When the Nest Gets Empty

Guys, did you leave your marriage when your youngest child reached 18, graduated high school, or left the nest? Were you waiting for that to happen? Are you planning to leave when that happens? Did you consider it, but stayed? If you stayed, did you make changes to what you'd tolerate from your wife, or how you behaved?

You can share your experiences and thoughts in the comment area below. You can be anonymous if you'd like, or write a comment for me that you don't want published (make it clear you don't want it published, if you don't).

I ask those questions above because it is something I think about. I have kids to raise, and absent what I'd count as a "strike three," I'm going to keep the family intact until the youngest is a legal adult and done with high school.

But I'm not sure what I'll do after that. I figured there are four basic options for me:

One Exception To "You Knew This Before You Married"

When Dr. Laura has a caller complaining about something in their marriage, she will almost always have one of these two statements as part of her response, even if she uses different wording:

1) You knew this about them before you married them.

2) You didn't spend enough time getting to know them before you married them. 

Usually, it is true. I do maintain, though that people: 1) CAN hide who they truly are, and especially a bad habit, for the 24-33 months she recommends before marrying, and 2) people can be changed negatively by illness or trauma.

But what I wanted to talk about was sex. 

One Way to Warn More Men

If you identify at all with MGTOW or agree with me that most men should stay Free Men (avoiding legal/financial entanglements with women) or at least avoid marriage, one way to get our messages out to more men is to use established platforms, such as online discussions, comments sections, and call-in shows (like talk radio).

Getting a single sentence broadcast can help change lives for the better. If you can red-pill just one man or boy listening, it makes a positive difference. Any show doing an hour or whatever of "open lines" (no set topic) is an opportunity, but especially shows or spaces talking about relationships, dating, family, or marriage.

I wrote an extensive open letter to Dennis Prager, but I'd never call in to his show, for reasons, but you might be able to. Although I'll be using Dennis Prager and Dr. Laura as examples, you can adapt these tactics to any call-in show, preferably one that puts "live" calls on the air. Note that Dennis Prager does live question and answer chats on Facebook and Dr. Laura's show has a Facebook page where she allows comments and discussions on things she posts, which are often about relationships and marriage. You can adapt these messages for any forum, social media, or comments area. 

Dr. Laura Asked If Men Are Idiots for Marrying

On her Tuesday, March 22, 2022 program, Dr. Laura read part of something from Jordan Gray found at Good Men Project. It was titled "I Used To Think That Men Who Got Married Were Idiots."

I used to think that men who got married were idiots.

Or, if they weren’t idiots, they were at least undesirable enough that they just had to settle for whoever chose them… because why else would you tie yourself to someone for life if the reason weren’t that you didn’t have any other romantic options?

I mean, seriously… getting married??

Okay so… you get a couple of months of hot sex, in exchange for a lifetime of indentured servitude to someone who eventually takes you for granted and sees you as a walking wallet and then stops having sex with you and makes jokes with her friends about what a dumbass you are? And that’s if you even manage to stay together… because what’s even more likely is that she eventually leaves you, takes the kids, and steals half of your life savings in the process.

Who in their right mind would sign up for such a thing?

Didn’t these guys realize that, if you really break down the benefits of marriage into their fundamental components, you could hire out all of these needs for way less money than what your lifestyle of snotty nosed kids and inevitable divorce would cost you?

And I’m not speaking hyperbolically here!

Here, I’ll prove it to you…

You could hire someone to come to your house to do a deep clean every other week for, depending on the size of your house, let’s say $200/month.

You don’t want to cook for yourself? Okay, you could hire a meal prepping service who could make your lunches and dinners (you can fend for yourself with a super simple breakfast) for $2,000/month.

Okay, cooking and cleaning are taken care of for less than the cost of your mortgage payment… what’s left? Oh right, the big one. Sex!

Depending on how fancy you are and the legality of sex work in your local area, you could see a sex worker every week for the rest of your life and spend no more than $1-2,000 per month on that expense.

So if you tally up the monthly costs of outsourcing predictable, guaranteed, high-quality cooking, cleaning, and sex… you’re looking at no more than $50,000 per year in total expenses. Now, that might sound like a lot to some in the short-term… but if you compare that to the average cost of raising children, and the amount of money you’ll inevitably have to shell out in your divorce, this is an absolute bargain.

That's where she stopped reading. She took calls from men after that, asking them "Are men idiots for getting married?" At first, she wanted calls from married men, but she had trouble getting enough calls, so she took them from any men (who passed the screeners). The thing is, Dr. Laura promotes marriage. When she deviates from her program's usual format for things like this, she wants a specific answer. It isn't really her trying to give people time to say whatever they want. She will deny anything that goes against her point.

Gray's essay was pretty good up until that point. I waited for her to go back to finish reading the piece, but she never did. Let's see why.

The Biggest Reason for Men to Remain Child-Free

Yes, children are expensive, tiring, and limiting, but the biggest reason not to have any children is that they should be raised within a good marriage, and a good marriage is now too rare or too costly. The sad, brutal truth is that you're not likely to be able to provide children with a happy, stable, intact, nurturing, loving, married mother-and-father home in which you are a genuinely happy participant.

We are naturally child-free. We have to do something (and things have to go right) in order for us to have children. The question should not be "Why don't I have children?" but rather "Why should I have children?" You shouldn't, unless you can 1) explain exactly why you want to have children in a logical, coherent, rational, unselfish explanation; and 2) have reasonable certainty you can provide any children you have with a happy, stable, intact, nurturing, loving, married mother-and-father home. Most people can't manage 1. Most people who think they can manage 2 are wrong.

Even if we can be determined to be a good spouse and parent, even if we think we're choosing a spouse wisely and treating that spouse kindly, we can be fooled or fooling ourselves, or our spouse can suffer and illness or trauma that proves fatal to the marriage, or at least the positive environment of the marriage.

The biggest reason for men to remain child-free is to avoid entering into a detrimental partnership with a woman and to avoid being tied to a woman for the rest of his life, regardless of what she does. Stay free.

Shocker: People Who Will Stay Together Longer More Likely to Marry

Our "friends" at the Institute for Family Studies published another marriage-seller piece, this one by Harry Benson, who is Research Director of the UK-based Marriage Foundation.

After all, marriage rates have been falling across the developed world since the 1970s.

Good.

Cohabitation has become normalized.

Shacking up is almost as bad as marrying. Don't do it, guys.

People talk about long-term committed couples and relationships as the equivalent of marriage.

What makes something marriage, if not committing to be together?

To What Should Males Aspire?

I recently heard Dennis Prager ask to what men would aspire if not marriage and raising a family. He's repeatedly said that guys are not real men if they aren't husbands and fathers. This is something heard from various corners of our culture, along with other assertion of what makes a guy a "real man". [This entry has been bumped up.]

Notice you never hear what makes a real woman. You never hear "What a real woman does, is..."

What is a guy if he isn't a real man? An artificial man? A transgender man? Of course, that's not what people are talking about. They are saying a "real man" as opposed to a man who is somehow lacking, or, as they might say, a "boy". There's nothing wrong with boys, at least not beyond the general thing of humans being fallen creatures. Again, you don't hear this with women. Women will refer to each other and themselves as girls and nothing negative is meant by it.

A real man is any adult human male who isn't fictional. For example, Prince Charming is fictional. Christian Grey is fictional. Jack Sparrow is fictional.

If there was such thing as a "real man" as opposed to an adult male who isn't a real man, that real man wouldn't give a piece of dung what other people say makes a real man. because when someone says, "What a real man does, is...",  what they're saying is "What I like men to do is..." Because real men urinate unless they have kidney problems, real man have weaknesses, and real men mess things up sometimes. But you'll never hear "What a real man does is urinate." But it's true.

Getting back to Prager's question...

Open Letter to Dennis Prager Regarding Encouraging Men to Marry

Dear Dennis Prager:

I'm a married father, and I earn my family's income. I wanted to get married, I was careful about who I sought as a spouse[1], and, statistically, we married at the right ages and were on track to have a successful marriage[2]. We both wanted to have children, and we did. Prior to having the children or even getting married, we agreed on how they'd be raised.

I've been gainfully employed since I was in high school, and even spent several years before I married working over seventy hours per week. I moved out of my parents' home for college shortly after graduating from high school and never moved back.

I haven't played video games since early adolescence. I have never abused alcohol or any mind-altering substances. I've read through the Bible multiple times and have studied it for decades. I have been a regular participant in adult fellowships at church that centered on marrieds and married parents, and I was steeped in the "Focus on the Family" outlook on family life. I have voted for conservative Republicans whenever I could since as soon as I could vote. I'm a longtime regular listener to your show (a P1, for sure), a reader of your columns, and have purchased and read through at least one of your books.

I've watched the Prager U videos dealing with marriage and male-female relations multiple times.

I say all of that to let you know where I'm coming from. I'm a supporter, not a hater.

Now, my point.

It's irresponsible and unfair for you to say men aren't real men unless they marry.

It is my position that most men shouldn't marry, and those who don't are still real men.

There are many men who marry because they are too weak, passive, desperate, or unwilling to be responsible for themselves. Almost all men who legally marry these days are ignorant, delusional, or masochists.[3]

Dennis Prager on the Burned "Excuse" For Not Marrying

Dennis Prager has one of the best talk radio shows and writes some of the best columns and books. He is generally a social conservative. He's a religious Jew, and if I understand correctly, he aligns most of all with Conservative Judaism. While many social conservatives rail against divorce, Prager does not. Nobody can accuse him of being a "hypocrite" for being twice divorced. (He is currently married.)

I haven't heard him or anyone else explain why he has been through two divorces, and I wouldn't expect him to. For all I know, he was a great husband in both cases and his wives simply decided to leave. I have not heard him talk about the conditions and results of his divorces, either.

Prager unabashedly promotes marrying.

Here's a disagreement I have with him.

He scoffs at the fear of divorce preventing people from (re)marrying, citing that we don't stop driving because of getting into car accidents.

Well, putting aside that some people do stop driving because of an accident, let's explore this analogy. I've heard Prager cite this analogy when addressing that a man who has been burned by divorce himself - rather than citing the divorce of his parents or siblings or friends - and is reluctant to remarry. I've never heard him ask if the person who is reluctant to remarry has minor children. Chances are, they do.

"Second" marriages with minor children have a 70% divorce rate, and that's only counting the ones that end in legal divorce, not the ones where couple is miserable (or the husband is) or separated or the marriage would have ended in divorce if a spouse hadn't died before it could happen.

Let's say that in buying and driving your first car, that no matter how good you took care of it, no matter how much test driving* you did, no matter how well you drove, it didn't stop someone else who was driving it from crashing it. As a result of that accident, you lost custody of your children, you had to leave your home, you had to pay for two legal teams, you lost half of everything you'd earned, you had to make ongoing payments to the person who crashed your car (and rather than being appreciative and apologetic, that person constantly badmouthed you to anyone who'd listen), and you had to pay a percentage of your salary to children who now hate your guts. You can even remove some of these results from consideration.

Let's say there was a 70% chance of  the same thing happening if you bought another car and let someone else drive it (which is what breadwinning men do when they marry). Would it be a good idea for you to do that?

Now add in that you can either 1) get everything you got by buying and driving your own car without doing so, or 2) live a nice life without those things.

Would it really not be valid to be "afraid" or reluctant to buy another car that someone else could drive?

Prager does acknowledge that some men are unfairly screwed over by family law and courts, and he regularly discusses the difficulties between men and women. But he has this thing about how you should fully experience life, and about how marriage makes people better, and that a guy isn't a real man unless he's supporting a wife. This is despite his insistence that dependency, when it comes to government programs, hurts people. As far as fully experiencing life and making people better, there are people who have, intentionally or accidentally, been left in a wilderness and have had to struggle to survive and make it back to civilization. That was a life experience. That made them a better person. Should we all do that, too?

Prager, at least weekly, says that happiness is a moral obligation. For some people, avoiding remarriage helps them stay happy.



Dr. Laura has taken a different approach. She strongly discourages people with minor children from remarrying, But if someone doesn't have minor children and is reluctant to remarry because of being burned in the past, or is already remarried and is not feeling secure in the relationship because of what a different spouse did in the past, she will point out that they aren't with the same person. True, but there commonalities in the laws, and courts and culture. It's a little like saying "Sure, someone stole your car when you were in that other city, but you're in this city now, with different people." It's not irrational to think there's a good chance the car may be stolen. That's one reason we have insurance. When it comes to remarrying, the best insurance is not to do it at all.



*Test driving can mean any number of things: dating, courting, fornication, shacking up. People can "test drive" without fornicating or shacking up, but others do test drive with those things. I don't recall if I've ever heard Prager's view on the moral status of intercourse, other forms of sexual interaction, or literally sleeping together. But let's not deceive anyone. There have been people who've shacked up and later decided to end their marriages, but there are also people who didn't even fornicate who've gone through divorce, too.

A Lack of Marriageable Women

Dr. Laura says everyone wants to be married, or at least be with someone, and in her world, that's the same thing. Something is wrong with people who don't. But she also has said the qualities a woman must have to be marriageable and has chastised men for marrying women who don't have these qualities.

This will especially help you if you call her up and she wants to know why you're not married, or not marrying the latest woman in your life.

These things disqualify a woman from being wife material according to Dr. Laura.

Out of the Age Range - If she is 27 or under, she's automatically not wife material yet. If she's more than ten years or more younger (or older... probably fewer years older) than you, she's out of the age range. A woman who is over 40 should not be having children.This will eliminate literally most women.

Has Minor Children - Single mothers, divorced mothers, and almost as much when it comes to widowed mothers, are to raise their children, who've already suffered a loss or a broken home. They shouldn't bring their new lovers around their children, and that precludes marriage until the children are grown. Many women 28 or older have children (though fewer than in the past). This will eliminate another significant percentage of women from consideration.

Twitter Disclaimer

I'm on Twitter. Here is my disclaimer.

1) When I tweet my own statements, they are my own personal statements, whether sarcastic or ironic or not. They don't represent anyone or anything else, such as an employer.

Faith

This entry is about my faith. If you have no interest in reading about that, then ignore this entry and read whichever entries here look interesting to you. Or, go do something else entirely.

"Why Can't Men Be Upfront and Honest?" - Part 5

In Part 1, I explained that men who get scarce around certain holidays and special days keep women from thinking of them as husband material, and thus are avoiding leading women on.

In Part 2, I explained that "bad boys" who aren't forthcoming and honest are rewarded with NSA sex.

In Part 3, I explained how this sorts out the women who are leading men on.

In Part 4, I showed how women often aren't upfront and honest.

Here in Part 5, I will be upfront and honest.

Here's honesty for you.

Male nature is such that what we want is frequent sex, and a variety of it at that, including what you might think of as perverted or degrading sex. We want sex with multiple young, hot women, whether one at a time or in groups. We like seeing their bodies, we like seeing them do sexual things. We want to have sex with just about any woman we see who isn't hideous. We want good food, especially if someone else is preparing it. We want appreciation, gratitude, admiration, and respect. We want to feel accomplished, and like heroes or conquerors. We want to hang out with the guys sometimes, away from women.

In this nature, we DON'T want to jump through a lot of hoops to get what we want. We don't want to pledge and live out being exclusive to one woman. We don't want our ears talked off with the same complaints over and over again, especially about something we can't or won't change; we don't want to hear criticisms, nagging, griping, whining, or endless babbling about subjects we don't care about. We don't want to pay your bills, pay your way, dance, buy you flowers or chocolates, or buy you a ring. We don't want to get "honey do lists". We don't want to be subjected to PMS, mood swings, deal with your catty friends or whacked out family, or raise another man's kids. We might be willing to do/endure these things to get what we want or because we have been indoctrinated/trained to think we're supposed to. Men who run game well mostly don't do these things.

If we could have our way, you'd have great sex with us whenever we want, never let yourself go, stop talking our ear off, take care of the kids until they are old enough to play ball or fish with us (if we want kids), keep the house clean, do the laundry, make our meals, get along nicely with our family and friends, and otherwise stay out of our way. This isn't to say we don't enjoy hanging out with you or that spouses aren't friends (especially if our testicles have just been emptied and our bellies are full - otherwise, we're focused on getting there), but there's a whole lot of things in relationships we don't naturally want to do.

There are always a few men who object. "I like dancing! I like taking a woman out on a really nice date!" There are always exceptions, outliers, guys who are in denial or have denied themselves, and not everyone wants exactly the same thing all of the time. Again, some men are sticking with an indoctrination/training or think they have to do/say these things to get what they really want.

I'm sure many of you women reading this are saying "There are things we want and don't want, too, things we tolerate in men that we'd rather not have deal with!" EXACTLY!!! That's why I encourage men to stay free. For every Free Man, there will be a free woman (unless she insists on being a sister wife or a mistress.) I encourage men to NOT subject women to things they don't want; don't get possessive of them or demanding of their time. Keep interactions to a bare minimum.

Here's an example of  guy who was doing it right.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4