You Did NOT Enjoy What You Chose to Do For Ten Years

Had to check in about a call during the first hour of Dr. Laura's show on Tuesday, September 17, 2013. Whenever I have a bone to pick with Dr. Laura, I point out that I listen to every minute of her show and I follow what goes on with her website and Facebook page, and I read her books. I think she usually hits the bullseye and I think she has done so much good for many people, me included. Blah, blah, blah...

Dr. Laura's advice and comments over the years have made it clear that she, like many other people, subscribes to the idea that men should have to buy sex one way or another, preferably by signing a contract that shifts over half of everything they’ll ever earn to a woman. That is not how she would put it, but it is the end result of what she says (including that men always pay for dates) and the use of phrases like calling women who shack up or otherwise regularly fornicate as “unpaid whores”.

She took a call from a woman who'd not been honest with her husband about her sexual past (as the husband had supposedly been with her) in that she had previously not disclosed to him that from her late 20s to her late 30s, she'd had a lot of one night stands as part of evenings stated off by clubbing. The caller said the encounters had been fun, at least for a few minutes each time. Dr. Laura denied they had been fun. Isn't it interesting how Dr. Laura can speak to whether something was fun for another person and tell that person they didn't have the feelings they did?

Well, through some drunken statements with/by one of her female friends (what are friends for, right), the caller's husband, who she'd been with for nine years, found out about the one night stands. He was upset about the lack of disclosure when disclosure had been the mutual agreement. Being hurt and surprised, he probably said a lot of things, but one of them was that he'd been paying for nine years for what the caller had repeatedly given away for free. His statement is truth, if harsh and unusually blunt. However, because his statement was painful to hear, Dr. Laura insisted that the caller, who had agreed with her husband that she had been wrong to do the behavior and to not disclose it, look at the statement as some of the worst kind of emotional abuse a husband can commit.

You see in Dr. Laura's mind, these women are victimized - not raped, as some feminists would say - but victimized nonetheless (probably because they were not paid, beyond drinks or whatever.) So the husband is supposed to stifle his own feelings and apologize for the sins of men, or something. Whatever he's supposed to do, he's not supposed to express that the "new" information makes him unhappy.

Dr. Laura also insisted that the man had not been honest with the caller, that a private investigator could find all sorts of dirt on him that he hadn't disclosed. It really is amazing what she knows about complete strangers she never met.

She told the woman to pack her bags and leave because the marriage is over and what he did was unforgivable.

Dr. Laura’s tone and her advice indicate to me that she has some personal matters somehow like the caller's that (still) bother her.

I know from past calls that Dr. Laura thinks anyone who wants disclosure of sexual past is just a twisted voyeur of sorts, but the caller indicated that what had gone on earlier in the relationship was supposed to be a mutual disclosure; it hadn't been something the husband hounded the wife about.

I have my own reasons to be biased about this. My wife said she accepted my past, but many times since we married, she has used my past against me, overtly and I suspect covertly as well. That isn't what was taking place here. What we had was a man who was caught off guard, felt lied to, felt mislead, etc., while others around him knew more about his wife than he did. And although Dr. Laura said there would be no reason for him to know unless she had a disease or effects of a disease as a result, I have to wonder if the call had instead been about a husband not disclosing to his wife that he had previously fornicated with women they would occasionally encounter around town, Dr. Laura would have reacted differently. This caller's husband was probably wondering how many guys they had bumped into over the last nine years that had been inside his wife. To some people, male or female, that matters. He may have also wondered if some of he difficulties they'd had in their marriage had been a result of his wife's past experiences, when he's previously thought he must have been doing things wrong.

It would have been different if Dr. Laura explained that her husband should drop the issue, not bring it up anymore, and that if he does keep bringing it up, the then caller should leave. But Dr. Laura told her to leave today and that what he did was unforgivable, and again, her tone was… off. I think she let the personal overcome her usual professional demeanor.