Unwed Mother
Baby Mama
Single Mother
Choice mother
Failure
The label is a matter of personal preference, but if you aren’t married to the father of your children and you aren’t a widow, you have no excuses.
For this you can blame feminism.
No, I don’t mean you can blame feminism for the fact that you have failed as a mother by severely disadvantaging your children. As I wrote above, you have no excuses for that. What you can blame on feminism is the fact that you have no credible excuse for the great harm you have caused your children. But I sense some skepticism on your part, so lets walk through the possible excuses. Unwed mothers are of course always chock full of excuses, so this is not a short list:
- I didn’t have any choice, I couldn’t [insert pathetic helpless woman excuse here]. Feminism is all about making sure women have choices. Women now graduate college at higher rates than men, and young women now out-earn young men. Women also have more choice than men regarding birth control and adoption. Women even have the hard fought choice to kill their own children solely at their own discretion, provided they do so before anyone sees the child’s face.
- I didn’t know I had choices. One of the excuses for unwed motherhood which holds a great deal of nostalgia is the idea that women become mothers without knowing they had a choice to. Tales of Happy Days past abound where women didn’t know that if they allowed a man to insert Tab A into Slot B, they could become pregnant. Frequent readers of this site already know I have a real weakness for the classics, but even I can’t say this one with a straight face. Feminists have been busily stamping out this particular patriarchal bogeyman with mass education programs for the last 50 years. If you didn’t hear the message, you simply weren’t listening.
- I was too young. Another classic, but this one went out of style with bell bottoms and tie-dye. Feminists have made sure that women feel free to delay pregnancy for decades after coming of age. They have been so successful, they are now focused on making women feel comfortable becoming mothers past menopause (H/T RL).
- I got bored and/or felt trapped! Don’t you want me to be haaaapy? I would love for you to be happy. Even more I would love for you not to send your kids through the meat grinder. You are the only one who could choose which man to marry. It was your responsibility to choose one who you could be happy with, and failing that, choose to be happy with the one you chose.
- The father wouldn’t marry me. Feminism removed much of the stigma for promiscuous women (spelled S-L-U-T), but it didn’t make you have sex with men you weren’t married to. Unless you were actually raped (no, not the new feminist definition of rape, but the real kind), you made the choice to have sex with a man you weren’t married to.
- The man I chose to father my child is an addict/abusive/irresponsible. See above. You are the one who chose him. As with the excuse that women didn’t know how babies are made, feminism has been very successful in removing all plausible deniability from this excuse as well. If you didn’t know that some men are like this, and that they posed a great risk to you and your children you simply weren’t listening. Feminism accidentally made this even worse. Pickup artists are a natural byproduct of the feminist war on the stigma against sluts (see pathetic excuse #5 above). Thanks to pickup artists, we now know that women are actually sexually attracted to men with these negative traits. Before you could blame a bad relationship with your father, or just men in general and no one would know your secret. Now everyone knows you were actually just thinking with your genitals. Ouch.
- My mother set a bad example by having me out of wedlock or divorcing my father. Yes, it is true that one of the many ways you have failed is by making your grandchildren and even great grandchildren less likely to have a father as well. But you still made your own choices (see above). However, feminism pushed for all of the above empowering choices to be available to you and your mother, so you can blame feminism for that.
- I can’t possibly be responsible, don’t you know that I’m a woman? While it is true that feminism has crafted a culture where women have choices and men have responsibilities, the reality is that choices always come with responsibility. But deep down you always knew that, didn’t you?
- I didn’t know choices come with responsibility. Yes, feminism has a huge amount of blame here, but deep down you really knew better. I’m trying to help women better understand this, and this post is a step in that direction. You now have the choice to either admit the painful truth and help other women, or choose your own feelings over the wellbeing of other women and innocent children. I can’t make this choice for you.
See Also: Authority always comes with responsibility, whether you accept it or not.
I hear #8 the most. Not that I’ve ever impregnated a woman, but women have never told me our sex was consensual. It was always “my fault” we had sex. I “coaxed” her. She had no will of her own.
The label is a matter of personal preference, but if you aren’t married to the father of your children and you aren’t a widow, you have no excuses.
Maybe you should insert a third option in there–“your husband initiated the divorce”.
Otherwise, nothing to disagree with.
[D: See excuse #6.]
Maybe you should insert a third option in there–”your husband initiated the divorce”.
Lest anyone possibly forget – But, men do bad things, too!!!
Well Zed, there are a few women who posted here or are reading that are divorced because their husbands left them or because her husband had an addiction problem. Is it really appropriate to blame those women when they really had no fault and why do you get so defensive about it?
[D: See excuse #6.]
Seriously Dalrock? So she’s supposed to predict that her husband is going to turn into a drug addict or that he’s going to cheat or engage in other irresponsible behavior? Stupid feminism for not giving women magical powers!
I’m not being defensive, Chels, I’m being a smartass.
Don’t forget NAWALT, either. 😉
The point I am making is that the tired old excuses are worn out, so you gals better get to work coming up with some new ones.
@Chels
Men can typically tell the difference between a person who’s likely to do drugs and one who isn’t. This also tends to come out in conversation if you’re causal about it.
The flip side of that is that how is a husband to know if a woman is going to be “not haaaaapy” later in the marriage. Game is about the husband doing what he can to help with that. Before that, though…he has a responsibility to choose someone who won’t abandon him, or face the consequences. We all know what they are. The wife has the same responsibility…to select a person she can be happy with. Failing that, she has to do everything in her power to keep a marriage happy.
Chels, approximately 40% of children in the US are born to women that are not married.
Women initiate 60% of divorces (65% in the age 35 – 45 bracket if I recall correctly).
Given those two facts, I think that the example you are offering is very much the exception, not the rule.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here, but on the “excuse 6″… I hope you’re not suggesting that men don’t bear their own share of the responsibility in actually BEING addicts/irresponsible or what have you.
This kind of strikes a nerve with me since my father was quite the hypocritical philanderer. Everyone thought he was the image of a decent Christian man, and doubtless many people who know us still think my mother divorced him frivolously, not knowing how things really were. I found out about his numerous extramarital activities at the tender age of twelve, and it really broke my heart. The funny thing was, though, that even in his affairs (oh yes, I had the questionable privilege to get to observe a lot of those) he seemed very supplicating and beta, not any kind of cocky alpha pick-up artist at all. It was always elaborate schemes of drama and misery, him crying on the phone and sobbing distorted love-confessions to some woman or another… Weekend-long excursions from which he’d come back forlorn, with red-rimmed eyes, smelling of perfume, sometimes drunk or hungover… It seemed as though he was constantly looking for another woman to be emotionally co-dependent with, and that-somehow-felt even worse than him just seeking some variety on the side, which in itself was quite hurtful enough for a young girl to witness, not to mention how it must have been for my mother. My smaller siblings never found out about the affairs, as far as I know. Eventually they ended up divorcing, and I have to say at that point, it was already a pretty huge relief for me. Not for my siblings of course, I have to say..
Of course, it turned out my mother picked very wrong. Of course, it wound up affecting her children, one way or another. My father was a loving man, sometimes. He was a good man, in many ways. He had faith, and moral, and values, and a family – and HE chose to throw them away. Not my mother, not us children, but him.
I’d like that to be kept in mind when you go and point at “excuse 6”.
[D: I agree. The cheating/abandoning spouse is solely to blame for their own moral failing. This is separate from the responsibility we all have to make the wisest choice possible to be our future child’s parent.]
Ceer, if I remember grerp posted something a year or more ago about the difference between contentment and happiness. It was worth reading, as grerps observations tend to be. I can’t look right now, maybe later I can find it.
On the subject of Women not being held accountable/responsible for their actions/choices I found this comment interesting on AVFM website saying that PUA are actually holding Women to a lower level of responsibility than Children:
“Men in the seduction community frame women’s whimsical, immature, standoffish, selfish, weak, and stupid behavior as indicators of higher awareness, virtue, and social intelligence. For example,
• A woman can’t initiate and lacks conversational depth — The PUA interpretation: She is testing your ability to “plow through” and lead.
• A woman is prejudiced and rejects you based on some stereotype she is carrying in her mind — The PUA interpretation: She is picking up on some vibe that you are inadequate or weak. Women are masters at picking up on subtle cues, after all. In other words, you need to up your game.
• A woman can’t take responsibility for her actions and flakes on you — The PUA interpretation: You didn’t do enough to attract her.
• A woman is with friends who regularly cockblock — The PUA interpretation: You have to win the friends over (never mind what she thinks). So learn group theory.
• A woman loses interest soon after talking to you — The PUA interpretation: You didn’t stimulate her enough.
• A woman resists you — The PUA interpretation: She is testing you to see if you are man enough and skillful enough to break through her defenses.
• A woman acts unpredictable, whimsical, and immature — The PUA interpretation: Women are more “complicated” than men and there are numerous attraction switches you must turn on in order for them to want to be with you.
• A woman needs her friends’ approval — The PUA interpretation: You must get her friends’ approval.
Looking at these it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Women’s rotten behaviour is justified using some form of twisted evolutionary psychology argument, or deftly reframing the situation to always put the burden on the guy to get things done.
Now imagine if a child did some of these things. What would the interpretation be?
• A child can’t initiate and lacks conversational depth — Society’s interpretation: He/she isn’t mature enough.
• A child is prejudiced and rejects you based on some stereotype he/she is carrying in his/her mind — Society’s interpretation: The child must be taught not to judge people based on appearances, and learn not to stereotype.
• A child can’t take responsibility for his/her actions and flakes on you — Society’s interpretation: The child must be held accountable in order to learn to be responsible and respectful of others.
• A child loses interest soon after talking to you — Society’s interpretation: He/she has a short attention span (not a good thing).
• A child acts unpredictable, whimsical, and immature — Society’s interpretation: This behaviour is wrong and the child needs to learn to be more disciplined in life and be more respectful of other people’s time.
• A child needs his/her friends’ approval — Society’s interpretation: He or she has low self-esteem and hasn’t matured enough to think for him or herself.
It seems that less is expected from women than from children. That alone speaks volumes.”
I normally like your blog, but as a divorced mother, I’m deeply offended by this post. You have no idea what went on in my marriage, or why it ended. Nor do you have idea how my daughter has turned out. For every example of a “screwed up” child of divorce, I’ll give you 10 examples of spoiled rotten, entitled children from “normal marriages.”
@Chels
Here is the fundamental question: Is it a woman’s responsibility to choose a man to father her children who isn’t going to act that way?
More to the point, is this your responsibility when picking a man to father your children?
I’m saying it is. You are saying otherwise.
I shouldn’t have to point out that the same basic rule applies to men. I’ve been saying this to men since the very beginning, and men don’t have any problem with it. Even men who have been badly victimized by our incredibly unfair system generally acknowledge that they failed their children by not choosing a better mother. I’m not able to think of any exceptions here. Women have even less excuse, since the very traits they “accidentally” choose for their children’s father are alpha traits, and the law is designed to punish men for acting in this way.
Is it a woman’s responsibility to choose a man to father her children who isn’t going to act that way?
More to the point, is this your responsibility when picking a man to father your children?
I’m saying it is. You are saying otherwise.
Well, no, I am not saying otherwise. However, what I am saying is that shit happens/people change, and that a woman has no way to accurately predict it. For example, a woman has been married to a guy for 10 years, and then one day, he tells her that he doesn’t have time for a relationship anymore? How is she supposed to predict that he’s going to turn out to be a flake when everything was fine?
And I’m not making up the above scenario–one of my family friends has been with this guy for 10 years, and then one day he wakes up and tells her that he’s not sure of their relationship anymore, and that he wants “time to think” (what the hell does that even mean? some sort of guy language for “I want to end this relationship, but I want you to be the one to do it”?). They’re not divorced (yet), but she’s quickly getting fed up with his instability.
Are you really blaming the woman?
Cosing all of this. Just in very very very minority of cases the man is a real con artist that could cover himself enough to trick everyone and the woman before becoming an item.
For # 6 I recommend what I did. Ask a close male (preferably a relative) about the man in question before getting in too deep. Men are very good at spotting players and trouble in other men they meet. One of the reasons I kept my player friends close is because they liked me enough as a some sort of sister to warn me of guys that were up to no good. My hubby passed the test with flying colors and I couldn’t be happier. Of course I did my homework first and made sure he wouldn’t lie to me or had bad habits, all this are red flags usually ignored but they do say a lot about a man past and future, YMMV.
@Lisa
Being offended has nothing to do with the truth of the matter and won’t shut down the conversation. This is the Manosphere and logic and reason prevail here.
The sociological research has clearly established a link between social pathologies (crime, drug use, addictions, etc) and single parenthood. You are committing the logical fallacy of the hasty generalization: http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/hasty.htm
Leaving aside the question of whether single-motherhood is or is not a bad thing, I am detecting a Transatlantic difference, because I cannot think that I have ever heard an English woman make excuses for single-motherhood, indeed quite the reverse; they want it that way. Whether, of course, in the circumstances I want them, as a future wife or girlfriend, or merely see them as Pump-and-dump material is an entirely different matter.
A woman I was dating actually managed to not fit into any of these, though she’s the one exception I’ve encountered in nearly 40 years. According to her doctor, she shouldn’t have been able to get pregnant without serious medical assistance in the matter. She never worried about birth control when she was in serious relationships, and that was amazingly effective for 20 years . In her late 30s, she got pregnant while in one of those “fun for now but not marriage material” relationships they can be so fond of. He wanted her to get an abortion. She didn’t, because she hadn’t thought she could get pregnant in the first place, but also didn’t want any money from him.
@Chels
I’m not blaming the woman for this man’s choice to abandon his family. But I am saying she was responsible for picking a father for her children who wouldn’t do this. Adults have responsibilities. Even women. It sucks. Welcome to the world men have lived in forever.
Consider it this way: She had options when deciding who to marry. Did she sort the options available to her by stability (aka boringness) and marry the most stable man she could find? Or did she choose a man who she thought had the right balance of stability and attractiveness (beta and alpha), along with make compromises based on other desired traits (earning potential, physical appearance, intelligence, humor, height, etc). She and only she was responsible for navigating this very difficult and complex choice, and therefore she is responsible for the choice.
I don’t know any more than you have shared, but assuming the man was in fact very stable until all of a sudden he bolted, I have a great deal of sympathy for her. But to say that she wasn’t responsible is to say that you aren’t responsible for making the right choice. I won’t risk harm to your future children to avoid hurting her feelings. Will you?
I’m a single divorced mom, and I don’t feel a particular need to make excuses for that fact. My kids are good students, they’re good citizens, and they are doing well in life. There are no guarantees in life. You can meet a nice guy at church (as I did), marry him (as I did), and live together for a decade (as I did) before finding out that he’s inserting his penis in multiple women (as I did).
Thank god for feminism. Unlike women in other generations, I was the breadwinner in my family. I could leave without seriously compromising my children economically when it became abundantly clear that my ex had no intention of honoring his marriage vows (as I did).
It takes two people to make a marriage work. I was 100% committed to my marriage. I was a good wife and I’m still a good mom. My ex-husband was not committed to the marriage and chose to break his vows to me (and to our kids). I could not control his actions, but I could protect myself from the consequences of his behavior (I got to experience a year of STD testing, for one thing, to ensure that he hadn’t infected me with anything since he had unprotected sex with both me and the women he cheated with).
I don’t feel a need to apologize or make an excuse for initiating a divorce from a man who broke his marriage vows. Breaking those vows broke our social contract. I never dishonored our vows (which would be something worth apologizing for).
My biggest question in life at the moment: Why on Earth are women NEVER held accountable for excuse 6, when in my experience it’s the main one. These same women then blaming ALL men for their troubles when it’s entirely down to their choice between Thug A or Thug B.
I think this could help:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/excuse (Noun)
“an explanation offered as a reason for being excused; a plea offered in extenuation of a fault or for release from an obligation, promise, etc.”
You are always responsible for your actions. *Always*. While Dalrock comes off really blunt, it’s simply the truth: you made decisions and you bear the responsibility for them. If it didn’t work out, it means you made choices along the way that lead you to that position. You can’t escape your own fault in the results.
So, if a woman is not with the father of her children, except in the case of a widow, she bears the responsibility for her actions that lead to the situation. Dalrock is just saying you can’t make excuses for that. You are responsible for that. Which is a bit shocking to a lot of people.
Meh. Not your best work. Statistically, this is correct, but there are obvious exceptions.
To the women above who are offended, trust me on this, nobody would feel sorry for you if you were a man faced with identical facts. You’d feel lucky to have received custody of the kids, and you’d be told to think with your big head the next time you pick a partner.
I think what’s missing in regard to #6 is illness. There are illnesses and injuries (and subsequent treatments) that actually do permanently change a person’s personality. In some cases it’s the man who changes and then wants out. There is NO way any person (male or female) could predict those things. This is not a case of two people who have consciously changed not honoring vows.
I’m reminded if the friend who was married for 20 plus years until her husband was hit by a drunk driver and suffered a brain injury. It totally changed his personality; physically changed him into a different person. I suppose she should have anticipated that one, too, and then done what to physically prevent him from leaving?? 🙄 Using this “method” of thinking, it was her fault for getting into a relationship in the first place. After all, if she had never gotten married to begin with, she wouldn’t have then been attached to a man who had such a tragedy befall him.
Generalizations can be made, but intelligent people shouldn’t make absolute statements. There are *always* exceptions to the rule.
What’s interesting to me is that the grandmothers (the first generation of single mothers themselves in many cases) of all those unwed, single mothers who chose to keep and raise their babies are often the ones left to really raise the grandchildren. I wonder if that affects their perspectives at all…. (you know, spending your life railing against being in the traditional nurturer role and then when your own neglected child dumps a child in your lap- well, some might say that’s Karma, but it makes me wonder if the ladies in that situation can see it if for what it is).
We need to make it less profitable for single mothers to make money off the number of children they have. And, we need to have morals in society. Used to be, people thought about decisions because there were actual consequences to their behavior. These kids are missing critical pieces of “normal” psychological development because they lack critical attachment in their early years. (read Love at Goon Park and Monkey Wars to understand this issue)
I am absolutely not surprised society is where it is today. I think though, that there are still some folks out there with more traditional values, and that they are doing what they can to raise respectful, responsible, sufficient kids.
“but if you aren’t married to the father of your children and you aren’t a widow, you have no excuses”
What about single women who adopt?
“You have no idea what went on in my marriage, or why it ended.”
Women seem truly incapable of sustaining a conversation without personalizing every subject in discussion. This is an universal phenomenon.
“Nor do you have idea how my daughter has turned out.”
This woman somehow think your post is about her and the circumstances of her life!
@TikkTok
Yes, and the exception you provided is a good one. The problem is when dealing with someone who rejects the very concept of responsibility you have to be much harsher than with someone who accepts it; the irresponsible will always find an exception which they feel applies to them.
@Boner Stabone
Adopted children have the same needs as biological ones do. I could see a corner case where no intact families were available and one could argue that this would be better than not being adopted at all.
I’m not blaming the woman for this man’s choice to abandon his family. But I am saying she was responsible for picking a father for her children who wouldn’t do this. Adults have responsibilities. Even women. It sucks. Welcome to the world men have lived in forever.
Consider it this way: She had options when deciding who to marry. Did she sort the options available to her by stability (aka boringness) and marry the most stable man she could find? Or did she choose a man who she thought had the right balance of stability and attractiveness (beta and alpha), along with make compromises based on other desired traits (earning potential, physical appearance, intelligence, humor, height, etc). She and only she was responsible for navigating this very difficult and complex choice, and therefore she is responsible for the choice.
I don’t know any more than you have shared, but assuming the man was in fact very stable until all of a sudden he bolted, I have a great deal of sympathy for her. But to say that she wasn’t responsible is to say that you aren’t responsible for making the right choice. I won’t risk harm to your future children to avoid hurting her feelings. Will you?
Sorry to be so blunt, but Dalrock, you need to get off your high horse for a minute and be more realistic. Yes, a woman is responsible for picking the best man she can find for her kids. However, lots of women do this, and somehow, after a few years of marriage, the man has a change of heart and he walks away for whatever reason. People change over time and there are no guarantees, and yes, there are men that also walk away because they’re not “happy”.
And that woman I was talking about chose her current husband because overall, it fit her criteria for what a good husband would need. Their relationship started shaking when his business got off the ground, and he suddenly didn’t have time for her, and suddenly he wanted to be alone, and have “peace and quiet”. He basically told her that his life got “too complicated” for him to be able to handle a relationship. If you weren’t so self-righteous, you’d see that no, she wasn’t responsible for HIS actions, because she has no control over someone else’s actions. They’re not divorced yet, but she’s emotionally exhausted and has no idea what to do to get him back.
If your wife decides to leave you tomorrow or in a few years, is it your fault? I’d suppose you’d say that it isn’t because you made the choice that you thought was right then and it worked out for quite a number of years, so how are you to blame for someone else’s craziness?
Passer_By – ”Meh. Not your best work. Statistically, this is correct, but there are obvious exceptions.”
I must agree.
As a number of comments have pointed out, #6 is likely to have a significant number of exceptions. Of course, as you note:
”To the women above who are offended, trust me on this, nobody would feel sorry for you if you were a man faced with identical facts. You’d feel lucky to have received custody of the kids, and you’d be told to think with your big head the next time you pick a partner.”
Those women who are the exception to #6 might not be aware that there are also a significant number of men who’ve been blind-sided by a wife who completely changed after the wedding (some times right away, some times years later). And, in those situations, we also see a litany of pathologies on the part of the women – infidelity, drug/alcohol abuse, personality disorders, letting themselves go physically, and even just losing all respect for their husbands and becoming total shrews.
Men who end up either divorced from such women or remain in loveless bad marriages can normally expect to be told (by women especially) that they screwed up and chose badly in their spousal choices.
So, when men (in the Manosphere) appear unsympathetic to women whose husbands “changed”, it’s useful to bear in mind that men have become so used to being assigned the blame for having made bad choices that it’s understandable that they would like to see women judged by the same standard that was applied to them.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s just part of human nature.
I believe that if women (in general) would be less focused on playing for “Team Woman”, and would simply be more honest about the truly vile behaviors of some of the members of their gender in regards to those women who are the ones who f*ck-up their marriages, and therefore be more inclined to be sympathetic to the (ex-)husbands of such women; then men would also be more inclined to be sympathetic to women who’ve been on the receiving end of the vile and unfair treatment by (ex-)husbands.
It’s one of the real challenges in the ongoing “gender war” (to the extent that it exists) to try convince each side that mutual respect is important. It certainly doesn’t help that girls and young women are actively taught to disrespect and disregard boys and men.
To the women above who are offended, trust me on this, nobody would feel sorry for you if you were a man faced with identical facts. You’d feel lucky to have received custody of the kids, and you’d be told to think with your big head the next time you pick a partner.
In thinking about my ex-spouse, I chose someone who was a Sunday School teacher and to all appearances, a beta. I do think it’s interesting, however, how–regardless of his actions–it’s my fault for choosing him (lolwut?). After all, since he cheated, he must have been an alpha (predicated upon the belief that betas would never cheat, I guess?). I have close friends from college, good girls, whose husbands (that they met at a Southern Baptist college–nice guys all) seemingly lost their minds in their late 30s and decided that they’d missed out on all the fun to be had in the world, and abandoned their wives and kids. Are my friends, similarly, responsible for their ex-spouses midlife crises?
It seems to me that the thinking on this subject is based upon some flawed paradigms.
Further, had my ex-spouse sought 50/50 custody of our children, I’m almost certain that he’d have been awarded with this in court. He didn’t, though. I got 70/30 custody because that’s what my attorney asked for, on my behalf, and my ex did not counter with asking for the custody to be divided evenly.
I don’t know what state y’all live in, but in my state, there is no preference to the female spouse in a child custody settlement, unless she was a SAHM and provided most of the care for the children (something that the standard issue feminist you seem invested in attacking isn’t prone to do). If it’s a working mom and dad, the court is almost certain to award 50/50–if the father requests it.
[D: I call BS on the unbiased custody claim, but feel free to prove me wrong with a link to actual data. I shared national data here. If your state isn’t highly biased against father custody, it is in the extreme minority, and my readers would love to know.]
@ Dalrock
What would you say about parents who send their offspring at a young age (I am thinking 7,8,9, or 11,) to a boarding school – to live under a strict, frequently brutal and spartan regime in a dormitory of thirty, sixty, or ninety other boys or girls of their own age? – and should such people be allowed to comment on your blog. 😉
Dalrock, solving the energy crisis one divorcee spinning hamster at a time
And Dalrock, I’m not mentioning that woman just for argument’s sake, I would really appreciate any advice on what to do in her situation, because she’s emotionally devastated. She’s been with the guy since she was 18, he’s her first love, they were together for 10 years, but married for a year and a half. Luckily, they have no kids yet, but she can’t bring herself up to leave him because she still loves him a lot.
Dubious Wonder – ”In thinking about my ex-spouse, I chose someone who was a Sunday School teacher and to all appearances, a beta. I do think it’s interesting, however, how–regardless of his actions–it’s my fault for choosing him
I think that there are enough situations like yours that Dalrock’s #6 can be (somewhat) invalidated. Not all women can be said to have chosen badly when their husbands either effectively concealed their true nature, or if they radically changed at some point after marrying.
Lot’s of men also report that their wives did much the same to them. However, they tend to get little or no sympathy (especially from women), and are assumed to have missed “the signs”.
I’d think that you might be more sympathetic to men who’ve gone through situations similar to yours, but it isn’t always the case.
To his credit, Dalrock is equally unsympathetic to men who seem to be ignorant/ignoring of the danger signs in women they consider marrying. He’s even posted on how to “interview” for a wife, so as to be better able to tease out indications that a given women might not make a good wife. It isn’t as if he just picks on women.
Men who end up either divorced from such women or remain in loveless bad marriages can normally expect to be told (by women especially) that they screwed up and chose badly in their spousal choices.
My best friend from college is married to my former best friend from high school (I set them up). About five years into the marriage, she very selfishly cheated on him. He caught her, and they worked very hard to restore trust. On his part, I don’t think it’s ever been restored (going on 10+ years now since the act of infidelity). She hasn’t physically touched him in 5 years. He sleeps on a couch downstairs since she won’t allow him to sleep in the bed.
I have nothing but sympathy for him. To all intents and purposes, she was a “good girl” who everyone thought would be a good wife and mother. I had known her for years at the time they married, and I certainly thought she would be. My good friend, similarly, married her college sweetheart, only for him to jump ship from the marriage after 10 years and 3 kids, because he felt like he was “missing out.”
I just simply think it is extremely difficult to completely know someone prior to marriage; and even if you know them when you do marry, over the course of their lives, I have become convinced that people change. Especially during the late 30s/early 40s, people seem to go through some kind of weighing process in their head about their lives, and it seems like A LOT of otherwise moral people lose their goddamn minds. I used to look at my ex and think that, while he wasn’t perfect, I trusted him completely not to cheat on me, and that we were both committed to our marriage. Based upon years of living together and many, many conversations over the years, serving as Sunday School teachers together, attending church several times a week, doing couples bible study together, etc., I strongly believed that he saw marriage in the same way that I did–a lifetime commitment to working things out and monogamy. Clearly, he didn’t.
Perhaps I should have picked up on some of the unspoken cues in our marriage that he wasn’t the person I thought he was, but I think that the average person might have missed them, as well. Both my ex-spouse (and Val, my ex-friend) and my friend Lesa’s ex-husband looked externally like rule-followers with strong value systems and a Christian moral compass.
I think that some of y’all are overestimating the human capacity for future prediction. Humans are…unpredictable…at times.
Even the best ones can seemingly surprise you.
@Dubious
“do think it’s interesting, however, how–regardless of his actions–it’s my fault for choosing him (lolwut?). ”
That might be Dalrock’s position. Not mine – I think this post of his is a gross overstatement. I’m simply telling you that if you were a man faced with similar circumstances you’d get zero sympathy and would be told that you’re lucky to be rid of [her] and lucky that [she’s] not demanding support from you to boot. In other words, if you were a guy, whether or not it was you’re fault, you’d be told to buck up and accept the situation, move on and choose better next time. They might throw in a “you must have been doing something to cause this woman to do what she did”, although I suspect you probably get that same sort of nonsense occasionally (just not as often as men do).
“I don’t know what state y’all live in, but in my state, there is no preference to the female spouse in a child custody settlement, unless she was a SAHM and provided most of the care for the children ”
Well, that “unless” seems to describe a lot of the cases of the women who behave this way.
Haha, emotionally exhausted, “not enough time for her” heaven forbid he want peace and quiet.
She’s not haaaaaapy
@ Opus: someone had a few classes in Philosophy, lol.
@Dubious Wonder:
In your personal case, you probably didn’t have too much to do with the resulting infidelity, but you bear the responsibility and the consequences for the choice to marry the man. We all have to live with the mistakes we make, though Dalrock is more commenting on the public excuse making that happens.
As for your friends, if a major problem is husbands running off, inside a fairly specific social set, and given the actual rarity that happens, then the likely result is the socialization of the females in the relationships. To throw back to a point I made a few months ago around here, they proceeded to “Grind” their marriages down to the point there was actually nothing left. It’s a social pathology that can go through social circles (like divorce can). That speaks very badly for how they handled their relationships.
Haha, emotionally exhausted, “not enough time for her” heaven forbid he want peace and quiet.
She’s not haaaaaapy
WTH are you talking about? HE wants to leave, he’s the one that is not happy, he’s the one that feels suffocated all of the sudden and SHE is still with him, not knowing what to do so she can get her husband back.
[D: I call BS on the unbiased custody claim, but feel free to prove me wrong with a link to actual data. I shared national data here. If your state isn’t highly biased against father custody, it is in the extreme minority, and my readers would love to know.]
The data on child custody doesn’t reflect what I’m saying…only what is ultimately rewarded by the court. My attorney, who handles a lot of the divorces in my relatively small community, told me that he was surprised that my ex didn’t counter with 50-50, but that most men didn’t–in his experience. If he’d asked for it, he’d likely have gotten it.
I think the issue is not that the laws/courts are biased in favor of women, but that men often don’t pursue getting an equal share of custody. Another strike against men is actually a result of conservative social behavior. Stay at home mothers are more likely to be rewarded with a greater share of custody, AND to receive alimony. Working moms (evil feminists, like me) are less likely to get those things. In my case, I pay the majority of costs for the children even though I have them 70% of the time, because I earn more than he does by a substantial margin (it is entirely income-based). So, our no-fault rules in my state (Florida) actually penalized me financially, even though it was his chronic cheating that doomed our marriage.
@ Dalrock- Right. I think the point for me is responsibility goes both ways- and given the society we live in, there is tons of blame to spread around.
When you have absentee parents, there is a perfect scenario for lack of consequences.
When you have schools that aren’t allowed to grade because it might “hurt” someone’s “self esteem,” it’s clear to me that the whole thing is jacked up.
Did it start with feminism? Maybe yes; maybe no. If feminism is solely to blame, one could counter that roles would have entirely shifted (and in some cases, dad is staying home with the kids, although I still have a hard time figuring out how he’s breastfeeding them ;)) and that men would have stepped up to fill the gap and be the responsible parent.
@Dubious- I am also in a state where the father has equal chance of getting full custody, particularly if the mother works outside the home. All marital assets (houses, often time the cars, even) are divided 50/50. If the mother was at home with the kids, the husband has to pay support for a period of 5 years if the mother needs time for education, unless other arrangements are made.
In our circle of folks we know, there have been numerous instances where the mother left the marriage and the children behind; after 10 years +. On the other side of the fence, I have seen marriages of Christian couples with teenage children who had very traditional roles and responsibilities, only to have the father leave the marriage after infidelity. And these folks by-in-large were 40ish; the ones where the wife leaves seems to be 30ish. Fwiw.
I’d be interested to know the type of church setting Dubious Wonder was in. Not all church folk are equally doctrinally Christian, many are surface-only cultural Christians. Not the same and something you very much can determine before marriage.
I like how whenever the women get criticized, they always blow up in a puff and blare off with the NAWALT. I mean if you really don’t like what Dalrock is saying, don’t read his blog. The choice and responsiblity for the choice, like all things in life, is yours. Dubious is the perfect example of females thinking they’re beyond reproach. Move along sister, no sympathy for you here.
It’s interesting seeing how the word “responsibility” is being equated with “fault” (and by a lot of the women commenting, it seems)…
Also, I have to point out that a woman earning the majority of the income for the family is effectively pushing the line on male headship, in a general sense. Now if the man is injured or in some other wise incapable of provision for the family, that is quite different. But if a guy making 20k marries a lady making 80k and they are both claiming to be Christian, the lady will have to work harder to demonstrate and live a life of submission to her husband’s authority. It sucks, but it is a biological and psychological reality.
The more Ms. Wonder posts, the more she shows she is not an exception at all to rule #6.
I’d be interested to know the type of church setting Dubious Wonder was in. Not all church folk are equally doctrinally Christian, many are surface-only cultural Christians. Not the same and something you very much can determine before marriage.
Southern Baptist. I think you’re going to have difficulty suggesting that they aren’t doctrinally Christian. Further, I think my post makes it clear that we weren’t “surface only.” He was deacon for much of our marriage, I was a Sunday School teacher for almost all of it.
@ Looking Glass
I cannot understand your reference to my having had classes in Philosophy – unless it concerned the use of the word Spartan. If so, I was thinking of my own childhood and my little brother (and many like us). My point was a serious one. This: If having a single mother is not very good, is it not, rhetorically, infinitely preferable to spending months away from home in an organisation essentially indistinguishable from a Borstal [the name of prisons for children in England] or Orphanage.
@Dubious Wonder
I have a great deal of sympathy for him and for you and women in your situation. As I mentioned in my comment to Chels, men in this situation almost always acknowledge that they failed to choose well. In fact, I can’t recall one who didn’t. The problem is our sympathy for women has made it impossible to state the truth. Women like Chels are being told they aren’t responsible for picking a man who won’t abandon her or her children, or who won’t cheat on her. She has all of the power to choose, so she is responsible for her choice. She and her children will very likely suffer if she doesn’t understand this. This isn’t kindness.
More importantly, this isn’t a hypothetical. Our eagerness to avoid hurting women’s feelings has resulted in tens of millions (or more) of children to be greatly harmed. I’ve shared the stats on out of wedlock birth and divorce following birth in a separate post. If we won’t hurt some people’s feelings to speak the truth now, then when? Do we need to wait until 70% of all children are born out of wedlock?
I have two responses to this:
1) It looks like far less of an accident when one makes the exact mistake they most wanted to make. Alpha men are exciting and attractive. They are also far more likely to cheat, abuse, become addicted, and walk out. In some cases this wasn’t very obvious, but in many others it really was if the woman had wanted to see this.
2) Even in cases where the man wasn’t obviously a high risk for excuse #6, as I mentioned to Chels the woman had options and made trade offs. She made a risk/reward decision, and unfortunately the risk showed up. She was the one in a position to reap the rewards, and she made the decision. Who but her can be responsible for her choice? How can we possibly counsel young women who are making this choice today if we don’t acknowledge this?
Dubious Wonder – ”So, our no-fault rules in my state (Florida) actually penalized me financially, even though it was his chronic cheating that doomed our marriage.”
That’s true of all no-fault divorce laws – the more responsible party will usually come out feeling like the loser.
However, I think that this statement of your’s need to be “unpacked”:
”I think the issue is not that the laws/courts are biased in favor of women, but that men often don’t pursue getting an equal share of custody.”
What you may not be aware of is that when husbands do contest for joint custody, many woman will respond with false allegations against him (DV, sexual assault, child molestation) in order to gain the upper-hand. A lot of men are already aware of this (or are warned by their attorney’s) and if they don’t have thousands of dollars to defend themselves against the potential charges, they often are intimidated out of pursuing joint custody.
So, yeah, it is that the laws/courts are stacked against men. A woman’s allegations will almost always be treated as legitimate, and the man is left fighting an uphill battle. Many woman don’t follow through when criminal charges are brought against their soon to be ex-husbands (and prosecutors routinely decline to file such cases), but the damage has already been done in the eyes of the anti-male biased (Anti-)Family Courts. Very few men who are thus accused, even those who are ultimately vindicated and exonerated of the charges, ever receive justice in the form of equal custody. The misnamed Family Courts are in no way beholden to the edits of the Criminal Courts.
Also, I have to point out that a woman earning the majority of the income for the family is effectively pushing the line on male headship, in a general sense.
Really. Scripture and verse, sister, to back up that claim.
A Lady “Not all church folk are equally doctrinally Christian, many are surface-only cultural Christians.”
Thus the more useful term “Churchianity“. or, at least more useful to an ex-Churchian such as myself.
Well I would like to congratulate dalrock for this article. This is he kind of writing that seperates the women readers who are interested in mra and which are simply here to spin their hamsters and get all tingly. By making an article so inflammatory, so forceful, and yet so true, it serves to separate the genuine readers from well…. The comments thus far.
My best friend from college is married to my former best friend from high school (I set them up). About five years into the marriage, she very selfishly cheated on him. He caught her, and they worked very hard to restore trust. On his part, I don’t think it’s ever been restored (going on 10+ years now since the act of infidelity). She hasn’t physically touched him in 5 years. He sleeps on a couch downstairs since she won’t allow him to sleep in the bed.
I have nothing but sympathy for him.
Fascinating.
I don’t.
Dude got cheated on, he took her back, and than let her kick him out of bed, makes him sleep on the couch and hasn’t physically touched him in 5 years? That’s not a marriage!
He’s in a prison of his own making.
He should kick her the fuck out. But than, it’s obvious to anyone who understands gender dynamics what happened here. He became uber-beta, she lost all attraction for him, and cheated on him with a man who made her tingle. For whatever reason, she decided to stay married in the legal sense, but other than that how could anyone consider 5 years of forced celibacy and sleeping on the couch “marriage?”
Even in cases where the man wasn’t obviously a high risk for excuse #6, as I mentioned to Chels the woman had options and made trade offs. She made a risk/reward decision, and unfortunately the risk showed up. She was the one in a position to reap the rewards, and she made the decision. Who but her can be responsible for her choice? How can we possibly counsel young women who are making this choice today if we don’t acknowledge this?
I don’t believe that I was counseled much on this topic, aside from being told to marry within our church. I think the overarching assumption in that era was that being a Christian/Southern Baptist would trump other issues. In other words, in those days, I truly believed that Christians were more likely to succeed at marriage than other people because of our moral compass.
I understand fully that I had no idea what I was looking for in a potential spouse, aside from the man being a Christian. Insofar as it’s possible, I’ve spent a lot of time with my kids talking about actions/consequences and critically examining other people’s behaviors for cues about their characters. We do this in regards to their friends, but it has major ramifications in choosing a spouse. My daughter is 18 and has dated some. She has better taste than I did, at her age. I hope that at least some of her good judgement is because of the many conversations we’ve had about worthwhile traits in men (and the types of men to be avoided). I’m pretty candid with my kids about dating/marriage, in a way that my parents weren’t really candid with me (and probably never knew they needed to be).
Unfortunately, my daughter has learned a lot about men by watching her dad’s behavior since the divorce (it hasn’t improved much).
Dalrock, stop using me as an example to “prove” your nonsense, because if I was to listen to you in this case, my only option would be to become a nun and not be with any guy. Marriage is a risk, some with higher or lower risks, but the risk is still there, and there are NO guarantees that a man won’t leave me after an X number of years.
Same goes in your case, your wife could leave you too or you could leave her, I don’t know why you think you (or your wife) is exempt from this little crusade of yours. Hmmm, life of singleness to counteract any risk! *rolls eyes*
Ughhh, usually I like your posts, but you have no idea just how arrogant/self-righteous you sound right now.
She’s been with the guy since she was 18, he’s her first love, they were together for 10 years, but married for a year and a half. Luckily, they have no kids yet, but she can’t bring herself up to leave him because she still loves him a lot.
Any changes in relative SMV going on?
Especially during the late 30s/early 40s, people seem to go through some kind of weighing process in their head about their lives, and it seems like A LOT of otherwise moral people lose their goddamn minds.
It’s not that uncommon because that time period is seen by many as the “last chance” to “do something else”. It’s selfish and irresponsible, but it is what it is.
I also agree that people can and do change over the course of a marriage. The most successful marriages navigate these changes well, but often that isn’t possible because the changes are either (1) moving one person away from the marriage (even in seemingly innocuous ways) or (2) are downright toxic to the marriage (and perhaps themselves as well). Change in marriage is inevitable but it’s not often innocuous.
I do think that you run a smaller risk of these kinds of change-ups happening if you marry slightly later on — early 30s, say, where both people have “had their run” in terms of things they wanted to do other than be married. We need to face reality here in that today a lot of people are going to want to experience X/Y/Z at some point in their lives, and for not a small number if they do not experience these before they are married, they will hit a point after they are married when they feel a ton of angst about having “missed out”. It’s also the case that people change dramatically during the course of their 20s in this current age we live in — a person at 30 often has a very different expectation, desired lifestyle and goals, and wishlist out of life than they did when they were 23 or 24, and if they have been married since 23 or 24, look out, because often the marriage is classed as part of the “old self”, and not the “newly aware” self of 30, with completely different goals, aspirations, interests, desires and, often, attractions. This happens to men and women alike, which is one big reason I am not an advocate of younger marriage — people change too much in their 20s, quite often.
Well stated, as always, slwerner.
Years ago I got very tired of the “always blame the man” practice that I was seeing all around me, and came up with the analogy of thinking about compassion as a commodity of which there is a limited supply. In a civilized culture in which most people live by civilized values, this is not a problem. If someone needs a little compassion, someone who has gotten some from someone else probably has a little bit to spare. A woman needs some compassion, and a man gives her some of his excess supply. Then, when his supply is running low, either that same woman or another replenishes his supply from her excess.
And, then along came feminism and convinced women that men had been oppressing and raping them since the beginning of time, and no man deserved any compassion from women, and women deserved every last little bit they could wring out of any man. And, slowly but surely, the supply of compassion that men had for women started to dry up.
How many times I have seen some guy blindsided by his wife or girlfriend – like the hippie-dippie wife of the Florida banker – and seen women try to turn it all into being HIS fault – “well, you just married the wrong woman!!!”
If Dalrock played this intentionally to rub into women’s faces the self-serving double standard so many of them practice – it was masterfully done.
Team Woman has been spending from their Social Equity Line of Credit for years, and unfortunately their credit line is maxed out. Guys who once would give them the benefit of the doubt and extend compassion to them have become hardened by the way the culture has been treated and it is quickly becoming every dog for himself.
If the women readers here don’t want things to get a whole lot worse, it would behoove them to take a look at the scorched social landscape which feminists have left behind them, and consider whether their actions are more likely to rehabilitate the social environment or spoil it further.
Anonymous Reader came up with a great analogy of the gender war being like the siege of Leningrad – feminists have gained all the ground for women that they are going to gain, men are now digging in, and the battle from this time forward is gonna be pretty bloody. https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/why-wont-these-peter-pan-manboys-man-up-and-marry-aging-flighty-selfish-career-gal-sluts-already/#comment-16822
It will be much easier to convince men to play nice if they have not been pushed totally against the wall.
Dude got cheated on, he took her back, and than let her kick him out of bed, makes him sleep on the couch and hasn’t physically touched him in 5 years? That’s not a marriage!
He’s in a prison of his own making.
He should kick her the fuck out. But than, it’s obvious to anyone who understands gender dynamics what happened here. He became uber-beta, she lost all attraction for him, and cheated on him with a man who made her tingle. For whatever reason, she decided to stay married in the legal sense, but other than that how could anyone consider 5 years of forced celibacy and sleeping on the couch “marriage?”
He would be severely financially penalized if he divorced her. He lives in California. He’s been advised by his attorney that she’d be entitled to half of his assets, both personally and from the start-up company that he founded during their marriage.
I hate no-fault divorce laws, frankly.
Yeah, wow, Dubious Wonder is just another Christo-feminist. Dalrock wins again. She is not an exception to rule #6. But you know, Churchianity does hurt people, as it hurt Dubious and her family. The idea that doing some surface ‘good’ things means you are good really bites ppl in the butt over the long haul.
NEVER let your wife make you sleep on the couch. My wife and I had a couple of bad arguments a few years ago. SHE spent the nights in the spare bedroom. My teenage daughter said “I thought the man slept on the couch”, to which I replied, “not in this house”.
TikkTok – ”I have seen marriages of Christian couples with teenage children who had very traditional roles and responsibilities, only to have the father leave the marriage after infidelity.”
[Okay, this sounds ominously like a situation I was close to (a guy who is now my ex-friend for having left his wife and four children for is assistant at his business), so I have to ask: Was this in the Denver Co, area, and the initials of the spouses D.E. and T.E.?]
”And these folks by-in-large were 40ish; the ones where the wife leaves seems to be 30ish.”
There might be something to this observation. It certainly fits with some situations I’ve seen.
[D: The data and the theory both back this last observation up. Women commit divorce theft when young, men when the wife is older.]
Dubious Wonder clearly believes or believed that Churchian morality was the same as Christian faith, and that does suck, that the distinction is not driven home properly for women and men.
@ Brendan
Nope, no changes, they’re both pretty much the same.
He would be severely financially penalized if he divorced her. He lives in California. He’s been advised by his attorney that she’d be entitled to half of his assets, both personally and from the start-up company that he founded during their marriage.
I hate no-fault divorce laws, frankly.
I do too….but 5 years of sleeping on the couch? You can’t put a price on such a miserable existence. Dude should be carefully planning an exit to minimize his losses…but he does need to get out. He could just sell the company and give her half of the sale, or offer to buy her out, or SOMETHING. How could any man tolerate such a situation? 5 YEARS?!?!
He’s too afraid to make a stand and make the hard decisions to live a better life.
Where it me, I’d walk from the money. Cut my losses. Living like that is FAR worse than simply losing money.
Yeah, wow, Dubious Wonder is just another Christo-feminist. Dalrock wins again. She is not an exception to rule #6. But you know, Churchianity does hurt people, as it hurt Dubious and her family. The idea that doing some surface ‘good’ things means you are good really bites ppl in the butt over the long haul.
Thanks for conceding so articulately that there is no scriptural support for your claim that a wife earning money = undermining headship. I appreciate it.
I do too….but 5 years of sleeping on the couch? You can’t put a price on such a miserable existence. Dude should be carefully planning an exit to minimize his losses…but he does need to get out. He could just sell the company and give her half of the sale, or offer to buy her out, or SOMETHING. How could any man tolerate such a situation? 5 YEARS?!?!
He’s too afraid to make a stand and make the hard decisions to live a better life.
Where it me, I’d walk from the money. Cut my losses. Living like that is FAR worse than simply losing money.
I agree. The last time he came and visited here (he lives in CA, we live in FL), he and I sat up until about 3 a.m. talking about his situation. I advised him to divorce her, and told him that he deserved to be happy. I understand, though. It’s not so easy when there are kids involved, and you know that your kids are going to be devastated by the divorce. You may know that a divorce is probably necessary, but you persuade yourself that you owe it to your kids to stay so that their lives won’t be disrupted. I did it for years.
Dubious Wonder – “…there is no scriptural support for your claim that a wife earning money = undermining headship.”
Perhaps not. But there is ample evidence, provided by the women who’ve been in the situation themselves, that when a woman (significantly) out-earns her man, she tends to lose respect for him.
Um, there is scriptural support. But the Bible is available online. You can look it up yourself anytime. It should be quite obvious that because men are commanded to support their families, it would be an issue if the wife is doing that in absence of the husband being sick or something.
Nope, no changes, they’re both pretty much the same.
In that case, my guess is that his perspectives have changed during the course of his 20s (you said she has been with him since she was 18, so I’m guessing now he’s around 30 or early 30s?). My guess is that your friend doesn’t fit into where he personally sees his life going and wanting to go — different from how he thought even 5 years ago. Yes, it’s selfish, but it’s likely not going to be easy to change. He’s basically rejecting her, and given that time frame, and the ages involved, it likely won’t turn around, I’m afraid.
@Chels,
Not to pile on but in your reference to women not knowing the husband is an addict or what not. Some of the time this is probably true for addictions that start later in life but how often do women end up with bad men by choice?
Some women see them as a project to fix or like that they are a bad boy etc. This is pretty clearly there fault for choosing damaged goods. If they k ew the guy was like this before hand or just didn’t bother with due diligence then they deserve the blame.
Although I am a big fan of grace and repentance and patience, I am also a big believer in owning your mistakes.
Jason
@ Brendan
No, there’s a 10 year age difference, he was 28 when he started seeing her–she’s now 28 and he’s 38, so it’s not like he grew up and changed, which makes it all more confusing…And he also told her that his life got too complicated and too busy for him to handle their relationship anymore and that she should leave him alone so he can think. What does that even mean?
@SL
“Perhaps not. But there is ample evidence, provided by the women who’ve been in the situation themselves, that when a woman (significantly) out-earns her man, she tends to lose respect for him.”
Yeah, but in this case he repeatedly cheated on her not vice versa. I suppose we could speculate that he did it because she lost respect and attraction for him and acted like sex was a chore, but she hasn’t indicated that their sex life had waned, and it sounds like his fidelity issues predated that in any event.
Um, there is scriptural support. But the Bible is available online. You can look it up yourself anytime. It should be quite obvious that because men are commanded to support their families, it would be an issue if the wife is doing that in absence of the husband being sick or something.
You made the claim, please feel free to bring the evidence that supports it. I believe that your position on this subject is extra-Biblical. In fact, the virtuous wife of Proverbs 31 was an earner and property owner (considered a vineyard and purchased it; sold woven goods for a profit).
I find it kind of appalling when people embroider the Bible to support their personal agenda. However, I’m more than willing to be convinced by any evidence you’d like to provide. 😉
“Well I would like to congratulate dalrock for this article. This is he kind of writing that seperates the women readers who are interested in mra and which are simply here to spin their hamsters and get all tingly. By making an article so inflammatory, so forceful, and yet so true, it serves to separate the genuine readers from well…. The comments thus far.”
Very true.
@Hravan,
I think it depends. If your mother had no idea going in that her husband was like that then yes I agree he is to blame.
But many women will either steal the man from another women or tolerate infidelities prior to marriage and women who do that have absolutely no excuse.
If you marry an addict or a cheater or whatever defect the guy has, well _you_ married him, don’t whine when he doesn’t change. If you ahead of time what the guy is like what excuse is there?
Jason
No, there’s a 10 year age difference, he was 28 when he started seeing her–she’s now 28 and he’s 38, so it’s not like he grew up and changed, which makes it all more confusing…And he also told her that his life got too complicated and too busy for him to handle their relationship anymore and that she should leave him alone so he can think. What does that even mean?
If he’s 38, and that’s what he’s saying, it’s something like a midlife crisis type of thing. It’s probably true that he has less time to manage a relationship than he used to, but normally people don’t push people away for that reason unless they want to use that as the stated reason for it, when in fact they want to push the other person away. When people (men or women) say they need space or time to think, what they are really typically saying is that they want space or time to think about leaving you, without you being in their face while they are doing it.
Either way, it isn’t good — he’s basically rejecting her rather clearly.
Zed – ”It will be much easier to convince men to play nice if they have not been pushed totally against the wall.”
Indeed! An in many arenas.
However, to her credit Dubious Wonder (of whom I was initially dubious), seems to be one of the more balanced ones. She obviously understands that both man and woman can be bad actors.
I’d draw the contrast between her and a hit-n-run poster from a week or so age, Jax, who did what many woman do in trying to use her supposed victimhood (also got the sh*t-end of a divorce) to try to seize the moral high-ground, and shut down dissenting opinion (as if only the experiences of a woman matter, and men who’ve had it just as bad or worse cannot possibly be expected to have anything approaching her virtual omniscience on the subject).
I’ve also seen numerous instance of women (typically when losing a debate regarding false allegations of sexually related crimes) suddenly try to pull out their “I was raped!” or “I was molested as a child!” cards to likewise shut down the debate they were losing.
Yeah.
What is probably going to strike some people as fairly strange is that I tend to be one of the hardest line MRAs that hang out here, but I have more sympathy for your story than most people here. It is fairly close to my sister’s story. She got married at 19, and for 37 years did her level best to be a good wife (and, from her brother’s perspective did a damn fine job of it) to a man who most of her family considered an idiot. He looked fairly good on paper when she married him, but his performance over the years did not live up to his prospectus.
After carrying him for 15 years, while he lost job and after job – some years making as little as $600 – he just got tired of being a bozo compared to her simple and quiet competence and dedication to her family. so he ran away.
I do not buy this concept that a person who lives in a culture which gives a lot of people free license to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it, is somehow responsible for the choices that other person makes and is therefore not allowed to feel disappointed or betrayed.
No Fault divorce laws not what they claim to be unless both parties in a marriage are equally sick of each other and want out. In all other cases, it works out that they are “punish the one least at fault and reward the other” divorce laws.
Dubious, while I’m no proponent of divorce, and I’m in lockstep with Dalrock here…what kind of damage is being done to the children by modeling for them such a dysfunctional “marriage” where Mommy has utter contempt, and Dad is a sackless wimp living on the couch?
Than again, it’s been 5 years. If he is waiting til the kids are 18 before splitting, I guess it’s understandable why he’s tolerating it. But still…
So what should she do? He also accused her of being too pushy, too aggressive and asking him too often about their relationship and asking him the same questions repeatedly (he said that he’s wary of that type of person). She has no idea how to behave, should she just ignore him and be cold/aloof? She’s pretty much going crazy, and has no idea what to do or how to behave.
Thank god for feminism. Unlike women in other generations, I was the breadwinner in my family
You thank Feminism for giving you the means to make money to survive your divorce. Consider that feminism also completely destroyed the cultural restraints on infidelity and any stigma for other women to have sex with your husband.
Do you really want to thank Feminism?
Passer_By – “but in this case he repeatedly cheated on her not vice versa. I suppose we could speculate that he did it because she lost respect and attraction for him and acted like sex was a chore”
I wasn’t referring to her situation specifically, but, what you’ve noted might be the case – whether or not she provides such details.
There was a news item a year or so ago telling us that research indicated that men who make less than their (female) partners where actually more likely to cheat than men who made more than their partners – as where women who made more than their partners. (sorry, don’t have the reference handy)
It seems as though the non-traditional earning imbalance might be a destabilizing factor in relationships.
Yeah, but in this case he repeatedly cheated on her not vice versa. I suppose we could speculate that he did it because she lost respect and attraction for him and acted like sex was a chore, but she hasn’t indicated that their sex life had waned, and it sounds like his fidelity issues predated that in any event.
We both started out making virtually nothing. I made more money over the long haul of our marriage because I am extremely risk averse, and was unwilling to change jobs (I’ve had 3 jobs in 20+ years–the last one for 12 years). If you work hard and stay with the same company for a while, your earnings are likely to surpass someone who continually hops from job to job. My ex’s employment habits weren’t very stable and he was constantly changing jobs or being fired (20 jobs in 12 years).
I didn’t set out to out-earn him, but because of his employment habits (he quit his job, for instance, a month before my daughter was born), there was a need for someone to hold stable employment. I don’t think I “disrespected” him during our marriage, but it is very hard to carry all of the financial responsibility in a marriage while your spouse does as he wishes. I’m not really sure how I was supposed to respond to a man who just up and quits his job before his wife goes on maternity leave, but I wasn’t happy about it. I was really worried and scared, because I was raised to be independent and take care of myself, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t — I had to rely on him. And, he just stopped working. I don’t remember grinding him down, but I do remember crying and being terrified about what was going to happen to our family. He got another job, and then within 6 months, he quit that one, too. That continued for most of our marriage. I don’t think he ever had a job for longer than a year, and some for a lot less than that. In that situation, you want your kids to have an income, insurance, etc., so I never really felt like I could quit. By the time we divorced, admittedly, I was super frustrated, but that was because of the employment issue and the infidelity.
When we were at church, people would sometimes say critical things to me about the fact that I worked. For instance, the husband of one of my babysitters was constantly making little remarks about the fact that if I loved my babies, I’d be home with them. He had no idea that I was working because someone had to. My ex would never defend me, or even take responsibility for the fact that he’d kind of put me in the position of having to be the breadwinner.
I didn’t stop having sex with him, he stopped having sex with me, for reasons that I don’t completely understand. Gosh, there were so many issues with our marriage, but for years, I just kept plugging at it and trying. I just kept thinking that if I tried harder, looked cuter, was nicer–it would get better. I became a really good cook, for instance, because he really liked good food. I can’t even believe, looking back, how hard I tried to please him, and how unsuccessful I was.
So, I guess that what I should take from all of this is that:
1) I wasn’t Christian enough for my husband to keep his dick out of other women.
2) I made too much money for him to keep his dick out of other women.
3) I didn’t have sex with him enough to keep his dick out of other women.
Apparently, it’s just too much to ask that he keep his dick out of other women. :shrug:
It seems as though the non-traditional earning imbalance might be a destabilizing factor in relationships.
Of course…it creates an emasculating relationship dynamic. And it’s not simply just “he can’t deal with her making more than him.” When she makes most of the money, she usually becomes the default leader in all other areas of the relationship. He doesn’t feel masculine in such a relationship.
Than he meets women who make him feel manly again because she’s not exercising power over him, it’s far easier for him to fall prey to temptation.
You thank Feminism for giving you the means to make money to survive your divorce. Consider that feminism also completely destroyed the cultural restraints on infidelity and any stigma for other women to have sex with your husband.
So, what you’re saying is that there was no infidelity prior to feminism? Or, that infidelity wasn’t widely culturally accepted prior to feminism? I think this is a history fail.
It appears that America has fallen a long way!
This is what Frenchman De Tocqueville had to say about American wives 180 years ago (Vol II Bk3 Ch X):
But no American woman falls into the toils of Matrimony as into a snare held out to her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught what is expected of her, and voluntarily and freely does she enter into this engagement. She supports her new condition with courage becasue she chose it. … Precocious marriages are rare. Thus American women do not marry until their understandings are excercised and ripened, …
No, I’m saying it was far less likely to occur. Women used to be reviled for being home wreckers. Now they’re celebrated, make guest appearances on Oprah and the View and in some cases become celebrities.
But I guess if being independent is your ultimate marker for success, you can thank feminism for both your career success and your spouse finding no shortage of willing home wreckers.
@Dubious
“1) I wasn’t Christian enough for my husband to keep his dick out of other women.
2) I made too much money for him to keep his dick out of other women.
3) I didn’t have sex with him enough to keep his dick out of other women.”
Actually, I thought my comment was defending you and preempting the counter-argument. At least that was the intent. Shrug.
I will say, however, that this compulsive job hopping thing is a new fact, and I’m a little skeptical that he didn’t show this type of impulsiveness and irresponsibility before you married. Women often seem to find that kind of thing charming and exciting at first. “He’s following his dreams” etc. But I obviously don’t know all the details.
DW – “So, what you’re saying is that there was no infidelity prior to feminism? Or, that infidelity wasn’t widely culturally accepted prior to feminism?”
I don’t think he’s implying that there was no infidelity prior to feminism, but there was a lot less of it, and yes, it wasn’t widely accepted the way it has become since feminist got the sexual liberation (of women) rolling.
If you’re trying to imply that there was just as much of it prior to 40 years ago, or that there was some wide-spread acceptance of it; I’d suggest that it is not Keoni Galt who has failed at history.
Well, look at Ms. Wonder’s hamster go. Her husband was in fact unstable and inconstant by nature, and then ended up demonstrating this sexually by stepping outside the marriage to find sex partners.
Again, the more she posts, the more obviously she reveals herself to be an example of rule #6.
Yes, he should have honored his marriage vows, but you knew you had an inconstant unstable fellow already when you married him. Your responsibility in this marriage lies in the fact that you chose to marry an unstable, inconstant guy. That he done you wrong is his fault, yes, it completely is his fault. Nobody is actually saying otherwise, you are making that out of whole cloth, as you are adding to the Bible on female earnings. Proverbs 31 in no way indicates that the wife’s earnings are what sustain the household. Projection much?
You are the poster child for this post! Feminism (“I was raised to be INDEPENDENT and RELY ON MYSELF”) is a big part of your woes. Because you were not raised to view marriage as a union of two fleshes into one, you chose a man who was never going to be one flesh with you, because you wanted it that way. You wanted independence and financial separateness from your spouse. It is unfortunate that you also suffered infidelity from your spouse, but it is not surprising when you were both living atomic, separate-flesh lives.
Keoni,
Irresponsibility of all kinds is celebrated these days, but I don’t blame that on feminism, per se. Quite a lot of social upheaval occurred in the 1960s, not all of it bad (i.e., civil rights).
I don’t know where you get the idea that being idependent is my ultimate marker for success. My parents raised me to be responsible and self-reliant, and to not rely on the government or anyone else to bail me out from bad decisions. But, I absolutely want to be married. In fact, I’m engaged to get married in 4 months to a man who is also responsible and self-reliant, and views marriage in the same way that I do. I am completely committed to marriage, I believe in fidelity and monogamy, and I honored my marriage vows every single day of my previous marriage, as I will in this one. If my ex had not cheated repeatedly, I’d still be married to him. I plan to be married to my fiance until one of us dies. That, frankly, was my goal with my ex. Unfortunately, he had other goals.
@Passer_By
I was thinking the same thing. She tells us he was a risk taker and that he was a leader (Deacon) in the church. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that other women found him attractive when she met him too.
If she could admit that in retrospect the signs were there and she was attracted to the very qualities which ended up making him a poor husband/father, then she could warn young women not to make the same mistake.
@Chel’s,
Honestly what should she do? Tell him to be a man and make a decision and live with the consequences.
I would actually suggest you get them Mark Gungor’s “Laugh Your Way To a Happy Marriage” DVD series and get them to watch it together. It can’t hurt.
I don’t envy the situation she is in, but on a brighter note. My wife decided she wanted a divorce about 2 1/2 years ago now, but we are working on putting things back together at the moment.
Whatever happens it will probably take time and probably hurt. But that is life.
Jason
If you fail to understand how the feminist movement unleashed female sexuality, you’re not paying attention to feminism…you’re following what’s called cafeteria feminism. Pick and choose the parts you like best and ignore the rest. One of Feminism’s fundamental principles is it’s emphasis on removing restraint, judgement and stigma from all female sexual behavior – including mate poaching.
Well, look at Ms. Wonder’s hamster go. Her husband was in fact unstable and inconstant by nature, and then ended up demonstrating this sexually by stepping outside the marriage to find sex partners.
Correct. I was willing to suffer through his instability because I committed myself wholeheartedly to our marriage, and I did not expect perfection from a spouse. Perhaps if I’d dated him longer before we were married, I’d have realized exactly how professionally unstable he was, but I did not (we only dated for 9 months). Of course, we were encouraged to get married by our church, because extended courtships amongst adults (I was 27 and he was 34) were considered to lead to sexual immorality.
you knew you had an inconstant unstable fellow already when you married him.
Actually, he didn’t demonstrate his professional instability until we’d been married about a year. For whatever reason, he was stable up until that point, and then things gradually went downhill.
I think that part of it was that he was wooing me, and of course, you want to put your best foot forward when you meet someone. It’s hard to maintain that behavior indefinitely, and eventually, his true colors showed through. But, at that point, I was married, with child, and leaving wasn’t an option.
Your responsibility in this marriage lies in the fact that you chose to marry an unstable, inconstant guy.
Absolutely. I own it.
as you are adding to the Bible on female earnings. Proverbs 31 in no way indicates that the wife’s earnings are what sustain the household. Projection much?
Feel free to support your claim that the bible suggests, IN ANY WAY, that women aren’t to be earners. Lydia, a deaconess in the early church, was also a wealthy business woman. Again, you have every opportunity to prove your point. Feel free to post the verses which support your claim. 😉 You are the one who is making extra-biblical claims, my dear.
You are the poster child for this post! Feminism (“I was raised to be INDEPENDENT and RELY ON MYSELF”) is a big part of your woes.
So, as a woman, I should have been raised by my parents to view other people as responsible to care for me?
Because you were not raised to view marriage as a union of two fleshes into one, you chose a man who was never going to be one flesh with you, because you wanted it that way. You wanted independence and financial separateness from your spouse.
Simply untrue. We had joint finances until we dissolved the marriage. Anything that I earned belonged to him. I gave myself to my ex completely. I understand that in your paradigm, it makes you feel more secure in your own marriage to throw these stones at me, but your claims are simply false.
I
Oh one thought, that I picked up from the afore mentioned Mr Gungor.
As a way to avoid making mistake #6. Actually two points now that I think of it.
1. You date the action but you marry the reaction. These are the things to watch out for when dating someone. See how they react to the unexpected. That is what they are really like.
2. Sex makes you stupid. I have exactly zero sympathy for women who end up with “bad men” (or men who end up with “bad women” for that matter) if they are having sex before they get married. There is research to show (and frankly it should be obvious from numerous anecdotes and observations in the world) that sex will make you over look flaws in a partner. When you are married that is part of the point of it, but when you are sniffing out prospective spouses, how can this possibly be a good idea?
Dalrock has taken some heat for Excuse #6, but I think a lot of credability for excuse #6 goes away if the women (or man for that matter) is sleeping with their prospective spouse before they get married.
I may be called a prude or what not for suggesting sex should wait till after you are married, but the data doesn’t lie. Want to make a good choice for a spouse? Then wait till after you tie the knot (And that included “not technically sex” activities as well, they have the same basic effect). You don’t get to claim “but I didn’t know” when the reason you didn’t know was because you ignored it while boinking your brains out.
Jason
I’m a man and actively support the MR.
I understand your accusation, women (and men) should be held accountable to breaking the social contract between a husband and a wife thus destroying a family, leaving children without the support they deserve.
However, there are no exceptions in your accusations, the blame is only placed on the wife, not the husband. The feminist society does the same thing, but to men. Going from automatically blaming men to automatically blaming women is not an improvement.
[D: You have misread me here. Men are absolutely to blame for their own actions in the cases you describe. But the assumption today is that women aren’t responsible for the choices they make. This is the problem. Quite simply it is cruel to women and children.]
@ Chels
“Dalrock, stop using me as an example to “prove” your nonsense, because if I was to listen to you in this case, my only option would be to become a nun and not be with any guy. Marriage is a risk, some with higher or lower risks, but the risk is still there, and there are NO guarantees that a man won’t leave me after an X number of years.”
Calm down, Chels. I agree with D’s #6. A woman is responsible for marrying a man who turns out to be an addict/abusive/irresponsible/cheater. Full stop. First, reverse the genders. Any man who marries an addicted/abusive/irresponsible/cheating woman is told it is is his fault/responsibility. The full weight of the blame and responsibility is placed squarely on his shoulders. Second, women fought hard for the right to make their own choices. With that right comes the responsibility. The ability to predict the outcome accurately has nothign to do with it.
Third, there are things a woman can do to assess whether a man is or might become an addict, abusive, irresponsible or a cheater.
1. Does he have a history of addiction? Did he go through recovery? How long in recovery? How did he do in recovery? What kind of addiction was it? Does he understand his recovery and what could jeopardize it?
2. Has he been married before? What happened to that marriage? Why did it break up? If he’s not been married before, what kind of women were his previous GFs/relationships? How long did they last? Is he over them? How did they break up and how did he handle it? Does he still talk about/think about/try to contact them?
3. What’s his employment/educational history? Any run-ins with the law? History of keeping or losing jobs? History of doing well at work, or is he a screwup? Problems paying bills? Problems managing his own money? Does he seem to be smart with money or does he screw that up too?
4. What’s his family history? Parents still living/married to each other, or divorced? Siblings? What’s his relationship with parents/siblings?
5. Does he have any male friends? What kind of men are they? Does he not have any male friends? If not, why not? Does he have a history of using the people in his life? Do people and friends go into and out of his life frequently?
6. Does he like to do things outside of work? Does he have some kind of release, a way to blow off steam other than internet porn? Does he have a hobby or a pastime?
7. How open is he with you about his past? Does he talk about things that happened to him, things he did, places he’s been, people he knew? Significant experiences/jobs/events/times in his life? Does he talk about what he likes and doesn’t like? Is he consistent? Have you caught him in any lies or half-truths about his life? Are there things he conceals from you or does not want to talk about? If so, what are they, and why does he not want to divulge them?
8. How does he react to stress? Joy? Happiness? Sadness? Loss? Anger? Overwork? Sexual frustration? Disappointment? Frustrated plans?
9. How long have you known him? No woman should marry a man unless she has known him at least a year, and preferably two years. In that time she has probably seen him at his best and his worst. A year to 2 years is a long time to play false with one’s life. His true colors will come out during that time.
@Dubious Wonder
First you told us:
Then you told us:
Then you told us (emphasis mine):
The only way I can read this with any consistency is if he had stable employment in the more than a decade he had been an adult before you met him, then suddenly changed. Is this the case?
@Jason:
“You date the action but you marry the reaction. These are the things to watch out for when dating someone. See how they react to the unexpected. That is what they are really like.”
Great formulation…I like that one. Plus, that is a great explanation of the bad choice I made in picking my ex-wife (actually, she was a great pick if I wanted an ex-wife…but I wanted a wife).
10. If he doesn’t have an addiction problem, consider this: Does he use illegal drugs at all? Does he drink to intoxication once a week or more?
I never said that women can’t earn money for their households because I know better than to rely on straw arguments found nowhere in the Bible. I specifically referred to the situation of the woman being the primary or sole breadwinner for a reason, y’know. You are spinning industrial-strength hamster wheels. I am impressed!
We all are aware that you wish to be seen as blameless and practically holy for marrying at all, but your own words describe the Churchianity and feminism that doomed you in your first marriage. I am sorry for you and your kids. I hope they do better.
Lets get real here for a moment. Women want the sexy bad boy that every other woman in the club burns for. Well, that sexy bad costs. He’s likely to flake, screw other women, and so on. Women don’t care about that, well OK. But if your husband screws around, or becomes a drug addict, you have only yourself to blame, because you picked him.
YOU. Not “it just happened.” You. You chose him over boring beta guys no other woman would burn for (so he would not even be able to cheat, much less want to). You chose the sexy, danger seeking bad boy and then complain when he acts like a danger seeking bad boy.
Theodore Dalyrmple offered to help reject his abused female patients potential suitors, on the basis of scars from fighting, tattoos, and tattoos proclaiming love of violence. The women laughed but went on choosing these men anyway. The violence, the danger, the other women were all part of that. Women just think their vaginas are magical and will “change” or harness that bad boy energy and danger. See: Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampire Diaries, nearly all romance novels.
Its as stupid as thinking a man can “save” a stripper.
If your husband divorces you for another woman, or the bottle, well it is unlikely that he suddenly got real handsome and irresistible, or that problem just “happened.” You knew it all along, and just assumed you had power where you didn’t.
You chose. Poorly.
I have re-read DW’s first post and all the comments and rejoinders, but, (as this thread has partially become about the rights and wrongs of her divorce) I would like to say, as is often pointed out on the net, male infidelity is nowhere near as serious as female, – you cannot cuckold a woman, neither does it mean Mr DW was not committed to his marraige or children or Mrs DW. I hear a lot of Hamster spinning – especially all that guff about STDs. The fact is, (in the eyes of God – as DW is an xtian) she made a vow, which she broke by her own free will – irrevocably. She deprived their children of a father and Mr DW of his wife and home (never mind money). DW was the bread-winner – an example probably of the fact that these days men cannot get jobs – thanks to the affirmative action of feminism. I say all this of course without the benefit of his side of the story. Reading her stuff you can see why men are going MGTOW. Having a sword of damacles hanging over ones head as DW had over her husband turns single guys like me into players. The slightest slip and he’s out. Nowhere do we hear of any feeling for her husband, or any empathy for him. It is all the usual me, me, me, me, me, what a wondferful mum I am, and I have the money to do it and the state to back me. DW destroyed the marraige, voluntarily. It was her choice.
Chels–
Maybe just maybe the fact that she’s had sex with him an average of once every two months for the last three years or blew up like a sea lion had something to do with that.
@dalrock
“The only way I can read this with any consistency is if he had stable employment in the more than a decade he had been an adult before you met him, then suddenly changed. Is this the case?”
And, furthering my point above, quiting your job as your wife enters maternity leave is an EXTREMELY narcissistic and self absorbed action. We also see that he hopped jobs constantly – extreme impulsiveness. As I understand it, these are two of the “Dark Triad” traits that women (especially young fertile women) find so inexplicably and frustratingly attractive, a fact which drives us responsible beta types batty. And those types of extreme personality traits don’t just pop up – they had to be there all along. So, it seems pretty likely that not only did he demonstrate these traits in some way before marriage, but she unwittingly fell for him precisely because he demonstrated those traits (which undoubtedly characterized in another way). So, yes, she really has to own her choices here, even though I was more in her corner at first.
@ Dubious Wonder:
“I was willing to suffer through his instability because I committed myself wholeheartedly to our marriage, and I did not expect perfection from a spouse. Perhaps if I’d dated him longer before we were married, I’d have realized exactly how professionally unstable he was, but I did not (we only dated for 9 months).”
It would appear you chose poorly, and too soon. This actually supports Dalrock’s number 6.
@OPUS
Actually, OPUS, I think you’re full of it on this one. Her husband was a royal jackass of a person – plainly narcissistic, irresponsible, etc. There’s no reason to feel badly for him at all. Unfortunately, like it or not, that’s probably a lot of what attracted her to him, even if she didn’t know it.
From Lisa
“I normally like your blog, but as a divorced mother, I’m deeply offended by this post. You have no idea what went on in my marriage, or why it ended. Nor do you have idea how my daughter has turned out. For every example of a “screwed up” child of divorce, I’ll give you 10 examples of spoiled rotten, entitled children from “normal marriages.”
Dalrock you are a cool motha fucka man,I laughed my ass off when i read that.
To all you divorced single moms upset at this post: we know that women and men both flake out of marriages. It’s just that men are more likely to be held accountable for it. There are not many places out there attempting to hold women accountable, this is one of the few. So, if you can, imagine which women might benefit from Dalrock’s advice, rather than assume that he’s talking directly to you.
A significant part of the problem is that young people don’t/often can’t choose very wisely for themselves. Hormones, a lack of experience, no real sense of how painful the negative outcomes can be – all can make for terrible decision making. Some people are terribly naive, some have an exaggerated view of humanity’s “goodness,” some are very adept at portraying themselves as other than they are. And some people are just flaky. I know it’s fictional, but look at the difference between Lizzie and Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice: same family, same upbringing, same cultural standards – very different outcomes. And they had chaperonage. We don’t even have chaperonage. It’s not just feminism that has hurt us all, it’s also the idea that young people are fully capable of making wise decisions and should be allowed a great deal of leeway to do so (see: every public school sex ed program in existence currently).
One of the terrible things we seemed to have absorbed is that nothing bad that happens is our fault. I’m working with my son on this concept now. He thinks that because he didn’t mean for something to happen, it’s not his fault. I regularly go over how choices have consequences and we have to look at what those may be ahead of time and also that admitting fault is not a weakness but a new jumping off point for strength. You can’t fix something until you know why it went wrong in the first place. Own it. Own. It. People will think better of you if you do.
Having said that, I think bad things to happen to good people, and I can’t say that, despite all of my efforts, they will not happen to me.
@ Jason
They’ve been having the same problem for over a year now :S In the beginning, he told her that he doesn’t love her anymore about 3 times, having changed his mind every single time. Then he told her the same thing that he’s saying now–his life is too busy and doesn’t want to make her life miserable, that he doesn’t want to be with anyone at the moment, all he wants is to be left alone by everybody because he’s suffocating. For a few months, things got better and now his father got sick and he started pulling the same crap on her. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster for her, and she doesn’t know what to do; she tried everything that she thought would work. He now says that he loves her, but he doesn’t want to be in a relationship. Why doesn’t he just leave?
Hahahaha. My dad is sick = pulling crap on wifey. What does a plane ticket cost to fly knuour fantasy land chels?
Knuour = to your, new iPhone
So what should she do? He also accused her of being too pushy, too aggressive and asking him too often about their relationship and asking him the same questions repeatedly (he said that he’s wary of that type of person). She has no idea how to behave, should she just ignore him and be cold/aloof? She’s pretty much going crazy, and has no idea what to do or how to behave.
Give him the space he wants. And set a time frame. If he comes back in that time frame, fine. If not, she should move on.
Jason:
I think it depends. If your mother had no idea going in that her husband was like that then yes I agree he is to blame.
Based on my lengthy discussions with both my parents (separately) later on, the picture I get is that he wasn’t like that when they got married. Or, to be clear, that side of him had never really had the chance to come out yet. I think my father just has a somewhat insecure and needy yet self-centered personality, he’s one of those people who’s worst sides tend to come out when they are given too much responsibility, like in the case of suddenly finding himself as the head of a rapidly growing family. It could be that my mother overlooked a fair share of his less desirable qualities back in the day-they were very much in love when they got married-or that she simply thought being rather on the over-emotional side wasn’t a deal-breaker. My father wasn’t a bad man per se, he was very loving and caring in the earlier years… Which of course made the hurt all the more acute when he simply started directing most of his energy and affection entirely outside the family. He became unstable, unavailable and unreliable. I witnessed it at the time, yet I do not really understand, and not for lack of trying.
However, my mother’s never used excuse 6 as far as I know, nor told any acquaintances what really ended the marriage. She doesn’t blame my father (she’s a better person than me, in many ways). She seems content to think that, by both of their fault, the marriage reached the point where it was past repairing, and they ended it. I’m not really into blame games, only that every person should be held accountable for their own actions, man or woman. The men here usually practice this consistently. And that’s why I wouldn’t want pointing to excuse 6 to become the knee-jerk reaction of the manosphere to redeem badly-behaving men of their own responsibility.
Personally, I’d like to think that I’ve been very careful choosing my fiance and I’m so very happy with him. But if, God forbid, he should ever cheat on me, I wouldn’t blame myself (providing that I treated him with all the respect and love he merits), and if I should ever cheat on him, he shouldn’t blame himself either (for the same reasons). Maybe that’s a naive way to look at things, but there it is.
Hahahaha. My dad is sick = pulling crap on wifey. What does a plane ticket cost to fly knuour fantasy land chels?
Sound impossible doesn’t it Matt? You know, the above is exactly one of the reasons why I brought this up and plus Dalrock managed to do something that he didn’t do before–piss me off with his arrogance. I’m so fed up with men being thought as flawless in this realm of the web, and everything being the woman’s mistake.
And as impossible it is to believe, Matt, he did start again with this after his father got very sick, it’s not sure yet whether he’s going to make it.
Give him the space he wants. And set a time frame. If he comes back in that time frame, fine. If not, she should move on.
Yeah, I told her that, and she said that she’s going to try to do it. But they live in the same house, they sleep in the same bed, and he behaves with her like he did before all of these problems, so she doesn’t know what to think except for pestering him and cry all the time.
Cue the bullshit: http://goo.gl/f4pXo
So, let’s get this right then, no matter how unexpectedly badly a man might act post marriage, his behaviour is always his wife’s responsibility as she shouldn’t have chosen him in the first place, even if spotting his flaws would require an infalliable level of foresight that nobody in the real world could possess? Sorry, I’m not convinced.
Well, she can’t let it be “business as usual”, because that’s a surefire way for it to blow up in her face. She should withdraw from what their previous normal was, give him the space and give herself a timeframe and see what happens. But continuing on as usual isn’t going to work, nor is pestering (that will drive him away faster than anything else). It sounds like he’s being selfish, but she can’t control what he does or feels. She can control what she does, however.
@Hraven
It should never be used that way. I’ve addressed this in a previous post; neither spouse should feel responsible for not stopping the other one from cheating/walking. This doesn’t mean they have a license to not meet the other’s needs, but the moral responsibility for adultery or abandonment lies with the perpetrator (full stop). My point here is that women (like men) have full authority to choose who they marry. With that authority comes responsibility. Men nearly universally take this responsibility seriously. Many women (see discussion above) feel that they aren’t responsible for their own choice. This is extremely harmful to women and children.
Dalrock:
It should never be used that way. I’ve addressed this in a previous post; neither spouse should feel responsible for not stopping the other one from cheating/walking. This doesn’t mean they have a license to not meet the other’s needs, but the moral responsibility for adultery or abandonment lies with the perpetrator (full stop). My point here is that women (like men) have full authority to choose who they marry. With that authority comes responsibility. Men nearly universally take this responsibility seriously. Many women (see discussion above) feel that they aren’t responsible for their own choice. This is extremely harmful to women and children.
Ah I see, thanks for clearing that up. I very much agree with you!
Yeah, the male version of Dubious would have said something like ‘maybe i put in too many hours at work, left her with too much time on her hands’.
This is not optimal, the male version should not take blame in that sense for a cheating spouse, but it is an acknowledgement of understanding what he chose to marry that Dubious does not appear to share.
In some ways, Dubious sounds like the Elizabeth Edwards to her spouse’s John Edwards, now that I think about the comments she’s made,
Frankly, I think excuse number six is more than a little unfair. There ARE men, and women too, who are good at hiding their true nature during courtship. There are men and women who really do change, and for the worse, after marriage. Sometimes years or even decades after marriage.
I don’t automatically dismiss a man’s claim that the woman he was married to after two, five or ten years of marriage bore only the slightest resemblance to the woman he married on their wedding day, and I don’t think it is fair to apply an across-the-boards double standard. Indeed, plenty of feminists/manginas/white knights are quick to say to a man whose wife, at point x, some years after the wedding day, has become a complete bitch….”well, you just chose badly, that’s your fault,” and man after MRA/MGTOW man will, quite rightly, in my opinion, say essentially the same thing that Chels said, ie that they must have lost their crystal ball somewhere along the way. She wasn’t like that when I married her. Perhaps you don’t believe this. But I think it’s the truth. Sure, sure, after the fact, someone can always go back and find “clues” and “hints” if they really want to, but that isn’t the point. The point is that people do change, and often for the worse, and that change was not reasonably predictable at the time of marriage.
In my experience, it is true that women change much more often and more fundamentally than men. There’s that old saying, which contains a lot of wisdom, that men marry expecting their wives never to change, and that women marry expecting to change their husbands, and that both are wrong. But, even if it is a case “But Men Do Bad Things Too,” there are men who change, and change for the worse, after marriage. And, often enough, there was no realistic way to predict that.
All of the other excuses really are phony, because they are based on a woman disclaiming responsibility for actions that were TOTALLY within her control. Excuses one, two and three, and eight and nine are simply ridiculous. Excuse four fails, but not necessarily for the reason given. Just like no one can predict, one hundred per cent for sure, that their spouse won’t become an asshole, no one can predict that their spouse will always make them happy. The reason excuse four fails is not because the wife “chose” the wrong guy, but because no one is ever happy all the time, and, in a marriage, if one person is not happy that person should work on making the marriage better, should endure a little short term unhappiness if necessary, and should at least try to understand that unhappiness is relative, and that being “bored” in a marriage is a better kind of unhappiness than the alternative, in many instances, for the woman herself, and should also, as you mention, consider the happiness of others, most especially her children, as well. Excuse five falis not only because the woman could have remained abstinent, but because she could have used birth control, and, in the rare cases where that fails, could have gotten an abortion. Having a baby out of wedlock is, in fact, a series of choices by a woman (having sex with a guy, not using contraception, not having an abortion) all of which are totally within her power and none of which requires clairvoyance. Excuse seven is only slightly less ridiculous than excuses one, two, three, eight and nine. Anyone can blame any and all bad choices, bad decisions, bad actions, etc, etc, on their parents, if they really want to. But in all but the most extreme cases of child abuse, there is always an element of choice later in life. Unless we are going to scrap the notion of free will entirely, the excuse of child enviroment and upbringing must be cabined severely.
Zed claims the above is BMDBTT reasoning. And, I suppose it is. But the fault for that lies in Dalrock’s original post, not Chel’s or my argument. Dalrock chose to be completely categorical. He states, more than once, that a woman with kids and no husband, barring widowhood, has NO excuse. None whatsoever. And he specifically denies even the possibility of excuse six. Normally, we assume that BMDBTT is implied (just as NAWALT is implied), but when one writes in absolutes, and then goes on to deny even the possibility of exceptions, that assumption no longer applies.
I see Dalrock has addressed some of this. He says:
“I shouldn’t have to point out that the same basic rule applies to men. I’ve been saying this to men since the very beginning, and men don’t have any problem with it. Even men who have been badly victimized by our incredibly unfair system generally acknowledge that they failed their children by not choosing a better mother. I’m not able to think of any exceptions here.”
Well, I’m a man and I have plenty of problems with that. I happen to know several men who seemingly chose well, only to have things turn to shit. Sure, after the fact, anyone can say that they should have chosen better (indeed, as stated above, manginas, feminists, and white knights say this all the time on message boards–not that I am accusing Dalrock of being any of these, I just think he is mistaken), but that doesn’t mean that they were at fault for choosing as they did.
“Women have even less excuse, since the very traits they ‘accidentally’ choose for their children’s father are alpha traits…”
That stikes me as grossly overgeneralized. How do you know what a particular woman in a particular case chose? She may have chosen for beta traits, but then it turned out the guy either never wanted to be a beta or simply got tired of it.
“I’m not blaming the woman for this man’s choice to abandon his family. But I am saying she was responsible for picking a father for her children who wouldn’t do this. Adults have responsibilities. Even women. It sucks. Welcome to the world men have lived in forever.”
Typically, though, even adults are not “responsible” for making one hundred per cent accurate predictions about other people, and their conduct, years or even decades down the road. Is the guy who hired the employee who went postal and shot up the office, after twenty years on the job, “responsible” for the bad outcome? That’s not normally how we look at things. You are straining badly here, and it shows.
“Even in cases where the man wasn’t obviously a high risk for excuse #6, as I mentioned to Chels the woman had options and made trade offs. She made a risk/reward decision, and unfortunately the risk showed up. She was the one in a position to reap the rewards, and she made the decision. Who but her can be responsible for her choice? How can we possibly counsel young women who are making this choice today if we don’t acknowledge this?”
And what counseling do you propose that could possibly eliminate or even reduce the risk? Advise a young woman to choose wisely? Sure Tell her to look for beta even though her gina tingles want alpha? Sure. Dig deep? Sure. But how can you say that she is “responsible” for the fact that her children have no real father, if, contrary to all reasonable expectations, he turned out, years after the fact, to be an asshole and walks out, or philanders, or becomes a crack head? OK, yes, the woman is “responsible” in the sense that she has to live with the consequences. But that is not what you were saying in your original post. What you were saying then was that she has no excuse whatsover. Well, the not foreseeably predictable behavior of another adult actually is a valid excuse. And it is fairly absurd to claim otherwise.
Also, I see more than a little inconsistency in telling young women, as we do here all the time, to throw away their bucket list, to stop looking for Mr. Perfect, and to marry relatively young, and then turning around and telling them that they should subject their possible future husbands to a KGB style investigation and when that turns up any failing, any hint of even possible future failing, or anything at all that, after the fact, someone could conceivably say about “Ah hah! He was a bum all along, so it’s your ‘responsiblity’ that he walked out on you and your kids…” she shouldn’t marry him. Who are these young women supposed to marry, if not men who are as equally flawed human beings as they are themselves?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that excuse number six applies in many instances. In my view, when it does apply, it is much more often the case that the woman changed than the men. And, in most cases, it doesn’t apply at all. The guy was a jerk all along, and she should have known it. Or, him being a jerk is not why she divorced him. Or, he isn’t really a jerk at all. But it can, and does, happen. To deny that is to deny reality.
Well Dalrock you have a christmas present coming to you. It took a while but Dubious Wonder just let us know she chose a bad man to marry. see # 6 ha ha ha ha ha. Outstanding article Dalrock.
hmm..I can’t tick any of these so no excuses from me, but then I don’t think I need one.
@Opus
My pa went to school at 5. My generation was the first in my family that didn’t have a full time nanny and I did not go away till 11 but my granny says it spoilt us. My grandpa blames a lot of society on children being spoilt, ‘helicopter parenting’ of the 60s onwards etc
@Chel’s,
It sounds like she should throw his arse out of the house. Tell him, come back when you want to be a husband to me. Don’t divorce him, I wouldn’t actually be in favour of that in this case (unless he has cheated etc), but draw a line in the sand and make his actions have consequences.
Let me guess. He is allowed sex and she cooks and cleans for him etc while he is behaving like this? No doubt he will continue as long as she lets it continue. She needs to draw a line in the sand and say enough. Decide what you want and make a decision. Put the onus on him to decide what he wants and stop enabling his behavior.
If she is letting him stay in the house and providing domestic and other wifely services while he carries on like this, why would he leave? He gets the best of both worlds. It will be hard, and she needs to accept the fact that he might chose to abandon the marriage, but it seems like that would be better than what she has now.
The only thing she can’t do under any circumstances is bluff.
Jason
@Hravan,
I hope it goes well with your fiance and I hope you aren’t having sex together yet (see my screed above about that screwing things up). If there is one resource I can recommend to you, go and get Mark Gungor’s Laugh Your Way to a Happy Marriage and watch it _before_ you get married (and maybe revist it periodically after for a refresher).
The adivce in it could have saved me a _a lot_ of problems that led to the current mess with my wife. I now give it to everybody I know who is getting married as a wedding/engagnement present.
Jason
Where it me, I’d walk from the money. Cut my losses. Living like that is FAR worse than simply losing money.
I agree. He can sell the business or buy her half, chances are she is going to bankrupt it anyway. Is a hard choice to make given that probably his business is his pride but really unless he is having hot sex on the side with other women, he is wasting his life away. Is not worth it, YMMV
The only way I can read this with any consistency is if he had stable employment in the more than a decade he had been an adult before you met him, then suddenly changed. Is this the case?
I knew him a sum total of 9 months before I married him. An incredibly impetuous thing to do, on my part, which I freely acknowledge (and part of the reason that I’ve dated my fiance for close to 4 years before committing to marriage). However, from what people told me, he was considered an extremely respectable person and extremely well-liked by people who’d known him for years. He had been working at his previous job for 3 years, I think and had been recruited by the company to work as VP of human resources. That was his story, to me, which was substantiated by his family members and friends. I did not run a background check on him (I was 27 at the time, and took people at face value). He was selected as a deacon of the church, in spite of his single status, because he’d been such a consistent servant to people in the church: helping old ladies with home repairs, counseling teenagers, teaching classes, etc.
On paper, he looked perfect. He was EXACTLY the sort of person that my parents had suggested I should marry. This was the first of a long series of lessons in which I learned that people can look great on the surface but have all kinds of skeletons in the closet. In no way would people have labeled him as a “bad boy,” though he is extremely warm and charming when you meet him. So charming, in fact, that
A few years ago, I worked with an extremely nice man who was very high ranking in the Boy Scouts in our local area. He was head of the social services council, very active in working with kids, and looked to be a pillar of the community. He was also a pedophile who was abusing the scouts in his local troop. When the story came out, his wife was quoted as being absolutely stunned by his behavior. I think I have concluded that if a person is truly determined to keep their dark secrets hidden, they can do so for an extremely long time, and to a degree that can be truly surprising.
I forgot to finish my thought…my ex is so charming that I am quite sure that most people would never believe he is capable of the things he’s done.
One additional thought. I guess it comes back to, _HAVE YOU READ THE MARRIAGE VOWS_.
It does say, “For better or worse, for sickness and in health, for Richer or Poorer”.
If you are going to get married, then both parties have an obligation to honour the vows they took.
So your wife changed, or your husband changed. Of course that is going to happen, you made a promise to love them (Remember the whole _I WILL_ part, not “i do” but I will,which is a statement about the future).
But then again we live in a society that treats vows as suggestions and has structured marriage as the only contract that can be unilaterally broken without consequence.
Who would have thought doing that would be a stupid idea? Other than anybody with an IQ above room temperature?
Jason
On paper, he looked perfect.
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
@Ruddyturnstone
Well argued as usual.
I agree with this. I would say excuse #6 is truly valid maybe 10%, perhaps as high as 20% of those who would use it. The problem is once you make a tiny exception, *all divorcées* will stampede their way through the loophole. They were all that rare exception where the alpha secretly hid the traits which women find so attractive, or where an ordinary beta snapped in some way and decided it would be fun to take his chances in divorce/family court. All of them will be convinced that there were no signs whatsoever, even when signs were very much there. None of them will feel responsible. I offer the comments above as proof of this.
However, your specific argument here is very weak:
If you are arguing that an alpha put on a beta act to get married, I call BS. He may have signaled more beta traits than he normally displays, but I don’t buy that an alpha would go full beta to find a wife. The only way this argument would make sense to me would be an omega pretending to be beta, and then reverting back to omega-hood.
@Dalrock,
“All of them will be convinced that there were no signs whatsoever, even when signs were very much there”
And if they were boinking the boy, it might even be true because they simply over looked the signs as they are essentially designed to do so when in a marriage. I don’t think this aspect of it can be overlooked. Sex does make you stupid. In marriage it is the novacaine that makes it possible to get along with another human being, outside of it, it sets you up for really really awful choices.
Jason
@Chels
Yes my wife could cheat or get unhaaaaapy. It happens. It wouldn’t be my fault if she did this. But I would have failed my children in an important way. I think nearly all men feel this way about divorce, even when the wife was textbook EPL and frivolously divorced him. I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life tormenting myself for it, but I would look for what signs I might have missed in order to try to help other men (and their future children).
There is another difference. Women are being literally cheered on to divorce frivolously by our culture and our legal system. Men are severely punished in divorce whether they are to blame or not. Also, women are told from birth to be suspicious of men. The apex fallicy tells women to look for exactly the kinds of traits excuse #6 involves, and on top of that women are specifically attracted to these traits. Men are told from birth that women are morally pure and incredibly selfless, and flakeyness/low impulse control in a woman isn’t something which makes Beta men aroused.
Feel that huge weight on your chest? That is responsibility. What strikes me is that you didn’t feel this way about your husband hunt before reading this.
You’re welcome.
There is a suggestion that the Proverbs woman has a husband in public life. I imagine her as a bit like the wife of an important man who has her managing his household.
@Jason- I actually wrote another comment this past week about the topic of sex. Here’s what I wrote:
People need to understand- and then REMEMBER- there are pheromones involved with attraction, and perhaps more importantly, CHEMICAL reactions during sex.
There is a reason people keep going back for more- there really IS a chemical dependency there, even if they don’t outwardly know it.
Dopamine and oxytocin are powerful. Ever wonder why you or someone you know went back for another (or more) roll in the hay even after the relationship was done? It wasn’t “just” “goodbye sex.” We all know of people who stay or keep going back after it’s over, even in volatile relationships and yet, they have no idea why. It doesn’t make sense.
Actually, it does. It’s more than just a “moment of weakness.” It’s chemical dependency. This particular part of the brain can send out a euphoria that is as powerful as cocaine. Some studies show the same brain patterns between people who are in love and those snorting coke.
And when you are talking about the different stages of love: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment, you’ve got different chemicals/hormones going on.
Lustful sex= opiates. This is kind of the equivalent to the body’s heroin: serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioides (this is the heroin) and a few others thrown in for good measure. Good stuff, that.
And oxytocin, the love hormone, is released during orgasm. (It’s also tied to breastfeeding, but that is a whole ‘nother ball of wax, lololol. Interestingly, oxytocin is one of those hormones that other people pick up on who are in close proximity- studies show that the oxytocin levels of breastfeeding mothers are higher in groups than of those of breastfeeding mothers who are not in groups. The point is- it’s something others can pick up on, and is one of the key reasons it’s dubbed the hormone of love….)
The romantic love phase can be compared to the manic part of bipolar disorder, and also OCD, where low levels of serotonin are released. Drugs for depression might interfere with someone’s ability to fall in love because of the constant addition of serotonin hanging around (this is why they are called “feel good” drugs).
Obviously, all those chemicals can be going on during long-term relationships, particularly oxytocin, which, while you don’t need to to orgasm to have, definitely helps. 😉
When you think about it, and when we understand this kind of stuff, it is no wonder when we see addictive personalities also grasping at the lustful phase of a relationship. They are looking for the high; the chemical dependency, even if they don’t consciously know it.
People need to understand, too, that ending a relationship come with all kinds of tangles, and we’re not just talking about who gets what stuff. Just like any other dependency- drugs, alcohol- chocolate :lol:- our bodies have a physical need to wean.
I really believe that if we know what’s going on in our heads (literally- chemicals being released in our brains and them systemically), we can make better choices. If, for example, we actually KNOW why we want to end up shagging even when we know logically we shouldn’t, we can make better choices; everything from avoiding situations that have the potential to end up between the sheets to actively removing ourselves from situations that end up somewhere unexpected.
~~~~~
Absolutely, sex impacts/changes/clouds decision making- and it’s because of the biochemical stuff going on in our bodies that we don’t have any control over once they’ve been let loose. That’s not to say we still don’t have the ability to make good choices; just that it’s more complicated to make them….
@slwerner- Nope, not Denver. But it is interesting, isn’t it, because this is something we have seen more than once.
Another observation is this: in some families (and certainly in the one I grew up in, which was Christian) the “wait until marriage to have sex” was ingrained in a way where the end result was actually “If you are sexually attracted to someone, you must get married, because sex= love.”
Clearly, that’s not right either, but there are a good many people who end up in failed marriages because of that particular mindset. I also don’t blame the church or Christianity, because ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the actual parents to do the parenting and help their children understand this stuff.
The *best* thing we can do as parents, imo, is to help our children develop good critical thinking and decision making skills.
Completely agree with the substance of the original post. I hear so much, “Oh my mother was so strong, she worked so hard, she raised us as a single mother.” I want to say, “I am so thankful to my mom, who worked hard on her marriage, and provided me with a good man for a father.
Perhaps #6 does apply in 10-20% of cases.
@Ruddyturnstone
I’ve always told women not to settle (how many links would you like as proof?). I do think they should be realistic, but they also shouldn’t try to shoehorn in a marriage which won’t work. I did advise one woman in her 30s that she should consider what traits she really needed and what ones she might be willing to make trade-offs on. This post doesn’t contradict that; some traits are too critical to make compromise on, especially after a certain point. Alpha is attractive and women understandably want to get as much alpha as they can get without taking on undue risk. But the downside of too much alpha is huge.
I have also never told women they need to marry young. What I have said is that if they want to marry, they should take their husband hunt seriously upfront. This post isn’t in conflict with that advice either. If anything, it should help young women understand why they shouldn’t waste a decade or more “having fun” and then make a mad dash to find a husband. This isn’t easy stuff.
con’t
but I agree that many more will try to claim that excuse. And I don’t buy it.
@TikkTok,
Thanks for the article 🙂
You said,
“Another observation is this: in some families (and certainly in the one I grew up in, which was Christian) the “wait until marriage to have sex” was ingrained in a way where the end result was actually “If you are sexually attracted to someone, you must get married, because sex= love.””
Yeah that would be broken thinking as well :S
Jason
If you are arguing that an alpha put on a beta act to get married, I call BS. He may have signaled more beta traits than he normally displays, but I don’t buy that an alpha would go full beta to find a wife.
Mmm I don’t want to look like Men do bad things too. but for the sake of the argument I did had a friend that targeted and specific woman that he knew wouldn’t fall for his Alpha circus trick, she was a bit like me in that aspect and she wanted a stable home and just one father for her children she was also a virgin, well he courted her for 9 years pretending to never date any other woman and feeding her lonely psycho lines while he was rotating at least 3 women very far away from were she lived, he got an extra cell phone to make sure that none of his women called him and given the distance and the fact that all this women were low class they never ran into each other or mutual friends, he managed to gain her trust and marry her. Of course he ended up going back to sleeping with other women and eventually abandoned her when she was 7 months pregnant with their first daugther even though his wife was willing to forgive him and stay married to him in spite of the cheating and was willing to tolerate other ones, again for the sake of keeping her marriage and having just one father for her children. I will say my friend doesn’t plan to have any more children and/or marry again. I think she falls into the 10% that really couldn’t help it, YMMV
The larger problem ISN’T that most individual women ( and many individual men) won’t take responsibility for their actions, it’s that society doesn’t HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE. While society would certainly be better if everybody behaved responsibly, and took responsibilty for their errors, mistakes, etc, that’s not going to happen, and it never has. So we have developed many methods over the millenia of holding one another accountable. Those methods have been severely compromised where women are concerned in our society, and rebuilding those is important.
Dalrock’s article serves as signpost on the route, by laying out the reality of where the choices are being made, and hence who should be accountable.
” Well argued as usual.”
Thanks. 🙂
“I would say excuse #6 is truly valid maybe 10%, perhaps as high as 20% of those who would use it. The problem is once you make a tiny exception, *all divorcées* will stampede their way through the loophole. They were all that rare exception where the alpha secretly hid the traits which women find so attractive, or where an ordinary beta snapped in some way and decided it would be fun to take his chances in divorce/family court. All of them will be convinced that there were no signs whatsoever, even when signs were very much there. None of them will feel responsible. I offer the comments above as proof of this.”
As rephrased, no argument from me.
“f you are arguing that an alpha put on a beta act to get married, I call BS.”
I wasn’t arguing that. Rather, that, as you said above, a beta “snapped.” She might have chosen a beta, and then he snapped. But your original post, and your subsequent ones, just assumed that any and all women who claim excuse six chose an alpha. Or, as you first put it, chose “with their genitals.” And that is not always the case.
“He may have signaled more beta traits than he normally displays, but I don’t buy that an alpha would go full beta to find a wife. The only way this argument would make sense to me would be an omega pretending to be beta, and then reverting back to omega-hood.”
I agree, there are not too many alphas out there pretending to be betas. But I have to say that I think you are reifying, to some extent, the whole alpha-beta-omega thing a bit much. Even in primate zoology, where these terms originated and where they are much more clearly apt than among human beings, there are no irrevocable and unbreakable boundaries between these groups. They are generalizations, and today’s “beta” chimp may become tommorow’s alpha. In human beings, where there are many more traits at issue than in chimps, and where society is vastly more complicated, these terms are, at best, an approximation. Their wholesale use in the “GAME” community, and, less so, their use by evolutionary psychologists, doesn’t change that. And isn’t the whole point of “GAME” that a beta can turn himself into an alpha, or into a close enough approximation of one so as to fool the ladies? It COULD be that a guy really was “beta,” then got a hot shot job, moved up the ladder, developed confidence, noticed that the ladies were finally paying him attention, and decided to go “alpha.” (I admit the “dump the loyal wife, marry your secretary” trope is rare IRL, but it does happen.) Or, just maybe, alpha and beta (and omega) is too simplistic, too cut and dried, too binary or trinary a system of classification when it comes to human beings.
Also, it isn’t even a question of a beta turining into something else. Maybe, he really still is a “beta” but would rather be one with a hottie wife than Mrs. Average, who he married before he rose in the world. Or a beta can stay a beta, but become a drug addict. Or a porn addict. Or a compulsive gambler. Do you really think that everyone who develops these flaws was an alpha pretending to be a beta or an omega pretending to be a beta? Or is it simple reduction….a guy who looked to be a beta becomes a philanderer, therefore, he was an alpha all along? Or a guy who looked like a beta becomes a drug addict, therefore, he was an omega all along.? Again, I think you are attaching way too much importance to these terms.
The point is that a woman can marry a guy who seems to be hardworking and devoted (call it beta, if you must), but it turns out over time that he either was neither of those things and was only “fronting,” or actully was when she married him, but changed. Alpha, beta or whatever really have very little to do with it.
Dalrock:
“I’ve always told women not to settle…I have also never told women they need to marry young. What I have said is that if they want to marry, they should take their husband hunt seriously upfront. This post isn’t in conflict with that advice either. If anything, it should help young women [realize] why they shouldn’t waste a decade or more ‘having fun’ and then make a mad dash to find a husband. This isn’t easy stuff.”
Well, if they shouldn’t waste “a decade or more ‘having fun,'” then, one would assume, they instead would be getting married pretty young, as I take it the decade or more of having fun takes place roughly from age eighteen to thirty five. And, correct me if I am wrong, but your view of marriage is not always expressed in quite the agnostic way you put it here…”What I have said is that if they want to marry….” But, even if that is not true of you in particular, it is true of the manosphere in general. In general, the manosphere thinks that women would do better to marry than not, and to do so when young rather than older. And, yes, I do think that actually is in conflict with what you are saying now. Women are being told: marry and marry young, but it is your “responsibility” if the guy you marry ever turns out to be a jerk.
“I do think they should be realistic, but they also shouldn’t try to shoehorn in a marriage which won’t work….some traits are too critical to make compromise on….”
They should be “realistic,” but they shouldn’t “settle” or “try to shoehorn” and should realize that “some traits are too critical to make compromise on.” Again, to me that sounds contadictory. I have a lot of regard for my fellow men, but damn few of them can withstand the kind of strict scrutiny that you are recommending. What guy NEVER has shown signs of straying, when it comes to monogamy in a relationship? Some, maybe. A few. But not many. What guy has never exhibited what could be considered to be “alpha” (or “omega,” for that matter) traits? Does the guy notice a short skirt and a low cut top on another girl when he is out with his date? I guess that marks a latent alphaness. Has he ever smoked pot or gotten drunk or lost more money than he should in Vegas or Atlantic City? I guess those are sure signs of omega-hood. Can’t marry him, or it is your “responsibility” if he turns out to be an asshole.
I thought the notion, in the manosphere in general, but also here in particular, is that most people probably should get married, and do so when they are relatively young (the main problem with that being that the laws of marriage and divorce, and the difference in how society treats men and women, make marriage a potential disaster for men). But, if that widespread marriage scenario is going to happen (even assuming the law and social norms are changed), a pretty large group of guys who are not striclty “beta,” as you define it, are going to have to get married. Which means that some women are going to have to marry them. Just as not all women get the alpha man they want, not all women can get the best. or the beta-ist, of the betas. Are the rest of the women, whose SMP may not entitle them to get a really good beta, simply not to marry at all?
Between your checklists for men and women, hardly anyone would get married. Because so few potential mates can meet the requirements for their gender (not to mention that so many of those looking to get married can’t meet the requirements for their own gender). Marriage “isn’t easy stuff,” but you make it sound well nigh impossible. Marriage used to be the norm. Do you not want that norm restored? Or are you OK with marriage (and childbearing, since I know you don’t believe in single parenthood), being the province of just a few?
“One additional thought. I guess it comes back to, _HAVE YOU READ THE MARRIAGE VOWS_.
“It does say, ‘For better or worse, for sickness and in health, for Richer or Poorer'”
Does it? Not all vows are the same. And, in any event, the vows are not what is legally enforceable.
“If you are going to get married, then both parties have an obligation to honour the vows they took.”
Again, plenty of couples write their own vows. There are no officially necessary “vows” that have to be said. The law doesn’t even care about the vows, as the license makes the marriage, not the ceremony. Of course, many religions insist on certain vows, but no one is obligated to have a religous marriage, and, even if one does, the vows are still not legally enforceable.
Moreover, everybody knows this. Everyone who marries today does so with the understanding that their marriage is subject to the civil law. That divorce is a possibility. And that the vows do not actually bind anyone, least of all their partner, if and when push comes to shove.
“So your wife changed, or your husband changed. Of course that is going to happen, you made a promise to love them (Remember the whole _I WILL_ part, not “i do” but I will,which is a statement about the future).”
Again, not everyone uses the “I will” formulation. And, of course, there is “change” and then there is “change.” It’s one thing if your wife, or husband, stops watching “Star Trek” with you, it’s quite another if she or he becomes violently abusive, commits adultery, becomes a crack head, etc. I think divorce for fault should be allowed.
“But then again we live in a society that treats vows as suggestions and has structured marriage as the only contract that can be unilaterally broken without consequence.”
I agree with you here, at least about the unilateral breaking of a contract without consequences. Absent fault, there should be strong consequences for breaking the marriage contract. And there should be strong consequences for being at fault. The only time I would allow a “no fault” divorce without consequences is if both parties genuinely wanted it.
@ruddytunstone,
Actually I don’t have a problem with getting a divorce for a limited set of at fault reasons (mostly amounting to adultery or abandonment. Violent abuse is one of those corner cases as once you allow it nearly anything will be called “abuse” and used as grounds for divorce. ). You are right the vows are not enforceable, perhaps that is the solution to the problem? Treat a marriage _as_ contract law. I’ve been thinking along these lines for a while. Get the state out of marriage all together and let it be treated simply as contract law. Draw up the terms you want and enter into it knowing the terms ahead of time and what is expected. I doubt it could end up worse than the current mess.
Jason
Again, plenty of couples write their own vows. There are no officially necessary “vows” that have to be said.
Indeed. Care must be taken in writing one’s own vows. (Groom’s reply NSFW)
@ruddytunstone,
On getting married young I think Dalrock and I would agree on this point. I am sure he will correct me if I speak presumptuously.
It isn’t the idea that, “you must get married young”. That is a mistaken understanding. I think in general the idea you actually want to communicate to people (especially Christians IMO), is that you have permission to get married when you meet the right person. It might happen when you are 18, or 28 or 38, but when you meet them you fall in love and want to have sex, you have the parents blessing to get married and “do life right”.
I would contend unless you are looking to get married and in a relativily short period of time (Proposal after ~1 year, 6 – 12 month engagment tops) you shouldn’t be dating at all.
The advantage of telling kids they can get married is that they will generally take dating much much more seriously because it isn’t just playing around until they are “old enough to get married, once they have a career and are finacially stable”. It means parents have to be willing to let the kids live at home for the first year or marriage or some such while they finish colledge, etc, but in exchange for them doing life right this seems like a small price to pay.
Given that the alternative of telling them to “wait, wait, wait” is they end up having sex before marriage (increasing risk of divorce), shacking up (increasing the risk of divorce), have multiple sexual partners (increasing the risk of divorce), becoming porn addicts (increasing the risk of divorce, I think you see the pattern here) etc, and end up marrying later when they are more set in their ways (adding stress to the relationship, I guess you know what that increases), it seems like a small price to pay.
Unfortunately our culture is insane and to many people worship at the altar of finacial success in the church, and sexual libertinism in the culture at large, that it isn’t likely to happen anytime soon 😦
Jason
Jason, I believe that many men will agree with this idea that people in their early 20’s should believe they have “permission” to marry. However, I do not know how many would do so, thanks to the extended adolescence that is common in industrialized countries, especially the US. A lot of men and women are “finding themselves” for 4, 5, 6 years. This gives rise to the whole issue of carousel riders/watchers, and all that falls out from that.
The idea of a young woman “spending” all her high-SMV years with a man in exchange for his fidelity down the line implies, eh, requires a future-time orientation that is downright countercultural. Maybe that’s one way to sell it – “countercultural monogamy”.
“Get the state out of marriage all together and let it be treated simply as contract law.”
Sorry, but that is completely contradictory. Who do you think enforces “contact law,” if not the State?
“Draw up the terms you want and enter into it knowing the terms ahead of time and what is expected. I doubt it could end up worse than the current mess.”
One of the problems with a “customized” marriage regime is that so many issues depend on whether a couple is legally married or not. Who controls the health care of an incapacitated person, if he is not married in the conventinal sense but only has a one-off contract? Or his burial at death? His “wife,” or the person who would otherwise be his closest living relative? Does the contract have to include and deal with all the possible situations in which the status of “marriage” comes into play. What do you do in those situations in which it does not? Would the IRS recognize such a marriage? How about the Social Security Administration? And private pension providers?
Marriage is a contract. But it is also a legal status. And a damn important one at that. All sorts of reciprical rights and responsibilities, and other sorts of legal ramifications, including those involving third parties, arise out of marriage.That gives rise to all kinds of complications that simple business partnerships, even those of a contractual nature, do not.
All that being said, I would support a regime in which at least more than one option is offered. And one of those choices being what we are discussing, ie fault does matter, divorcing without fault does matter, etc.
“It isn’t the idea that, ‘you must get married young’ That is a mistaken understanding. I think in general the idea you actually want to communicate to people (especially Christians IMO), is that you have permission to get married when you meet the right person. It might happen when you are 18, or 28 or 38, but when you meet them you fall in love and want to have sex, you have the parents blessing to get married and “do life right”.”
Not sure if that is Dalrock’s take or not. In any event, it sounds like “soul mate” hooey to me. The idea that there is one “right person” out there, waiting, for you to meet and “fall in love and want to have sex with” is, IMHO, fairly tale nonsense. And, I’ll stand by my statement that, in general, the manosphere advocates marriage at a young age, particularly for women. Marriage at age thirty eight simply isn’t the same thing, nor “just as good,” as marriage at eighteen or twenty eight. Thirty eight is pushing the fertility limit hard, and it is typically after a big fall otf in SMV for women. In general, and, in my view, rightly so, the manosphere advocates women getting married when they are young, pretty, desirable, fertile and, hopefully, not overly “experienced” when it comes to sex. Find a good beta guy and make it work. Forget about looking for “the one.” And, to repeat, that is also consistent with what Dalrock said about not “wasting a decade or so.”
“The advantage of telling kids they can get married is that they will generally take dating much much more seriously because it isn’t just playing around until they are ‘old enough to get married, once they have a career and are finacially stable’. It means parents have to be willing to let the kids live at home for the first year or marriage or some such while they finish colledge, etc, but in exchange for them doing life right this seems like a small price to pay. Given that the alternative of telling them to ‘wait, wait, wait’ is they end up having sex before marriage (increasing risk of divorce), shacking up (increasing the risk of divorce), have multiple sexual partners (increasing the risk of divorce), becoming porn addicts (increasing the risk of divorce, I think you see the pattern here) etc, and end up marrying later when they are more set in their ways (adding stress to the relationship, I guess you know what that increases), it seems like a small price to pay.”
LOL! Now you’re doing it too! What is the upshot of all the above if not that you should get married relatively young? You are advocating folks getting married before they finish college, before they have other sexual partners, and so on. Well, that means marriage at a young age, no?
To not hold women accountable for the choices they make is foolish. You really have to pay attention when selecting a mate. All men know this because one slip, and you get divorce thefted into poverty. Just because the same is not true for women (who have to pay less even when in comparable circumstances) doesn’t mean they don’t ultimately bear the responsibility for choosing wisely.
Marriage as the norm can be restored when people learn from an early age how to live with another person. There certainly are little things that you can do (or refrain from) to make the other person’s life much less annoying. That, and people need to learn to not channel their own bad emotions into destructive tendencies.
@ruddtyturnstone,
“Sorry, but that is completely contradictory. Who do you think enforces “contact law,” if not the State?”
Of course, but I think you see my meaning. Treat marriage _simply_ as contract law rather than making it a special case like it is today. As I said, I doubt it will make the mess any worse.
“One of the problems with a “customized” marriage regime is that so many issues depend on whether a couple is legally married or not.”
True and much of that could largely be dispensed with and revert to power of attorney etc (that could be specified as part of any particular marriage contract).
“Would the IRS recognize such a marriage? How about the Social Security Administration? And private pension providers?”
Wills and contract law for everything but the IRS, and many tax laws already assess a literal marriage penalty at the moment.
“Marriage is a contract. But it is also a legal status. And a damn important one at that. All sorts of reciprical rights and responsibilities, and other sorts of legal ramifications, including those involving third parties, arise out of marriage.”
True, but the current system seems hopelessly broken and I doubt if those that broke it will let their “improvements” be wound back to a more sane time. So I am suggesting this as an end run around the problem that those that broke it would probably even be stupid enough to perceive as another “improvement” as they define it.
“All that being said, I would support a regime in which at least more than one option is offered. And one of those choices being what we are discussing, ie fault does matter, divorcing without fault does matter, etc.”
Exactly. And the marriage contract is the only contract that one party can leave today unilaterally and without consequence (well in theory).
Jason
@A lady
You were awesome tonight. And you deserve lots of good sexual pleasure for your solid insights.
Find the one you enjoy the most and get yourself some uninhibited orgasms. (go for two or three)
Dalrock:
“Yes my wife could cheat or get unhaaaaapy. It happens. It wouldn’t be my fault if she did this. But I would have failed my children in an important way. I think nearly all men feel this way about divorce, even when the wife was textbook EPL and frivolously divorced him. I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life tormenting myself for it, but I would look for what signs I might have missed in order to try to help other men (and their future children).”
Again, I’m a man and I don’t feel this way. And I know plenty of other men who don’t either. I would really like to know what makes you think that “nearly all men” agree with you on this. It is one thing to say that men generally take responsiblility for their actions, but quite another to say that this responsibility extends to being able to tell, without error, what other folks will do at some indefinite time in the future.
Your assignment of “failure” to yourself and your quest for the “signs” that you missed simply assumes, without any real evidence that I can see, that there is some sort of foolproof, or nearly foolproof, way of determining what another person will do, and what she will become, years and even decades after the time of evaluation. What makes you think this is so? There are “red flags,” yes, and there are good signs too, but I see no ironclad set of rules, no perfect set of questions to ask or procedures to follow that will tell you what is in another person’s heart not only today, but ten or more years from today.
Men that I know think that women are pretty darn good at hiding their true feelings. And that they are changeable as well. Particularly, that they change after marriage. Again, to quote an old joke…Question: What food most reduces a woman’s sex drive? Answer: wedding cake. And, many women change in a lot more ways than that, with much worse ramifications, and all without any “sign” in advance.
I wonder, is this supposed ability to predict the future when it comes to spousal behavior something that you believe is limited to that realm, or does it extend to all human interactions? Do you think employers have foolproof ways of knowing who will be a good employee five, ten or more years down the road, and who won’t? Does anyone who enters into a business partnership with another individual have some way of knowing for suew, if only he would put the time and ask the right questions, whether that individual will be a good partner a decade or more down the road?
From whence does this ability come?
@ruddtyturnstone,
“In any event, it sounds like “soul mate” hooey to me.”
No definitely nothing like that. Quite the opposite really. It is just saying, if you meet someone you want to spend your life with, then you have permission to do so and that the choice will be encouraged rather than discouraged and threatened against. Thats all.
“Marriage at age thirty eight simply isn’t the same thing, nor “just as good,” as marriage at eighteen or twenty eight.”
Sorry the numbers were picked fairly arbitrarily. The point was, you don’t have to marry now if you don’t want to (with the appropriate caveats about waiting and the risk of spinsterhood) but that it will be encouraged when you want to. Sorry I meant it as opposed to saying “wait wait wait” and threatening kids if they want to marry to young. Does that make more sense? The whole “don’t get married to young” message is the problem, but it wont be better if people rush into marriage at 18 or 19 because they think they _must_ get married young.
“In general, and, in my view, rightly so, the manosphere advocates women getting married when they are young, pretty, desirable, fertile and, hopefully, not overly “experienced” when it comes to sex. Find a good beta guy and make it work. Forget about looking for “the one.” And, to repeat, that is also consistent with what Dalrock said about not “wasting a decade or so.””
Yes exactly. This would track pretty much with my point of view (except for the “not overly experienced, given the known down side to “experience”).
“LOL! Now you’re doing it too! What is the upshot of all the above if not that you should get married relatively young? You are advocating folks getting married before they finish college, before they have other sexual partners, and so on. Well, that means marriage at a young age, no?”
Maybe, maybe not. The point was to give them permission to do so if they meet the right partner (in a suitable partner not soul mate sense). If they don’t get married till after college because they haven’t met the right person then they dont get married till after college. My point was to give them the option to marry when they meet the right person, rather than discourage that behavior so that they will pursue other outlets for their desire. I think we may just be talking past each other a bit, especially as I almost never hear the “don’t leave getting married to long” message, and nearly always hear the “don’t marry to young message”. So my perspective is coloured by that to some degree.
I agree young marriage should be an option and kids should have permission to do so, and be expected to be sexually chaste until they are married. In the church at any rate.
Jason
@Anonymous Reader
“Maybe that’s one way to sell it – “countercultural monogamy”.”
Actually given the nature of youth generally, it would likely work to sell it like that.
Jason
@ruddtyturnstone,
“I wonder, is this supposed ability to predict the future when it comes to spousal behavior something that you believe is limited to that realm, or does it extend to all human interactions? Do you think employers have foolproof ways of knowing who will be a good employee five, ten or more years down the road, and who won’t? ”
Although it is obviously impossible to know for sure, it would seem that only in the realm of choosing a spouse is the advice for the culture as a whole the worst possible advice in that regard, the advice that is most likely to make sure you make a bad choice.
Nobody would suggest finding business partners or employees in a way that deliberately goes out of its way to make poor decision making more likely, yet when finding a spouse, that is exactly the advice that is pushed wholesale.
Jason
Me:
“In general, and, in my view, rightly so, the manosphere advocates women getting married when they are young, pretty, desirable, fertile and, hopefully, not overly ‘experienced’ when it comes to sex. Find a good beta guy and make it work. Forget about looking for ‘the one.’ And, to repeat, that is also consistent with what Dalrock said about not ‘wasting a decade or so.’”
Jason:
“Yes exactly. This would track pretty much with my point of view…”
Then, I guess, the next question would be how can a woman do that when any hint of a red flag, when any trace of either “alpha” ness or “omega” ness, means, according to Dalrock (as I’m reading him), that she should NOT marry the guy. Even a “good beta” is unlikely to be a pure beta. But if she marries a beta with any degree of impurity, then it will be her “responsibility” if he turns out to be an alpha playa or an omega bum, and she will have “no excuse” if her kids thereby end up essentially fatherless.
“Although it is obviously impossible to know for sure, it would seem that only in the realm of choosing a spouse is the advice for the culture as a whole the worst possible advice in that regard, the advice that is most likely to make sure you make a bad choice. Nobody would suggest finding business partners or employees in a way that deliberately goes out of its way to make poor decision making more likely, yet when finding a spouse, that is exactly the advice that is pushed wholesale.”
Assuming all of that is true, it still doesn’t answer the questions. How does one go about knowing what will be in another person’s heart years or decades down the road? And, if there is no real way of knowing, how then can one possibly be held “responsible” for not getting it right, particularly if, at the time, the relevant indicia seemed to indicate that the person had the right things in his or her heart at that time.
Dalrock is correct about this: feminism IS to blame—not only for unwed mothers, but most other gender-relative problems.
Feminism teaches women to hate men and regard them as inferiors. It also teaches them that they are victims of the male, no matter what. It teaches them to serve themselves and not care in the least about anyone else’s interests or feelings. And feminism has so permeated our culture that those attitudes accurately match those of about 99 1/2% of American females between the ages of 15 and 50.
Since women are taught that men are useless as anything other than ‘sperm donors’; that women ‘own’ sex and reproduction; why is surprising that they universally throw themselves at inferior males and spawn children with them? There’s no sense of committment or love; only a sense of entitlement, instant gratification, and the obsession women have of feeling superior to men.
The children don’t factor into the equation any more than the men do. Women typically have no more concern with children than they do with men. If they did, they wouldn’t make—as they routinely do—psychologically and emotionally unstable males fathers of their feral offspring. But not only that, they, bed-hop from one thug to another or stay with the first thug ‘out of love’, they say—LOL.
In other words, their Superiorty Complexes—-engendered by feminist indoctrination and a feminised cultural milieu— are so strong that they actually override both the maternal instinct and the natural female inclination to bond with a strong, intellegent man; attitudes possessed by real women. It’s no wonder, then that US women lead all other demographic groups WORLDWIDE in consumption of prescription psychiatric drugs.
The hoplessness of pursuing American women is further manifested—men who continue to do are in serious states of psychological denial themselves. The only males who can ever ‘succeed’ in a culture where gender-relations are this warped are those types of males who are defective enough to fit into it. So things will NOT change unless real men stop chasing phantoms and seek alternatives, because American women offer NO solution.
@ruddtyturnstone
“Then, I guess, the next question would be how can a woman do that when any hint of a red flag, when any trace of either “alpha” ness or “omega” ness, means, according to Dalrock (as I’m reading him), that she should NOT marry the guy. ”
I think you might be reading to much into it. All human beings are going to be a mixture to some degree, and many of the negative traits can be encouraged or discouraged with some work. Not talking about getting a “fixer upper” or thinking a wife can change her husband, just that she can encourage the traits (already present) that she values.
I think the point is just to chose with some degree of caution and wisdom (get feedback from others and listen for example) and be aware that the choice _will_ be her responsiblity and that _she will_ have to live with the consequences of her choice.
Sometimes the choices will be made erroneously and a mess will result, but surely if people were more willing to take responsibility for their actions (husband and wives, although it seems husbands are not generally the problem on the whole, going on anecdotes here, which are obviously biased) and decisions, then the number of messes would be greatly reduced and there would be more sympathy for those that end up in a mess.
Currently the problem is that rather than genuine sympathy for the cases that genuinely fall apart because of circumstances beyond the womans control, to many are clearly cases where the women is partially or even wholey at fault, but wants to blame everybody but herself. Thus all the cases that genuinely deserve sympathy are drowned out by the noise of the whiny blame shifting little princesses who could never admit they made a mistake.
Jason
“I think you might be reading to much into it. All human beings are going to be a mixture to some degree, and many of the negative traits can be encouraged or discouraged with some work….[etc. etc]”
Sorry, Jason, but that’s just not the vibe I’m getting here. Rather, it is a woman claims excuse six, and then an interogation is conducted into everything she knew, or should have known had she called in the FBI, about her husband prior to marriage. If that interogation leads to anything that could be considered alpha or omega (or, as you put it, if it discloses any traits that should be discouraged), then excuse six is off limits to her, and it is her “responsibility” that her kids are now fatherless. End of story. No “excuses”accepted.
@ruddtyturnstone,
“Assuming all of that is true”
It is. Check the data.
“How does one go about knowing what will be in another person’s heart years or decades down the road? And, if there is no real way of knowing, how then can one possibly be held “responsible” for not getting it right, particularly if, at the time, the relevant indicia seemed to indicate that the person had the right things in his or her heart at that time.”
What can I say. Life is not without risk. If you don’t want the risk of a relationship that ends in heartbreak then the only way to be 100% sure to avoid that is to never get into a relationship.
This whole thing can never be without risk because life can never be without risk. I think the point is that today, the message the culture shrieks at people, is the message designed to create as much risk as possible of undesirable outcomes.
Think of it like swimming at the beach. The chance of getting attacked by a shark at the beach is non-zero (actually it is extremely low, but run with me), but even though it is non-zero, it doens’t mean you should therefore chum the water and use BBQ sauce flavoured sunscreen while flapping about in the water doing your best wounded seal impression, because what the hell it might happen.
Jason
@ruddtyturnstone
“Sorry, Jason, but that’s just not the vibe I’m getting here. Rather, it is a woman claims excuse six, and then an interogation is conducted into everything she knew, or should have known had she called in the FBI, about her husband prior to marriage.”
I think you are reading to much into it. Think back to an example I cited earlier.
If “abuse” (defined just as “abuse”) was a legal grounds for fault in divorce proceedings what would happen? It seems like repeated violent spousal abuse (savage beating requiring hospitalization for example) should be grounds for fault divorce (if not assualt and battery charges etc). But if “abuse” is a grounds for divorce, then you would have some women crying “abuse” because their husband wont put the toilet seat down.
Clearly one is actual abuse and the other isn’t, but when their is a loop hole some women will justify their behavior by citing the reason in question even though they are grossly misapplying it to the situation they find themselves in.
Simpler to say, “This excuse wont fly” and take it on a specific case by case basis, rather than suggest that such an excuse is generally applicable.
It doens’t seem that _anybody_ in this thread has actually suggested that there are not genuine cases of “Excuse #6”. Even Dalrock has conceded that they really do exist. The point is that they are actually the exception not the rule. Most “Excuse #6” cases are actually an attempt to abuse a reason that is real rather than admit the woman herself made a mistake.
Jason
“What can I say. Life is not without risk. If you don’t want the risk of a relationship that ends in heartbreak then the only way to be 100% sure to avoid that is to never get into a relationship.”
Of coure, but that is a far cry from saying that, in every case, even when the “heartbreak” resulted from the failings of the other party, that you are still “responsible” for that heartbreak, and, indeed, it is a “failure” on your part, and that there MUST have been “signs” as to the other person’s future failings that you missed.
“Think of it like swimming at the beach. The chance of getting attacked by a shark at the beach is non-zero (actually it is extremely low, but run with me), but even though it is non-zero, it doens’t mean you should therefore chum the water and use BBQ sauce flavoured sunscreen while flapping about in the water doing your best wounded seal impression, because what the hell it might happen.”
Of course, but who is disupting that? I think you are engaging a straw man here. I see the analogy differently…say there is a beach with no history of shark attacks, and there are no current shark warnings, and you don’t chum the water, you don’t dause yourself BBQ sause, and you don’t do your best wounded seal impression, but, nevertheless, you are attacked by a shark. To me, in that situation, you are nol “responsible” for the consequences of the attack, you have not “failed” in any way, nor did you miss any “signs.” A detimental event occured that was not reasonably foreseeable. And that is a valid “excuse.”
“Simpler to say, ‘This excuse wont fly’ and take it on a specific case by case basis, rather than suggest that such an excuse is generally applicable.”
Simpler still to say the excuse may or may not fly, and take it on a case by case basis.
“It doens’t seem that _anybody_ in this thread has actually suggested that there are not genuine cases of ‘Excuse #6’. Even Dalrock has conceded that they really do exist. The point is that they are actually the exception not the rule. Most ‘Excuse #6’ cases are actually an attempt to abuse a reason that is real rather than admit the woman herself made a mistake.”
Yes, and I agreed with Dalrock once he added that qualification. The problem is that, subsequently, he opined that, in his own hypothetical case, if his wife did an EPL on him, that would represent a “failure” on his part and that it must be the case that he missed the “signs” of her decade(s) later EPL tendencies. And that is what I disagree with.
@Ruddyturnstone
I should have said fathers, not men. At the very least I should have said husbands. As to where I came up with this, I’ve seen it stated by other men in a large number of comments on this site and others in the manosphere. I also recall reading that this is a very common for men to feel this way. Here is one article which touches on this: Men more likely to commit suicide after divorce, study finds
I will like to add that another way number 6 is to blame in feminism is the fact that eliminating formal courtship a guy doesn’t faces the filters of the family both older wiser women and the men in general. Is easy for a guy with bad intentions to approach a modern woman, if the same guy had to consider her father and her brothers in the approach chances are he wouldn’t do it unless he knows he is into the girl for real and is not just for a quick pump and dump. The same for the red flags 6 pairs of eyes see better than one.
In modern setting sometimes the family knows the guy in person when is too late (or never) and the woman is unwilling to listen to reason or parents are shamed into respecting their daughter’s choices no matter how obviously stupid they are, YMMV as usual.
#6 also over a period of time is manufactured. Just as with modrn feral women it is not enough to be honest loyal and hardworking.https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/boring-loyal-dudes/ aman has got to have “game” In this feminist environment an otherwise “good man can make himself a #6.
With the misandry fueled attitude of women today i woder how many #6 are made. And how many women that are claiming #6 as the excuse are not themselves the #6 but are able due to the default child custody able to show themselves as a neglected family.
Dalrock:
Of course I understand why a father would feel bad if his wife went EPL, and thereby left his children motherless. But I don’t see that as the same thing as the father feelings that he has failed. As for husbands and fathers generally, I really don’t buy it. Again, I know many, many divorced men, fathers and childless, who feel, in my view quite correctly, that they are not at all to blame for having “chosen badly,” that there were no “signs” that they missed, and that their “excuse,” to the extent that they feel they even need one (since the wife filed for divorce and did not even allege fault), is that their wife changed in ways that there was simply no way for him, or anyone else, to predict when they got married.
As for comments in the manosphere, I have seen many, many more such comments attacking white knights/manginas/femiinists for claiming that the ex husbands invariably “chose badly” and that it was their “responsibility” for not having chosen better. Again, in my experience, the usual MRA/MGTOW view is NOT to accredit the “you should have chosen better” argument raised against a man complaining that his wife frivolously divorced him, went EPL, etc. I have not been on this particular site long enough to know whether that view prevails here or not.
I don’t see the suicide article as being particularly on point. Men commit suicide more often than women, in the context of divorce, according to the article, primarlly because they have a less robust social support system than do women and because their role as fathers is often destroyed (wives lose a spouse, husbands lose a spouse and children). As an aside, and without any supporting data, one person theorizes that men also feel bad because they feel responsible for the failure of the marriage, along with other notions of men being blindsinded by divorce petitions and a general male tendency to deal with stress by engaging in destructive behaviors . Well, that is just one man’s notion, as far as we know. And it only applies to men who commit suicide after their divorce (naturally, men who commit suicide over divorce are more likely to feel responsible for the divorce than men who don’t, and vice versa). And most importantly, we have no way of knowing if that feeling of responsibility exists because, in those cases, perhaps the husband really was responsible for the divorce, in a direct way. And still less do we know that men who feel that way (ie “responsible”) are involved in cases in which excuse number six might be applicable on their behalf.
Sorry, but with all due respect, I really don’t believe that you have shown that “nearly all men” (or all husbands and fathers) feel the way you described.
“there is a beach with no history of shark attacks, and there are no current shark warnings, and you don’t chum the water, you don’t dause yourself BBQ sause”
Shouldn’t it be fish sauce? 😉
About the chosing badly part. I see a lot of men chosing badly enough to have the wife divorce him, but wisely enough to have good relation with the ex (50/50 custody, no CS, no alimony etc.). But maybe it’s due to the social/legal climate I come from (Sweden). But this is happening among expat Swedes in another European country where the wife could propably go the bad route because of the law in the country of residency (I’m not read up on international private law, so I might be wrong).
It is curious how “Team woman” works. It speaks volumes about the psychology of American females.
Every time a man says:
a) Something bad about a particular woman or about women in general.
b) That a woman or women in general have responsibility about something bad.
Any woman who is in a 100-mile radius starts defending women like crazy because they can’t accept anything else that women are angelic creatures that can do no harm and have no responsibility about bad actions.
(In fact, it is not that way: but I’ll explain later. Bear with me)
So, when Dalrock says a reasonable thing like “women who divorce are (also) responsible of their situation”, the women who hear this cry “Team woman!!!!”, high five each other and start telling BS. For example:
“And what about a woman who has been ten years with his man and he was completely stable and in love and suddenly he wakes up and says “I need time to think?””
There are some things to say about this scenario:
1) This is the interpretation of a friend of the wife. We don’t see the man’s point of view. We don’t see the situation in an objective manner either. It could well be that the husband was not so stable in the first place but the woman’s rationalization hamster keep her from seeing this. He produced her gina tingle so she disregarded the rest.
2) Even if this description of a perfect husband turning into a cad after 10 years of marriage is true (it could be), this is only a tiny percentage of the cases.
(This use of private stories to disprove a general statement is a fallacy very used by women. Firstly, private stories are interpreted from a woman’s point of view. Secondly, the plural of anecdote is not data).
But if you concede that there are exceptions (and there are, like in anything else), “Team Woman” has won. What really matters to “Team woman” is that generalizations are not made. So you can say “well, of course women are responsible of their divorce but there are exceptions: there are cases where only the man is responsible”.
When you accept that, Team Woman has won because every woman thinks she is the exception. “Well, in my case, I am not responsible of my divorce, because, after 10 years of marriage, he became emotionally distant so I had no other option to divorce the ass, seize the assets (in the best interest of my children, of course) and start banging hot alphas”.
This is why women, who in private are very competitive, rally together in public. Because every woman sees any generalization like applied personally to her. “The personal is political”.
I see this once and again in blogs like Susan Walsh. When you say any generalization “Women are attracted to alphas”, there is always a woman saying: “I am not attracted to alphas and my friends neither”. I feel like screaming: “Honey, I am not talking about you, you narcissist! I am talking about American women in general!”
This narcissism is what makes women rally together to produce feminism. When Heather Mills divorces Paul McCartney and gets an OBSCENE amount of money, women don’t see that Heather Mills is their enemy (when men see celebritries divorce and the money women receive, they are less prone to want to get married). Women see themselves in the role of Heather Mills so they start defending her, while roaring: “TEAM WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Imnobody: Yeah, it is hard believe that women accept the generalization AT ALL when they all see themselves and most women in their circle as exceptions and are not willing to support the generalization spontaneously, but only after stating the exception (NAWALT) and BMDBTT.
How can they think that this is something that is really beneficial to themselves as exceptions?
Exceptions should be strong enough in their conviction that they are exceptions not to care too much what men say and think of women in general, since their behaviour is such that any man can see that they are exceptions.
It only strengthens the male attitude that women can’t be trusted in these matters.
Apparantly the exceptions are really bad at marketing/displaying their exceptionalism. It is really hard to imagine true exceptions in any other field being so lousy at marketing/displaying this. In every other market the quality/luxury brands are able to distance themselves from the low quality competition to a much higher degree and finding a niche market where the customer is willing to pay a higher price for the superior product.
Female behaviour int his area is more in line with “confuseopolies” like banking, insurance, telecommunications etc. where the suppliers are behaving in a way to make it impossible to make comparisons between offers and uphold an oligopoly that way, not competing in price, quality, reliability or service, just doing their best to lock customers in and milk them for what they are worth.
I’m of the opinion that people can change, especially if you marry young. We don’t have crystal balls on hand. I was 17 when I met my husband. If my adult mature self were to council my younger self, I’d tell her that all those alpha traits could lead to womanizing. Yet, that didn’t happen. I’d look at the beta traits that he had, and tell her that he was displaying some very good husband material. Yet we’re no longer together.
Would I have believed that 13 years on he would develop an addiction to pain pills? Probably not. Even as a grown adult woman, I was able to think that perhaps the addiction was caused by accident, and not on purpose. After all, he’d had an injury and there was nothing in our past to suggest drug use. He eventually quit the pills. And there was nothing that suggested to me as a teen or as an adult woman that at somewhere between 22 and 23 years of marriage that he would start using meth. I’m not even sure if meth was around when I was 17, but considering that he didn’t do drugs, I certainly wouldn’t see it in his future. Sorry, but I’m not owning that.
Let’s put it on the other foot for a moment. What of the virginal young woman that he chose .Was there anything to suggest to a very young man that one day she would cheat on him. Yes, it was during the pill addiction. Yes the pills affected our sex life. And the discovery of the affair motivated him to quit. Despite the disapproval people would feel toward my actions, is it fair to blame my husband for not fore seeing this as a young man?
So looking into the crystal ball, young man with a mix of some very alpha traits mixed in with some beta didn’t cheat, but virginal young thing did. How would he know. Do we blame him for choosing unwisely.
I dunno Dalrock. I’m not sure that it’s fair to blame someone for not being able to see far into the future. Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.
This is very strongif you aren’t married to the father of your children and you aren’t a widow, you have no excuses…No, I don’t mean you can blame feminism for the fact that you have failed as a mother by severely disadvantaging your children. As I wrote above, you have no excuses for that.
Whilst I’m not one for excuses and we all have to take responsibility for our life actions and decisions, it looks like it is completely assigning blame to the woman.
But then you said this
Yes my wife could cheat or get unhaaaaapy. It happens. It wouldn’t be my fault if she did this. But I would have failed my children in an important way. I think nearly all men feel this way about divorce, even when the wife was textbook EPL and frivolously divorced him. I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life tormenting myself for it, but I would look for what signs I might have missed in order to try to help other men (and their future children)
And IMO this if anything is tame. What person wouldn’t reflect on the experience and what they could learn from it? It’s not how I interpreted the post.
I’m wondering if it’s a language thing or not. In the scenario described, would you think to yourself and also think that it’s fine for others to say that you had ‘failed as a father by severely disadvantaging your children’?
Dalrock,
I think people protest too much. You are right on the money. People are not thinking seriously about the long term ramifications of who they chose to be the father/mother of their children. At the end of the day your freedom to chose is also the rope of responsibility when your choice fails. You didn’t know he would change during your marriage?? Did you not know any couples who had been married a long time? Any long term married couple will tell you people change in marriage and to be on the alert. I see a lot of women use #6 when they have engaged in magical thinking. The thinking goes if I marry him all his bad traits will disappear. I’m sorry but I am sick (heartbroken) at seeing all these single moms. And sorry to burst the”let’s focus on the rare exception rule” most of these women choose badly or even worse drove away good men. If you can’t accept responsibility for making a bad choice, you have doomed yourself to making another one.
Chels (re: your friend) — despite their difficulties, if neither of them has actually left, how about just waiting it out? Lots of storms just … pass. It might help if she frames it that way for herself, and makes it her business to be as understanding and supportive as she can be in the meantime. She can choose to be his biggest cheerleader, instead of one more problem he has to deal with, you know? I know that may sound naive and oversimplified (and perhaps I’ve misunderstood the dynamics of the situation, too), but as long as his behavior really is about work, and not about, say, his receptionist, maybe she’s suddenly coming off as nagging and “needy” without realizing it. Maybe he just needs more space than usual due to the pressures involved in getting a business off the ground. Perhaps if she can just tough it out for now — and be genuinely nice to him — it can work itself out. (She may also need to adjust her expectations somewhat about the amount of time he will have “just for her” — let alone for her and any kids, too — if he’s in business for himself.) Just a thought.
And one more thing: What she probably really needs is the opportunity to talk to a much older woman who is happily married to a successful entrepreneur. (Don’t ask me where to find such a woman, but it would be really worth it to her to find one!) Someone like that could tell her, with a great deal of credibility, whether his behavior is perfectly normal given the pressures he’s under – or not. (Consider this as a possible scenario here: Such businesses often fail, and he probably has his life savings — and their financial future! — on the line. The pressures may be enormous, and he needs a weeping, desperate female — who is sure it’s really all about her — like he needs a hole in his head.) I realize I don’t have the whole story, and I don’t even know you, let alone her or her husband, but I’m assuming good faith and normal human imperfection on both their parts. Marriage is hard sometimes; it just is. From what you’ve said, though, they both sound mostly confused and overwhelmed. If she can get a handle on her own contribution to that, it could make a huge difference for both of them.
lIfes not fair, never meant to be, batting for team woman & crying lifes not fair, its the pill, im the exception meth addiction was never invented when i met him, & you cheated on him, blaming it on the pills …
Take responsibility for your own actions, you cant ever hold yourself responsible for another persons actions, unless directed by yourself
I seriously wish the women posting here observed the following :
Life does not throw pity parties, stop asking other women to throw pity parades for you, & stop dramatising your past, & wallowing in the emotional feedback to your detriment
It is to your detriment to buy into the female victimisation mindset marketed by all feminists, it prevents you from seeing the advantages of life,
feminist women will only reinforce the detrimental states youve experienced, by telling you outright lies, its ok to feel them, its ok to wallow in them & beg everyone around you to throw you some crumbs of pity
When they should be giving you real advice, & helping you back on your feet, instead of reinforcing the detrimental emotional states, destroying any hopes you have of getting back on your feet & seeing the advantages & opportunities & strengths, you would posses, if you stopped using pity & drama as an excuse not to face reality
This is the very real danger women face everywhere when they buy into Team Woman, & feminist ideologies, you are excused from facing reality & the pains & travails of life, instead of becoming intelligent & more aware
Feminists & Team Woman want you to take all the pain & suffering you’ve experienced, & take it for granted,
This is essentially what feminists want women to do everywhere, take the pain & suffering women feel & take it for granted, yes take it for granted it happens to you because you’re a woman, its the patriarchy, its men …. dont learn from it, dont become aware or more educated of a person
The black community practises the exact same methodology of victimisation, as taught by feminists, it is meant to disempower you & rob you of your ability to learn from life, as your too busy wallowing in your own pity & the emotional fall out from the nauseation of drama
They dont want you to question it & learn from the lessons life lays out for you,
when you take responsibilityfor your own actions, you become empowered as a person, not as a feminist, or a woman, gender has no place in learning from life … life is objective & cold in the lessons it teaches,
Self responsibility is the Height of individuality & growth as a person
this is why feminists preach the victimisation theory to hapless women everywhere, as it forces women to encompass only a narrow set of consequences
Feminists & Team Woman dont want you to see the bigger picture, feminists & team woman shout empowerment, when they really dont want you seeing the bigger picture
What is the bigger picture? They dont want you to see yourself as an individual, they want you to see yourself as a caricature of predefined ideologies dictated by feminists & Team Woman
Team Woman will always reinforce the detrimental consequences of your actions, to the point you are powerless to correct them, as your too busy contemplating the drama of your consequences & the emotional fall out, & excusing yourself as not like that
Women everywhere now see it as some sort of perverse RIGHT, not to face reality, & see the consequences of their actions, & observe them as they as they should be observed, without guilt or pity
This post is a lot longer then i intended, but i will state this, feminism & the Team Woman female empowerment industry, two very different camps …. teach women to victimise themselves, precisely because it gives what would be otherwise rational women, tunnel visioning the life experiences they face, & stereotyping to rules dictated by feminists & the Team Woman
Basically dont experience them your lifes & travails first hand, experience them the way we the feminists & the Team Woman empowerment industry, tell you to experience them
Victimisation is not empowerment, it is not pity or guilt, it is a societal wide disease perpetrated by feminists & the Team Woman industrial complex, carbon copied from the racial movements of the slave trade, & 60’s & 70’s
Victimisation & group think such as the popularisation & marketting of batting for team woman are very real techniques of isolation & dependancy
Used by cultists, marketers & corporations & institutions everywhere
When you make excuses for yourself as a woman, you isolate yourself from the very real life consequences of your actions
When you bat for Team Woman & cry out not all women are like that, you are acting out your dependancy on the group to think for you, it is an act of group think, not an act of statement borne out of your individuality as a person
Wow Eileen, that was some really good advice, thanks! I emailed her what you said, and she said that she agrees, and she will try it out. She’s sure he’s not cheating (definitely not the type) and they’re both really good people (I’ve known her for years, she’s the daughter of my parents’ neighbor), so I’m sure they can work it out, but this emotional roller coaster is incredibly hard on her 😦
Thinking of what you might say when reading this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2054475/How-women-turning-Mean-Girls-arent-good-men-there.html
There aren’t enough good men to go aroudn so now single women are fighting over the few they find. They got into this mess because poor poor women are too edumacated to settle for less than Mr Perfect. This is all the fault of ‘society’ & benefits men in some nefarious way and thus needs to be stopped!
“In every other market the quality/luxury brands are able to distance themselves from the low quality competition to a much higher degree and finding a niche market where the customer is willing to pay a higher price for the superior product.”
This is the consequence of feminism and the removal of stigma.
(About stigma see: http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_4_bring_back_stigma.html)
In the times of the evil patriarchy (which I lived in my country), young men were divided into “eligible bachelors” and losers (that is, the same as today). Young women were divided into “good women” and “bad women”. A good woman had to maintain its reputation through her behaviour, not only not being a slut or divorcing men serially, but also by being kind and a good person.
As any good, each kind of quality product had his advertising: good men show that they were able to support a family by paying dates (that is, the same as today). Good women dressed and behaved in public in a way that show people that they were not bad women. Women belonging to families with good values were considered “good”, because, in these evil days, good families didn’t let their girls to do thing that harmed their reputation in the marriage market. This was the family’s role.
Good women were offered a higher price: they were offered lifelong marriage. Bad women were offered a meal and some money for their sex: a lower price for an inferior product.
Now, feminism removed the stigma associated to bad women and land whales parade in the streets with T-shirts telling “I am a slut and I am proud”.
As a result, all women are the same and there is no distinction. Quality women have had to compete with bad women at the same level. A slut arms race is the result. Girls are more and more slutty to compete for men.
So the marriage market has become “a market for lemons” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
The seller (the woman) has more information about the quality of the product than the buyer (the man). This defines a “market for lemons”. Like any other “market for lemons”, the quality of the product decreases and decreases.
It is similar to the Gresham’s law “Bad money drives good money out of the market”. Let’s call it imnobody’s law “Bad woman replaces good woman in the marriage market”
.
This narcissism is what makes women rally together to produce feminism. When Heather Mills divorces Paul McCartney and gets an OBSCENE amount of money, women don’t see that Heather Mills is their enemy (when men see celebritries divorce and the money women receive, they are less prone to want to get married). Women see themselves in the role of Heather Mills so they start defending her, while roaring: “TEAM WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Yes, you do see this. Even my mother and sister, whom I consider to have integrity and good judgment generally, thought Elin Nordegren was entitled to half of Tiger Woods’s money because she’d been married to him for a couple of years and he cheater. Yes, he was an ass. A huge, skanky loser, and his actions humiliated her and his children and will not be forgotten. But he earned that money. Why should she have it? She could easily live with both kids on some reasonable amount of support – and have a far nicer lifestyle than I’m currently enjoying too. I also don’t buy that she was completely unaware of his sexual nature or of the egregious amount of cheating going down. And I don’t think she should be allowed to take the kids out of country unless he agreed to it. She made the kids with this guy; they need a father. Stay in Florida, live in the house across the street. Make a Tiger voodoo doll and stab it every night in private.
I don’t think John Cleese’s ex should have won the divorce lottery either, or Heather Mills. Feminism was supposed to be about woman being able to make an independent living and doing it. So feminists should be saying, “Yeah, take everything! Chop his penis off too! Yeah, yeah!” Shows how much feminists really want equality; they only want equality of outcome, not of opportunity + responsibility.
I would say that Mel Gibson owed it to his wife to be generous in the divorce. She raised 8 kids with him, lived according to his rather unique religious proscriptions, and then got chucked aside publicly when they were both older and he went off his meds. He might still have been a highly successful actor without her, but I think she put in the time so he could do that and have kids and stay on track emotionally.
Incredibly sage advice, Eileen. Too bad we don’t have women like you writing advice columns instead of the nasty airheads who seem to write most of them.
Sorry, that should read:
So feminists should NOT be saying, “Yeah, take everything! Chop his penis off too! Yeah, yeah!”
I also don’t agree that women should be allowed to physically beat on men just because they are mean. Violence is wrong, period. If Elin bashed Tiger with a golf club, she should have been arrested. What kind of message is that sending to her kids?
@Chels
That is fantastic. One thing which struck me after reading Eileen’s comment and your response here is that if she is accurately reading this, there was a risk the entrepreneur husband could have dangerously misunderstood your friend’s concerns. I’ve seen a number of men describe reaching a point where they intuitively feel that they just can’t make their wives happy. At this point many just decide the marriage must be done. This is how I read the author’s now ex husband in this WSJ article. I think what drives men to assume this is both the cultural cheerleading to women to empower themselves through unhappiness and an intuitive sense of what is being described in the rotating polyandry posts/discussions. Your friend deescalating would go a long way in that case, especially if she can show him that she is pulling on the same team as him and not looking for an excuse to cause it all to unravel.
But again, all of this assumes that Eileen’s take is correct (which I hope it is).
Thinking of what you might say when reading this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2054475/How-women-turning-Mean-Girls-arent-good-men-there.html
There aren’t enough good men to go aroudn so now single women are fighting over the few they find. They got into this mess because poor poor women are too edumacated to settle for less than Mr Perfect. This is all the fault of ‘society’ & benefits men in some nefarious way and thus needs to be stopped!
Oh that’s just more nonsense from the infamous male feminist Hugo Schwyzer. He absolutely hates men, full stop.
Imnobody: Thanks for the lemon article.
“There are also parallels in the insurance market, where, unless those least likely to need insurance (i.e., those least likely to get in accidents) are forced to buy insurance, it is those most likely to need insurance compensation who tend most to buy insurance.”
This must fit as a parable for the SMP as well, but I am not sure how.
I definitively avoid buying insurances if I can. I have insurance for the house and the mandatory insurance for the car, but not for theft and so on. Everytime I buy some kind of consumer electronics they try to sell me insurance. Those insurances are only for stupid people and for immoral people who abuse them. When new cell phones are hitting the market, the next newest models get stolen a lot, for some reason.
“She could easily live with both kids on some reasonable amount of support – and have a far nicer lifestyle than I’m currently enjoying too.” Since Elin Nordegren is the daughter of my favourite radio journalist, I would like to beleive that she treated Tiger fairly. There was a lot of speculation before the divorce, but I have not read anything after the divorce that suggests that she made higher demands than Tiger was comfortable with.
@Jason
This popular fiction is at the core of the problem, and we do women a tremendous disservice in perpetuating it. Women don’t “like a project to fix”. They are attracted to men with an easily identifiable set of alpha traits, many of which tend to be incompatible to marriage (see excuse #6). The whole women liking a project to fix myth is the woman’s rationalization hamster talking. She recasts her unexplainable attraction for bad boys as an altruistic desire to save him on her part.
Perpetuating this myth is cruel to women because it robs them of the opportunity to truly take responsibility for their own choices.
Dalrock, aren’t there some women who want to be mothers to their husbands than wives? Or those who wish are trying to repair their relationship with their father through their husband? Granted, they may be a few, but the fixer-upper mentality might characterize them?
Dalrock – “This popular fiction is at the core of the problem, and we do women a tremendous disservice in perpetuating it. Women don’t “like a project to fix”. They are attracted to men with an easily identifiable set of alpha traits, many of which tend to be incompatible to marriage (see excuse #6). The whole women liking a project to fix myth is the woman’s rationalization hamster talking. She recasts her unexplainable attraction for bad boys as an altruistic desire to save him on her part.”
Bingo!
I first started noticing that sort of female rationalization as a teenager in church youth group back in the late 70’s. The hottest girls, who never seemed the least bit interested in us “nice guy’s”, would often bring their (latest) boyfriends with them (typically either team captain-type jocks or just plain thugs, but occasionally a fortunate-son of the wealthy class) and they always gave the same line about just wanting to get them saved and bring them to Jesus (’cause f*cking them would show them “the way” or something).
I have a sister in law who rejected the advances of a very solid, deeply Christian (she herself always espousing her deep Christian commitment) doctor, and instead opted to marry would-be medical student (she would eventually put him through medical school while she worked to support him) who, in retrospect, had a lot more of the “bad boy” emotionally damaged persona. It was a long running family joke about her always bring home “lost puppies” and “fix’er-up’ers” in her choice of troubled and unstable boyfriends; everyone (myself included) of the rationalization that she just needed someone she could “fix”.
Her husband cheated on her while in med school, and then filed for divorce also immediately after he graduated.
You’d think she have learned a lesson from that, but instead of giving a guy (established IT, upper beta sort) who had long had a thing for her any serious consideration, she instead through herself into “partying” so as to find more exciting guys – more like the “puppies in need of fixing”/bad boys she always preferred. Her stated rationale was something along the lines of her needing to work through her post-marital issues with someone else with similar issues rather than becoming “unequally yoked” with someone who already had it all together.
imnobody says “the plural of anecdote is not data.”
A huge flaw in common female arguments.
Pure gold.
So, I’ve searched your blog for this, to no avail. Perhaps you can point me to the scientific basis for the claim of alpha/beta/omega males in humans/primates. This apparently is how you define the term. I have to say, I don’t believe there is any scientific basis for this definition, at all. But, I’m willing to read what you’ve got.
Looking at the definition you provided, my ex-husband was not at all an alpha. He was not sexually experienced, had not dated alot, was small of stature (5’4″), not particularly muscular, and not dominant in behavior. It’s interesting that you’ve created a self-perpetuating system in which your definitions are continually reinforced via circular reasoning. Again, though, I would really like to see some biological or even sociological research which supports your particular definition of alpha and beta.
Second question: Do you consider yourself a Beta, Dalrock?
[D: Yes, I consider myself beta (hopefully greater beta). Another Heartiste link which may help define this for you is this one (he has done a whole series, so you could search “chicks dig jerks” within his site for more). Another blogger has defined alpha and beta traits here, although this is just an excerpt. His full book does the topic much more justice.]
I should point out: his height never bothered me (I’m 5’3″) and I liked his body. I would say that his issues probably came from his dad, who was also a cheater (and the kids knew about his behavior).
It’s an interesting topic. I do consider myself a feminist. However, I hate irresponsible behavior by women. In fact, feminism, to me, means having choices, but then taking personal responsibility for my choices. When I divorced, I took on the majority of the responsibility for parenting, and I pay the overwhelming majority of my kids’ expenses (he does contribute, but to a much smaller degree). I paid him a large cash settlement so I could keep the kids in their house and attending the same schools (he pays for half of the kids medical insurance and prepaid college programs, but that’s the extent of his child support). A woman expecting a man to support her financially for an indefinite period is certainly not how I define feminism. I’m okay with the fact that I paid him in the settlement, I earn more, and he was entitled to a settlement of the assets we acrued during the marriage. It isn’t just men who pay in divorces, it’s whoever earns the most money. So, if women earn more, they also end up paying more.
One other question: Would you advise that a person stay married indefinitely to an unrepentant cheater in the guise of taking responsibility for their actions? Just curious.
[D: Cheating is a valid reason for divorce in my opinion. What I would advise is a more complex question. However I wouldn’t second guess a man or woman’s choice to divorce for infidelity.]
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A remaxd
Where’s the pity party? I owned my actions. Where they influenced by my husbands pill taking? Yes. But no pity party before,during or after. My question was whether it was right to blame my husband for my actions anymore than than to blame me for his. There seems to be the impression that he and I should have been able to see these things decades ahead of time. That’s absurd.
I Fully agree that life has risks, that’s why this post is absurd. There are some things that have to be lived through, and there are no crystal balls.
Dubious Wonder,
FYI, I responded to your questions in-line above.
Edit: I should include a warning that Heartiste is pretty crass. I’m guessing you already noticed that from the link you referenced though.
Dalrock writes:
[D: Yes, I consider myself beta (hopefully greater beta). Another Heartiste link which may help define this for you is this one (he has done a whole series, so you could search “chicks dig jerks” within his site for more). Another blogger has defined alpha and beta traits here, although this is just an excerpt. His full book does the topic much more justice.]
Interesting read. My ex definitely falls into the category of narcissist (I literally think he has no conscience), though I don’t think that the rest of the description fits him very well. Narcissists are all about appearance, which can make spotting them rather hard when you are young and inexperienced. They look good on paper, but are exceedingly difficult to be married to.
After 12 years of trying, I didn’t really see a fix for the marriage (when someone is a committed cheater who refuses to reform, and you catch them cheating multiple times, you’re somewhat left without options). The only fix for me, moving forward, is to avoid repeating that mistake and to train my daughter and son to be more informed and perceptive than I was at her age.
The other part, of course, is to train my son to understand what real masculinity is, versus fraudulent masculinity (peacocking). That’s a major focus of my efforts as a parent.
The other part, of course, is to train my son to understand what real masculinity is, versus fraudulent masculinity (peacocking).
Eh, you won’t be able to do that. The best you can manage is to teach him what *you*, as a woman, think “real masculinity” is. This is something that has been going on for a few decades now and it’s more or less a complete failure. Its failure is one of the things that has given rise to Game/PUA, actually.
Much better option: find another man (relative, neighbor, someone you trust), who can model it for him. It’s really the only way it works.
“My ex definitely falls into the category of narcissist”
See the science here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-women-really-do-love-selfobsessed-psychopaths-850007.html
“Bad boys, it seems, really do get all the girls. Women might claim they want caring, thoughtful types but scientists have discovered what they really want – self-obsessed, lying psychopaths.
A study has found that men with the “dark triad” of traits – NARCISSISM, thrill- seeking and deceitfulness – are likely to have a larger number of sexual affairs.”
@Dubious Wonder
You have basically just described the dark triad traits perfectly, and these are the traits we have been talking about regarding reason #6. I think the Heartiste (he has also gone by Roissy and Citizen Renegade in case you see those terms) link I included specifically used this term. It is a cruel trick of nature that women are attracted to these traits. It is cruel to the women who marry them and the children who experience the resulting turmoil. It is also cruel to the ordinary “nice guy” betas that women in general walk right past them to get with the alpha. Now that the mechanics of attraction are better understood, betas are learning how to mimick enough of the alpha traits to be attractive to women. We can help women by teaching them about this part of their nature, but the temptation to rationalize going for the man they are most sexually attracted to is enormous.
This is at the core of my post. I take no pleasure in digging up the great pain you and many others have already experienced. I’ll write some more on this later but I’m swamped right now.
I don’t see where you had any choice there.
After 12 years of trying, I didn’t really see a fix for the marriage (when someone is a committed cheater who refuses to reform, and you catch them cheating multiple times, you’re somewhat left without options). The only fix for me, moving forward, is to avoid repeating that mistake and to train my daughter and son to be more informed and perceptive than I was at her age.
The other part, of course, is to train my son to understand what real masculinity is, versus fraudulent masculinity (peacocking). That’s a major focus of my efforts as a parent.
One of the best things to do is give up feminism and actually teach your kids about sexual attraction and responsibility. This guy is the best place to learn about how relationships work at a very real and non sugar coated level. http://heartiste.wordpress.com/. Try to teach your son about misandry, all of it. make sure he doesn’t go out in the world thinking he has constitutional rights as he was taught is school. Make sure he learns “game” The one greatest gift you can give a daughter is to understand the power and temperary gift of physical attractiveness and the the long lasting and pernament power of emotional attractiveness that comes from being on team “us” and not as a liberated competitor.
Much better option: find another man (relative, neighbor, someone you trust), who can model it for him. It’s really the only way it works.
True. I can’t teach him to be a man. I can only help him think critically about the subject. My son is a speed skater, and his coach is a really good role model. I take my son to practice 5 days a week, not only because he’s good at the sport, but also so he can spend as much time, as possible, with his coach. And then, on the drive to and from (we spend a lot of time in the car these days getting to those practices), we talk about life, his friends, girls, etc.
On the other hand, I’m not really a girly girl…I grew up on a farm, rodeoed for years, and I work in a male-dominated field. So, while I can be soft and compassionate, my most common response to him is something along the lines of “suck it up.” This is much akin to the sort of thing my my mom told me when she was coaching me for rodeo…”If you’d been paying attention, that horse wouldn’t have bucked you off…get back on and ride.” My job is to raise him to be a responsible adult who understands that pain is part of succeeding in anything meaningful.
DW
“Real masculinity” or fake has nothing to do with narcissism. That women often can’t tell between any of the three is only one painful red pill moment for us guys.
Please don’t fuck up your son, either, as I’m sure your husband’s example has done plenty of damage already. Reading hooking up smart is more depressing than reading roissy for me. Susan and most of her commenters are what I would consider not-man-hating women (and really I’ve come to believe that the only man a woman fully loves is her son) who mean well. But they do NOT come even remotely close to understanding what it is like to be a man. This disconnect, even by well meaning women, makes me more and more tempted to ignore every word out of a woman’s mouth. Please don’t think you understand your son cuz you don’t!
I’d have done better w/ women if I’d have ignored all of what my mom told me and ignored much of what my dad did for my mom. They both, by word and in their actions, beta’d the crap out of me. And they’ve been happily married for 40+ years. And only by deprogramming myself from their married example have i been able to find a wife and make my marriage a happy one. To this day, my first reaction is too much beta and giving in to that makes me and my wife of 15+ years miserable. I found mmsl well after I conciously started “alphaing up” and long after I read every single roissy post.
From my pov, every cultural change in the last 40 years has either worked towards removing men’s balls and/or any incentive for men to do the right thing. It’s working out great!
My son is a speed skater, and his coach is a really good role model. I take my son to practice 5 days a week, not only because he’s good at the sport, but also so he can spend as much time, as possible, with his coach. And then, on the drive to and from (we spend a lot of time in the car these days getting to those practices), we talk about life, his friends, girls, etc.
That’s good for him, I think.
One of the best things to do is give up feminism and actually teach your kids about sexual attraction and responsibility.
I teach my kids about responsibility daily, nor am I particularly interested in becoming something I’m not suited for (a fraudulent delicate little flower).
This guy is the best place to learn about how relationships work at a very real and non sugar coated level. http://heartiste.wordpress.com/.
I’m in a happy relationship with a decent, honorable man; my kids see it daily; my daughter will be my maid of honor in our wedding.
Try to teach your son about misandry, all of it. make sure he doesn’t go out in the world thinking he has constitutional rights as he was taught is school. Make sure he learns “game”
My son is already successful with girls, at 13. Succeeding with girls is easy; being a successful husband and father is hard. My goal is to teach him to be a successful husband and father.
The one greatest gift you can give a daughter is to understand the power and temperary gift of physical attractiveness and the the long lasting and pernament power of emotional attractiveness that comes from being on team “us” and not as a liberated competitor.
I don’t compete with my partner, we play on the same team, and that’s what we model for my kids. We support each other, build each other up, and take care of each other. No gender wars at my house. My guy is not threatened by my competence at life; it is one of the characteristics that attracted him to me. Not all guys require a traditionally feminine woman (though I am a damn good cook, I can also fix my car with equal panache).
wow that sailed right over her head. good luck DW. You will do just fine.
“We can help women by teaching them about this part of their nature, but the temptation to rationalize going for the man they are most sexually attracted to is enormous.”
This is why families took an active role regulating and restricting the sex life of young women to make sure they didn’t do foolish choices that they regretted all their life. A grandmother could have advised the young woman: “This boy is not good for you. It is too self-absorbed. It is a cad”. Yesteryear young women would have listened the experience of the grandma.
But modern society does not value experience and the grandma is only an old fart. Restricting the sexuality of young women is a violation of their most basic human rights.
So, as Tom Wolfe put it, since modern people have thrown away the wisdom accumulated for millennia, they are going to have to relearn everything from scratch. Much pain will ensue for the following generations.
Control and Self-Discipline, along with a solid understanding of the carnage his Father’s actions had, are the only way to avoid him repeating the same decisions. There is very much a gap in his understanding of relationships because of his father’s actions. (It’s the same issue when a mother just ejects a father because “he’s boring”).
“We can help women by teaching them that this part of their nature, but the temptation to go after the man they most sexually attracted to is enormous.”
Oh, nonsense. Women aren’t sexually attracted to men at all; at least not in our culture. Do you believe, when you see some nice-looking girl on the arm of some dysfunctional dolt, with his pants down around his knees and smelling like a goat, that she’s REALLY sexually attracted to him? Of course not. They’re not attracted to these bums because of sex or love—they’re attracted to them BECAUSE they are losers. Being with such males accomplishes three main things for most women:
1. It preserves their precious ‘independence’ by being with someone to whom a committed relationship is impossible. Then when she dumps him, she can play the ‘victim card’.
2. It secures their social status as the ‘owners of sex and reproduction’ because, obviously, such males are utterly unfit to be fathers or husbands; and
3. It bolsters their egos by making them appear superior to any male they happen to be with.
That’s it in a nutshell. Men who talk about ‘rationalization’ are the ones doing all the rationalizing. To believe that women really want them for sex or love is to be in deep denial about reality. And it will have the same consequences for men as all evasions of reality have.
@ Eric
“Do you believe, when you see some nice-looking girl on the arm of some dysfunctional dolt, with his pants down around his knees and smelling like a goat, that she’s REALLY sexually attracted to him?”
If they are fucking them, and are not receiving some form of material compensation/benefit for the arrangement, then absolutely.
Alot of people like to blame delinquent males for single-motherhood, but I think this deflects responsibility from the mother who likely chose to mate with a ‘high-risk’ male.
Because, only rarely, do reliable/red-flag indications of delinquency fail to present to the critical observer(ie. exceptionally attractive guys with a host of female ‘acquaintances’, or a plethora of prior gf’s, or an overactive, hypersocial party lifestyle, etc – whose selfish reproductive interests would be undermined by paternal liability).
Even in science, past behavior is a reliable predictor of future behavior.
And let’s make no mistake that women have a observable tendency to preferrentially mate with patently ‘high-risk'(delinquent and abusive) males:
“Good genes, mating effort, and delinquency”
(Martin L. Lalumièrea and Vernon L. Quinseyb
a Forensic Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250
College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 1R8;b Department of Psychology,
Queen’s University at Kingston, Humphrey Hall, Kingston, Ontario,
Canada, K7L 3N6.)
Thus, there is a measurable tendency for women to be (adaptively) forgiving/permissive/credulous of highly attractive males(who in turn, have evolved an adaptive bent towards short-term mating – frequently indicated in abusive, delinquent, and promiscuous tendencies that expedite short-term mating traffic).
Paragon
Dirty little secret. Don’t say this out loud in front of women it causes trouble for all. Child birth is 100% under the positive control of the female. A woman knows a man is using birth control and if she is using birth control. No matter what he says she knows if she can get pregnant or not just by what she has done with or with out anyones knowledge approval or help. And after all of that a female can still decide to kill a child she doesn’t want or need while the child still 100 percent depends on her body to live without having to tell or inform anybody of a damn thing. So the bottom line is a woman doesn’t get pregnant unless she is too stupid to know how her pussy works,is a lieing devious bitch,or she did that on purpose with her man. Don’t ever make notice out loud to any of this,it really does disturb the peace.
This DLS is the main reason for a male birth control pill. That would put men in charge of the llies and stupidity. A man will decide which woman is worthy of being a mother and who needs to be pumped and dumped and working as a pack mule with no entitlement to a wealth transfer. What is really nice is some women will make sure childless women understand that they are childless because the men find them are unworthy to handle the responsibility of motherhood. And others will blame men of course but the bottom line men will be in control.
I think it would be a win win for all men get the blame and get the authority to fully control the situation and women who are completely adverse to any responsibility are removed from the direct decision making process and are given no resposibility (or any blame).
I can imagine the hate (from women) directed at men if a male birth control pill becomes available. They’ll be saying (shouting) “Man Up!” and procreate you man-child and how men are oppressing women by denying them children.
Men and women both have the capacity for bad behavior.
The real difference is that our current culture is an excuse-making machine for women. There always seems to be some reason why a woman should not be accountable for her actions and decisions.
It’s humorous how many times I hear women say that they don’t want to “be judged” – I never hear men say that.
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Women dont want to be judged, as it doesnt feel emotionally gratifying
Women want you to throw pity parties & reinforce the emotional high they feel as they serenade you with past mistakes
Self validation is never a critical learning strategy, all it does is breed entitlement & a gold digging princess madonna complex
Self validation is a precursor to low esteem & insecurity in any relationship or endeavour
ie. Dont pickup chicks to get validation from them, do it for yourself
Dont expect validation or an emotional context for things you have no control over, ie the past, chicks who flake on you on dates, none-functioning relationships
Objective Constructive Self introspection, by accepting reality you gain the power to change it
@Eileen:
“And one more thing: What she probably really needs is the opportunity to talk to a much older woman who is happily married to a successful entrepreneur. (Don’t ask me where to find such a woman, but it would be really worth it to her to find one!) Someone like that could tell her, with a great deal of credibility, whether his behavior is perfectly normal given the pressures he’s under – or not. (Consider this as a possible scenario here: Such businesses often fail, and he probably has his life savings — and their financial future! — on the line. The pressures may be enormous, and he needs a weeping, desperate female — who is sure it’s really all about her — like he needs a hole in his head.) ”
If you find one of the few entrepreneurs who do not fail their business but are actually a bit successful you may get some divorce pay-off: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055002/Lisa-Tchenguiz-Vivian-Imermans-trophy-wife-fights-100m-divorce-settlement.html
Present day entitlement & the gold digging princess madonna complex, are all the results of manginas & feminists throwing pity parties for women, validating a woman’s emotional context,
As feminists & mangina’s throw pity parties for single moms, & out right lies on the wonders of a life lived responsible for your own actions, & the introspection it gives you on the tenacity of your actions
Pity parties & emotional validation are all designed to make as irresponsible for your own actions, while responsible for the group as a whole, group think … ie all governmental & political offices operate in this way,
Isolate a person from the consequences of his actions ie politicians or past relationships & they start to want emotional validation from the group, as a whole , ie by slavishly observing the political rules of their party or reliving the emotional highs of that experience
This is precisely why single moms & ethnic communities are targetted by feminists & political correctness & everything they do excused
The results communities of women & ethnic communities, all isolated from the consequences of their actions
It is the consequence of your actions which gives you individuality & a tenacity to see things as they really are
By identifying yourself as a feminist or a black community under racism, you get single moms unable to see the results of their actions, or gang bangers fighting against a society, basically massive communities devolved into referring their actions to a group of victimisation instead of the consequences of their own actions
Feminism & Political correctness are all about the isolation of the individual, which is why it is communism & marxist, ideologies designed to assign the consequences of an action not to yourself
By being responsible for the results of your actions & not the action of others, you become a self driven, tenacious, driven to objectivity & truth as a person, traits only individuality can bring, as a self driven man is incorruptible, you avoid the paradigm of popular culture & mass media completely
Paragon:
If women feel no emotional attachment to men, then the sex act becomes meaningless. Most women see sex as only an obligation, ‘the price they have to pay’ for a relationship. It’s really more of a burden that they resent rather that bonding experience that they share and enjoy. Mostly, they’re incapable of sharing anything, anyway; and they’re not about to give their social status as the ‘owners’ of sex.
@ Eric
“If women feel no emotional attachment to men, then the sex act becomes meaningless.”
Then it becomes important to ask what is cuing these emotional entanglements.
In evolutionary terms, it means displaying fitness signals which speak to genetic quality(rather than direct/material benefits), given an emphasis in short-term mating(and thus a basis in traits which communicate something about relative deviation from developmental competence, and other limiting quantities of evolutionary success).
This is zoology 101, and has long overdue application in a broader discussion/treatment.
@ greyghost
“Paragon
Dirty little secret. Don’t say this out loud in front of women it causes trouble for all. Child birth is 100% under the positive control of the female.”
Yes, but something else I’ve noticed is that wanton pregnancy is often strategic in broader terms than just near reproductive success – it is rationalized as a practical means to ‘snare’ commitment from a man(as naive as that may sound to a rational individual, hypergamous women rarely qualify).
Small comment (having not read comments 50-250): I think the difference here is Dalrock is championing results based responsibility (you wanted to be married, your partner left you, it would have been possible to select someone who would still be married to you, therefore: you fucked up) vs Chels/Dubious who are championing algorithms based responsibility (I picked a partner who was short/Christian/beta/stable/committed/unlikely to divorce in some way, but was divorced anyway, therefore: it’s not my fault).
If you will allow me to wax philosophical, I think its actually the same difference between capitalism and socialism. The problem with the algorithms position is that while it may be true, we have no way of knowing, because we never met your partner. It’s equally possible that you were young, stupid, in love, inexperienced, desperate, or some combination (please don’t take this personally: our family had a lawyer friend who handled divorce cases, and he would always ask them why they made one or another stupid decision, and they would reply ‘but I was in luuuuv’),and no matter what you say over the Internet it cannot compare to real physical experience. On the other hand divorced/not divorced is a simple statement of fact.
Grerp makes a good point. I have much more sympathy for a divorced older woman such as Mel Gibson’s ex wife, Robyn who is not in a position to find another husband. Elin Nordegren is still young and beautiful and has plenty of options. This should be taken into consideration by the courts when determining a divorce settlement. Basically Robyn put in her time whereas Elin really didn’t.
In fairness to Elin, I read an interview with her and she talked kindly of Tiger.
@DW
Oh, Dubious, I do not know how you’ve gone through the ‘Sphere on your path. But I could recommend some posts for you to understand WHY your man felt the need to dominate some other woman besides you. You obviously value economics more highly than preserving the intact family unit that leads to better results for children. He patently could not meet your standards in that regard. Feminism (which you should have capitalized when you spelled “god” with a small G, because we all have a god, and it’s obvious where your loyalties lie) helped create this situation. I’d suggest two articles for a brief overview:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/one-key-to-marital-success-have-fewer-options/
And the ever-excellent “Dominance and Submission in Marriage,” over at Athol’s place.
Someone is always captain, and someone first officer. Sounds like you let economics rule, let your husband know it, and he sought another woman to be his “first mate.”
Lisa–
Big freaking deal you’re offended and and I dare say everyone or nearly everyone here doesn’t give a rat’s ass that you are.
The point Dalrock is making here with this post is entirely valid. He’s been more than reasonable in explaining in detail what he means.
Western and especially Anglosphere and worst of all American culture absolutely does tend to excuse women for nearly anything these days and endlessly shift blame to their significant others.
ALady wrote:
You really shouldn’t lie with your posting name! This is simply exemplary understanding, and I have never found a woman who voiced it so well – are you sure you’re “a Lady?” Hate to steal, but I wanted to see this posted again. Absolutely spot on.
Dubious Wonder Wrote:
I’m sorry if I’m writing on these things late. DW, this is your SECOND mention of finances. I think you might be too much like the rich young man in Jesus’ parable, who was saddened as he could not take up and follow Jesus as that meant selling all his worldly goods and following him. You have made clear how important financial security and independence is to ME, and I have never met you.
Let me draw a few conclusions from what you have written. You were a 27yo Christian woman (Virgin? Very important for a wife; see here ) who married a 34yo Deacon of the Church. He was a “Christian,” which is what you were looking for. You were independently established in work, I would assume. I think this is accurate to what you have written.
You married your husband on the declining part of your Marriage Market Value, as attractiveness for women matches fertility, which is at a peak from 18-24. Your husband might still have been slowly rising in MMV; he had achieved a position of leadership in an organization that you valued, and so he had social status over you; you could look up to him. Underneath this, of course, was a raging materialism, reflected in your ongoing concern here for “finances” and also your praise of feminism, that outgrowth of Cultural Marxism, offshoot of the materialist philosophy of Comte and others (and that, for an argument for another time, I, as a Catholic, blame on the Reformation and the Solas, but leave that aside for now.)
I think your husband, who had so much “hand” (PUAs say “frame”) when you married, by his position of respect in your church, gradually lost it over the first year as he was unable to meet your material desires. It is perfectly understandable to me how he could quit his job as your child approached; he knew he did not make enough to keep the three of you secure. Rather than face this and confess to you, he internalized the shame and sought elsewhere. Then he gave up; he could never meet your standard. His other girlfriends still looked up to him as you did on agreeing to enter into marriage.
Know this going into your new marriage: you will not be happy with a man who is not superior to you; you also need a big earner, one who pulls in more than you. That you did not know this the first time through is tragic, but understandable. Use that hard-won knowledge to do better this next time, and cut your ex some slack.
Paragon:
With women who haven’t been subverted by feminist cultural indoctrination, what you’re saying is true. They instinctive seek the most desirable males; but in our culture this is reversed. The fact that American women lead every other worldwide demographic in consuming prescription psychiatric drugs is evidence that they are going against their own natural inclinations.
Dalrock, man, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but today’s woman does not make excuses for being an unwed mother.
gradually lost it over the first year as he was unable to meet your material desires. It is perfectly understandable to me how he could quit his job as your child approached; he knew he did not make enough to keep the three of you secure. Rather than face this and confess to you, he internalized the shame and sought elsewhere.
This is simply not true. I’m not materialistic — at all. I didn’t care how much he earned, EVER. All I wanted from him was consistency and stability. He clearly cared that I earned more, and this was a major issue for him, because he brought it up to me all the time. I don’t know how much of his job instability was trying to find a shortcut to making more money than me. I would have quit my job, in a heartbeat, if he just had a stable job. But his lack of professional stability scared me, so I kept working to make sure that our kids had a home. It was literally that touch and go at times. He handled all of the money, but would go out and spend money on an indulgence, and then forget to pay the power bill for 3 months. I am not a person who likes having debt, I was raised to be very financially conservative. The lack of stability and safety was terrifying for me, particularly because we had small children who were completely reliant on us.
I’m pretty sure that he did indeed internalize his shame and seek companionship elsewhere. But, what would you have done, if you were in my shoes, and you never knew when your husband would be bringing home a paycheck or if you’d have power at your house? I’m a responsible person, I stepped up and took care of things for all of us.
My fiance is a full-time Ph.D. student. It doesn’t bother me that he isn’t earning a salary right now because I know that he is a fiscally prudent and hard-working person who lives within his means…which means that we can both live within our combined means. That is what matters to me…fiscal conservatism, being very stable, not living above one’s means, making sure that the bills are paid on time, etc. I have no problems turning over my paycheck to him at some point and letting him tell me how much money I have to spend in a given week (he’s better at managing money than I am). I don’t need a lot of material stuff. I do need safety, predictability, and stability. I learned in my marriage that I don’t deal well with the lack of these things.
@DW,
You seem like a fair-minded woman, DW. And most of what you write strikes me as old-fashioned bourgeois values, before that became a term of opprobrium. But still, I’m not materialistic — at all is in conflict with your earlier advocacy of feminism, a materialist philosophy grown out of cultural marxism, another materialist philosophy. (And “what matters to me…fiscal conservatism, being very stable, not living above one’s means, making sure that the bills are paid on time” strikes me as also a materialist view on life. YMMV. ) This troubled me, as it seemed in conflict with your professed seeking of a Christian spouse, but then you later confessed to being not religious, so I guess the earlier programming has been replaced in a system upgrade. We can’t all be airy-fairy idealists, as in the “God Will Provide” joke.
I do think you’re going to be more successful the second time out, and I wish your family the best.
Its official. Single moms have their own national anthem now. Warning: not for the faint of heart!
Only two things are infinite, the universe and female solipsism, and I’m unsure of the former.
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It’s amazing in how different societies we live! In my world, the “promiscuous women” are called sluts and whores, while of course, the “promiscuous men” are celebrated We have a very low rate of divorces, because divorced women are much worse then those “promiscuous women”, or maybe at the same circle of the societies hell. The ratio between women and men is 3-4 f/1 m (because our men have wars every 20 years), so the men actually have the advantage to choose. The religious (that are very influential) leaders are brain washing us since we are 3 y old. At the same time we are watching those brave, independent Hollywood woman on TV, so we’re kind of ..confused… And once when it comes to marriage and children, the woman are working, having proper jobs, doing all the house works and giving births and raising childern. There is a very common saying. “A woman holds three corners of a home.” And the man’s only obligation is…to be the authoritative male around the house, that means: drinking with his male friends after the work, in the evenings.. to do some gambling…. In the end to offend the wife, to yell and beat the children because they annoy him….etc.. And of course, those same men are having affairs all over (with those promiscuous and divorced women from the beginning). Why in earth should even cross these men’s mind to get a divorce: they live in a heaven. And all of this is socially totally accepted and approved and above all desired. And the paradox is that these men are raised by these woman who tressure their sons more then anything, making them incapable of dooing anything, and tolerating them everything, while daughters are thought to suffer forever….You get the picture. Probably there are men outhere thinking still, that women aren’t intelligent creatures…
They are not fathers! They don’t take part in these children’s lives at all, except in negative terms! When I look at these families I can’t stop asking myself: Why don’t these women get a divorce? It would be sooo much better for themselves, for the children! And maybe, we could hope to have a new generation that did not grow up looking up to this model of behavior, and our stupid-conservative-ful of hate-primitive- society would change!
Saddly we will not learn from you, as the human species isn’t really able to learn from others mistakes… we will repeat them…. go to another exreme…what is going on with you now….
But it’s not just up to women (like not in my world, neither in yours)… It’s up to the society as a whole. And this Ego-Era is making us worse then ever…. all of it just in the name of $.
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OH, REALLY? I enjoy your blogs tremendously. You are right on track. I have even shared your blog with my church pastor. I was married for 10 years to a man who was ultimately arrested for hiring a hitman to kill me so he could live happily ever after with his new “love”. I am a single mother, not by choice, and not from a grievous error in judgement from the start…
Please be careful of broad generalizations, we aren’t all women who got “baby rabies” and took the first sperm donor who came along, or idiots who got knocked up without commitment, or women who threw away husbands because we were too lazy to keep ourselves up.
At 40, I remain attractive, fit (I teach yoga) and I am attentive to my children’s needs (all 3 are in AP courses). I own my own home, I have cleaned up my credit since the divorce. The insinuation that all single mothers are somehow responsible for their circumstances is very disheartening to me.
I did not choose this lifestyle, nor do I deserve it.
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My mother’s excuse is, “My husband found that younger, hotter women were attracted to him after he got a big promotion and a raise.”
I don’t blame my mom for my dad’s affairs.
IF your mother had any friends who engaged in affairs, and she didn’t cut off the friendship, then your mother is to blame for fostering the environment. That she likely thought it was okay for her friends to be homewreckers merely makes it ironic (or perhaps karmic) that she was on the hurtful end herself.
Jenny Sanford is not married to the father of her four boys. (Of course, she is the exception to those rules – she made a very rational choice – but I will point out that the exceptions are a bit broader than “dead husband”.)
How about a similar one for men? “Top 5 pathetic excuses for not being married to the mother of his children” or “Top 5 excuses for having a baby with a psycho.”
1. I wanted her to abort, but she forced me to have this baby. (Did she also force you into sex? If you had sex with her, you had to know this was a possibility, and unless the basics of gestation escape you, you knew that she, not you, would be carrying this child.)
2. I didn’t know she was crazy! Yeah, because you were too busy boinking her to figure out that she’s a whackadoodle, and enjoyed the sex too much to do anything about it.
3. She told me she was on the Pill! Are you that naive? Have you never heard of a condom? Did you not know that Tab A, Slot B causes certain results some percentage of the time, and all that birth control does is change the percentage?
4. She divorced me! See #2. I really do feel for people whose spouses just walk out on them (no-fault divorce is downright satanic), but really, you married her. You dated her, spent thousands of dollars on a ring, and said your vows in front of family and friends. This wasn’t some arranged marriage; you didn’t wake up one day bound in matrimony to this chickie. Vet her better.
5. She wouldn’t get married when she got pregnant! So don’t screw women who aren’t your wives. Easy-peasy.
I see so much denial here among the ladies -“There is no way I could have known he would change” I am betting, he didn’t change at all. You just misinterpreted his personality.
Let me see if I can clear this up a bit. Women like bad boys, but not in the sense that they think. We are not talking about a tatted up body-builder, biker guy with a criminal record. We are talking about a man with high levels of the Dark Triad traits. These guys walk around seeming normal (or even better than normal) every day. It is only when you pay really close attention, that you begin to truly see what they really are.
The Dark Triad – What they actually are:
The Narcissistic personality (in the clinical sense) is characterized by a grandiose self-view, a sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, and egotism.
The Machiavellian personality is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, with a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and deception.
The Psychopathic personality is characterized by impulsive thrill-seeking, and in its “primary” form by selfishness, callousness, lack of personal affect, superficial charm, and remorselessness.
How women interpret when a man they are attracted to has these traits:
Narcissism = confidence, knows what he wants and gets it, inner strength (no empathy)
Machiavellian = Charming, smooth talking, outgoing.
Psychopathic = fun, adventurous, unpredictable, possibly charming as well, (but for a different reason.)
What she didn’t notice because her attraction overrides her ability the reason and see (but I bet all of these things were there):
Narcissism – His confidence was unfounded or disproportional to who he was. He acted like a rock star or entitled member of royalty when he was just an average guy on paper. He got what he wanted, and if it came at the expense of others, so be it. When he didn’t get what he wanted, there was anger, even rage, rather than a healthy acceptance or “find another way” mentality. He was “always right”.
Machiavellian – That charm was all about him, not about you. He used charm as a tool to manipulate you to get what he wanted. “You look beautiful today” actually was just an opener to get something he wanted. He used charm to cover over his mistakes and get out of trouble (and to cover his dark triad tendencies).
Psychopathic – He was fun and impulsive, but you didn’t notice that when his impulsiveness hurt others, he felt no remorse or simply could not understand why others got upset with him. He might quit a job while his wife was pregnant and not be concerned about her, for example.
Notice that in the previous comments, the more details the women give above about how it wasn’t their fault, and how they describe how their man was “before he changed”, you can see all if the key traits above in the men’s actions and personalities. They say love is blind… that doesn’t mean you fall for physically ugly people, it means you fall for mentally/emotionally ugly people.
Two notes:
1. These traits are not Alpha male specific. Beta men can have these traits too, especially the Machiavellian ones. They are simply more like to show them at home instead of in public. Where the Alpha is what he is no matter the audience.
2. If you are woman, and you are thinking… “Aren’t all men like that?” Then chances are you have never dated/had a relationship with anything but “bad” guys. You discarded the good ones without understanding that your lack of attraction for him was, at least in part, due to him not having these traits. The 80/20 rule applies. 20% of the men (most of whom have those traits above) get 80% of the dates/sex….LOL
So there… now you are armed with information. Study, learn, better prepare yourself to make a more informed decision for your next relationship/mate choice. Excuse #6 no longer has many exceptions to throw out there, does it?
For nearly all single moms I know, the excuse was they knew that sex=babies, but assumed that their birth control was effective enough that it wouldn’t happen to them. Feminists tout birth control as a 99.9% effective way to all but guarantee that sex is consequence-free. In reality, effectiveness rates are low enough that statistically, most women who use it will wind up pregnant within a few years.
Have you ever read Humanae Vitae? It was written in the 1960s, but predicts with stunning accuracy what happened to our society once we placed our trust in contraception and assumed it was an unmitigated good.
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@Char
That’s BS, abortion is 100% effective and further you are asking us to believe that the most litigious society in human history has decided em mass and in silence not to sue or even mention the real effectiveness of various birth control methods.
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@JKL @Charlotte
Charlotte is correct. The typical effectiveness of all contraceptives is less than 99.9%. This is well known.
Take the pill, for example:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322799.php#outlook
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the pill is 99.7 percent effective with perfect use. This means that less than 1 out of 100 women who take the pill would become pregnant in 1 year.
However, with typical use, the effectiveness of the pill is 91 percent. This means that around 9 out of 100 women would become pregnant in a year of taking the pill.”
The reason that we do not have mass suing is because most people are statistically challenged. Both 99.9% and 91% effectiveness per year sound relatively effective. However, most women use the birth control pill for many years. A typical woman on the pill for 20 years (e.g. from age 15 to 35) has a likelihood of at least one pregnancy of (1-0.91^20)*100% = 84.8%. She has a 50% chance of at least one pregnancy after just 7.5 years on the pill, ( 1-0.91^7.5)*100% = 50.7%. That is, the majority of women on the pill for a couple decades will get pregnant at least once.
Yes, abortion is nearly 100% effective, but not all women are willing to kill their children.
As a rule of thumb, most sexually active women have been pregnant at least once by age 35 (just based on stats, I don’t have hard data for this). Whether they kept the child or not is another matter.