Vox weighed in on the sex denial spreadsheet that has gone viral with his post Mortification Game:
The fact is that she’s feeling incredibly humiliated and defensive. And since in women, defensive crouches are followed by instinctively sexual responses, if he maintains his frame, the chances are that she’ll return from her trip more sexually willing than before. (Personally, I doubt he will, he’ll probably contact her too soon, apologize profusely, buy her flowers, and they’ll be back to their old routine within a week.) But what he has inadvertently done is to introduce Mortification Game to a worldwide audience, Mortification Game being a subset of Dread Game.
Dread Game isn’t for healthy relationships, but it can temporarily improve unhealthy ones and buy them time to fix things. This spreadsheet isn’t indicative of immaturity, but rather desperation combined with a desire to save his marriage while honoring his wedding vows. It would be much more effective for him to have simply gone radio silent and had sex with other women while she’s gone; the sexually hypercompetitive nature of women would likely have her sensing his subsequent indifference to her deprivation upon her return. But he chose not to do that, instead he plunged once more into the gap to try to salvage what looks like a fairly hopeless cause.
Vox has clarified that just because he pointed out that having sex with other women would likely have been more effective, that doesn’t mean he would advise a married man to do so. But even without the husband cheating, sudden radio silence could be a very effective tool. It isn’t guaranteed to work, but it is hard to imagine it would work worse than continuing to beg for sex. As Cane Caldo advised in Tacomaster Desires Steadfast Love:
In the meantime, TM, do not ask that woman for sex.
My wife found an example of radio silence working on the women’s confession site Scary Mommy yesterday:
I never wanted sex with DH. Always with the excuses….too tired, too sweaty, on my period, maybe coming down with a cold…now he stopped asking. So worried he found somebody who actually wants sex with him.
Like (4) Hug (39) Me Too! (23)
Note that a husband using radio silence game hasn’t violated the two part test I included in Headship Game. A husband causing his wife to feel discomfort about her sin isn’t unloving, it is in fact the opposite. He also isn’t sinning or encouraging his wife to sin by no longer begging for sex. The moral problem with Dread Game as (generally defined) isn’t the dread, it is the mechanism typically used to create the dread. Cheating on your wife, carrying on inappropriately with other women, or threatening to cheat on your wife isn’t consistent with the role of a Christian husband. Ceasing to (inadvertently) provide your wife a sense of comfort in her sin isn’t sinful, and it is in fact loving.
Likewise, Dread Game is loving when practiced by a mother on her married daughters, as Mentu’s mother did:
Take good care of that man, or some other woman will!
Pingback: Radio Silence and Dread. | Manosphere.com
Yeah, well. Since ignoring her in all other ways doesn’t work, it’s not obvious that ignoring her sexually would magically work. In fact, given the *extremely* low libido of the vast majority of women compared to the vast majority of men (as documented, e.g. in the AARP study you linked earlier), the vast majority of women would simply be glad not to be bothered as often; they definitely wouldn’t *initiate*.
Of course, it depends on the extent of the radio silence. As I’ve mentioned before, when my father-in-law was humorously relating to his daughter and me his physician’s dire prognosis of the effect of his prostate cancer on his sex life, his wife was heavily mourning the supposed loss of future consortium. “We already haven’t had sex for ten years because you always turn me down!” he maintained. “But I still like to be asked!” she huffed.
Here is PJ Media’s resident White Knight view on the topic:
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/07/21/would-you-want-a-husband-this-incompetent-at-turning-you-on/?singlepage=true
I agree in theory, but in practice I think there is great temptation to go too far if trying to apply dread game. For example, if she begins to suspect that you’re being unfaithful, I think it’s tempting to fail to adequately reassure her. However, this is not consistent with husbands loving their brides as Christ loves his church – no matter how unfaithful the church is, Jesus does not give nor permit any impression that he himself might be unfaithful.
For example, when the wife finally gets around to noticing the lack of requests and then asks for sex, will the dread gamer accept? I think it’s tempting to come up with some excuses of your own, even though this is just as sinful as her rejections had been.
Would Jesus call out sin in his Church? Absolutely. Would he instruct his Church to be faithful? Yes. Would he use dread game on his Church?…
In fact Jesus uses Dread Game all the time……….!!!!!!one oneoneone1!!
There is no way to the Father but through him??
@Kman
A husband doesn’t have the obligation to save his wife from her own hamster, especially if her hamster is in the process of steering her away from sin. The husband in the scenario hasn’t said anything to suggest he will be unfaithful. He has in fact given a vow. Letting her worry that her sin will destroy the family isn’t a sin. Likewise, the son in law in the example at the end of the post doesn’t have an obligation to contradict his MIL. He can remain silent and is not sinning.
Not all dread gamers perhaps, but a Christian husband would. If not, he is sinning and going against the instruction in 1 Cor 7.
You don’t just ignore her sexually; you withhold all emotional comfort. You treat her like you don’t need her at all, but will let her continue to live in your house because you’re an honorable man and you made a vow. Adults who live together without having sex are called roommates, so you treat her like one. The loss of sex may not bother her — may even relieve her — but the potential loss of your overall commitment will scare her if she’s not already headed out the door.
No, it’s not guaranteed to work. But even if it only has a 1% chance of working, that’s better than the absolute zero chance of success of the usual advice: be nicer, buy her stuff, do more chores, communicate more, etc.
I like his unpacking of the heads win tails lose scenario. He offers the proof, then the fact that he actually premeditated and compiled it negates it. Or, she says she just cannot believe he would actually put together that info to “hurt her with”……or something like that.
Men are known to be superior at compartmentalizing. But in things like this its a sort of compartmentalizing she does, combined with the other thing women and feminine thinkers (think liberals do, that is to think that to -think about doing something and get the feelings that doing it would create is the same as actually doing the thing-. Means she rejects him, imagines in her head she will get to it tomorrow, and walla, she has filed it under DONE. Therefore looking back 30 days she doesnt see the landscape littered with consistent rejections at all. Each one was nitrogen blanketed and hermetically sealed and buried, separate from the others. She could not even conceive of what she had done, if she could she may actually feel badly, so to avoid feeling badly she walls each one off.
There is also the very predicted response where a guy says, “you reject sex 9/10 times over the past 6 months and she responds, “that’s not true, we had sex last Saturday” and cannot see how stupid that response it. But it makes her feel better
Spreadsheet man got a “yes” three times in one month? That’s about triple my long-term average — at least, up until the two-year blanket denial, followed by the divorce. He doesn’t know how good he’s got it.
@KMAN
Do you have the intestinal fortitude to read the story of the 10 Virgins?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25
They were told to be ready, had everything they needed to be ready and were not. Quit making excuses for women. You excuse sin, not even Jesus did this. He said “go and sin no more” not keep sinning so grace can abound.
Ignoring women works wonders. Just blowing them off with a “hm, that’s nice” and then walking off or doing something else drives them insane. I suggest everyman do it.
On a husband’s obligation to assure his wife that her denial of sex won’t create temptation for sexual sin, this would also require the husband to contradict the Bible in 1 Cor 7. In other words, it would be a sin.
Basically this just turns into the husband getting none when he feels like it and the wife getting it when she needs it. In other words, once again, you’re all playing to the female frame.
If she actually asked for sex, yes, because of the scripture you quoted. And because that would signal such submission on her part that he’s won in a rout. But that’s almost never how it will go down. If dread game works, she will gradually start to worry that she’s losing control of him, that maybe she’s not as attractive as she used to be, and she’ll try to do little things to get her sense of control back. She’ll dress a little nicer when he’s coming home, make his favorite meal, or offer to rub his shoulders. If he’s savvy enough to read those signals, he can decide when to say, “Let’s go to bed,” or whether he wants to continue the lesson.
Or….. the object of her affection turned her down or, the man she was cheating with just dumped her….
A woman’s imagination is the single most useful tool in your Game arsenal.
http://therationalmale.com/2011/08/25/imagination/
This from that Scary Mommy link:
If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d divorce my DH. He’s a good Dad and a decent Husband but I’ve out grown him… Don’t want my kids to be a product of divorce though
She’s outgrown him……..the good dad and decent husband has been outgrown.
I agree with feministhater: by not making your desires clear to her, you simply give her another reason to feel better about not having sex.
@empathologism re: “it makes her feel better”.
According to my wife, the way women’s hamsters work about this issue is: she only *feels* like she is turning him down when she wants to have sex but turns him down anyway. Otherwise, she doesn’t *feel* like she is turning him down, merely communicating that she’d rather not at the moment.
I used Dread Game myself before I knew what was and it is NEVER a sign of a good relationship. And it’s nothing to base a relationship on, either,
What is most likely going to happen is she will get all pissed and accuse him of having an affair and then demand he leave the house. She may even try and get DV situation going. No way is an American woman is going to do a damn thing reasonable like this described.
@Beta Revolutionary
When did I excuse sin?
@Dalrock
As I said, I have no problem with the theory. I wasn’t trying to critique what you wrote so much as add my own cautions with respect to dread game.
Your last several posts have been excellent (all bookmarked); please keep up the insightful observations.
@ Cail: “The loss of sex may not bother her — may even relieve her — but the potential loss of your overall commitment will scare her if she’s not already headed out the door.”
FemHater: “Basically this just turns into the husband getting none when he feels like it and the wife getting it when she needs it. In other words, once again, you’re all playing to the female frame.”
It doesn’t really play into the female frame. Cail’s suggestions – treat her as a roommate, withhold all emotional comfort – force her into his frame. The Christian wife is presented with a choice: obedience to God’s command by acting as a wife and engaging sexually; or disobedience by continuing to withhold sex and risk the family’s destruction.
The nonChristian wife also has a choice: sex or divorce. Sex and preservation of status and marriage; or divorce and loss of status, money, ease and comfort.
The husband might not be able to save the marriage. He might not remain married. The family might be destroyed. But at least it forces her to make a clear choice – accept the comfort and status of marriage, or reject them and suffer the consequences.
@empathologism
“She’s outgrown him……..the good dad and decent husband has been outgrown.”
How naive you are! She has done nothing. Nothing except be a good wife. He, however, has plainly failed to make her feel desired, safe, happy etc. Whatever it is that she needs to feel engaged in the relationship,….he has utterly failed to provide that.
Poor woman. She’s trapped with an abject failure at least until the kids are grown or until her friends can convince her that her kids will be happier if she is happier.
Dal is right that the Roissy style dread — cheating, threatening to cheat, and inappropriate advances and conduct with other women — are inconsistent with Christian marriage. But radio slience isn’t. Disappearing for hours or even a day with no contact isn’t. Withdrawing emotional comfort isn’t. Refusing physical affection isn’t. Showing and demonstrating the consequences of her sin against him isn’t.
This kind of modified dread is intended to be an abrupt course correction — a clear statement and demonstration to the wife that if things do not change immediately, then the consequences will be serious, dire and marriage-threatening, up to and including divorce and destruction of the family and all the sequelae that naturally will flow from it.
“If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d divorce my DH. He’s a good Dad and a decent Husband but I’ve out grown him…”
What does that even mean, other than hamster talk?
…if things do not change immediately, then the consequences will be serious, dire and marriage-threatening, up to and including divorce and destruction of the family and all the sequelae that naturally will flow from it.
Are you referring here to the wife initiating divorce? Because the husband threatening divorce is VERY inconsistent with Christian marriage. Divorce is not an option.
Now, if you mean that he’s warning the wife that her behavior may eventually lead to her wanting to divorce him, well, that’s different. Though it sounds vaguely nonsensical.
@Kman
Not a problem, and there is also no problem with critiquing what I write. This is what we are here for, to thrash this out and make sure we are getting it right. If I’ve got it all wrong and you set me straight you have only done me a favor. But likewise I’ll push back on my side, as it is part of the same process. So long as we both are focused (in the end at least) on getting it right over proving ourselves right, this is a very valuable thing.
The Romans quote is a good one. Interestingly not only is it an important warning on sin (essential for Headship Game), but it is also good practical advice from a Headship Game perspective. The husband’s frame, his driving motivation, has to be right. In this case avoiding sin and being effective are in concert. If he is doing this out of anger, or hurt, in an attempt to lash out at her, it won’t work. In more colorful terms, he shouldn’t be “beta buthurt” about it. This doesn’t mean her rejection of him doesn’t hurt, but that he needs to get his head clear and act from an appropriate and loving frame. But loving in this case doesn’t mean “nice”, as I suspect we already agree.
“I’ve outgrown him,” means, “I don’t want to have sex with him anymore and I think I can do better.”
@Kman
Thank you.
You do not have to cheat to create “dread”. You do not have to do anything unethical, immoral or against God’s laws in order to instill dread. All you have to do is convince her that you, as a man, have options, and those options could very quickly become more attractive than her if she continues to behave as she has.
Flirting with another woman does not break a marriage vow, but it will create dread.
Taking up a new hobby where other women (that she knows are single) are does not break a marriage vow, but it will create dread.
Mentioning how attractive another woman (or mother) is in an overt fashion does not break a marriage vow, but it will create dread.
Demonstrating the potential fruits of your own higher SMV (presuming you’ve been married into your 30s) to her will not break a marriage vow, but it will create dread.
Remaining a lot more aloof while no longer asking her for sex will not break your marriage vows, but it will instill dread.
There are probably countless ways of re-demonstrating to a woman that her marriage is not a non-compensated meal-ticket, convincing her that she also has to put forth effort at building and maintaining attraction, without breaking the marriage vow
“Are you referring here to the wife initiating divorce? Because the husband threatening divorce is VERY inconsistent with Christian marriage. Divorce is not an option.”
Sex is the sine qua non of marriage. Sex is the only thing a man does with his wife that he’s not permitted to do with anyone else. No sex, no marriage. For a wife who remains in rebellion despite all reasonable countermeasures, who persists in her sin, LEGAL divorce is very much an option. It’s not nearly the best option but it might be the only available one to bring resolution. Whether it frees him up to have sex with other women or remarry, at least ontologically, is a different question. But it does resolve the matter, at least legally. She has made the choice; the only issue is who is going to do the mechanical work of the legal divorce.
Without getting too far down into theology here, if a wife remains in open rebellion despite all the described measures, then she’s clearly not content to “abide with him in peace”. One can seriously question whether she is a believer, and thus whether divorce would be permitted (at least in my protestant view).
A big problem with commenting on this story is that we don’t know what else transpired between them. For example, was it just “let’s have sex / No” (many times) then, bam, the spreadsheet, or was their other communication between? It’s hard to analyze the situation too much without more detail. The one thing that’s crystal clear is that the wife wasn’t listening to her husband.
As I said on Dr. Helen’s blog, Warren Farrell likes to say “women can’t hear what men don’t say,” but often men are saying plenty and women aren’t listening.
@Bob Wallace
This is a straw man. No one is arguing that this is something to “base a relationship” on. First, (my apologies but this is a pet peeve of mine) this isn’t Oprah, and we aren’t talking about “relationships”. We are talking about biblical marriage. I know Vox used that term, but the frame shift from my biblical frame in the OP to the Book of Oprah is grating. Vox’s post wasn’t specifically focused on biblical marriage, but my post was. Even Vox’s quote referencing “relationships” specifically contradicts what you are suggesting is being argued here:
Second, I was very specific about the fact that as commonly defined nearly all “Dread Game” is sinful because of the mechanism used, and therefore not consistent with Christian Headship.
“If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d divorce my DH. He’s a good Dad and a decent Husband but I’ve out grown him…”
What does that even mean, other than hamster talk?
The rough translation is “I think I could attract a higher MMV (perhaps also higher SMV) husband at this point in my life than I could when I met and married my husband.”
This is rarely the case in fact, as Dalrock has pointed out on many occasions. In most case, this is wish thinking. But there are some cases where the MMV/SMV of one of the spouses gets distorted relative to where it was in comparison to the other spouse at the time of the marriage — say a woman loses 150lbs, or she married very young and eventually gets an advanced degree and outearns her husband or something like that. In those situations, the wife can often feel “Gee, i really can do better if I hit the reset button as compared with what my options where when I married this guy” — and she may have a point in that limited number of cases, or at least more of one than in the typical case.
“All you have to do is convince her that you, as a man, have options”
Yes. One such option is living alone, in peace, away from a wife who hates you. There’s nothing immoral about that. If anyone in this scenario is acting immorally, it is the wife, who refuses to honor her marriage vows and violates scripture in doing so.
Take good care of that man, or some other woman will!
YES.
Guys, believe me, women have a sixth sense about how well another woman treats her husband or BF and if she feels even a hint of attraction for him, she will make it known to him, through all different types of signals and indicators, that if his wife is mistreating him or failing to live up to her “wifely duties,” she will gladly fill the void. While many women do this for purely manipulative reasons in order to elevate their ranking within the henhouse pecking order and to strike at a rival (they have no real interest in the man at all, except to use as a weapon against another woman), others are quite earnest in their intent.
I can tell you with certainty that right now there are at least half a dozen women who have made it very clearly known to me that I will NEVER want for companionship or a bed partner should I desire it (and guys, I’m just an average-looking middle-aged white guy with a bit of a bulge and some hair loss, no George Clooney type stud). Were I not determined to maintain a Christian frame and do everything I can to make my dysfunctional marriage succeed, Mrs. feeriker and her rebellious self would be in VERY big trouble right now (as in “kicked to the curb last week” trouble).
I can almost guarantee you that Mr. Spreadsheet is at a similar advantage. Mrs. Spreadsheet needs to “dust that thing off down there and put it to work, pronto [better to hear that from this quarter than from the woman who will take her place if she doesn’t get it together]” if she wants to keep her husband.
@Jeremy
I disagree. There is a line here. The husband doesn’t have an obligation to become wooden and deliberately unattractive when talking to other women, but if he is sending a message that he intends to break his vows or takes actions which he knows will lead himself into temptation he is crossing the line. Light playful banter would be ok, having another woman sit on his lap and fawning over her would not.
The biblical message is that a spouse denying sex creates temptation for sexual sin. I can’t see where a pastor would be sinning for example by quoting the Scripture and then describing what Mentu’s mother told her married daughter as an example of a loving reminder of this. Likewise a husband doesn’t have the obligation to assure his wife that 1 Cor 7 is in fact incorrect, because it would be a lie. Nor is he sinning by pointing out that she is creating temptation for sexual sin by her refusal. But threatening to cheat is something different.
@Dalrock
The existence of a line does not demonstrate that that line must be crossed to accomplish the goal of instilling dread. You haven’t made your case here.
I never said, “threaten to cheat,” I said, “make it obvious you have options.”
I’ve outgrown him,” means, “I don’t want to have sex with him anymore and I think I can do better.”
Depending on the wife’s age and physical attractiveness rating, it just as often means “I’m done with sex, PERIOD, and there isn’t a damned thing he can do about it unless he divorces me – in which case I’ll reduce him to becoming a homeless beggar.”
Sorry but from my own experience the dread game doesnt work.
The Rational Male
What Jeremy is saying. Making it clear that you have options DOES NOT mean you’re promising to ever exercise them, any more than USSTRATCOM possessing ICBMs means that they’ll unleash them on another country even if serious conflict between these countries and the U.S. erupts. It’s purely a weapon of deterrence.
@Jeremy
I think we need to be very clear on the line because this could quickly become dangerous territory. But if we are in agreement on that, then we are on the same page. The moral problem with dread isn’t that it makes the wife uncomfortable with her sin, the moral problem lies with the (most often, nearly always) sinful mechanism being proposed. If the mechanism isn’t sinful, and the intent is loving, then there isn’t a problem.
Dalrock,
I just think there are countless ways of creating dread without violating anything your God commands of you. Just because what the typical Manosphere/PUA blog proposes is sin, doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of other methods that people aren’t talking about.
My hesitation with radio silence and disappearance is that it’s only temporarily effective. Once a woman comes to associate your silence and removal with your demands for (negotiated) sex, any initial sense of dread is gradually replaced with her impression of you acting like a sulking child – further cementing her Beta impression of you.
For Dread to be effective, there has to be some semi-continual dread of actual, realizable loss to inspire a minimum of anxiety or urgency. If you’re in a traditional marriage where it’s understood that divorce (at least on your part) is never an honest option – wives will develop a tolerance for dread, you become a paper tiger, and you just go back to ‘drip fed’ lack-luster, negotiated duty sex in her necessity to placate to you.
Spreadsheet Guy is learning this now no doubt. He’s done what most men do: attempt to litigate with evidence and deductively solve his problem by appealing to his wife’s reason with a token effort to enforce his ‘being in the right’ by exposing her to a marginal amount of dread. What he fails to account for is that even if she responds with more frequent sex, any sex they do have will be the result of her negotiated obligation, not her genuine, motivated desire.
I realize this will upset the more ideological of the commenters here, but when you consider stories like this, and the fact that Athol Kay can generate enough revenue from MMSL from likewise frustrated husbands to quit his day job, one truth becomes glaringly apparent: under our current social mores, premarital sex and its inspired urgency is a more honest, motivated and passionate proposition than married sex will ever be.
It is the only condition under which men ever (if ever) realize any true leverage in the Frame of their sex lives. The frame you enter into monogamy/marriage with sets the tone for your future relationship.
“You don’t just ignore her sexually; you withhold all emotional comfort.”
Correct. Doing this is where dread is born.
Women need male attention and affirmation. There is more to this than just sex.
@Rollo,
This is the fundamental paradox women have with marriage as it is simultaneously a new wife’s greatest achievement, while also being an initial and lifelong negotiation for her desire. Women want to be taken, safely, and those two desires are in eternal conflict for there is no safety in offering yourself for the taking.
You don’t just ignore her sexually; you withhold all emotional comfort.
That’s true, but be aware that women of a certain age are known to sublimate this lack of male emtional nurturing, often in slowly destructive ways (e.g., overeating, drinking to excess, smoking, drug abuse, compulsive overspending, or addiction to social media). While many men might be tempted to say that she’s reaping what she has sown, these things can cause destructige blowback on innocent third parties (e.g., children) as well.
@Rollo
As I mentioned in my reply to Kman above, the frame matters both from a perspective of sin and in order to be effective. If the husband is doing this from the frame of a sulking child he is doing it wrong.
If the goal is to have the most effective game, we would both agree that getting married is stupid. Why should a man marry (especially today) if not out of a sincere belief in biblical sexual morality? The right frame for a Christian husband is something other than what you are arguing here. It isn’t just wives who could end up suffering as a result of remaining faithful to their vows.
What I’m arguing here is that the husband does have some tools which might help bring the wife back out of sin. This is different than my usual (and much preferred) focus of married Game, which is to hopefully make the marriage more enjoyable for both and make it easier for the wife honor her own vows. Even so, this would be the desired ultimate outcome of dread. But either way, effectiveness is a secondary consideration.
Dr. Helen:
http://pjmedia.com/drhelen/2014/07/20/would-you-want-a-wife-this-clueless-about-sex-and-your-emotions/
http://pjmedia.com/drhelen/2014/07/22/white-knighting-much-dave/
—
Comments on both posts are generally good, but there are a few white knights hanging around (e.g. GawainsGhost – appropriately enough).
Ahh yes…the great passive aggressive silent treatment used by the feminine to get what they want. Using that is a sure fire way for the masculine not only to get what he wants but also shows the feminine how the masculine does things. (even if it is exactly the same)
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant.
@Dalrock, I don’t believe it’s necessary to believe in biblical morality to believe in traditional marriage. That’s the point of the book I wanted to send you. I think traditional morality is founded on who we are as human beings, and I think people are wrong when they think the only way to defend it is from a religious point of view.
deti,
One can seriously question whether she is a believer, and thus whether divorce would be permitted (at least in my protestant view).
Catholic here, so here’s my perspective. “Not being a believer” is not necessarily an excuse for a divorce. POSSIBLY, if beforehand she lied and fooled him into thinking she WAS a believer it MIGHT be grounds for annulment. In today’s annulment climate it probably would go through, though in a perfect world it probably shouldn’t (you’d have to prove she was actually *lying*, something that isn’t easy).
Divorce, even civil, should never be used as a threat to try and fix a relationship. Civil divorce should be an option if the situation is literally impossible to deal with (abuse, and possibly serial adultery with no promise of remorse or stopping, which happened to an Aunt of mine).
But no sex? That’s terrible, but not an excuse to (civilly) divorce, in my (not necessarily correct) opinion.
If somebody gives me a good enough reason why I’m wrong I’ll be happy to consider it and possibly change my opinion, but your post doesn’t convince me as of now.
@crowhill
“I don’t believe it’s necessary to believe in biblical morality to believe in traditional marriage”
If not Biblical morality then it is nothing more than a commercial enterprise is it not? Then why would one who questions Biblical morality be concern with morality at all?
“I think traditional morality is founded on who we are as human beings”
Well do all human beings think the same, act the same, believe the same, talk the same?
“and I think people are wrong when they think the only way to defend it is from a religious point of view.”
You are correct…it can be defended from a non “religious” point of view. However even this point is fundamentally rooted in a *Biblical* point of view and teachings on how to achieve this.
cicero:
if radio silence is passive aggressive then the man isn’t doing it right. The radio silence needs to be overt and up front. “You don’t want sex with me. OK. You’re sinning against me, you’re setting out stumbling blocks for me, and you obviously don’t care. I’m going to be out for a while. Don’t call me because I won’t pick up. I won’t respond to any texts.
“If all you want is a roomie, that’s all you’ll get. Everything split down the middle 50/50. You earn half the income, I’ll do half the chores.”
Then refuse all affectionate overtures. Offer no affection. Hold her to her insistence on a roommate arrangement. If that means she needs to get a job to start earning income, then that’s what she’ll need to do. No emotional support, no crying on your shoulder, no talking about things, no intimacy of any kind. He lives his life; she lives hers. And it goes on for as long as the lesson needs to. Or until she has reached a decision on what kind of marriage she wants.
jf12 – I disagree with this:
the vast majority of women would simply be glad not to be bothered as often
because of this:
“We already haven’t had sex for ten years because you always turn me down!” he maintained. “But I still like to be asked!” she huffed.
So, supposedly the only good kind of Dread is Nothing? Just, Nothing? Nothing has never proven to be effective in practice to me.
I’m still not buying it, and I can’t see that I ever will. Even though I consider myself morally nearly completely hogtied/prevented from doing active Dread, I’ll keep doing what I can actively, instead of passively doing Nothing. Even if all I can do is wiggle my thumb, I’ll make sure to convey that my thumb is deadly serious.
“Civil divorce should be an option if the situation is literally impossible to deal with (abuse, and possibly serial adultery with no promise of remorse or stopping, which happened to an Aunt of mine).”
To a married man, a wife’s deliberate deprivation of sex IS abuse. She knows he wants sex and is deliberately refusing him. That is the very definition of abuse. It is cruel. It is inhuman. There is literally nothing a wife can do which is more savagely cruel than to deprive her husband of sex.
It’s also marital abandonment. No, it’s not living separately and apart, but they might as well be. The wife who deliberately refuses sex is not acting as a wife. She has abandoned and shirked her marital duties and obligations. This is abandonment of the marriage.
@JDG re: “because of this”
You mistakenly think that making HER feel better is what it’s all about.
That’s why I would never recommend that a guy tell her that’s what he’s doing or indicate that it’s intentional. Telling her “you’re getting the cold shoulder until I get sex” leaves her in the driver’s seat and signals that he’s willing to negotiate something that should be non-negotiable. For dread game to work, it’s critical that he leaves it to her imagination to try to figure out what’s gone wrong, as you mentioned in another comment. Let her hamster run with it; it’ll come up with scarier scenarios than you ever could. Ideally, the next time you show her affection, she should feel like she won you back, the way she won you the first time, not that she caved in or worked out a deal which she can then try to renegotiate forever.
in my book, wifely deprivation of sex is the very definition of extreme and repeated mental cruelty.
re: “effectiveness is a secondary consideration”
at best. Zippy had a good article about the ineffectiveness of morality.
elovesc34:
what is your experience that indicates dread doesn’t work?
@deti re :”if a wife remains in open rebellion despite all the described measures, then she’s clearly not content to “abide with him in peace”. One can seriously question whether she is a believer, and thus whether divorce would be permitted”
I have tried to make this my explicit stance, but my wife and my pastor refuse to allow my stance. This is THE crucial component that makes Dread work, and without it, all we gots is a big fat Nothing.
Rollo is correct as usual. “For Dread to be effective, there has to be some semi-continual dread of actual, realizable loss to inspire a minimum of anxiety or urgency.”
jf12:
email me at detination42 -at – gmail -dot- com
@feeriker re: “It’s purely a weapon of deterrence.”
No. The big red button has to be pushable for the threat to be effective.
@deti
As it should be.
Dwelling in the corner of the housetop is a tiny bit quieter, but you’ll only achieve actual silence by dwelling in the wilderness,giving her grounds to file for abandonment.
Christianity may not allow you to cheat on your wife, but it does allow you to take a second wife. I have learned that there are plenty of attractive young ladies in Asia and Africa that are willing to become a second wife to a good provider. Kenya just formally legalized polygamy.
Dread game worked for me. I stated plainly other women were interested in me and it worked despite telling her repeatedly in the past I don’t believe in divorce. Women lie so much they expect you do too.
“premarital sex and its inspired urgency is a more honest, motivated and passionate proposition than married sex will ever be”
Non-marital sex of any type is, by its very nature, either dishonest or an instance of mere use of a human being.
Here is PJ Media’s resident White Knight view on the topic:
There are a lot of “right” wing feminists over there.
Some interesting comments about the spreadsheet at the Telegraph:
Angelfire – Fifty shades of ‘neigh’
Mcgoohan1971 – Shouldn’t his information be referred to as an “unspread” sheet?
pjon – “If women are so brilliant at multi-tasking, why can’t they have a headache and sex at the same time?” – the wisdom of Billy Connolly
And then there is this fine exemplar of feminine virtue:
AmyBellows –
I’d add one line to the spreadsheet and email it back to him.
Date: now – Dec 31, 2199
Sex?: NO
Reason: You’re a dick.
she only *feels* like she is turning him down when she wants to have sex but turns him down anyway. Otherwise, she doesn’t *feel* like she is turning him down, merely communicating that she’d rather not at the moment.
This is the key to understanding the female mind. It’s all right there.
Goes to the gym to get in better shape, only has sex with husband three times in about two months, away on “business trips”, do the math.
@deti
“The radio silence needs to be overt and up front. You don’t want sex with me. OK. You’re sinning against me, you’re setting out stumbling blocks for me, and you obviously don’t care. I’m going to be out for a while. Don’t call me because I won’t pick up. I won’t respond to any texts.”
What … and you are of the opinion that this is not passive aggressive female?
“If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d divorce my DH. He’s a good Dad and a decent Husband but I’ve out grown him…”
What does that even mean, other than hamster talk?
This IS hamster talk, but what it means is anybodies guess. Probably something to do with a lack of tingles / excitement as a result of her head being filled with the guile preached by the minions of Dr. Phil, Oprah, and the women on the View.
heh. You’re being a bit of an ass about this, cicero.
What about “overt and up front” is passive-aggressive, exactly?
Goes to the gym to get in better shape, only has sex with husband three times in about two months, away on “business trips”, do the math.
I caught that too at the beginning, but her husband was probably giving her the “strategic” benefit of the doubt just to see how she’d react to the evidence he threw at her. As of right now, he really needs to consider hiring a PI to tail her ass for while.
Goes to the gym to get in better shape, only has sex with husband three times in about two months, away on “business trips”, do the math.
Indeed, this is my thought as well — saw all of that as red flags, really.
As an unbeliever, I would argue that this would be a good time for that poor gent to start talking to lawyers — particularly if there are no kids in the equation (the original article didn’t specify, but did mention that this couple is in its mid-20s, so it’s entirely possible).
Rather than indulge in passive-aggressive female-type antics like sending out spreadsheets, men in this situation (without children) ought to just cut their losses. They will likely get divorced down the line anyway, and then there will be more time to impute the alimony, and a greater possibility of children who will be harmed.
I do respect the “no divorce under any circumstances” crowd here, though; and understand the need to tough it out for heaven’s sake.
Boxer
deti,
There is no such thing as abandonment of the marriage. The best a wife can do is leave, but she’ll always be married whether she likes it or not.
I know you probably think this is a semantic difference, but it is critical. Even if she denies sex, they are still married. They will always be married. For that matter, if there are kids involved I’d say that civilly divorcing because of lack of sex is absolutely and totally immoral.
If a husband literally can’t abide living in a house in a life with no sex, perhaps he shouldn’t have gotten married. He is in no danger of injury in this case, and his wife is not leaving him.
Just like a wife has no right to stop obeying her husband even if he is a bad provider a husband has no right to leave his wife even if she is not giving him sex.
I’m gonna send up a totally silly assertion, and then try to find a real world example. Seriously, I didn’t peek first. I bet some judge somewhere allowed a woman to claim that her husband’s turning off his cell phone to avoid talking with her constituted some kind of abuse towards her, and that she was rewarded either with extra money or something for it.
@damntull
Non-marital sex is a two-party voluntary transaction. Married sex gets turned into an obligation by fiat. Which is more dishonest?
@JDG re: “This is the key to understanding the female mind.”
I really believe so. If it doesn’t “count” emotionally to her, then it literally doesn’t get counted.
Quick poll here for anyone who’s daring enough to answer. I predict the men know the answer to three significant figures, but the women will run out of fingers and toes before realizing “Oh my! Has it really been that long?!”
When was your most recent sex? Mine was last Friday afternoon (yes, afternoon for various reasons).
Malcolm”
“If a husband literally can’t abide living in a house in a life with no sex, perhaps he shouldn’t have gotten married. He is in no danger of injury in this case, and his wife is not leaving him.”
If he wasn’t going to get sex out of his marriage, then there was no reason for him to get married. Sex is the “carrot” he gets for marriage. I think even St. Paul recognizes this.
If she’s depriving him of sex, she’s abusing him. She is injuring him by refusing him sex. She’s doing this for the specific purpose of gaining leverage over him. Wife deprivation of sex always has leverage and control as the goal. There could not be a clearer case of abuse.
And if she’s not having sex with him, she has abandoned him, she has “left” the marriage. She hasn’t left him physically and hasn’t stopped living with him; but she’s abandoned her marriage by shirking and refusing her marital duties. She’s not acting as a wife, not behaving as a wife, and therefore is maritally “absent”. That sounds like abandonment to me.
Malcolm, you and I aren’t going to convince each other, so it’s probably best to agree to disagree. Thanks for the thought provoking discussion.
Malcolm, you and I aren’t going to convince each other, so it’s probably best to agree to disagree. Thanks for the thought provoking discussion.
You argued in good faith, so I extend my thanks as well. I at least have stuff to think about now, and I always appreciate that.
When you’re a married man, and you’ve been told that you are finally, at long last, going to get to have sex pretty much when you want it within reason, because you’re married, and you’ve been told sex is your reward for marrying, because marriage is the only biblically sanctioned place for sex; then your wife deprives you of sex deliberately and with the specific purpose of gaining control in the marriage, there is nothing which could be more cruel and inhuman and deliberately, willfully injurious and demoralizing to that man.
I had stopped asking for sex after the my wife refused me, for the umpteenth time, in July of 2005 and she never made any acknowledgement of the lack of sex or expressed any worry that I might be “getting any” some place else. In fact she expressed more dread when I finally got free from porn last year and started asking for sex again.
Deliberate deprivation of sex is also abusive and injurious because the wife KNOWS that her husband is morally constrained from going outside marriage for sex. The wife KNOWS that he can’t resort to porn or hookers or an extramarital affair. She knows it’s painful for him.
Any married man who’s been through this, where a wife is deliberately withholding sex, making him jump through hoops, turning the cold shoulder, knows how cold and cruel and exquisitely painful this is.
Porn is no way to create dread. In fact it’s a beta signal. Porn is not competition for the wife’s attention, it’s a substitute and she knows it. Getting off porn by definition would make your woman pay more attention because she knows you’re not getting a substitute anymore.
jf12 – You mistakenly think that making HER feel better is what it’s all about.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
In searching “turned off his cell phone” and “grounds for divorce”, I’m finding non-casefilesand non-judges’ opinions that celphone silence does constitute abuse, but those are from like ten years ago. More recently, advice sites are telling women that a husband who suddenly starts turning off his cell phone before going to bed may be hiding an affair that way.
jf12 – Have you not read anything else I’ve posted over the last several months?
deti sez it right “there is nothing which could be more cruel and inhuman and deliberately, willfully injurious and demoralizing to that man.”
And that is the REASON she does it.
@JDG, I guess you’re right. I guess women perversely like to be able to turn a man down. But you have to admit they always claim to hate to be bothered aka harassed. “You’re asking too often so it seems like begging! You’ve already asked twice this week even though we had sex, like, last week … well, ok,maybe the week before … well SO WHAT that’s it’s been over a month. What are you, Mr. Calendar?”
Rollo Tomassi says:
July 22, 2014 at 1:04 pm
I realize this will upset the more ideological of the commenters here, but when you consider stories like this, and the fact that Athol Kay can generate enough revenue from MMSL from likewise frustrated husbands to quit his day job, one truth becomes glaringly apparent: under our current social mores, premarital sex and its inspired urgency is a more honest, motivated and passionate proposition than married sex will ever be.
It is the only condition under which men ever (if ever) realize any true leverage in the Frame of their sex lives. The frame you enter into monogamy/marriage with sets the tone for your future relationship.
Note “under our current social mores”. That is exactly the problem. The historical solution is to prohibit pre and extra-marital sex entirely. One could just as well say the problem is the existence of the alternative, and the many opportunities for its indulgence presented in our society. From the looks of our present cultural trajectory, it seems pretty obvious that a society which wants to stay civilized needs to take this into account.
But you have to admit they always claim to hate to be bothered aka harassed.
It’s like deti says: Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.
Sunday afternoon (40 hours ago). Her: mid-20s, tight, extremely athletic, no tattoos, but with a nose piercing and hair dyed some bizarre colors I can’t describe. I probably will see her again (she’s texted me at least 10 times since) but I sense too many issues lurking just beneath the surface for this to morph into anything beyond the occasional fling.
elovesc:
Why did she refuse you up to 2005?
Did you treat her as a roomie? Require her to do half the chores, earn half the money? Refuse communication with her outside of formalities and pleasantries? Withhold emotional support/prayer/ help/ intimacy? Go into radio silence for extended periods of time? Refuse contact with her while away? Refuse to respond to texts and phone calls?
Did you ever reach a conclusion on why your wife refused you and/or expressed no sexual interest for over 8 years?
Pingback: No, You Still Can’t Divorce | Malcolm the Cynic
No doubt there are women like that, but that’s not what “I’ve outgrown him” means. That means something specific: she thinks she can do better than him. The hamster runneth [with my comments]:
“For all the years we’ve been married, I’ve been improving myself [women are always improving themselves]. All my life experiences — childbearing and selecting the right school and daycare, my many interesting careers [it only looked like she was too flighty to stick with one generic office job], all the college courses I took before realizing those degrees weren’t right for me, the yoga/reiki/astrology/past-life-regression sessions, all the diets and workout plans [none of which stuck], all the books I’ve read from the Oprah book list, all the Cosmo articles, all the home remodeling projects I started [and he paid for and finished], all the time spent picking out the right fashions — all these things have made me utterly fascinating and still improving every day.
“And look at my husband, sitting there in his same old recliner, watching the same old football team, drinking the same old beer he drank when we met. He’d probably be wearing the same clothes too if I didn’t pick out something different for him. If I say anything about making changes, he actually claims to be happy with our life! He’s still the same guy I married, except with more paunch and less hair. He hasn’t improved at all. He may have been a decent catch [starter marriage] for me when I was just an uninteresting girl, but really, he just hasn’t kept up with my journey at all, and I’ve outgrown him. I deserve — no, I owe it to myself — to find out what better life is out there waiting for me, if I didn’t have him holding me back.”
As Novaseeker said, it’s rarely true that her SMV has increased, but that doesn’t keep her from thinking so. And at first, it may seem like she was right, because she’ll hit the bars with her most cleavage-enhancing outfit and guys will swarm her like she hasn’t experienced in years — because she was married and wasn’t on the market. It’ll take her a while to realize they aren’t the same quality of guys who were swarming when she was 22, and they aren’t offering the same things she could take for granted back then.
The spreadsheet hits Heartiste:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/the-married-man-thirstzone/
@Jeremy
Given that you don’t believe in biblical sexual morality, why are you advising those who do on the proper way to navigate it? Be honest. You don’t believe there is a moral reason to marry, and that marriage is in fact less moral than sex outside of marriage. From here, the obvious answer is not to get married. I don’t agree, but at least it would be logically consistent. I gave you the benefit of the doubt earlier, but you are here whispering in married men’s ears that x is ok, and y is ok, when really you despise marriage.
I went through this a few years ago. I’d get a “yes” from my wife once or twice a month. Eventually I stopped asking, wondering how long it would take her to notice. It took a few months before she asked me. I said “no” the first few times she asked just to get a taste of that. I learned to live without sex when I was a virgin, I can do it now. I never initiate anymore, and never will again with her. I’ve only gone red pill about a month ago, and had no understanding of the whats or whys to these games. Now that I understand more, a whole new set of gears have shifted within me. I’ve gone “roommate” with the whole emotional spectrum, as some here are now suggesting. I’ve been asked “Are you okay? Is everything okay?” a dozen times in the last week. She knows at some level that in my own heart I’m gone, and I’m never coming back. As I’ve been in the dark the last 20 years, now she’ll be. I’ll never explain to her what changed, nor why it’s changed. I’m happy to be emotional roommates until what I decide what I want for myself next.
@rycamor
The existence of the alternative is not talked about much in society. I recently, finally, concluded that I truly dislike watching soccer. The game itself is somewhat fun to play, having played it a bit in my youth. However, I gave it one final attempt as a friend convinced me to watch the championship match of the World Cup. So we did, we watched all 120 minutes of the final match. For the first 45 minutes, you could watch both teams truly put a serious effort into scoring goals. After about 10-15 minutes into the second half, you could see the players begin to slow down. They all pretty much stopped playing to win. This is an effect of the rules of the sport which prohibit open substitution and only allow for 2 per match. This is quite unlike hockey which allows almost unlimited substitutions at any time. As this final soccer match wound down, even into the final minutes, both teams really slowed down. It became somewhat clear that while they were putting forth some effort, they were mostly tired and playing for a tie and a penalty-kick-off for the championship.
Then suddenly, the freshest guy on Germany happened to get the ball inside the defense and scored on the Argentinian goalee. He was a substitute who came in halfway through the second period, probably the freshest guy on the grass.
Then, for the remaining ~5 minutes or so of play, it was a completely different game. Suddenly every player, from both teams, realized that playing for a tie was no longer an option, and that the game *could* be won or lost under the clock. Their entire mindset changed, they could *win* or *lose* based on their performance over the remaining time. They *finally* put forth the level of effort you see in every NHL hockey game. It was absolutely amazing. Go watch the video if you can find it, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.
The option of playing to a tie destroyed any motivation of playing to win at the end of the game. The rules of the game offer a perverse incentive to resolve the match with the equivalent of a free-throw-shooting contest. This was enough for me, and it became completely clear why soccer is an absolutely terrible game to attempt to enjoy. Watch any NFL game, unless it is a blowout, the teams are *always* fighting to the end. Watch any NBA game, and while the constant time-out calls near the end of the game can be frustrating for those who like action, you do see a significant effort by both teams to win in regulation as there is no option for a tie. Watch any NHL playoff game… (enough said).
Incentives MATTER. Society has completely forgotten this fact. The existence of divorce allows couples to “play to a tie” and only put forth token efforts at remaining together. An unsatisfying “tie” can ultimately be resolved in some family court, and nothing will be lost for the individual.
By providing people alternatives, by allowing couples to separate, the option exists. If the option exists, then the self-centered among us will always default to the least painful option to them. It was once considered that humanity needed to “play to win” as everyone used to understand that nature could kill us all with a single event (still can). Now humans seem to consider that humankind cannot be extinguished (a false perception), so humanity need not form a stable, growing, and “winning” society on this planet. We now play for a “tie” and let our unsatisfying lives serve as a pathetic high-water-mark of human existence. We’re just another line in a canyon that will someday be explored by beings more intelligent than us. They’ll look on our society and marvel at how we ever did anything because we couldn’t see that human survival means more than individual comfort.
I’m not defending this woman. Some of her comments are, although she probably doesn’t know it, invitations for him to express just how much he desires her. The comments on feeling gross, I might be sick, I need to shower… I had to tell my husband early on in the marriage that when I said things like that, what I really wanted was a demonstration of just how desirable I was to him, even sweaty, fat, and possibly contagious. My husband was really surprised to learn this information.
Almost all of her excuses would be best met with the techniques Athol Kay suggests. We want men to present passion and confidence–and then, if we insist on no sex, we are driven crazy (in a good way) by his sudden indifference to the lack of sex.
Phillyastro says:
July 22, 2014 at 10:44 am
“Here is PJ Media’s resident White Knight view on the topic:”
I tried to read and understand Swindle’s article. It started out as typical feminist tripe, and then he went off on one of his weird pseudo-mystical rants.
In short, he makes no sense. I wonder why PJ Media continues to provide him with a platform from which to spout such disjointed, convoluted, unintelligible nonsense.
@Dalrock
No, I don’t despise marriage. I despise marriage-by-old-man-covenant. Two people coming together to form a stable building block for society is the highest moral and ethical union that can exist. There is no greater method of ensuring a stable and advancing human society.
Two people staying together *only* because their culture or religion tells them to is an absolute sham, a travesty of the attempted enforcement of rules in spite of human nature.
Religion is not wrong in saying that marriage is the bedrock of society, no they’re quite right. Religion is absolutely wrong in insisting that only a marriage of biblically-enforced obligations is acceptable. In fact, I would say that religion’s meddling in marriage is almost as bad as the State telling us how/when to marry.
@Boxer re: “I probably will see her again”
Thanks, but what I’m looking for is, primarily, the marriage effect. I think the married men will tend to still know it was 14:27 on Sunday afternoon that they melded into she of many colors. I think the married women will tend to stare off into space “The last time? Hmm … but … sex isn’t everything.”
There is a saying: “Everyone wants a spouse who would never cheat on them, but could any day.”
Also recall the difference in classical meaning between the words Envy and Jealousy. Envy is “I want what you have”. Jealousy is “You make me appreciate what I have.”
Let’s put those together…
When my wife and I go to a swing dance, her seeing me dance with attractive young women makes her jealous. She thinks, “They are smiling at him and enjoying his personality and dancing skill. But they get that for only one dance. I get him all the time!” There is no envy: nothing they have is not already hers. There is no dread: nothing I do makes her worry.
Back when my hair was very long and I needed it braided (most often twice a week before going to the dojo), I would ask random women to braid it. I could arrive at a park or library with my two kids and simply ask a woman, “Would you braid my hair?” Knowing other women were braiding my hair made my wife jealous. She thought, “They thought he was attractive and liked playing with his hair. But I get him and his hair all the time!” There was no envy. There was no dread.
Of course, those two examples work for my particular spouse. If seeing me smile at another woman upset her then swing dancing would not be appropriate for us. If she was sensitive about other women touching my hair then having other women braid it would not be appropriate for us.
Because there is neither envy nor dread, my wife *likes* being a little bit jealous every few days. Reminding her that I am attractive makes her (as the woman who “has” me) feel more attractive.
There is no place for “Dread Game” in a healthy marriage. But a little jealousy without envy or dread feels good and helps keep a marriage healthy.
(If that previous sentence sounds false to you, then I suspect you misunderstand classical jealousy and/or cannot recall feeling jealousy without envy or dread.)
—
Please pardon a theological tangent. Sorry, but I cannot pass by the classical definition of jealousy on a Chrisitian blog without mentioning Romans 11:11-15, in which a careful scriptural translation will use jealousy instead of envy:
“In that case, I say, isn’t it that they have stumbled with the result that they have permanently fallen away?” Heaven forbid! Quite the contrary, it is by means of their stumbling that the deliverance has come to the Gentiles, in order to provoke them to jealousy. Moreover, if their stumbling is bringing riches to the world–that is, if Israel’s being placed temporarily in a condition less favored than that of the Gentiles is bringing riches to the latter–how much greater riches will Israel in its fullness bring them! However, to those of you who are Gentiles I say this: since I myself am an emissary sent to the Gentiles, I make known the importance of my work 14 in the hope that somehow I may provoke some of my own people to jealousy and save some of them! For if their casting Jesus aside means reconciliation for the world, what will their accepting him mean? It will be life from the dead!
Theologically, whatever good thing “life from the dead” means will happen when Gentiles provoke Jewish people to think, “Hey, that is *our* God! When I see *you* with him it makes me treasure him more. I have been taking God for granted and not enjoying my relationship with God as much as I should. When I see how you relate to him and enjoy his presence, it makes me want to do that even more than I do now.”
Historically, Gentiles have been great at provoking Jews, but not yet in this way. Thus no “life from the dead” yet.
The rest of the dynamic appears in Second Corinthians 3:14-17:
What is more, their minds were made stonelike, for to this day the same veil remains over them when they read the Old Testament. It has not been unveiled, because only by the Messiah is the veil taken away. Yes, till today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart. “But whenever someone turns to the Lord the veil is taken away.” Now, “the Lord” in this text means the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
So a Gentile believer provokes a Jew to jealousy, which is enough to cause the Jews to look for more of God’s Spirit, which causes a change that allows the Jew to finally see the Messianic truths in scripture. This dynaimic is how most Hebrew Christians came to faith–I have seen surveys done at MJAA Conferences. We all need it to happen more.
@Judge Dread re: “She knows at some level that in my own heart I’m gone, and I’m never coming back.”
You may give her too much credit. While it is true that a man in love could never be cold or use Dread, women’s falling-in-and-out-and-in-and-out-of-love willinilliness doesn’t let them see that fact.
If a man were to ‘go his own way’, is the sin of hiring a prostitute or fornicating once or twice a month greater than the sin of being married in a virtually sexless marriage and resorting to porn or an affair?
It seems that this is the paradox christian men are presented with today.
Judge Dread says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:59 pm
Two wrongs don’t make a right. You should flat out spell it out for her and give her the opportunity to repent.
Just my 2 cents.
re: “invitations for him to express just how much he desires her.” Opposite time, again?
She already was/is making half or more of our income and doing half or more of the chores.
“Withhold emotional support/prayer/ help/ intimacy?”
yes to all
“Did you ever reach a conclusion on why your wife refused you and/or expressed no sexual interest for over 8 years?”
Yes, in part, mistakes I made early on in our marriage and she doesnt feel sex is necessary to her happiness.
@davidvs, the fact that other women gladly groom you marks you as alpha. Hence your alpha solutions fall flat for us betas. In much the same way, Obi Wan could just wave his hand and get Imperial stormtroopers to do his bidding, but that is not a realistic option for most of us.
Could a man even formulate this thought except as a parody of women’s “thinking”: “He should have realized by now that my No sometimes means more Yes than my usual yesses mean. Not every time, but sometimes.” ?
@jf12…
“@davidvs, the fact that other women gladly groom you marks you as alpha.”
Not at all. Most women really like playing with long hair. And most moms/babysitters watching kids at a park or library are really bored.
I know how to be attractive:
http://davidvs.net/hobbies/masculinity-norms.shtml
but it’s much less work to merely be strategic.
😉
@jf12. Yes–opposite time exactly! It’s harder to explain in other non-sexual situations that are the more typical “shit tests,” which are a test of masculinity, except, you know, when we’re really serious and would please like you to take it seriously. It’s incumbent on the woman to figure out and express where she actually is. This is so simple for a woman to figure out for herself, if she’s willing to listen to what’s going on in her head, and then give the man a fighting chance by cluing him in. My husband and I have turned these encounters into a joke, so I can admit where I want the opposite of what I’m saying, as opposed to the times when I really do want what I’m saying I want.
But this only works if a woman is being honest with herself. We remain flummoxed as to what to advise our sons, although increasingly I think giving them copies of Athol Kay’s writings is the place to start.
“Nope, stop, forget it” meaning “I like what you’re doing. Please continue it, and do it harder.”
@jf12 says:
@deti re :”if a wife remains in open rebellion despite all the described measures, then she’s clearly not content to “abide with him in peace”. One can seriously question whether she is a believer, and thus whether divorce would be permitted”
I have tried to make this my explicit stance, but my wife and my pastor refuse to allow my stance. This is THE crucial component that makes Dread work, and without it, all we gots is a big fat Nothing.
—–
Your stance (your position, your understanding) is your own. It is not for them to “allow” something that is yours to choose. The fact that you are allowing others to dictate your stance is a part of the problem.
It is up to them to convince you to change your stance (if they can), not up to you to convince them to let you have one.
I understood, but you didn’t specify originally, and I wanted to indulge in a bit of praxis philosophy. All you married bros should be banging far more often than a jaded libertine, who cares nothing for his women.
Likewise: All you chicks who deny your husbands sex should take warning. A non-relationship, with a guy like me, is your future. If that doesn’t sound appealing, then you better get on that dick, and fuck that mofo out of his mind on a regular basis.
Boxer
re: alpha. Yes, seriously. The hallmark of any primate alpha is that females groom him and bring him food offerings. When any human female sees her man being groomed servilely by other women, or being serviced food-wise, then she sees him as more alpha reflexively.
@TFH, not flaming you, but until I see two books, a blog and a forum dedicated to ‘married women sex life’ the size and extent of MMSL– where women encourage one another to get in shape, be sexy and put forth the same effort and determination to better themselves for their sexually disinterested husbands as the men on MMSL do to reinterest their wives, call me skeptical with regards to equivalencies.
@Josh the Aspie, re: unbelieving wife. There is a grave problem with unilaterally allowing any husband to self-adjudge his believing wife to be an unbeliever for the sole purpose of giving himself an out from his marriage. But, I’m thinking, it NEEDS to be POSSIBLY allowed. Maybe conditionally on his giving her many chances and wrestling himself with the issue e.g. as evidenced by his commenting on blogs ….
@ Rollo:
“If a man were to ‘go his own way’, is the sin of hiring a prostitute or fornicating once or twice a month greater than the sin of being married in a virtually sexless marriage and resorting to porn or an affair?
“It seems that this is the paradox christian men are presented with today.”
Well, are you asking morally or practically? Morally, it’s a paradox only if the wife is disobedient and refuses to honor her vows. The wife is acting immorally; but worse; she’s permitting her husband to be tempted into sin. That doesn’t mean she is causing her husband’s sin; but she is creating favorable conditions for it, which compounds the problem and is a sin in and of itself.
Clearly a man GHOW and fornicating is a “lesser sin” only to the extent that he isn’t harming a wife or children through his immoral sexual sin. Morally it’s still sin. Practically, the MGHOW’s sin is “lesser” only because its ramifications aren’t so far reaching.
@jf12. Well, it means, show me that you want it. And it’s easiest to spot with apparent rejections where the woman is insulting herself. I’m not sure I can explain the level of mortification a woman feels at exposing herself if she is unappealing. If I need to lose 10 pounds (which I currently do), then I am so ashamed to present myself to my husband. So I’m likely to bat away his expressions of sexual interest as being mere politeness on his part, and he could take “I feel gross” to mean “No thanks,” when what I really mean is “I’m too disgusting to be desirable to anyone and it would be wrong for me to show myself to you.” But if he really really wants me, then I can let myself get carried away, even if I’m gross. For us, it’s a little ritual we play through, because we have reached an understanding about what I mean (only because I told him how to decode what I say). Being desired by a worthy man is such an aphrodisiac to a woman, and the problem is that we no longer consider our husbands to be, de facto, the worthiest of them all.
@PhillyAstro
Thanks for the link…..
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00JZ4LKT2/pjmedia-20
Kosher Lust…….””I think the Orthodox Jewish understanding of sex’s role in marriage and how it can be utilized to transform people and unify a family is the best, most sane that I’ve ever encountered””………..A book that I have to read!…Thanks.
@malcolmthecynic says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:03 pm
deti,
If a husband literally can’t abide living in a house in a life with no sex, perhaps he shouldn’t have gotten married.
Not being able to “control your vessel” is literally the only biblical reason to get married.
http://www.htmlbible.com/kjv30/B46C007.htm
Dalrock: Thank you for covering this.
Rollo pasted a quote in these comments soon after the post appeared.
I’m thankful to have read Rollo Tomassi in the years BEFORE the mobility, speech and some other functions were taken. My 2014 has been spent in 24/7 inpatient care to restore them.
You can discuss the ‘Christian’ way all you want, but when tragedy strikes, do you want someone that doesn’t like you anymore? Or, do you want to learn what Rollo, a happily married MAN can teach about the reasons why a woman will or will not be there for you through recovering from the loss of mobility and other functions?
I was dead.
But I didn’t wake up alone.
If this happens to you too soon, will you have learned from Rollo Tomassi, or have you let someone else’s interpretation of a more popular book sentence you to a life of not knowing love?
Rollo is quite considerate of your beliefs in his book “The Rational Male” and he goes into much more detail about why your ‘Christian’ marriage isn’t what you’d believed it would be.
It’s shocking, really, to see nice, faithful men having such fear of learning the truth of what it means to be the man God put you on earth to be.
In the referenced scenario, the man’s wife put it on display and she received mostly support from friends and strangers. But would those people be there 24/7 in the hospital for weeks at a time? Would they patiently be there for six months of inpatient care and painful, intense rehabilitation?
Would your ‘LTR’ or spouse or fiancé be there 24/7 despite your being surrounded by other medical staff?
Only you can answer that question.
Either way, I have always known that I don’t know it all. I love to learn. Rollo is clear in his book that he appreciates how ‘Dal’ brings these concepts to ‘Bible’ followers.
And so, I hope that you, too, will read Rollo’s book I mentioned here: https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/radio-silence-and-dread/#comment-132685
He acknowledges you won’t agree with a lot of it, but it’s more than a decade of research mined from more than a million men.
When you don’t agree with it because you think God doesn’t allow learning from The Rational Male, remember that you wear clothes from brands that stand for stuff you don’t believe in. You watch TV, consume content and you’re reading this on a device from brands you might say ‘Christian’ beliefs wouldn’t agree with. But you still choose to let the device teach you and you SPEND the currency of time on it.
The teachings from the Bible quoted here, interestingly, leave out a lot of its other teachings. It’s a long book.
The wife’s deliberate sexual deprivation having the effect of tempting her husband into sin is yet another indication of the abject cruelty of the situation. She is cruel and injurious to him by deliberately and willfully refusing something he wants; then compounds the cruelty by goading and taunting him into sin.
Re: Rabbi Boteach, he had some silly ideas, but he’s also had some great ones. He wrote a series of essays on “the secular shabbat” which I’ve put to use in my own life. His articles on married couples sex lives (I have not read the entire book, but I assume its a collection of his articles, a few of which I have read) would likely go over well here with you married dudes.
@Mulier, re: “the problem is that we no longer consider our husbands to be” worthy of enough sex.
Correct. That is the problem. The solution cannot be “Pretend my No mean Yes, and force me! tee hee.” Sorry, it’s not allowed.
Further, on the topic of a wife denying her husband sex:
1 Timothy 5:8New International Version (NIV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+5%3A8&version=NIV
8 Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Josh the Aspie is completely right, and malcolmthecynic completely wrong.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/radio-silence-and-dread/#comment-132794
@jf12
“re: alpha. Yes, seriously. The hallmark of any primate alpha is that females groom him and bring him food offerings.”
Ah… but in my experience this is true socially when I am the “Alpha Male Of the Group”, whether or not I am Alpha in any abstract or independent way.
And it’s really, really, easy to be the AMOG in places where there are 0-3 other men and the others are clearly too herb-ish to even think of approaching a woman they do not know to start chatting.
“When any human female sees her man being groomed servilely by other women, or being serviced food-wise, then she sees him as more alpha reflexively.”
Hm. So what I described above had the added leverage of using those AMOG settings with abusrdly low standards to reflexively make my wife think I was more Alpha in an abstract/independent way? Perhaps.
Cail Corishev says:
July 22, 2014 at 10:58 am
Haven’t read all the comments just yet, but co-signing (from the ‘been there, done that’ trenches) that all of the typical advice this would normally receive is guaranteed not to work.
Not, force me. But, indicate strong interest. And yes, you’re right that considering one’s husband to be worthy is the most essential factor. But even a woman who considers her husband to be worthy (in fact, especially a woman who considers her husband to be worthy), may sometimes think of herself as unworthy. This is the little bit of truth that the self-esteem movement has so distorted. There are times when I am not worthy of my husband, and I know it. When that happens, I feel it would be wrong to inflict myself sexually upon him, even if he asks nicely.
The older understanding of sex roles probably lent itself so easily to pleasurable marital sex. But today, with Marriage 2.0, we wind up having weird conversations instead.
Likewise: All you chicks who deny your husbands sex should take warning. A non-relationship, with a guy like me, is your future. If that doesn’t sound appealing, then you better get on that dick, and fuck that mofo out of his mind on a regular basis.
Boxer
Well said, Boxer. But alas, pearls before swine.
1) If we’ve learned nothing else from choking down the red pill, it is that women CRAVE sex from men who see them as nothing but dicksockets -with-pulses, to be abused, used, and discarded.
2) Your message addresses the long term, the very concept of which few women can comprehend.
Boxer says:
July 22, 2014 at 3:00 pm
As a believer (a Catholic one at that), I can’t in good conscience recommend initating civil divorce, but you are exactly right that, if a divorce is inevitable anyway, the elapsing of time will worsen the damage ultimately realized.
I speak from painful experience.
Years ago, when I was struggling career wise, DW had a good position as an RN and would occasionally talk about how she was approached by men at work who were very successful, and when in an argument would say she had options, men found her very attractive, I’m lucky she stays with me, etc.
Now I’m a a really good position with a Fortune 500 company, making well into six figures. Because I don’t want any secrets in our marriage, I’ve mentioned to her that sometimes I get propositioned from woman. The response has always been “Uh huh, good to hear, I’m sure it’s hard for you.” Not without reason. I’m a 7 compared to her solid 9 and she works hard to stay attractive.
Last year I got back from a business trip and my wife finds in the mail a thank you card. I ask her to open all my mail to see if it’s junk or important. It’s a letter from a very attractive woman almost 20 years younger asking to get together for lunch and includes a 5×7 of her at a resort showing some leg. For some reason my wife is surprised.
“Women at work are asking to get together?”
“You knew this. I just ignore them. Anyway I’m not into women with tattoos” The woman had a tattoo on her ankle.
I didn’t bother to read the letter and then told her I was going out and to just put the envelope in my office pile to go through in case it had anything business related.
Not, Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know what signals i was giving that would cause her to write that!, not, I’ll tell her to never speak to me again! or I would never in a million years cheat! or, Throw that letter out right now! or, Do I need to change? Have I hurt your feelings?
No reason for me to gush and apologize and fret about her feelings. Simply, I’ve told you this, I ignore it, I don’t find women with tattoos attractive and please put the letter in my office. That night, Best. Sex. Ever. And a noticeable change since in overall demeanor.
We have a committed marriage and I would never cheat. I don’t think she would either. Both of us know the disaster of divorce. No complaints in the bedroom either. Things could be a little better in some areas but know I’m lucky overall compared to the mess out there in other marriages. But in this instance a few truthful words to the point went a long way to improving our relationship.
@Mulier, re: “we wind up having weird conversations instead.”
I think women prefer it that way, usually. Must always caveat with the “usually”. Also, I bet “usually” when you say “No!” you literally mean “No!” “even if he asks nicely.” So he’s just supposed to guess when you mean “Try harder.”
Probably, not really going out on a limb here, the only thing I ever had going for me with women was my ability to have weird conversations. For, I dunno, six or seven or eight women, maybe nine (Hi, el!), I’m certain I provided them by *far* the weirdest and longest conversations they ever will have in their lives.
But I only married a couple of them.
I think we got into the ‘duty sex’ conversation when SSM still had her blog going, but I’ll pose this situation again; is an obligated compliance sex an honest expression of passion in comparison to unobligated, desired sex on a woman’s part?
As I stated before about Spreadsheet Guy, even if his wife ‘repents’ and has sex with him, how into it is she really going to be knowing what led up to that sex?
15’I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16’So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Revelation 3:15-16
I’m sure the theologians will contextualize this, but the fact remains that the idiom of being ‘Lukewarm’ is drawn from this scripture. It stands to reason that even God is primarily interested in genuine desire, whether it’s hot acceptance or cool rejection.
If a wife isn’t hot for her husband, no amount of resigning herself to her biblical obligation to bang him (is there a scripture for this?) is going to fire her up. We’ve discussed before how all the virtue a man possesses is never an arousal for women.
@Rollo,re: “all the virtue a man possesses is never an arousal for women.”
Yes,but his *badness* is arousing. Dread is, basically, the threat to be Bad.
What Dread game can provide, in terms of arousal, some have called distancing, but we can call de-familiarization. Closeness game, i.e. snuggles game, as we all know doesn’t work. But, I think, possibly conversation game CAN work provided you maintain distance and not get enveloped in oneitis.
Good weird convo starter: “Remember having that dream where you’re kind of a dolphin and you swim by doing backflips at the surface?”
Not if the teeth in his Dread are pulled by having divorce or the threat of having an affair never be a realistic option for him due to he and his wife’s tacit acknowledgement of their religious convictions. The frame is hers, and her insurance of that frame is his conviction to ‘forsake all others’ and never have divorce on the table.
@Rollo
As you mention, that is a discussion we already had at SSM. I won’t try to remake all of the arguments I made there, but I think you are at least somewhat mischaracterizing the argument. We know of at least one woman who claimed that a conscious decision to stop saying no to her husband caused her to feel more arousal:
At the very least, a wife’s change in attitude can change her arousal. Also, the biblical instruction on marriage is for the wife to submit to her husband. Submission is sexy for women, which is why secretaries, etc. so often find their bosses sexy when they wouldn’t if they didn’t work for him.
No one that I’m aware of is arguing that all else being equal the wife being genuinely aroused isn’t better than “duty sex”. As you know, I encourage men to lead in such a way that their wives are more likely to feel more attracted to them. But where I fundamentally disagree is when someone says that illicit but passionate sex is morally superior to licit “duty sex”. One is licit, the other is not. Really really liking something doesn’t make it moral (just like romantic love and sex). For those who don’t believe in this distinction, I’ll ask again why marry?
Exactly what Rollo said. A marriage of expressed-and-enforced-obligations is about as loving as a cell phone contract, and just as destructive on society. What any loving God is actually demanding is that people love each other. How can you love that which you are obligated to by fiat?
This is not an excuse for women who refuse their mans sexual needs, rather it’s a recognition that you cannot make a pet dog love it’s master with the whip.
@Jeremy
“Non-marital sex is a two-party voluntary transaction. Married sex gets turned into an obligation by fiat. Which is more dishonest?”
Thanks for the non-sequitur. So what if non-marital sex is voluntary? – it’s still either dishonest (a unitive act without the intent to unite) or an instance of use of a human being as an object.
Marital sex is by definition voluntary because it begins with “I do.”
Marital sex is by definition an act of love, an act of authentic self-giving, so the act is not dishonest. Spouses can be dishonest about their feelings at any given moment, but the sexual act itself is not dishonest within the context of a marital relationship.
If sex is the reason for a marriage, then IMO, the truth of religion has passed you by.
Sex is the physical union of male and female energies. In the most intimate and passionate moments of physical sex, the two differing energies can become one, and a flash of insight about the real mystery of marriage may be obtained.
This should lead to the spiritual side of marriage, the true calling of this union, where the 2 energies essentially dissolve into each other, leaving neither female nor male, just oneness, Godlyness, Christ consciousness, what ever noun you may choose to describe it. Where the two sets of foot prints disappear, and only one set remains.
If you stay on the baser plain of the flesh throughout your marriage, you have wasted both yours, your wife’s and God’s time.
@Jeremy
1)
“A marriage of expressed-and-enforced-obligations is about as loving as a cell phone contract, and just as destructive on society.”
Actually, married couples who honor their marriage vows are necessary for society. Non-marital sexual relationships and divorces are destructive.
2)
“How can you love that which you are obligated to by fiat?”
Stop saying “by fiat.” Marriages are not unilateral decrees – they are mutually agreed. You’re making yourself look stupid.
3)
Sounds like you’re confusing agape and eros – consistently.
That’s logical, but (fortunately, in this case) a woman’s perceptions have little to do with logic or reality and everything to do with her emotions. If she feels like her husband is getting attention from other women, and she doesn’t feel like he needs her like he used to, that’s going to get her hamster running no matter how seriously he takes his vow and his faith. It’s not that he would stray; it’s that she feels like he could.
I had stopped asking for sex after the my wife refused me, for the umpteenth time, in July of 2005 and she never made any acknowledgement of the lack of sex or expressed any worry that I might be “getting any” some place else. In fact she expressed more dread when I finally got free from porn last year and started asking for sex again.
Does your wife have a history of any sexual abuse? Did she have a sexual history prior to marriage?
The thing is, when you are a teenager reading your Bible, and you get to the parts about your husband ruling over you and your body belonging to your husband, well, that all sounds so outrageously wonderful. How could that be in the Bible?! It’s terrible and incredible.
These are the ways that the culture really does screw things up (although I take Dalrock’s point that the culture is each of us, participating in our own ways). As a woman, you are told over and over that your duty is only to yourself. The old way of doing things no longer applies. You’re wrong to want what you want. You must want better things, which are coincidentally things that appear to be good for you but probably will make you very unhappy. So instead of enjoying yourself, you have to make everyone miserable, for some greater good.
To Rollo’s point, duty sex, as originally conceived, had very little that was dutiful about it, because it is so wonderful to owe sex to someone else. Really, what could be better? But today, with there being so little virtue in doing one’s duty, the duty looms large.
@damntull
How is a voluntary activity the use of a human as an object? Both parties agreed to it. Doesn’t sound like anyone using anyone to me. What is marriage other than a commitment that both parties agreed to?
What you really mean to say is that non-marital sex is a misuse of the sex act as described by doctrine. But that doctrine was written in an era when all sex resulted in pregnancy, ALL SEX. This meant that in those times, such an act was a willful destruction of society by fathering/mothering children outside of a commitment. The men who wrote that doctrine, inspired by God or otherwise, were correct to write it under such conditions, I do not fault them their wisdom.
But the game has changed. Whether the bible acknowledges it or not, not all sex acts result in children in this day and age. We have control over reproduction separate from intercourse, this means that non-marital sex is not a willful destruction of society. It does mean that willful ignorance of the consequences of reproduction while engaged in non-marital sex is sinful as it “sins” against society and both parties involved in the act by harming their futures irreparably.
Meanwhile, many men who are not getting sex from their wives turn to laws written in books in order to “whip” their women into satisfying marital obligations written by men who lived thousands of years ago. These men are self-restricting their own behaviors according to doctrine because they believe that attempting to make wives aware of modern male “options” is unloving and therefore sin. As such, these marriages turn into arguments over contract terms set in stone when the United States was probably still roamed by Mastodons, rather than institutions of mutual voluntary commitment for the good of society (and the two parties).
Your adherence to an ancient doctrine is admirable, but it ultimately misses the point of such rules if we cannot adapt to their original intent, which was to instill love in each other.
Honestly, if I can grab her and have a go any time I want, I don’t care all that much. Sure, passionate, excited sex is better than duty sex, but either one is better than nothing if you’re a man who burns enough to be married in the first place. And it’s not like you have a choice between daily duty sex or monthly passionate sex; the woman who refuses that often isn’t passionate for you. So the three choices are really regular passionate sex, regular duty sex, or rare duty sex. The first is best, but the second is far better than the third.
And as a practical matter, like the woman Dalrock quoted from SSM’s blog, I don’t think a woman could provide daily duty sex long-term and not learn to like it. She’s going to go one way or the other: either find herself getting more passionate for her husband, or start refusing him.
But where I fundamentally disagree is when someone says that illicit but passionate sex is morally superior to licit “duty sex”. One is licit, the other is not. Really really liking something doesn’t make it moral (just like romantic love and sex). For those who don’t believe in this distinction, I’ll ask again why marry?
I suppose some would marry for the idea of having kids in the most beneficial circumstances (many secular upper middle class marriages could be described like that).
But in any case, the key problem you’ve fingered here is actually rather similar to your fingering of the “romantic love makes sex morally legitimate” concept. The concept being argued here is similar: genuine mutual lust makes sex more “legitimate and honest” than sex where lust is lacking, waning, negotiated, part of a larger package of obligations, etc. In each case, it’s lust and/or romantic love which legitimates the sex, rather than the specific relationship context (marital or not) which determines the legitimacy of sex. So, it basically inverts sexual morality by making marriage more or less irrelevant for the purpose of serving (among other things) as the only legitimate moral context for sex — sex is moral if in the context of romantic love or genuine, urgent, passionate lust, but marital sex as a part of a bundle of obligations and commitments is “less genuine”.
Basically, our lusts and emotional passions become what legitimates our actions in this scenario. Obviously, that’s morally unsound.
@Rollo
“If a wife isn’t hot for her husband, no amount of resigning herself to her biblical obligation to bang him (is there a scripture for this?) is going to fire her up. We’ve discussed before how all the virtue a man possesses is never an arousal for women.”
Rollo, I honestly believe that Spreadsheet Guy (SG) probably would not care if his wife was “into it” around row 15. Seriously.
I know that plenty of blog runners and comment runners are blessed with wives who dig them soooooo muuuuch that they will never even think of a spreadsheet. But ya know sometimes everyone “isn’t feeling it”. For those of us in the cheap seats (you know not doing spirit marketing in bars with comely shot girls) it’s more about getting women to understand needs.
The WHOLE point of Spreadsheet Guys email is to point out that HE WAS TRACKING THIS and IT WAS AN ISSUE. Frankly we all go to work and “may not be feeling it”. We all cook dinner for ourselves or our loved ones and “may not be feeling it”. We do ALL OF OUR DAILY TASKS and NO ONE ASKS “are you feelin’ it honey”.
People work for me… I pay them in large part independent of if they feel existentially validated by their labor. But for some reason in the western world we have allowed our society to really think that Sex is a GIFT independent of ALL OTHER RELATIONSHIP factors. Frankly we need an old school wake up call here. ALL of the “BAD PLACES” in the world like Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan etc all have women who are having 10+ fertility rates. I doubt if the average child bride in Afghanistan is “Feelin’ it”. I doubt if her middle aged husband really cares if his wife is “feelin’ it”.
A man provides for his family independent of whether he is “feelin’ it”… A woman who cares about her man SHOULD reward that.
@Jeremy
“How is a voluntary activity the use of a human as an object? Both parties agreed to it.”
So what? Both parties agreed to the mutual use of each other as objects. There is nothing about the act being voluntary that negates the fact that it is an instance of use.
“What you really mean to say is that non-marital sex is a misuse of the sex act as described by doctrine.”
No, I mean to say it is a misuse of the sex act by nature of the act itself – it has nothing to do with doctrine. The negative consequences attending non-marital sex such as emotional pain, STDs, etc., are not the result of contradicting doctrine, but are the natural result of uncommitted sexual behavior.
“But that doctrine was written in an era when all sex resulted in pregnancy, ALL SEX.”
False. That has never been the case.
If a man were to ‘go his own way’, is the sin of hiring a prostitute or fornicating once or twice a month greater than the sin of being married in a virtually sexless marriage and resorting to porn or an affair?
It seems that this is the paradox christian men are presented with today.
~Rollo
And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
You present a false choice. If a man is really in a sexless marriage for years then he should take something like propecia to lower his sex drive (and have great hair) and go to heaven for all eternity. But no one really believes in heaven or hell anymore so why get biblically married anyway.
@damntull
Divorce only occurs from marriage, no marriage, no divorce.
Non-marital sexual relationships, some with kids, often last longer than marriages. No vows, no sanctification, nothing but two people committing themselves to each other, and they better society with their commitment. You find that sinful? More sinful than a woman rejecting a written obligation?
It is by fiat. Did you write the doctrine marriage vows? Did your wife? If you didn’t write down your obligations, but rather relied on what someone else wrote down in the bible, you’re effectively just doing what someone else told you to do. If you later pull out what someone thousands of years ago decreed that your wife is supposed to do, I’m sorry but I find little difference than that of a dictator.
Nope. Eros is nurtured between a couple, it’s the attraction that game is supposed to help create. But ultimately agape is what results in an older committed couple in which eros was sufficiently nurtured over a long marriage. The two are different, but when you satisfy one over a long commitment, you end up with both. It’s what makes well-adjusted grandparents who properly created a family the uniquely situated people they are. Marriages that stand the test of time always end with both in existence, as the person who attracts you your entire life is someone you will end up loving unconditionally.
As an idea for Christian dread, the Bible does allow divorce for any reason with the caveat that the husband and wife must remain celibate for life (either one’s life). The marriage is either allowed to reform if they recommit or permanently severed by adultery if one of them has sex with someone else. The idea here is that a sexless husband could sit down with his wife and point out that if she isn’t going to put out then there’s no Biblical drawback to divorce. He’s looking at lifelong celibacy either way and one of those ways is much more peaceful than the other.
Whether the threat carries weight under Marriage 2.0 is a different matter, of course.
Rollo Tomassi @ 5:42 pm:
“I think we got into the ‘duty sex’ conversation when SSM still had her blog going, but I’ll pose this situation again; is an obligated compliance sex an honest expression of passion in comparison to unobligated, desired sex on a woman’s part?”
I think I see where you’re coming from. The answer is that an absolute standard of morality (God’s) cannot also be dependent on subjective factors. There always comes a time when doing the right thing will be unpleasant, or difficult, or more costly than expected. That must not be allowed to influence one’s responsibilities. Meeting one’s obligation to a spouse is more important than enjoying the obligations because morality is absolute, not relative.
My apologies if I’m rehashing the duty sex debate.
hurting:
If by radio silence and dread doesn’t work” you mean that it doesn’t always repair or restore a marriage; or that it doesn’t always bring the wife along sexually, then I agree.
It works by forcing the wife into his frame and by forcing her to make a choice, once and for all, whether she wants a marriage to the man running dread.
@Mulier
Thank you for explaining that. Rollo is correct that you can’t “negotiate desire”. But being possessed is (or should be) sexy to women. Submission is sexy to women. Even dread as Vox described it… is sexy to women. The irony is all of this agrees with what Game teachers are explaining, or more accurately the other way around.
Rollo’s point about negotiating desire is correct, and I think quite insightful. For that insight, I’m in his debt. For those who don’t get it, they really need to consider it. But it isn’t what is being discussed. Biblical marriage is designed to create passion. This doesn’t mean it always works that way, partly because we are sinful and not always faithful to the instruction. It also doesn’t guarantee that marital sex is always as exciting as illicit sex. Overall I think we could make a very strong case that it is more exciting and satisfying than hopping from partner to partner. But from a Christian perspective this is like arguing whether smoking crack is a better high than real achievement; it doesn’t matter.
And where marital sex, including duty sex, doesn’t ignite the passions the way we would all hope and want it to (the way you describe), it still is part of honoring biblical marriage. Again, this isn’t negotiating desire (and again I’m not knocking Rollo for his insight and contribution here). This is honoring a sacred vow. That honoring the vow has a chance, I would argue a very good chance, to lead to better results still doesn’t make this negotiating desire. Negotiating desire is “She should want me because I’m good”. Or “She should want me because I gave her X”. Rollo is right. That is nonsense, as Rollo has eloquently explained. But biblical marriage is something different.
1: develop annoying outdoorsy hobby/extra-curricular activity; e.g. base-jumping, paragliding, sea-fishing, mountain-biking (xtra-ruff), spelunking. You know, anywhere void of wifi-reach and cafeterias, where the herdmind reinforcement is not on tap and a modicum of physical effort and co-operation is required.
2: you absolutely have to get more sleep;
i.m.e. the primary bludgeon in the armory of the discontented “wife” is getting up at sparrowfart like wot you does, getting in the way, hogging the bog and demanding coffee (in bed!) &c. until you leave at say seven … and then going right back under the duvet till .. eleven. Or twelve. When it’s time for her hour-long bath. And nineteen carefully calorie-counted breakfasts. One after the other, while watching TV.
Which accounts for her sleep problem and mystery illness that “the doctors just don’t understand” and causes her to greet you at seven (p.m.) in a bathrobe with the first glass of cheap red in hand, demanding (a) that you remove your dirty oppressive man-boots on the step and simultaneously (b) sort out all the horrible problems she’s accumulated during her trying modern woman’s day, fighting with the neighbors, the kids, the store clerks, the plumbing, the heating, the power company, the dog, her mother, her brother’s wife …. which she will be cranking on about till three in the morning and a pint of wine and five hours on Twitter/Facebug to the good (used to be usergroups when I had this crap, chatting with the other hags plus creepy ‘sensitive’ manginas), “because you just don’t care” how she feelzez.
Dam’ right I don’t, just at the moment, peaches. Gimme an hour and a shower, and a weissbier ..
The you gotta get up again at zombie-o’clock and drive, and chuck heavy stuff about in The Weather, again and again.
… fuck that noise.
Pub.
Then sleep.
At some point you have to stop trying. Like Spreadsheet Guy.
Or stop caring at all. Like I did.
Auld Tam, c/o
Paris, Texas.
@LiveFearless
I think you have greatly misread me. I’ve never suggested that men, including Christian men, don’t have anything to learn from Rollo. That would be hypocrisy, since I have learned a good deal from him. You will note that he is on the blogroll, and that I did a post on his book when it came out. Rollo and I have different perspectives in some areas, and I think we manage that as openly and respectfully as one could hope.
If you look at the majority of my posts on Game, you will find that most of it isn’t teaching specific Game concepts, but explaining how I think a married man (most of the time specifically a Christian married man), should approach Game. I’m not the man to teach you or anyone reading everything they could want to know about Game, or even most of it. My focus is instead around explaining the very basics, along with suggesting a framework to evaluate it from a moral perspective.
Dalrock:
“But being possessed is (or should be) sexy to women. Submission is sexy to women. Even dread as Vox described it… is sexy to women. The irony is all of this agrees with what Game teachers are explaining, or more accurately the other way around.”
No, the irony is men telling women what is or should be sexy to them.
@Dalrock, only the first sentence,
Dalrock: Thank you for covering this,
was directed at you.
The other uses of the word ‘you’ were for the few that have chosen to suspend learning from sources that they’ve been taught are morally ‘wrong’
[D: My mistake. Thank you.]
Bingo.
That is one reason I harped on and on about the submission verses when I still had my blog going. Not only is it biblical, but submitting to one’s husband is actually highly enjoyable most of the time. It’s ever so foolish of women to fight against a properly ordered marital hierarchy.
From Rollo’s book “no one has had more profound an impact on me than Dalrock: http:// dalrock.wordpress.com/ I’m impressed with Dal because he’s the one Man in the ‘sphere I can bounce off ideas of common morality and how they relate to Game concepts and know he and I are on the same wavelength”
I think one thing missing in the “duty sex” arguement, is this modern bent of people, to ask, “what’s in it for me?”
What is in it for my wife, when she is not into it, but still gives it up, is her pleasure in my pleasure in attaining it.
Oh Barb, just let go of the reins. Your man was designed to handle them better; you’ll be happier and so will he. Your job is to be the co-pilot for your captain. You know you want to, and that’s why you feel so frustrated and make such harsh-sounding comments. Why fight against what will truly make you happy?
You may think I’m trying to inflame you and make you angry, but I’m not. I’m truly trying to point you in a better direction.
Spreadsheet man got a “yes” three times in one month?
No, 3x in 44 days, or once-every-two-weeks. He was turned down 25x. IIRC, she was never ill during the entire seven week period, just watching television, or proposing to shower, &c. The couple is in their middle 20s, married 2 years, appended 3 years prior, and without children.
Barb – No, the irony is men telling women what is or should be sexy to them.
That’s not irony, it’s plain and simple facts that were learned, tested, and found to be extremely accurate. That you don’t understand this says more about you than you can possibly realize.
From: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/22/whos-the-worst-frustrated-husband-creates-no-sex-spreadsheet-wife-puts-it-on-the-internet/
I noticed a lot of people saying things like: “he’s probably really bad at sex – that’s why she doesn’t want to do it.”
But, a good reply:
elainebenes
Maybe he’s really bad at it …
vadeux
To be fair he doesn’t seem to get much practice.
That advice Cane Caldo gave me has helped tremendously. I stopped asking for sex and A)started being more direct, telling her exactly what I want and B) started doing more of my own thing and putting my needs/interests first. Those two things have worked wonders.
SSM, JDG;
glad this works for you. Different people have different preferences and needs, however, and what works for you does not necessarily work for others.
It is as presumptuous for religious men (and some women) to tell all women what they should find sexy as it would be for feminists, female and male, to tell all men what they should find sexy (hairy legs in Birkenstocks, e.g.) While there are men who are into hairy legs in Birkenstocks, assuming that all men should find such attractive is a bit of a stretch.
[D: Have you ever seduced a woman?]
Regarding marriage
Jeremy – Religion is absolutely wrong in insisting that only a marriage of biblically-enforced obligations is acceptable.
Based on what? Where is this fountain of light from which you so generously pour out these pronouncements of wisdom that over ride the wisdom of God? Why should anyone believe you over the Bible?
Your adherence to an ancient doctrine is admirable, but it ultimately misses the point of such rules if we cannot adapt to their original intent, which was to instill love in each other.
When we obey God we show that we love him, and when we love each other we are obeying God (and demonstrating adherence to that ancient doctrine). Instilling love in each other is a a great idea, but not always possible because the other person also has a choice to make. The best we can do is to love and obey God, and then love each other (as God has commanded). God spells out fairly well how we are to do that (some of which you have already objected to).
If you didn’t write down your obligations, but rather relied on what someone else wrote down in the bible, you’re effectively just doing what someone else told you to do.
Absolutely! And if you don’t, you are still doing what someone has told you to do (be it yourself, Opra, the amazing atheist, or whom ever has your ear – there is nothing new under the sun). A man would have to be a fool to trust Opra, Jeremy, or even himself over God.
If you later pull out what someone thousands of years ago decreed that your wife is supposed to do, I’m sorry but I find little difference than that of a dictator.
Feminists and manginas throughout the western world agree with you. You remind me of someone else who questioned God’s authority.
Genesis 3:4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Regarding marriage:
Genesis 2:22-24
Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman, ‘ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Proverbs 5:18-19
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer– may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.
Matthew 19:4-6
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ ? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
1 Corinthians 7:1-3
Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:10-11
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
Hebrews 13:4
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
Marriage is a reflection of Christ and His Church. It is not about our happiness or anything else based on selfish desires, and it certainly is not something we can re-negotiate at our convenience. Those who play fast and lose will reap a sluggards reward, and those who ignore the boundaries that God has set up will inherit destruction.
Just as a more personal question, when would it be acceptable to withhold? If I know that engaging would cause ptsd flashbacks etc. I of course say no (I’d rather not crush his soul into tiny tiny tiny pieces). It’s the more gray area where I’m not sure that is the problem, so I try because I love him and want to please him but well…… when things go south they go south badly. Drugging myself up to ensure a “positive” result makes *him* feel uncomfortable, so I’m a bit at a loss… He’s a 2x/day person if that’s any help.
BTW I really really really hate women like this. Life on a silver platter with a hubby that still likes you after you ate the entire wedding cake and the housewarming cupcakes? WTF. Not to mention publicly shaming her husband in public. Inexcusable.
It is as presumptuous for religious men (and some women) to tell all women what they should find sexy as it would be for feminists, female and male, to tell all men what they should find sexy (hairy legs in Birkenstocks, e.g.)
These folks for the most part aren’t telling you what you SHOULD find sexy, they are telling you what most women DO find attractive. Are there exceptions, sure. But they are by far the minority. It is what it is and believing it isn’t won’t make it anything different than what it already is.
@All,
I wrote a post on my own blog that should work as a response to most of the people writing here. You’re all welcome to respond there if you’d like.
I’d like to emphasize that I am trying to respond honestly and fairly – in other words, I don’t mean to insult anybody with pedantic bashing.
As for 1 Timothy 5:8, being “worse than an unbeliever” is not grounds for divorce.
No to mention provide *for their own relatives* seems to imply that the passage probably isn’t about sex specifically.
JDG says:
“These folks for the most part aren’t telling you what you SHOULD find sexy, they are telling you what most women DO find attractive. ”
Well, Dalrock’s pronouncement is unequivocally categorical:
“But being possessed ***is (or should be***) sexy to women. Submission ***is sexy to women.*** Even dread as Vox described it… ***is sexy to women.***” (emphasis mine)
There is no room for nuance in the above statement.
It is an error to think that what you personally find sexy should be sexy to all. Even if a majority of human beings find certain things sexy, making categorical statements about what should be sexy to all disregards the complexity of our sexuality.
Since desire cannot be negotiated, or willed into existence on the basis of “shoulds,” de- or rather *pre*-scribing it in such a categorical way does not do anyone a favor, and certainly does not reflect the variety of human sexual experience.
I’ve read a few posts and followed the comments section and there seems to be a difference of opinion between GBFM and Dalrock. If you Dalrock and GBFM could weigh in on your opinion of marriage in the United States, that would be awesome. I believe that getting married in the United States is NOT a biblical pursuit. In fact, I believe that people who do get married and FUND the current secular regime are making matters worse. If all men refused to sign the dotted line I believe the system could change for the better. Does anyone agree with these positions or am I at the wrong blog?
If you personally find fat, wimpy, smelly men attractive, by all means grab yourself one; we won’t stop you. But that has nothing to do with normal human behavior, which is what we’re making “categorical statements” about. Saying “women desire X” does not mean “all women everywhere always desire X and if you say otherwise you’re a liar,” so put away your solipsism.
But one of the big lies is that we’re all such unique snowflakes with such diverse, “complex” desires that it’s not possible to draw any useful generalizations and use them to predict individual behavior. The truth is that we’re a lot more similar than we are different, especially when it comes to this instinctive biological stuff. Men, with rare exceptions, are attracted to an hourglass figure, firm breasts, shiny flowing hair, big eyes, etc. Women, with rare exceptions, are attracted to a dominant, powerful man taller than themselves and will sublimate their desires to his. That’s just how we’re built, how we all work, with those few exceptions you’re determined to use to invalidate the general truth. We really aren’t that complex; and it is possible, with minimal information, to make judgments and predictions about this stuff that will play out just as we expect.
Hi Barb – thanks for continuing the discussion in a very calm and polite way! I’m happy to keep discussing this with you.
OK, first, may I suggest that you read a secular blogpost on a totally different topic, sexual orientation? I’ll explain why in a moment. You can find this post at Darwinian Reactionary:
The Myth of Sexual Orientation
http://darwinianreactionary.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/the-myth-of-sexual-orientation/
Now, the whole article is worth reading, but let us skip to the summary:
I’m sensing that you may not be a Christian, so let’s take this out of the realm of obedience to the Bible and put this strictly in evolutionary terms (nota bene: I do not believe humans evolved from non-human animals, but let’s ignore that at present).
For a behavior as important to reproductive fitness as sexual expression is, can we agree that any sexual trait that did not maximize the number and survivorship of offspring would have been strongly selected against in our evolutionary past?
So, just like Mr. Darwinian Reactionary explains that the idea of sexual orientation is really just describing a sexual disorder (in a morally-neutral sense – here disordered only means “selected against” by natural selection), so too would a woman who does not like submitting to a dominant man really just be a woman with disordered sexuality – and remember, I am talking about disordered in a morally-neutral sense.
For you see, in order to obtain the best/strongest possible genes for her children, and the best possible provider and protector in order to ensure the survivorship of her children, a woman would desire a man who is strong, dominant, fit, a good provider, and so on. Once she has selected a man, she will sometimes still feel the urge to “fitness test” him (challenge him) in order to see if he is still dominant enough to keep her and their children safe and cared for. If he is – if he shows that he is a firm leader – she will find submitting to him naturally pleasurable (have you noticed that things which increase our reproductive success also tend to be pleasurable?)
If she did not find submitting to a strong man who was a good leader enjoyable – if she were drawn to a weaker man, one whom she could dominate, one who relied upon HER for leadership, protection, and provision, she would be compromising the number of children she could bear, as well as the survivorship of her children. And anything that leads to fewer, less-healthy children is evolutionarily disordered.
So you see, we are talking about normal – not sexually disordered – women when we say that women find (or should find) submitting to their husbands arousing. Nature’s God designed us to enjoy this. A woman who does not enjoy this is not a “bad” person, but she is sexually disordered and is not a role model that other women should seek to emulate.
Ah, Cail, I was typing the same thing as you at the same time, only you put it much more succinctly than I did!
Does anyone agree with these positions or am I at the wrong blog?
I think for the most part I agree. I’m all for marriage in church and before witnesses, but I think it is better to keep the government out of it if at all possible. the government really shouldn’t be dictating who is married and what is marriage to begin with.
In the Holy Bible, a husband and wife become one flesh in the sacrament of Holy Matrimony… If it is then recommended that a husband “game” his wife and games are defined as things to be played, does this then recommend for the man to play with himself? “To treat his own body like an amusement park?” To play with his own flesh?
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Thanks for the link, and a great post as usual.
@davidvs
“”So a Gentile believer provokes a Jew to jealousy, which is enough to cause the Jews to look for more of God’s Spirit, which causes a change that allows the Jew to finally see the Messianic truths in scripture. This dynaimic is how most Hebrew Christians came to faith”
Interesting analogy.Shalom!
Regarding sexual orientation:
1.6% of the population:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr077.pdf
The “gay germ” hypothesis:
http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/greg-cochrans-gay-germ-hypothesis-an-exercise-in-the-power-of-germs/
I don’t think anyone else posted this, but I found another link at the mommy site to be reasonably good:
Why You Should Say Yes Tonight (Even Though You Really Want To Say No) – See more at: http://www.scarymommy.com/why-you-should-say-yes-tonight/
They even link the spreadsheet thing I believe.
[D: Funny. As so often happens, the Dalrock research dept had just handed that to me.]
More conservatives weigh in on the spreadsheet story:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/22/a-spreadsheets-not-going-to-spread-her-legs-and-more-marriage-advice/
(Guess which way it goes…)
JDG, how is it possible to keep government out of it now? Does not going for an “official” marriage license really help in any cases? I was under the impression that you could still get hit for child support and even considered married if you played at it enough, including having a religious ceremony which would seem to be enough in the eyes of many to lump you with “common law married” types.
Is it a matter of which state you live in? Something else?
Dear Freeriker:
Yeah, I hope so. All the elderly playas will appreciate these stupid women who get themselves divorced. These old dogs need some hot younger women to service them, and the divorcée is the one to do it.
I know there’s some wimminz reading all the MISOGYNY here who don’t believe me. I’ll tell it to you straight. I really enjoy laughing at wimminz (and I know a lot of these) who got divorced, thinking that their millionaire hunky handyman was right around the corner. The reality hits them sooner than they think, and that reality is that the games their mothers and grandmothers played are over.
Playas know what I’m talking about. We don’t have any respect for you hoes who ruined a good brother and took his money. That goes double for single moms. You think I, or any man, would want responsibility for your mentally fucked up kidnapping victims? LOLOLOL! You cunts have already proven yourselves to be the lowest form of life on earth. No man will ever trust a piece of shit like you again. You sealed your fate when you filed those divorce papers. I know men who make a game out of having these bitches buy them stuff, and string them along with ideas of marriage, only to yank that rug out from under them at a moment’s notice. We all laugh at you bitches.
And I speak for my generation. The younger guys coming up: well, they’re a completely different animal altogether. Those guys don’t give a shit about you bitches. The truth is rough, but there it is.
Well, she who has ears will hear, and the rest of them be damned.
She starts by blaming the man Marcus. Pretty normal and idiotic. He may be a beta (or worse), but she is the one putting sex off all the time.
I do wonder if the study cited there is accurate:
> Looking specifically at those between the ages of 25 and 59, 25 percent of married people reported that they were still having sex two to three times per week versus less than five percent of singles.
25% have sex 2-3 times a week in that age range. I find that very hard to believe.
That seems like it would make a good base post here to evaluate the claim.
Dear TFH:
I suspect that these wives who balloon up to ungodly proportions are doing so consciously, in order to make themselves as unattractive as possible to their husbands. This should be seen by men as one of the most disrespectful acts a woman can do.
To be clear, I’m not talking about 5 or even 10 kg gain. Both men and women get somewhat “domesticated” when they get married. I’m talking about these women who become huge, monstrous porkers. I see a lot of these walking around. Usually the male half of the marriage looks pretty good, while the female looks like a beach ball.
I don’t blame these men for not wanting sex, and would support any man who divorced a woman who was so self-destructive.
Boxer
@TM
I am very glad, and thankful that you let me know. I’ll recall this when discouragement creeps into my mind.
@BradA
“Looking specifically at those between the ages of 25 and 59, 25 percent of married people reported that they were still having sex two to three times per week versus less than five percent of singles.”
The age range makes it a little questionable. Age 25-27 is around where most people start getting married, and people generally have more sex early in a marriage than later (as well as just being young(er)).
As for singles, I suspect frequency is largely dependent on them being in a relationship (generally), and since there’s no differentiation, the conclusions aren’t as simple.
@BradA
I went to the GSS to check whether sex frequency was covered, and it was. Here’s the post I made for the charts: http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/07/gss-sexual-frequency-by-age-and-marital.html
Interesting chart. That seems more realistic in context, but still seems a bit high when you are older.
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Isa says:
July 22, 2014 at 9:14 pm
“Just as a more personal question, when would it be acceptable to withhold?”
When divorced, in a coma, bleeding to death, the house is on fire, or the like. (If you gave birth 48 hours ago and it was a difficult one, guess what, that’s only one part of your body, so use another part to take care of your husband’s needs.)
More conservatives weigh in on the spreadsheet story:
Mollie Hemingway is actually a fixture of the evangelical press.
Mollie Hemingway’s substantive remarks are trivial and the rest of the piece is filler.
@deti
“heh. You’re being a bit of an ass about this, cicero.”
Only a bit? Well maybe you should try and remove your head from yours and not take things so personally.
“What about “overt and up front” is passive-aggressive, exactly?”
Well the part where what you wrote being neither overt or upfront. So how exactly is she to know how to fix her transgressions if you did not tell her what you want her to do and how you want it done and actually being there to see that it gets done before she gets her reward? So just like a scared and confused woman you advocate running away from the problem and have her read your mind on how to meet your standards.
And another thing, the whole “You’re sinning against *me*”.Might want to have a rethink about that.
“It is as presumptuous for religious men (and some women) to tell all women what they should find sexy”
But that’s not what’s going on. Rather, people are describing what women demonstrate (by conduct, deed and response, not by words) what is sexy to them.
@Boxer re: “All the elderly playas will appreciate these stupid women who get themselves divorced.”
I’m not actually to the point of, er, appreciating them. Just amusing myself (and them) by telling them what I’m going to do and what they’re going to do in response, and then doing it.
@BradA re: “a bit high”.
?
?
The majority are in sexless marriages. How can that be high?
@ cicero:
200-some comments on this thread, and you’re still not getting Dread and how it works? Troll.
OK. One last time, then I’m done.
Dread is a last resort course correction; intended to yank the marriage back on course when the wife is rebellious and threatening to blow it all sky high anyway. Your last comment suggests I should communicate with her directly, as a man communicates with another man. She isn’t listening to direct communication styles, or malesprach if you will; if that was going to work, it would have worked by now.
Women communicate indirectly. If you want to get through to a woman who isn’t listening to you, then you speak her language. The things she wants from those close to her are affirmation, validation, and emotional support. So you withdraw all of them. You disappear for hours; you go about your life, and you withdraw emotional attachment. She will want to know why you have changed. You let her hamster’s imagination do the rest. If this gets her attention that something is wrong, great. If it does not, then she is sending a message that she is fully checked out of the marriage and the husband can act accordingly.
Either way, it forces her to make a choice: Does she want the marriage or not?
Now. Go back and read this comment as many times as you need to in order for you to understand it.
deti says:
July 22, 2014 at 7:05 pm
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The “typical advice” to which I referred is the ‘just love her more, buy her flowers, rub her feet’ kind. As to the efficacy of radio silence/dread I’d hypothesize that there is probably no down side to it; it may not work, but it’s probably not going to hurt.
Right. We’re not saying what they should find sexy; we’re saying what they do find sexy. If they don’t like it, they’re welcome to prove us wrong. I look forward to seeing sites like date-a-quiet-accountant.com outrank date-a-convict.com.
@Boxer re: ungodly proportions. Since my wife has ballooned up these past few years (she looks quite a bit like Linda Ronstadt, for good and ill), the (many) chubby chicks at work have decided that must be what I like. I often get a lot of beams and nods from them nowadays.
@Isa re: “He’s a 2x/day person”
And you’re, a what? Meals 3x/day person? Sublimate, or imitate sublimating, some of your desire forfood into desire for him. Enjoying “doing” for the other person is NEVER hard unless you actually hate him.
Tam compresses a whole miniseries into a comment.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/radio-silence-and-dread/#comment-132834
Behold the tragedy of errors that is modern pampered woman.
@Rollo, re: “her insurance of that frame is his conviction to ‘forsake all others’ and never have divorce on the table.”
The single most relevant comment here, undermining Dalrock’s scheme. A husband’s harumphing from behind the newspaper NEVER was a viable scheme for changing a wife’s behavior, but him packing her a suitcase can be very viable.
Dread is effective because it plays into the wicked selfishness trait. Women also don’t have the capacity to love. There selfish nature compensates by allow behaviors as a substitute. So a woman’s good behavior (or bad) is to allow others to see here as a what ever is popular good mother, strong and independent, Sexy hot, what ever. pedestalizing women removes the need to simulate goodness and we have the feral cunts we have today. Dalrock has done the lords work on the pure now flake of goodness view of women in church. Most of this understanding is all well and good but it is in the law itself that has pedestalise the pussy. It once again comes done to the laws of misandry. It is a good thing in the long run for it removes the veil of blissful ignorance. The church has stepped on it’s crank big time and I don’t see the Christian church getting over this until they truly suffer badly. They are doubling down and hanging on to churchianship with all they have.
To start with we could troll with red pill truth every so call Christian blog. The truth is awesome. Real world red pill truth is biblical even with ever seeing the bible. The evidence to me is the complimental post from atheist on a Christian blog. That is what the power is not the lies the current church is pushing following the PC imperative. Have faith fellas
““You’re sinning against *me*”.Might want to have a rethink about that.”
Don’t have to. Christ already did. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US”
cicero, you might wish to go back and have a look at that.
Mulier says:
July 22, 2014 at 4:04 pm
“what I really wanted was a demonstration of just how desirable I was to him, even sweaty, fat, and possibly contagious.”
Did anyone else cringe at this statement?
OT but of interest for the research arm, perhaps: http://thoughtcatalog.com/penny-rogers/2014/07/i-dont-regret-cheating-on-my-boyfriend-heres-why/
“I cheated on Justin with someone I met in one of my classes. He is charming, intelligent, funny, and really, really hot (like, I-don’t-comprehend-what-you-say-when-you-talk-to-me-because-I’m-hardcore-staring hot). It was difficult not to be attracted to him as well. After getting to know him better, I started having sexual feelings toward him, and my curiosity grew. There was a clear sexual tension between us—a mutual desire I would venture to say. He knew that I was dating Justin, and he was respectful of that boundary. But it was me who crossed the line: I asked him to hangout at my apartment and had very clear intentions. That “what if” in the back of my mind took over. And the sex was fantastic. We didn’t make love, but we fucked. Hard. Three times in a row.
I sometimes ask myself why I don’t feel guilty about cheating on Justin with my classmate, or why I don’t feel guilty for enjoying the sex so much. My answer is always the same: because it was something that I needed to do for me.
Of course, Justin forgave her and all is well. Kids these days.
Dalrock asks if Barb has ever seduced a woman. In the absence of Barb’s answer, I force myself to imagine this:
“No, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what would work for *me*. Just for once I would like to be seduced by a kind gentle man who is above all caring and considerate and asking about *my* feelings. All the men who have seduced me have done the exact opposite! And I didn’t like it one bit!”
@JPOutlook
To avoid getting mired down in semantics, can you tell me which part of the following you object to?
1) In the case of a wife repeatedly denying sex contra to 1 cor 7:5 (the example given being the wife who published the now famous spreadsheet), a husband should stop begging for sex, especially if his continued begging is giving his wife comfort in her sin.
2) There is nothing wrong with a mother reminding her married daughter to “Take good care of that man, or some other woman will!” to help her daughter resist the sins our thoroughly feminist culture encourages of wives.
3) A husband must not cheat, threaten to cheat, carry on inappropriately with other women, or take actions which make cheating likely. However, he is under no obligation to attempt to convince or reassure his wife that denial of sex on her part would not create temptation for sexual sin.
4) It is consistent with biblical headship for a husband to attempt to lead his wife out of sin, including the sin referenced in bullet #1. However, it is important that he do this out of love and not out of anger and hurt. This doesn’t mean her rejection of him isn’t hurtful, but it is important that his head is clear and his motivation is out of love.
lol @ Novaseeker’s link. Especially the fact that this little girl thought that him being “really,really hot (… hardcore-staring hot)” was DIFFERENT from being “attracted to him as well” was DIFFERENT from “having sexual feelings toward him”.
Morons these days.
@Mulier, I’ll try another angle. While it is good and necessary that you have developed sufficient self-awareness to realize that much of what you say to your husband (and others …) is meaninglessly contradictory AND contrary to your own desires, rather than making him (or us …) play along with your frame (e.g. “Do the opposite of what I’m now saying, sometimes!”), you should take the additional step of recognizing that the far better approach would be for YOU to submit to a more rational frame. Control what you are saying (and thinking …) so that it lines up with reality.
@Oscar
No, but you certainly made me chuckle. I thought it was uncommonly insightful, and was especially impressed that she both recognized this about herself and clearly communicated it with her husband early on in the marriage. This part of a later comment also stood out to me in the same (positive) way:
“Does anyone agree with these positions or am I at the wrong blog?”
In the short term, yes, our current marriage laws are so unbiblical as to be optional at best. In the long term, if you want government out of marriage then how will you enforce the marriage commitment? No enforcement is basically no-fault divorce, which is why we’re here at Dalrock’s place talking about things like Dread Game in the first place.
Government has legitimate roles in society. Enforcing marriage to keep families intact is a legitimate role. The problem is that our current government derives great benefit from intentionally destroying families.
“What I really wanted was a demonstration of just how desirable I was to her, even broke, slumped over, and bawling like a baby.”
But as Dalrock said, at least she recognizes her contradictions and doesn’t keep her husband in the dark expecting him to “get it” without a map.
The Attraction Doctor draws the bullseye around the correct target.
“This husband does not have the power to influence his wife’s desire to have sex with him when he wants it. In the primary definition of the word, he is impotent – unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless.”
“both the husband creating the spreadsheet and the wife posting it online is a power struggle over defining whether sex is owed (a form of legitimate power).”
“female-centric advice has attempted to shift the power dynamic even more in favor of the wife, by suggesting that the husband should not even have an expectation of sexual satisfaction in the marriage.”
“Only advice for men seems to come close to empowering the husband.”
“empowering the husband as an individual… may not work to empower him within his marriage.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201407/husband-tracks-sex-spreadsheet-does-wife-owe-him-more
So he build up this expectation that he is going to offer away to empower the husband within the marriage. He fails.
1. He suggests figuring out what the wife likes, and doing more of that (as if the husband hadn’t tried that first and foremost!).
2. He suggests witholding positive reinforcement until only *after* sex (which is the approach I took, getting me up to a whole four times a month …)
His main error,of course is his absolute insistence the wife WILL respond properly to being treated properly. This viewis contradicted both by general experience with women, and this specific individual’s actions.
I know how he feels, then.
Back on point, as I stated eariler and at Vox’s, Spreadsheet Guy is simply following the male deductive approach to problem solving and making appeals to his wife’s reason by graphically showing her (and now all of the internet) the evidence of his correctness.
I can’t fault the guy for his effort; he simply hasn’t learned that women never want full disclosure of anything – and particularly anything that shines an unflattering light on them. Nothing is more gratifying for a woman than to believe she’s figured out a man using her mythical ‘feminine intuition’.
Spreadsheet Guy doesn’t give her the option to use her imagination and solve the puzzle – just like most guys who believe the trope that ‘open communication is the key to a good relationship®’ he spells it out for her in no uncertain terms – and with a marginal amount of above-board dread he expects (I presume) the problem with her sexual frequency to be solved for him.
In a Christian context, Christian men are expected to make the same appeals to a woman’s reason by highlighting scripture that makes the same case for them. Rather than a spread sheet, they point to the parts of the Bible that indicate a “woman’s desire shall be for her husband”, and believe this will solve the problem of their wife’s sexual disinterest in them. It’s the same litigiousness with the same expected results, and met with the same disappointment when the frequency (nominally) increases but the desire and fervor don’t.
As has been discussed frequently here, a feminized churchianity and the saturation of feminism into contemporary christianity are equally litigious in resisting this “you should bang your husband because the Bible says it’s your duty to do so” message with the same Biblical referencing appeal to reason. Granted, it’s motivated by feminine-primacy, but even ‘men’s ministries’ are piling on to this same resistance by fostering the message that it’s men’s fault for not being more “passionate men of God” and this is the reason wives resist their sexual advances (and appeals to their scriptural reasoning) as well as reserving the right to accept or not accept that reasoning by reinterpreting those backing scriptures to better serve the feminine imperative in the church.
Whether on a spreadsheet or highlighted with a yellow pen in the Bible, appeals to women’s reason is never an incentive to genuine desire.
Brad – JDG, how is it possible to keep government out of it now? Does not going for an “official” marriage license really help in any cases?
It is possible to get married and not register with the state, and so not willingly support the state in it’s perversion of marriage. I have a friend who did this, though he had to look around a little to find a bible believing pastor who would marry them with out state approval. This is kind of sad that so many genuine Christians have the view that the state can regulate marriage (which is God ordained).
I’m not sure a marriage without s state license would make any difference in family court as whom ever the woman names as the father is on the hook (married or not), or how practical it would be financially. I suppose financial gains and losses for this would depend on the situation of the couple.
These days one has to go to extremes to keep the government out of anything. The only effective route to escape family court that I can think of at this time is to move to another country where patriarchy is still the norm.
@ISA
What you are describing is different than what we are talking about here, and I don’t think this is a good forum for that question. I don’t mean that as a criticism, but instead that this would get very personal very quickly, and while most people here are very kind the internet can be a harsh place. My only suggestions would be to take this very seriously and make every effort (which I believe you do from what you describe), and talk with a good pastor or priest for more specific biblical direction. I also think while the topic is different the frame of mind Cane Caldo describes in this post is something to try to apply.
@Rollo re: “‘men’s ministries’ are piling on to this same resistance by fostering the message that it’s men’s fault for not being more “passionate men of God” and this is the reason wives resist their sexual advances”
Good example of Ciaran’s Moral Autoimmune Disorder
http://www.justfourguys.com/man-up-a-moral-autoimmune-disorder/
@Rollo
You make good points, but this is incomplete:
“Whether on a spreadsheet or highlighted with a yellow pen in the Bible, appeals to women’s reason is never an incentive to genuine desire.”
It is not just about women. Appeals to anyone’s reason, female or male, are not incentives to genuine desire.
If that were the case, the feminists’ (or anyone’s) appeals to male reason would make men desirous of hairy legs in Birkenstocks, or grossly overweight women, or whatever. Or Robin Korth’s almost-lover would have had passionate sex with her during that fateful weekend. Etc.
Appeals to reason have nothing to do with desire, and sometimes can be its best extinguisher. The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.
This also is the gist of my earlier point. I don’t necessarily disagree with what’s being said here, but I object to “shoulding” people into desiring something they don’t. It simply does not work. If a woman does not find submission sexy, telling her that she should find it sexy will not change her desire, and neither will calling her preferences “disordered,” etc. Same goes for men who find submission sexy, for example, or any number of sexual preferences that do not fit the “norm” as we may conceive of it.
Barb:
“I object to “shoulding” people into desiring something they don’t. It simply does not work.”
You’re unwittingly erecting a strawman. You’re advocating against a position no one is arguing. You are also arguing that not all women are like that, which is the oldest naysayer argument in the book.
Maybe you’re just not seeing it. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
No one is saying that people SHOULD want something they don’t. What is being said is this: we observe that women (in the main) are attracted to dominant, confident, assertive men who attempt to “take” them or “possess” them sexually and relationally. We are not saying women SHOULD or MUST find this sexy. We are saying that we see women respond to these traits favorably by giving attention and sex to such men, marrying such men, and bearing the babies of such men. We are saying that these are observable facts.
We are not saying that it should be this way. We are saying that we can see that it is this way.
“Does your wife have a history of any sexual abuse?”
I know of no history of sexual abuse.
“Did she have a sexual history prior to marriage? ”
I believe, from comments made by her first boy friend to me, that it was petting above the waist. I know with me in the 4 years we dated it was petting and (pardon the crude expression) dry humping fully clothed.
re: “It is not just about women.”
It turns out that THE solution to women’s ubiquitous loss of desire in long-term relationships is her submitting i.e. her decreasing her power of “no”.
1. Behaviorly, if she chooses to submit constantly for an extended period of time, e.g. sex every single day for a month, she will tend to find that she enjoys her relationship a lot better. Interestingly, however, in every experiment of a fixed time period, e.g. six months, the women universally report being amazed that constant submission made them feel so much better, but they don’t want to continue it …
2. Chemically, increasing her libido cures the monogamy blahs. The next-to-market cure for low-desire disorder is touted as THE monogamy drug as well: Lybrido. Essentially 100% of the women in every study reported having an order of magnitude more sex and being much happier in the relationship.
Besides, making a spreadsheet of your spouse’s (mis)behaviors and sending it to them out of the blue while they are doing something else altogether is not reasonable behavior.
It looks like an act of passive aggression, and/or an emotionally clueless move of an Asperger’s dude. But it is neither reasonable nor helpful. By acting this way, you are not appealing to reason (and that’s apart from ineffectiveness of such appeals with respect to desire) — on the contrary, you are either purposely (passive-aggressively) trying to evoke an explosive emotional reaction of some sort, or are lashing out in clueless desperation (Aspie), which will still evoke an explosive emotional reaction in response. None of it is about reason, however (even though it may appear so to a semi-autistic mind).
deti says:
“No one is saying that people SHOULD want something they don’t.”
This is tiresome, deti. Here is the exact quote:
Dalrock says:
July 22, 2014 at 7:07 pm
“(…) being possessed is (or should be) sexy to women. Submission is sexy to women. Even dread as Vox described it… is sexy to women.”
If you want to quibble about definition of “should” the way Bill Clinton did about the meaning of “is,” have at it.
Nothing wrong with 2, if you have help there use it when appropriate.
Number 1, the husband doing some “begging” for sex can be fun for both involved, once in a while, but if it’s making him feel bad or the wife too proud then of course it should stop. Common sense?
I like 3 a lot, since infidelity is a sin for the husband and this is one thing that he and God can control almost perfectly, God willing.
Number 4 is a bit off. Why get so technical? Is that the part you call feminist culture? If it must be done, it must be done, but having a wife that can simply shut down sexual initiation is already pretty much out of hand. The Christian couple must be an environment where wives aren’t normally headstrong like this. Playing a game could be good for a while, but could it really last as a long term way of living? You have got to break the woman’s spirit which is causing her to sin. But, preferably you don’t get to that point as you’ve chosen a wife that doesn’t have such a hard heart!
“Does your wife have a history of any sexual abuse?”
I know of no history of sexual abuse.
“Did she have a sexual history prior to marriage? ”
I believe, from comments made by her first boy friend to me, that it was petting above the waist. I know with me in the 4 years we dated it was petting and (pardon the crude expression) dry humping fully clothed.
Hmm.
There are things that can cause a lower libido — physical things — that may be at play here. The other options are a lack of attraction, or sexual hangups that are not abuse-related. That is, she has a low libido, but the question is why. It could actually be a combination of the relevant factors, but it isn’t very normal for a married woman to believe that no sex at all is necessary to be happy in life (even if she isn’t interested in sex with her husband for other reasons).
Barb:
Your lack of comprehension is silly. If you can’t understand that what is being discussed are observations and not exhortations, then there’s nothing to discuss.
Best to you.
“you are either purposely (passive-aggressively) trying to evoke an explosive emotional reaction of some sort, or are lashing out in clueless desperation (Aspie),”
Could be. I tend to agree with Vox Day that the husband in this case is responding to an implicit demand from the wife that he “prove” his claims that she doesn’t sleep with him. Something like this:
Husband: “We don’t have sex enough. You’re constantly turning me down.”
Wife: “No I don’t. If you really think that I’m constantly rejecting you, then prove it.”
Husband (to himself): “OK.”
Husband then proceeds to keep a detailed account as set out in The Spreadsheet. He proved it with documentary evidence of her wifely failures.
I think it’s also partly the husband saying to his wife that he knows she’s probably cheating on him and he doesn’t care. Best thing he could do would be to maintain radio silence and then serve her with divorce papers at the airport on her return.
She says it occured with menopause but she has been gatekeeping / refusing since the second year of our 34 year marriage.
elovesc:
I’ve been following along too Nova will weigh in. But it sounds to me like a biochemically low libido, or lack of attraction, or a combination of both. The fact that you’ve been married 34 years tells me she’s in her early 50s at the youngest and is at least a couple of years past menopause, so that could be making things worse.
Your telling us that the low/no sex started in the second year of marriage says that things started well from your perspective and then went downhill. That says lack/loss of attraction which sometimes happens shortly after marriage. It sounds to me like lack of attraction with low libido. But it has gone on for so long that it’s now entrenched behavior/response, and it will likely be very difficult to change, if that can be done at all.
She says it occured with menopause but she has been gatekeeping / refusing since the second year of our 34 year marriage.
Unfortunate but sounds like probably a naturally low libido to begin with (could be disorder related, but is experienced as normal by her) coupled with some marital issues like lack of attraction, and now with menopause thrown into the mix as well. That’s a difficult combination, unfortunately.
@deti
“200-some comments on this thread, and you’re still not getting Dread and how it works? Troll.
OK. One last time, then I’m done.”
No what you don’t understand is that dread does not work. Fairy
So you can take you ultimatums and give it to someone who actually cares about your backwards thinking.
“Dread is a last resort course correction; intended to yank the marriage back on course when the wife is rebellious and threatening to blow it all sky high anyway. Your last comment suggests I should communicate with her directly, as a man communicates with another man. She isn’t listening to direct communication styles, or malesprach if you will; if that was going to work, it would have worked by now.”
No what I am telling you is that you were not able to communicate effectively to begin with now you are getting desperate because you don’t know what to do. So your solution is doing what she does because you now all of a sudden know exactly what she (as a woman) might start thinking.
“Women communicate indirectly. If you want to get through to a woman who isn’t listening to you, then you speak her language.”
Well smarty pants if you did understand the language as you claim then you wouldn’t find yourself in the position in the first place.
“The things she wants from those close to her are affirmation, validation, and emotional support. So you withdraw all of them. You disappear for hours; you go about your life, and you withdraw emotional attachment. She will want to know why you have changed. You let her hamster’s imagination do the rest.”
You are so preoccupied with her hamster that you fail to see that you are running your own. You don’t withdraw emotional attachment without clearly defining what you want and how it should be done, so you withhold it until conditions are met.
“If this gets her attention that something is wrong, great. If it does not, then she is sending a message that she is fully checked out of the marriage and the husband can act accordingly.”
Yes now you have her attention (which you clearly lost with your new found linguistic skills) she knows something is wrong. She doesn’t know what it is, and she doesn’t know how to fix it. So you are still stuck with the same problem to solve.
“Either way, it forces her to make a choice: Does she want the marriage or not?”
No the whole charade forces your hand. Because remember you said. Men don’t communicate as woman and now all of a sudden you think that this female style mind game will make her think like a man.
““You’re sinning against *me*”.Might want to have a rethink about that.”
Don’t have to. Christ already did. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US”
Trespass = a wrong. So someone can wrong you however someone can only sin against God. Unless you think yourself worthy of passing law and judgment. Your starting premise is fundamentally flawed.
“….but it isn’t very normal for a married woman to believe that no sex at all is necessary to be happy in life”
That is what I coming to realize now. I would really like to get into a good biblical counseler to get us some help.
So what’s the answer guys? Dealing with this exact situation myself. 14 year Christian marriage with low frequency and overall poor sex life. Wife is a very submissive SAHM outside the bedroom. I’m in good shape, make lots of dough, and am around plenty. I realize I have lived in her frame. That is, sex is not that important. So I put up with it and intermittently begged and whined. Trying to change now…but struggling to do so without the leverage of real dread. I agree with those above that yes, I could appeal to reason and the bible, but that will only get me duty sex. At this point, I’ve been doing the whole roommate approach, but I’d really like to just blow the whole thing up. I know she won’t leave and what have I got to lose when I’m not getting it anyway?
deti says:
“I tend to agree with Vox Day that the husband in this case is responding to an implicit demand from the wife that he “prove” his claims that she doesn’t sleep with him.”
Possibly. Given that she was shocked by the spreadsheet, however, it does not sound as though she made demands, implicit or not, that he proved his claims.
But since we don’t know any details of their marriage, all this, like almost everything else written about this couple, is mostly projection-based speculation.
@Barb, you’re clearly approaching the spread sheet incident as I would expect most women would – from a feminine-primary perspective. The first reaction to anything unflattering of the feminine is always to erect male equivalencies (“ooh, ooh, men do it too only worse!”), but in doing so you only illustrate your singular, feminine-correct perspective.
You presume that Spreadsheet Guy took the time to log all of his approaches in order to provoke an emotional explosion from his wife, but this reasoning only shows you lack of understanding men’s deductive approach to problem solving.
From The Desire Dynamic:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/08/25/the-desire-dynamic/
When I’m dealing with clients at work I’ve learned to keep meticulous records of my dealings and emails. I do so not to piss them off or provoke an emotional response from them if something goes bad, but rather because it’s the most deductive way to account for what’s happened during the process of my dealings with them.
It would be great if I could rely on a mutual affinity and understanding, but that’s not how (most) men process things.
Deti
when peoples view is challenged the denial gets to much and they will play dumb and just not understand.
Cail Corishev says:
July 23, 2014 at 10:44 am
“What I really wanted was a demonstration of just how desirable I was to her, even broke, slumped over, and bawling like a baby.”
… “after she discovered that I’m a diehard Brony”.
Yeah, I don’t see that happening.
On occasion I am accosted by a morbidly obese radfem I work with, whose hair rapidly has rapidly alternated between dreadlocks, skrillex, cornrow, and butch — always died some garish color never found in human history. One day she decided to yammer to me about Bronies. She had apparently just figured out the phenomenon with the help of a documentary. It was her opinion that those men are total losers who would never amount to anything, and would all “die lonely and unloved”.
Considering the source, it was one of the funniest conversations I remember.
Rollo Tomassi says:
July 23, 2014 at 11:11 am
“In a Christian context, Christian men are expected to make the same appeals to a woman’s reason by highlighting scripture that makes the same case for them. Rather than a spread sheet, they point to the parts of the Bible that indicate a “woman’s desire shall be for her husband”, and believe this will solve the problem of their wife’s sexual disinterest in them.”
I don’t think that verse refers to women’s sexual desires.
That quote is from Genesis 3:14-19, in which God hands out curses to the Serpent, the Woman and the Man for their respective roles in Adam & Eve’s rebellion.
The Woman’s Curse goes:
Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
The EXB puts it this way:
Genesis 3:16 Then God said to the woman,
“I will ·cause you to have much trouble [or increase your pain]
·when you are pregnant [in childbearing],
and when you give birth to children,
you will have great pain.
You will greatly desire [C the word implies a desire to control; 4:7] your husband,
but he will rule over you.”
In other words, part of the woman’s curse is that she will desire to have headship over her husband, but headship rightfully belongs to him.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
@Boone, as you may have gathered, your situation is *extremely* common, and there is *nothing* you can do. All you are allowed to do, morally and legally, is Nothing. That’s it.
All of this is conjoined. The *reason* wives’ egregious misconduct occurs so frequently is because there is nothing the husbands can do; if there was something they could have done, they would have done it.
N.B. See? I’m not advocating being Bad. But being Bad would almost certainly work for Boone.
re: shocked. I’m *certain* that the *only* thing she was shocked about was that he had the temerity to send it to her.
They can do plenty, they’re just a bunch of ball-less wonders who don’t have the courage. This is the result of a nation of slutty single mothers, who raise men up to be slaves.
My brother the spreadsheet creator should get to work changing the locks, and head on down to the family courts for one of those ex parte orders. I doubt he’d have trouble getting one. “My wife is crazy, she told me she’d kill me when she returned…” As evidence, he could submit her bizarre internet whines.
Then he can have a yard sale of all her stuff, while she sits beyond the 100m perimeter set by the judge. It’ll help him with the attorneys fees.
Usually it is deti who says this, but again I will force myself. It seems like every woman plays the Not-All-Women-Are-Like-That, For-Example-Me card all the time, and then denies doing so. Every woman says:
“Well, yeah, 3 times out of 27 is kind of too low, so shame on her. But NAWALT. Sex is VERY important to most women! For example, in our relationship we still have a LOT of sex after all these years! I mean, two or three times a week every week. Well, some weeks. Not last week, though, nor come to think of it the week before that either. Granted, it’s not two or three times a day like when we first started, but who keeps it up like that? Every woman is different, is my point, and two times a week two weeks out of the month, i.e. 4 times out of 30 days is a LOT of sex, andcompletely different from 3 times out of 27 because I said so that’s why. But NAWALT.”
@Boxer re: courage. Hamlet’s Gordian knot is not so easily untangled.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
Boone:
A few questions:
How old are you? How old is your wife? Any kids?
Your premarital N? Hers?
How long has your sex life been like this? Did you have premarital sex with her?
Does she have a premarital history of sex abuse particularly as a child?
Was there a dropoff in sex after the marriage?
The “sex is not that important” meme sounds like she’s been reading a lot of Christian self help and marriage books/resources usually put out by evangelical protestant ministries which frequent and sponsor Christian radio and television programs. Does she consume a lot of materials from such print and electronic sources? Is she a regular churchgoer? What messages does she get about sex from the women she attends with?
The usual reasons for this kind of marital issue are:
1. Lack of attraction
2. Past sexual hang-ups related to premarital sexual conduct or abuse
3. Low libido. This is a medical problem which usually is a result of biochemical or hormonal imbalance
Without knowing more, I think you should try to rule out a medical problem. If there’s lack of attraction you need to get to the bottom of why that is; and you need to be prepared for everything you might find once you start investigating.
If there are past sexual hang ups related to her premarital sexual conduct, you might or might not get the full story from her. It’s well known that women aren’t always honest about their sexual pasts. Your wife might be; but then again she might not.
You will have to let her know directly that the lack of sex isn’t acceptable. You need to withdraw all emotional support right away. You need to force her into making a choice for your marriage or against it.
Rollo, you are projecting.
“You presume that Spreadsheet Guy took the time to log all of his approaches in order to provoke an emotional explosion from his wife, but this reasoning only shows you lack of understanding men’s deductive approach to problem solving.”
No, I do not presume any of the above, and if you read my comment without your projection goggles on, you’d notice that.
“When I’m dealing with clients at work I’ve learned to keep meticulous records of my dealings and emails. I do so not to piss them off or provoke an emotional response from them if something goes bad, but rather because it’s the most deductive way to account for what’s happened during the process of my dealings with them.”
That’s awesome. Your spouse, however, is not your client. The fact that you analogize between your dealings with clients and spousal interactions is, well, interesting.
That aside, do you send those records of your interactions, unbidden and especially the negative ones, to your clients without their request for such? My guess is no. And that is because you do understand that doing so would be seen as a rather bizarre and most likely provocative gesture.
“It would be great if I could rely on a mutual affinity and understanding, but that’s not how (most) men process things.”
Most men do understand that sending such a spreadsheet to their wives would be seen as some sort of provocation, just as it would be if they sent such to their clients.
This is Human Emotional Literacy 101.
@Deti writes
We are not saying that it should be this way. We are saying that we can see that it is this way.
Illusions are true when all popular content repeats them. It’s sad.
“Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
~Mark Twain
Boone,
Something you can try besides Christian Dread is learning to play a musical instrument. There’s a good reason “Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer” is a recurring Manosphere concept. A second idea is to get a motorcycle– I’ve heard several Manosphere guys say that’s a sexy thing to women. A third idea, since you’re in good physical form, is to compete physically. Karate competitions, amateur kickboxing. That’ll both demonstrate high value and draw her attention to your body. The inevitable bruises will actually help.
Pick something that’s fun for you, though. If you do it only for her then you’re still playing into her frame, and you won’t keep at it long enough to make a difference.
Thanks JPOutlook. I’ll reply inline below:
We are in agreement. The point of the example was to demonstrate that the problem with what we are calling “dread”, isn’t the discomfort or the worry that the wife experiences which is designed to lead her away from sin. The problem is whether the mechanism used is sinful (cheating, etc) and whether the frame is loving. This may seem obvious now, but I would argue that prior to my making this argument it hadn’t been made (at least in this portion of the blogosphere) and the feeling/discomfort was widely seen as the problem with what we are calling dread game. That it is obvious after the fact is a good sign though.
I’m not in agreement on the first part, but that isn’t material. We are in agreement on the fundamental point. The potential controversy here would come from an objection to the husband doing anything which he knew would or could cause the discomfort. As I mentioned above, that part was novel prior to my publishing the post.
I suspect you are only agreeing to the first part of 3, and not the part following “However”. The husband must not sin, but this doesn’t mean he has to make his wife comfortable in her own sin, and it also doesn’t mean he should try to convince her that her denying sex
createsdoesn’t create temptation for sexual sin. The example I gave in the OP was the woman writing the confession that she was quite comfortable denying sex until her husband mysteriously stopped asking. At that point she suddenly feared that some other woman would exploit (or at least attempt to exploit) the void she created by not honoring her wedding vows. In that case the husband wasn’t sinning by suddenly stopping begging for sex, nor for not working to reassure her that continuing in her sin would be “safe”. He can’t cheat or threaten to cheat, but permitting her to worry about her own sin isn’t a problem.I’m trying to be precise, especially because I thought we could be getting hung up on terms. There is a long backstory to this, where the one true meaning of “Game” has been argued continuously with no progress for at least two years. It isn’t just the definition of “Game”, but the definition of the words used to define Game. I have every confidence that one day we will move to the next level, and debate the definition of the words used to define the words used to define Game. It is above my ability to resolve that dispute, so I choose not to engage in it further. I realize now that you likely aren’t aware of this history. For the sake of this discussion, don’t think of it as “playing games”, but as describing a technique for management/leadership/applied psychology. I’m not claiming to have solved the controversy here, but simply explaining how I’m using the term.
The origin of the term comes from the description of a man’s skill with attracting, seducing, and leading women. The term and the base concepts come to this conversation by way of men who perfected this understanding outside of marriage (pickup artists, players, serial monogamists, etc). This causes understandable concern about adopting sin, and this is part of the controversy around the definition of the term. For more, see my posts on the topic of Game.
Although ignorance is not bliss, the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
Barb:
So what that Husband sent Wife a spreadsheet constituting documentation of her sexual denial.
The point is that she repeatedly denied him sexually. Instead of focusing on her bad conduct which started this entire kerfuffle, you’re preoccupied with blaming him for his communication style.
The blame is not on him for keeping records. The blame is on her for violating her vows and scriptural command.
She’s commanded to sex him up. Her refusal to do that is the problem here. His giving her a record of her denials is not.
On the broader (yes,broader: it’s the underlying reason for, the causative agent of, most of women’s rebelliousness,etc) issue of women losing interest in sex with long-term partners the current teaching of psychologists is “Oh well. If you want to, use your imagination, for example imagine you’re having more sex.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201406/love-lust
“Nine times out of 10, 19 times out of 20, [snuggling] is as good—or better [than sex]—for our relationship.”
3 times out of 27
I apologize for what is certainly an out of line comment here, among all you Christian dudes, but…
You fetishize her internal thoughts and feelings over the act itself. Why? Does your god tell you to do this? If so, where? From what I read in the text, she’s supposed to submit. If she’s willing to submit, what’s the problem?
When she asks you to swap out the old radiator in her car, and you do it, are you thrilled at the idea beforehand, and moan with pleasure with every turn of the socket while performing?
The point is that what needs doing gets done, I believe. We all do things when we’re not in the mood. Mowing the lawn, painting the garage, driving the kid brother to the airport. Why is this different?
Are you talking about divorcing this woman over her lack of eagerness? I’m assuming that’s what “blow the whole thing up” means. Are you sure there aren’t other issues that compound your frustration?
Deti, you react in a knee-jerk and irrational fashion (which suggests that this subject hits close to home — no surprise there).
I am not “preoccupied with blaming him for his communication style” (projection), just untangling the emotional underpinnings of this case to the extent it is possible, given the scarcity of details.
I am also not blaming him for keeping records (geez, those projections). I point out, however, that he did not handle this situation in a rational manner, contrary to what some here believe. He can keep records of anything that transpires between him and his wife forever, if that satisfies his cravings; what he does with those records is what makes a difference. And he either knows it or not; it is not clear either way from what’s reported about this case.
But it should also be noted that in all the documented history of joys and woes of marriage, score-keeping of any sort has never led to marital bliss. That also tends to be rather obvious to anyone with an ounce of emotional intelligence, male or female. Only autistics or vindictive individuals of both genders disregard this common truth.
I agree that withholding sex by a spouse is awful, more so if done deliberately (and we don’t know that either, do we). We do know, though, that this marriage is in serious trouble and probably beyond repair (although strange things happen).
I sometimes ask myself why I don’t feel guilty about cheating on Justin with my classmate, or why I don’t feel guilty for enjoying the sex so much.
If he was just her boyfriend and not in a life long commitment then from a Christian point of view Justine and her were just sex buddies. They weren’t married and so her promiscuous proclivities weren’t adultery but rather fornication with a different partner.
This is another reason why I believe that people shouldn’t have sex before marriage (life long commitment). All the trust issues and lack of commitment problems that come with it are problematic to say the least.
He was sleeping with her knowing she would sleep with someone who she wasn’t married to and then surprised she would do it with someone else.
She is by her own admission an unrepentant whore who feels no remorse for having violated what ever agreement she and her fornication partner had set up.
All of the above of course is based on the condition that their “partnership” was not a life long commitment.
Marriage to her would be foolish let alone having children with her, especially in this country.
My answer is always the same: because it was something that I needed to do for me.
What else is she capable of doing because of “it was something that I needed to do for me” ?
@ Barb:
Hi, Plain Jane.
[D: That might explain something I just saw. I’ll put her in moderation while I investigate.]
@Boxer
Looks spot on to me.
deti says:
“@ Barb:
Hi, Plain Jane.”
Huh? Who’s Plain Jane and how is she relevant to this situation?
Or is this just more irrationality from deti?
See, Barb/PJ, the problem here is that she won’t have sex with him.
But you’re perseverating on his giving her a spreadsheet. You just won’t give it up.
We say “She won’t have sex with him.” You keep coming back to “But but but the emotional retard of a husband made a record of it and GAVE IT TO HER!! The horror! The outrage! The abuse!”
That says everything I need to know.
I’ve instinctively did dread game at the beginning of my marriage when I was continually rejected in bed. It never worked. She flipped it around that ignoring her decreased her desire. Honestly, at the time, I figured she was right. I have since learned that she never knew what did or did not turn her on. I can say without a doubt if we were having wine or beer and put kids to bed and she smoked a cigarette, I was going to get a bj. You would think I would try to turn her into an addict.
Even up until a few weeks ago before getting my balls back I was convinced that if I “did” something good I would get rewarded, and thought the opposite was true too. I always cracked masculine jokes, that she thought were gross etc., and then I wouldn’t initiate sex because I figured I had ruined my chances for that night and possibly the next few nights. Since knowing the instinct game deep inside me and letting that out I have had more sex in the last couple of weeks than the first half of this year!!!
I absolutely HATE myself for not realizing my SMV when I was younger. My wife is 9 years older, and although I do love her and I am committed. She was hamstering at the wall when we got married. I was an Alpha that went Beta to AFC. For our entire marriage I was in christian hell for lack of sex because I felt like it was me.
I would get hit on by her married friends. It would drive her crazy, but it never got her to have sex with me.
So I am not convinced Radio Silence works. Gaming with all it’s aspects has done wonders!!!! Realizing your SMV and MMV is key!!!!
I am 42, triathlons, hunt, built my own cabin with a chainsaw and axe from logs on the property, do house fix up and I am a chiropractor. She is ex feminist past the wall, with a promicuis past. I am the beta she married after banging the Alphas. Problem was I was beta to her age and both our perceived SMV. She “knew” more and had “more life experience” so I deferred to her on many things. I was either a beta with alpha traits or alpha with beta traits, however I use to pick up girls younger and that is how she and I became friends… I was picking up on this girl maybe 2 years younger at a party and my wife to be dragged me away saying she was too young (my wife and I were in the same college course at that time).
I see the light, could careless now. When she whines I just hit the basement and build .45s or 9mm that i use in competition shooting. I have thousands of rounds made just from a few weeks…. LOL!
Radio Silence? No. All aspects of Game? Yes.
JDG says:
July 23, 2014 at 2:52 pm
“She is by her own admission an unrepentant whore who feels no remorse for having violated what ever agreement she and her fornication partner had set up.”
Pardon me, but whores are professionals. Ms Rogers is clearly an amateur. No need to insult whores by placing them in the same category.
@Dalrock writes:
don’t think of it as “playing games”, but as describing a technique for management/leadership/applied psychology
Yep.
I’ve never heard anyone demonize Anthony Robbins. I have an interview that he asked to do. It’s with Eben Pagan, the man known in other names that caused a long list of ‘game’ ‘gurus’ famous. He said he’s learned more about enhancing his businesses from Eben Pagan.
Why are those with
beliefs discussed here
not the angel investors
and owners of
what decides what content will be popular?
It’s because learning how to lead the world, as taught by those that do not lead the world, is considered taboo.
The language will not change unless the group chooses to create new life habits that include learning from the most powerful people on earth.
@ToGBFM Dalrock
This is a diverse group, and there is no orthodoxy required to read and participate. For my take on the question of if a man should marry, this post is probably the best fit to your question. But others here have your opinion. Either way I don’t sugar coat the data on what is happening. I don’t think we are having a marriage strike in the classic sense, I think it is something more ominous. I’ve shared data on declining marriage rates and remarriage rates and high divorce rates. I’ve also explained the way no fault divorce and the family courts and modern Christians deliberately destabilize marriages in order to put husbands at the whim of their wives.
Dalrock:
In the interest of full disclosure, my little j’accuse regarding Barb is just a suspicion. “Barb”‘s aggressively confrontational style, pedantry, and interest in going immediately personal while accusing others of projection are reminiscent of PJ around these parts.
@Dalrock Thanks for the reply! I have been in talks with a priest/mental health etc., but “use your discretion” is not a strategy I’ve ever been particularly comfortable with, hence the internet question with all attendant risks.. The link is quite useful. I tend to err in being overly submissive and obedient, line walking has never been my forte.
Deti, you are confusing me with someone else, apparently. Moreover, you continue to disregard what I’m saying in favor of your projections, which you indulge with relish. It is your problem, for which I have no solution or wish to seek one. I also have no time to repeatedly bounce my arguments off your projections, so this is the last time I will address them and then just leave you to revel in those projections as much as you desire:
1. Yes, THE problem, as far as we can tell, is that she kept refusing sex.
2. His documenting the problem on the spreadsheet is not the problem per se, especially if he is a Spreadsheet Aspie; but sending the spreadsheet to her while she was otherwise occupied is not a rational solution to THE problem.* In fact, this solution can have only one outcome and it is one that will not help his marriage, as most people with at least average EQ would understand. He either he did not understand it because he suffers from a deficit of emotional intelligence (AS, etc.), or he intended her to react the way she did, quite possibly hastening the demise of their marriage.
Hope this explains it. If not, you can keep your projections going, but I will opt out from this exchange with you.
*There are other ways: he could have presented the spreadsheet to her face-to-face, during a quiet evening at home, which would possibly opened up a conversation between them, etc. The solution he chose can be seen as rational only if his intent was to implode his marriage. And maybe it was, and what’s more, maybe this is what both of them desired.
She’s not shocked that he made a spreadsheet, so that’s a red herring. The specific means of communication — the words — are irrelevant, as usual. She’s shocked that he stood up for himself, even in a small, awkward way. She thought he was under control, so why now, why this particular time, has he suddenly rebelled against her authority?
But she’s freaking out over a couple other things too. One is that he surprised her, that he managed to hide this idea and his anger from her (probably helped by her ignoring his signals) for so long. After all, we all know women are so sensitive that a brutish man couldn’t hide something like this from one for months, right? So that alone is embarrassing for her.
Another thing is that she thought she was going off for a fun 10-day trip with his balls in her purse, safely tucked away where she’s had them for years, where she doesn’t have to worry about them. And suddenly she discovers that he sneaked them out before she left, and he’s using them — maybe in more ways than one! Now she can’t enjoy her trip at all! Again, it’s the loss of control that’s freaking her out so badly that she’s made a spectacle of herself, not his choice of recording techniques.
@Cail, a most excellent analysis.
Cail:
I’d say that’s pretty spot on.
Wife’s shock at receiving documentation of her sexual sins against Husband along with a statement of “I won’t miss you while you’re gone” also explains her gross overreactions. She posts the spreadsheet on Reddit and engages in conversations (ostensibly to “get some help”).
In reality, she’s surprised he stood up for himself and she knows she’s got a few problems on the home front to deal with. Gotta rally the troops to her defense and circle the wagons with “you go grrrrl” and “you don’t owe him jack” and “he’s an emotional retard” and “woman good, man bad”.
Uh, you do realize it was this guy’s wife who posted his spreadsheet online right?
So, what do you propose would be a better solution to his sexless condition? Do you think that if he’d printed out his sheet and sat down with her at the kitchen table and cooly discussed his list and her reasons for evading sex item by item that her behavior would change?
Would she rationally consider his log-verified analysis and offer him counter terms to his demands that she get turned on for him 4 times more per month in order to effect a more mutually amicable sexual arrangement?
@Deti
Semantic analysis suggests that “Plain Jane” and “Barb” are the same person (they have very similar results for gender and feminism). That said, for MBTI “Plain Jane” gets “ISFJ,” while “Barb” gets “INTJ.” It should be noted that medication can alter the results of MBTI.
http://feministing.com/2014/07/23/chart-of-the-day-when-does-a-woman-owe-you-sex/
Oscar – My bad. I stand corrected and here by apologize to all whores for my inconsiderate comparison. I should have used the term slut. I will be more careful in the future.
jbro:
Susan Walsh, the head HUSsy, has weighed in too. In the comments she depicts that diagram with approval.
her take on this is predictable:
1. Husband is an emotional retard.
2. Wife is a spoiled brat and treating husband terribly.
3. Men, including husbands, are never at any time entitled to sex. (Interestingly, the concomitant positiion of “women, including wives, are never at any time entitled to commitment” is not stated.)
In other words, part of the woman’s curse is that she will desire to have headship over her husband, but headship rightfully belongs to him.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
Yep!
$usan Wal$h’s misandry has been obvious to me for a long time, deti. So no surprises there.
Cail’s analysis is spot on – it is all about the control, and sudden loss thereof.
Not going to go too far afield on this, but:
Society has said that a man is not entiled to anything from marriage — not to sex during marriage, not to his wife’s fidelity during marriage, not to an expectation that the marriage will continue until one of them dies.
Then we must also say that a woman isn’t enttiled to anything either.
A wife is not entitled to financial support during the marriage, not to her husband’s fidelity during marriage, nor to an expectation of support after the end of the marriage.
Slightly off-topic, but… cheating, pregnant ‘ho (possibly to have won the Darwin Award for it) exemplifies why marriage today sucks for guys:
https://gma.yahoo.com/missing-marine-wife-may-having-affair-neighbor-160629385–abc-news-topstories.html
deti says:
July 23, 2014 at 4:45 pm
Secular society and the overwhelming majority of putatively religious society is perfectly happy with an arrangement whereby a man derives no meaningful net benefit from marriage.
Pingback: PTSD Flashback Sex | Cail Corishev
TFH:
Agreed. My comment was simply to point out that marriage requires incentives for the man, otherwise he simply won’t do it. This is changing slowly though. Most women still get to ride the carousel and still get to parachute into a marriage; it’s just that marriage age is being pushed out later. Most men are not at all aware of what the SMP truly looks like.
The only thing I really see changing is the remarriage rate, which at least among men, is cratering. You can reasonably conclude this because a divorced man getting burned in a marriage which ended in divorce, vows not to repeat the same error. But that’s not the case with my relatives in the midwest — My mother’s brother is on his third marriage. His son is twice divorced. I have a Christian male friend on his third marriage. Many of my male coworkers are on their second marriages. I am in a minority, being still in my first and only marriage.
Seriously, for both ChartMan and Boone, and all you other guys out there not getting enough, one word – Alcohol!
Exactly. While a spreadsheet might not have been the most alpha response possible, sending it to her at the beginning of her trip was brilliant, and gives me hope for the guy. If he’d confronted her with it in person, she would have turned it into a big emotional confrontation, where women usually have the upper hand. She would have immediately focused on the extremes (“What, you want to fuck me when I’m about to throw up?”) and nit-picked the details (“I don’t remember you asking that night. You must not have been clear.”). As a last resort, she might have broken out the tears over his callousness. Odds are she could have had him apologizing by the end of the conversation. The 10-day waiting period prevents much of that and puts him in a much better position as long as he stands his ground.
In Susan Walsh’s defense, I think she has been fairly open in dropping her previous focus on marriage. I don’t think she still bills the site as being all about using hookups as a path to “relationships” and then ultimately marriage. Her About page doesn’t say anything about marriage or even (serial) monogamy anymore. Her Mission Statement is:
In retrospect I think her rupture with the manosphere, at least the marriage minded portion of the manosphere, was inevitable. She was clearly moving in another direction, although I don’t think even she really realized it at the time. I assume now she has “found herself” as a cool mom relationship blogger, and thus it is no longer how to hook (up) your way to marriage, but instead Could Casual Sex Be Right for You? where after some charts, graphs, and bullet points she concludes with:
From that point of view, the idea of obligations in marriage is downright absurd. If it feels good, do it. Morality means be true to yourself.
@boone
“At this point, I’ve been doing the whole roommate approach, but I’d really like to just blow the whole thing up. I know she won’t leave and what have I got to lose when I’m not getting it anyway?”
What you have to lose is your children, since she is a SAHM, and a ton of your income, both as pure alimony/spousal support and also as de facto spousal support disguised as child support.
Then we must also say that a woman isn’t enttiled to anything either.
Maybe “entitled” is the wrong word, but scripture makes it plain and clear what is expected from each spouse. If these feminist harpies don’t want to abide by what the creator of all things has designed for marriage and hold up their end of the bargain, then they obviously should not expect to reap the benefits from the input of their spouses.
You will find an exceptionally small number of women who think your above paragraph is fair. Also, a large portion of conservative men will also be unable to say your paragraph is fair.
I’ll wager finding a large portion of men who agree with deti’s statement will be hard to find regardless of their political/social leanings.
Rollo Tomassi says:
“Uh, you do realize it was this guy’s wife who posted his spreadsheet online right?”
Yes. It is about him sending it to her in the first place, when she was doing something else. It’s kinda like a wife sending a hubby a message during his business meeting that she’s divorcing him.
“So, what do you propose would be a better solution to his sexless condition? Do you think that if he’d printed out his sheet and sat down with her at the kitchen table and cooly discussed his list and her reasons for evading sex item by item that her behavior would change?”
The solution to his sexless condition and what to do with the spreadsheet are two different matters. Sharing the spreadsheet with her is a semi-nuclear option with a real potential to destroy their marriage (which I suspect he wanted to do).
There is a small possibility that spreadsheeting could help — if, for instance, she knows that he is The Spreadsheet Aspie, and she is an Aspie herself, and if the timing were right. It wasn’t. He likely knew it and counted on her blowing up (that’s probably why he avoided confronting her face-to-face).
“Would she rationally consider his log-verified analysis and offer him counter terms to his demands that she get turned on for him 4 times more per month in order to effect a more mutually amicable sexual arrangement?”
If she were a fellow Aspie, there is a possibility of that happening.
I realize you are being sarcastic, however, so let me ask you: why do you think he sent this spreadsheet to her? Your tone indicates that you believe the possibility of her responding to it with a more mutually amicable sexual arrangement is nil. What then would be the real purpose of such a move, in your opinion?
As to the solution to his sexless condition, if they explore the *real* reasons for their lack of sex and nothing changes (and chances are both of them would have to change some things about themselves in order to repair their marriage), divorce may be an option, even though the religious folk here disapprove.
In Susan Walsh’s defense, I think she has been fairly open in dropping her previous focus on marriage.
That’s likely because she discovered there was a lot more money to be made in blogging as “mom who’s cool with hookups” than there was in having anything to do with marriage, or actually trying to learn from men. Helping men? Supporting the civilization that makes her life possible? Basic human decency? Forget all that stuff. Follow the money. Follow the money, and there you find her.
That is why I have begun referring to her as $usan Wal$h, in order to clarify the situation in a very understandable and terse form.
Somewhat on-topic, after settling into the wasteland of long-post-menopausal coital non-bliss, I tracked the times of having sex (instead of the times of refusals). Although the times looked quite random and tended to average only two-three times per month, eventually I collected enough stats to determine my wife was still monthly periodic in desire: the *lone* Fourier peak was still monthly (e.g. 28 days).
1. From that point of view, the idea of obligations in marriage is downright absurd. If it feels good, do it. Morality means be true to yourself.
You could be correct, Dalrock. If Susan is a marriage advocate, then it certainly isn’t marriage as I understand it to be. In my view, marriage creates a system of rights, duties and obligations for the benefit of both.
In the thread I referenced, Susan gives a clue on her view of marriage:
“In a loving relationship, there should be no sense of “owed.” Mostly you want to have sex, and sometimes you don’t but you have sex anyway. Occasionally, neither party wants sex so it’s all good.”
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2014/07/23/relationshipstrategies/the-sexual-dissatisfaction-spreadsheet/#comment-1500511969
Marriage is just a “loving relationship”. There is no “owed” when it comes to sex. There is no discussion of commitment. One wonders if Susan might hold the same view with regard to a husband’s financially supporting the family or being committed to her in any way. Would Susan say a man does not owe a wife financial support? He does not owe her sexual fidelity?
If a woman has no obligations in marriage, then how can it be said that a man has any obligations in marriage?
If it feels good, do it.
Wasn’t that the marching orders for the flower power people of the 60s? What a wonderful legacy that has left us. The age of Aquarius, Alice, and Acid all wrapped up in a neat little package.
It’s the new morality and all the rave. From “power to the people” to “men are pigs” in just a decade or two. We’ve come a long way baby. Schools out and all that jazz.
In retrospect I think her rupture with the manosphere, at least the marriage minded portion of the manosphere, was inevitable. She was clearly moving in another direction, although I don’t think even she really realized it at the time.
She was moving in that direction a few years ago, really. I suspect that ultimately she sees it as being pragmatic — she has never been a critic of the move away from traditionalism in issues relating to marriage and fairly hostile towards any move back towards that. The basis of her criticism was the perceived harm of the hookup culture on the relationship future of people the age of her kids, and I suspect she has become convinced that it isn’t necessarily that harmful to her core audience of young, high education upper middle class women — most of whom get married anyway, to slightly older, similarly high education upper middle class men. She’s just trying to try to make sure they get there with fewer pitfalls, and in a way that “makes sense to them”. In essence, she’s become a massive enabler of the entire life script of young upper middle class women, and wants to make that script work better for them.
If a woman has no obligations in marriage, then how can it be said that a man has any obligations in marriage?
Because they’re wymin dang it!!!
TFH
Is she actually making significant money? How so, and from what source?
No idea, but she reworked her entire site, throwing out a lot of old posts/comments, after getting interviewed in print and video. HU$ apparently obtains some cash flow from advertising, and I’m surprised there isn’t a book of some sort, maybe she doesn’t get along well with ghostwiters.
Since I have not read her site since the great purge of thinking men, I dunno what it looks like in detail, but I’m told she’s reverted to the “Online Cool Cosmo Mom” look that was an earlier style.
Since $usan Wal$h is totally wrapped up in the Female Imperative, there’s no need for me to pay any more attention to her than to any other aging, 2nd stage feminist, truly.
Dalrock:
I think you’re correct that Susan has distanced herself from promoting marriage. Here she is from the post you cited:
“I have always opposed sex-positive feminism (3rd wave) while supporting gender equity feminism (2nd wave). I have never promoted early marriage, chastity before marriage, or any other traditional values.
“I promote committed relationships while recognizing that people get them in a variety of ways.”
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2014/06/26/hookinguprealities/is-casual-sex-right-for-you/#comment-1472363200
Susan is very careful here not to say anything about promoting marriage. She now only promotes “committed relationships” (whatever that means). So yeah, she’s found her voice as a cool mom relationship blogger, who’s monetized HUS through BlogHer, and who wants “committed relationships” for her focus groupers and commenters.
From that point of view, the idea of obligations in marriage is downright absurd. If it feels good, do it. Morality means be true to yourself.
By implication, yes, but there of course she’s discussing hooking up, proper, not marriage. She’s had this view for several years about dividing people into buckets of “best behavior for them” based on their sociosexuality level (i.e., naturally more restricted or less restricted). Basically the idea is that promiscuity is more harmful for people who have low sociosexuality, and are more restricted, than those who are high sociosexuality, and less restricted in that the latter are “built for it”. The idea is that those who are not built for promiscuity or even occasional casual hookups should avoid them, while taking less of an issue (it appears perhaps even no issue at this point) for people who have high sociosexuality, who presumably can engage in these behaviors with few or perhaps no adverse impacts.
As you can see, the focus is really never on what is best for the social order, really, but what is good or harmful for the individual. This was always the basis for her issues with hooking up, really. She was concerned that for many people it could be interfering with the eventual goal of marriage.
I haven’t read over there in a long time — I lost interest when her focus shifted really. I don’t know if she’s become more indifferent about marriage, or if she has just written off high sociosexuality people from that point of view. I do know that she has never been an advocate for traditional sexual morality outside of marriage (i.e., abstinence), but rather a supporter of serial monogamy — so not very traditional and more contemporary UMC in terms of sexual mores.
Novaseeker
The basis of her criticism was the perceived harm of the hookup culture on the relationship future of people the age of her kids, and I suspect she has become convinced that it isn’t necessarily that harmful to her core audience of young, high education upper middle class women — most of whom get married anyway, to slightly older, similarly high education upper middle class men. She’s just trying to try to make sure they get there with fewer pitfalls, and in a way that “makes sense to them”.
In other words, to enable riders of the cock carousel to still step off when they are ready and have a Better Built Beta waiting for them. Just as I said how many years ago?
In essence, she’s become a massive enabler of the entire life script of young upper middle class women, and wants to make that script work better for them.
Or, as I said more bluntly, $usan Wal$h runs a finishing school for sluts. Hooking Up $mart is intended to teach them how to pretend to be worthwhile women long enough to get a ring on their finger. After that, it’s all gravy – all the way to the cash and prizes, should they so desire.
And now I’m done talking about people. I’d rather contemplate ideas.
“In a loving relationship, there should be no sense of ‘owed,’ unless it is the wife making a demand of the husband, in which case it is his moral and legal obligation to see to it that she gets it immediately.”
You left sumpin out there, $uzy. FIFY
@ Nova:
“I suspect she has become convinced that it isn’t necessarily that harmful to her core audience of young, high education upper middle class women — most of whom get “committed relationships” anyway, to slightly older, similarly high education upper middle class men, which relationships are alterable and terminable at will.
FIFY.
Yes, Susan is convinced that the hookup culture isn’t harmful to her niche audience; because she’s convinced that most of them aren’t involved in the hookup scene of promiscuous carousel riding. She’s convinced that a “serious relationship” or three with a few flings and ONSs before marriage at 28 or so is just how it is now, which means it is OK.
By the way, my tip of the hat to those of you at HUS. I am sure you’ll eventually be along to read these comments.
Amend my last to read “woman” and “man” in place of “husband” and “wife,” since $uzy is apparently not keen on pushing marriage anymore.
@ Boone
“So what’s the answer guys?
… I realize I have lived in her frame. That is, sex is not that important. So I put up with it and intermittently begged and whined. Trying to change now…but struggling to do so without the leverage of real dread.
… At this point, I’ve been doing the whole roommate approach, but I’d really like to just blow the whole thing up.”
I don’t have the answer, but I have some decent answers. A fear I used to have was if my wife divorced/left me I couldn’t get remarried and would have to remain celibate. After much bible searching, I found no evidence that having a second wife was sinful. Maybe not ideal and difficult to make work, but not sinful. So if she were to leave, I could marry again. I would then have a wife in good standing and a wife in rebellion. If she were to have sex with someone after leaving me, then the bible strongly indicates I could divorce her (a real one).
1. Work on your internal frame by reading and internalizing what the Bible says about some of these things. Particularly Genesis 2:18 & 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 (woman was created for man and to be HIS helpmeet, not the other way around); Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 6:16, John 17:3, Genesis 4:25, Ephesians 5:30-32 (sex was one of the main parts of marriage from the beginning and even eternal life and the Christ/Church relationship are likened to it), 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 (desiring sex with your wife is a perfectly biblical reason to get married); 1 Corinthians 7:2-5 (she owes you sex, she is sinning to refuse you, you own her body sexually speaking, she increases temptation for you to sin by refusing sex) and Proverbs 5:19 (it’s basically a command to have her breasts satisfy you, also scientific studies indicate breast massage/loving prevents breast cancer).
2. Start doing things you want to her sexually. Grab/enjoy her breasts (adjust force as necessary to accomodate mood/tenderness). Grab/spank her butt. Grab her and kiss her good for more than a few seconds when you feel like it. Pick her up when you feel like. Walk up behind her and put your arms around her and kiss her neck while copping a feel. Rub her thigh and even her pussy while in bed when you feel like it. Caress her face/neck/whatever when you feel like it. Honk her boob when you feel a little playful/mischievous. Be bold and fearless. Look her in the eyes and don’t look away. You are trying to love her sexually and are in the right. She is in the wrong when she pushes you away or treats sexuality as unimportant. Start small if you need to, maybe just grabbing her close to you and give a quick kiss. Increase from there.
3. Reframe any objections you get from her. “Just trying to be satisfied by your breasts at all times.” “Just trying to keep your breasts healthy” “Sex is important and I won’t apologize for it.” “God created sex and made it important. Take it up with Him.” “I don’t just love you sweetly and affectionately. I love you hard. Good and hard.” “You’re just a party pooper.” These aren’t polished lines obviously, just rough potential examples. I’m sure there are much better ones that are more alpha and framed better. Try to come up with some good ones that make her laugh or shock her in a good way. But some type of reframe is better than none. Try to keep it light and playful, at least not bitter/angry. With her sexual mistreatment of you, the key is staying in control and not blowing up. It’s hard not to blow up sometimes.
4. Read Cane Caldo’s article http://canecaldo.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/tacomaster-desires-steadfast-love/ .
@Anon Reader
That was yours? I was thinking it was “Finishing school for hos”, but after searching I see that “hos” was her misquoting you. Funny, I had forgotten that you had made the infamous comment right here at Dalrock. I’m pretty sure out of you, me, and Rollo, you were her favorite. Good times.
As for whether she is making money, I presume so. She has the coveted
bluered ribbon of blogging success on her About page.You can’t make this stuff up.
@jsr,
“Work on your internal frame by reading and internalizing what the Bible says about some of these things. Particularly Genesis 2:18 & 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 (woman was created for man and to be HIS helpmeet, not the other way around); ”
Good comment, good advice.
“
“STDcheck.com”– Fast, Private and Affordable STD testing.”
With the red ribbon. Red certainly indicating engorgement or irritation. If ever there were a dubious honor, it would be the red ribbon of the top 100 “Sex, Lust and Love blogs.
Congratulations, $u$an.
She’s convinced that a “serious relationship” or three with a few flings and ONSs before marriage at 28 or so is just how it is now, which means it is OK.
Well, this is her story. She did some hookups (she even recognized a pity f*ck), some serial relationships and she ended up with an alpha who made her tingle (she said “After sex, I spent all the night with my stomach making flip-flops and I said to me: That’s it. I’m keeping this guy”) .
So yes, it was always about “how to hook up and end up with the alpha and the white picket fence, that is, how to be as smart as me”.
When she was more amenable to the manosphere, I wrote that she was delusional because the culture has moved on and this thing was not possible anymore. But now I have changed my mind and, thanks to the Dalrock’s stats, I am sure that most young women today will still have their cake and eat it too. It turned out that the delusional person was me.
(The ribbon of STDcheck.com made me laugh for five minutes.)
@Boone
First I join with Boxer, who despite being a rake, gives good advice. I highly hope that he reforms er long.
That being said:
At this point, I’ve been doing the whole roommate approach, but I’d really like to just blow the whole thing up. I know she won’t leave and what have I got to lose when I’m not getting it anyway?
Sounds like a troll. She’s awesome and the mother of my children but no sex and I pussied out so can I dump her? Grow a pair. You make a mockery of men here who have to deal with real shrews. Asking for advice on dumping her after you admit your own failure on a pro-marriage forum is a kind of madness.
But let me answer: you risk losing your soul.
If you are serious and just desperate then do read Cane’s post. But I have the sneaking suspicion you are either a woman or a white knight troll.
But now I have changed my mind and, thanks to the Dalrock’s stats, I am sure that most young women today will still have their cake and eat it too.
Now a question comes to mind.
Is this a consequence of “blue pill” thinking or just a result of men wanting exclusive access to sex more than having a virtuous woman?
Jsa – Great comment, thanks so much. I definitely needed to read the Tacomaster link.
Deti – Here are the answers to the questions:
I’m 38, W 35. 3 Kids. We met in college, stayed together and waited til we married to have sex. No other prior partners. I used to think our sex life was great, but now I realize I have pretty much getting it only when and how she wants it. No history of abuse, medical issues or anything weird. She is very conservative in her beliefs and takes her faith very seriously. She’s extremely submissive to me, and constantly reminds our kids I am the leader of the home. She really follows that, with the exception of our sex life. She has some friends who have told her that they never deny their husband. She tried that once or twice, and claims it doesn’t “feel” right. I can assure you it was pure duty sex and there was no attempt on her part to actually participate. I told her I’d rather just go to sleep than do that again.
One issue I’m realizing is that I have been totally friend-zoned. Yes, we have been “best friends.” Hang out, travel, enjoy things together, talk, etc…I’ve been so beta-ized I get why the attraction level is low. In fact, she’s actually been saying to me, “I miss my best friend.” I told her, “I’m your husband, not your friend.”
Just to clarify, when I said “blow it up” I did not mean leave. I meant lay down the gauntlet…i.e, if you want a real marriage and want to be treated like a wife, then you need to start acting like one.
Thanks for all the great comments. Dalrock, I really enjoy your blog.
JDG:
It’s a result of men wanting to have sex.
Most men do not have easy access to sex, not even to one woman. For women, sex is a choice. For men, sex is an achievement. For the average man, getting even a common slut to open her legs for him is like building the Great Pyramids at Giza.
Most men are thirsty as hell and they will take whatever the hell they can get. That’s why most women will get to ride the carousel and be as promiscuous as they want, and still parachute into a marriage.
Men are having problems getting their wives to put out. And these are the women who promised to love, honor and cherish these men.
I remain convinced: Most women are marrying men they aren’t attracted to; because most of those women have already had sex with the men they are or were attracted to.
From the horses mouth – “This is another area where my views have evolved based on emerging research. When I started HUS, there was a perception, not just here but also among researchers – that hookup culture was destroying relationships, that guys don’t want relationships, and that promiscuous women are taking all the best guys for themselves by offering casual sex.
About fifty studies later, it’s clear that is not the way things work.
Sociosexuality is a key determinant of behavior. Though as you saw in the post, 23% of people below the SOI median had casual sex.
What I think is most important is that people live their lives in an authentic way. ”
and
“Since you’ve been reading here a while, you’ll know that I’m very oriented towards relationships. But I respect your right to make your own choices – no judgment.
I appreciate your cordial tone – I’m always happy to welcome civilized people who have another viewpoint.”
and so the worm turns. Susan is being led by “research”. Which if you have the stomach for it, later in the comments a poster explains that this latest study is not very well put together, which of course just gets sloughed off.
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2014/06/26/hookinguprealities/is-casual-sex-right-for-you/
I get the basis of the study that Suze is using. I would probably fall into that unrestricted sociowhatevah. But as that old saying goes, “when I was a child I spake like a child, etc.”
I got married and put away my inborn desire for sex with no strings, and devoted my energy to my wife and family.
One more time – “If at seventy, you are still thinking and acting as you did at seventeen, you have wasted your life” – Mohammed Ali
Not many people appear to want to grow up anymore.
The “red ribbon”? Seriously?
I pity the modern satirist. Come up with an idea, and find out that reality has already gone there.
Boone, as the old saying goes, fake it til you make it. Follow the advice of being more sexually playful with the wife. My favourite, that I think I got from Athol, is a GOOD smack on the butt, then leaning in and whispering in her ear, ” did that hurt? Let me rub that for you” Just don’t do it everyday, or every week. LOL!
As for duty sex – YES! If your wife is willing to give you duty sex, accept her gift. Always! As was said I think upthread, this can actually lead to true passion.
And if nothing else works – Alcohol!
TFH – “A lot of modern-day female behavior might be what nature *wants* women to do, which is to eradicate the manginas that were unnaturally produced via too many centuries of Marriage 1.0.
If we object to socialism as a subsidy for lazy people, we can similarly object to Marriage 1.0 as a subsidy for manginas and whiteknights. Sad but true.”
WOW dude! Utterly brilliant hypothesis!
STDCheck $u$an knows that the hookup culture isn’t harming her focus groupers because the statistics show they will still get married.
Or “committed relationships”.
Or “meaningful relationships”.
Or something.
@deti
“I remain convinced: Most women are marrying men they aren’t attracted to; because most of those women have already had sex with the men they are or were attracted to.”
Sort of like this woman on that mom’s site linked above. Who would want to be married to that woman?
“I have had sex with Ryan Gosling several years ago while he was filming a well known movie I am a regular person and it was ever bit as good as one would imagine I am still thinking about it…
Like (404) Hug (15) Me Too! (22)- ”
http://www.scarymommy.com/confessions/347362/
If we object to socialism as a subsidy for lazy people, we can similarly object to Marriage 1.0 as a subsidy for manginas and whiteknights. Sad but true.
I don’t see the connection. Please explain.
I don’t see the connection. Please explain.
The concept is that marriage 1.0, with its presumption of “someone for everyone, and for life”, was sexual socialism viewed from the perspective that a good percentage of men have no business mating at all, and this system subsidized their mating opportunity in a way that distorted the market as compared to a free one, and therefore resulted in hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dysgenic offspring who never should have been born if the system permitted alpha men to be the exclusive sires of all women.
Marriage 1.0 only exist do to lack of laws of misandry. Wives are not sexually interested in their husbands because they don’t have to be. Especially if they have hostages. just the nature of women. She is a helper. Get a surrogate, a nanny and a whore. Seeing this agonizing over these worthless cunts we are married to is embarrassing. You want to fuck your wife run some game or get a girl friend on the side. By law you will not enjoy being married in the west. It is by law. Women wouldn’t have it any other way they voted for it. get used to it as the reality.
Boxer says: “The point is that what needs doing gets done”.
– That is the most succinct statement in this thread.
Barb says: “I am not “preoccupied with blaming him for his communication style” (projection), just untangling the emotional underpinnings of this case.”
– That IS projection. There are no emotional underpinnings. There is his need to ejaculate inside her; it’s that damn simple for him, and it’s that damn simple for her. There is no biblical obligation for anyone to be emotionally engaged in that act.
Rollo says: “In a Christian context, Christian men are expected to make the same appeals to a woman’s reason by highlighting scripture that makes the same case for them.”
– While Rollo has a better handle on the biblical perspective than many Christians, I would only say that to “dwell with your wife in understanding” does not mean ruling her by reason. “Understanding” means, in an appropriate way considering she is “the weaker vessel” (i.e., less capable of self-restraint or of self-control by way of reason) and as a “co-heir of the grace of life” (i.e., equally sinful though in her own way). I may dwell with a child in understanding, precisely by refusing to reason with him but by commanding or threatening him instead. A wife requires an analogous, even if not equivalent, approach.
@Boone,
“She’s extremely submissive to me, and constantly reminds our kids I am the leader of the home.”
She is submissive, but do you dominate her? Do you ever tell her what to do instead of asking politely? Do you ever tell her to run an errand for you? Do you ever take one of her dresses or skirts out of the closet and tell her she needs to be wearing that when you get home tonight?
Duty sex is a good start if you do it at the same time you share short Bible studies about the importance of sex in marriage (Proverbs 5, Song of Solomon, 1 Cor. 7, etc.) 5 or 10 minutes per study is all you need.
@ToGBFM Dalrock
“I’ve read a few posts and followed the comments section and there seems to be a difference of opinion between GBFM and Dalrock. If you Dalrock and GBFM could weigh in on your opinion of marriage in the United States, that would be awesome. I believe that getting married in the United States is NOT a biblical pursuit. In fact, I believe that people who do get married and FUND the current secular regime are making matters worse. If all men refused to sign the dotted line I believe the system could change for the better. Does anyone agree with these positions or am I at the wrong blog?”
lozozozozozolol
I think that Dalrock’s foundational flaw is that he oft states that successful marriages are a matter of “Christian men learning Game,” rather than Christian women learning Christianity. Rather then women serving God, Dalrock wants men to kneel before butt and gina tinzgzlzlzozooz.
This view is compounded by his loyal flock of frankfartian fanboyz who regularly (and falsely) chime in that 1) Jesus came to abolish the Law of Moses and Genesis, 2) that the words of Jesus are “Noise,” 3) that Freud and Marcuse are the True Fathers of Christ and the Great Books, 4) that the Great Books for Men are worthless Pagans, 5) that Rollo is Greater than Homer, 6) and the Christianity is really all about a “good rogering.” Dalrock oft seems to favor the words of Atheists such as Boxer over the Great Books for Men, Homer, and what Jesus actually said.
As an economist, Dalrock could improve upon all this by studying scholars and economists like Stephen Baskerville and Stephan Molyneux:
Dalrock could acknowledge that marriage is over in the United States and the West, and then perhaps his frankfartian fanboyz could pipe down, and we could fix it by reinstiling the Honor of Homer and Christ in the Vow.
(Cue Boxer et al. denying Christ and Homer and exalting the butt and gina tingzzlzlzo over da GBFM)
lzozozozolzollozolzoz
Boone:
You have it a lot better than most of these guys here. I’d say it’s time to take “yes” for an answer.
Others have mentioned Athol Kay. If you’re not reading him yet, you will likely find it helpful.
Boxer
The concept is that marriage 1.0, with its presumption of “someone for everyone, and for life”
Thank you Novaseeker.
I never understood marriage 1.0 to be under any such presumption. My under standing was that it was marriage with biblical principles where both parties upheld their obligations.
Question to anyone: Am I to understand then that marriage 1.0 and the Bible based model for marriage (where both parties are held accountable) are not the same thing?
I never understood marriage 1.0 to be under any such presumption. My under standing was that it was marriage with biblical principles where both parties upheld their obligations.
Question to anyone: Am I to understand then that marriage 1.0 and the Bible based model for marriage (where both parties are held accountable) are not the same thing?
It’s what is implied by the system of Marriage 1.0.
Marriage 1.0 is generally “the system of marriage that existed, legally, before no fault divorce”. That is what changed marriage, for Christians and non-Christians alike. Historically Christianity supported Marriage 1.0, and it was more closely aligned (albeit often not perfectly so) with Christian morals about marriage. Marriage 2.0 was a break with that, and hence something moving away from traditional Christian concepts of marriage, with which Marriage 1.0 was more closely aligned.
Under Marriage 1.0, most people were expected to marry, and everyone was expected to stay married (divorce was very exceptional). In a system where everyone who is married has to stay married for life (which is also Christian marriage in general), then there is numerically more or less someone for everyone, because there is very little serial polygamy (which, by contrast, is rampant in Marriage 2.0). Everyone marries rather assortatively in Marriage 1.0, and then they are more or less stuck with their spouses. This is contrasted with the current system where, even if you marry assortatively, you can leave marriage easily and remate, thereby taking up “mating spots” for others who may have no mate at all, forever. In that sense, “hard monogamy marriage” can be seen as a subsidy for people who, if there were not hard enforced monogamy (as is today) would be incel. The materialist/evolutionary perspective (which I don’t agree with in this case for moral reasons) sees that as being preferable to a situation where incels are permitted to breed because everyone else is locked into their marriages and can’t get out of them to swoop up the people who would otherwise be forced to marry people who would, in a “free system”, be incels.
There are numerous problems with this. I will probably write some critical thoughts about the concept on my own blog, if I have the time, sometime in the next week. But the core of the concept is that Marriage 1.0 subsidized the ability of people who never should have breeded (from a materialist/evolutionary perspective) to be able to breed, precisely because it held people to their vows in a more strict way, which meant that there were more mating opportunities for materialistically dysgenic people (men, for the most part) to mate.
Many months ago, I started seeing a cute little African chickie. In the course of our various shenanigans, I got the details on what marriage was like back home. Bear in mind that home was an extremely backwater place, where people danced around half naked and cast spells on each other and shit like that. By our standards we’d call it “primitive”; or maybe “developing”, if we were being polite. Neither Christian nor Muslim, these people were “tribal”.
Anyway, I came around to the subject of divorce. Does it ever happen, etc. She laughs and says “not like here”. I pressed her until she elaborated a bit. Young couples almost never split up, but once in a generation there is a family row. At first, the villagers politely shun the people involved. If this doesn’t work after a few days, and the couple insists on separating, then everyone in town takes a turn kicking their asses (and I mean literally) until they shut their mouths, move back into the family home, and start behaving decently.
Apparently this very rarely happens, as the spectacle of all the neighbors intervening into the business of a married couple leaves a powerful impression on the youngsters. There are clear lines that people don’t cross over there. The shit that happens here with babymamas and thugs and playas cruising for hoes… they wouldn’t put up with that for any length of time.
If someone really behaves badly (beating his wife badly, or fucking the neighbor, or what not) then that person is driven out of town. Even in cases where the one spouse is blameless, though, it’s a mark on him/her and the whole family is shamed to the point that they never really get over it.
So, yeah. It’s not just Christianity/Judaism/Islam. This is the cornerstone of a civilized life, everywhere that there is civilization to speak of (even in those dreadfully poor places, where civilization is threadbare).
re: biological realities promoting sexual morality. It’s a big theme currentlt highly active in evo-psych studies, e.g.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-014-0320-4
Yes, because almost identical formulae for Marriage 1.0 emerged in non-Christian countries too (India, China, etc.).
I thought marriage 1.0 and marriage 2.0 were definitions of marriage as understood in the US before and after feminism. Much of US culture was Christian based as was marriage in the US, hence the biblical reference.
So was marriage 1.0 in non-Christian countries based on the presumption of “someone for everyone, and for life”?
Was marriage 1.0 in non-Christian countries viewed from the perspective that a good percentage of men have no business mating at all?
I ask because these concepts are not biblical (unless you count eunuchs), and I don’t believe that these concepts were common in the US before feminism.
Novaseeker says:
July 23, 2014 at 10:52 pm
Thank you again. I was typing and did not see this until I posted.
I guess you answered what I was really trying to get at.
My take is that people who see marriage 1.0 as a subsidy for people who would otherwise be incel is looking at marriage the wrong way.
Thank you for clearing that up.
If you can stomach it, here is a radio host interviewing some psychology professor about the spreadsheet. Her blind faith that any failings by a woman simply MUST be the fault of a man is either horrifying or hilarious…
[audio src="http://store.corusradio.com/audio-vault/chqram/2014.07.23-10.00.00.mp3" /]
(Interview starts at the 7 minute mark)
That existed in the US at one time, and still exists in some parts of the world
Yes this I know. It existed to some degree when I was a child and it still exists in my wife’s home country.
I was trying to understand how someone could equate marriage 1.0 with socialism. That was the reason for the previous line of questioning.
If you can stomach it, here is a radio host interviewing some psychology professor about the spreadsheet.
I would sooner walk along a beach laid out with a collection of the largest women to ever visit America’s Walmarts, all wearing bikinis and with my eyes pinned open, before I would subject myself to that recording.
It’s not at all clear that the overall effect was dysgenic, though (which I’m guessing is your reservation about the theory too). Yes, it allowed some low-SMV men to breed, but it also allowed a lot of reasonably intelligent, hard-working, responsible, but low-aggression men to breed who might not have in a dog-eat-dog alpha-takes-all system. Those guys may greatly outnumber the effeminate manginas, and they’re the backbone of civilization. Also, Marriage 1.0 tended to prevent the Idiocracy scenario where the cocky guy with the 80 IQ has more than a dozen kids with all the women in the trailer park, which is much more common under Marriage 2.0.
Marriage 2.0 might be eugenic if women were attracted to men who are intelligent, healthy, virtuous, etc. But they aren’t so much. The bad boys they’re attracted to might have been genetically superior when life was a constant struggle against starvation and predators; but when it comes to maintaining civilization, it’s hard to say they’re superior to the mild-mannered accountant.
@Boone @elovesc34
Sounds like there’s some basic puritanical frigidity going on. Christian women (practicing that is) have a very very very hard time embracing female sexuality. Being told for years your desires are bad and must be controlled… not conducive to good sexual relations.
A couple things to toss at the wives, #1 bachata classes. Very sexual, sensual dance. It’s also, you know, a class so the whole hips moving thing without immediate sexual satisfaction might get things moving at home. #2 BUTI. I’m an instructor on the side, and let me tell you, all my students have a greatly improved sex life. More strength, flexibility, endorphins, and oh yeah unsticking your hips? Great. #3 Maca. It helps regulate both male and female hormones and is well known to increase libido. Blend it up with a banana and a bit of unsweetened chocolate powder. Insta love drink.
Also, all are great ways to get her in shape, making her feel sexier and (hopefully) initiate of her own free will. Women put way too much emphasis on “feelings” and don’t understand how doing certain activities can *change* your feelings.
@Cail Corishev
1.0 was also generally arranged by families (even for peasants) to create stronger ties to property etc without reference to the general fitness of either party. I’m not sure that at any time monogamous marriages were very good Darwinian vehicles. 2.0 isn’t either, from the standpoint that women are picking men… WHO CAN’T PROVIDE FOR THEIR OFFSPRING. Darwinian suicide. The best from a Darwinian perspective, the mistress of a powerful man in an arranged marriage. High level of fitness/wealth for the man and fitness/beauty for the woman. So the kids will get quite a few good assets, material and physical.
@Oscar
Interesting. In the vulgate it says ” sub viri potestate eris, et ipse dominabitur tui” which is pretty unequivocal. Do you have a link to some decent exegesis on the verse? It has always seemed to me that most women desire to be controlled, rebel at that desire due to feminist programming, then completely run off the rails once they try to rule over their husbands… Nothing is less attractive than a shrewish woman.
CAF:
How do I show a man I’m interested?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=898365
—
One particular comment (#10): Most of us guys are terribly dense and unobservant. Subtle might work with 5-10%.
Some people just aren’t able to connect the dots – men are almost always told to suppress their drive, which includes interpreting “everything” as an advance.
@deti
“”I think you’re correct that Susan has distanced herself from promoting marriage.””
I believe you to be correct.Susan Walsh used to post here at times but,I have not seen a post by her in a long time.
@Boone
“So what’s the answer guys?
How about……..”You are going to give me steady sex or I am getting myself a girlfriend. You are not cutting me off…..just losing your place in line!”
@greyghost
“”Seeing this agonizing over these worthless cunts we are married to is embarrassing. You want to fuck your wife run some game or get a girl friend on the side.””
Very well said! My sentiments also!
From Genesis 3:16 – “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” The two clauses are likely not parallels. If they were, then it would not be much of a curse as the two pronouncements more or less compliment each other. Instead, it would seem they form a statement of action and reaction. Because the woman “desires” her husband, he will “rule over” her.
The word desire is translated from the word tesuqah, and it occurs only three times in the Old Testament: Genesis 3:16, Genesis 4:7, and Song 7:10.
It can carry the sense of sexual longing (as in the Song of Songs), but its usage in Genesis 4:7 shows another side, that of a desire to overcome or defeat another: “[Sin’s] desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
In my opinion, this latter meaning fits Genesis 3:16 better than the former.
@GBFM
After reading your posts for quite some time now(deciphering your posts). I suspect that you are a “Christian Jew”???……..Correct?
“”Dalrock oft seems to favor the words of Atheists such as Boxer””
Me thinks you have been huffing too much glue!
jf12,
More than twice a week seems high at 50+ in their numbers (25%+). Perhaps I am judging my own desire too much here, but what was once a very strong desire is much more manageable now, at least in my case.
Luke,
Many think a man should magically not have sexual urges during the latter part of a pregnancy and until well after birth. As if those just go away….
JDG,
> I’m not sure a marriage without s state license would make any difference in family court ….
That is what I was thinking. I am not sure what the point of avoiding the government’s intrustion will really accomplish. The government is involved in a boatload of things they should not be in. Avoiding marriage completely is one thing, but I am not sure that avoiding the state’s certificate is sustainable Biblical when taking into account the commands to obey those in authority. It is a stupid thing, but not necessarily an immoral one.
Avoid this completely if you wish, but playing house anyway would need a bit more Biblical support for me to jump behind that.
Does anyone have a sound Biblical argument for that approach? Or is it just a case of someone protesting the system by doing something inconsequential in the long run that could cause many to stumble who didn’t understand the point?
elovesc,
Menopause doesn’t have to have a negative impact on sex, for either party.
Boone, don’t be abusive, but don’t “beg for it.” Big gap between those two you should exploit. Consider starting with intimate things like backrubs, touching, etc. Build back up to a strong desire rather than begging for it.
I expect the counselor would do no good. Your wife is unlikely to listen even if he or she actively supported you in this area. Be aggressive, appropriate, etc. and see what happens.
She will have to ultimately go along, but that should not be a huge problem if she really is submissive otherwise.
http://www.11alive.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/23/teen-sued-parents-restraining-order-boyfriend/13059963/
So much to say…
Deti, where did the HUS lady dig her current picture from? It looks even younger than the one she had on the blog a few years ago. I think I saw a later picture of hers and the one she is using now is a complete fib if that was correct.
Dalrock,
The name of her site betrayed its true intent. It could never have been about life-long marriage since it was about hooking up, a very different concept. It even implies more of a “friends with benefits” situation than a marriage or even “long term” (1 year or more I would guess) relationship.
Boone, jsr said it better than I.
Jsr, if taking a second wife that way has no limits then a man can never commit adultery unless he marries a woman already married to another. I find that to be stretching things far too much for Biblical consistency.
Yes, “desire” is a confusing choice of words for Genesis 3:16, and “desire to control him” is a big stretch. The Latin literally means, “You shall be under the power of your husband, and he shall rule over you.” That’s how the Douay-Rheims translated it, but later English versions went with the “desire” idea. I don’t know Hebrew, but I looked up the other two uses of the same word, and “power” or “domination” would fit in those locations. Some translations use words like “lust,” but the point is the power/lust/desire is coming from the man, not from her.
The context isn’t relationship counseling; it’s a curse. God is laying out the punishment for eating the apple, and it’s basically, “You couldn’t obey one simple rule, so from now on you’re going to stay busy having babies (painfully), and your husband is gonna make the decisions for you.”
@Rollo: 7;22 “What he fails to account for is that even if she responds with more frequent sex, any sex they do have will be the result of her negotiated obligation, not her genuine, motivated desire.”
Much has been written around here about desire can’t be negotiated. That may be true, but for the Christian couple, that is an irrelevant truth. For the Christian couple, 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 is the governing principle: neither has power over their own body; each must yield their body to the other. Paul makes the point that this instruction is given as guidance, not as commandment. But still, he is making the logical point that married partners OWE each other sex. In Paul’s context, the sex is the reason for the marriage, so give it up. For the Christian couple, sex is an obligation, negotiated or not. For the Christian couple, this instruction is not predicated on whether genuine desire is present. It is an instruction to get on with it, with no excuse, and with no thought given to whether your desire for what is about to transpire is at the same level as the desire of your partner.
In this context, the claim that desire cannot be negotiated is irrelevant.
Brad – Getting married without state involvement is not playing house. It’s just as serious as any other marriage, and the folks who do this probably take their vows more seriously then the average practitioners of government sanctioned unions these days.
The marriage license as we know it didn’t come into existence until after the civil war. People simply got married with out government regulation or intervention. It didn’t become a standard practice in most states until after 1900.
The state considers the marriage contract to be a secular contract between the parties and the state, and the state is the principle party. If the husband and wife wish to include God in their marriage, they must do it in their own minds because the state does not recognize this.
It may be worse than that though. The Doctrine of Parens Patriae, and the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis apparently made possible that through the marriage license the state became the true custodians of a married couples children. The couple is allowed to keep their children at the pleasure of the state and can also lose their children at the pleasure of the state.
Furthermore, if we are going to believe that government has the authority to regulate marriage, then we also have to agree that two men or two women can marry, because that is exactly where the government is going with marriage. In fact, some states are already there thanks to judicial usurpation.
Yes we are to obey the authorities that god has put over us, but we must obey God over man. Still, I am not aware of any decree by the state that stipulates that one must have a state license in order to have a marriage ceremony and consider yourselves married. In fact the state is the party that doesn’t recognize God’s involvement with marriage in the first place.
It’s not what I did by the way, but it is a position I have come to agree with.
“Nothing is less attractive than a shrewish woman.”
Except an obese shrewish woman, Isa.
@Boone,
Regarding duty sex.
Don’t look at duty sex as a final destination. Look at it as an opportunity to teach your wife how to be a better helpmeet. After awhile of plain vanilla sex, start telling her what to do during duty sex; “move your hands up and down my back,” etc. When she complies, reward her with, “That’s a good girl,” You belong to me”, “You are my girl,” etc.
Have a plan and implement it slowly. You need to teach your wife how to please you.
@TFH, JDG,
The matriarchy creates lots of manginas.
RichardP
You made an outstanding reply.
RichardP:
How does that work when it is a man who is not desirous of his wife? He cannot “get on with it” if he can’t get or keep it up.
Ben
that is a good reality incentive for a woman to try and remain attractive. Pretty neat how that works the man doesn’t need to nag her reality just takes over. God is really something huh?
@ greyghost
“when peoples view is challenged the denial gets to much and they will play dumb and just not understand.”
I could not agree more. Which makes long term “game” usage so dangerous. Due to the fact that cognitive dissonance will start to set in when red pill Christian men realize that they are still stuck in the system they thought they got out off and that they are still being played.
BradA:
I wouldn’t know where STDCheck Susan’s photo came from. For a long time she used what looked like a selfie. The current photo is obvioiusly professionally done. She’s putting a more professional, upscale sheen on HUS to burnish her “cool mom” image and attract to the site her desired clientele: UMC and upper class, employed, college educated, socially liberal, coastal, single white women.
Doesn’t yet seem to have worked – the folks commenting at her site, at least, are a mishmash of
1. working class and middle class married women of various ages
2. single women of various ethnic backgrounds who by their own admission have been quite unsuccessful in their personal lives.
3. A few men, mostly single, some married; and most of whom are obviously new to the scene.
She does seem to have some lurkers who fit the target audience, according to her emails, at least. But to say that STDCheck Susan wants them to have successful marriages seems to be a stretch. She wants them to have “committed relationships” or “meaningful relationships” (whatever that means), which I can only presume means she wants her focus group girls to have whatever kind of relationships they want in that moment with the hawtest men they can possibly get, however they can get them.
But to say that STDCheck Susan wants them to have successful marriages seems to be a stretch. She wants them to have “committed relationships” or “meaningful relationships” (whatever that means), which I can only presume means she wants her focus group girls to have whatever kind of relationships they want in that moment with the hawtest men they can possibly get, however they can get them.
I guess the idea is that this segues into marriage in some cases, following the typical life script of the UMC and UMC+ today. That’s why I say she is basically enabling that life script — i.e., trying to make it easier to obtain both aspects of it (fun and eventually marriage, later). It isn’t pro-marriage in the sense of making marriage a priority — the script doesn’t do that, as we know. It assumes, however, that if the script is followed, marriage will eventually ensue for most — and so far that has been true enough. So not marriage oriented or sexual morality oriented, but UMC life script navigation strategy oriented.
My own POV on that is that while it works for the UMC and UMC+ it doesn’t seem to work for nearly everyone else, and that’s a big issue, as I have harped on more or less constantly over the last year or so and won’t bore everyone again with in this comment ( 🙂 ).
@BradA, what charts are you looking at? The first chart of Marcus shows 19% of married couples in their 50s having sex two or more times per week, 6% of those in their 60s, and 2% of older than 60s. A rough average is 9% go at it twice a week or more at 50+. I don’t see any numbers anywhere for your “More than twice a week … at 50+” being 25%.
@Novaseeker
I think you are right here. What we are seeing is the constant drift in the process, towards more embrace of the carousel without giving up the option of marriage. Many see the first part and assume that marriage isn’t important to the women involved, but it is actually the firm assurance of still getting marriage which makes them able to fully embrace the carousel. But in Susan’s case it is striking because she is do dramatically following her target audience in their (for the moment) abandonment of concern about marriage. I suspect this is a sign that she is tracking younger on her target audience, because we know that by 25-26 women are starting to get nervous.
Thanks for refining that, Nova. Yes, the “committed” and “meaningful” relationships eventually segue into “marriage” What Susan advocates is clearly marriage 2.0, though, after the life script. Without getting too personal, Susan is talking to girls and women who resemble her own life script. Upper middle class, white, monetarily privileged, intelligent, ambitious, socially liberal and thoroughly modern. Sexually active before marriage in “relationships” of varying attachment and duration. Financially “self-sufficient”, attended prestigious graduate school, pulled off parlaying a one night stand into a marriage.
The marriage she advocates is thoroughly feminist and completely Marriage 2.0. Its contours and parameters are defined completely by the participants. Marriage has as its purposes the “happiness” and “personal development and fulfillment” of its participants. The partners are completely and totally “equal” in every way. There is no “headship” concept, and certainly not male headship. Marriage is alterable and terminable at will. Man must continually qualify for sexual access to his wife. However, wife is entitled to his resources at all times, and even after marriage if there are children.
This doesn’t work at all for the socioeconomic statuses below upper middle class, though, for all the reasons you’ve said before.
Also that the woman will be in control of the process, so she will be able to marry a quality man when she decides the time has come, and exit the marriage when it’s not working for her. That’s why the focus on “committed relationships.” In most cases, that will include a marriage (or two), but marriage isn’t the end goal; it’s part of the “journey.”
I’ve beat this drum before too, but: most people of Susan’s generation (and mine) assume that “hooking up” means what it meant in our youth: a couple of serious relationships and a couple of drunken one-night stands, so maybe an N in the mid-to-upper single digits by one’s wedding night. Until recently, that was probably still the case for most girls in the UMC. That’s changing fast, but we haven’t seen the effects of it yet. It’s already a quaint glimpse of the past in the lower classes, and we are already seeing the effects there.
Cail,
> Yes, “desire” is a confusing choice of words for Genesis 3:16, and “desire to control him” is a big stretch.
I would go off the Hebrew, not the Latin, in this case.
The woman wanting to rule the man:
[Gen 3:16 KJV] 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Sin wanting to rule over Cain:
[Gen 4:7 KJV] 7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
The word for desire in both these passages is tĕshuwqah, which says to me that it is the same kind of desire. That seems reasonably clear to me. It is the desire to control the actions of another. Both are bad, but part of what is reality.
Note as well that what God told Adam and Eve after they fell does not have to be only punishment. It can be Him noting a natural consequence of their actions, which seems quite logical. Her rebellion caused her to lose the good relationship she had with her husband and get something that was not as pleasant.
JDG,
I would completely agree the State has no business in the marriage game. However I still don’t see the point of pretending it is not involved by not following the rules that exist now in that area. What exactly does someone who pursues that route gain? What Scriptural command are they following that would not drive other actions? (Our taxes go to a lot of really ungodly things, are they advocating not paying those as well, as an example?)
> which I can only presume means she wants her focus group girls to have whatever kind of relationships they want in that moment with the hawtest men they can possibly get, however they can get them.
That seemed to be the case when I was making a few comments there. I had asked what the value a several year relationship really had over a shorter one. It is still “short” in the terms of a life if it doesn’t go the long haul.
I think you are correct noting that her focus is more on the woman feeling good NOW than it is on any long term stability. I would argue that will make everyone feel worse over that period, as short term thinking is hazardous, but that is the trend today.
Isa says:
July 24, 2014 at 12:19 am
“Interesting. In the vulgate it says ” sub viri potestate eris, et ipse dominabitur tui” which is pretty unequivocal. Do you have a link to some decent exegesis on the verse?”
JDG covered it (July 24, 2014 at 1:08 am) before I saw your question, and his analysis fits with what I’ve read and understood to be the case. I can’t say with 100% certainty that it’s the most accurate way to translate that verse, but it does explain a lot.
“It has always seemed to me that most women desire to be controlled, rebel at that desire due to feminist programming, then completely run off the rails once they try to rule over their husbands…”
Rebellious, manipulative women are a running theme in the Bible, LONG before feminism existed. The best/worst example of this is Jezebel, who played her whiny husband (King Ahab) like a fiddle. That’s why feminists worship her as their matron goddess.
Even righteous, Godly women of the Bible sometimes rebelled against and/or manipulated their husbands.
For example, it was Sarah’s idea for Abraham to make a child (Ishmael) with Hagar. We’re STILL paying for that bit of rebellion. Also, it was Rebecca’s idea for Jacob to deceive his father, Isaac.
Feminism is the RESULT of the Woman’s Curse and her original sin, not the cause of it.
jf12,
I am looking at the chart linked above. I was reading the 43-50 one it seems, but 19% for 2 or more times a week seems on the higher end even in that case. Though it could be that it is 2 more so than 3 or more and it seems more reasonable then.
@deti
“Marriage has as its purposes the “happiness” and “personal development and fulfillment” of its participants. ”
I don’t read over there any more, but I think she would put the well being of the children above that – perhaps not in a way that is absolutely sacrosanct, but I think she would say it’s the first priority.
“Man must continually qualify for sexual access to his wife. ”
I don’t know that she would fully endorse that either. The problem is that when many people (feminists especially) write about this issue they act as if their are only two available options: (i) she is free to have as little or much sex as she wants and any implication to the contrary is rapey rapey rapey apologism or (ii) she must be available to fuck him on command anywhere at any time no matter the circumstances or how she is feeling. Of course, reasonable people would reject both options. I do recall a few years ago, I think, Susan said that when their kids were young she went through a period where she wasn’t feeling sexual and she had been avoiding sex for a while. Her husband sat her down and said that it was absolutely unacceptable in a marriage and that she needed to get with the program on that. On reflection, she concluded he was right and it was on her to find a way to get back in the groove, so to speak.
Cail,
> I’ve beat this drum before too, but: most people of Susan’s generation (and mine) assume that “hooking up” means what it meant in our youth
I didn’t think I was that much younger than you, but I must have just been on the cusp of the transition as that implies “temporary” to me.
Crank,
I don’t recall reading anything about “the children” ever over there, even prior to this transformation. It seemed quite focused on the woman.
BradA, in my generation “hooking up” meant temporary too, or “temporary with the potential for permanent.” The bigger change today is just how much more casual the sex is and how much larger the numbers are. It’s not a couple of guys each year at college anymore; it’s a couple each month, or maybe one each weekend except when she settles on one guy for a while.
Girls who didn’t think of themselves as sluts used to hold out until the third date. (Or as Elliot Reid (a girl) said on Scrubs when she was telling a friend she planned to sleep with her new boyfriend that night: “I’m four-date Reid. That’s one date more than the sluts and one date less than the prudes.” But then she admits one of the “dates” was when she bumped into him at the vending machine earlier that day.) They waited that long to make sure he’d call them back, and get at least some hint that he might be a keeper before giving up the goods. That’s gone. If a first date goes well now, you can pretty much expect a blowjob at the end, if you’re not too shy to ask. When I first started learning game several years ago, I lost a couple prospects because I didn’t go for sex on the first night, not realizing it was on offer so soon. That wasn’t because I was such an irresistible stud; it’s just that’s what they came to a date expecting.
Susan’s advice, or stuff like The Rules, which is all about how to hook a good man and control the relationship without giving up the goods, is wasted on these girls raised on sex-positive feminism. They already know how to hook a man: suck his dick. What’s the problem?
@ Crank:
“I do recall a few years ago, I think, Susan said that when their kids were young she went through a period where she wasn’t feeling sexual and she had been avoiding sex for a while. Her husband sat her down and said that it was absolutely unacceptable in a marriage and that she needed to get with the program on that. On reflection, she concluded he was right and it was on her to find a way to get back in the groove, so to speak.
You are correct. That’s pretty much what happened, except that I’d add that according to the way STDCheck $usan told the story, Mr. HUS told her in no uncertain terms that if things continued in said fashion, she would need to consider life as a divorced woman.
In other words: DREAD.
@Boone,
“Blowing it up” then was remarkably poor word choice. Read the Taco master link by Cane and the…I believe…”If it hurts you are doing it wrong” post. Also you can’t compare your marriage to any post anywhere. If you are hurting, then yes have more sex. That is only healthy. If couple X on the interwebz claims they have it forty-two times a day don’t lust after what your neighbor has.
And for the love of God dropping dread game on a wife you admit is submissive and is at least trying with duty sex looks positively draconian. Vox (and Boxer for the matter), who is no shrinking violet, points out this is an emergency measure. You from your description are not in an emergency. You are in territory where a bit of playful teasing is likely to be far more conducive than dread _from your description_.
Dalrock, FYI:
I’m not that Plain Jane, whoever she is, of whom you’ve all suspected me to be; but you have decided to ban me because of this baseless accusation thrown out by deti after I confronted him with misrepresentation of my statements.
The practice of banning female posters who do not toe your PC line, based on nothing more than a tantrum of a male regular who argues dishonestly and when confronted with it resorts to smears, does not put this blog in a positive light.
It shows that, among other things, you are not interested in debate, much less learning, only in confirming your already well-established biases.
Which is to be expected, I suppose.
Hey man Barb is pissed
Brad – What exactly does someone who pursues that route gain?
Some folks gain financially from being considered married by the state. Some folks avoid unfair financial burdens by NOT being considered married by the state.
What Scriptural command are they following that would not drive other actions?
There is no direct biblical command that I am aware of that would require Christians to opt out of government sanctioned marriage. However, when one considers that the government not only actively promotes the divorce and the CS industry, but it also wants everyone (Christians included) to except the notion that marriage can be redefined to suit man rather than God, I suppose these passages in 2 Cor 6 might be their motivation to not partnership with the state in marriage:
14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
17 Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
then I will welcome you,
18 and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”
Some one may reply with a quote from Mathew or Mark::
“Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
To my knowledge Caesar isn’t demanding that couples get a marriage license before they marry. It’s just that Caesar won’t recognize they are married without it (except in family court). So couples aren’t doing anything wrong morally or legally by not inviting the state to participate in their marriage. It’s not like the state would hold them accountable to their vows even if it was invited in.
Barb/claims not to be PJ”
I didn’t mispresent anything you said. I repeated what you said. I pointed out your odd perseveration on “but but but he made a spreadsheet” which was an obvious attempt to deflect attention from the actual issue, which is her depriving her husband of sex.
You’re not here to discuss issues. You’re here to stick your fingers in others’ eyes, and troll and insult people, and stir the pot.
Deti,
you also did not see my follow-up responses to you (among others), because after you cried Plain Jane!, Dalrock censored all my subsequent comments. BTW, I did not insult you even once; pointing out the irrationality of one’s argumentation (e.g., misrepresentation of another’s arguments, or obvious projections) is not insulting to people who are interested in an honest debate.
I guess the fact that my comments now are allowed to show up proves that his investigation revealed I’m not this mysterious and dangerous Plain Jane, whom you so fear.
Be that as it may, this debacle confirms that debate and learning are not what you seek, since personal attacks are preferred here to focusing on arguments.
No, grey, it does not piss me off. Disappoints somewhat, maybe, but not also terribly so. This is, after all, par for the course on all ideological blogs. You find the same close-mindedness, group-think, and intolerance for differing views on any blogs with an agenda: religionist and atheist, MRA and feminists, conservative and liberal. They are nothing but echo chambers for the true believers. This one is no exception, contrary to what you may think (that’s also another feature of ideological echo chambers: they all believe that they both represent The Truth and are open-minded at the same time, and anybody who sez otherwise is itching for a fight).
Is ok.
Since when ignoring an annoyance is an expression of fear? Bzzz, bzzz… Oh, it’s a fly. Surely a “mysterious and dangerous” fly
Barb – FYI –
Deti = never wrong
cicero
This entire discussion and blog is about learning to cope and seeing the truth. The bottom line it is the laws of misandry. Games just helps on the margins. The real benefit of red pill truth of the nature of women is no marriage takes place in the first place. My thing is for men to learn to thrive not inspite of women and the laws of misandry but thrive out side of women and misandry period.
DeNihilist:
If you think I’m wrong about something, please share. I don’t claim any monoply on “the truth” and happily admit when I’m wrong about something.
(The fact that you believe I’m wrong about Game is, well, your opinion; and you didn’t demonstrate I was wrong about anything with respect thereto. You didn’t when the debate was had elsewhere, and you still haven’t.)
No Deti, I think you are wrong in your interpretation of game in a Christian sense. I think GBFM has a better answer for Christian men then you do. I think AD has a better answer for CM then you do. But again, this is opinion, so there is never going to be a conclusive ending.
So be it.
Barb, you weren’t banned. You were in moderation for a while. By the time you wrote your comment claiming you were banned you were already out of moderation. Opposing views are welcome. PJ is a long time troll who periodically reappears. Around the time Deti suggested you might be PJ, a comment came in from someone calling herself plain Jane and hit moderation. This fits her pattern, but after looking at more of your comments I didnt see some patterns she usually exhibits.
Deti can be wrong, just as any of us can be. I am sure I have disagreed with him in the past, though I find general agreement now and can’t think of anything specific. Lots of variations on a general theme here.
Barb, you will have to grow a thicker skin if you want to participate in any Internet forums, especially here.
JDG,
> Some folks gain financially from being considered married by the state.
Any idea which states (or a sample set) where this would be true. I was under the impression that the State would basically consider them married after a certain time if they claimed to be married, which would be the case with a religious ceremony.
Though the costs would seem to arise in family court, and you noted that they could not avoid that.
Not a big issue either way. I doubt I would take that approach, even now, though I don’t expect I would remarry if my wife were somehow gone, so it remains a very academic point for me.
Please help Dalrock or anyone else! What does Christian dread look like in detail for a married couple of 15+ years? I feel like what I need is dread in my marriage now. It’s not healthy, though it has improved significantly with much prayer and this site. I want to honor Christ. I want to have lots of sex with just my wife and the mother of my two children. I’ve never been with another woman. I have temptations b/c I’m like the guy in the spreadsheet. Heck, I’d take his ratio now compared to whatI I’m getting. Please help! Thank you.
http://p36husband.blogspot.com
@Prov Erbs –
I just sent you an email, at the address you list on your blog’s “About me” page. I don’t have the expertise to advise you on the specific question you asked about dread, but I’m willing to do what I can to help.
@Dalrock –
This man sounds like he’s in serious need of some good advice. It might not be wise to give it to him publicly, but he’s posted a contact email address at his blog. I’m inexperienced enough that I don’t want to be the only guy trying to help him. Would you be able to lend him a hand as well?
Proverbs is either a troll site, or, you are an idiot. Husband works to 11 and leaves for 6 weeks, wife goes out 5x a week.
Who watches the kids?
Hint: use less words to be more believable. How do you have the time to write all that TL;DR? I’m guessing an unemployed manboobzer.
@greyghost
“This entire discussion and blog is about learning to cope and seeing the truth.”
I am not arguing that the truth isn’t being talked about here. The point I am trying to highlight is that you and others do not see the whole truth. Satan even tried tempting Christ and he also spoke the truth. Half truths are more dangerous than flat out lies.
“The bottom line it is the laws of misandry.”
No the bottom line is the law laid out in the Bible. And if you truly understood how to use it correctly then you would see that there was a veil over your eyes.
“Games just helps on the margins.”
And who determines what those margins are? Like I said I do not argue the effectiveness of game. I am trying to show that game is not what you are told. It is the same tactics used by feminists just now the glove is on the other hand. However the glove is still covered in muck.
“The real benefit of red pill truth of the nature of women is no marriage takes place in the first place.”
No my brother marriage does take place. Marriage is a contract. Now men get angry when the other party does not abide by there side of the contract. Thus you are told that woman do not honour contracts and get away with it with the support of governmnet. Now game tells you that because she broke her side of the agreement and you can’t beat government that now all is fair game. This is the lie. There is no honour in what game tells you.
The truth is this. Contracts are dynamic (contract law 101). This is found in the Bible. *You just haven’t been taught how to hold on to your claim*. In contracts you can act 2 ways in honour (the way the Father wants you to live) or act 2 ways in dishonor (the way game/feminists/government tells you to live). Now if you truly understood the dynamics of this taught by God regarding His contract law and how it applies to secular law then you will truly live the Free life God intended for you as His precious Child.
“My thing is for men to learn to thrive not inspite of women and the laws of misandry but thrive out side of women and misandry period.”
My goal is also for men to thrive. I am not a big admirer of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but he was correct in this, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Christ promised us true freedom. However we are slaves to our own ignorance. If you believe nothing that I have written, then as a fellow Christian man I implore you to believe me on this. The Bible has all the answers to your problems and I mean all, you just have to pray for wisdom to understand because there is such a magnificent depth that one can only see God’s greatness. Not this superficial Bible quotes game justification. It took me more than a decade just to ask the right questions. I have now given you the springboard to start asking those questions that took me so long to find. The God given free choice is yours… explore the new path highlighted or continue on the one you are on now.
@Prov Erbs,
you may want to implement jsr’s advice to Boone from this thread (@July 23, 2014 at 6:24), specifically his points 2 and 3.
Sexual contact between spouses should be ongoing, 24/7. People don’t always understand that, and men especially have a hard time grasping that their wives may not be sexually responsive, as if on demand, during those 15 minutes in the evening when they decide to act amorous. Sexual play between spouses starts in the morning and it should not really end. (When at work, there is the phone to use — call, text, send a pic, etc.) You are (or should be) lovers, first and foremost, with all the other marital roles, important as they are, being in second place or further.
For all those exhortations about duty sex, most people probably realize that it is not the most desirable kind. It can be injurious to a wife, emotionally but also physically, and unpleasant and discouraging to a husband. When the roles are reversed, with a sexually demanding wife and recalcitrant husband, it is even worse, if at all possible. And lecturing your spouse about their marital duties is as great a turn-on as giving them spreadsheets. So don’t.
Do what jsr suggests in 2 and 3 in terms of reintroducing sexual desire into your marriage. Don’t ask, don’t apologize, don’t explain. Be humorous about it, if needed (e.g., she’s startled, etc.), and don’t take her lack of enthusiasm personally. She is your wife and lover; chances are she too is missing her husband AND lover (YOU, in case this isn’t clear), but may not even realize it or is at loss what to do about it.
@BradA,
my skin is thick enough, thanks.
@DeNihilist
July 24, 2014 at 3:27 pm:
Yeah, I’ve noticed.
P.S. @Prov Erbs,
I just saw your blog, and in light of what I read there, my — or really jsr’s — advice, above, may not be applicable (yet?). It sounds as though your issues go beyond the usual sexual blah experienced in most marriages at some point.
Best of luck to you both. I hope you will resolve this crisis in a positive way.
re: “Sexual contact between spouses should be ongoing, 24/7. ”
Always, always, always, it is the wife who told the husband to “Stop that!” Always.
So if the husband is very busy and doesn’t have a lot of time or energy to spare throughout the day but really needs that physical connection and release at the end of the day, and his wife needs all-day foreplay, who is right? Whose needs are more important?
Ha, like we have to ask. Whatever the problem, it is always, always, always the man’s fault and responsibility. The only question is how.
re: “Sexual play between spouses starts in the morning”
Reality: “Stop that! You have to get ready for work!”
@ Barb:
“Sexual play between spouses starts in the morning and it should not really end.”
Yawn. Choreplay. “Slow Cooker”.
Yeah, right. All you’re suggesting is choreplay. If he just does dishes and folds the laundry, she wouldn’t be stressed out and will feel better.
No, let me tell you how this really goes down. Husband does chores, wife says “do more”. Husband does more chores, wife says “I still don’t feel it”.
Or maybe you’re suggesting the old “slow cooker” theory of female sexual response – where the woman has to get little bits and pieces of affection and then she’ll be ready for sex. Yeah, right. How does that explain the woman who gets wet in 30 seconds in the presence of an attractive man? She doesn’t need all day attention to get revved up. She only needed to be in hawt guy’s presence for less than a minute and she’s lubed up and ready to go.
And what if husband touches wife, pinches here, gropes there? “STOP THAT! You’re OBJECTIFYING me!! You PIG! That’s not God-honoring!”
The problem here is her refusal to submit and her lack of attraction to her husband. It’s not his doing chores and it’s not doing “the little things”. Those are bullshit excuses and covers for the real problem – wives hating and disrespecting their husbands.
This is bullshit, Barb. And it’s embarrassing. What you’re really doing here is telling men to kowtow and submit to their wives. Stop it.
Barb,
> For all those exhortations about duty sex, most people probably realize that it is not the most desirable kind.
I don’t think anyone said it was ideal. The idea is that it is a step away from “nothing” towards a better sexual relationship.
Having a wife who is a dead fish is not that compelling in the long run, though it is better to get sexual expression with your wife than through other outlets.
I think deti said it best if you’re not effing you’re not married. Whats the point of marriage otherwise?
Dear “Gin martini”
It’s certainly possible. Then again, it’s possible that “Gin martini” and “Boxer” are the same unemployed manboobzer, and devoted male feminist, who is here out of morbid curiosity or something.
I read some of Prov Erbs’ articles this morning. He seems like a middle-aged Christian guy without much of a social life, who busts his ass supporting his family, and who gets no respect for it. He is in denial (let’s face it, if his blog is true, then I’d bet 1000 dollars his wife has already fucked at least one of those dudes). No offense, but I’d have dumped that slut a long time ago.
Prov Erbs’ main problem, in my opinion, is a lack of respectable male friends. Such a network is a very solid support system for a brother. Women know its effectiveness instinctively, and this is demonstrable by their accusations of “being gay” etc. whenever she senses a brother confide in a colleague. He seems to know this himself, hence his appearance here and his request for help.
Alas. I’m not married, and don’t put up with this crap, so can’t offer anything more than general emotional support. I do hope he finds some good advice, though.
Boxer
Barb, good comment. That is the “game” I have played with my wife for 28 years. We still go at it like spring chickens! Even when she calls me a pig, or actually gets angry with me (usually just before period time) I laugh and continue.
It does not take much time out of my day, a few second rub here, a smack on the ass there, a quick grope then a neck kiss, all done lightly and playfully. Laying in bed together at night, I love tickling her thighs, the softest part of her body. Most nights she falls asleep with me “molesting” her. LOL!
As for the fast rev up, I guess she still finds mr=e attractive, cause sometimes I’ll hit a quickie before work, and invariably she is moist and responsive.
Not saying always like this, sometimes she performs duty sex, but I have got the warming lube right by the bedside, so no problemo. Too many guys are afraid of no from their wives. We are the outgoing energy in this world, most women are the resting energy, so yeah,
men persue, women do!
Things go in cycles in this world. Realize it, accept it, live it.
deti says:
July 25, 2014 at 11:33 am
“Yawn. Choreplay. “Slow Cooker”.”
Screw choreplay. Spank and/or pinch her ass on your way out the door in the morning. Bonus points if you make her jump.
“And what if husband touches wife, pinches here, gropes there? “STOP THAT! You’re OBJECTIFYING me!! You PIG! That’s not God-honoring!””
My instinct is to give her what the kids call a “s__t eating grin”, call her a dirty girl, and do it again when he gets home.
I could be wrong.
I have a post in response to Prov Erbs in the works.
@Oscar
Looks to me like you have it zeroed in.
Good stuff. A few more variations on the same theme. Pull her into you, kiss her, and cop a feel right before you head out the door (with your mind now squarely focused on whatever it is you are going out to do). You are a man on a mission.
“You knew I was a man when you married me.” Try suppressing the shit eating grin. Don’t worry, you won’t be able to.
“I’m a man and you are my woman. I’m allowed to do that with my woman.”
This last one needs some tuning, as it is a bit long. But you can riff off of it at the spur of the moment anyway. Written language and verbal speech don’t translate exactly. The key point is to set the frame that you are a man and she is your woman. You can reinforce this by periodically calling her woman. “What do you mean woman?” With a bit of practice: “Whats for dinner woman?” while pulling her into you from behind and holding her in your arms.
re: some tuning. Almost universally, married women, after the honeymoon period, *complain* that their husbands “have to” keep constantly touching them all the time. “Even when I’m doing the dishes.” So, usually, the men stop because the women *made* them stop.
If she gives in to it, that’s great, but it begs the question of how to get her to give in to it.
deti says:
“Yeah, right. All you’re suggesting is choreplay. If he just does dishes and folds the laundry, she wouldn’t be stressed out and will feel better.”
Kindly point out where I’m suggesting choreplay. Oh, right, you can’t, because it is not what I’m suggesting at all.
More projection-based misinterpretation from you, deti. So what exactly is your problem? Not only you continue to misread my comments, but your snide and hostile attitude is not conducive to a rational conversation; though maybe someone spat in your cornflakes this morn, so perhaps it explains that.
Anyway, until you start focusing on what’s being said and not what you imagine is being said, I will not engage in conversation with you, as it is a waste of my time.
@DeNihilist:
Yes, that’s the way to go. Husband and I are in our fourth decade together, and sex keeps getting better, even though our bodies are growing older.
@BradA says:
“I don’t think anyone said it was ideal. The idea is that it is a step away from “nothing” towards a better sexual relationship. Having a wife who is a dead fish is not that compelling in the long run, though it is better to get sexual expression with your wife than through other outlets.”
Brad, I did not say it is ideal either, did I. And yes, I get your point.
However, when some people hector about duty sex as much as I often see it done, I can tell they tend to forget (if they knew it to begin with) that married sex is ultimately about intimacy and love. Yes, occasional duty performance is not the end of the world; but if all you have (or expect) is duty sex, then it is a sign your marriage is in serious trouble because it lacks love, for whatever reasons. Sexual intimacy is not like cooking or going to work or mowing the lawn — all things we do because we must, whether we like it or not. People who look at it this way are not and will not be really sexually happy, and neither will their marriages.
Wives who are healthy, and in normal marriages, want and like to be desired by their husbands. If husbands cultivate that attitude of expressing their ongoing desire for their wives 24/7 (that does not mean always intercourse, jf12; if you are late for work, maybe she’s right and you need to scale down your aspirations a bit, lol), their seemingly blah wives will not only be receptive, but become enthusiastic participants in the game of mutual seduction (save unusual cases: medical or serious psychological or relational problems, etc.), the way it used to be (I presume) in their early days.
@Barb, re: wives will become enthusiastic.
Unfortunately that’s NOT the norm, and very very very unfortunately Nothing the husband can do will make her become enthusiastic “the way it used to be”. Almost always it’s entirely up to her, instead, to go against her biological schedule, her gut, her feelings, and decide to cooperate in her seduction.
re: wives cooperating sexually in ways other than intercourse. You do know the statistics, right? You do know the joke of the bride smiling, right?
jf12 says:
“If she gives in to it, that’s great, but it begs the question of how to get her to give in to it.”
You don’t beg the question, nor ask her / wait for her to give in to it. If you do these little sexual gestures throughout the day, there won’t be a problem with her giving in to it (you may actually end up with an opposite “problem”).
Again, don’t ask, don’t explain, don’t apologize. Do. If she is not used to it anymore (or maybe never was), start small. jsr, Oscar and Dalrock’s suggestions are correct.
P.S. I do not know any married woman — and I know a few married women — who’d say “You’re OBJECTIFYING me!! You PIG!” when her husband kisses her or grabs her butt (unless she says so teasingly, leading him on to more kissing and grabbing). I’m assuming you are being facetious. But then I’m also not Christian, so maybe my experiences are different for that reason.
I’m sorry to hear this, jf12. In that case, the libido pill you’ve mentioned earlier would be a useful thing (provided that their marriage is good otherwise and her reluctance is not related to some other issues, but just a drop in libido).
@Barb:
“. I do not know any married woman — and I know a few married women — who’d sayYou’re OBJECTIFYING me!! You PIG!” when her husband kisses her or grabs her butt (unless she says so teasingly, leading him on to more kissing and grabbing).”
Since you’re not Christian and you have no experience with this, you don’t really know what you’re talking about, then, do you?
“I’m assuming you are being facetious.”
I am not. I’m dead serious. I have past experience with this, remedied only through a bit of modified dread.
Perhaps you aren’t suggesting choreplay. You are, however, suggesting the “slow cooker” method, which is doomed to failure. Nice try, though.
Barb,
> Brad, I did not say it is ideal either, did I. And yes, I get your point.
You implied that only the ideal would do. Reaching that ideal is not possible from a full stop any more than hitting 65 on the highway is instantly. It all takes time. And road conditions impact the driving speed.
> Wives who are healthy, and in normal marriages, want and like to be desired by their husbands.
Define “desired”. All of them don’t want sexual desire as much as you claim, at least not at an outward level. Even duty sex can help build that desire though, in part due to the chemical exchange that happens even if the situation isn’t ideal. Sex is better than no sex. Just crying out for perfect husbands is more likely to get them to say “forget it” since none of them can always be perfect.
> their seemingly blah wives will not only be receptive, but become enthusiastic participants in the game of mutual seduction
You don’t have much experience in this area do you? That may happen if the wife is attracted to her husband, but it can be much harder or even impossible without a wife’s commitment to it as well.
Desire is not guaranteed to follow.
Habits and memes are hard to break, even in a marriage. And society has pushed the “married people have no sex or boring sex lives so much many women believe it. You are not taking that into account in your statement of the ideal.
re: “there won’t be a problem” “I’m assuming you are being facetious”
No, and no. The VAST majority of wives deny their husbands sex MOST of the time, and complain that he is always trying to sexulaize “Even when I’m doing the dishes.”
And yet your comment contradicts hers, so I wonder if you missed her point. You say all-day foreplay is great, and I agree. It’s certainly my preference; when I’m with a woman I’m constantly touching her. (Why have one around otherwise?) But you go on to say your wife gladly takes care of you on other occasions, even when she’s not physically “ready.” You’re saying that lots of playfulness increases the fun, but you get sex when you want it with or without the warm-up work.
Barb is saying it’s required. She says sex should involve 24/7 slow-cooker-style effort on the man’s part. If a man isn’t getting as much sex as he likes, then he should go on a campaign of trying to coax his wife into sex with 24/7 light foreplay. Again, that’s loads of fun and there’s certainly nothing wrong with doing it to rev her up and try to turn duty sex into “pound me like a tent stake” sex, but it shouldn’t be required, as apparently it isn’t in your marriage. If a husband has to earn sex, even with something he enjoys doing, and may be denied if he doesn’t do enough of it, that’s bad for the marriage and certainly isn’t biblical.
Barb’s just singing the same old song, and Deti read it correctly: if a man isn’t getting enough sex, he’s doing something wrong, so here’s one of the hundred or so things he might have to change about his behavior to earn it.
BradA:
Barb is old school. Probably married a man she was attracted to; married her first or second, maybe third, lifetime sex partner. She probably isn’t a former carousel rider or career girl with a good double digit notch count. She wasn’t jaded by the time she’s 26 and finally ready to get married kind of woman. Noice that Barb says she’s in her fourth decade of marriage to her husband.
That’s why her recommendations fall flat – the quality and caliber of woman has declined markedly. She doesn’t get that most women in the last 20 years or so are marrying men they aren’t attracted to. She doesn’t understand that by the time those women are marrying, they’ve already had sex with the men they are attracted to and cannot get one of those men to wife them up.
Barb doesn’t understand this.
Re : you’re not slow cooking slow enough, or cooking enough, or the kids will need a snack soon, or anything. Almost never is the fault that the husband isn’t doing something correctly enough. Almost always the fault is the wife deciding to go against her husband’s desires regardless.
It occurs to me: Barb has been married 40 + years. She knows absolutely NOTHING about the current sexual and marriage marketplaces. She has been out of the market for so long, she doesn’t know what it’s currently like for most men.
Barb’s suggestions will work only with a woman who is attracted to the man doing the things she advocates. They only work where there is mutual attraction. If the woman isn’t attracted to the man, these same suggestions will be viewed as offensive, battery, and attempted rape.
Barb, please pipe down. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re embarrassing yourself. .
@Barb, @jf12
“No, and no. The VAST majority of wives deny their husbands sex MOST of the time, and complain that he is always trying to sexulaize ‘Even when I’m doing the dishes.'”
Most men are taught to always treat a women respectfully.
That is terrible advice! Just because a man respects a woman does not mean he should always demonstrate that. Similarly, a husband who find his wife sexy should not always demonstrate that.
The problem is that conflicts arise when demonstrating that someone is worthy of respect, attraction, comfort, and devotion.
http://davidvs.net/hobbies/masculinity-connection.shtml
By trying to always demonstrate respect, that majority of husbands are crippling their own ability to make their wives feel attractive. And no one wants to be sexy with someone who does not makes them feel attactive.
re: when something seems to work when it happens to work, which isn’t all the time or even very often, and doesn’t work the rest of the time, then it is actually *never* working, actually. It is never the case that A actually causes B if A only sometimes causes B if the wind is blowing right.
re: sex getting better when older. 9 times out of 10, the only thing this means (if actually sex and not cuddling) is that the woman is even harder to get off, so her orgasms are harder than they used to be. Rarer sex is never better sex for the man. Never.
@BradA & Barb
It seems to me that the two of you may be talking past each other.
As far as I can tell, both of you agree that…
1. Our feelings often follow our actions, so we should carry out our responsibilities even if we don’t feel like it, and that can lead to actually feeling like it.
2. Both spouses are responsible for making themselves as attractive as possible to their spouse.
3. Both spouses are responsible for sexually satisfying each other.
Am I right?
deti says:
July 25, 2014 at 2:42 pm
“Barb is old school. Probably married a man she was attracted to; married her first or second, maybe third, lifetime sex partner. She probably isn’t a former carousel rider or career girl with a good double digit notch count.”
Heck, is it even possible for such a woman (“a former carousel rider or career girl with a good double digit notch count”) to bond with a man for life?
I mean, Rahab was a pro, and she’s in Christ’s family tree, but we’re not told how her marriage to Salmon went.
Dalrock says:
July 25, 2014 at 1:13 pm
“Looks to me like you have it zeroed in.”
I got one right! I’m on a roll!
The worst/best part, the funniest/saddest part: my wife and I are held up as an *exemplary* older couple in our church, the sort of still-loving long-married couple that younger couples ought to aspire to grow into. This despite/because (don’t you love/hate the paradoxes here?) our pastor knows pretty much about our home life and the home lives of other couples.
I know that as bad a wife as my wife is, most wives are even worse. That fact makes me feel only worse, however. It’s like a prisoner in Andersonville being told he should feel luck because he’s still getting to eat the good mud pies, because most of the men have already been reduced to chewing on sand.
Due to reading a response further up it looks like one of my comments may have read as a justification for divorce.
That would be a poor reading of scripture, and I apologize if I advocated an incorrect path and caused anyone to stumble.
I quoted
1 Timothy 5:8 New International Version (NIV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+5%3A8&version=NIV
“Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
However, it says in 1 Corinthians 7:10-16:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/asv/1-corinthians/passage.aspx?q=1-corinthians+7:10-16
“10 But unto the married I give charge, [yea] not I, but the Lord, That the wife depart not from her husband 11 (but should she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband); and that the husband leave not his wife. 12 But to the rest say I, not the Lord: If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him, let him not leave her. 13 And the woman that hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her, let her not leave her husband. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. 15 Yet if the unbelieving departeth, let him depart: the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such [cases]: but God hath called us in peace. 16 For how knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? Or how knowest thou, O husband, whether thou shalt save thy wife?”
Clearly, if one spouse wants to abandon his or her duties in the marriage, but is willing to remain married and living with the other spouse, divorce is not something you should initiate. Rather, we should seek to bring the other spouse back to obedience through the mechanism and behavior God has blessed for us, and directed us to.
re: sex getting better when older. The objective infrequency tells the *entire* true story. Subjective fireworks ought to be irrelevant fiction to the outside world.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/radio-silence-and-dread/#comment-132994
FWIW after the publicization fo the concept of lesbian bed death, “they” began counting snuggles as sex to cook the books for lesbians.
“ Heck, is it even possible for such a woman (“a former carousel rider or career girl with a good double digit notch count”) to bond with a man for life?”
Possible. It can be done, but not without effort, pain and gnashing of teeth. Mostly it’s not worth the effort.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/mark-driscolls-feminist-foolishness-posing-as-christian-wisdom/#comment-28446
let’s face it, if his blog is true, then I’d bet 1000 dollars his wife has already fucked at least one of those dudes
Unfortunately I would have to agree.
> Wives who are healthy, and in normal marriages, want and like to be desired by their husbands.
Define “desired”.……….and define a normal marriage.
I’m always amazed at what folks these days consider a “normal” marriage is.
She doesn’t understand that by the time those women are marrying, they’ve already had sex with the men they are attracted to and cannot get one of those men to wife them up.
Barb doesn’t understand this.
A lot of women and men too from that age group don’t understand this. I didn’t understand it the first 40 years of my life. I had no idea that given the right incentives women in general where just as likely as men to fornicate at the drop of a hat.
I really should have known as I had seen the signs all around me, but could not recognize them due to my understanding of female behavior from a previous generation. It felt like a little part of my world died when I found out, but suddenly all those strange occurrences and unanswered questions were explained.
re: incentives. A huge number of women, I dare say a majority, suffer not merely from a lack of motivational libido but an almost-absolute incuriousity most of the time. They simply are not interested, and not interestable most of the time. Their lack of wanting is merely biological, and can only be overcome behaviorally if they wanted to overcome it! A Catch-22, given their total lack of respect for their men’s sexuality.
A number of women in their 40s have not even bothered to look at their own genitals *ever*.
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/these-grown-women-are-about-to-see-their-own-vaginas-fo-1583732505
Man Up by not using active Dread!
That’s the solipsism. “My husband does this and I’m happy, so you guys just need to do it and your wives will be happy.” But if a guy’s marriage is already suffering because his wife is withholding, that can result in him getting the cart before the horse. If he starts groping and tickling his wife all the time out of the blue, he’d better be doing it from a very solid, dominant frame. Otherwise she’ll see it as desperation and neediness and despise him that much more. His frame control needs to come first; it’s far more important than whatever physical actions he decides on.
Barb can’t see that because she can’t see her husband’s frame — she lives inside it. That’s not her fault — heck, it’s good, the way it should be. But it’s the reason that it’s extremely hard for a happy wife to offer worthwhile advice to the husbands of rebellious, unhappy women.
Count me as one who agrees, unfortunately, with Boxer and Nova that if his blog is true, his wife has probably already cheated on him.
I’ve read some of Prov Erbs’ blog. At the risk of stealing Dalrock’s thunder, here are my suggestions:
1. He continues the gym workouts and maintains the rest of his life including his good earning power.
2. He informs Wife there will be changes. He immediately leaves the apartment and moves back into the house, where he will reside permanently. He will sleep in the marital bed. He will express his strong preference that she do so as well; however, she may sleep wherever she wishes. He will take control of all finances and bill paying. When they move to the new house, he will not get an apartment. As before the move, he will reside in the marital house and sleep in the marital bed. These are nonnegotiable. If she disagrees, she may leave the residence – alone; and she will expect to be served shortly with papers.
3. He tells Wife she will need to make some changes too. She will immediately begin conducting herself as his wife and as mother to their children. She deletes her Facebook accounts and social media. She and CrossFit are done. She and Crossfit friends are done too. At the very, very least, she will not stay out late at night. There will be no Crossfit goodbye parties. Starting immediately, the bulk of her time will be spent at her employment doing her work; and at their house caring for his home and children. At a later date, after the move, he might – MIGHT—allow her to join another gym. These are also nonnegotiable.
4. At an appropriate time, he must get to the bottom of whether she has cheated. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting that she has; and he needs to find out if there’s anything further. This is speculation based on his writings and descriptions of Wife’s conduct. The most recent post suggests she might be going through a “breakup” of an affair — the sudden statements that she hasn’t been to the gym in four months; the sudden closeness and receptiveness to physical affection, etc. The lying about going to the gym is also troubling. He needs to get to the bottom of all this.
5. He undertakes an immediate audit of the finances. He accounts for every dime spent, every check written, every credit card purchase. He reviews the cell phone bills with a fine toothed comb. He reviews the text messages and the emails. He needs to call out anything suspicious.
Boxer. Some people here know who I am, and I am hardly a troll. However, this non de plume is my troll battle account.
A wise, or even just sane, man, when confronted with game, might test one or two of the ideas in private, and maybe write a few words on their success in a comment. At first.
A troll would pretend to try them all out at once, write thousands of words on the topic, concoct an spectacular elaborate story of it failing, so they can point and laugh how wrong concepts are, even if they are thoroughly inconsistent.
PJ’s been banned, but there are lots of people who want to put egg in your face.
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Cail, nice take on my post, never thought about it thataway. What was going through me brain at the time, was more the levels of passion in the sex. I was comparing duty sex to little passion, or no time to get you going. I grok what you’re saying though, again nice take!
Deti, when does the slow cooker style finally fail? I have been slow cooking my wife for close to 28 years now, and she still isn’t “done”. Maybe the luck of the draw?
Well I guess I am from Barb’s time in history, cos not only my situation, but a couple of other couples I’ve known most my life are like Barb and hers, and me and mine.
So if the younger generation is this much different, then yes, the go slow at first is for sure. I do not carress my wife 24/7. Just here and there outta the blue, except when we retire for the night. Even then, I will sometimes roll over and not touch her at all, outta the blue.
So yes, Cail has it, you do need the right frame, as I said earlier, life is cyclical. You need to be aware of the cycles and allow your love life to go up AND down. Just don’t start to fear during the down parts.
NARALT. I get this, but if something works for at least 2 commentators on this blog, and some men are living in a sexless marriage, what is wrong with trying our advice? The worst, she just stays the frigid cow she has always been. The best, you slowly melt her indifference and reap the rest of your life in a sexually pleasing relationship.
Now there is a theory out that there are 5 basic ways that people communicate. One of the groups are touchers. Me, having a heritage of Italian, am obviously a toucher, so maybe I unconciously picked a woman who was open to this form of communication.Don’t know, don’t care.
Also I am not stating that my married life has been bliss. Far away from it. We have been on the brink more then once of seperating. Somehow we have stayed together.
I just grok what Barb is saying, because I use this game in my relationship and it so far has been very good.
Also I just have to get this out while I am rolling, Rollo states that it is impossible to maintain the passionate sex throughout a LTR. Sorry, but he is wrong. Not only is there still passion in our sex, but frequency as well.
K, gotto go do more work on the shed now (hmmm, wonder if I get it up before she gets home, will that get me some tonight?????…………)
deti says:
July 25, 2014 at 4:01 pm
“Possible. It can be done, but not without effort, pain and gnashing of teeth. Mostly it’s not worth the effort.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/mark-driscolls-feminist-foolishness-posing-as-christian-wisdom/#comment-28446 ”
That’s one hell of a training program! I like what Dalrock had to say after your comment.
“Put brutally, if she marries she may well experience significant periods where she doesn’t feel “in love” with or sexually attracted to her husband. This problem is her creation and her responsibility to overcome. I don’t advise women to marry when this is a likely scenario because I don’t think we have it in us as a culture to demand that she fulfill her marriage vows anyway. However, if she insists on marrying anyway she needs to fully accept the responsibility of this.”
Sounds like a tall order!
Couple of thoughts:
Yes, I am old school. Married young, to my one and only. Both virgins. Raised a family together and have been through *a lot.* I am not going to detail the intimate history of my marriage here, but suffice it to say that I know and understand the plight of married spouses who are and feel deprived of sex and affection. Been there, done that, and emerged from it stronger, as a couple, than ever.
My personal experiences, limited as they may be by old-schoolness and such, make me believe that most marriages on the rocks can be saved and even made better. And I speak as an atheist, understanding that you have an extra asset on your side, which is your religious faith. Even though I don’t share it, I respect it and see its value.
Repairing an ailing marriage takes patience and time, and yes, faith, whether religious or not, preferably of both spouses; but sometimes only one’s faith and patience can be enough.
There are of course marriages that are not meant to survive, and divorce would be the best option for the couple, but I understand why you are against it.
Cail says:
“Barb can’t see that because she can’t see her husband’s frame — she lives inside it. That’s not her fault — heck, it’s good, the way it should be. But it’s the reason that it’s extremely hard for a happy wife to offer worthwhile advice to the husbands of rebellious, unhappy women.”
You are incorrect about this. As I mentioned above, my husband and I have been through a lot, including some really dark times (yes, multiple) in our marriage, where we came extremely close to divorce. You just have to take my word for it when I say that I understand both the position of an unhappy wife and an unhappy husband (yes). And I think that if we, my husband and I, could make it, given what we’ve been through, almost anyone can with a bit of good will and a lot of patience.
BTW, that dread you keep talking about is not a bad thing in introducing reality into the spouses’ thinking (I say spouses because, hard as it may be to believe here, sometimes husbands need a dose of harsh reality too).
And I should also add that some of the best advice I received during the darkest times of our marriage came from other women, who helped me see the overwhelming good in my husband, despite his all too human flaws (which we all have). The way you tend to demonize (yeah) women in these conversations here does not do them, or you, justice, I think. I can understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone. JMO.
Denihilist:
The problem with the “slow cooker” method is threefold. First, it proceeds from an assumption that the woman is already attracted to the man running the slow cooker. A man trying to run slow cooker on an unattracted wife (pinch, grab, touch, leer) doesn’t come off as rakish or sexy. It comes off as needy, mawkish, and creepy. He won’t turn her on, he’ll probably get arrested.
Second, it presumes that slow cooking is the only way women get attracted. It presumes that women ALWAYS need this kind of priming before sex can happen. This just isn’t true. We know that women can get themselves worked up a LOT faster than that; else we wouldn’t hear stories of bar bathroom BJs and same night lays for men they just met a couple of hours before. At the risk of crassness, she can go from quite dry to soaking wet in less than a minute. So this notion that slow cooker is always the way to go and it’s how you get there, is just not true.
Third, when the family/marriage ministries talk about this, it almost always includes choreplay as a required element. “Do the dishes, fold the laundry, help her around the house so she will be rested and will feel like having sex!” Nah. Women aren’t turned on by men with dishpan hands.
Barb says,
“The way you tend to demonize (yeah) women in these conversations here does not do them, or you, justice, I think. I can understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone.”
NAWALT you say? The generalizations here about women are generally true, we believe that. No one said there are never any exceptions because it would be ridiculous to point out something so obvious, everybody already knows that. The harsh truth however is that the *vast majority* of married and single women in the west are completely unsuitable as wives. Selfish, manipulative, controlling. They’re promiscuous before marriage and sexless shortly after. Start gaining weight with the first bite of wedding cake, don’t care about their husbands needs, interest etc. *Most* women make horrible wives. It’s absolute reality and men are finally waking up.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone.”
You couldn’t be more wrong. You are completely wrong. In spite of many opportunities to marry and almost certainly suffer the miserable life of drudgery that would have resulted from pairing in marriage with any of the selfish shrews I’ve dated over the course of my life I’ve remained single. I owe much of my good fortune to the many men I’ve known who told me the horrible truth about their wives, ex-wives and what they’ve seen and learned from other men including blogs like Dalrock’s. All of the misery easily could have happened to me otherwise. Call it demonizing if you like, we don’t need your approval, the ugly truth about women, generally, saved me from a hell on earth. Lady, I feel like I’ve won the freakin’ lottery.
@embracing reality,
I think it is great that you eschew marriage and, what’s more, feel so good about it. Believe it or not, I do too (feel glad that you are not married).
Marriage is definitely not for everyone, and those who feel so antagonistic toward it (and toward people of the opposite gender) should definitely remain single. It works out for the best.
Deti,
> Noice that Barb says she’s in her fourth decade of marriage to her husband.
I had missed that. My wife is clearly attracted to me, but regular touching doesn’t get her to initiate anything. It can make other things go easier, but she doesn’t magically respond to any specific kind of behavior, though ironically a little aggressiveness works far better than asking nicely. (Not that I would ever do the latter, I would just avoid her if she is in a disrespectful mood, at least I would these days. Begging has never been my way. Other problems yes, but not that.)
Barb,
> there won’t be a problem with her giving in to
You don’t know much reality. Plenty of challenges even with all that.
Oscar,
I am trying to address her continual claim that the women can’t but help to respond if her man just does the right things. That is bogus whoever says it. Those things may help or be good, but the women has to have the attraction or get a grip on her own attitude. That will not change without her decision, no matter what the man does.
Barb, I am sure I could match most hard times you could note (perhaps not all). My wife and I never gave birth to children (with only 3 months on birth control at the very start). We raised and went through hell with an adopted sibling group I consider them my children, but they all decided the birth family is more deserving of their loyalty and focus. (The 2 sons kept my last name, at least for a while, which I cannot explain since they keep none of my values.)
The youngest tried to get my wife to leave me as her parting gift (when she left home at 17, legal in Texas). She is now shacking up with her birth cousin as if that is so much better than the direction we tried to get her to follow. (She had/is married to a former (?) meth head who will never amount to much.)
I can match just about any sob story you can make. I have a life to look forward to with no siblings (my younger sister died last year) and no children or family that way in the future. It did almost tear our marriage apart, but fortunately God brought me out of the depression I was facing over losing 1 child after another and my frame is the only thing holding it together, though my wife plays an active part. She had to decide she was going to work and I believe she has. I have seen adjustments. We are both working out the walk and I plan to do more (like eating better and starting back to free weight lifting soon), but she will have an ongoing decision to make to decide what she does.
My actions may make her choices easier or they may not. Remember that sin is pleasurable for a season, but bitter in the end. The right path for anyone, including a woman, can be challenging. You paint a scenario that just isn’t accurate in even my own marriage’s case.
Note I have been married for 26 years as of the end of next month, so I have some experience at this. Both my wife and I come from divorced families as well. We do have a firm commitment to the Lord, but that didn’t prevent her from considering leaving a few years ago. You should realize the world is much bigger than just you and your experience.
Brad, I’m sorry to hear about all the hardships you’ve experienced. I hope things work out well between you and your wife, and, eventually, between the two of your and your children.
I’m deliberately not sharing details of my life and keeping my description very general, because, apart from valuing my privacy, I realize all too well that every marriage has its challenges, often grave. This is not a pity contest. I sincerely believe, however, that most marriages, even those with grave challenges, can be saved. My belief is based on first-hand experience, not only with my own marriage, but also others I know.
I am not saying that my advice is 100% fool-proof. That would be silly. Every couple is different and it is impossible to know what really goes on in individual marriages unless one can experience it. Moreover, as I stated earlier, trying to just invigorate your blah sex life, as important as it is, may not work in marriages that deal with serious dysfunctions that should be addressed first.
But we are exchanging ideas here, aren’t we? Some of them may be useful to others, some may not. Take what works for you.
Barb,
I’m sure you sincerely do feel good I’ve eschewed marriage and the very real statistical likelihood of being destroyed by a selfish wife but aren’t you forgetting someone? As I pointed out so many men aren’t so fortunate to have heard the ugly truth, that you condemned as demonizing, before they make the decision to marry. Don’t you care about them? How about their children that will be denied a father in the home because of their frivolously divorcing mothers selfish quest for personal happiness, however temporary.
Math doesn’t lie. You should be aware by now, if you’re going to debate the subject, women initiate statistically 70% of divorces. 75% of all divorces are No-Fault. University of Notre Dame in a massive study found women broke up families in divorce, not in the majority for infidelity, abuse or abandonment but in the majority for dissatisfaction. It’s simple math Barb, women in massive numbers don’t honor their commitments and in large numbers care more about themselves than not only their vow, their husbands but also their children. Even if men don’t state the facts about women with the most tender of tonality don’t you think single men have the right to know the ugly truth about women generally, before it’s too late?
Those things may help or be good, but the women has to have the attraction or get a grip on her own attitude. That will not change without her decision, no matter what the man does.
Yep! Well spoken.
Let me put my 2 cents in.
Firstly the Prov Erb guys situation is hopeless. He needs to realize that his wife has already emotionally left him. AND… though I hate to say it (because I am a Christian and I believe in the sacrament of marriage). He needs to initiate divorce proceedings.
Why? because his wife has obviously passed the point of no return. And will not be convinced by half measures to honor her vows. Only the nuclear option of firmly revoking his quiet acceptance and provisioning will dissuade her from a slow course to leaving him. She in fact is interviewing candidates right now because she believes that vacancy in her bed will be permanent. He has to put this in his calculus and pull the trigger first. There is a slim possibility that the Marriage can be saved by direct confrontation.
Ok so I have experience with another timeline.
A couple married 14 years 3 kids and 2 dogs. A wife approaching 40 and not liking it one bit decides to “get in shape”. Wife starts going to classes and exercising more. In this timeline the husband had the FIRST incident of the late night Cross Fit and drinks with girls after (seriously it was actually Cross Fit too). And that FIRST time when his wife wandered home at 2am she was confronted immediately and loudly. Also a husbandly ultimatum was given right there at 2:10 Either The Late Nights and “drinks with friends” STOP NOW or he will DIVORCE NOW.
The husband also did a radio silence and left home for 5 days giving the wife the impression that husband was pursuing other options (prayed a lot but no lawyer visits, read “The Game” and “The Mystery Method” cover to cover, if single life was imminent best to get prepared).
Husband came back after the absence and asked “Answer please”.
Wife apologized while crying and asked for forgiveness.
Two years later no late night drinks, no odd socializing with mixed gender groups with husband not present. And happy to say a frequent and enthusiastic sex life.
ALL people as they age and yes we all have issues at Mid Life. But even the best of people need to be reminded what is at stake. And frankly I needed to remind my wife (yes obviously it was me) that I would not take any of this Sh*t.
We live in a VERY free society. We allow people to do things today that would be unheard of in times past. But that freedom in non-ethical circles should not be allowed to bend ones sense of rightness. A man must remain a man and realize what is proper behavior for his spouse to adhere to. And if she is not forcefully made aware of the consequences of unacceptable behavior. He MUST be willing to follow through. There are so few socially and legally acceptable levers for a man to assert his rights in a marriage these days. A man must use his limited leverage at the EARLIEST possible moment or the window of opportunity for change closes rapidly.
For the record I was advised that legal divorce but separation in the eyes of the church was an option. But of course I could never marry again. It hurts even to this day to think about what was risked. In my case it worked out. Rollo talks about “soft dread”, but there are times that heavy reality weapons must be deployed.
@ jf12. I’m sorry to resurrect the conversation. I’ve been away.
I don’t think either sex has a rational control over sexual desire. I’m with Augustine on this one. Perhaps before the fall we could have decided it was time to create a child, reasoned our genitals into cooperating, and then dispassionately done the deed very politely. But in the fallen world, both sexes have to think about how to enflame their spouses over the long-term or settle into a passionless marriage. (Yes, wives should think about how to keep their husbands interested too, if they want their husbands to be happy.)
And I’m not sure the following conversation is quite as irrational as you think it is:
Husband: “Want to have sex?”
Wife: “I’m disgusting.”
Husband: “I couldn’t tell. Get over here.”
Has the wife really been duplicitous here? I think she has said what’s on her mind, which is that she feels physically gross to look at. If the husband assumes that she means something else, well that’s not what she said. If he wants really dutiful sex or a fight, he could reply with a guilt trip. Or, he could address the matter at hand, which is that she feels undesirable.
I understand that this is a burden on the husband. Ideally the wife reciprocates with support in other ways.
@embracing reality
You are right that math doesn’t lie.
Math tells us that, for instance, men are the perpetrators of an overwhelming majority of murders (90%, with over 1/5 of women as victims) and rapes (99% in single-victim incidents, with 91% of female victims). Simple math, simply mind-boggling, isn’t it. Yet I, like most women, choose to interact and form relationships with men, despite these grim stats. No doubt this is unforgivably naive of me, given the scary numbers.
So now that you’ve brought up the importance of math, I wonder — even if we don’t state these facts about men with the most tender of tonality, what with sheer numbers telling the sordid story on their own — whether women have the right to know the ugly truth about men generally, before it’s too late?
I hope you see how that works.
BradA says:
July 26, 2014 at 1:18 am
“I am trying to address her continual claim that the women can’t but help to respond if her man just does the right things. That is bogus whoever says it. Those things may help or be good, but the women has to have the attraction or get a grip on her own attitude. That will not change without her decision, no matter what the man does.”
I see. And yes, you’re right. A person (male or female) has to be willing to be seduced in order to be seduced.
Isn’t that what pick up artists propose; that a woman can’t help but respond if a man does the right things? That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?
Math tells us that, for instance, men are the perpetrators of an overwhelming majority of murders (90%, with over 1/5 of women as victims) and rapes (99% in single-victim incidents, with 91% of female victims).
Sources please. Your numbers concerning rape victims look a tad off.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/false-rape-culture/lies-damned-lies-and-rape-statistics/
Also, and more to the point, what is the percentage that you as a female will be murdered (the rate per 100,000 is something like 1.13 for women) vs the percentage that a married man in the US will get his family nuked against his will? (hint => around 37.5%) It’s quite a difference.
Would you put on a parachute that had a 37.5% chance of not opening when you need it to?
The numbers are from The US Dept of Justice.
Source on rape:
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF
Source on murder:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
Barb
Regardless the accuracy of the numbers, you fail to grasp them. There is nothing in those numbers that is suggestive of heightened risk to be experienced by comporting with a given male. Nothing. Not one statistical thing.
Despite the numbers, again, real or not, your take is histrionic, even if you self proclaim to not be guilty of following through with it. There is nothing there that is “ugly truth about men”. Have someone versed in statistics explain why to you.
Ever seen that joking email that lists off all these horrible statistics and the thing that is being warned about is merely water? What you’ve done with these numbers is a close cousin to how that goofy thing works.
You need more info. You need to know murders per ‘000 people and murders per murderer, and some demographic info, population density info, attempted murder vs success, myriad things to draw even a loose conclusion about women’s need for caution with men….generally.
The only histrionics here, empathologism, come from your and JDG’s knee-jerk reactions to these numbers (which are official DoJ stats, BTW), without proper attention given to the context of my comment.
Mirroring “embracing reality”‘s own arguments using unassailable numbers shows how demonization of the opposite gender is not necessarily reflective of the reality most of us live, and therefore does not serve us well.
Yep! Those stats are not separating rape from other types of assaults. They are playing fast and loose with the definition of rape. Further more, they don’t take into consideration prison rape (which involves mostly men). Men are raped at a much higher rate than anyone wants to admit. The link I posted above will explain in further detail. Here are some more facts and stats:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/activism/about/
Barb sometimes knee-jerk reactions can be a good thing. Whats wrong? You don’t like what the real world looks like? Well neither do we.
Oh, I see Barb, because a tiny** minority of men BREAK THE LAW it’s perfectly reasonable for the law to allow wives to legally destroy husbands and families for frivolous reasons. Nothing to see here, everybody just move along. Men should just blindly trust women in spite of their reputation for destroying families, backed up with facts. Men shouldn’t be allowed to tell the truth about this in harsh tones because RAPE! MURDER! And stuff like that there.. Did I get that right?
** Rape!!! Google “1 in 4 rape myth” and read the truth from sites like Independent Women’s Forum where the long ago debunked study is once again debunked by women.
** Murder!!! If you’re really going to total up the murders don’t forget that your team has now voluntarily walked into US abortion clinics and murdered more that 56 million of your own children. Thats more people than died in the entire second world war. Also don’t forget that the vast majority of time through out history where someone died to save someone else it was nearly always a man doing the dying. Men’s voluntary disposability has been very useful to women, yeah, we’re done doing that but you’re welcome.
Barb darling, you need to lay off that feminist cool aid. It was poison from the start and it’s 45 years old now.
unassailable numbers? Google “why most divorce filers are women”. It’s not 1960 anymore.
From Divorce Lawyer Source,
“It’s the wife who files for divorce in about two-thirds of divorce cases, at least among couples who have children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the proportion has changed slightly over the years; for example, in 1975, approximately 72 percent of the divorces in the U.S. were filed by women, whereas by 1988, only about 65 percent were filed by women.”
” In some of the states where no-fault divorce was introduced, over 70 percent of the divorce filings were by women. Among college-educated couples, the percentage of divorces initiated by wives is a whopping 90 percent.”
You’re behind the times Barb, where you been the last 40 years?
Oscar
Isn’t that what pick up artists propose; that a woman can’t help but respond if a man does the right things? That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?
Not really. PUA’s may make dozens of approaches per week, and they don’t waste time on women that do not respond, they “next” them. Unless you are proposting that a married man should be able to “next” his wife at no cost, you are comparing two very different situations and implying that they are the same.
Is that what you mean to do?
@Mulier, on the other hand I’m glad you are resurrecting the conversation.
“And I’m not sure the following conversation is quite as irrational as you think it is:
Husband: “Want to have sex?”
Wife: “I’m disgusting.”
Husband: “I couldn’t tell. Get over here.””
I would never have said this isn’t a *common* conversation. I’m saying it doesn’t *work* as a sexual technique to get sex. She is saying “I’m disgusting” *specifically to avoid having sex, and for no other reason.
@Deti: “To a married man, a wife’s deliberate deprivation of sex IS abuse. She knows he wants sex and is deliberately refusing him. That is the very definition of abuse. It is cruel. It is inhuman. There is literally nothing a wife can do which is more savagely cruel than to deprive her husband of sex. ”
They also seem to get a perverse kind of satisfaction from it that is enraging. A woman who denies sex IS CHEATING on her husband and she is violating her marital vows. Those marital vows work both ways. In the 1st century the solution to a sexually denying wife was simple- kick her ass to the back room and go get a younger prettier, more compliant model. I think if Jesus had commented on it he would have surely agreed that denial of the marriage vows is the same thing as “marital infidelity.” Stretching the interpretation? Not as much as the Lord stretched Jewish law to free the prostitute. Even His disciples at the time complained about the “hard’ teachings. Today they are not “hard” they are “impossible” or at least “untenable.”
“The wife’s deliberate sexual deprivation having the effect of tempting her husband into sin is yet another indication of the abject cruelty of the situation. She is cruel and injurious to him by deliberately and willfully refusing something he NEEDS; then compounds the cruelty by goading and taunting him into sin.” (FTFY- the male sex drive is not ‘something he wants.’)
@JudgeDread: “I never initiate anymore, and never will again with her.” I did this with my wife for several years and I assure you it does NOT work. There are only 2 options with this dynamic: divorce or despair. Remember the definition of insanity?
@Boone- JSR has got a great start for you upthread and others have commented. You need to make yourself a sexual being with your wife. She is your WIFE. You are supposed to be lovers. Treat her like that. You have to Instigate before you Isolate and Escalate and you have to build a strong frame, immune to her denials.
If you’re really going to total up the murders don’t forget that your team has now voluntarily walked into US abortion clinics and murdered more that 56 million of your own children.
How did I not think to mention this?
Barb darling, you need to lay off that feminist cool aid. It was poison from the start and it’s 45 years old now.
Excellent.
BPP,
What I’m getting from you is “If it’s REALLY hard Jesus can’t have meant that!” This reasoning strikes me as suspiciously similar to “Divorce is okay if I’m reaaaaaaaaaaally unhappy, and Jesus would agree.”
@ Barb:
“Math tells us that, for instance, men are the perpetrators of an overwhelming majority of murders (90%, with over 1/5 of women as victims) and rapes (99% in single-victim incidents, with 91% of female victims).”
So what? The relevant metric is not which sex commits rapes and murders, but how likely you, personally, are to be a victim of such crimes.
Likewise, with respect to divorce (which is the issue under discussion here), the relevant metric (as you’ve chosen to frame the issue) is how likely one is to be a victim of a divorce he doesn’t want. According to the known stats, men are pretty likely to be on the receiving end of a divorce they don’t want.
Your stats tell us nothing about how likely you, personally, are to be raped or murdered. But we know that a good 40% to 50% of married men in this country will be involuntarily dragged through a divorce.
Try again.
[D: Barb is a confirmed troll and won’t be able to reply.]
Ah well, she won’t be missed. She’ll likely return with another user name eventually, she’s likely been here before. Hers is a lonely life living under a bridge I’m sure.
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“@BPP,
What I’m getting from you is “If it’s REALLY hard Jesus can’t have meant that!” This reasoning strikes me as suspiciously similar to “Divorce is okay if I’m reaaaaaaaaaaally unhappy, and Jesus would agree.”
I agree with this assessment to a point and fully expected this reply from somebody- why that is just like a woman leaving the marriage because she is not haaappppy! Except it is most definitely NOT the same thing. A woman denying sex is a soul destroying willful act of disobedience as Deti has observed repeatedly. A woman does this with deliberateness and actual malice. Moreover, she is obtaining perverse and sinful PLEASURE from watching her husband squirm in pain. See my thread over at the Red Pill on this topic:
http://en-s.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/2cfffu/figured_out_something_important_about_sexual/
The current social climate is much different than the climate in the 1st Century when the disciples still complained about the “hard” teachings. With men disempowered in marriage, the teachings are not “hard.” They are impossible. Without the threat of active dread and the threatpoint of being willing to end the relationship because the wife has become an unbeliever by denying sex, the man has absolutely NO power and the wife will treat him as badly as her sinful heart desires. She will deny him with extreme malice and subsume her own desires merely to gain the upper hand and force him to be a good little Beta Bitch who she suddenly finds completely undesirable and suddenly finds that much easier to deny.
The Lord said (paraphrasing) Moses told you to give your (sinful, denying??) wife a bill of divorce because your hearts were hard, but I say if a man divorces his wife except for MARITAL UNFAITHFULNESS then he commits adultery. A wife who violates the marriage vows by acting with malice and cruelty and continually denying sex IS BEING UNFAITHFUL. Such a thing was virtually unknown in the 1st Century- and our hearts have been made ‘hard’ again by the social climate.
Also, being haaappppy (or unhappy) is your individual choice. The man gets the choice and so does the woman and certainly being unhappppy is NOT grounds for a bill of divorce. However, unilateral sexual denial is NOT a choice made by the partner who is not denying but an option forced upon him with all the power of the culture and social power far greater than all of Caesar’s armies.
Marriage is a CONTRACT. You can’t have a “contract” with one party having all the power and one party encouraged and rewarded for changing the terms at will while the other party is systematically disempowered first by the culture and then by nitpicking statements of instruction to a 1st Century audience.
Lets flip the script. Imagine if a woman was being repeatedly tortured by her evil husband. Her husband tortures her physically and mentally because he derives sadistic pleasure injuring her body and mind in order to bend her to his will. If her husband is wilfully causing horrible physical and mental scars and stress to the point she is near suicidal and in complete despair, do you really think Jesus would have faulted her for leaving him? Really? The same Jesus who pardoned the prostitute caught in the very act of adultery?
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OK,
Late to this thread as usual. But I am always trying to get to the truth.
What would you guys make of this line of thought?:
http://www.the-generous-husband.com/2014/08/09/more-non-sexual-more-sexual/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+50%2FCPIy+%28The+Generous+Husband%29
Some clarity would be appreciated.
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