Dennis Prager was so thrilled with an article that he happily read it and touted it on his radio show, had the writer on his show, and linked to the article on his website. Dennis Prager was downright giddy about it.
Turns out this guy is his friend. Now, I don't expect Dennis to trash his friend, especially on the air. Instead, he simply should not have mentioned the article. But Dennis couldn't help himself, because he's so obsessed with advocating that people
marry and have children that he lauds it even if it is clearly a train wreck.
Dr. Laura and Dennis Prager would both be called conservative talk show hosts. Yet I think Dr. Laura would, in most of my points below, agree with me. If Dennis' friend had called Dr. Laura on the air and proposed what we'll see below, Dr. Laura would have probably ripped him a new one.
Enough intro.
Joel Alperson wrote at Medium
"How to Marry and Have Four Newborns at 60."Right off the bat, that's a huge NOPE!!!
A Chinese woman in her late 40’s and an American man of almost 60 were finally living their dream.
Over ten years of age difference. Not good. Of course Dennis, being married to a woman 15 years his junior, has no qualm about that.
After all, she wasn’t Jewish (and I wanted to have a Jewish family), she was an employee, she lived in China and was married. What’s more, it was around the time I hired Wei that I met the woman I would marry.
So this a second marriage (at least) for each. Most second marriages divorce. Different country, different culture, was an employee, different religion... how many red flags can there be?
But, as life is rarely predictable and sometimes horribly unfair, this seemingly impossible-to-marry single, who married for the first time at 47, saw his marriage end in divorce after only seven years.
That was to be expected since you married at the first time at 47.
I was shattered. The part of my life I most wanted was now over.
After finally starting a race that almost everyone else I knew was running, I found myself behind the starting line again.
Getting married and popping out kids is a race?
But it’s funny, things can happen when one is running out of time. As options narrow, choices that once seemed crazy can seem perfectly reasonable.
That's called desperation.
Who would help me start my search for a wife in China? It was Wei.
The woman who became his next wife. Conflict of interest?
It was only after months of meeting other women in different parts of China, usually after Wei had traveled to, yes, meet and pre-qualify them, that I finally noticed her.
This isn't romantic. It's a mess.
After over ten years of employing her, I told Wei that of all the women I had met in China, the one I most wanted to be with was her. She was stunned — both for the reason I expected and for one I hadn’t: she had committed to marry another man.
I felt even worse when she added that she had been interested in me for years. But, like a professional poker player, she’d had no “tells”. She never betrayed her feelings even slightly.
This is so painful!!!!
But Wei’s marriage was troubled from the beginning. Though married, they lived in different cities, seeing each other and communicating with one another rarely. The last straw was when Wei learned her husband was communicating with other women via a Chinese chat service.
Is she bad at picking men? Or does she neglect them?
She separated from him and virtually all contact between them ended.
That what she told you.
It was after this separation and her plans for a divorce that we started talking about our future together.
Why include a detail like this? Maybe you're protesting too much?
Given that a divorce in China can be appealed and the extreme acts some in China will take to save face, Wei’s escape ultimately involved her hiding from her husband for almost two years.
Yeah, this is a way to start a marriage.
Another challenge was how we could quickly have the two or three children we wanted (yes, we have four . . . remember that part about life being unpredictable?). As Wei was still living in China, we chose to have our children in Asia.
Remember, she was in her 40s. He was in his 50s. They rented wombs, which, especially in other countries, can be fraught with ethical issues.
And as she was too old to have them naturally, we used surrogates. The laws surrounding this type of childbirth forced us to operate in multiple countries.
Maybe that should have been a clue!!!
A friend helped us find two surrogates — in Thailand of all places. And the embryos were implanted in Cambodia (don’t ask about the room where I gave my sperm sample. The awful porn DVD they were playing was, to put it mildly, not helpful).
So it was ALLEGEDLY his sperm. Has he done a DNA test? Whose eggs were used? Another ethical consideration.
How many human beings were discarded in this process? ("Extra" embryos)
As their due dates approached, the surrogates traveled to China where our children were born. You’re probably thinking, “Wasn’t there an easier way to do this?” Maybe, but I don’t regret our choice because the result was four happy, healthy children.
You could have adopted embryos or born children, you know, instead of intentionally creating children whose parents will be elderly before long.
The moral of this story? Actually, there are three.
Don't marry. Don't have kids. Avoid working with women.
The first is that fear can destroy one’s life and it had seriously compromised mine. It was fear that kept me from confronting my dad over the very poor relationship we had.
Oh, hello.