What's a Single Mother To Do?

Anonymous left a comment on this blog's most popular entry, which has hundreds of comments, so I wanted to call attention to hers.

I had my son with my now ex fiancé.

There was the first mistake. Conceiving before being in a stable, healthy, happy marriage.

We ended up breaking things off because he completely lied about who he was and it became a toxic environment.

Well, at least you didn't make more kids with him.

now I am a single mother who is currently picking up the pieces and doing what I can to give my son the best life possible regarding the circumstances.

It would be great if that included living with, or very close to, your nice, loving, married parents.

Despite how things ended, his father is still actively involved and we even hangout as a family periodically. 

If he's not abusive, I guess that's better than nothing.

My question is...if I choose not to get back with his father because of the boundaries that have been crossed..now what? Don’t date until ny son is 18 years old? Date a guy who is also a single father? Forever be alone? 

Good question.

1) Get your tubes "tied". Tubal ligation. Or, depending on your health history and your family health history, consider getting your ovaries and/or uterus removed. We don't need more children brought into this situation. Your son certainly doesn't need it.

2) Be there for your son. He needs parental attention. He doesn't have an intact home.

3) When your son is with his father, or grandparents, or aunts/uncles, you can date. Your son should never meet your new lover(s) until your son is 18, grown, moving out on his own. Even though people like me warn men to never date women with minor children, you can find plenty of dates anyway.

4) After your son is grown and out, you can date, be in relationships, shack up, marry, whatever. If you DO shack up or marry, be sure you get a prenup (marry) or cohabitation agreement (shackup) so that your son will be protected.

If you don't find this ideal, well, that's because your situation is not ideal. My advice is for your son's best interests out of the remaining possibilities.

We Are Not Going Back

During the first hour of Dennis Prager's Monday, August 19, 2019 show, toward the end of that first hour, he said he "doesn't understand" waiting to marry until establishing or gaining success in your career (succeeding professionally/financially). He claims it isn't rational, and it isn't what people did in history. "Why can't you work on your career while married?" he asked. [This entry is bumped up, and some details of my life might have changed since.]

He says things like this because he is a marriage-seller and because he has no idea what it is like to be a young person today, trying to make their way in this world. He's made it clear that he buys into the idea that man isn't really a man unless he takes on the burden of supporting a wife and children, as if women still don't have access to employment, property ownership, and personal finance. 1) If someone is working on career success, marriage, especially with children, is an enormous disadvantage. Even putting aside the emotional drama and turmoil a wife and family can bring, a spouse and children put a demand on time; there will be days you'll be late for work, or have to leave early, or not be able to work at all due to family matters. You'll get calls and texts that demand your immediate attention, taking you away from whatever you're supposed to be doing. Also, these days, establishing yourself in a career often means long and odd hours, extra days, networking at lunch and happy hours, business travel, moving, and changing employers. None of these are friendly to family.

Running Game - How Long Will She Be Around?

Running game is about weeding out the duds and the women who are too much work. It isn't about building a relationship so that you'll be monogamous, living together, married, and then raising children together.

As such, once you're into your groove as far as running game, and you're attracting women, it's no big deal when some women stop seeing you, or you need to stop seeing them, after a while. If you're doing really well, some will drop off the list simply because you don't have time for them because you're too busy with other, more attractive, more enjoyable women. That's peak game.

For most men, in most situations, the best of the relationship has already been experienced during the first three to six months anyway.

If she won't see you again, or you need to drop her, there's no need to spend any time being upset about it. You don't try to "make it work" or "win her back" or go to counseling or therapy with her. You simply move on, seeing other women or picking up new candidates. It's better to be alone than stop running game and cater to the demands of a woman. If you run game well, you won't be "alone" for long. You'll have your pick of dates. Never let on to women if you are in a slump or dry spell.

Conversely, a woman can be on your list or in your bullpen for YEARS if she's willing, stays attractive and enthusiastic, doesn't cause problems, doesn't start trying to enforce demands, etc. But what are the odds of that???

An Update on the Dr. Laura Program

 

The Dr. Laura Program got moved from SiriusXM 111 to 123.

That doesn’t mean anything to those who listen through paying for her specific subscription on her website, which then allows them to listen to the podcast of show directly from her website or through services like Apple Podcasts.

However, for casual listeners on SiriusXM, who might not have listened to her many reminders she was moving, it can mean they think she’s gone from SiriusXM.

So, she lost some listeners.

And it’s not the first time she was moved on that service.

What’s more, there are STILL people who listened to her on terrestrial radio who are unaware she’s been on SiriusXM since she left terrestrial radio and others who simply didn’t bother to listen via the service or pay for the podcast version of her show.

She’d already been struggling to get callers in recent years. The move hasn’t helped.

As a result, since the holiday break, there have been days she has changed the format for the last hour or so of her three hours. Instead of people calling her with their problems or dilemmas, she’ll announce a topic or a question and encourage people to call in with their response. This is more like traditional talk radio.

The problem with that is Dr. Laura isn’t used to traditional talk radio. She’s explicitly said many times that she doesn’t argue or debate. She makes the question or topic so narrow or specific that she gets callers she claims aren’t on-topic even though they are addressing many of the elements involved, and she puts them on hold or drops them without engaging. She usually has a specific narrative in her head she wants the callers to say, and of course many say something else, which might undermine the point she’s trying to make.

Her regular format consists of her giving a monologue about something, which casual listeners naturally assume is the topic for the hour or the day, which is incorrect. Because the rest of the time is taking calls on “anything other than politics,” with the first caller often having an issue that was addressed in the monologue (gee, what a surprise! Totally random, right? I mean it’s not like staff had that caller lined up already or anything). The callers are props; the point of the show is for Dr. Laura to pontificate, often using the caller as a negative example, and to occasionally slip in her political asides without allowing calls addressing those asides. When you realize the true point of her show, her constant interruptions of the callers and chastising them for not immediately stopping the moment she interrupts makes sense. Sometimes, the callers are helped. That’s a happy byproduct rather than the goal, most of the time.

With the lack of callers, it’s not hard for anyone to call and reach the screener. But you don’t even have to call. You can email the show and staff might call you to encourage you to come on the show as a caller.

While I now have a problems with her tactics, demeanor, hiding from her past, and some the advice she gives, I’m glad Dr. Laura is still teaching the people who are able to find her to:

-Take personal responsibility for their life in an honorable and ethical way

-Avoid misandry (in most cases) and treat good husbands well

-Not freak out about the existence or viewing of adult media

-Prioritize their minor children if they have them

-Not date parents of minor children or at least avoid the children knowing about them

-Not live together (unmarried)

-Not electively kill their child

-Not treat boys like defective girls

-Get their children out of public schools

…and probably many more things.

Stop Wishing Marriage on People

BEFUDDLED IN FLORIDA wrote in to Dear Abby about the joys of marriage. [This entry has been bumped up.]

I endured an arduous decade-long marriage with a subsequent nasty divorce and custody battle. This was followed by years of contentious child rearing with my ex.

What are the odds this is a man?

With my children now grown, I am free to spend my money the way I want and have absolute freedom. I live alone, and quite frankly, I love my life. I am 100% sure that I want to remain unmarried.

Being free is the way to go!

When people ask me about getting remarried, I tell them "never again," and I mean it. Yet, inevitably, people say, "You never know, you might get married again someday." Abby, I DO know. It's been more than 20 years.

I used to get annoyed, but now I just blow it off. Do you have any retort that doesn't sound rude? I have thought about saying, "I guess you know me better than I know myself," but it sounds snarky.

Unfortunately, no response other than "I sure hope I can remarry!" will be received well. You're going to have to break a few eggs here. Tell them how awesome unmarried life is. Drive that home until they can't stand to hear it anymore. Tell them how much you love the freedom, like having control over your own life, how you don't have to argue with someone in your own home, you don't have to spend your money on things you don't want or don't need. Talk about how everything is less expensive for you.

Guys, check out these posts that deal with this:

How to Just Say No to Giving Up Your Freedom

Keeping Boundaries as a Free Man

Why Aren't You Married?

Practical Advice For Men Avoiding Relationships

Dennis Prager on the "Burned Excuse" For Not Remarrying

The Prom is For Girls and Gays

We’re facing Prom season again.

Every year, I note this ritual, which has become another day, along with "Sweet Sixteen" (or other birthdays for certain cultures, at 13, 15, etc.) and wedding days (the the related events) that are all about feeding the narcissism and sense of entitlement of attention-whores and attention-whores-in-training.

Refer back to my "Beware the Prom", and this look at a Dear Abby column, and this look at a different Dear Abby column and this entry on increasingly showy proposals for dates.

Stop it, guys! Unless you're gay or trans and want to rub it into the noses of some uptight school staff or parents by taking someone of the same sex or wearing a dress, you don't really want to go to a dance, do you? You don't really want to take a girl to the prom, do you?

It a nutshell, here are my problems with the prom as it is these days:

Motivations Against Adult Media

I don't like it when people aren't honest and upfront about their motivations. I'm much more likely to deal with a salesperson who is honest than one that is pretending to do something out of the pure goodness of their heart or claiming a dire disaster will happen to me if I don't buy from them. [This entry has been bumped up.]

You see this sort of thing all of the time. People say they want to "legalize hemp" for medical marijuana or because practical products made from hemp are so much better than using petroleum. But once recreational pot is legalized these people seem to disappear. Or the "Indian gaming" pushes that say it'll be nothing like Las Vegas, and then once the laws are passed they run ads calling themselves the "shortcut to Vegas!"

This happens constantly when people talk about adult media. So many of the complaints are really about media, masturbation, male sexual nature, the nature of sex, etc. but people choose to only apply their complaint to adult media.

Some people breathlessly pronounce that if you watch "porn" you will become addicted, become impotent, rot your brain, and become a serial mass rapist-murderer. That, THEY CLAIM, is why they constantly warn people and call for restrictions ranging from censor/spyware they're selling to incarcerating people for making or watching video of adults having sex or pretending to. They dupe politicians into passing declarations that such material is a "public health crisis" even though it isn't, and offer a “cure” in the form of a book or “rehab” they’re selling. Or stickers and t-shirts.

Let's get honest about why people freak out about porn.

Women Need to be Romanced

 

Husbands, how often have you heard that if only you were more sensitive, caring, romantic, did more around the home, and jumped through any number of hoops, your wife would be willing to have sex with you more often? Haven't you heard that women need to be pursued and romanced over the course of the whole day in order to get turned on?

Exhibit A, your Honor: A recent [this entry has been bumped up from April 2018] letter to Dear Abby.

UNWORTHY IN THE MIDWEST wrote:

I am a 17-year-old senior and have been dating the same boy for two years.

High schoolers shouldn't do that. Not exclusively, anyway. Guys, you don't need a girlfriend while you're trying to get educated.

A month ago, he told me he wanted to break up "because he needed some time to figure out what he wanted."

Translation: "I want to figure out if I want to have another girl as my girlfriend, primarily by sticking my penis in her."

I was devastated but agreed. Two weeks later, he told me he was sorry and he loves me.

Translation: "I couldn't get the other girl or she's not as good at sex or sexually compatible with me as you are."

We are back together now, but the weekend after our breakup,

Hours or days after the breakup.

I went to visit a college girlfriend. We went to a party and I ended up having sex with a boy I didn't even know.

Here are the really big questions, men:

How much romancing did that boy do?
How much of her laundry did that boy do?
How much did he prove that he could take care of her, protect her, provide for her?
Did he ever take out the trash?
Did he ever wash the dishes?
Did he ever buy her flowers?
Did he set up a candlelit dinner?
Did he even buy her dinner?
How much money do you think he spent on her?

You get the idea. He didn't do any of that, and yet she did him.

Somehow, she was able to have sex without any of that romance or helping out. And she's not a freak. This is very typical.

I feel guilty and unworthy. What should I do? If I tell my boyfriend, I'm sure I'll lose him for good. If I don't tell him, I'll always worry that he will find out from someone else.

You're 17! Are you going to go to the same college as this boyfriend?

He has a lot to learn if he thinks she wasn't getting some, especially since he was probably getting some or trying really hard to (or had already, when he broke up with her). Guys, expect that within hours after you break up, she's getting some. Come to think of it, you shouldn't assume  or count on her having only been with you while you were a couple anyway.

Surprisingly in this age of "me too", Dear Abby didn't tell the LW she was raped. Even if the age of consent is 16 or 17 where she was (and we don't know it was), she was probably drinking.

Childfree People Are Happy

Guess what? There's a study showing that childfree people are happy.

Thank you to Dennis Prager, whose angry ranting about this alerted me to its existence. [This entry has been bumped up from June 2021.]

New research from Michigan State University psychologists examines characteristics and satisfaction of adults who don’t want children.

That really bothers Dennis Prager and others, for various reasons - that there are so many childfree people and they are happy.

As more people acknowledge they simply don’t want to have kids, Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary Neal, both associate professors in MSU’s department of psychology, are among the first to dive deeper into how these “child-free” individuals differ from others.

Thank you to the Neals!

“Most studies haven’t asked the questions necessary to distinguish ‘child-free’ individuals — those who choose not to have children — from other types of nonparents,” Jennifer Watling Neal said. “Nonparents can also include the ‘not-yet-parents’ who are planning to have kids, and ‘childless’ people who couldn’t have kids due to infertility or circumstance. Previous studies simply lumped all nonparents into a single category to compare them to parents.”

That's SO important!!! The same thing happens when all "unmarried" people are lumped together. Find out how men who intentionally avoid marriage are doing.

“We were most surprised by how many child-free people there are,” Jennifer Watling Neal said. “We found that more than one in four people in Michigan identified as child-free, which is much higher than the estimated prevalence rate in previous studies that relied on fertility to identify child-free individuals. These previous studies placed the rate at only 2% to 9%. We think our improved measurement may have been able to better capture individuals who identify as child-free.”

More people are going to opt to be childfree.

Given the large number of child-free adults in Michigan, more attention needs to be paid to this group, the researchers said. For example, the researchers explained that their study only included one time point, so didn’t examine when people decided to be child-free — however, they hope forthcoming research will help the public understand both when people start identifying as child-free as well as the factors that lead to this choice.

A trip to the mall or supermarket can be enough, or any public restroom where a kid who's being potty trained is being resistant.

Here's the link they want included.

Marriage Strike Persuasion Tip

 

To encourage more men to join the marriage strike or to explain and defend the marriage strike, one need not assert that marriage benefits women. (“Women get prizes for marrying, men don’t!”)

It’s enough to say things like:

-Marriage sucks for men.

-There’s no good reason for most men to enter that terrible state contract.

-Marriage brings nothing a man wants he can’t otherwise get for less cost.

None of those statements mention women or what marriage does for women.

A woman (or a man, for that matter) arguing that marriage sucks for women, too, is not your opponent. At least not while they are arguing that point, if your goal is for fewer men to marry. The fewer women who marry, the fewer men who marry.

I concede that if your higher goal is changing family law in hopes of ending the marriage strike, you might want more women to want marriage but be unable to find a willing man, so that they might vote accordingly. But you may be counting on the women’s vote to be more rational and thought-out than it is.

As for me, I accept things are they are now, and as such, my goal is simply for fewer men to suffer in a terrible state contract and a bad social construct.

The Dr. Laura Program Isn’t Therapy

Many people think of Dr. Laura as a psychologist or "shrink." She was a trained, licensed therapist with a private practice. But she has far, far more experience as a radio talk show host (and author, columnist, etc.)

Something both callers, to, and listeners of, The Dr. Laura Program should remember is that she's almost never doing therapy on the program.

Aside from selling advertising and subscriptions, the program primarily exists for Dr. Laura to teach her opinions to the audience. She has said so. The reason she's doing this on the radio rather than in private practice is that she is reaching a mass audience.

Sometimes - even often - callers are helped, but that’s not the top priority. Indeed, she often tells callers she can’t help them, even when she sometimes can. There are the rare occasions she leads the caller through something therapeutic, but otherwise the program is not therapy. Far more often, though, the callers are there to serve as a warning to listeners.

Listeners range from unquestioning sycophants to perpetual critics who “hate listen.” Somewhere in the mix are gawkers who do the audio equivalent of staring as if looking at a train wreck. Some consider Dr. Laura a shock jock: focusing on where she disagrees with the caller, yelling, constantly interrupting callers even after she asked them a question and they were starting to answer- and often chastising the caller for "talking over" her, repeatedly yelling “woo-hoo,” pounding on a desk with her gavel or fist while frequently employing words and phrases like “humping,” “unpaid whore,” "piece of s---," and “limp d—-.” But she insists what she’s doing is a program to help people, not a show.

She’s there to give her set of teachings I’ve collected together and called The Dr. Laura Plan, and make negative examples out of anyone who didn’t follow it. There's a lot about the plan that is great. But Dr. Laura, who often mentions it's better to start children in Kindergarten at age six, questions why someone is still living at home at age 18 (6 + 13 years of school = Age 19). Her advice about when to marry and saving sex for marriage means faithful followers will reach about age 30 before they first have sex. And the world would rapidly depopulate if people only married and had children under her blessing.

Something listeners must keep in mind is that it's one thing for callers to agree to her advice during their call, but it can be a far different thing for them to follow through and live it out, especially when it involves radically changing their life or stopping sex in a relationship that's been established as sexual. Also, Dr. Laura controls the microphone. Letters claiming her advice didn't work (or, that she didn't understand the caller but jumped to conclusions) aren't going to make it onto the program, and if a caller somehow manages to make it through and get a "bad review" onto the air, she can say they didn't actually follow her advice, and then prevent them from saying any more.

Control is very important to Dr. Laura, and she will control the program in order to deliver and reinforce her message. That extends to what kind of situation someone can call about. Notice that, as common as it is today for parents, grandparents, etc. to struggle with a teen or young adult claiming to be transgender or nonbinary, you will never hear a call on her program pertaining to that. Clearly, she doesn't allow such calls, and has told her screeners not to let them through. She hasn't mentioned this to the audience. [Update: She has taken a few calls and has mentioned the issue as an aide a few times now, as of late 2025.]

So, you're not going to get therapy on the Dr. Laura Program unless she has the time, wants to give it you, it can be done over the phone, and it would be applicable to your particular situation. You are far more likely to be cited as a positive or negative example to listeners, which is the real reason you can call her toll-free.

She can still help you about certain things if you call, though, and if you listen you can get much insight into human behavior and relationships.

When the Attention Thirsty Change Tactics

There are women who get enormous amounts of fame/attention, money, and/or power using their youthful sex appeal. They do it through modeling and/or acting, perhaps in "mainstream" movies and television shows, perhaps in cheesecake, erotica, or porn, whether pictures or video. Maybe their looks allow them to marry men with money, power, and/or fame.

Men tend to think women are at their most physically attractive when they are younger. Things start to decline at 25, and the decline accelerates at 30.

Are there beautiful women in their 40s, 50s, even 70s? Yes! But in general, women are at their most physically attractive when they're younger. That's a fact of life, whether I like it or not, and whether you like it or not.

One of the problems for the women who made their living via media based on their attractiveness/sex appeal when they were young is that the media in which they've appeared doesn't go away. Their appearance in Playboy when they were 23 is still around when they are 53. They're not just competing with newly "arrived" 20-somethings, but they are competing against their own younger selves.

Some of these women have decided the way to handle getting older is to attack the way they made a name for themselves.

When you're famous for something and then you switch to being in public opposition or criticism of that thing, you get a lot of attention and become a superstar in your new circles.

That's what some women have decided to do.

Keep in mind that most of the women who do this were very outspoken in defense of their old way of making money, back when they were in the thick of it. They rebuffed critics by insisting they were liberated, empowered, knew exactly what they were doing, in control, winking all the way to the bank, enjoyed what they were doing far more than other jobs.

They insisted they knew better than the critics, who were often accused of being stuck in the past, childish, uptight, simple-minded, trying to control other people. The women assured us they were enlightened, modern, in control of their situation, and doing something they enjoyed and found meaningful, that they understood the critics' positions and that the critics were thoroughly wrong.

And then... further down the line, with their bodies no longer anywhere like they were in their prime, lo and behold, they turn around, join in the criticism they previously assured us they had solidly debunked, and attack the people who helped them gain fame and wealth.

Of course someone has every right to discuss harassment, assault, shady business tactics, terrible people, and the drawbacks of a line of work. But recognize what is going on. Attention whores do what they do for attention (and money). They previously tried to make the very people they align with now look ignorant and inferior while presenting themselves as superior. Now they are working with the very people they used to mock. It isn't because they stumbled upon some new insight. It's because they aged out of the previous way of getting attention. They hit the wall.

They should be called out on it. "What do you know now that you didn't know then?" Just about anything they say will be something someone specifically told them and they scoffed about.

Most who enjoyed their fame don't do this, especially those who age gracefully. They quietly "settle down" or make the most of fan conventions or new roles.

Having Someone or Something Check On You

If you’re a Free Man or otherwise living alone, especially if you work alone/from home or are retired, it’s generally a good idea to have someone checking on you regularly to make sure you’re functional.

It could be a friend or neighbor you see every day, either because they come to your place or you go to them or communicate (text, call, video chat) every day.

It could be someone you interact with online.

Accidents happen, there are robberies and break-ins that can result in assault, and there are health events like heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, falls, etc. Don’t think it can’t happen to you because you’re not older or because you’re in good health.

Depending on your wishes and your conditions, you may not want to be rescued and recussitsted if something happens to you, but you should at least be recovered. It wouldn’t be good to be rotting way for a long period of time, especially if you have paperwork that should be executed.

But being rescued, depending, can also lead to treatment, recovery, and additional good times.

We are rapidly approaching the ability, and may already be there, to have machines handle checking in on you every day to protect your life and health. There’s probably an app for it. You can also hire a live human being to do it, if you don’t want a friend to do it.

Marriage sellers say married men live longer. We’ve covered that before. One of the reasons the data can show that is that a husband who has a fall or a health episode can have his wife call for help. So, the guy might get to live a few more months in convalescence.

That isn’t a compelling reason to marry.

Free men can, and should, set things up in a way so that if something happens to them, someone will know and act.

Do Married Men Get It More and Better?

Marriage sellers will often say married people have more and better sex than unmarried people.

Unmarried men should not fall for this.

Stop reading now if you don't want the brutal truth.