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 decided to keep the family intact ant least 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:

When To Involve Cops With Family

Your family member might be, or is, breaking the law, or is out of control with a mental breakdown or rage.

Do you call the the police?

That depends.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Your call will be recorded. Your location, name, voice, and what you say will be in the possession of a government agency and might be subject to release to the public.
• If police respond, they will be armed.
• If police respond, they might search you, your vehicle, your residence, etc.
• They might arrest someone, including you.
• They might end up using force, including deadly force.
• Assume everything will be audio and video recorded, but you won’t have access to the recordings, or they might be made public. 
• If the person cited or arrested is your spouse or dependent, that is going to have negative consequences and repercussions for you, including financial. 

Involving law enforcement should be a last resort, if any resort at all.

I thought about this when Dr. Laura told a caller to call the police on her husband, to get him stopped for potentially driving under the influence.

Nobody should drive impaired. The caller didn’t know for sure her husband was impaired. Dr. Laura certainly didn’t know. And it’s no skin off her nose if some caller ends up in a terrible situation. Her net worth is in the millions. She has no dependents. She can afford legal fees, fines, etc. Many of her callers can’t.

If someone is a danger to you, your children, or other dependents, it’s best to be financially and legally separated from them as well as physically. Involving the police when you’re still going to be legally connected is usually a very bad idea.

Of course, if you or someone else is facing imminent, serious harm or deadly violence, and you can’t get away or get the others away and can’t neutralize the aggressors yourself, an emergency call might be in order. But it has to be very serious.

I grew up with a respect for police and an optimistic view of police. But let’s think logically here. It’s a job. For any job, you’re beholden to your boss more than anyone else. You may think police work for you, but their boss is their chain of command. Law enforcement personnel are primarily there for the bidding of government; to enforce laws, not to be of service to you. It’s great if police have provided a service to you, but that’s not their primary goal.

People are flawed. Some are corrupt. Most people are looking out for their own interests. This includes cops.

Bullies, power trippers, sadists, sociopaths, and psychopaths exist. Nothing stops them from becoming cops.

You don’t know all laws. You can easily be breaking a law without even knowing it. Even if you aren’t, a cop has the ability to arrest you if they can fill out the paperwork. 

In general, cops, like any other job, are there for themselves, maybe for their family, too. For most jobs, someone being there for themselves isn’t a problem. But cops are armed, can take you to jail, and can initiate actions leading to your criminal prosecution, which can result in fines and prison sentences. They’re backed by unions, laws, policies, and courts. Some became cops because of family tradition. Some just needed a job. Some want power over others.

I imagine some originally got into law enforcement to help people. And sometimes cops perform heroic deeds. That doesn’t mean you should be quick to involve cops in a family matter.

You shouldn’t participate in crime nor enable it (assuming we’re not talking about unjust laws). You shouldn’t allow anyone to steal from you, threaten you, or assault you or innocent people, especially those for whom you have responsibility. Proactive protection and reactive defense are important. There are things you can do, such as getting away from the aggressor, or taking someone in for a psych hold, without being quick to involve cops.

Once cops are involved, there can be serious consequences, including for you. Involving cops should be the last resort.

Like so many other things, this is less of a problem for free men; men who live alone and aren’t responsible for others. 

What is Running Game?

I'm not talking about sprinting.

Running Game is a way of dealing with women that reduces costs and risks while increasing sexual or personal success.

Running game works because of how women are.

A man who is experienced and skilled at running game will have just about as much sex/affection/company as he wants without spending a lot of time, money, and effort getting it.

Please note that running game is not about assault. It relies on consent.

Running game is how men become David and avoid being Rick.

Men who run game might be seen as jerks, bad boys, a--holes, cads, players, unreliable, aloof, arrogant, immature, users, selfish etc. None of that matters, because men who are running game keep their dating life separate from their professional life and the rest of their private life, and they get what they want. It's fine for a woman to hate him if he's already gotten what he wanted from her.

Running game can share some tactics with "pick up artistry," but the goal of running game isn't to try to find a girlfriend or wife, just a woman to date, and usually, multiple women, so that he has options any night of the week. Running game doesn't mean a man will get every woman he wants, but part of running game helps him to quickly sort out, and stop seeing, the women who willl be too much work, or aren't going to have sex with him, or at least won't have sex with him unless he spends a lot of time, money, and effort on her. These women don't need to be wife material because running game includes avoiding marriage. These don't need to be women the man would want to introduce to his family, friends, or co-workers because he's not going to be doing that. They don't need to be accomplished or smart or even kind. They just have to turn him on, be willing to have sex, or whatever else it is he really wants, and not have certain red flags.

Running game often goes against what men and boys are told about women.

But it works.

I explain how in subsequent posts, most of which have the "running game" tag.

Why Romance Doesn’t Cure Dead Bedrooms

 

When a husband complains about a dead bedroom, chances are he will get advice telling him to be more romantic. Usually, he’s already doing that, or doing it in so far as his wife allows.

Sadly, it usually won’t cure a dead bedroom.

That’s because the reason she is rejecting or sexually starving him isn’t because of a lack of romance.

What does romancing a woman do?

• It signals his interest.
• It signals his willingness to back up his interest with effort and investment.
• It’s one of many ways to create a bond.

A husband has already done those things on an ongoing basis in extremely significant ways.

This isn’t to say a husband shouldn’t romance his wife. If she wants romance, he should romance her. Because spouses should do certain things for and with each other because the other spouse enjoys that.

A wife isn’t rejecting her husband because of his lack of interest, effort/investment, or bonding. If he didn’t have interest, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to reject him!

She’s rejecting him either because she already has a bond with him and figures she doesn’t need to please him anymore or she is trying to severe their bond. She is sabotaging their relationship. What she wants matters, what he wants doesn’t. She’s exerting control. Her motivations to have sex with him are outweighed, in her mind, by reasons to avoid sex with him, no matter how irrational her thinking. 

Some women deny this because they have a high drive. They insist the husband must be a terrible lover. But many women don’t have a high drive, at least not most of the time. There are husbands who are very romantic and great lovers and are still rejected so that they are having sex infrequently if at all. The average husband is more than willing to do what a wife tells or shows him she needs sexually. But she does have to tell him (sweetly/kindly) or show him.

This is not about women who have some condition or injury that has them in a lot of pain. Of course there are certain things they won’t be doing or won’t be doing often. This is referring to women who, for example, collect and store resentments and decide to punish their husband even if he’s a good man. Nobody’s perfect, and as that record of mistakes or wrongs gets longer and longer, his sex life suffers.

Sometimes, a husband and wife in a dead bedroom might have sex after romance. But generally, romancing a rejecting wife will not cure a dead bedroom. Nor will it that the husband takes on more of the chores.

It’s just one of many reasons more men are joining the marriage strike.

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.

Why Your Husband Isn't Pursuing You

...Or is outright rejecting you.

Dr. Laura recently [this entry has been bumped up from August 2017] had a call of the day that was about a married couple not having sex. The caller was the wife and she wanted to know what to do. Her show's Facebook page linked to it, and many very revealing comments were left there.

Jamie's husband works all day and when he comes home, he is too tired for sex. What can Jamie do to bring the spark back?

Let's look at some of the comments:

A Detrimental Partnership

Some things in your life, you do well. You know a lot about those things, maybe from experience, maybe from formal education and training, maybe from educating yourself. You do those things well and will likely be able to do those things well until you die or unless you get serious dementia.

Imagine if someone came into your life who clearly, objectively, provably, wasn't very good at doing one of those things, or at least nowhere near as good as you, yet you now were compelled to partner with them in the matter, meaning they would get to make a lot of the decisions, or you were expected to clear every significant decision with them.

This is what can happen when a man who has his financial act together marries.

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.

Why People Want You To Marry

Men are told to get married.

If it weren't for the constant drumbeat of marriage sellers, there would be even more men joining the marriage strike than have already.

Boys are sold marriage from the earliest ages. It's in the media we consume from the earliest ages.

Why? Why do people want you to get married?

There are many reasons.

Some might have bought into the flawed claims that men are better off if they marry. That's almost never the real reason someone will urge you marry. Let's consider some of the reasons.

What Timing!

How amazing is it that so many people manage to find THE One to marry in such a narrow sliver of time?

Most first marriages happen in the 25-35 age range.

Wow, out of eight billion people (OK, four billion if we narrow it down by sex), out of 60 years of adult life, so many people manage to find that ONE special someone in a narrow window of time. Sure, a few people marry someone they've known since their childhood or adolescence, but most people (where marriages aren't arranged) marry someone they met just a few years, at most, before the wedding.

Let's be real.

Not only are most of those people "settling," many of them think they are settling, no matter what they say.

Yes, some really do feel like they have actually found THE ONE and are blessed beyond expectations.

And yet... within five, ten, fifteen years, how many of them have demonstrated otherwise? Bitterness, resentment, abuse, affairs, separation, divorce, on and on it goes. Clearly they weren't THE ONE.

Some Christians (and I expect followers of some other religions) pray for their child's "future spouse" from the time they know they are expecting. The problem with Christian doing that is there is no guarantee in the Bible that everyone will find a spouse. Wanting your child to marry when they are adults and praying for the people they will interact with in their life is fine, but it is presumptuous to speak as though they will get married (and I wouldn't wish what's called marriage today on any son of mine.) I wonder what these people do when the marriage doesn't last, and their child is facing remarriage. The person they prayed for is an ex or dead, and now their child is potentially marrying someone they never prayed for all those years.

As unromantic as it is, chances are, there isn't THE ONE. There are two people settling for each other, because they are pressured or because they think it is how to get what they want or how to get to what they should do.

The Horse is Out of the Barn and the Robot is Out of the Box

Grab some popcorn and some tea and peruse the panicked, hysterical shrieking of the controlling women and their enablers who can't stand the idea that more and more men will be enjoying robots that essentially amount to advanced dolls and sex toys. [This entry is bumped up because it is as relevant as ever.]

Technology is always going to be applied to sex, if there is any way it can be. This is human nature.

Sex dolls and sex robots or whatever you want to call them will never be effectively banned. Aside from the fact that prohibiting the private ownership and use of personal objects isn't practical, how exactly do you ban these things without banning a bunch of other things? How do you define a sex robot or a sex doll? Some men will stick their penises in knotholes in a plank of wood. Are you going to ban planks of wood? No. So, are you going to ban all robots? All dolls? All sex toys or masturbation aids? Any three-dimensional representation of a person?

Despite the futility, some women (and the men who enable them) are trying to ban these elaborate masturbatory aids.

Don't Date Women With Minor Children

The most popular entry on this blog, and it's not even close, is this entry warning men against dating single mothers.

It gets a lot of traffic and has received hundreds of comments (including from widowed mothers, who really need to read THIS.)

As is to be expected, a lot of angry comments came from single mothers. Others admitted what I wrote was true, even if they didn't like it. Nobody, though, demonstrated what I wrote to be false. That's because it is reality, like it or not.

I want to revisit the issue. Guys: If you're going to bother dating (or seeing for personal reasons) women, don't date women with minor children or dependent adult children or grown children living at home. They could be divorced women, widowed women, women who never bothered to marry. And if they're married or in a relationship, no matter what they say about that relationship, it's not good to go there. So don't mess with mothers of minor or somehow dependent children. And if you're with one and don't have a kid with her, get out!

Maybe you think that eliminates too many women, but it really doesn't, especially if you're sticking to women in their twenties, which you can do no matter how old you are, if you play your cards right. Also, there are more and more women older than that who are childfree. "Fertility" rates are down.

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.

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.

Common Marital Mistakes

Let's look at an entry on the Dr. Laura Blog about "marriage mistakes all couples make", which I'd cynically say starts with getting married in the first place. [This entry bumped up from April 2017]

1. Screaming.There is absolutely no justification for yelling at your spouse. If you’re upset about something, count to 15, and then calmly express yourself.

Guilty, guilty, guilty. I am. It's one reason I'm in therapy. I don't want to scream. My my wife would scream at me if she could. She does the equivalent through texts. One time in particular I screamed at her was when the kids were away for the night and I'd jumped through all of the hoops and I was hoping for some long-overdue lovemaking, and she made it clear it wasn't going to happen, basically because she didn't feel motivated to do it.

Yes, I screamed at her. I screamed at her that I was tired of being crapped on and rejected. I screamed that there were women who'd actually wanted me and it was a rotten thing to do to marry me when she didn't. Yes, I'm guilty. [It has been a long time since I last screamed. I'm a beaten dog and realize that I just have to endure, at least for now. - August 2022]

2. Ignoring. If you’re actually too upset to talk, just say, “I’m not ignoring you. I just need to take a little time-out to pull myself together, and then I’ll be good to go.”

I've never, ever ignored my wife. She has ignored me many times, and you know what? The more she ignores me, the better! It means less stress for me, less work for me.

Well, let me qualify that. It's OK as long as she's not going to be home alone with the kids, because then her ignoring me could be an indication that she's having a psychotic break.

3. Trying to agree on everything. Coming to a complete consensus on every issue is not going to happen.

Are you paying attention, guys? There will be disagreements, including unresolved disagreements. Do you really want to legally and financially bind yourself to such a situation?

If you have a difference of opinion, ask yourselves who cares more or is impacted the most. Then let that person make the decision and take the responsibility. However, if you’re not willing to accept the responsibility for something, you can’t bitch about it later.

Yeah, here's what happens with us. My wife will announce or request something. If I disagree, well, that's too bad. She's going to go ahead anyway. I might ask her questions, especially about the possible problems that might result from her decision, and she'll usually accuse me of being pessimistic and raining on her parade. Then, later, when what I was concerned might happen does happen, I'm stuck dealing with it because my wife will say she can't and that she didn't know things would be that bad. The one exception is that she wanted to keep homeschooling, and has wanted to return to homeschooling, but we put the kids in private school and have kept them there, but it was because a couple of experts, including one we needed to sign off on the homeschooling, said my wife wouldn't be able to keep doing it.

4. Making assumptions. Don’t assume anything! If you want to know something, ASK.

Generally good advice, but it can also be helpful to think through what the likely possibilities are before or without asking. Sometimes you'll realize you don't really care all that much and so there is no point to asking.

5. Not communicating. A lot of problems can be avoided if you simply talk to each other.

In our case, the less communication, the better. If she's not communicating with me, then I'm not being given more tasks to do, hearing about how I'm wrong or insufficient in some area, or how much sex is a burden to her. Or I'll hear less about some inane TV show I don't care about. So it's good if she communicates less. And I'm better off if I communicate less, because talking with her rarely improves anything for me. Rather, anything I say can and will be used against me.

6. Lying. If you ever think, “Boy, I hope my spouse never finds out about this,” then don’t do it.

I'm generally for honesty, but really, not telling her things she doesn't need to know is fine, at least in our case.

Sometimes, a spouse has something wrong with them, so that if you tell them something innocuous they'll launch into a tirade and be in a bad mood for a couple of days. Sorry, honestly, especially volunteering something, isn't the best policy in that case.

7. Not making your spouse a priority. Your spouse needs to be adored and appreciated, and given affection, attention, and compliments. Get your pride and ego out of the way, and stop dwelling on what you should be getting.

Generally, yes. But at some point, when things are not right, mitigation is necessary. Let's take the example of a trauma center surgeon. She's there saving lives. And that's her priority. But if she never thinks about her own needs, as in "I really need to be relieved so that I can tinkle, then get something to eat," then she's eventually going to collapse. Making your spouse a priority without them doing the same thing can only last so long.