotional relationship with someone else.
That kind of infidelity would indeed be very troubling, but I would accept partial responsibility for that scenario, and turn my attention towards working on our own relationship, and that wouldn’t be possible without forgiveness.
Gerald is right. Forgive. And forget. And then work on what led to the problem in the first place.
20) ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. In the end, this is the only advice you need. If this is the guiding principle through which all your choices is governed, there is nothing that will threaten the happiness of your marriage. Love will always endure.
As long as “always choose love” means “put the other person first” then I agree. But that MUST be reciprocal. If he is not going to put you first, not going to forsake all others, not going to make you his priority, then you are wasting your time and your life.
And so is any man. None of us exist to be a tool for others to use. It’s absolutely true that marriage works best when the other person is the top priority, but if the feelings and actions are not returned, the relationship is just an elaborate exploitation of one person by another.
And the sad reality is that marriage really has become a vehicle for one person to exploit another, until they get tired and decide to trade in. What I take away from Gerald’s post is that he deeply regrets not supplicating his entire personality and needs to the woman he loved. That may be cruel, but it’s the feeling I am left with. There is so little sense in his writing that any of their marital problems were caused by her. It feels like he accepts complete and total blame.
There’s something heroic in that.
And something bitter, too.
Everyone knows that ultimately, marriage is a gamble. There are no guarantees. But when the odds are stacked so horribly against you, why would you take the risk at all? In my opinion, Gerald’s advice doesn’t help, over all. Encouraging men to yield everything they can to women, without insisting that women yield the same to men, is only handing women a sword.
That tends not to work out very well.
I gave ’em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.
Richard M. Nixon
Why would a man fight a battle he knows he can’t win?
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
I only skimmed his post as soon as I saw that he put no responsibility on her. He talked as if everything was all his fault. I was done with him after I saw that.
The truth is, we have absolutely no idea about why she left. It could be that he was always a Plan B. Always a starter husband as far as she was concerned. Which means that there is nothing he could have done differently to save that marriage.
And he could not have dared to post the things that she did wrong in the relationship, or Facebook would have instantly deemed it a hate post.
That post didn’t strike me like advice; it struck me like the pathetic whining of a man who acted like there were no other women in the world, and his life was over because of this one relationship. Which is probably one reason she left him. Pathetic whining on a man is just not sexy.
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Hmmmm………
Most of the those 20 points when followed to the letter is what caused a significant percentage of divorces in the first place. But yeah, there is another point here. If this man followed all these things to the letter, he would have lasted only 6 rather than 16 years. This is the voice of a mangina – Simply another set of kilobytes to be transferred to the recycle bin. Somehow I have a feeling, Roissy would give out 20 points diametrically opposite to what laid out here and still create a much better marriage blueprint 😉
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He is a pussybeggar and she is an harpy, for sure.
Now, the second part: how much money he has to pay to da bitch?
JB, you attached an sculpture head of my countryman Lucius Anneus Seneca, the great stoic Roman philosopher, born in Cordoba, Hispania (Spain) and mentor of Emperor Nero.
Yo did it because everybody should take this bitches with an stoic attitude?
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His item #1 would make more sense if he had said: Always be GAMING. Not always be courting, except to use that word as a polite name for GAMING. That never stops; Athol’s site and book are the final word on this. Becoming a beta schlub by inaction is a mistake too many men make, and one I had to unlearn myself.
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I like the KISS principle. Simple is best.
1) Value yourself
2) Value your spouse
and, that bit about the humor. Levity in life is really important.
This guy’s list sounds like something directly out of Nicholas Sparks. He might actually be Nicholas Sparks. There’s probably a profit incentive (motivational speaker, from what I understand…if i made my living telling people how to be successful and my own marriage was a failure I’d feel the need for ‘splainin too), and it has gone viral so, well done, I guess.
Some of it right, some just silly. Women swoon, “YES! YES! That’s what I want!” Yet the moment a guy would turn into this ‘always see her best’ et al and takes whatever crap she dishes out they’d instantly be repelled. As they turn into Jaba the Hut lying on the couch and whining and the man supplicates ‘you’re always perfect to me, Dear, feel free to use me as the human canvas on which to project your endless and painfully redundant whiny verbal articulations’…Their lizard brain would tell them ‘this guy has to settle, he can’t do any better…he’s living with Jaba the bitching Hut! I need a new man!” What women say they want are quite often not what they really want. By contrast, a man will tell you what he wants…and that’s really what he wants. It’s kind of refreshing.
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“this one relationship”? Dude, it was the end of a 16 year marriage, not a 16 week casual dating relationship.
Separate from the merit of his advice, Rogers is allowed to be devastated about what happened him. If he wants to vent about it, let a brother vent. Swallowing the red pill doesn’t mean we become unfeeling sociopaths.
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He’s an idiot.
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I just have a hard time believing that none of the problems in the relationship became evident until sixteen years had passed.
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Maybe I should create a list on how to stay unmarried and save men the pain of how to stay out of family court.
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I’m sorry JB, I couldn’t stomach the blue-pillness of that dude’s FB post. I regret to admit I could only get a few paragraphs in and then I began losing my lunch.
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There is much simpler advice for any one that doesn’t want to get divorced. It’s only 3 words, but three very powerful words. DON’T GET MARRIED. The institution of marriage isn’t failing. It has failed, past tense. Any one that gets married today is just asking to have their heart ripped out, and if you happen to be male, you wallet emptied as well.
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“16) BE FULLY TRANSPARENT. . . .” is a topic, when it comes up in the Manosphere, that always snares my attention. It’s closely related to the ‘Just be yourself’ topic. I prefer Rogers’s take, but I would tweak it.
First, he positions the man being “fully transparent” as an issue of earning the woman’s trust. I disagree. The issue of a man being transparent to his partner is really about the woman earning her man’s trust. It’s up to the woman to make her man feel like he can be transparent with her without fearing he’ll be punished for saying the wrong thing, AKA fail a fitness test.
Second, I don’t like JB’s response to 16, but I’ll go part way in her direction. I don’t advocate constant confessional dogmatic disclosure on the man’s part as a practical matter, but ideally, he would trust that he *can* disclose his mind dogmatically and confessionally to his woman without punitive consequence. And he should be able to trust that when he does fully disclose his thoughts and feelings, she’ll be on his side in whatever constructive manner he needs her to be, eg, whether it’s formulating a solution together or simply commiserating with him.
However, the PUA school in particular and the red-pill Manosphere in general teach men as a tenet that talking with women requires special navigation skills like Mark Twain on the Mississippi River. For example, the “What are you thinking?” question from women is a classic fitness-test trap. (In my experience, yes, it is a trap and I’ve been punished for answering the wrong way, ie, openly and honestly.) Further, that men can’t be open and honest with women even in a committed partner relationship. As Fred says, a man must always be gaming or else he’ll suffer the consequences of failing a fitness test, killing her attraction, etc..
I prefer Rogers’s take on 16, once suitably tweaked, but the red pill warns that women don’t want openness and honesty from their men.
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For sure, I’m not giving his ex a pass.
But men are the vigorously passionate, romantic, dreaming, and idealist gender. Masculine feeling runs deep in our souls and that’s a strength. Rogers’s “pathetic whining” is a sign of his deep feeling. I don’t fault him for loving his wife and his broken heart.
Rogers seems like a decent guy. He just needs the red pill.
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Has anyone vetted this? How do we know that it’s a man who wrote this?
It’s the same shit all over again— marriage break ups are solely men’s fault!
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He was asking to be divorced !
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True, Feminine Imperative is all over it, but even if it’s a troll, there are men who really think like this. Many of us ex-blue pillers thought like this to some degree.
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But men are the vigorously passionate, romantic, dreaming, and idealist gender.
I now understand this to be true. Women mask their true nature of Hypergamy with romantic fluff.
Masculine feeling runs deep in our souls and that’s a strength.
So true. The key is to find someone worthy to invest it in.
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To be clear, I didn’t mean that married couples shouldn’t talk to each other about their feelings!
Of course they should. But Jesus, I don’t need to know every time the wind changes directions! I was thinking more in contrast to my relationships with my girlfriends, in which, yes, we chart every little thing that happens during the course of the day.
And some feelings really are better left unsaid. If there is no solution, and all you want to do is vent, it is often better to find someone other than your spouse to vent to.
Inlaws are a great example. Yes, mine can be real dicks, but it only makes my husband sad and angry when I talk to him about it in any depth, because there is nothing he can realistically do about them. He defends me against the more blatant insults, but he can’t change the fact they don’t like his wife, and it doesn’t really help for me to tell him how much they upset me.
Luckily, Pixie has a total cunt for a MIL, too. so we scream in text messages to one another.
The inevitable frustrations of being at home, the boringness of it sometimes – also shit I bring to my other SAHM friends, and not my husband.
Your spouse doesn’t have to be your sole support, I suppose is what I meant.
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Inlaws are a great example. Yes, mine can be real dicks, but it only makes my husband sad and angry when I talk to him about it in any depth, because there is nothing he can realistically do about them. He defends me against the more blatant insults, but he can’t change the fact they don’t like his wife, and it doesn’t really help for me to tell him how much they upset me.
It’s always sad to read you mentioning this, JB. I cannot imagine any woman being a better wife to their son than you. Whenever you describe your MiL’s behavior, in particular, I cannot help but ask myself “what the FUCK is wrong with this woman? Would she really rather her son be married to an ’empowered’ feminist cunt who cuts his balls off on a regular basis?”
That said, kudos to you for handling these situations with such grace. Were I in your shoes, I don’t think I would be able to be quite so accommodating.
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I don’t know what Rogers’ religious persuasion is, if any, but heaven help any churchian man in his situation who relies on “Christian” marriage counselors for help. This asshole is typical of the lot. Their prevailing message is essentially as follows: “As the man, God made you the head of the household, so any problems in the marriage are YOUR fault, not hers.”
Maybe Rogers read this piece of rot by the aforementioned churchian asshole. For his sake I hope not. I did before swallowing the red pill, and ever since have been trying to stop others from suffering through this piece of nonsense and being burned and scarred by it.
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This is really beautiful, and absolutely true for women, too. When your husband is upset, it’s your job to hold him and let him know that everything is okay. Sometimes you will need to be the pillar on which your husband can lean. All too often, I think women don’t truly appreciate that men can be floored by an emotional reaction. Men can receive staggering blows. Men have all the same emotions and reactions and feelings as women, as sometimes those will be overwhelming.
Don’t run away or act disgusted when confronted by your husband’s emotions. Don’t be afraid of anger or physical expressions of inner states of being. When women get really angry or upset, they tend to cry. When men get really angry or upset, they like to kill things in virtual reality. One isn’t better than another. And both are felt with equal depth. Don’t sneer at how your husband expresses his emotions.
Unfortunately, JB, you appear to be one of only about 100 women in the western world who understand this. Excellent advice indeed, but I wouldn’t count on very many women heeding it or responding to it with anything other than amused contempt.
I’m betting that Gerald tried to show his emotional side to his ex-wife and very quickly regretted doing so.
But if your idea of a laughter filled weekend involves a Benny Hill/Three Stooges marathon, maybe give your wife a pass to go to a period costume drama at the theatres with her friends?
Absolutely. What else would any reasonable husband do? Unfortunately, the typical scenario in reality goes something like this:
Husband: “WHOA, way cool! A Three Stooges marathon on TCM this weekend! I’ll use the TV in the bedroom so that you can watch Lifetime on the big screen.”
Wife: “NO! We are going to the period costume drama festival at the Orpheum this weekend, so get your ass upstairs and get the pantaloons and vest out I bought for you out of the closet and take them down to the dry cleaners so they’ll be ready by Friday afternoon!”
Husband: “Um, for how long have you had this planned? Don’t you think it might’ve been a good idea to at least tell me about this (I wouldn’t dare suggest that you should have maybe ASKED me) sometime before the middle of the week before the event?”
Wife: “Unless you want to sleep on the couch for the rest of the week, DO AS I SAY!”
(Cue further screaming here)
10) “FILL HER SOUL EVERYDAY… learn her love languages and the specific ways that she feels important and validated and CHERISHED. Ask her to create a list of 10 THINGS that make her feel loved and memorize those things and make it a priority everyday to make her feel like a queen.”
Aww. This is sweet. Make sure you do the exact same for your husband.
See “accepting your husband’s emotions.”
Marriage isn’t a commercial relationship. Don’t turn it into one.
Not very many western women seem to have gotten that memo either.
GIVE HER SPACE… The woman is so good at giving and giving, and sometimes she will need to be reminded to take time to nurture herself.
Again, sage advice. Unfortunately, also not very useful when dealing with a woman who is best at taking and taking.
15) BE VULNERABLE… you don’t have to have it all together. Be willing to share your fears and feelings, and quick to acknowledge your mistakes.
Again, see “accepting your husband’s emotions.”
20) ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE.
As long as “always choose love” means “put the other person first” then I agree. But that MUST be reciprocal.
Aye, and there’s the rub. Unilateral transactional demands seem to be the norm in relationships these days.
And the sad reality is that marriage really has become a vehicle for one person to exploit another, until they get tired and decide to trade in.
This. End of story.
And finally, JB asks, rhetorically:
Why would a man fight a battle he knows he can’t win?
In the end, it’s because he really doesn’t have very much choice. Think of the economic term “sunk cost” and the phrase “past the point of no return.” He’s invested so much of himself in the fight (in this case the relationship) that to not fight the battle and concede defeat would effectively erase a decade or more of his life, meaning many years lived largely for naught and at a loss. Its’ one of those “heads, you lose, tails, I win” situations. Better to go down in flames than roll over and be taken captive.
Not saying that I necessarily agree with this attitude, but it’s understandable to an extent.
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Another similarity, JB. My in-laws hate me, always have.
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Marriage=poo doo! Dealing with cheating wife with a former boyfriend’s name out of who knows how many tattooed above her ass crack that has snakes in her head telling her she can fix you, family/divorce court, child support/loss of children, alimony, giving up half or more of one’s property, or hiring someone to kill you for insurance money? Then sit at my computer and post on face book what a sniveling, whiney, “it is all my fault” being a cry baby snot bag man bitch? Not no but hell no! Feminism has destroyed marriage, hell relationships for that matter, There is no way in this world I will ever have an ounce of trust in a woman in the united states, not gonna happen!
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I don’t give her any bragging rights and she’s shut out of the conversation with her friends about how their daughter in laws have such trouble with the nannies and go shopping in New York and take cruises and blah blah blah.
We don’t get manicures together and I could give a fuck about clothing brands or labels and I don’t spend a lot of time searching for the perfect throw pillows.
I’m the daughter of a couple of dirt farmers with no pedigree and nothing to note.
Her friends look on her with pity and she hates it.
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It actually really sucks, because it puts my husband in such a shitty position. His mother is constantly making him defend me, and then gets all hurt when he DOES.
It’s getting better though. Slowly. We’ve been married 13 years now, together for 15. In another 15 years she might find something to like about me.
Here’s hoping!
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“NO! We are going to the period costume drama festival at the Orpheum this weekend, so get your ass upstairs and get the pantaloons and vest out I bought for you out of the closet and take them down to the dry cleaners so they’ll be ready by Friday afternoon!”
Ha! That is an awesome idea!
Must find Mr. JB some pantaloons and a vest. Velvet or brocade? Decisions, decisions….
😀
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Most men who marry today are begging for exactly that.
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Hope so, JB! You’re very likeable. 🙂
(knock on wood) I know how much it sucks. I’ve been married longer than that, and it has only gotten worse. We’re basically estranged to the point our kids couldn’t pick out those grandparents in a lineup. And they’re the only grandkids. It’s seriously tragic. I think sometimes people just go crazy with age. My family loves my husband. When my dad passed, his didn’t even send a courtesy condolence card.
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JB,
How much of the calibration of spouse as best-friend do you think is determined by personality?
There’s a red-pill woman blogger (I can’t recall her handle at the moment) who says her husband is her best friend. She says the reason is they’re both introverts and are each other’s in-group.
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This is really beautiful, and absolutely true for women, too. When your husband is upset, it’s your job to hold him and let him know that everything is okay. Sometimes you will need to be the pillar on which your husband can lean. All too often, I think women don’t truly appreciate that men can be floored by an emotional reaction. Men can receive staggering blows. Men have all the same emotions and reactions and feelings as women, as sometimes those will be overwhelming.
The funny thing is that men are raised to expect that women are different, and are taught to understand this and find a way to work through the differences. We understand on a visceral level that sometimes things that don’t upset us at all will upset our wives, and things that upset us won’t upset our wives. Women, on the other hand, tend to be taught that their way of communicating, and their likes/dislikes are correct, and that men’s ways of communicating and men’s likes/dislikes are incorrect (he won’t talk to me or open up! Why is he so closed off emotionally?!!). Therefore, when a woman starts crying over something that a man can’t understand, he does what he can to help her. When a man starts crying over something a woman doesn’t understand, she is shocked and caught off guard, as well as feeling inside that she’s seeing something wrong that shouldn’t be happening and it scares her away.
This is really just a matter of education and teaching our kids what you just said above and also:
Don’t run away or act disgusted when confronted by your husband’s emotions. Don’t be afraid of anger or physical expressions of inner states of being.
^^^THIS^^^ times 1,000.
When women get really angry or upset, they tend to cry. When men get really angry or upset, they like to kill things in virtual reality. One isn’t better than another. And both are felt with equal depth. Don’t sneer at how your husband expresses his emotions.
I don’t kill things in virtual reality. I actually kill things. A lot. I don’t do it in anger, but it is cathartic to go out hunting, bag an animal, bring home protein for your family, and assuage the primal urges for a while.
My friend’s 12 year old daughter passed away last Thursday, very suddenly after being first diagnosed with leukemia the week before. It put us all back on our heels. I’ve felt partially wrecked for the better part of two weeks now, with her diagnosis and subsequent slide into oblivion, and I BECAME ANGRY.
VERY, VERY FUCKING ANGRY (perhaps that has reflected itself in my participation on this forum, and if so, I apologize). I wanted to punch God in his face. I wanted to go find a panda bear and put a bullet in it’s stupid head for being too lazy to fuck to save its own species.
I wanted to club a baby seal. I wanted to, in the words of the immortal Tyler Durden “Destroy something beautiful” so that I could punish the universe somehow.
My wife didn’t understand. I explained to her that its part of a Dad’s constitution. I explained to her that back in the cave man days, her life and the life of our daughter would ABSOLUTELY DEPEND on me being the meanest, nastiest, most unforgiving motherfucker on the block. If I was going to be evolutionarily and biologically successful, every saber toothed tiger in a 100 mile radius needed to know that it was a bad idea to mess with my girls, lest they have ME to deal with after.
So we’re wired to get pissed and want to fuck some shit up. Virtually or in real life. It’s how it works. You and my wife understand that. Lots of western gals don’t seem to be capable of grokking such a thing.
I’m betting that Gerald tried to show his emotional side to his ex-wife and very quickly regretted doing so.
I never understood this, but I think it is a product of what I said above. Women don’t know how to deal with a man who has emotions, and I’ve come to believe that men, not women, are the more emotional gender of the species – we just hide it and cover it up better.
I can’t really figure out why some women can’t deal with the fact that their spouse is human, but it really does seem to turn them off when they discover that fact. I do think a lot of it is training. We train men to care about women’s feelings and emotions, and women to expect men to not have any, or for men’s to not differ from theirs in any meaningful way. It’s a recipe for failure.
Absolutely. What else would any reasonable husband do? Unfortunately, the typical scenario in reality goes something like this:
Husband: “WHOA, way cool! A Three Stooges marathon on TCM this weekend! I’ll use the TV in the bedroom so that you can watch Lifetime on the big screen.”
Wife: “NO! We are going to the period costume drama festival at the Orpheum this weekend, so get your ass upstairs and get the pantaloons and vest out I bought for you out of the closet and take them down to the dry cleaners so they’ll be ready by Friday afternoon!”
I’m told that this is a very typical scenario by a lot of men. I’ve never really experienced it, because I think my wife is smart enough to understand that I’m a human, also, with my own desires and wants and needs.
Husband: “Um, for how long have you had this planned? Don’t you think it might’ve been a good idea to at least tell me about this (I wouldn’t dare suggest that you should have maybe ASKED me) sometime before the middle of the week before the event?”
Wrong answer. My response would be more along the lines of “Uhhhh, FUCK OFF?”
Wife: “Unless you want to sleep on the couch for the rest of the week, DO AS I SAY!”
It’s my bed. I have no problem sleeping in it with you. You are the one with the problem. If you don’t want to sleep with me, then YOU sleep on the couch (and realistically, how is she going to stop you?). I’m going to go watch some Benny Hill.
(Cue further screaming here)
You know, if you’d asked nicely, I’d probably have gone with you without another word and probably enjoyed myself. The second you started demanding, you can go fuck off. Now shut up, the Stooges are on. If you’re angry, you’ve got no one to be angry at but yourself. Maybe next time you’ll ask me with a bit of respect and deference to the fact that I’m human, and I’m not your pet.
In the end, it’s because he really doesn’t have very much choice. Think of the economic term “sunk cost” and the phrase “past the point of no return.” He’s invested so much of himself in the fight (in this case the relationship) that to not fight the battle and concede defeat would effectively erase a decade or more of his life, meaning many years lived largely for naught and at a loss. Its’ one of those “heads, you lose, tails, I win” situations. Better to go down in flames than roll over and be taken captive.
But what I don’t understand is why any man would put up with the above for a decade? I wouldn’t put up with it for ten fucking seconds. The first time my wife tried to TELL me what my plans were for the weekend, she’d be getting put in her place. Because of this, she never has. We talk about plans, we each make compromises on what we want to do, and in the end, we’re both happy. I would probably go with my wife to the cross-dresser thingy or whatever the fuck it is, because she wants to go, and she wants to go WITH ME. What bigger compliment could a man get from his wife than her wanting to spend time with him, share things with him, and do things with him, even if they aren’t things he wants to necessarily do? That being said, the rest of the weekend that wasn’t the dress-up deal would be me watching my marathon, and she then gets to go fishing with me some other weekend for the same reason. Give and take. Compromise. Work together as a team.
I’ve seen it time and time again where men date these women, marry them, have kids with them, and then eventually get sick of their shit and wonder how they lost a decade (and half their stuff) to a harpy shrew, and for the life of me, I can’t, either.
Some men say “well, she changed,” and my response is that “well, you LET her.” Because to a man, you see them putting up with this crap. If it started in year 8, you put up with it and allowed it for two years before it got so bad you left. There is no way my wife would even consider pulling this crap on me (or me on her, for that matter) because the response would be the same from either end – Go fuck right off, and when you’ve got your head unstuck from your ass, then come back and let’s talk like adults. The FIRST TIME. Not two years later. Not two weeks later. Not two days later. Right now.
The only person on Earth that gets to tell me what to do is my boss, because he’s paying me for my time. Even then, I would expect him to ask nicely.
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I agree with your “snotbag man-bitch” statement. This guy just put up a 20 point list about all the things he should have done in his marriage, and how wrong he was, and how it was all his fault – and I just can’t believe that is true. i can’t believe that she had no part in the dissolution of their marriage.
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So……..then………..let me ask the people here:
How then can a case for marriage be made anymore?
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I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend’s little girl. That’s so heart-breaking. What a tragedy.
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I’ll make a case for it: it’s the best way to build wealth and raise children.
But it needs to be a conscious choice, especially on the part of the woman. And there are ways to tell which women are going to be viable partners for the project:
She needs to have some viable options, and then CHOOSE to stay at home and raise your children. Women who are at home because they have no other reasonable choice are not really making a choice then, are they? Women who leave their jobs are putting the needs of their family first, and that counts for almost everything.
She needs to be frugal with money. She doesn’t order pizza, she makes it. She doesn’t buy a bag of cookies, she makes them. She doesn’t have 300 pairs of shoes. She doesn’t lust after McMansions and other pointless material things. She has saved some of the money she earned while working. She doesn’t want a $20 000 wedding. There’s a big one. Go ahead and propose, but if a big fancy wedding is in her plans, break it off. She’s not the right one.
She needs to actively care about your comfort. That tells you she values and appreciates the work you will do to provide for her and your children. Does she open your beer? Get you coffee? Fix your plate? Pack up the leftovers for your lunch tomorrow? Make sure the laundry is in the dryer so your clothes are ready? All those little things add up to someone who values you, and wants to do everything she can to make sure your whole family survives.
Walk past a bridal shop. Ask about her wedding dreams.
Ask if she has any money saved.
Ask how many pairs of shoes she has, and how much did they cost?
Ask on the first date. That will tell you if a second one is worthwhile.
Divorce is a great way to destroy children and wealth –no doubt about it. But marriage is the best way to do both of those things right.
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Hear! Hear! Well said.
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Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet 🙂
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Well, if you do go through with this, I hope Mr. JB has sense enough to quaff down copious quantities of his favorite ale just before attending the event. While I could probably get into going to a period costume event (provided that the period in question didn’t involve men dressed in pink tights as typical attire [and NO, that is NOT a suggestion!], other men might not be so thrilled at the idea.
The reason I suggest the “ale preparation” for Mr. JB for such an event is twofold: 1) it “dulls the pain” for any man not into dressing in period costume, and 2) provides a certain air of authenticity to the event, whether one is into the dress or not (e.g., if the period of dress is, say, Medieval, Renaissance, Colonial, or Victorian, we know that water of those eras was generally non-potable, meaning that people relied on alcohol, especially beer, for their liquid consumption).
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Excellent points.
I wonder if what humanscorch really meant to ask was “is the institution of marriage realistically viable anymore, given the society in which we now live?”
I don’t think it takes a particularly cynical person to answer with “not really.”
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Mine too, but the good news there is that my wife hates them as much as they hate me. She’s closer to my family than to her own.
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That’s so awful. How could anyone not like you! You’re like the epitome of the ideal wife and mother.
My mother in law didn’t like me at first UNTIL after she saw the kid of wife I am to her son and the kind of mother I am to her grandchildren.
Hurts my heart that your MIL can’t see how amazing you are to your family.
Great article btw.
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I meant kind- not kid in my previous comment.
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I’m betting that Gerald tried to show his emotional side to his ex-wife and very quickly regretted doing so.
I never understood this, but I think it is a product of what I said above. Women don’t know how to deal with a man who has emotions, and I’ve come to believe that men, not women, are the more emotional gender of the species – we just hide it and cover it up better.
I can’t really figure out why some women can’t deal with the fact that their spouse is human, but it really does seem to turn them off when they discover that fact.
As I commented over on Dalrock’s blog today in the comments section of his latest post, in response to another poster’s question on this very subject: women see signs of emotion in a man as a weakness, something that threatens the façade of protection and security they seek in men. As I also mentioned there, the “tell me what you’re feeling/thinking” request from a woman, or some variation thereof, is the oldest fitness/shit test in the history of human femaledom. If (most) men have learned nothing else in the course of ten-plus millennia of human civilization, it is that acceding to such a request means failing the fitness test. By revealing their emotions, they’ve revealed that they’re vulnerable and a “vulnerable” protector provider is, in the female mind, no protector/provider at all. It’s probably not even something women consciously do, just something that they’re biologically “hardwired” for. For the man, revealing emotions/vulnerabilities = female rejection. THIS is why only the fool opens up fully to his wife. I guess Gerald Rogers is one of the outliers who never learned this Manhood 101 lesson, to his tremendous cost.
Husband: “Um, for how long have you had this planned? Don’t you think it might’ve been a good idea to at least tell me about this (I wouldn’t dare suggest that you should have maybe ASKED me) sometime before the middle of the week before the event?”
Wrong answer. My response would be more along the lines of “Uhhhh, FUCK OFF?”
Wife: “Unless you want to sleep on the couch for the rest of the week, DO AS I SAY!”
It’s my bed. I have no problem sleeping in it with you. You are the one with the problem. If you don’t want to sleep with me, then YOU sleep on the couch (and realistically, how is she going to stop you?). I’m going to go watch some Benny Hill.
I’m tempted to say in response to the above that either you’re not actually married or that if you are, you’re just passing verbal gas here.
One of the immutable laws of modern marriage in the western world (and the Anglosphere in particular) is that no man EVER DARES respond to his wife in the way you’ve described unless 1) he’s suicidal and really no longer gives a shit (certainly not a remote possibility), 2) his wife is a quadriplegic incapable of inflicting the physical violence upon him that such a request automatically prompts from today’s “empowered grrrrrrl”, or 3) his wife is the primary breadwinner and he’s so bereft of any assets of his own that any threat she makes to walk out and initiate divorce proceedings immediately would be laughably meaningless and empty.
Otherwise, no husband with a functioning cerebrum would even think of responding in the way you describe.
But what I don’t understand is why any man would put up with the above for a decade? I wouldn’t put up with it for ten fucking seconds. The first time my wife tried to TELL me what my plans were for the weekend, she’d be getting put in her place.
Unless you live in, say, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, you’d pay dearly for “putting her in her place” – “dearly” as in being arrested for DV, thrown out of your own house, locked up in jail, stripped of all income and assets, possibly lose your job, and essentially having your life destroyed on her whim.
THAT is why so many men “fight the battle they can’t win” and put up with shit for years, if not decades. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t, so in the end, assuming that they don’t lose it and pull a John List-plus-suicide first, they grin, bear it, put up what resistance they reasonably can, keep what little of their hard-earned assets they can, and do their best to survive, if not exactly live.
Some men say “well, she changed,” and my response is that “well, you LET her.”
And how exactly do you propose that a man “stop” a woman from changing? Do tell. I smell a PhD thesis in your answer – or more likely a very entertaining piece of fantasy fiction.
Because to a man, you see them putting up with this crap. If it started in year 8, you put up with it and allowed it for two years before it got so bad you left. There is no way my wife would even consider pulling this crap on me (or me on her, for that matter) because the response would be the same from either end – Go fuck right off, and when you’ve got your head unstuck from your ass, then come back and let’s talk like adults. The FIRST TIME. Not two years later. Not two weeks later. Not two days later. Right now.
Once again, a lot of verbal flatulence. Go right ahead and try on your own wife what you suggest here that every other married man do. I hope you like wearing the color orange and that you are capable of surviving on the streets, because that’s exactly what will be the long-term consequences of acting on your plan (again, unless you live in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia).
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Good points all, JB.
Here’s the rub.
The consequences of failure are devastating and life changing, to the point that a lot of men can’t recover.
The risk of failure is simply astronomical.
And 98% of that risk is borne by the HUSBAND.
For many, the potential rewards simply aren’t worth the risk.
If anyone wants to resurrect marriage, it can only be done by making marriage attractive and less risky to men.
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Agreed. But understand that everything comes with a risk. The riskiest thing you do every day of your life is drive a car.
The laws can and must change if men are to accept the risks of marriage. Custody and child support are key battlegrounds.
Bring back “fault” divorce. You can sue for divorce “just cuz” if you want, but you walk away with nothing but the clothes on your back. You DO NOT get the kids or the house of a slice of the pension or future earnings or ANYTHING.
Eat
Love
Pray
Go right the fuck ahead.
On your own dime.
Hope it doesn’t taste too bitter.
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I’ll make a case for it. It’s the best way to build wealth and raise children.
I wonder if what humanscorch really meant to ask was “is the institution of marriage realistically viable anymore, given the society in which we now live?”
I meant both. Like, what is it good for, given the risks, which JB addressed, as well as given the cultural climate, does it still have any relevant value.
Because as many other posters have said, it’s not men that have changed. Plenty of men are still willing to pony up their part of the deal. It’s women that have decided that they want to throw away their virginity as soon as possible, slut up their best years, still get their pick of the top men afterwards, and be fat and bitchy in a marriage and still get full benefits both as a wife and an ex-wife.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
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Freeriker – I’ve had those exact conversations with my wife, and put her in her place with exactly those words, very early in our relationship, before we were married (we dated for 5 years). I’m not just passing gas, as you put it. This includes the part about the bed and her sleeping on the couch if she as so against sleeping with me. She had bought into the bullcrap that she’d been taught about male/female relations, but she is a very smart, intelligent, and loving woman and it didn’t take her very long to see the lies in what she’d been taught.
I don’t know why you brought domestic violence into this discussion – I wasn’t talking about physical threats. I would never dare hit my wife, nor any other person unless it was in self-defense. I also was very dead-pan, explanatory, and almost patient in my delivery – no anger, no emotion, but I spoke almost exactly those words (including the “fuck right off” part). If she’d responded angrily or irrationally, I’d have left her. On the spot. Without question.
You seem to have missed the point of my comments, which were to say that I don’t get why guys put up with this crap. I would deal with ANY PERSON who tried to treat me that way in the exact same way – why would I treat the one woman on Earth who is supposed to have the most respect for me, and I of her, over anyone else, any differently? You are saying that you have no other choice BUT to put up with this crap, which missed my point entirely – you DO. LEAVE. DON’T MARRY HER.
You, scorch, and a few others on here have a very jaded view of women in western society, and I assure you, it isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is. If you talk rationally with your gal, show her that you’re angry with her, and explain why she is in the wrong, she’ll probably figure it out shortly. If she doesn’t, LEAVE HER. And for chrissakes, DON’T MARRY HER.
I’m actually getting a bit tired and offended by the “all women are totally irredeemable pieces of shit” narrative that is so strong on here. I love my wife with every ounce of my being, and I do take exception to you guys continuously telling me that she’s a selfish, irrational, venal moron who I can’t talk to rationally without getting clapped in handcuffs and taken to court to lose half my stuff. I’ve had many candid, brutal conversations with her over the years. She with me and I with her. Hell, we’ve even had a couple of blow-ups where we shouted at each other and called each other names. But in the end, we realize that we love each other, not just IN SPITE of our faults, but often BECAUSE of them.
If you’ve been hurt, I am sincerely sorry for you, but your experience was not mine. I didn’t allow a woman to trap me into misery. I told her the way things were going to be and gave her an option to either accept my offer or reject it. She accepted, which more or less disproves your thesis that all women are idiots, because she is living a good life as a result.
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I’m still looking for baby seals to club.
I work with her Dad. he showed up yesterday to collect some things out of his office – pictures she’d drawn him over the years, glittery macaroni art and so forth. You know, those absolutely priceless treasures that all Daddies have in their offices from their little ones. I have a tin can on my desk wrapped in construction paper with a tiny little handprint on it that my baby “gave” me on my first father’s day that says “World’s Best Dad” on it. I can’t even imagine having to look at that goddamned thing ever again if my baby died, but there they were, collecting her art just three days after her passing. I guess they wanted to display it all at her funeral.
I cried for the first time in so many years I can’t even remember the last time. Watching her Mom and Dad collect her macaroni art and little drawings that said “I love you, Daddy!” in nearly illegible crayon was more than I could handle.
The funeral is on friday. I have to say that I’m not looking forward to this…
Goddamn it all, anyway…
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Yes. I refuse to allow fear of what could/might happen dictate the choices and decisions I make as relates to my happiness.
If I choose wrong, and it all falls down around me, so be it. But I’m not going to allow fear of that to stop me from trying.
I’m a fool like that.
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I wrote letters like these when I was beta-ly infatuated with a girl when I was 17. This isn’t the writing of a man, but of a boy.
His “message” could have been summed up like this: “I should have used more game on my wife.”
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“Agreed. But understand that everything comes with a risk. The riskiest thing you do every day of your life is drive a car”
True, but marriage for a man is a needlessly excessive risk. For a woman, it may be like driving a car. For a man, it’s like driving blindfolded and drunk. Too many cards stacked against dudes.
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Your proposed solution is the only one that will ever change the status quo – and stands exactly ZE-RO chance of ever coming to pass as long as those who currently hold all political and economic power (i.e., globalist banksters and their feminist enablers) continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
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Uhgg – In laws. My mother in law just verbally abused my Dad for some slight or another earlier today. he went to my house to help me with a project that I’ve neglected because I’m at work, she was there, and she decided that she was going to be a bitch. He’s spitting mad at her right now, and from the sound of things, rightfully so.
Looking forward to diffusing that bomb when I get home…
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I’m dying to hear your thoughts on the whole Miley Cyrus debacle.
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You, scorch, and a few others on here have a very jaded view of women in western society, and I assure you, it isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is.
I’m actually getting a bit tired and offended by the “all women are totally irredeemable pieces of shit” narrative that is so strong on here. I love my wife with every ounce of my being, and I do take exception to you guys continuously telling me that she’s a selfish, irrational, venal moron who I can’t talk to rationally without getting clapped in handcuffs and taken to court to lose half my stuff.
If you’ve been hurt, I am sincerely sorry for you, but your experience was not mine.
1) Kind of funny that you can’t see the irony in what you’re saying. That based on your experience, you speak out of it, but someone else speaking out of theirs must be jaded.
2) I’m not saying that all women are totally irredeemable pieces of shit. Can’t speak for anyone else. I’m saying that women that are mature enough and agreeable enough to build a healthy marriage like you have, and JB has, are few and far between these days.
3) Sorry that you’re unaware that a man putting his foot down still has to be received and responded to by a woman, and that many women these days will turn it into an assault charge if they don’t like it. Women have to choose to submit.
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What is wrong with these people? It took my in-laws awhile to warm up to me because I’m naturally reserved, but they’ve always been kind. I guess I hit the jackpot in this group.
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I think he’s a bit passed the cosplay age.
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I am so sorry for the death of your friend’s daughter. But I really appreciate the explanation for your anger. I have never understood the male tendency to fall back on anger when they’re upset, but it makes sense as you explain it. I have always tried to not react negatively to my husband’s anger (though it is hard when he blows up in front of the kids) and I’ll remember this the next time he’s struggling with something.
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I am absolutely certain that is why we do it. I saw a little girl from my tribe who was being hurt. Og SMASH!
It just confuses Og a bit when there aren’t any saber tooth tigers to throw sticks at in her defense. How does one vengeance stab the ever loving fuck out of cancer?
Hence the need to vent anger. Find something to club.
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True, everything comes with risk. However some things are justified risks, whereas marriage has a lot of bullshit risks that don’t need to be there.
For instance, I climb mountains. However, the risks involved are risks I know are going to be there ahead of time. The weather can change, rocks can fall. I know all this.
But with marriage, you never what new law is going to come along next. What is the judge going to be able to take from you next? Just when you think it’s gotten as far out of hand as it has gotten, some judge or lawmaker makes the risks even more insane.
And it’s all bullshit.
It’s all coming down to the fact that when a man signs a marriage license, his life is no longer his own. He becomes the property of his wife who can take everything he has on a whim. It’s just not worth it.
And while the MRAs try to fix it, I know that because women hold the majority of the voting power (even if they don’t hold the seats themselves) that lawmakers will only cater to them. They’ll keep getting all the marriage rights they want. The only way to fix marriage is to make it so utterly rare that it’s considered an extreme sex fetish.
And according to a new report from the census I saw today, we’re well on our way to that.
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Just adding my sympathies. And a quick google found this. http://www.newgrounds.com/seals/index.html
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You missed the best bit at the end then:
“MEN- THIS IS YOUR CHARGE : Commit to being an EPIC LOVER. There is no greater challenge, and no greater prize. Your woman deserves that from you. ”
Oh she deserves that does she? What so everyone with a vagina deserves a man-bitch-he-slave, just because she has tits?
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The only reason some people are shocked about what Miley did is that she’s a white chick. She basically stole the same dance that hip hop and kpop artists have been doing for years.
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Since we have porn, nobody cares about this attention whores.
Today, normal actresses and singers are imitating pornstars.
And, today, normal women in the nightclubs are imitating high class prostitutes in cabarets.
The profecy of Weininger has accomplished: “The liberation of women will be, avove all, the liberation of the inner Prostitute in women” (written in 1900)
Amen
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Do it, please!
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It would be a short list. Here it is:
1) Don’t get married.
The end.
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There’s no reason for you to get married.
People tend to marry because they want to spend their life with another person and raise a family, and they fear not making a commitment with (the person they want to do that with) will end in that person going to someone else who does value him/her enough to make that commitment.
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Another former Disney star who believes the promotion of slut/wild girl culture makes up for lack of talent. Another former child star whose attempt to stay relevant is by showing the world how grown up she is and of course the only way to show that you’ve grown up is to promote entitled-princess-don’t-judge-me-slut culture. She’s all grown up and able to do what she wants without judgment (slut shaming is evil) but of course, we’ll find a way to blame The Patriarchy™ because grown up women aren’t actually able to make decisions with their own brain. And they should never, ever be criticised for anything. Ever. ‘Cos that will shatter their strong and empowered ego.
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Thank you, scorch, for taking the words right off of my fingertips. You’ve captured my thoughts on Goober’s comments perfectly.
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The fact that supposed “grownups” are paying this any serious attention (other than perhaps to point it out to their own teenage daughters and say “do something like this while you’re living under my roof and you’ll be getting a chastity belt for an early birthday present”) serves only to provide additional evidence of civilization’s ongoing collapse.
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@ JB:
Agreed that everything comes with a risk. I know the riskiest thing I do every day is drive.
Where there is risk the man must ask himself: Can the risk be calculated? If so, what is the calculation? Can the risk be eliminated? If not, can it be minimized or controlled? What steps must be taken to minimize or control the risk? What cost or burdens are associated with those steps? Can I even take any of those steps? What are the consequences of failure or loss? What will be lost? Can any of the loss be recovered and how long will it take?
With marriage:
–Calculation of risk: Moderate to high. 40 to 50% of all marriages fail.
–Can the risk be eliminated? No.
–Can the risk be minimized or controlled? Yes
–Steps to minimize and control risk: Become Game-competent. Be high value. Be physically attractive. Be in top 10% of wage earners. Screen women extremely hard for marriage. Be ruthlessly self-interested: Push women hard for sex and NEXT women who refuse. Suss out their attitudes on men, relationships and marriage and NEXT all women who fail.
–Costs/burdens: Time and study and devotion to learn Game. Time and money investments in nutrition, gym memberships and workouts. Earning money requires years of education, training and licensures, and the money for the training. Screening: opportunity costs with other women and other pursuits. Time and money for dating, contraception, etc.
–Ability to take steps: Most men cannot learn rudimentary Game much less implement it much less become proficient. Most men aren’t “High value” or in top 20% of attractive men. Physical attraction requires time and money investment, and reaches limits. To screen women a man must first attract women, and most men aren’t attractive.
–Consequences of failure/loss: Divorce. Alimony. Children’s lives destroyed. Loss of relationship with children, loss of influence and direction over their upbringing. Children’s lives and attitudes toward relationships ruined. Child support obligations for decades. Financial devastation, wage slavery. If she stays with you: grindingly unhappy, sexless, drudging marriage in which you function as a barely tolerated roommate/pack mule/provider/wage earner/free handyman.
–Potential for loss recovery: Poor. Man in 30s or 40s has to learn and get proficient in Game. But he has no money and brings little to the table for another relationship because he has crushing alimony and child support obligations; ex wife has ½ his 401(k), and half his wages are garnished from every paycheck. Any second relationship/marriage will be double income/no kids, out of necessity. Can’t travel because his passport is revoked; routinely has drivers license suspended because of late payments or arrearages on CS. No woman wants this.
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THIS. Thank you, deti!
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You guys are dating the wrong women.
If a woman came on here complaining aboit how all men suck because all her boyfriends beat her, you and I and everyone else on here wouldn’t give her a pass for her horrible decisions and allow her to play the victim card.
If you guys are dating women who would lie to the police and hace you arrested for dv simply because you disagreed with her, why should I be any more inclined to give you a pass than I would a woman who chronically chooses men who beat her?
We’d blame her for seeking the drama. What should I do with y’all?
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40 to 50% of all marriages fail.
This number is biased by repeat offenders. If you exclude folks who’ve divorced multiple times, the number for first time marriages is more like 30% currently. Additionally, the first-time marriage failure rate for women who are college educated is lower than 20%.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but you massively increase your chances of success if you get a little more picky about the woman you plan to marry. Previously divorced? Uneducated? Criminal record? N-count?
A 20% failure rate equates to an 80% success rate. That’s decent odds. Those are odds that I’m willing to take (and did take – wifey has a BA in business).
. Can the risk be minimized or controlled? Yes
Absolutely, and your list of things to do in order to minimize the risk is spot on (with one exception). Be worthwhile. Provide for her what she needs and desires, while still maintaining your own sense of self and meeting your own needs. Ensure she’s prepared to meet YOUR needs and isn’t going to use the fulfillment of your needs as a bartering chip down the road. Tell her to fuck off once or twice before you marry her to see how she’s going to deal with it (if she deserves it – I’m not advocating being an asshole, I’m advocating treating her the same way you would anyone else who made unreasonable demands of you as detailed above).
As for “game”, I don’t really know much of what that entails, but from what I’ve seen, I disagree completely with the whole thing. Marriage shouldn’t be an effort in making sure you’re never yourself and you’re always “on game.” If you are with a woman that needs that, move on. If she’s not satisfied with you for who you are, you’ve got the wrong chick.
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Goob:
Couple of things.
Big difference between the woman who dates shitbags who beat her; and the man who dates/is married to a harpy:
The woman dating shitbags chooses her shitbags and knows they’re shitbags.
The man married to a bitch almost never sees she’s a bitch until AFTER the wedding, when she changes drastically.
The woman dating a shitbag for whatever reason, wants to be with her shitbag.
The man married to a harpy bitch has no say in how long they remain together. If she decides it’s over, it’s over – whether he wants it to be or not; whether it’s good for the kids or not; whether it will destroy their finances or not.
Also: It’s getting tougher and tougher to separate out the good women from the bad. True there are many, many more bad women than good. Be that as it may, many women are exceedingly good at playing the role of the sweet, kind, good-natured girl during the courtship/dating phase. After the wedding, you discover she was a slut with an N north of 30 (a fact she lied about) who suddenly HATES you because she had to SETTLE for you, you weren’t anywhere NEAR her first choice, and now that she’s married she’ll get abusive and deny you sex.
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Nicely said Goober. Spot on.
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All very true, Goob, except that men in this position were lied to explicitly and repeatedly about this.
Divorced? Uneducated? Doesn’t matter if she was divorced or uneducated, because that’s sexist and we’re all the same and you can’t judge her.
Criminal record? Youthful indiscretions, young man. Don’t you judge her, you pinch faced moralist.
N-count? Easily lied about. And even if she does tell the truth you have jack shit to say about it because HOW DARE YOU JUDGE HER! It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter anymore. It was just meaningless sex. I’m not the same person I was then. I’ve grown and matured. I want to do it the right way this time. You’re special; you’re not like those other guys.
“Marriage shouldn’t be an effort in making sure you’re never yourself and you’re always “on game.” If you are with a woman that needs that, move on. If she’s not satisfied with you for who you are, you’ve got the wrong chick.”
What you’re describing is pickup artist, routine, Mystery style “game”. I agree that some “game” should be part of your personality; not an act or routine. Here’s the problem: many, many women are NEVER satisfied; and even if they are satisfied today, tomorrow they’re not. Also, part of “game” is learning and understanding female psychology and nature; and why women think, process information, and respond differently than men. Most men have been programmed from birth that men and women are exactly the same except for their genitalia; and that women think, process, and feel exactly as men do.
I’m glad for you that you weren’t raised with that kind of disinformation. Those of us who were are working to unlearn it.
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Goob:
Would you fly on an airplane that had a 20% chance of crashing?
If one in every five commercial aircraft crashed, what do you suppose would happen to commercial air travel?
If you had a 20% chance of getting ripped apart or incinerated every time you got on a plane, would you do it?
Even if my marriage has a 20% chance of failure, those odds are still unacceptably high, arguably. If I have a lifetime one in five chance of losing my children and half my property, and thus be legally obligated for years or decades to pay her money for the privilege of being her ex husband, and have to live the rest of my life with that, the rewards are not worth the risks.
Incidentally, the chances of dying in a motor vehicle accident are 1 in 100, or 1%.
The chances of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 20,000.
(Source: http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html)
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And one last thing, Goob:
Assuming arguendo that you’re correct about the true divorce rate among college educated being 20%:
1. What about those who aren’t fortunate enough to go to college? Do we just throw them to the dogs and say “Good luck” or “tough shit” or “sucks to be you” or “well, just don’t get married and live as an involuntary celibate”?
2. For the unlucky 20%, the persons who will bear the brunt, eat the shit sandwich, and then be told to pay for it, will be the ex husbands. Full stop.
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Deti;
I want to thank you and riker and scorch for being patient with me and flaming out with this discussion. I know that for a lot of guys, these words are very emotionally charged, and that I’m picking at a pretty raw scab here for some of you. I appreciate your ability to have a rational and calm discussion about this, because I really do think that your experiences are so far outside of mine that I’m having a hard time seeing it from your side of the pond (and vice versa, to be fair, I think).
I appreciate the stealth aspect of a lot of the melt-downs that you touched on – where she presented as exactly the opposite of who she was right up until she had you by the balls, then changed 180 degrees and started making life hell.
The thing is, that beaten woman could say the same thing – “he didn’t start out that way. He was so nice and only started hitting me after he lost his job…” You know the story. No woman ever stays with a man who beats her ass on the first date. It sneaks up on her just like it does us, and we STILL wouldn’t give her a pass.
But I tell her, and I’ll tell you the same thing – I can’t believe that there was no sign of it in the first part. A tiger can’t hide their stripes that well. She had to know that he was violent, just like a lot of the guys saying this happened to them had to know, also, and cowed under to her demands rather than make ripples and risk having to sleep on the couch.
If a woman is really a psycho bitch like you described, she won’t be able to last through the first incident of you telling her to fuck off without popping her cork. Which means that you (not you, the hypothetical you) must have never told her to fuck off. Which means that you somehow got through a long (I recommend 3 to 5 years, MINIMUM, before you get married) courtship without her ever once revealing her true nature to you, or ever once starting to treat you like a pet instead of a human being. I just can’t believe that.
So I suspect that the hypothetical guy in feeriker’s example above, who was being told that he would go to the dress-up thingy or sleep on the couch for the rest of the week was giving in and going instead of making ripples. Feeriker’s response above to my alternative makes me think that this is exactly what happened, because he thought it was ludicrous that I would ever dare to stand up for myself in the face of such unbridled selfishness and aggression. So I suspect that his hypothetical was giving in, without even thinking about it. He probably gave in from day one without even realizing it. It likely started with small demands; you know, nagging you to pick up your clothes or do the dishes. Small things that most men wouldn’t even think twice about – they’d just do them because why not? – but it isn’t being asked to do things that is the problem – it’s being DEMANDED to do things, or nagged into it, or coerced by threat of being cut off or some other such bullshit.
Ask me nicely, and I’ll do anything for you. Tell me to do something, and you can go fuck right off. My wife learned that in year one. If she was unable to accept that, we’d have never made it past year one, because I have no intention of ever being with a woman that doesn’t respect me enough as a human to treat me with a modicum of dignity.
If the woman was really that horrible, she’d never be able to live under those conditions and you’d never get past the courtship stage.
I’m merely probing the shared responsibility aspect of the meltdown of any relationship – these things don’t happen in a vacuum, and perhaps a bit of introspection on that fact might help some guys in dire straits, woman wise, instead of just choosing to blame women – ALL women – for their plight in life. Because I’m not convinced at all that it is women’s fault. A WOMAN had a hand in it, but so did the hypothetical guy we’re all talking about here – he’s just as much to blame for allowing himself to be treated like a doormat until he couldn’t take it anymore, or she lost all interest in him and left.
What I’m saying is that you couldn’t have fixed your relationship with a woman like this by being this way – on the contrary, you would have avoided it all together… And isn’t that the entire point?
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All very true, Goob, except that men in this position were lied to explicitly and repeatedly about this.
Divorced? Uneducated? Doesn’t matter if she was divorced or uneducated, because that’s sexist and we’re all the same and you can’t judge her.
Criminal record? Youthful indiscretions, young man. Don’t you judge her, you pinch faced moralist.
True. Very true. However, if she’s this big of a liar, I would think that a guy would have a pretty good chance of catching her in a lie at some point in time. Maybe more. Big red flag, you know?
N-count? Easily lied about. And even if she does tell the truth you have jack shit to say about it because HOW DARE YOU JUDGE HER! It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter anymore. It was just meaningless sex. I’m not the same person I was then. I’ve grown and matured. I want to do it the right way this time. You’re special; you’re not like those other guys.
If it’s a deal breaker for you, it’s a deal breaker. She can moralize and be pissed at you all she wants as you walk out the door. This is my point – you can’t be bullied into seeing things her way. If she says you’re being judgmental and unfair, you don’t have to accept her word for it. If it is a dealbreaker, walk out the door. Don’t marry her. Don’t let her accusations of being judgmental stop you from doing what is best for you.
Here’s the problem: many, many women are NEVER satisfied; and even if they are satisfied today, tomorrow they’re not.
If she’s never satisfied, don’t marry her. I already discussed the “she changed” comment above, so I won’t rehash it – suffice it to say that in most cases, there were signs that were ignored along the way – ie, she wasn’t ever satisfied at all.
Also, part of “game” is learning and understanding female psychology and nature; and why women think, process information, and respond differently than men. Most men have been programmed from birth that men and women are exactly the same except for their genitalia; and that women think, process, and feel exactly as men do.
I disagree here. Men are taught to think women are different and special. Women are taught to discount men’s differences as being wrong and incorrect (he won’t open up to me emotionally! Why won’t he open up to me? Why doesn’t her ever want to talk about his day? Why won’t he communicate?) So men go through life trying to cater to women’s differences, whereas women go through life being annoyed by men’s differences as if they are wrong or incorrect, just by the value of the education they had growing up. Liz admitted to me above that she had no idea why men react to sorrow with anger so often, when it really should be pretty obvious to anyone that’s ever cared to think about it. Why did she never care to think about it? Because she was taught not to care – he didn’t react the way a woman would react, so it is wrong, different, incorrect, and scary. (No offense, Liz, and no criticism intended. It was just an apt example, and we are all a product of our raising – at least you’re trying where a lot of other women haven’t ever realized that they need to try).
SO therein lies the rub – our society raises girls to see the way that men do things as being inferior to the ways that they do things, even if it is subconscious. That’s why there is a phase in every relationship where it is absolutely, positively necessary for the man to tell the woman to fuck off, because there is no other way to ferret out whether she is going to care about you as a human or not other than to defy her, stand your ground, and insist on being treated as such. Smart women will realize this as soon as you assert it. Worthless women will rage on. At that point, you need to walk out the door. It’s that simple.
I’m glad for you that you weren’t raised with that kind of disinformation. Those of us who were are working to unlearn it.
The disinformation that you were taught so permeates our culture that it takes a lot to see past it. The bumbling, stupid husband being rescued from his idiocy by his beautiful, patient saint of a wife in the TV commercials; the “perfect” man in rom-coms who bows to his woman’s every desire and lives his life to serve her; the nagging, harridan wife of the sitcom “neighborhood dude” who treats him like shit and he rolls his eyes but does her bidding, anyway, out of fear of her wrath if he doesn’t (ever watch Tool Time? I fucking hated that bitch); the denigration of the quiet, stoic archetype and the metrosexualization of manhood.
None of that is women’s fault. It is ALL of our fault. And the simple way to fix it is just to demand some human diginity from the one person in life that should give it to you by default – your significant other. It’s really that simple.
Would you fly on an airplane that had a 20% chance of crashing?
No, but not flying on an airplane wouldn’t have significant implications as to my happiness and life fulfillment. I’d miss my vacation. I wouldn’t miss out on a lifetime of having children, gleeful Christmases, grandkids, and a wife to stick by me through my life, through thick and thin. If I was given a 20% chance of dying, and an 80% chance of living my life the way I described above, with the alternative being to be single and childless, I’d take the chance. I rather be dead than alone forever. It’s not in my wiring.
. If I have a lifetime one in five chance of losing my children and half my property, and thus be legally obligated for years or decades to pay her money for the privilege of being her ex husband, and have to live the rest of my life with that, the rewards are not worth the risks.
Yes, but given the alternative of never having kids to care about in the first place, and never having a shot at having a wife to work, live, and love with, I’d take the chance. I’d take it even if it was 50/50. That’s what men do – we take risks to try and make the world a better place.
Assuming arguendo that you’re correct about the true divorce rate among college educated being 20%
1. What about those who aren’t fortunate enough to go to college? Do we just throw them to the dogs and say “Good luck” or “tough shit” or “sucks to be you” or “well, just don’t get married and live as an involuntary celibate”?
2. For the unlucky 20%, the persons who will bear the brunt, eat the shit sandwich, and then be told to pay for it, will be the ex husbands. Full stop
To item 1 – it’s still a 70% success rate for first time marriages, even without a college education. I’d take the risk. I’d expect any man to, unless he has no desire for kids and family.
To item 2 – I can’t argue. It fucking sucks, and it needs to change.
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The part you are missing Goober is many many young guys A) Never have a adult male influence in their lives and B) Taught by their mothers, teachers and society in general that the man’s place is to make his girl happy above all else.
You are right, they probably never told a woman to fuck off in their entire life because that is how they were raised. “If momma ain’t happy nobody be happy.”
There are entire generations of young men who know nothing else but supplication to women. Never realizing that being a spineless jelly fish will get you nothing but divorced in the end.
Many of the guys here were that guy I just described until something finally happened in their lives to open their eyes, or “take the red pill” as the saying goes in the man-o-sphere.
The difference between a women recognizing a physically abusive partner before had is that she has been taught to identify them and what to do afterwards.
What does a guy who is TAUGHT that the women is always right and to be put on a pedestal to do when he attracts a controlling harpy? That behaviour is what he is taught a women is supposed to be like. She should be running his life, telling him what he can do,wear and hang out with. Almost every cultural aspect he is exposed to as a child reinforces that trope.
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Goob:
“If a woman is really a psycho bitch like you described, she won’t be able to last through the first incident of you telling her to fuck off without popping her cork. Which means that you (not you, the hypothetical you) must have never told her to fuck off.”
Yeah, I get the gist of what you’re saying. You’re saying both the man and the woman have a role to play in the meltdown of any relationship. Correct. You’re also saying that if a woman really is a harpy bitch, a guy should be able to see that BEFORE the wedding; or at least see signs of it. You’re right about that too.
What you’re missing is that (1) men are explicitly taught and trained by everyone around them that those signs mean nothing and if you notice them or raise a stink about them you are a sexist pig who deserves to spend his life as an incel; and (2) you never, ever, EVER tell a woman to fuck off or challenge her in any way and if you do, you run the risk of arrest and prosecution for assault, as well as accusations of violent and criminal behavior.
I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you just don’t have any experience with this. But I am telling you — and I am not the only man who has experienced this – that there are millions on millions of men who have been taught and trained exactly this way: men and women are EXACTLY the same except for their genitalia. A woman can act, eat, drink, work, talk and have sex exactly like men can and you as a man can’t say anything about it. Her past sex partners mean nothing; they don’t matter; and you better never ever ever say anything about them to her. Talking to a woman and telling her to “fuck right off” is the height of disrespect and is borderline criminal behavior, EVEN IF DONE WITH A DATE. You say that to a woman and you can expect NEVER EVER to see her again, EVER.
Everyone around us – parents, pastors, teachers, scout leaders, EVERYONE – told us in no uncertain terms that if we ever acted this way toward ANY woman, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, we could expect the weight of the law and social opprobrium to come crashing down on our heads with a fury and destructive power we could only imagine in our worst nightmares. We’d get arrested for assault. We’d get suspended from school. We could get kicked out of college. We could lose our jobs. We could get accused of sexual harassment (defined as “any sexual conduct by unattractive men; and any conduct by anyone that any woman doesn’t like”). We would be accused of “sexism” , second only to racism as the nuclear bomb of social discourse. Any man accused of racism or sexism could count on having his reputation and career utterly DESTROYED.
The implicit threat every man receives from a woman he’s dating is exactly this: “you will do what I say, when I say it. I get what I want, when I want it. If not, we’re not dating anymore and we’re sure as hell not sleeping together. You and I both know I’ll have you replaced and fucking another guy inside of a week. You, on the other hand, will scrimp and scrounge to get a hand job from a chubby 4. You won’t get your dick wet for at least a month or more. And you and I know it. So, little man, whatcha gonna do?”
That’s what we were told, explicitly and implicitly. Maybe you don’t get this. Maybe you don’t know this. But this is the experience of millions on millions of Gen X men, steeped and absolutely saturated and bombarded with feminism at every turn. We were told this was normal. We were told that this is simply how relationships are, and should be. We were told you have to be nice. We were told that if you’re having a bad relationship, it is because YOU, the man, are not being nice enough, and you have to be nicer. You have to do more for her. You have to take care of her. And that means you don’t EVER tell a woman to “fuck right off”. That means if she has plans for your marriage, you WILL do them, because to do otherwise is “not nice”.
Perhaps this will help you understand.
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Husband: “WHOA, way cool! A Three Stooges marathon on TCM this weekend! I’ll use the TV in the bedroom so that you can watch Lifetime on the big screen.”
Wife: “NO! We are going to the period costume drama festival at the Orpheum this weekend, so get your ass upstairs and get the pantaloons and vest out I bought for you out of the closet and take them down to the dry cleaners so they’ll be ready by Friday afternoon!”
A lesson to learn: respect each other’s choices.
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“I disagree here. Men are taught to think women are different and special.”
Goob, that might be YOUR experience, but it isn’t mine. I was taught and brought up and indoctrinated that women and men are EXACTLY the same except for their reproductive tract plumbing. That was absolutely hammered into us from day one, right up until marriage.
Most of us didn’t learn anything different until we were already married and had made let’s just say, less than optimal marriage choices.
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“if she’s this big of a liar, I would think that a guy would have a pretty good chance of catching her in a lie at some point in time. Maybe more. Big red flag, you know?”
Perhaps. But again, we’re told it doesn’t matter, and it’s irrelevant, and not a disqualifier for relationships. We’re told to ignore it because, well, she’s a woman, and she cares about you, and if you have a problem with it, then you’re a pig and a sexist, and she won’t sleep with you, and you deserve isolation and ostracism.
“If it’s a deal breaker for you, it’s a deal breaker. She can moralize and be pissed at you all she wants as you walk out the door. This is my point – you can’t be bullied into seeing things her way”
No one ever told us that women lie about their Ns; and that women with high Ns are not good relationship or marriage risks. Again – we’re told that it doesn’t matter, and that it SHOULD NOT matter, and that she’s “changed” and she’s “different”. And we’re told NOTHING different.
“If she’s never satisfied, don’t marry her”
Most men with the disinformation training we received approach women and relationships with a scarcity mentality – “She is the only one who cares about us; she’s the only one who’s interested; we’ll never ever ever find another woman; finding another woman is very very difficult; and if she breaks up with me it will be years before I find another one”. You might not believe this, but we are trained to believe this – that you have to stay with this one because you fought like hell to get this one, and you’ll have to start all over again if this ends; and you’ll go months and years with no sexual release.
Again – I am glad you, Goober, never got that kind of training. I sure did. For about four decades.
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Freetofish:
Word.
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freetofish:
Spot on.
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Deti;
I’m indebted to you for the time you’ve taken to explain this to me, and also your patience in the discussion.
The indoctrination has got to stop, and it goes both ways. Women are the way that they are because they are taught to be that way. men are the way that they are because they are taught to be that way.
We’re teaching our kids wrong.
The green shoots of fixing that problem reside right here in places like JBs blog.
I’m glad you’re here.
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Good points well taken.
I can’t disagree. As i said below in the other conversation going on, popular culture is creating a situation that is causing this, as well as single motherhood and so forth.
The only point I was trying to make is that whether its his fault or not (and it isn’t his fault if he’s merely doing what he was trained to do), a man acting in such a way has a part in his own downfall.
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yes, a man acting the way freetofish describes is taking part in his own downfall.
He just doesn’t KNOW that. In fact, when he points out that nothing he is doing is working, he is told the exact OPPOSITE — he’s told that he’s not doing ENOUGH of what he’s been doing — being nice, supplicating, pedestalizing, doing chores, leading her in devotions, taking them to church, etc. He’s told to double down on the “niceguy” act. Then when it doesn’t work, he goes to his pastor or his wife’s friends, and they tell him he’s still not being nice enough and it’s his fault and he has to do whatever he’s told.
Men cannot win for losing.
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Goob:
I’ll give you an example of the training I’m talking about.
When I was in 7th grade I was a bit of a loud obnoxious kid. It was my habit to flirt and play around with girls by sticking out my tongue at them.
It was sticking. out. my. tongue.
You would have thought I had shot and murdered a teacher for the scandal it caused.
Girls complained to teachers. Teachers called my parents. My parents were called into a meeting at the school with the principal, with me there. I was told in no uncertain terms that 12 year old boys DO NOT stick out their tongues at girls, and that if I ever did that again I would be faced with SERIOUS REPERCUSSIONS (cue dramatic ominous incidental music). I was sent on my way.
at home I was grounded for a week and told that if they were ever called to the principal’s office for somethign like this ever again, I could expect more groundings, more punishments, and more discipline.
All this.
For flirting with a few girls by sticking out my tongue at them.
What say you to that, Goob?
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Goob:
It’s good to hear that you are open and receptive to differing viewpoints and experiences. That’s a different tune than I was reading yesterday.
I can tell you that if scorch, riker and I are jaded, we’ve got damn good reason to be.
I can tell you that I would expect to be excoriated, shouted down, and threatened with doxxing if I expressed these views outside the manosphere and other friendly sites. The views I express are derided and denigrated as sexist, chauvinistic, narrow minded, and just false. We’re blamed for our failures, when we did only what we were told to do. We’re told that it’s all our fault, for doing nothing other than following the plan laid out for us and the shitty fucked up advice our parents gave us for an SMP that hasn’t existed since about 1955.
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Once again, and I am agreeing with Deti, it seems obvious that the messages have been clear.
Pedestalize, don’t judge, don’t criticize, don’t correct, cater to, women.
The results of such behavior however are self-defeating, as you become less and less attractive to women as you do such things. Hypergamy.
Manosphere retraining is the only source of information that can red pill your thinking, and it’s really a return to how things used to be back in our dad’s and granddad’s day. There is no societal support for the Manosphere, however, and there is little legal support for men’s needs or rights. There is primarily the feminine imperative, which is what gives us the Miley Cyruses of the world.
So in Goober’s case, he lucked out in getting some good Manosphere training as a part of his upbringing; not all of us had that experience.
In JB’s case, she was able to recognize the flaws in Feminism and control her hypergamous thinking enough to recognize a potentially good husband when she saw one, and commit herself to being a good wife once married.
What I, and so many others keep trying to communicate, is that Goober’s and JB’s experiences are, sadly, in the minority.
There are still PLENTY of men that would love to head up a family and have semi-traditional roles; however, the women just aren’t there any more. The social & legal contracts have been changed to reflect the feminine imperative which shifts all of the burden of every member of the family onto the dad; even Protestant churches are conforming their messages to feminine ideals. In a nutshell, girls are raised to be selfish sluts, and the law says they can get full legal benefits of wifery regardless of what they bring to the table.
Given all of the above, I hope that Goober can now understand why many of us see the marriage landscape these days as bleak.
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The only way to fix marriage is to make it so utterly rare that it’s considered an extreme sex fetish.
Then they would make a cohabitation enough justification for child support, even if the kid has a biological father that is not you. Someone has to pay the bills.
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You’re right Goober, he is contributing to his own downfall, I certainly don’t argue that. The sad part is he just has no idea he is.
It is insidious how feminist pop culture is. Name the last family sit com/animated show that had a competent father figure. Cosby Show is the only one I can personally think of and that went off the air 20 years ago.
Since then we have a steady diet of Tim Taylors, Raymonds,Homers,Peter Griffins, Kevin James in King of Queens, etc etc etc.
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Very thoughtful commentary. Well done.
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This number is biased by repeat offenders. If you exclude folks who’ve divorced multiple times, the number for first time marriages is more like 30% currently.
In that case, what about correcting this particular part of Wikipedia?
“[…]it has been shown that for the past 10 years or so, first marriages have a 50% chance of ending in divorce.”
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https://judgybitch.com/2013/08/27/advice-for-women-who-dont-want-to-get-divorced/
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Why do men write this down and share it to the world, but women dont. Its not as if men are already not being told to do this everyday on every channel on every show. Why is it mostly men and rarely women?
This letter sounds a like woman’s wish list on how a husband should treat her. Is the person who posted this, real?
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Mrs JB,
Can you post this superb reply of yours to his fb page too, where he posted it. It could also attract more people to your site.
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HOLY MISOGYNY BATMAN!!
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Fall in love over and over – never stop courting – never take that woman for granted
Falling in love over and over again is falling time and again in love with delusion; falling in love with delusion will only distance and drift you from the true love you’re seeking apart. You only fall in love one time and then begin to nurture and build the next higher stage of love that is a true, deep and genuine love earned not by delusions, thrills and phantasies but trough working as a team and surviving together the difficulties in marriage as well as the hardships of life (while helping reciprocally and supporting each other). Anyway, metaphorically compared to a camp fire, falling in love is like the first strong fire that ignites immediately, but at the same intensity and speed is going to distinguish in very short time unless we cultivate and nurture it by adding more wood, rekindling a stronger fire and taking care of it until the solid burning coals are created and we can enjoy the steadfast warm and hot fire over a long period of time. It is only now that the fire is not going to extinguishes and that we continue to maintain through adding more wood from time to time to keep it burning.
Real Life, true relationships and genuine deep love, are from the nature of the steadfast warm fire of coals and it is earned by work over time, not the short term deceiving and fleeting thrills of phantasies and delusions. It is when we stop deceiving ourselves by our instant mind suggesting us short term satisfaction and begin to understand that in the long run running after never ending thrills will never make us happy but only more bitter and frustrated, while it’s the long term commitment and investment that will at the end let us enjoy the fruits of our work and ever-lasting marital bliss and happiness. Yet, as opposed to the man hating notion in the article, it is the vast majority of women who lack the required commitment – not men! Those are the women today who rush into the marriage but being brainwashed by feminist incitement who are eager to give everything up and leave the marriage. How much? Well it is around 70 percent of divorces that are initiated by women; it’s only 30 percent that are initiated by men. It’s not men who lack commitment but women who lack it. Well, she doesn’t have to stay, but should have the wisdom, the responsibility and integrity to do if she chooses you. In fact, if she is decent woman she will stay and work with you together.
Either way, once the commitment on both sides is here, the way to build a functioning relationship, a true love while avoiding being granted is to create a so called emotional bank which both partner deposit each day small acts of love, generosity, kindness and many more on daily basis. Some of those acts may overlap with what we call and label as falling and love or courting if considering its appearance, while in essence it’s not only a small part of what we deposit but also different in meaning. Yet, there is a small problem and a caution we should take: either those are both the partner that deposit their acts of love, compassion, forgiveness and generosity or it is one that is doing so, taking more than what was deposited creates only deficit, insufficiency and shortage. Hence, the maintenance, the deposition and withdrawal, is mutual responsibility and can never be demanded from one partner.
You want your man to court you, respond with the same coin – even better initiate it yourself; you don’t want to be taken for grant, so reciprocate your man in the same way and stop objectifying your husband as an ATM and/or a sperm bank; you want to be honored, respect him; you want to be acknowledged, give him attention. Do you remember when he was courting and dating you? Can you remember what you have done in those days to keep him and not letting any other woman put her hands on him? Well imagine this right now and do the same. Believe me, I am a man, when you will do this, he’ll not only return you the favor but he will reciprocate it twice and three time more. The responsibility of working in the marriage in this way, is not only the responsibility of both partner, not only that both of them should do this without asking something in return but it can neither function in another way nor it will function when not done in this exact way. There is nothing epic or heroic in putting the man out of the equation, demanding only him to contribute to the relationship and put all the blame on him when it falls apart; it’s simply ignorance, evil, hypocrisy, self-hate or misandry (depends on the gender that is spreading it).
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Never blame your wife if you get frustrated – she was best suited to trigger your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them
Translation: especially don’t forget this when she abuses you – mentally, emotionally, financially and even physically. When she mistreats you like a piece of shit or exploits you, know your place and act accordingly. This abuse is all for your benefit, only that as all men you’re simply stupid to realize it. You simply don’t understand that the abuse is here to help you. Interesting if the argument would still be valid when said by a husband to his wife and what the feminists would say about this?
Truth and suggestion: Wow, this is real cruelty and evil. While it is true that we should never blame anyone, neither our spouses nor anyone else, we should indeed talk and give feedback when our needs are not met or when we are abused and mistreated. It does not matter if this is a wife or husband, once you as a man are abused stop giving the other cheek and let them turn you from the victim into perpetrator. While you should never criticize or blame you should also stop collaborating with your role as you’re wife doormat and let her understand her actions and their resulting consequences. First, you should talk to her. If that doesn’t help, suggest counseling. If that doesn’t help either or she’s simply not willing to attend counseling, let her understand that you will not take her abuse forever. If also this doesn’t help, so dump her ass and never look back again.
Yet dumping her ass does not have to be motivated by ill will or hate. You can leave her and be motivated by lots of love and compassion. Yes, sometimes, both love and compassion do not have to be soft and cozy. Sometimes they have to be as sharp as sword to be effective. This is the kind of love and compassion you practice when she does not want to take responsibility and to behave as a grown up woman instead of a giant toddler. As standing opposed to the author’s self-hate and misandry, you should hold yourself in the equation of love and compassion and not letting the others to abuse you for no reason – yes, even if it’s your own wife. Being sharp as sword doesn’t mean to be violent – neither physically, mentally, emotionally or otherwise – don’t lower your standards to hers. It’s simply about letting her deal with her own shit, fucked up and messed up life and the consequences of her own actions. To do so you don’t need to criticize or blame her, just simply act and respond wisely.
And no, her task is not to trigger your childhood wounds and make you suffering as it is not your task to endure abuse, playing the self-martyr or to trigger her childhood wounds and make her suffering. Life itself, all of its conditions, circumstances and relationships, even that with your wife will inevitably trigger your wife’s and yours own childhood wound. Yet, it is neither your wife’s nor your job to trigger the wounds but rather help yourself reciprocally to heal – not to add more pain and more suffering than you have both already been inflicted. It is both of your tasks to help each other heal, to help each other grow and not to inflict suffering one upon the other. If it’s not in your wife’s or yours capacity to help each other, so at least do Good, avoid the wrong and don’t hurt each other. Remember always, that your wife is not your teacher; neither she’s your guide or even God. Exactly as you, she is your fellow traveller on the path but not your judge and persecutor.
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Forgive immediately
Translation: no matter what she does, whether she mistreats you, abuses or cheats on you, please don’t be such an asshole, please immediately forgive her, she’s so suffering!
Truth and suggestion: well forgiveness and letting go are indeed the very heart of any healthy condition of functioning relationship. It is not an apex that culminates itself as one strong and powerful event, but is an ongoing process of daily small acts of forgiveness that at the end culminate in an unconditional forgiveness when it is required. Besides of this, forgiveness without wisdom and insight is prison; forgiveness that is accompanied by and insight and wisdom sets us indeed free and liberates us from the bondages of the past. Not forgiving is still being hostage of our past, but forgiving without understanding what and how to forgive sets and build our future chains and prison. This is not forgiveness, but suppression and self-denial. That being said, some types of forgiveness require time and not only can’t be forgiven immediately but unless we have healed from our wounds and gained wisdom from our pain could not be forgiven. Forgiveness is not something one can force. It is not a derivative of will but a property of our heart. In some cases, forgiveness should not be only considered under the light of our process that we undergo, but unless the offender bears witness of the suffering he has caused it is not wise to forgive him hence he has learned nothing to be awarded with a second chance after being forgiven
Take for example, the case of infidelity which I use here because it’s the ultimate betrayal that is most difficult to forgive in any relationship and marriage. While it is wise to forgive immediately when your wife burned a dish when cooking, it is not very wise to pretend that nothing has happened when your wife has cheated and immediate forgive her immediately. However, it is even more complicated because while you should forgive her anyway one day for your own sake and happiness, in my opinion cheating is a deal breaker and she should not be granted a second chance even if you forgive her. What people do not understand and mix constantly is the differences between forgiveness, reconciliation and a second chance. Forgiving someone, does not mean you have to reconcile with that person and be with him together. It does not mean either that you have to give him a second chance. The question or the decision if you do or don’t do this depends on holding you in the equation of love and compassion, If you forgive but keeping that person, in our case the wife, in our live is not safe then forgive but don’t give a second chance. You should forgive, but not necessarily reconcile with her and give her another chance (the same is for the wife of course).
The question of giving a second chance and full reconciliation is not an easy one, is not automatic and should be considered from many angles under the light of the equation of love and compassion that includes both sides. Especially it should be treated with wisdom, with mindfulness and situational awareness where we can be sure that the partner is honest, learned from the mistakes, has corrected his ways, has done everything to win the trust again, has done a deep internal searching and put boundaries for him to prevent him acting in the same way again. This is not an easy task, it is a very personal question and the idea of immediate forgiveness in such case is infantile stupidity. More than showing emotional, mental and spiritual maturity, the authors ignorance in claiming that we should by definition and all the time immediately forgive, is pointing to something different. We don’t have all facts and details about why his marriage has failed (I am sure it was not only his fault because there is never such reality), but it may point to lack of self-esteem, lack of confidences, to various degree of varying fears, suppression, denial, self-hate, one of them or the combination of them or something similar. Degrading oneself to that point doesn’t show of great wisdom, insight and maturity.
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