Not Treating In Kind

My wife and I are likely entering a new phase in our lives. For the time being, another one of her responsibilities has been delegated to hired help, at great expense, which should, in theory, give her more time and energy.

Of course I'm NOT talking about lovemaking. Being a good husband, I have not seriously considered having someone else fulfill her responsibility in that regard.

We've had sex exactly twice in the last five weeks, unenthusiastic on her part, and clearly what she considers an act of mercy for me.

She still wants to cuddle, which we do in the family room, after the kids are in bed for the night.

I know that, like many women, she wants to cuddle without it leading to sex, because you know, why would you want to have sex with your husband? So that's what I do. It does not lead to sex at any other time or any other benefit beyond the cuddling itself.

When I'm feeling rejected/neglected sexually, I'm less inclined to otherwise be physically affectionate with her. I keep hugs and kisses to a minimum frequency and duration, because I feel emotionally distant from her.

I suppose the experts would tell me I should be doing the opposite - I should be being more affectionate, because 1) it will help and 2) I should take what I can get. I struggle for a good analogy, but to me, it's like someone has told you they don't like you (sexual rejection) so why would you make an effort to talk with that person more? I don't want to be an annoyance or burden on anyone. To me, when it comes to spouses, physical affection is all part of the same package, a continuum, and if you don't want to travel that part of the circle, we shouldn't be traveling on the circle at all. If you're going to tell me I'm not good enough to be served my dinner in your restaurant, I'm not going to order drinks in your bar. If you don't give a crap about what my needs are, knowing I have them, why should I give a crap about what you want?

She texted me while I was working and asked if we could cuddle tonight. Now, if I treated her like she treats me, my response could be:

1) Telling her we should wait for tomorrow night or another night, and then orchestrating events so it won't happen that night.

2) Telling her "I don't feel like it."

3) Telling her she did X wrong and so I'm not going to.

4) Agree, but make sure my body language and participation are as cold/distant/motionless as possible.


But how did I react?

I quickly and simply agreed.

This is going to eat into my sleep time, which is already too short.

These days, I feel like I have a beautiful friend living with me as a roommate, but one whose bills I'm paying and whose bills I'll be obligated to pay for rest of my life no matter how she behaves and even if she kicks me out of my own home.

Romantic, eh?

Keeping the Health Department Out

My wife and I agreed early on, with her insisting first, that she was going to be a stay-with-kids mother. She was going to give up her job.

This was to allow her to raise our children with love, care, and the best caretaking, and to keep the home, and still have enough energy for me.

HA!

What crock.

I have always helped out around the house. One of the ways we split things was that she would wash the dishes and I would put them away after they dried. Every once in a while, I just couldn't take the dishes piling up any more and I'd wash them, knowing full well I was running the risk her stopping her washing of the dishes entirely. Well, it appears she's done just that.

To get around the issue, we have been using disposable plates, cups, and utensils.

How lazy can someone get, really?

I'm the full-time sole breadwinner. I come home after working and I don't want to clean up. One of my sisters says, "Hey, suck it up. Single mothers do it." Yeah, but I'm not a single parent. The law says that I'm paying my wife half of my frickin' income and I sure as Hell expect that buys something. Not the most romantic thought, but my wife hasn't given me any reason lately to think romantically.

So, I've seen our place get worse and worse. I come home and I don't want to clean up. I don't want to discuss it with my wife. I don't want to discuss it with my kids. My wife should be teaching my kids to clean up after themselves. She should be cleaning up, too.

As a kid, I didn't keep the cleanest room. However, unlike my kids, I did not keep any food or used plates, cups, etc. in my room. My room might have gotten cluttered, but it wasn't unhealthy.

I have no training as social worker or code enforcement expert, but I would expect my daughter's room to be condemned. I'm not exaggerating.

So... my wife scheduled a visit from my mother and one of my sisters, so they can clean up our home. And on top of that, she still scheduled a woman we've previously hired to get there an hour before my family, so we could pay that woman money to do what my family members were coming to do for free.

So in addition to half of my pay going to my wife, I'm paying a stranger on top of that. My sister brought along one of her friends to help, so she could see the disaster as well.

They didn't exactly finish, but they did manage to lose some items my daughter considers important. And they did stay late enough that, after I finished  putting the kids to bed per their requests, I wasn't going to get nearly enough sleep.

At least my wife finally did start cleaning (and I helped out, mostly by taking out trash, doing the dishes, and cleaning a bathtub). I should tell her I've arranged for my family to come by and clean, even when I haven't, just to get her to clean.

My wife has been cooking maybe once every three weeks. And by cooking I'm talking about throwing something in the crock pot.

My wife lets the laundry pile up to a ridiculous point, preferring to put it into the washer and dryer when both of our kids are with my family.

There is plenty of time she's not supervising the kids, because she stays up too late and sleeps in a lot.

She's reduced our sexual encounters to about once every two weeks, for as short as she can keep them, and she's repeatedly indicated to me she only does it as an act of mercy to me. For example, here's a gem of a quote, when I called her out on looking for excuses to avoid sex:

"It isn't about finding an excuse not to have sex with you. It's about finding a reason TO."

In other words, she can't think of a reason to have sex with me. It doesn't matter that I pay the bills. It doesn't matter that I play with the kids in ways she can't or won't. It doesn't matter that I'm her husband. It doesn't matter that I pay the insurance and bills that allow her to visit many different doctors on a frequent basis.

Yeah, I've done the romance her thing. Yeah, I've done the sit and cuddle and rub her legs with no expectation of sex thing. You know what those things got me? A lot less sleep and no sex.

Once again, I can think back to my wayward youth and be comforted in knowing this is not about me. It's her problem. Plenty of women were very eager to have sex with me on a regular basis.

So, I'm probably going to be responding to some of her requests with, "No, I just don't feel like doing that." Childish? Perhaps. But I have no other recourse. One way or the other, I will be forced to hold up my end of the bargain. I have to keep my end of the deal to provide.

So while she:
Doesn't clean
Doesn't cook
Doesn't do laundry in a timely way
Doesn't supervise the kids all of the time they're home
Doesn't accept my sexual advances often enough...

... I'm still keeping my end of the deal. I don't have much of a choice.

I see our situation and I think we're raising our children to be spoiled, useless, and difficult to live with monsters. But at this point, I'm thinking I'm going to strongly advise my son against marrying, so at least he will not inflict himself on someone else.

A Terrestrial Radio Format I Want For Los Angeles

Terrestrial radio ain't what it used to be. Anyone can you that. Tom Leykis gives much insight into how sausage is made when it comes to terrestrial radio, and he frequently points out that the two largest companies are, together, mired in staggering debt. With satellite radio, various apps providing customized listening, and MP3s, etc., and, on the flip side, advertisers having more delivery methods than ever, terrestrial radio has some major troubles. I really like Leykis' model, and his show is so much better since it came back as an Internet show.

In Los Angeles, CBS ended up with both major "all news" stations, AM 1070 KNX and AM 980 KFWB. I remember when I used to listen to KFWB. They had a 20-minute news cycle, with sports twice and hour, and traffic reports every ten minutes. This was 24/7/365. Then things started to change, and I stopped listening, except for when they picked up Dr. Laura after her long run on KFI (and before she went to satellite, where her show is even better.) KFI has gone downhill since she left, except for, perhaps, giving Gary Hoffman the 5-6am weekday hour.

Since CBS owned "too many" radio and television states in the Los Angeles market, KFWB had to be treated as the stepchild. Now it is taking on a sports format, so it can play catchup with Clear Channel's AM 570 and ESPN and whatever other sports stations there are. (Can you tell I don't listen to that stuff?)

Here's what we need in the Greater Los Angeles radio market: An all-traffic station. I'm serious. Now, maybe eventually Internet delivery to moving vehicles will get to the point and penetration where people will be able to do this via automation using their smart phones or part of their vehicle dashboard, but for the time being, Los Angeles needs an all-traffic station. Most traffic reports currently heard on terrestrial radio in Los Angeles are woefully inadequate. They are not timely, or too short, or whatever else - but since they're really there so you can hear a billboard, the companies don't really care.

But if there is an entire station, one with a far-reaching signal, that focuses primarily on traffic reports and covers the entirely of the Los Angeles-Ventura-San Bernardino-Riverside-Orange County area, it would be worthwhile to listeners and worthwhile to advertisers.

Rush "hour" in the Los Angeles area is MANY hours, twice per day. And when it isn't rush "hour", there's construction and cleaning. Traffic is bad on the weekends, too.

With a format like this, we can get detailed information about where an accident is, how many lanes are closed how far the backup is, what speeds there are, and an estimated time of clearance. We can get detailed suggestions of ways around the traffic problem. We can get more information about problems on surface streets. Presidential visits, parades, and other special events can also be detailed. And yes, the time can be filled in with weather reports and other news, especially news that might have an impact on traffic. We can even get told which freeways and streets are wide-open.

Please, someone make this happen. It's not like the existing frequencies are all filled up with highly successful formats.

Taking a Sick Day?

I'm usually suffering from not getting enough sleep, but when I'm also fighting an illness I've caught from my kids, it's a double whammy.

My kids always seem to be sick. I think they could stand better hygiene, better nutrition, and cleaner home environment... gee, if only they had a stat-at-home-mom. Oh wait, they do!

Anyway, one of the "advantages" of being a married father is that staying home is not restful. In the limited thought process I can muster while waking up, I realize that if I stay home, I will not be able to sleep. The kids will be fighting with each other or their mother. I will be be summoned to do some tasks. The dog will either demand to be let out of the room or let back in by constantly scratching at the door.

If I was living alone, I could take the day off from work and relax.

But I don't live alone.

Yes, yes, I realize that single mothers and mothers in general usually still have to take care of the family and home while sick. I get that. However, for lack of a more romantic way of putting it, I earn income and then, by law, I'm essentially paying my wife half of my income. I planned things out so that my children would have to parents and there would be a division of labor. I give my wife plenty of time to herself.

Do Good Men Project Their Problems on Others?

Dennis Prager rightly talks about Leftist hysterias – things that the Left will focus on and claim are already or pending disasters, and how the Left has been proven wrong over and over again about them. Well, my fellow religious conservatives have a couple of such hysterias. One of them is "porn addiction" or porn "use" at all. Granted, additional people join religious conservatives to jump on this bandwagon.

I want to say before this goes further that I'm not defending porn per se; rather I'm concerned about red herrings and other poor arguments being used against it, because they teach bad thinking and when people I otherwise admire use bad arguments, their credibility suffers.

Although I can't know another person's motivations for sure, I strongly suspect that when someone beats this "men need to drop porn" drum endlessly, no matter how many words they use, it really boils down to one or more of the following:

“Really, I wish I could indulge without trouble but my wife and/or my god doesn’t like it. So I have to say this. Or I don’t want you doing what I can’t.”

“I have a daughter and I don’t want to think she’s going to be showing her body to anyone or having sex.”

The Good Men Project, apparently doesn't have an official stance on porn since they regularly published pieces from Hugo Schwyzer, who was known as the "porn professor" while teaching at a community college. I can appreciate a website that appears to have an overall purpose (calling men to be better) hosting content with different opinions of how to achieve that purpose. Like I said, they published Schwyzer, but they also just published a "men are bad for enjoying porn" piece by Bryan Reeves, "5 Reasons Why Men Must Give Up Porn".

It should be noted that the headline can have two meanings. One is that ALL men must give up porn. The other is that if men have these problems, those men must give up porn. It is a very unreasonable essay if one takes the first meaning.

I Have Kept My Voice Down

So the sex drought ended at three weeks, having gone back to the weekly mercy sex schedule. Any time I get close to giving her an orgasm, she stops me. As far as ending the drought, she said she needed me to be more affectionate during the rest of the time. Hey, I’m all for that. If I can give/get a hug, kiss, caress, that’s all good. The problem is, it is hard to do when 1) she’s not there because she’s taken the kids and left in a vain attempt to punish me; 2) I’m not there because I’m working to support the family, all of the comforts they enjoy a lot more than me, and to make sure my wife can have all of her medical appointments and medications; and 3) she pushes me away when I am there. It smacks of “jump through more hopes, you trained dog”, because she’s not going to enjoy it much either way, but if it means I share more affection, OK.

There’s no passion, no playfulness on her part. Over the years, there were a couple of times she did something special, like secretly dropping the kid(s) off with family so that when I came home it would just be to the two of us, with the intention of us having fun together; also, a couple of times she dressed a special way including one time she role-played. It has been a long time since something like that. When we have the place to ourselves and we can make love anywhere at anytime, she wants to stick to the default appointment, in our bed.

Ugh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know fornication is wrong and it was bad for me to do back in my unmarried days, but darn it those women wanted to play. They let me know they wanted me, they appreciated me, they enjoyed me, and enjoyed what I did with them. There’s no way of knowing for sure – maybe they would have become icebergs after sharing wedding cake with me, or having a couple of kids.

She has said things in therapy that clearly state what I have suspected is the truth, about what she has done in terms of marrying me and having children. At the time she says them, she’s crying, and so I can’t say “Yup, I agree” because then the marriage would be even worse and there would be no going back, and we have kids to finish raising and I want them to have the best intact home I can provide them. So I carefully react in a way that isn’t disagreeing with what she said, but doesn’t “amen” it either.

She has put a tiny amount of time (so far) into preparing to look for work she can do from home. If that can help offset the unexpected costs we’re facing, that would be great.

Meanwhile, I have successfully kept my biggest flaw in check for all of this time.

I Did Not Miss You

Recently, after I’d implemented my New Attitude, my wife was still upset about the last incident where I was yelling at the kids (it was over a situation where they were endangering themselves). She repeatedly asked me to leave the home to stay somewhere else. I refused. So after a couple of days of me handling the kids without yelling at them, without discussing the issue with me or telling me what she was going to do, while I was out working, she packed up some items, packed up the kids, and took them to the home of her married-with-kids sister. I came home and realized, after I didn’t get immediately presented with demands, that they weren’t there. There was no note left. I had to check my e-mail to find a message that had been sent only a few minutes before explaining her plans. I was relieved that, if her message were to be believed anyway, the kids were alive and safe and with other responsible, capable adults. The way she handled that, though, was unacceptable.

My father’s response (I think he was tipped off by my sister) was to call and tell me to change the locks. If it was just my wife, I would have. However, I have an obligation to my children.

Despite my attempts to communicate, my wife refused to respond to me for over two days. Evidently, she, her sister, and brother-in-law were unable to handle my son, so my wife dropped him off with my mother after a couple of days.

I still had to work and do the necessary chores around the house, but the few waking hours I had at home were GREAT! I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, without interruptions, without nagging, without snide sarcasm. I wasn’t asked to do things by my wife that she should be able to do for herself.

On the fifth day, I had my regularly scheduled individual therapy session. Ah, there was too much to cover in such a short amount of time. After returning home from that, as planned, my wife started a text discussion that lasted for over three hours. It was more one-sided “You need to change” nagging (I’ve never asked her to change anything about herself, although I could have) and immaturity on her part. She even sent me a link to a music video about breaking up or a sad time in a relationship. What are we, seventh graders? I, of course, tried multitasking because it was just too much nonsense, but she realized I was changing screens and she berated me for it. So I multitasked on a difference device.

I missed my kids. There was nothing good to miss about my wife. She hadn’t been making dinner, running errands, or doing much around the house at all. We hadn’t been spending time together at home, we hadn’t been hugging and kissing, we hadn’t been going on dates – and not for my lack of offering/trying. Sex? HA! Since she likes reserving my mercy dose of sex for a one weekly go on a weekend night, it is very easy for her to escape that “obligation” by picking something I did that needs to be punished, or saying I should get more rest, or telling me it would better to do the next night (9 out of 10 times, it ends up not happening that next night). I really don’t want a hostage anyway. As of this writing, it has been at least two and a half weeks since our last sexual encounter, with no end in sight, despite the fact that…

I convinced her to return on the sixth day, along with our daughter, and my mother brought my son back. The kids had missed me, judging from their actions. Since they all returned, I have been behaving myself despite several instances where other parents might have yelled at their kids.

We had a therapy session as a couple. There was so much I never got around to bringing up because my wife was already crying through so much of it. I had to bite my tongue a few times, especially in response to the therapist, who I generally like.

After the session, I managed to get my wife to accept a dinner date with me. It was good to see her actually eat something (a history of anorexia is yet another thing that kept hidden to me until after I was vested in the marital contract), and something that wasn’t junk sweets. The dinner was already keeping me out too late, but as it was winding down, she requested I help with some chores once we got home. Ugh. She operates as though she doesn’t know that I am the sole support of this family and that it is important for me to get enough rest before I go off to work. Yes, I could have told her “no”, but there would have been hell to pay for that, and I was trying to get her back into a positive attitude.

It’s not like she has any responsibilities other than being a wife and mother. I realize those are challenging and extremely important roles, and that is why I readily agreed to be the sole income earner (and now I’m looking to take on additional work even though I already work full-time). She doesn’t work. She doesn’t volunteer. She’s not part of an in-person team or club. She doesn’t have a productive hobby anymore, such as gardening or knitting or sewing. She’s not taking care of a parent. She’s not managing our finances and bills. Being a wife and mother is IT, and yet she’s doing pretty much nothing as a wife and not nearly enough as a mother.

I come home after a full day of work straight out of a Dilbert cartoon and literally, immediately, the kids rush to me with their requests because their mother wants to them sit around the house because it is easier on her. They want me to take them here or there, or do some physical activity with them. And I do, because that’s what a good father does, especially when their mother doesn’t. This will mean a late dinner for me and a too-late bedtime and no time for me to relax. Meanwhile, the woman who is legally entitled to half of every penny I’m earning sits in our bed or on the couch, watching television and playing mindless tablet games. I like spending time with the kids, as long as they aren’t auditioning for a new season of Supernanny. I can’t say I like it more than having a little time to myself on my own terms, but maybe I could if I had more of such time.

When I am working, I’m often getting texts from my wife complaining about how she can’t control the children, and how she’s fallen over and hit her head or bruised herself. She can have a tough enough time walking these days, but when you add in the sea of debris that our home’s floor can become soon after we’ve paid someone to clean the place, even the most physically coordinated person is going to trip sometime. Could I clean the place up myself? Yes, I could, if I gave up some more of the precious few hours of sleep I get, and if I didn’t want to stick to my principle that we’re supposed to have a division of labor.

So, to wrap this entry, I’ll say a couple of things I probably have said here before. Here I am, someone who would self-identify (and be identified by others) as a conservative, family-minded Evangelical Christian who is intellectually convinced that sex is for marriage, and yet: 1) I can’t fully regret the fornication in my past because if I hadn’t had those experiences to give me perspective now, I’d be in a much worse place psychologically and think I was completely unlovable by other normal human beings, or I’d be more likely to divorce to try to remarry so I could experience a healthy sex life, and 2) I can’t in good conscience recommend LEGAL marriage to my son or any other guy (with certain exceptions I’ll have to save for another entry). Ladies, you might find that second one offensive. Yes, I’m fully away my wife’s situation is not typical and there are some women out there who are consistently great wives and mothers, but the risk is too high, and the laws and courts enable women to ruin husbands. Even the best wife and mother can become destructive and hurtful with a hormonal problem or a brain injury. Dr. Laura has indicated that 40% of first marriages end in divorce. I just heard author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach say a third of marriages are sexless. In considering the remaining percentage of marriages that don’t end in divorce, aren’t sexless, yet are often unhappy or troubled, then the odds are NOT in favor of lasting, happy marriages in which the spouses are faithful.

The Sick Irony of the Isla Vista Mass Murder

... is that had that evil waste of human potential who carried it out lived, he would have had female groupies, maybe even marrying one of them as he served or awaited his sentence. Guys who rape, torture, and murder kids get female groupies.

Complain about misogyny and the NRA all you want, and tweet #YesAllWomen, but remember that there are women who CHOOSE to worship evil guys like this murderer. How about addressing that?

How about addressing women who CHOOSE to stay with with abusive guys, not only risking themselves, but their children?

No, no guy should beat, rape, or murder a woman or anyone else. No, severely mentally ill people shouldn't have guns. Violently mentally ill people shouldn't even be out and about.

This is not about rape culture or gun culture. It is about allowing evil people and violently mentally ill people to give off warning signs and still remain free.

A New Attitude

I need to stop yelling at my wife and kids.

If for no other reason, my kids need one good parent who doesn't abuse or neglect them, and instead will protect them.

I think I know how I’ll be able to. In addition to all of the advice I have been gleaning from multiple sources, some personalized, I have decided that a significant problem has been my expectations. I've been frustrated because I expected my wife to be a functional, effective wife and mother. I expected this because she was eager to be a stay at home mother and I was glad she was eager to be, and that was the plan long before we married. I also expected it because she had been able live on her own and to work full time with children, and was educated in caring for children, child development, nutrition, etc.

But my expectations were not built on the whole truth, because I didn't know the whole truth. I'm not excusing my yelling, just explaining it. My expectations led to my frustrations which led to my yelling. Changing my expectations will be one the factors and that will allow me to stop the yelling. So far, I have restrained myself multiple times due to this shift in expectations.

Who Has Time For Hobbies With All of These Appointments?

I've been seeing a therapist for a while. In addition to that, my wife and I have been, together, seeing a different therapist who has a lot of experience in dealing with situations in which one parent has a disability and the kids are acting out. This second therapist we sought to help us with our parenting because we’re apparently doing a horrible job.

There were a few simple things the therapist told us to do in order to help our marriage because the marriage is the foundation of the family, so this will eventually help our family dynamic. One was having a date night at the bare minimum of once per month. Another was sitting together and being together for a mere fifteen minutes in front of our children, without allowing the demands of the children or them demonstrating cage fighting techniques on each other to interrupt this time together. With weeks behind us since that those suggestions given, we haven’t done either.

We haven't done the second one because when I'm home and awake and the kids are home, my wife takes the opportunity to take time to herself.

We haven't done the first one because my wife prefers to put off doing chores until my family has our kids. OK, so my wife doesn't want to go out. How about some lovemaking? No, why would she want to that more than once per week? It's only minimally enjoyable for her because of the medication cocktail she'll be taking the rest of her life. Well, at least I can catch up on some desperately needed sleep, right? Uh, well... no. My wife had errands for me to run. That's my fault, I will admit. Instead of thinking of what would make her life easier, I should have told her "HELL NO I will not run errands, I'm going to get some sleep. You run the errands while I'm working the kids are still with my family." But I didn't.

My wife knows I'll eat one way or another, so she doesn't make a point to care if I eat.

My wife doesn't care if I'm extremely tired and not working to my potential. It doesn't cross her mind, I'm, sure, as long as the benefits are paid for and the bills are paid.

She could turn it around (and has) to say I have no idea what it is like living in her body. Which is when I want to scream with every ounce of energy I have left, "YOU CHOOSE TO GET MARRIED AND HAVE CHILDREN. JUST BECAUSE YOU WANTED IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD HAVE SET UP THIS SITUATION FOR CHILDREN!!!" She thinks the kids should just suck it up and have a limited life because their mother is disabled. Because their mother chose to become a mother knowing she was disabled and then experimented with treatments, leaving her a lot worse off than when we were dating.

The issues with the physical disability are bad enough, but there is no way I would have married her and had children with her if I knew of her mental health history (more of which has come out in the therapy) and her apparent need for ongoing medication for that. I didn't know because neither she nor her family were open with me about it before I married her, probably because they knew I wouldn't have married her.

I've been getting closer and closer to yelling the statement in caps up there two paragraphs up. The closest I came was when I congratulated her on getting what she wanted (to be a wife and mother), at the height of one family meltdown or another.

She has been saying to me what I've been thinking about her current effectiveness as a wife and as a mother, but when she says it I don't have the heart to explicitly agree. Instead, I tell her what she does right/well, or I ask her why she is saying what she is. I neither agree nor deny her statements. I don't want to deny them because, well, they're true, or at least I think they are.

Even though we don't have the money for it, we've been more or less replacing her with surrogates. We haven't sat down and verbalized that is what we're doing, but it is pretty much what we've been doing, slowly but surely. Of course, this does not extend to sex. Her responsibilities as a wife and mother are being increasingly offloaded onto others. Well, actually, mostly mother. I can survive without a wife, so the needs of the kids are what take priority.

At this point, without some sort of dramatic improvement in her physical condition due to finding the right treatment (or reverting back to the treatments she used to get), I don't see how we're going to avoid moving in with someone or having someone move in with us.

How does a therapist help a man deal effectively with staying in a difficult situation that he's in because he fell for fraud and misrepresentation? How does a therapist help a man deal with the fact that his own government will force him to support, for the rest of his life, the person who perpetrated this? How does a therapist help a man deal with the fact that all of this is cheating his kids out of the childhood he intended to give them?

And You Are...?

I can't help but ask, "And who appointed you to the position of deciding this for my sex?" whenever I hear a woman, no matter how much I admire her, publicly proclaim "Here's a list of the qualities of a real man." or something of the sort. If she's doing it in private to a boy she's raising, fine... but public pronouncements of that sort leave me shaking my head. Be honest, lady. Say "These are the qualities that turn me on in a man" (of course we know what women SAY turns them on and what actually does are often two different things) or "These are the qualities in men I think are beneficial to society." It is especially amusing if they say a "real man" is one who takes all sorts of crap from women and gives up all his hopes and dreams and works his ass for people who never appreciate it, but take it for granted.

You Know It Is Bad When

You know it is bad when you wonder if life would have been better for you and your children if you'd had not stopped your wife from committing suicide a year and a half ago.

If it came down to it, I know I would intervene and jump through all of the hoops all over again to save her from herself, because that's just who I am.

But sometimes, when I'm away from home for several hours and she's been quiet rather than sending me texts, I wonder if she has done herself in intentionally or accidentally, and if that would be so bad. My primary concern about that would be the kids being there and being distraught, or that she would have harmed the children.

We are getting already, and seeking the help of more, professionals. This is not how I wanted to spend my time and money, but this is how it is.

A Game Wives Play

Step #1: Deprive your faithful husband of sex. (Note the word faithful. Some husbands go and get it elsewhere.)

Step #2: Push his buttons - you know, the ones that get him angry.

Step #3: Chastise him for being grumpy or losing his temper, and cite his lack of cheery perfection as a reason to not "reward" him with sex.

Step #4: Repeat

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. "1) But that doesn't make sense. 2) That means she goes without sex, too, and women like sex, too. 3) You must be a bad lover or repulsive."

Let's take those in order.

1) Women don't have to make sense.
2) There are plenty of prescription drugs that suppress normal sexual desire/enjoyment, and some women like other things more than sex.
3) Yeah, that's what I'd be thinking if it weren't for all of that ever so wrong fornication I perpetrated in my wayward youth. Actually, the women were always or almost always the initiators, but I was certainly a willing participant. Those women really seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, if not more.

What does she have to lose? She knows I'm not going to stray. She knows she's going to have her bills paid one way or another. It probably hasn't occurred to her that although she wants her children to grow up, avoid fornication, and marry, I can't, in good conscience, encourage my son to marry. Not with my own experience, not with those of other men I know, not unless the laws and culture change to be less hostile to husbands.

Friendship or Flirtation?

My standard Dr. Laura disclaimer applies. I love the show, love her, love her books, agree with her 98% of the time, and think she’s helped me and millions of other people. If I didn’t listen to every minute of her show, I couldn’t write posts like the ones before.

 
During Dr. Laura’s third hour yesterday, a woman called who said she works with her husband and went on to say that she’s have a problem because her husband has developed a friendship with another female cowoker. The caller went on to say that he texts that coworker and they hang out together during many of their breaks. Rather than first asking, "Why isn’t he hanging out with you on break?" Dr. Laura jumped in and said it was a flirtation, not a friendship.
 
Uh, really?
 
Based on texts and spending break time together?
 
What if the coworker had been male? Would Dr. Laura declare the husband gay?
 
During my wayward youth, at one job during a certain time period, I had three peer coworkers. All three were heterosexual females. I did end up having a fling with one. The other two, with whom I was working before the one with whom I had a fling, I also texted and spent break time with. Hell, we went to Happy Hours and I was in their homes and did other things together. NO FLIRTING. I did not have designs on either of them (even though they were attractive enough) and as far as I can tell, they had no designs on me, and there were plenty of times they could have flirted if they had wanted. There was no flirting. (Now, as I’ve said elsewhere, if those women had offered themselves to me, I would have taken them up on their offer, but that had nothing to do with them being coworkers or the amount of time we’d spent together. That’s normal male behavior without abiding strong convictions to do otherwise. Should a man never have waitress serving him in
a restaurant because he’d be willing to have sex with her?)
 
Now, one could say the texting and hanging out are inappropriate for a married man. But to categorize it as flirting automatically… nah.
 
Regardless, the older, wiser me now would tell the guy not to interact with women in the workplace/company any more than absolutely necessary, and to keep that interaction to the driest, dullest minimum required by the work. And these days, if you read my blog, you know that my advice would be not to have married in the first place.
 
Now, how many people are going to live the way? Not many. We have the reality of the sexually integrated workplace. Are men to treat male and female coworkers equally or not? Does getting married mean a man is no longer permitted to network or form friendships with approximately half of his coworkers?

This is not the 1950s. No, I’ve never thought “This is the 21st century” is a valid argument to ditch morality, and I can like the roles, values, morals, and manners of the 1950s as much as the next person, but the reality is we now have a sexually integrated workforce, and the reality of today’s professional climate often means socializing is necessary for surviving and thriving as an employee. On the other hand, it is dangerous for men (unmarried or married) to do so. Unless he is self-employed, a man is at risk either way. Or am I missing something here?
 
Then the call went on, with Dr. Laura telling the caller her marriage is already down a hole because:
 
"He was willing to have you be upset not to lose her."
 
Hmm.

1) How many times have we heard that being upset is a choice?

2) Where is the line drawn on something like this? If a wife says, "I don’t like that male friend of yours" and can’t give a rational explanation as to why, is a husband obligated to drop that male friend rather than being "willing to have you be upset not to lose [him]"? What about where he works? The car he drives? The clothes he wears? The books he reads? The approach of "if it upsets your wife, then it is wrong" is only a good and hard rule if you’re wife has perfect judgment, instincts, security levels, etc. Guess what? The only being there is whose upset reaction is always the determining factor is God. I feel like advising men in such situations to randomly pick something the wife does and insist she stop, because it bothers you.

 
"The minute a man is willing to hurt his wife to hold on to another woman, it’s an affair."

Yes, depending on the definition of hurt. Otherwise, this kind of rule could lead to requiring a man to be a hermit.

Letter Writer Didn't Get It

The woman who sent this recent E-mail of the Day to Dr. Laura misread/ignored a very important word said (written) by a man. Hard to believe, I know. I have no idea if Dr. Laura (who is on vacation) actually read this letter herself or not.

I know exactly where the man being quoted is coming from. Whether you, dear reader, agree or not, the man is operating under the very common understanding that men want sex, and women want attention, a bill-payer (at least to buy dinner/entertainment/gifts while dating), a bodyguard, a chauffeur, and a stronger/taller person to do her bidding.

The woman who sent the letter starts off:

Dr. Laura,

It's soooo hard being a woman who is waiting out there.

By "waiting" she means not having sex until married.

When the rest of the women give it up for free, the men won't even give me a chance.

The phrase "for free" implies she expects to get paid for sex. "Without commitment" might be a better phrase, but I could quibble with that one, too. She's right, though, that smart or even just lazy men are going to seek the path of least resistance to getting whatever it is they want.

Then again she might not be attractive.

Kid-Oriented Life

I've heard Dennis Prager talk about this. Somewhere along the way, we shifted. Even though so many children are dumped in institutions from the earliest ages because their parents won't change their lives for them, parodixically we have allowed kids to become our masters. When I was a kid, toys and other kid stuff stayed in our bedrooms or a designated playroom. Now they are cluttering our entire home. A parent might come to one of our games or school musical performances, now both/all parents are expected to come to all of those things every time. Kids used to have to endure adult conversations at the dinner table until the adults excused them. Good luck with that now.

And then there are the kid birthday party. Every kid needs a big party every year. And the parents of the invited kid guests have to be there, too.

So on a Saturday morning, I end up at a 2 year-old's birthday party. There was no need for me to accompany my wife and kids there, but my wife is trying to make the mother her best friend, and so of course I am supposed to come along to help keep our bratty kids in line and because my wife hopes I will be good friends with the father. That way I'd have even less ability of keep my old friendships going. Not that I have time for them anyway, with my family obligations. But since my wife didn't pick them, she'd just prefer I not have them. They aren't clones of us, and so she can't relate.

It was really interesting to have my wife shower ahead of this party, and to get out of bed and get ready to go much easier than with just about anything else. These days, she usually sleeps as much as she can as long as I will be around to keep the kids from killing each other. And she doesn't seem to care to shower on account that there might be the possibility of making love. Her choosing not to shower in a given day is a big sign to me that she doesn't want me. I tried to take advantage of her having just showered, but she was tired. Of course.

This is definitely worth over half of everything I'll ever earn. Isn't it?

Bad Things and Theism

I don't know if anything has happened to Dr. Laura in her personal life, beyond seeing a friend of hers die not too long ago after an awful fight with cancer (which can certainly be devastating to see), but now she has gotten to the point of saying she is offended by the Theistic beliefs and related prayers of her callers. I was just listening to the second hour of yesterday's show and she had to make a point of it when a caller who'd witnessed a death as a result of a car accident says she now prays before driving.

Dr. Laura has a skeptical background, but went through a time of being an observant Orthodox Jew before giving that up after, she has explained, being disillusioned by some others in that community. She also has said she had talked with a famous Christian minister who told her to think of the Gospel as a metaphor, from which she inferred that even he didn't believe miracles were real in the literal sense. (Connecting the dots to other things she has said, I suspect that minister is Robert Schuller, which would not surprise most Christians the way she thinks it would.)

She encourages families to be active in their faith communities, preaches right and wrong as though there is an objective morality, yet has strongly implied she doesn't believe in an afterlife and continually expresses what appears to be Deism, if not Atheism, now to the point of, like I said, stating she is offended by prayers as asking Him to keep someone alert as a driver.

If there is a God, He can intervene in life. If there is a God who has called us to pray, what is wrong with praying for strength, alertness, etc. as long as one takes the reasonable actions they can? It isn't like the caller said she stays up for 72 hours before driving and prays for alertness. I realize the "IF" is a big one.

I will pray that Dr. Laura finds peace. I hope (another word she doesn't like to hear from callers) that doesn't offend her, because it is not meant as a dig. She has done so much good and I don't want to see her in anguish over what is wrong or broken in this life. Yes, there is much broken in this world. I am convinced God has provided a way to overcome that brokenness. If there was anybody who didn't deserve a painful and early death, it was the Jew we know as Jesus. Yet it is through that sacrifice we are reconciled to God, and we can look forward to the redemption of the world from sickness, suffering, and sin. That is not some wishful thinking on my part. It is a conviction based on consideration of facts, facts she can investigate herself if she so chooses. She may find a renewed passion for preaching the morals she does. After all, if there is no God concerned with what we do, and no cosmic justice (an afterlife involving rewards and punishments) then what objective reason is there for any given caller or listener or reader to put aside selfishness for the sake of their spouse, their child, or anyone else?

It's the Middle of February

Here we are again. It's another Valentine's Day.

Fortunately for me, my wife likes to celebrate a different day, as one of our anniversaries falls close to February 14.

It's my year to plan.

Hey, I know, how about we plan a nice session of "How Did Our Sex Life Deteriorate To Doing It Once Every Two Weeks and You Wanting to Get It Over With More Quickly?"

Ah yes. Probably has something to do with one or more of the many, many medications she takes.

Which is one big reason I didn't want a wife who needed such medications.

Hey, let's go out on a date and... talk about the kids. Because what else do we have going on in our lives?

KFI's New Host

KFI AM 640, a ratings leader in recent years in Los Angeles, is a talk radio station owned by Clear Channel, which is scores of billions of dollars in debt. Clear Channel just changed their Left-leaning talk station in the same market, 1150 AM, into a right-wing format. Rush Limbaugh is now on 1150 and will soon be off 640. To fill up the 9am to Noon slot, KFI will now have the Bill Handel show run until 10am and the Bill Carrol show will shift two hours earlier. But this will leave the 1pm to 3pm slot open.

As far as I know, KFI hasn't announced who will fill that slot. I've noticed the station has been trying hard to have "diversity" on the weekends, but what about during the week? It's all white males, mostly heterosexual with the possible exception of Ken (but since he doesn't talk about hi sexual orientation it really doesn't count) and he definite exception of the might-as-well-be-gay Bill Handel, who, by the way, is a Latino Jew.

So I propose they find for their afternoon slot a black illegal alien transgendered disabled lesbian Wiccan Green Party partisan. Who cares whether or not the show will be any good? They need diversity.

UPDATE February 11, 2014: They filled the spot with a couple of local television news folks. Mark Thompson, who's been appearing on the Tim Conway Jr. Show and filling in here and there (and who has quite the voice), and Elizabeth Espinosa. Thompson is not to be confused with the "Mark & Brian" guy. Thompson is also not to be confused with a young ample-chested woman, which is why he's no longer doing the weather on TV. I have nothing against these two, but I doubt I will be choosing them over Michael Medved.

Questions For Dr. Laura Schlessinger - 7

Read the introduction to this series here. This will be the last in this series for now. And there have been plenty of questions.

19) You say minors should not have certain tech things and then say your  generation survived youth without smart phones, tablets, and online  social networking. But generations before yours surived youth without technological/communications/media/social things you enjoyed as a minor. Shall we all live like the Amish?

20) You say grownups should not have personal Facebook accounts. How would they comment on your shows’s Facebook page if they didn’t? Are you aware that Facebook settings are customizable, so that, for example, only family has access to your personal Facebook page?

21) You say that a spouse who has not shared every password is hiding something they shouldn’t and/or is doing something unacceptable. Do you say the same thing about a person who does not always have their spouse present when they are in a therapy session? I realize that writing and other computerized activities are not the same as doing pushups when you’re on the phone with a show host, but they can be therapeutic.

22) How is it that interacting through online/telephonic communications is not a real relationship, but it is infidelity for a spouse to interact with someone else that way?

23) According to you, it is OK to fantasize, including about other people, when having sex. It is also OK to watch television, watch movies, and play board games. However, you denounce people who like fantasy in movies, video games, etc. and play video games in general as childish. What are the differences, other than your personal preferences?

24) I have heard you give what I would consider perfect answers to wives complaining to you that their good husband who does not neglect them views porn. However, when women call to say the same thing about their boyfriends, you tell them to dump him. Why is that? Are you just trying to save the boyfriend from becoming a nagged husband? Or is it that a married man is “entitled” to orgasms encouraged through visual/auditory stimulation because he’s paying for them, but the boyfriend is not, and thus it is morally unacceptable?