A Time For Choosing

On the Thursday, October 15, 2026 Dr. Laura Program, Hour 2, “Don” was the caller.

He and his wife have a 30 year old daughter, she’s married, has two kids. He and his wife gave them a car, gave them a down payment for a condo. Their backyard floods and Don’s wife wants to spend thousands to fix that for them.

His daughter and spouse are “not good with their finances.” They both work, but “things are expensive these days” and they don’t have the money to fix the backyard. Don says he wants to stop giving them all this money.

Dr. Laura says to Don that his wife won’t listen to him. She said that herself. Don agreed.

Dr. Laura suggests he siphon “legally” most of the money away from his wife’s reach.

Mind you, Dr. Laura is constantly saying men should “lay down their life” by LEGALLY marrying and sharing finances. It’s “their” money, not his & hers. Even as she was talking to Don she mentioned community property laws.

Don says he’s just trying to keep peace, which Dr. Laura rips him for saying, and any husband who does likewise.

Again, mind you, Dr. Laura insists married couples with young kids can stay together PEACEFULLY until kids are 18 even if they don’t like each other.

She goes on to say Don has no control over his own life, he’s emasculated, disrespected, etc.

YES, Dr. Laura. He legally married. No customized prenup. He did what you tell men to do. (I guess doing what a woman says is OK if the woman is Dr. Laura.)

“Act like a man. Or at least act like an equal individual. And tell your wife you two have to agree in order to spend the money. Shouldn’t happen otherwise.”

But Dr. Laura already said the wife wasn’t going to listen to him. That’s why she told him to move the money even while she cited community property laws.

“Act like a man” isn’t advice. “Take the dog and move to a new place,” is advice. He can tell his wife no, and she can ignore him and still give away the money. THAT’S MARRIAGE THE WAY DR. LAURA TELLS MEN THEY SHOULD DO IT. Vague statements like “Act like a man!” smack right against the wall of reality.

Legally marrying today IS emasculating. He gave up control of his life. Remember what you say all the time, Dr. Laura? “Lay down his life” by legally marrying. Now, his only legal and ethical option to prevent his wife from continuing to do this is divorce her. He’ll get MAYBE half of whatever’s left, but he’ll also have to pay for two legal teams and, likely, alimony. What a deal! Then, his wife can give away the money she gets, but not whatever he’s left with.

Choose, Dr. Laura. You can keep telling men to legally marry with their state’s default prenup OR you can tell men to avoid emasculation and have control over their own life. You can’t have both.

Today’s terrible state contract and the current social construct are emasculating. While Dr. Laura dislikes men “getting sex for free,” at least free men can avoid emasculation and keep control over their own life. They can say “no” to a woman and it actually has some power.

Porn Panic From the Right

Dennis Prager talks about panics from the Left. Here an example of panic from the right, as expressed in two essays, which are very much like countless other essays and commentaries throughout the years.

"Susan" wrote on her blog at the URL https://thesparrowshome.com/pornography-is-destructive/ under the title "Hugh Hefner, Dennis Prager, and the Destructive Nature of Pornography" in October of 2017:

Hugh Hefner died last week. While I don’t revel in his death, the phrase ‘good riddance’ did cross my mind.  Hefner contributed heavily to bringing pornography to the mainstream, making it more easily accessible and normalized. Grieving his death never entered my mind.

If it hadn't been him, it would have been someone. Have you ever taken a real art history course? Or seen early movies, before the "code" days?

If You Marry, You WILL Have a Prenuptial Agreement

The question is, will it be the default agreement put together by strangers (state law, left up to interpretation and application by a judge), or will it be customized to the two of you?

The state prenuptial agreement is TERRIBLE for breadwinning men.

You might think "I don't really have much." Maybe not. But with hard work and smart moves, that'll change. Don't cheap out! If you "cant' afford a prenup," you can't afford a wife.

Guys, you should NOT be marrying at all, but if you are going to legally marry or even just cohabitate, you need a customized prenup, and you need to do it right. Judges have thrown out prenups. Here's how to minimize the risk of that happening.*

1. The agreement has to be signed and notarized/filed/whatever BEFORE a wedding date is set, before there's a pregnancy, and before you live together. You do not want her to later claim she was in any way pressured or coerced or signed under duress.

2. She will need her own attorney and so will you. The attorneys will go over the agreement before it is finalized.

3. Along with your attorney, line up a professional videographer and a (retired?) judge to go over the finalized agreement with both of you and your attorneys, signing and dating it on-camera. The judge should confirm your date, time, location, identities, that you are of sound mind, that you're entering into this agreement willingly (no wedding date has been set yet, etc.), that you have your attorneys present and that you are satisfied with them, that you understand English, and go over each clause of the agreement to explain what it means and whether or not you consent to it. The idea is to make it virtually impossible for the agreement to be challenged later by claiming there was pressure or that something was unfair or not understood.

4. Make sure you have discussed with your attorney how to keep the agreement in effect. Certain things you might otherwise say or do could end the effectiveness of the agreement, and you want to be sure to avoid that. Don't let her pressure you into doing those things!


The specifics of the agreement will be up to the law and what you two and your attorneys work out. She might ask for a sunset so that if she stays with you a certain number of years, the state's agreement comes into effect. Avoid that! All that does is give her a countdown. Things that might be in the agreement might include, but certainly not be limited to, access to financial accounts, the conditions of any joint accounts, provisions for insurance, what each of you owned and owed at the time you entered into the agreement, the process for amending or changing the agreement, who will pay for what, what happens if there is a separation/divorce/incapacitation/death, what will happen with property purchases and sales, etc.

You want to protect any property or assets you would be bringing into the marriage. Have your own business? Plan to start one? What if you create something like a work of art or a game? These are things that need to be considered.

If you own a home, you'll probably need her to sign a quitclaim deed and you'll probably have to refuse to allow her to "help" with paying for or maintaining it.

In most places, inheritance is NOT community property. If anyone is leaving anything to you, they should leave it only to you, NOT including her, and you should keep whatever you get separate. For example, if it's cash, it would go into an account she has nothing to do with.

If there is a divorce, you're not going to be able to get away with paying her nothing. You're going to have to pay her something, but if you spell out what in the agreement, it can be far less than what you'd have to if you went with the state default.

Again, you most likely shouldn't be marrying (or living together) in the first place. But if you're going to take that risk, mitigate it somewhat with a customized prenup. If she won't agree, DO NOT MARRY HER.

Keep in mind, having children provides an end-run around a prenup. She can get a court to order you to pay "child support" well above what it takes to raise the children. No man should be conceiving children unless he sincerely wants to be a father.

*I'm not an attorney. Do not so much as share a residence, let alone marry a woman, without consulting a family law attorney.

What Is A Real Man?

A real man is any human being who is:
1. Male

2. 18 years of age or older
3. Not fictional

Whether a man does or doesn't do any certain things you or anyone else likes or doesn't like has ZERO determination over whether he is a real man or not.

Keeping Boundaries As a Free Man

If you are a Free Man, meaning you don't have a wife and don't live with a woman, I implore you to enjoy your freedom. I also urge you to keep your freedom. 

That might sound easy. I mean, don't you have to decide to move in together and don't you have to ask a woman to marry you?

Sure, but it gets more complicated than that.

Some women literally scheme to get pregnant even though you've made it clear you don't want to have children. Some women incrementally move-in-by-stealth. Some women nag and nag and nag (and even get your family to join in) to get you to "propose".

You need to keep boundaries in order to stay a Free Man.

AVOID POP DNA TESTS. Don't buy them for your family, either. You can't stop them being foolish and taking them, but avoid taking one yourself. No good will come from one of those. The only time you should take a DNA test is through the advice and arrangement of your lawyer.


Monk or Ghost

This is the the most extreme way of staying a Free Man without literally going off to be an isolated hermit. Some men decide to avoid women as much as possible. They don't date, they don't have female friends, they don't work for or with women, and they don't have any professional or financial connections to women (for example, they refuse to have a woman as an accountant or doctor). That is extreme, but for some it works.


Stay Present But Independent

This is the less extreme way. You can still participate in society and interact with women. You just need to be persistent and firm in keeping yourself independent. Let's consider how to do this.

Answering Marriage Seller Assertions, Talking Points, and Questions - Part 5

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here and Part 3 here and Part 4 here.

 

 

Doesn't the woman you're with want to marry?

There is more than one way to answer this depending on your situation, but this question is based on you having at least one woman you are seeing, which may not be the case. In some cases, more than one of these answers will be useful for you.

A) No.

B) She says she wants to marry, but I know she isn't prepared to be a wife.

C) More than one woman I'm with wants to marry. I treat them equally by not marrying either/any.

D) There are things I want. That doesn't make it her/any woman's obligation to do them.

 

E) So what?

F) I take marriage very seriously and I don't want to enter into it lightly [...or at all].

G) We haven't been seeing each other long enough. [60 years might be enough.]

It is important to remember that you're not holding any woman hostage. Ideally, you haven't made any promises about actually proposing or getting married to any specific woman, nor are you living with any woman. She is continuing to see you AS-IS.

If you have told a woman you will propose to her or you will marry her, you need to invoke your prerogative to change your mind, and the sooner you make that clear, the better. She might leave/stop seeing you, she might not. Even if she does, it is far better than marrying. Living together is usually a very bad idea, but don't make it worse by signing a terrible state contract.

This sort of question by marriage sellers is often followed up with "So you're just using her?" or "You're wasting her time!" You are no more using her than she is using you. Since you're not married, your interactions are entirely voluntary, whereas marrying (even if subsequently divorcing) forces some interactions even if one of you no longer wants to interact in that way. If she doesn't enjoy the time she's spending with you or doesn't otherwise get anything out of it, she is free to NOT see you.

Part 6

Adapt or Be Irrelevant

A pitfall of conservatism is when a conservative fails to deal with the reality that things have changed.

I'm not bashing conservatives. Most people would probably classify me as a conservative if I described most of my political and social positions. Obvious exceptions you might have noticed if you've read other entries on this blog is that I warn most men not to marry and I think professional antiporn crusaders are misleading people for personal gain.

I recognize that the truth is the truth regardless of the culture or what is in fashion.

And a truth that conservatives need to deal with is that some things change and if you're going to be effective, you need to meet people where they are.

Let's bring this into the world, to where the rubber meets the road.

Example: State marriage licenses. They are issued to same-sex couples and that's not going to change, unless states cease issuing marriage licenses entirely. Most conservatives have conceded this. Some still appear to be devoting their resources to trying to reverse this shift.

Two talk radio hosts to which I listen via paid podcast subscription, both of whom I think do a lot of good for people, demonstrate the problem with not accepting change.

Dr. Laura, despite what people might think who only know her through what other people say, has always held some positions that go against conservative consensus.

However, she usually refuses to help callers who are cohabitating outside of legal marriage. She usually won't help them with the problem or concern that's coming up within their relationship as it is. Instead, she tells them to either move out or go to the courthouse and get married ASAP. Very few of the callers are going to do either, and dismissing them with that won't help them in their marriage (if they do marry) or interpersonal relationships with each other or others if they do move out from each other.

I am generally against "shacking up" myself. However, most people who marry these days lived together before they did, just like Dr. Laura and her late husband. It's perfectly valid for her to explain why she now opposes shacking up (as long as she doesn't rely on statistics in a misleading way), and she can still do that. But the callers, and a wide swatch of her audience, will benefit more if she deals with things as they are. There are several other examples I could cite when it comes to the Dr. Laura Program.

I don't know of anything more foundational to how Dennis Prager views life and talks/writes about life than the notion that men and women should marry and raise children together, and that it is man's lot in life to financially support a woman. He is so convinced of this he constantly urges men and women to order their life around this. If they aren't married now, they should be actively seeking to marry, including if they've been divorced multiple times. If the Lord Almighty were to part the clouds and boom from the skies with a command to someone walking alongside Dennis that they shouldn't marry, Dennis just might go atheist.

Even though he acknowledges the severe problems with family law and courts, he still urges people to subject themselves to them. He needs to accept that we no longer live in small farming villages on family farms our entire life and don't need to birth our own farm hands. Men and women can both thrive living "alone" or without marriage.

Antiporn crusaders write and talk like scientists who aren't in their tank can't research and network, and that people can't check things out for themselves now. Their claims from forty-plus years ago like porn rots brains and turns people into serial killers are easily debunked now, but they still try to use those scare tactics. Porn isn't going away.

Life has changed, and tactics and positions need to change with it, or someone becomes ineffective.

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.

Part of Running Game is Saying No

Men who think they have to jump through hoops for women in order to get what they want from women, saying "yes" to what a woman asks of them, have been misled.

In general, NO works much better.

Unpaid?

"When someone is selling something, they don't like it when other people sell the same or similar product or service for much less." - Me [This entry has been bumped up.]

On Dr. Laura's Thursday, June 18, 2020 show, she took a call from a woman who has had a boyfriend for three years and she called about the possibility of talking marriage. Dr. Laura asked her if they were having sex. Of course the answer was yes. Dr. Laura called her an unpaid whore, which is a term she tends to apply to shackups, which the caller noted because they weren't living together. Dr. Laura went on to say that women like the caller are "giving men sex for nothing."  (I may be conflating the call with another one from the same episode, during which a man challenged the wisdom of marrying without having lived together.)

Aren't they giving each other company and sex? What exactly is he getting out of the relationship that she is isn't?

Again, we see the principle that men are expected to pay for sex, or that women don't enjoy sex.

And, we have no idea what bills of hers he's paying, or what gifts he's giving her. If he's taking her to nice dinners and paying for her vacations, entertainment, recreation, etc., then she is getting paid.

Dr. Laura brought up the white wedding dress and how it's not fair for women who aren't virgins to wear them. Except the truth about white wedding dresses says otherwise.

One Reason You're Not Husband Material

Guys, I often write about how there isn't suitable, compatible wife material for you to marry. But another reason you should avoid marriage (or at least, a reason you can tell others when they ask you why you're not married) is that you aren't husband material. This isn't an insult, mind you.

Below is a list put together through listening to Dr. Laura for many years. She is very pro-marriage and used to do marriage and family therapy.

If a woman is looking for a man to be a husband and father to her children, this is the kind of employment he must have. This is just about his job. This doesn't even cover all of the other qualities he must have. If you don't have a job like this, you're not (first) husband material, and so you shouldn't marry. (And, if you don't marry during the child-raising years, then you're not going to be marriage material later on, because you didn't marry earlier, which means you're not the type to commit to marriage.)

A (first) husband has to have a job that, in no particular order...

Thinking Critically About Cohabitation

Introduction: Is Unmarried Cohabitation Bad?

I've been carefully mulling over just about everything I've accepted about sociology.

Let's look at shacking up (unmarried cohabitation).

Don't misunderstand. I'm against shacking up. But I'm also against misleading people.

Dr. Laura (and many socially conservative commentators) will tell callers that shacking up is linked to negative indicators, such as:

• It makes it less likely you will get married
• It makes is less likely you will stay married
• Increased infidelity
• More abuse
  

When Dr. Laura (or any other commentator) barrages someone with all of this, most recipients aren't prepared for it and don't have the wherewithal or the time to counter the claims. Indeed, as Dr. Laura says, she refuses to argue or debate, which seems strange if she's confident that she's right. She hits her callers with this and that's that.


How Do We Know If It is Good or Bad?

The Marriage Seller Pivot

 

 

 

 

 

 

People who try to convince men to marry (marriage sellers) quite often do a pivot.

They usually start their sales pitch appealing to your own self-interest. They say things like:

Married men earn more money

Married men are healthier

Married men live longer

Married men are happier

Married men have more and better sex

But when those of us who know better point out:

• Married men are also taller, meaning that marriage didn't cause men to be richer, healthier, live longer, be happier, have more and better sex, and get taller. Rather, women are far more likely to marry and stay married to men who earn more, are healthier, are happier, more sexually compatible, and taller.
  
• "Married" men are being compared as a group to all "unmarred" men, which consists of diverse groups, including divorced men and men who can't attract a wife (because they are sick, poor, unhappy, etc.) The stats marriage sellers are trying to use to show marrying benefits men never separate out intentionally unmarried men for comparison, many of whom are wealthier, healthier, happier, and having more, better, and more diverse sex than most husbands.
• Over half of everything a married man earns/owns legally belongs to his wife, who can take it away at any time for any reason, and 80 percent of spending decisions in a marriage are made by a wife, often to buy things a man doesn't want and won't use, so my unmarried counterpart only has to earn 51 percent of what I do to be better off than me.
  
• Men have often been conditioned to think they are losers, failures, or sinners if not married, or that complaining about their marriage is a sin or negative confession, and thus might say they are happy (if husbands) and unhappy (if still looking for a wife) as a result.

...marriage sellers will often pivot. They might try an ad hominem attack, call you bitter, ungrateful (if you're married), selfish, loser, immature, incel, misogynist, or even say marriage isn't a bed of roses for women either (which is an odd way to try to sell it).

The more careful ones, though, will pivot from "You'll be so much better off!" to "You have an obligation to get married." They don't lead with the obligation/duty approach because they know it isn't nearly as appealing as the first approach. With the "obligation" approach, they say things like:

Marriage is good for society
Marriage matures men
The Lord wants you to get married

Those are largely circular arguments or, like the first set, involve supposed correlation rather than demonstrable causation in the direction from marriage to positive outcome. If someone asserts something like "marriage is good for society," ask them to explain how. They'll probably say something about fatherless kids being a problem on society. But if you will not create children and then abandon them, where is the issue? They might say that it's better for a woman to have a husband than depend on government. But those aren't the only options. How about teaching and encouraging women to be truly independent?

There simply is no general Biblical command to marry that applies to every man today, especially not to get a bad contract from a secular state or engage in the common behaviors of today's social concept of marriage. Yes, the Lord, according to the Bible, doesn't want you trying to steal away another man's wife from him, so don't do that. Getting married certainly doesn't stop that! Notice the Bible doesn't tell you what steps to take to be married, as in "Do X, Y, and Z, and then you'll be married." That seems kind of like an important thing to be left out if everyone is supposed to marry.

Prager University even tried to teach viewers that married men are sexier.

Pay attention if you hear someone who effectively dismantles the claims of a marriage seller that married men are better off, and you might notice the marriage seller try a pivot.

Stay free, men.

Running Game Is LESS Work For Most Men

 

A comment was left after this post on how to present yourself when running game:

 

I don't know man. MGTOW seems less work. As they say, the juice is not worth the squeeze. After dating and having a few gals in bed, I just found out that Adult Movies were more easy and clean and less headache. At times I would just pay if I'm in a tough spot. Professionals don't talk about "feelings", they just do their job. So do I.

I understand.

Paying a pro, masturbation (especially with technology), sublimating sexual urges are all ways to deal.

MGTOW and Running Game aren't always mutually exclusive. Some MGTOW date. Others go into "monk mode" or whatever the individual calls it, giving up dating entirely.

Running Game is for men who want "amateur" female company, but do not want to spend a lot of money, effort, time, emotion, or give up their freedom or be mistreated by a woman.

It does take a little effort to set up your presentation, but many aspects of that - like having a Google Voice number or something similar - are probably good things to be doing anyway in order to protect your identity, even if not seeing amateurs. And once your presentation is set up, maintaining it isn't much effort.

One of the primary reasons to run game is to reduce effort and hassles, and once you get past the initial startup, it makes life so much easier. It's definitely easier than marriage or dating with marriage as a goal, or dating in the ways that are promoted by marriage sellers or most mainstream media. It's also not criminalized. It's not for everyone, but it does work for some.