A False Dichotomy About Society

We are frequently presented with a false dichotomy for society:

A) Husband and wife, blissfully and legally married, raising their well-behaved children, nicely maintaining a suburban or rural home, attending religious services multiple times per month, active in their community, law-abiding, building wealth. 

B) Miserable men abusing substances, eating mostly fast food, out of shape, playing video games and watching adult media all day, either living dependently in a parent’s basement and/or shacking up with a woman, or in squalor, conceiving children and then abandoning them, maybe living a life of crime. Women dependent on government, pining away for a good husband she’d lavish with her heart of gold. Children troubled because they weren’t raised in Situation A.

Those aren’t the only options. And we know they aren’t because there are examples of people living great lives who aren’t legally married. And there are people who are legally married who live terrible lives and/or are terrible parents.

There are never-married men who have lived great, honorable, productive lives.

There are never-married women who are thriving and happy.

There are children whose parents aren’t legally married who are being raised well and are thriving.

Most married people will either go through a divorce if they haven’t already or will be in a marriage with significant problems, such as separation, contempt, indifference, quiet desperation, abuse, dead bedrooms, affairs, and other miseries. Most divorced men didn’t file for the divorce. There are married women who complain frequently about their husband and reveal him to be a burden.

Let’s learn from, and hold up as positive examples, men and women who’ve done well unmarried. 

We can teach and encourage more people to:

• Take care of themselves through their own work and good habits, voluntary transactions, and voluntary associations
• Avoid aggressive violence 
• Have relationships they enjoy 
• Avoid conceiving children they won’t parent well

…without having them sign a terrible state contract

Reject the false dichotomy. A terrible state contract is not what makes anything better overall.

Answering Marriage Seller Assertions, Talking Points, and Questions - Part 4

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


It's not a commitment without marriage.

There is more than one way to answer this.

A) I don't want a commitment.

B) That's your assertion. Your opinion doesn't make it true.

People make commitments, including in romantic relationships, all of the time without a bad state contract.

Legally marrying isn't a commitment to anything other than default paternity and the spouse who earns more paying the other spouse.

It's very clear some people commit without legally marrying and some people legally marry but aren't committed to caring for, or staying with, the other person.

Commitment is demonstrated in behavior.

Let's consider two couples. The first couple never marries, but they take care of each other with love, kindness, and affection for decades, until death. The second couple gets married, cheat on each other, generally treat each other like crap, and break up. Who was truly committed?

Part 5

How To Avoid Single Women With Kids

Someone came here by searching "how to avoid single women with kids."

The most popular entry here is a warning not to date single mothers. You can see for yourself there are hundreds of comments on it.

Of course, you can avoid single women with kids by avoiding women entirely. That fail-safe solution isn't for everyone, though, especially if your a self-destructive masochist who actually wants to get married.

So how does a guy avoid single women with kids (single mothers), especially since more and more women are mothers the older they get?

Hang out in the pet store by the cat supplies.

But seriously, simply pay attention. Most single mothers won't stop talking about their kids, or will badmouth "the father of my kid(s)". In online dating profiles, their kids will often be in their pictures, even though there really isn't a good reason to show complete strangers pictures of their kids unless they're trying to attract pedophiles.

Any woman who hides the fact she has kids is definitely bad news. If you're just looking for sex, there's a chance a woman who hides or omits that she has children is also just looking for sex, and so you might think that's a good thing. But ask yourself... how did she become a single mother in the first place? By other men who were just getting together with her for sex? Stay away, unless you have had a vasectomy, and even then, you should probably heed the warning against dating single mothers.

How do you smoke out a single mother who is hiding the fact that she's a mother?

Perhaps by moving things to her place as soon as you can. You don't want her coming back to your place, anyway. If she's reluctant to let you see her place, she might also be thinking about her safety and convenience, or it might be a mess, or she might live with her husband(!), or she might have kids.

It would take a lot of work for her to remove signs of being a mother from around her place. She could try to pass off the other bedrooms as roommates' rooms.

It doesn't matter how things are going, or how attractive you find her. Once you realize she has kids, especially if she hid it, and especially if you haven't had a vasectomy, you need to drop her immediately. Leave. Ghost her.

If you have any tactics that work for you, please do share them in the comments.

What Newly Divorced or Freed Men Should Do

"Divorce is expensive because it is worth it." -Modern Proverb

So you're newly divorced or about to be divorced, or out of a long/live-in relationship.

What should you do?

This is all about minimizing risks, damage, and pain, and getting you to thrive and enjoy your life.

1) Reject the idea that you are a failure, or this is just about you or just about her. Most marriages fail; even more so for relationships that don't marry. It was likely a bad idea to get married or so deep into the relationship in the first place. Resist the notion that you should try this again or you should have shame for the divorce/breakup. If anything, it's a shame people have been pressured into these situations.

Minimize Hostility

Most women don't like men.

There are some who genuinely like men.

But for the most part, most women don't like men, even if they like what men can do for them.

Even women who like and appreciate what men can do for them might grow entitled, demanding, and  then resentful.

Contempt and disrespect pervade.

What men do is never enough. Women in "committed" relationships think they settled.

Many men simply don't grasp this. For example, most heterosexual men are physically attracted to a wide variety of women, and like seeing a woman's genitals, even if he doesn't know her. Conversely, most women don't even like their own husband's penis and don't care to see it. There's a good chance even your newlywed wife isn't physically attracted to you.

Consider gays and lesbians. Most gay men, who have no interest in women sexually, do not hate women. In fact, they often have women as best friends. But a lot of lesbians openly hate men. Because they aren't attracted to any men, they have no reason to pretend to like them.

For most of human history, women depended on men directly. That's no longer the case. Women can earn money in white collar or service jobs, and have full access to financial services, asset ownership, etc. Gun ownership can physically protect her.

Even though women no longer need men, there are still "kept" women, far more than men. But even many kept women grow to despise and resent the men who provide their lifestyle.

There are women who prefer male bosses and/or like hanging around men. But that's not necessarily because they like men. In some cases it is because women are so bad to each other or because these women believe they can manipulate these men.

Perhaps nothing is more amusing to a woman than when a man gets hurt or injured.

 

Pay attention to how women talk about men in spaces and platforms that cater to women. Notice the advertisements that effectively appeal to women, and how men are usually portrayed as helpless, pathetic, stupid, ignorant, annoying, disgusting, etc.

In addition, women who appreciate men or at least their man can be poisoned by their mother, sisters, friends, media, etc. into being hostile.

What's my point?

My point is DO NOT BURDEN WOMEN. Respect their independence and autonomy. Stay free. Do not enter into a terrible state contract with someone who, chances are, isn't attracted to you and doesn't like you, or at least soon won't.


She Feels Differently Than You

Answering Marriage Seller Assertions, Talking Points, and Questions - Part 3

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Two can live together for less than separately.

What this means is if you're paying $3,000 per month and a woman is paying $2,500 per month, if you marry and move in together, she can stop paying rent or a mortgage and some redundancies will be eliminated, and the overall cost of living for the two of you will be less. Allegedly.

That benefits her. Unless you're already paying her way through life, which you shouldn't, how does that benefit you? IT DOESN'T. Even if she plans to contribute to rent or the mortgage, she will likely push to live in a bigger/more expensive place, there's no guarantee she will even keep working and financially contributing, and you're better of NOT allowing her to develop a claim to a home you owned.

Having her move in to your place puts your place at risk. She can have you kicked out of your own place, compel you to keep paying for her to live there, and claim at least some ownership. Don't allow that! DON'T MARRY! Don't let her move into your place!

Having her move in with you or you moving in with her will also will increase your utility bills and grocery bills, and she will likely insist on removing and replacing many items (especially if she thinks another woman touched them), and that will be costly.

Always keep in mind that divorce is very expensive, and even without divorce, at least half of your earnings are legally shifted to your wife. Wives make 80 percent of the spending decisions.

Stay free and keep control over your own assets and finances. Don't pay a woman's way through life. Respect their independence, their capability, their girl power. Believe women who say women don't need a husband.

Part 4

Oh No! Men Enjoying Technology!

I'd probably like most of what Barak Lurie has to say on his weekly radio show. I've never heard it. I'm thinking the vast majority of people in the greater Los Angeles radio market haven't either. That's not a knock on him, but it's just the reality of weekend AM talk radio, especially any English station in this market not named KFI. He was fortunate enough to get on Dennis Prager's national daily show today (Wednesday, October 2, 2019), during the Male-Female Hour, to promote his book Rise of the Sex Machines. [This entry has been bumped up.]

Like Prager, Lurie sells marriage and parenting. These guys want you to get married and crank out babies. They see doing those things as an obligation. Doesn't that sound appealing?

So they are worried about "sex machines", meaning sexbots or sex robots, as if the only choice a man has is being in a marriage with a woman, or having a sexbot, and if we warn against the latter, men will be forced into the former.

Right off of the bat, Lurie said it's much easier not to have a relationship. Exactly! Why make life more difficult if you don't have to???

Prager, for his part, started off saying he was worried about sexbots and he mentioned incels. Again, incels are involuntarily celibate (unmarried). Robots/dolls could disappear and incels would still exist. Most incels don't have one. Very few do.

Prager went to say that loneliness is an epidemic and that the only cures are traditional. However, it is possible to be unmarried and childfree, and not be lonely. As Dr. Laura tells the children of older adults who are worried about those older adults being lonely: Loneliness is a choice.

They didn't ignore the part women are playing in this. Prager said that feminism today means disdain for men. But he quickly went back to saying that he was raised to believe that "being a man" meant taking care of a family, and that getting married was the most important thing to do.

That was a long time ago, sir. And just because someone raised you that way doesn't make it right, especially today.

Lurie did cite that relationships today are considered minefields, false allegations of rape, me too, and all of that. He lamented that the Japanese view children (realistically, I note) as liabilities and that it makes no sense to have children, but Lurie thinks having children is a duty. How nice!

Closer to the end of the hour, Prager said that "winner men" will still seek women instead of sex machines. Sure, if he defines winners as those who seek marriage, but that's circular. The fact is, there are men who are successful, healthy, attractive, and having great lives who are not seeking women, at least not to marry, live with, or to join in an exclusive relationship. Winner men have the most to lose by signing that terrible state contract and engaging in that conflated cultural train wreck.

It says a lot that these guys think men might eschew women because of the availability of sex dolls, including that they think men will perceive that women have less to offer as overall positives in a man's life than a robot. They can't stop progress, so if they're worried, perhaps the answer is working on changing the things that are getting men to avoid marriage (and no, it isn't dolls, robots, or pixels).

Does Living Together Mean Doom?

Dr. Laura makes it sound like your marriage is doomed if you two cohabitate (“shack up”) with each other before you two marry. Well, chances are, it IS doomed, because it’s marriage and most marriages fail. Anyway, she also makes it sound like you won’t get married if you cohabitate while unmarried.

She’s highly likely to be basing that on very old data. But let’s grant that current data indicates “couples who cohabitated before marriage divorce at a higher rate than couples who didn’t cohabitate before marriage.” I don’t even know how anyone could word the second point. “Couples who cohabitate are less likely to marry than couples who don’t” is clearly not the case. Most couples don’t marry. Most people who marry had been a part of a different coupling multiple times before they ever married.

It’s possible to say AN INDIVIDUAL who shacks up tends to marry later or never marry in comparison than those who don’t. 

If the data takes couples who have plans to marry and tracks them over time, and sees that those who cohabitated before marrying had a higher rate of never marrying than those who didn’t cohabitate before marrying, that would be something. But since we don’t know the control group being used for the claim “couples who cohabitated unmarried were less likely to marry,” it’s a suspect claim. It’s far easier to make the first claim, as that is objectively, to some extent, observable: they married. They either lived together before they married or they didn’t. And over a certain amount of time, they either divorced or they didn’t. 

But what even counts as cohabitation? Even married people who didn’t officially share an address might have frequently spent days, weeks, even months in the same place. Back in my youth, I often spent 3-4 nights per week at my girlfriend’s place. I had my own place. I never claimed a girlfriend’s address as mine. Does that count? What if they spend almost every night together, some at his place and some at hers?

Keep in mind divorce is just one way a marriage can be terrible. A marriage can be legally intact but awful. Dr. Laura would claim the data also shows the quality of the marriage is better for couples who didn’t first shack up, but I’m not so sure. It could be that couples who didn’t cohabitate before marriage are less likely to be honest - with a sociologist or even themselves - if their marriage is crappy, and that could be for religious reasons, among other explanations.

Here’s the reality today whether anyone likes it or not:

-Most couples who marry cohabitated. (Twisting Dr. Laura’s tactic on its head, we can say shacking up leads to marriage, since most people who married shacked up.)

-Most people won’t marry someone they didn’t cohabitate with first.

-There are couples who’ve been together for decades, including officially or unofficially living together, who’ve never had even a courthouse wedding.

-There are people who’ve been married for decades who lived together before they married.

-If you want to be in either of those groups, there are things you can do to make it more likely.

One of the “dirty secrets” of the data Dr. Laura is using is that it lumps all unmarried cohabitation together, including people who never intended to marry or be permanent in the first place, and people who “fell into” living together. Data that separates out independently established, stable people who PLANNED out their cohabitation in advance, discussed and sincerely agreed about goals, intentions, rules, etc, and had a high level of general compatibility will show much better results.

Maybe you don’t want to marry.

Maybe you do.

Either way, cohabitation will be more likely and even may most likely work out if:

-It’s thoroughly planned out ahead of time, with sincere, honest, realistic discussions and agreement about goals, timelines, intentions, rules, etc. (Dr. Laura says there are no rules, but she doesn’t get to decide that for you.)

-It is done out of mutual intention, not incrementalism or “falling into it”, and an informed, experienced desire to live with each other, not out of desperation or zombie relationship escalators.

-You’re both responsible, established, independent adults who can generally handle life well and are fundamentally compatible.

Dr. Laura claims the intentions are different in shacking up, and that it is to avoid commitment. She was a trained, licensed, experienced therapist but she is not a mind reader. She doesn’t know what a caller she’s been talking with for 20 seconds really intended, and she certainly doesn’t know what their partner, who isn’t on the call, intended. She can make an experienced guess. Sometimes. 

Most of her listeners probably have no idea she did “everything” wrong. She shacked up for years with an older man who was a married father when she took up with him. She got pregnant at least once. And yet they subsequently married (as he had, she had been married before) and stayed married for decades, until he died. It apparently worked out for them. Although she’d say they beat the odds, if you could ever discuss it with her (she’d never let such a discussion about herself make it to air). If she’d discuss it and be honest about it, she’d probably say there was much misery because of how things started. 

I am compelled by my conscience not to end this post without stressing that  I think most men should avoid shacking up/cohabitating. It’s almost as bad as marrying. It’s costly and puts you at risks, shifting much of your power to her, and you can get kicked out of your own home. But if you’re going to do it, there are ways, as I explained, that make it more likely to work out. 

This Is Not a Case For Getting Married

The marriage sellers are linking to "A Case For Getting Married" by Matthew Walther. It's at The American Conservative, so all of you who aren't conservative are already warned.

In the extended social circles to which I belong a great deal of agony surrounds discussions of the so-called “dating scene.” Men are so lazy and so childish, and just look at the icky things they tweet; women are impossible to approach, etc.

Guys running game often wait for women to approach them. Hot women hate to be ignored.

Right off the bat, this reveals something about the author, or at least the people he associates with: they are bad at dating, and so they are happy if they don't "have to" do it anymore. We hear the same thing from Michael Medved, who thinks all men are as hapless as he apparently was.

My own belief is that beneath all the other difficulties real and imagined is risk-aversion. The longer people wait to pair up in the hope of finding the “right” one, the likelier they are to become so settled in their habits—and so neurotic about the opposite sex—that no prospective partner will be capable of ticking all of the ever-increasing number of boxes.

So, don't grow into the kind of person who you are, give all that up to be molded by some woman who will likely divorce you.

How to Prevent Domestic Violence, Cheating, and Divorce

This is how you can prevent domestic violence, cheating, and divorce:

Do not marry.

Do not live together.

Do not promise nor expect exclusivity.

Free Men who want to remain free men in good standing do not engage in rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, stealthing, stalking, or revenge porn.

Free men, if they want sex, run game, which ensures that they don't waste time with women who do not want sex. Free men do not marry nor live with women. Free men do not agree to exclusivity. This prevents domestic violence, cheating, and divorce. It also prevents rape.

More men should be Free Men.

Learn to Say No

Something any adult needs to thrive and to protect themselves is to learn to be comfortable saying "No."

You do not need to, nor is it healthy, to try to satisfy every request that anyone brings to you. Some religious people mistakenly think that if someone comes to them with a request, they are supposed to say yes, or at least find a solution for them. But that's not what the Lord does. The Lord often tells people "No." If you're ever going to parent, and most of you shouldn't, you'll have to say "NO!" quite a bit.

Do you ever find yourself agreeing to someone else's request or demand, only to regret it later or even immediately, or looking for ways to back out, or simply not showing up?

There are two relationships a man can have that make saying "No" extremely difficult:

1. His relationship with his wife

2. His relationship with his boss

Both have to do with his financial well-being. His wife can take away over half of everything he's earned (and his children!). His boss can fire him.

Men can avoid or mitigate this problem by saying no to marriage in the first place, and by being self-employed or at least having an Emergency Fund.

It should be easier to say "No" to anyone else, whether the person at your door, on your phone, or in your inbox claiming to be a salesperson, the panhandler on the street, the traffic cop who asks to check inside your vehicle with no probable cause or warrant, relatives, neighbors, someone you're dating, and just about everyone else.

People do need cooperation, so of course there are times you should say "Yes" even if it wasn't your idea, or isn't exactly what you want to do right now, because it is the right thing to do or because it will help you reach your other goals. But there we be times when you'll need to say "No" to avoid people walking all over you, or overextending yourself, or moving further away from your goals, or giving up your dreams, or any number of other reasons.

The more self-sufficient and independent you are, the easier it will be for you to say no. If you can walk away from something and be happy or at least content or satisfied, or more than you'd be if you'd said yes, that's a great place to be.

Two Types of No: No as in "absolutely not," and no as in "sweeten this deal and maybe I'll say yes." Let's look at both of those.

What Honest Messaging Would Look Like From Censorship Crusaders

Whether #Traffickinghub, Laila Mickelwait, Justice Defense Fund, Exodus Cry, Fight the New Drug, or so many others, anti-porn crusaders are desperate to present their attacks on adult media as either an attack on criminal material or only a specific company because of claimed crimes (Traffickinghub/Mickelwait/JDF).

Here's what honest messaging from them would look like.

"We don't like porn, or we like it but wish we didn't."

"Our religions are against nudity in media, erotic images, and sexy dancing, so we try to stop others from being involved with these things."

"Compulsive porn viewing is a common sign someone has problems with compulsive tendencies."

But they want to get people to stop watching all adult media, or at least feel really bad about it, or donate money to them, and they know that if they were honest about that, their messages would only motivate some of the people in their own small religious circles.

So what they do is try to correlate negative indicators with "using porn" in a way that tries to get people to believe that porn caused these bad things.

Quite frequently, they try to portray things true of (even common with) media in general, business in general, organizations in general, or even humanity in general to be unique problems with porn, stripping, etc.

Example: "She's only doing this because she needs money."

Well, yeah, isn't that why almost everyone works a job?

There are countless other examples.

Unfortunately, they push panic on the gullible.

Is Getting Married a Smart Short-Term Financial Move For a Man?

I was listening to podcasts from the Dr. Laura Show from mid-June 2015, and she took a call from a woman whose grown daughter was in a five-year relationship, and NOT shacking up with the guy. Both of them had been pursuing graduate degrees. The reason the guy had given to the caller's daughter about not yet being married was financial. Dr. Laura scoffed at this and noted he's supporting himself and paying rent, so there would be no cost to to marrying and moving in the caller's daughter. [This entry has been bumped up.]

I've heard Dennis Prager express similar ideas.

Dr. Laura did acknowledge that having children would increase costs.

A lot of guys fall for the mistake in thinking that moving in a wife or a shack-up honey will be 1) financially efficient and 2) a good financial decision. Let's just stick to moving in a wife, since shacking up is a horrible idea all around, and Dr. Laura would discourage it. [Marrying is almost always a horrible idea for men, too.]

The reality is, it isn't as simple as "Oh, now she's here so she can contribute to rent." The ideal portrayed is that, after marrying, these two will continue to earn at least as much as they already are in their respective jobs, and they will eliminate redundant expenses. and would be able to buy some things they'd usually buy separately "in bulk" together. But how often does it really work on that way?

In no particular order:

1) Moving a wife in means getting married. While Dr. Laura often tells the joint biological parents who are shacking up to run down to the county office and get married (because marriage is correlated to benefits to the children), it is highly unlikely this woman, who has been dating this guy for five years and not shacking up with him, would agree to that. Instead, an expensive wedding and related expensive events/purchases would be "necessary".

2) Once married, women tend to push for children (and others also apply pressure to have children) or "forget" to take contraception.

3) Most likely, his utility and grocery costs will increase, along with his vehicle maintenance and operation costs.

4) She will start buying all sorts of stuff they don't really need, since she won't feel like she needs to be tight with her money for survival. His money will now legally be her money, so she won't feel the need to be thrifty. Also, she will insist on redecorating, and throwing out and replacing everything from cookware to furniture, especially if some other woman he had sex with ever touched any of it.

5) For much the same reasons as #4, she might push for a bigger apartment or a home purchase.

6) She will pressure him to work less and avoid networking happy hours, to make social engagements she's arranged, and to keep him from spending time with other women, who are now fully integrated into workplaces. She will also likely discourage him from taking promotions that would involve moving or changing health plans or might put him on the radar of women she thinks are more attractive than her.

7) She will likely work less.


Don't even try the "married men earn more money" line.

There's probably a bunch I'm forgetting. The point is, dismissing financial concerns as unfounded fails the reality test. Now maybe he's just using it as an excuse. But it isn't necessarily the case. And  these things  are just the short-term, because that was the issue. The claim was that the man wanted to be on better financial footing before marrying. For the long term, marrying will definitely be against his financial advantage, as at least half of everything he'll earn will be hers by law.

Is It Really Sacred?

Since I listen to every (new) minute of the Dr. Laura Program, I heard her give this monologue recently. It has been posted on her website as a blog post. I still don't see an ongoing blog tab anywhere on the site, but this was tweeted out (by her staff, since she doesn't touch Twitter). It is titled "Respect Your Marriage Vows by Not Shacking Up First".

As regular readers of this blog know, I think shacking up is a generally bad idea; it's almost as bad as legally marrying.

But Dr. Laura promotes marriage and is against shacking up. Dr. Laura maintains that her program is a secular, non-religious program. But if you pay attention, she invokes religious concepts sometimes.

If someone isn't planning to marry, shacking up can't possibly disrespect their marriage vows. And now, many, perhaps most people, who do want to marry will refuse to do so without first living with the person they are considering as a possible spouse. The secular world has made it clear that they see shacking up as a normal part of relationship cycles. Without invoking religion, it is extremely difficult to explain how this would disrespect their future marriage vows. Dr. Laura has tried to teach that it is objectively detrimental to shack up, which I address here. In this blog posting of hers, she tries to explain why shacking up is bad a different way.

If you call anything a ‘piece of artwork’ or if you call something sacred, don't you immediately look at it differently from everyday objects or experiences? It doesn't matter if you're religious or not, I think when we say something is sacred, everybody lowers their voice and shows more respect. It's not accidental.

So, playing a mind game with oneself? Then someone could call shacking up "sacred" and this is all over.