I Can't Even Get Enough Sleep

As I pried myself out of bed after yet another too-short sleep, with no end in sight, something I already knew really sank in.

If I was an unmarried, child-free guy, I could actually get enough sleep.

Instead of getting up when I do when I prepare for work, I could sleep in at least another two hours, because I would be living closer to where I work and I would have less to do for other people before I leave the house.

I wouldn't have this dog that does various things that delay my sleep, wake me up, and diminish the quality of my sleep.

After work, I'd have a shorter commute home, fewer chores and errands to do, and wouldn't have to tend to the kids.

I could do things without being interrupted by what my wife and kids want.

Right now, on days I work, I'm getting about five hours of sleep, on average. On the other days, I'm lucky if I get eight. "How about naps?" you ask? Dog won't have it. She'll start barking. Constantly. At nothing.

A Shifting Position?

As I frequently say, I'm a huge fan of Dr. Laura. I agree with her almost all of the time and I think she does a lot of good. She had to deal with cancer not that long ago and I hope/pray (despite what she might say about hoping and praying) she never has to deal with cancer again.

It is nearly impossible for cancer not to change someone, and I think breast cancer changed her. As she said on the air, she had breast cancer and had a single mastectomy and, thus far, opted not to have reconstructive surgery.

In the past, when women called to get her advice on plastic surgery, including breast surgery, she used to be very supportive of "restorative" surgery, to counter what disease, surgery, aging, or breastfeeding had done. We're talking women trying to get back to the way they used to be, not women who used to be B-cups going for DDs.

Lately, though, she has discouraged women from even trying to get back to the way they used to look through surgery.

Torturous Tweeting

One of our favorite anitporn (and, apparently, antimasturbation) Twitter accounts, NoFap, tweeted out this profundity:

If you use enough porn and get addicted, you'll never need to date, have relationships, or romantically connect with humans.

First of all, "porn addiction" either doesn't exist or is exceeding rare. That phrase is usually used to describe a guy enjoying porn who has a wife who disapproves. It is probably why "addiction" seems to be a huge problem in subcultures in which porn viewing is considered very sinful, but not so much in subcultures where porn viewing is seen as frivolity at worst.

Secondly, there are a lot of guys who love to avoid dating, relationships, or "romantic connections", probably so much so that even some who think porn is lame will claim to enjoy viewing it just to make it easy to get rid of women.

Finally, either NoFap believes women have nothing to offer men other than auditory and visual sexual stimulation, or they think a lot of men think that way. Either way, isn't it better that someone who thinks of women that way not date them, or at least not try to get into relationships with them?

Here's my page discussing these topics.

It's National Masochistic Self-Destructive Male Week!

Well, that's not what they're calling it. Leading up to one of the worst days of the year, marriage pushers have decided this (February 7 - 14) should be "National Marriage Week USA".

Ugh...

So of course, they're marriage marketers are trotting out the same misleading statistics and fairy tales.

A good example is Sheila Weber's piece I found at Fox News.

The misleading headline is "Better Sex, Better Health, More Money: What Men Really Get Out of Marriage".

More than ever, today’s young men question the value of marriage to increase their happiness and well-being.

Of course they do. Men eventually catch on. We see what is going on around us. We see what has happened to our fathers, our uncles, our brothers, our friends. We see what happens to them when they marry. We see what happens to them when they get divorced. We see when something is a bad deal. We see the brides, who literally the day after the wedding, chop off their hair and start gaining weight. More men are opting to live a better life than that.

The U.S. marriage rate has dropped dramatically (from 70 percent in to 50 percent in four decades) and marriage is getting replaced with new habits of long-term dating, late marriage and long-term cohabitation.

Better get used to it.

When My Sentence Ends

I've never been arrested, but sometimes I liken my marriage to serving a sentence due to my wife's mental illnesses, which she hid from me until after we had kids, and her deteriorating physical health/abilities (which were also hidden from me).

It's still many years until our youngest child is grown, and thus by Dr. Laura's rules I'd be free to leave the marriage, but lately a thought crossed my mind:

Do I have a moral obligation to tell my wife if I plan to leave, and if so, how far in advance?

Obviously, she'd be informed at the time if I physically moved out of the house and/or had her served with divorce papers. But I'm wondering if I'd have a moral obligation to tell her in advance of that.

I referred to staying married until the kids are 18/out of high school as Dr. Laura's rule, but I have adopted it as well because I agree. To be sure, Dr. Laura does advise people to remove themselves and their children from an abusive situation (either leaving or kicking out the abuser), but absent actual abuse, the best thing is to stay and raise the kids and be polite and civil (and if at all possible, affectionate) to the other spouse.


The way I see it these are the basic possibilities for the future, in no particular order: