Something a Wife Doesn't Want to Find Out

Standard disclaimer about posts like this: I love Dr. Laura and her show. I do posts like these to express my few, usually minor, disagreements with how she handles some calls/topics. Also, this post is going to be about very adult topics.



I could have sworn I heard this call on Dr. Laura's show before, and maybe I did. (I thought maybe I'd written about it to, but I couldn't find anything.) At least on the podcast, past calls are dropped in from time to time unannounced, as if they had been live calls to the live show from that day. I don't know why this is. I don't know if there aren't enough calls, or something is getting edited out and the repeat is there to fill the time, or if Dr. Laura needs longer or more frequent breaks than the commercial breaks give her - I don't know. But since I listen to every minute of the podcast, I notice.

About 23 minutes into Hour 2 of the April 6, 2015 podcast, she took a call (or a past call was played) from a wife/mother who described her husband as an otherwise great man/husband/father/lover (they had a full sex life) but she was calling about her husband of fifteen years masturbating to media. Normally, when a wife calls and is happy with her marital love life but worried that her husband views/masturbates to porn (women or men with women), Dr. Laura tells her not to worry about it. However, in this case, the woman discovered that the media consisted of pictures of her (presumably clothed) friends.

Dr. Laura was thoroughly outraged by such behavior.


I'm not exactly sure why, but my guess is that it is because these are women to whom he might actually have access. If they were porn stars he didn't know, it would be OK. But most men will masturbate with women they actually know in their minds, at least every now and then. What do you think males were doing for all of those years before mass media?

Then Dr. Laura repeatedly implied he could be a pedophile. "Make sure he's never alone with the kids with a camera" - she repeated that over and over over again. Really?!? There was no indication he's a pedophile. These were grown women. Clothed.

She went on to say something along the lines of "Don't tell me you know what he can and can't do if you didn't know this." Right. I'm sure he's secretly torturing puppies in the basement.

After the woman said that her husband explained he'd been masturbating to women he knew since he was a teenager, Dr. Laura accused her husband of fraud. "He married you under false pretenses. He didn't tell you he had perversions." This idea was also repeated. Dr. Laura wrapped up the call by saying the worst thing he did was misled her and misrepresented who he was. Really? There's probably something about the wife the husband still doesn't know. Does make her an entirely different person?

Wow.

Do I think it is a good thing for a husband's preferred masturbation material to be his wife's friends? Absolutely not. But I think our usually awesome host overreacted to this big time, and perhaps let some bad personal experiences, at least one that was made public, bias her reaction to the point that the call did the caller, and her family, more harm than good. Almost always, the opposite is true - the caller and/or the caller's family is better off as a result of the call.

Does she really expect and advise that every man, before he marries, proactively tell his potential wife all of his sexual/masturbatory/porn fantasies, fetishes, preferences, etc.? I know she tells men not to even date until they can provide for a wife and children. Throw in that when a woman calls because her boyfriend/fiance admits to viewing porn, she tells those women to run (as I wrote above, she tells wives not to worry if their husbands do the same). Most men are going to be in their late 20s or early 30s. before they can support a wife and children. So do the math on all those factors. Even (or perhaps especially) if he never uses porn, a man is likely going to have developed at least one turn-on that someone, especially a woman, could call "perverted", before he marries. It doesn't necessarily mean he will act out that turn-on, just that it helps him finish the masturbation with the least amount of time wasted. It is also entirely possible that the husband figured he'd not be continuing the habit as a married man, figuring masturbation would be a rare contingency.

I don't think not disclosing masturbatory preferences amounts to marital fraud. Marital fraud would be something like, oh, not disclosing a history of mental illness, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations.