As I’ve previously explained, there is a very common misconception that our society no longer believes in sexual morality. While this misconception is understandable, it overlooks the new sexual morality which has replaced the old one. The new sexual morality inverts the natural order. Now instead of lifetime marriage being the moral place to pursue sex and romantic love, romantic love is the moral place for sex and marriage.
You can see this new view with the huge social push to position couples who embrace divorce as demonstrating the height of virtue. The Huffington Post published an article earlier this week gushing over a couple who took a “divorce selfie”. Since marriage vows have no moral meaning, divorce doesn’t involve breaking any vows. Divorce (they rationalize) should be about celebrating the fact that there once was romantic love, not about the destruction of a family or a failure to honor a solemn vow made in front of God and their closest family and friends. The ex husband in the divorce selfie explains:
Here’s to the most friendly, respectful, and loving split imaginable. We smile not because it’s over, but because it happened…
…we also wanted to let people know that this didn’t have to be a negative experience. We are choosing to move forward with love. We’ve been separated a year, and throughout that time, we’ve both been committed to preserving our friendship.
…
To share that kind of bond with another is one of the most divine gifts given to us…
I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to love and be loved in return. I truly smile because I lived in that beautiful sunlight of love for a bit.
Back in March Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their divorce as a “conscious uncoupling”. The Daily Telegraph and countless other media sources were delighted with this new and more enlightened approach to divorce. More recently Jewel and her husband announced that they were engaged in a “thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves.”
Ty and I have always tried to live the most authentic life possible, and we wanted our separation as husband and wife to be nothing less loving than the way we came together. For some time we have been engaged in a private and difficult, but thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves. Allowing ourselves the time and space to redefine what we are to each other with love rather than malice.
We have been so aware that it is easiest to use the inertia of anger to leverage two souls apart who have been bound together by so much living. By a child. But we did not want anger to burn the ties that bound us. Instead we have chosen the much more difficult task of undoing ourselves stich by stich, and releasing each other with love so that we may take on our new form: dear friends and devoted co-parents of our beloved son Kase. We have no desire to damage ourselves and each other in the process. Who better than each other to bear witness to the heart ache of redefining our family? And who better as ally, while we learn to redraw ourselves in whatever new shape we find as separate people who are still striving to be the best versions of ourselves- as humans and as parents.
This new moral view is so ubiquitous that no one seems to notice what should be obvious. If the ideal divorce is one where no one is to blame, then the ideal marriage is one where the vows have no moral meaning.
See Also: Lovestruck
When I hear someone trying to be “authentic” I release the safety catch of my Browning.
Glad to see you back in the saddle.
[D: Thank you.]
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While marriage does not have a social or moral meaning in this society, I think we can see the marriage ceremony as one facet of a newly institutionalized process. I don’t know what I’d call the marriage/divorce process, but that is what has replaced traditional marriage.
I also don’t think this is as new as many people assume. There’s a book, published in the late 1980s, called *The First Wives Club*. The new institution is at least 20 years old, though it’s newly universalized, I suppose.
I wonder why these people bother to take vows at all. They literally and consciously do not mean them.
I heard that some law student (in Canada?) has once again resurrected the idea of marriage licenses that have an expiration date. Like your driver’s license, it would have to be renewed or it would expire. Sure, it’s nuts, but I don’t see how that differs from this new trend as a practical matter.
I recall attending a wedding once (one of my whack-a-doodle cousins), where they removed the standard line:
“… as long as we both shall live.”
And replaced it replaced with:
“… as long as we both shall love.”
Horrific, but at least honest. (The bride’s white dress wasn’t honest at all, of course).
I totally understand, and agree with how wrong this is. But I also think an amicable divorce is much better (maybe even more “moral” ??) than the typical horrendous divorce in which the wife withholds the husband’s involvement in the children’s life, or tells them horrible stories about their father… or makes up sexual abuse accusations against the father.
Its still wrong to glorify divorce, but at least people are coming to see (in a secular mindset) that treating the ex-husband or wife amicably is important. Its a secular society way of trying to make problem that should’ve never existed be “ok.”
Lyn that is classic. I like to think I would have had the moral certitude to first confirm the content of the vows and then walk quietly out of the ceremony. This is what the lawyers call a contract that is void. The vows “so long as we both shall love” is void ab initio for indefiniteness and lack of consideration (a legal term of art). It is like saying I agree so long as I agree. Nothing is offered in exchange for something else so there is no contract- which is very appropriate for modern “marriage.”
They don’t understand those vows (from a Christian viewpoint). They don’t understand what a “covenant” is and view marriage as more of a “contractual agreement.”
What utter narcissism.
A day of excess and self-idolization (their wedding) followed a few short years by more self-love.
When I received my divorce decree in the mail, my lawyer’s letter started with, “Congratulations!”
I felt sick and sad, but my lawyer’s opening sentence indicated that so many former clients felt great joy and no sense of shame when their (civil) marriage officially ended. People miscontrued my feelings for a guy who hadn’t “moved on past the ex-wife,” but it wasn’t that at all. It was a decree of failure.
Failure is a part of life, but who in their right mind celebrates it?
I may be Captain obvious here, but I wonder if it is rational to expect a secular society to have Christian values? I mean, of course any society that has turned it’s back on Jesus is going to wander off and do un-Christian things and have non-Christian values. I think that it is important to remember that the problem is not that they do not honor marriage vows, but that they do not know or accept Jesus. Until that is fixed nothing else matters.
Tattoo girl…. The “amicable” divorce is a myth for anyone other than the VERY wealthy. Our divorce system is actually a system of resource predation, and there is nothing amicable about being mugged and left for dead. Bear in mind the soon to be ex wife cannot gain maximum cash and prizes unless her husband is evicted from his home and the lives of his children.
BPP, right on – they created “vows” that have no meaning – a mockery that was meant to sound like it was binding whereas it was deliberately stripped of meaning. That wedding happened when I was a child, and walking out wasn’t an option for me. In retrospect, there were a few times I should have walked out of places (my church a few times, for instance), when I didn’t. I was a pretty mild kid. Now? I probably wouldn’t go to the wedding in the first place. I skipped my SIL’s recent nuptials – and I don’t feel even a little bit bad about it.
GWADFT – I see your point, and NOT having a knock-down-drag-out in front of the kids is better than doing so, but if these couples are capable of having a such “loving” divorces, then surely they are capable of just staying married.
GWADFT,
It’s amazing how “amicable” a divorce can be when it never lasted long enough for either to be “vested” in the other’s finances (typically 10 years) or when there are no children to weaponize against the other spouse.
They had an amicable breakup as official boyfriend and girlfriend because they never committed their entire resources (in all forms) to the marriage. It’s so easy to break bonds when you never really committed.
I may be Captain obvious here, but I wonder if it is rational to expect a secular society to have Christian values?
Which is easier to get out of: a 5 year cellular contract with data plan, or a marriage of 5 years?
If car dealers sold vehicles on a contract like modern marriage, how long before they would go bankrupt? “I used to like my car, but now I’m not haaaaapy, so I want it to go away and I don’t want to make any payments any more – in fact, you should pay me until I find a newer car that will make me haaaaapy – and if you don’t do what I say I’ll send the police after you”.
From a purely practical standpoint, given the damage that divorce does to children, it should be extremely difficult for parents to divorce. Certainly at least as difficult as any other common contract people sign every day.
@okrahead
The other problem is what it teaches the children. Their family was just broken apart and their lives turned upside down. When they ask who did such a terrible thing to them, the parents answer:
This doesn’t mean you have to fight in front of the children or draw them (further) into the process. But lying and pretending no one did this terrible thing to them creates its own problems. It also teaches them in the most up close and personal way possible that neither of their parents believe that solemn vows have any moral force at all.
The other answer we see parents telling children is:
Yet the child knows mommy and daddy made the same promise to each other and are quite happily changing their mind on that. The divorce is proof that one or both parents don’t take their promises to love seriously at all. Yet a promise that both parents love them is supposed to comfort the child.
@Chris Nystrom
The far bigger problem is that Christians don’t have Christian values.
I think this is really saying what a large number in the manosphere have already realized: When the vows become meaningless, then the whole thing becomes meaningless. This has really been the state for quite some time. Although, the State will always look for its pound of flesh from the man and insert its own priorities into all of these kinds of things.
But more notably, this trend (amicable separation) is something that really won’t catch on, simply because it doesn’t make money for the lawyers.
If no one is to blame, why split up in the first place?
Good point about children. Tell.them it’s no big deal all.you want, but their unformed minds will look for.someone or something to blame, and whatever they settle.on will scar them for life. It makes.as.much sense as telling a kid who just lost a parent to cancer that it is.no big deal.
You ain’t just whistling Dixie there….
That is so very true Dalrock…. that makes sense.
Has anyone ever gone through Tommy Nelson’s Song of Solomon video bible study? My young single men’s group went through it and I only caught the last video. I’ve watched a few more and he seems to take the churchian stance of men keep your wives happy. Can any wiser people weigh in on this, since he does go line by line through scripture.
I find it interesting that even on HuffPost, most of the comments about the article are negative. Most people who left comments disagree with the notion of a divorce selfie; hey support the idea of marriage for life. Maybe there is hope for us….
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HuffPo
…we also wanted to let people know that this didn’t have to be a negative experience. We are choosing to move forward with love. We’ve been separated a year, and throughout that time, we’ve both been committed to preserving our friendship.
Wait, what? Is this a big, public, extended way to do an LJBF?
Hmm. Well, why not? Carousel riders become experts in both beginning and ending relationships with men, for some it’s just a habit. And most men (beta, etc.) have been trained through both the media and personal experience to just go along with LJBF.
So given that all the relationships both men and women have from high school (ok, mid school) on forward in time are expected to not last, and if they are really, really good to end with an LJBF, then this is a reasonable way for the current generation to come to view divorce.
Of course, as a rule when a carousel rider LJBF’s her latest boyfriend during their 3rd year of college, there’s no fallout on other people such as divorce does to children. Even adult children. A man I met this summer had completed university and was preparing for a graduate school, his parents are in their 50’s or 60’s and he’s the youngest child. Last winter he learned they were divorcing, and although he’s tight lipped about it as men generally are, it’s gnawing on him in various ways. He won’t be going to either of their homes for Thanksgiving this year – too painful. He’ll have to decide how to deal with Christmas, though. Maybe a motel rather than picking one or the other to stay with.
Children of divorced parents are more likely to divorce themselves. Even if the divorce happens when the children are in their early 20’s there is an effect. All the happy selfies won’t paper over that fact. Although come to think of it, given the explosion of frivorce in the 80’s and 90’s, perhaps the LJBF approach is to be expected, as the men and women in their 20’s today are the children of the 80’s and 90’s.
Sure there can be an amicable divorce.. when the wife gets everything with no complaints from former hubby. I’ve yet to see or be part of a happy divorce where the husband didn’t have to delve DEEPLY into his pocket and agree to shoddy visitation schedules.
It is just the husband playing along being nice..hoping she will not go full vengeance on him in the divorce..hoping to come out of it with an extra scope of ice cream.
Since marriage vows have no moral meaning, divorce doesn’t involve breaking any vows.
This is just part of the larger picture that no one’s “word” means anything any longer. It used to be that when two men got together and gave their word, it was their bond and neither would go back on it and would stick not to the letter, but the overall intent of the agreement. Today there are very few people like that (too many men raised by women) – those who are out there in my business I know and we work together all the time for the benefit of both. But every now and then one of the newer guys – usually part of the younger crowd – will slip in and word gets around that you cannot trust so and so. So out come the lawyers. To a certain extent women have always been like that – they have no integrity or honor – I am not bad mouthing women, just stating a truth that is never talked about. That is why they were “controlled” because left to their own devices they deteriorate into anarchy – that is where we are today, needing contracts, which can be broken just as easily because there is no honor. Marriage because it is between a man, and a woman is just the most obvious one to decline the fastest….
I have embraced this mentality and do what is best for me – while there are still people that I know who’s word is their bond, that number is shrinking all the time. Today with women throughout the workforce it’s almost impossible to find any business where honor and integrity still hold the reins. This is why people will call me all sorts of names when it comes to my private life, but when it comes to business, they know that if I give my word, I will stand by it. Of course I couldn’t do any of the more slimy things I do in my personal life without willing women to do them with. I never gave my word to the husband or boyfriend of the women I bed, and remaining honor bound is foolish when others will rake you over the coals if they can. So I would rather be the one doing the raking, and women are enjoyable – as long as you understand they are completely untrustworthy. You can trust them to do what they want, when they want – that may not be what is best, but it is what they want. And today, it is excused by everyone… And men are blamed….
Is it my fault that women will cheat on their husband, or boyfriend? No, it is up to the women to uphold her part of the bargain of such an agreement. Personally, I don’t expect a woman to do this – which is why I have several women I see, and keep my options open. I expect all women to cheat. lie, and otherwise subvert the truth if they can, when they can – and I make sure they understand the consequences. This is why I tell anyone who has a pregnant girlfriend or wife to get a DNA test, ASAP. I expect every woman to lie – and while I expect most men to do the same, I still run into one, every now and then that will surprise me. No woman have EVER surprised me by holding honor and integrity as a virtue.
Women have always been this way – look at Don Juan, he couldn’t have banged half of Europe if women weren’t willing to cheat if they thought they could “get away with it”. Today, it’s just more out in the open and talked about. This is nothing new… It’s just that with the advent of the internet, it’s not as “hushed” up any longer…
You can believe me or not, makes no difference to me either way. Time is a wonderful teacher, and you will learn – sometimes it’s painful, but always useful….
Alluding to what you all have said it just hit me that :
In marriage : man financially responsible, woman – head of family
in divorce : man putatively financially responsible, man punished for screwing up the show, punishment includes denial of fair access to kids (if at all)
Its like Dalrock said before, only in divorce is the man recognised as the head of the family.
And therefore rightfully punished for his abject failure.
As with everything else to do with feminism, no fault divorce is just a damm lie.
Divorce utterly destroys children. It just does. Everyone knows this, most of all the divorcing parents. That’s why they work so hard to rationalize it and furiously resent it when someone is gauche enough to point out what they’re doing to their own children.
Dear Peeps:
The breaking of the solemn vows are important to the ideological structure of late capitalism, and the proof of their importance is their codification into a structure of their own.
The “new marriage” (i.e. marriage/divorce/remarriage/divorce…) is damaging to families and children, but affirmative in the eyes of the state. This ritual reproduces the relations of production by which the state survives and grows. It prepares children for a life of betrayal by bosses and co-workers. It atomizes the individual, cripples him with fear of abandonment, and convinces him to live life as a soft target: no longer a citizen, but merely as a consumer.
Boxer
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Just Saying says:
August 29, 2014 at 12:55 pm
You boast about bedding married women. Alright, they’re bad – and they’re oath-breakers. So… you didn’t break your word because you didn’t give it. You want a freaking cookie?
You’re still a scumbag.
You say, “remaining honor bound is foolish when others will rake you over the coals if they can.” No, it doesn’t make you foolish… it makes you a decent human being – an honorable man. Christians are called to do the right thing regardless of what others do, encourage, or allow. If you think you’ll get a pass for what you do, you are in for the rudest surprise of the ages – eternal damnation.
Anything the Huff Poo puts out is NWO propaganda. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing is fake, fake marriage, fake amicable divorce that just feeds the feminine imperative girl power culture. Men should be happy about their servitude and men think just like women and like selfies too! When was the last time you saw a man happy about a divorce but still wanted to be “friends” with his wife? Maybe he is that pussified but that’s hard to believe. Men get married to stay married or they don’t get married at all. Or maybe like flybynight said, he knows she’s out and this is damage control. I still think the whole thing is fake like everything else you see on the “news”.
The new sexual morality inverts the natural order. Now instead of lifetime marriage being the moral place to pursue sex and romantic love, romantic love is the moral place for sex and marriage.
The new sexual morality also contributes to the reversal of God’s order for the relationship between the husband and the wife, which fits smugly with the “woman is superior (and should lead), man is a dufus (and should follow)” narrative.
The new institution is at least 20 years old, though it’s newly universalized, I suppose.
I would say closer to 40.
As far as I can tell, marriage vows are now seen as contingent on feeling good about the marriage. As a child of what was called, in the 60’s, a “broken home,” I had many conversations with my fiancé about the meaning of marriage vows and the permanence of the union. Twenty years later when she informed me of her intention to divorce me (no reasons ever given), I reminded her about those deep conversations. She said, “When I promised to marry until death us do part, I meant it – then. But now I’ve changed my mind.” I am not kidding: The vows were nullified because she changed her mind. A few months later, with her lawyer threatening to have me removed by force, I moved out of our home and into a run-down apartment a week after our 20th anniversary. At least she accepted responsibility for the breakup of the family. When we told our two children, she emphasized to them that she made the decision and that I did not want the divorce.
Jack Donovan has written a lot about honor. Donovan is not a Christian, and he’s also a homosexual, so that removes him from the good graces of many around here for superficial reasons, but I think his observations are sound.
Honor is an outward display of inner discipline, and it’s the sort of signaling men give to other men, indicating that they can be relied upon in times of crisis. The sorts of childish “me first” ideas that float around the manosphere are understandable, but they’re also not indicative of individuals grounded in a healthy masculine lifeworld.
Not fucking a married woman also ought to appeal to the childish and the selfish for pragmatic reasons, I might add. A married woman who whores around on her husband is advertising, in the loudest possible voice, that she’s a meddler, a troublemaker and no one you want to have anything to do with. Even when I was thoroughly enjoying the libertine lifestyle, I didn’t give two seconds to married chicks. I found them repellent.
Boxer
I have seen relatively “amicable” divorces, but it usually comes from the man’s side, like it was pointed out. Women divorcing often think the husband will stay their “friend” and I’ve observed men use this to their benefit during the process to insure the amount of time with the children was close to 50% (which does impact child support).
Women at some level seem to have difficulty either intentionally, or because of their nature to understand betrayal. I think it is because of their fluid nature. Roissy commented that women have BFFs because they really don’t have the friendships that men do. There are men that would take a bullet for each other, and scarce few women would do that for each other.
But generally the amicable ones have certain traits to it like: the woman is a high earner, or similar earner, or the father is actually more of a caregiver in the children’s lives, or the woman is concerned about the impact of airing her personal life will have on her relationships with friends or family or career (never underestimate this, women are social animals and are very conscious of these things and it can sometimes be used as leverage) and finally, the man wanted out but felt oath bound not to (there are still men like this) and is relieved in a way that the trigger is pulled.
A man generally doesn’t have any choice in the divorce and may choose the amicable route to try and minimize the damage the divorce does to the children. Minimize. He knows he can’t prevent all of it.
And while divorce shakes the foundations of a child’s lives, I should point out that men married to women with a personality disorder are teaching plenty of bad things about relationships and love to their children by enduring the abuse. The current marriage system is set up to give women with personality disorders all the power in the relationship and they abuse it.
But divorced people are never friends after the divorce. They cannot be. You cannot be a friend with a person that has broken an oath and betrayed you. The man just plays nice because it is expedient.
off topic but interesting nonetheless:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/28/link-between-mens-height-divorce-_n_5731688.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
Taller men divorce more apparently and marry more educated women, and younger.
Short men marry later (which is one factor a woman closer to the wall has less window to do it) and even the article throws out that shorter men appear to be more traditional gender roles (ie they employ more masculine dominance, less housework)
I wonder why these people bother to take vows at all. They literally and consciously do not mean them.
My thoughts exactly. How can anyone call what is commonly practiced today marriage. But then again, many of these folks want to call a homosexual interaction a marriage. Come to think of it, some people will consider interacting with animals and inanimate objects a marriage.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/woman-marries-dolphin/2006/01/01/1136050339590.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2035996/Woman-married-to-Berlin-Wall-for-29-years.html
Few seem to know what marriage is anymore.
Kase???
I guess the frivorce industry is headed down the same road as the funeral industry. It’s a “life celebration” instead of morning a loss.
https://www.google.com/search?q=thinkinghousewife+celebration+life+funeral&oq=thinkinghousewife+celebration+life+funeral&aqs=chrome..69i57.8332j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8
“THE modern world progressively destroys all vestige of the sacred and turns all ceremonies and rites into vulgar exercises in self-love. The funeral is no exception to this rule. In an egocentric, nihilistic culture, the traditional funeral is too sad, too serious and too impersonal. It’s too much of a downer. That’s why instead of praying for the dead and contemplating the hereafter, survivors now commonly celebrate the life of the deceased with upbeat eulogies, mementoes, biographies, songs, and photos. Chad Bird, in his excellent essay “The Tragic Death of the Funeral,” aptly calls it “necronarcissism.””
~The Thinking Housewife
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2013/12/the-death-of-the-funeral/
Divorce should be painful because it represents failure and loss. An amicable divorce with everyone smiling and pleased-as-punch broadcasts that they are not feeling the loss, and that means they didn’t place much value on the marriage to begin with. These were two people who should have never married, IMO.
Later, when they start dating again (once the emotions have calmed…. 2 weeks) will suitors find it strange, awkward, and even inappropriate that the divorcees are friends? Imagine the woman you are dating going out for a friendly brunch with her ex-husband.
They don’t understand those vows (from a Christian viewpoint). They don’t understand what a “covenant” is …”
No, but most likely their grandparents, and likely their parents, did. We are circling the drain. If your average non-Christian initiator of divorce views marriage as a contractual agreement, then I have trouble believing they know what a contract is.
I think that it is important to remember that the problem is not that they do not honor marriage vows, but that they do not know or accept Jesus. Until that is fixed nothing else matters.
Making disciples of men and teaching them all that Jesus has commanded is and always should be top priority for Christians.
With that being said, I don’t think a stable society has to be made up of saved people; however, I believe a free society does need to be made up of a moral and religious people (not necessarily saved people).
If it took the complete destruction of a nation to save it’s people, I would be for it.
Well, what they are trying to do is “make divorce better”. That is, recognizing that divorce is a shitty thing, generally speaking, for everyone involved (spouses, children, family and friends), but not wanting to attack divorce itself, they take instead the path of “trying to make divorce better” — aka “the good divorce”. This is a way they have of trying to address the worst aspects of rancorous divorces in terms of impact while at the same time not for one second abandoning the divorce culture which sees burning passionate love as a necessary condition for remaining married, and divorce as an act of positive liberation to find new, burning passionate love … or, just to self-actualize in a different way which “is authentic to you at your stage in life” or some other such post-modern nonsense.
The key is that while they recognize that divorce in practice sucks, their way of addressing that is to try to make it suck less in individual cases, while still retaining, full on, support for the “freedom” that divorce gives (mainly to women). In short, it’s another way of making people feel better about divorce and, for UMCs and above, a way to peddle their divorce in a more acceptable way to their mostly still married social circle (“oh, our situation is very amicable, we’re still great friends…” and so on, to benevolent nods of the cabernet/chardonnay set).
The far bigger problem is that Christians don’t have Christian values.
But are these Christians that don’t have Christian values, or are they tares among the wheat? It’s one thing to not be able to live up to your values, and quite another to not have them to begin with.
Here is a warning to any man who would sleep with a married woman:
With much seductive speech she persuades him;
with her smooth talk she compels him.
All at once he follows her,
as an ox goes to the slaughter,
or as a stag is caught fast
till an arrow pierces its liver;
as a bird rushes into a snare;
he does not know that it will cost him his life.
And now, O sons, listen to me,
and be attentive to the words of my mouth.
Let not your heart turn aside to her ways;
do not stray into her paths,
for many a victim has she laid low,
and all her slain are a mighty throng.
Her house is the way to Sheol,
going down to the chambers of death.
I guess the frivorce industry is headed down the same road as the funeral industry. It’s a “life celebration” instead of morning a loss.
R selection. Any perceived positive experience like marriage regardless of duration/outcome is celebrated because the social environment is so unstable that people feel lucky to have experienced anything “special” even for just a short time before they die. Similar to when cockroaches get sprayed with poison before they die they start having sex. The situation the world is facing is the same and people, especially women are acting accordingly. Sorry to be so dark but I think that’s the truth. Trying to convince people to adopt authentic Christianity in this environment is an almost impossible task because base survival instincts have taken over.
“We have been so aware that it is easiest to use the inertia of anger to leverage two souls apart who have been bound together by so much living. By a child. But we did not want anger to burn the ties that bound us. Instead we have chosen the much more difficult task of undoing ourselves stich by stich, and releasing each other with love so that we may take on our new form: dear friends and devoted co-parents of our beloved son Kase. We have no desire to damage ourselves and each other in the process. Who better than each other to bear witness to the heart ache of redefining our family? And who better as ally, while we learn to redraw ourselves in whatever new shape we find as separate people who are still striving to be the best versions of ourselves- as humans and as parents.”
Pardon my French, but, what a load of mealy-mouthed, sophist BULL$*** !
The Brass Cat says:
August 29, 2014 at 2:16 pm
This.
If two people could divorce amicably, they could (and certainly would have in an earlier time) have continued to live together amicably for their children’s sake. If they truly can walk away from their marriage without so much as the batting of an eye, it is indeed prima facie evidence of an insincerity on their part in the first place.
My divorce attorney told me (and he’s practiced for going on 40 years) that there is almost never such a thing as an amicable divorce. One party always wants out more than the other, and given the incentives and statistics, we know who this is.
Face it, those of us with Christian values in this country are finding our selves further and further distanced from those who allow popular notions to rule the day, in fact worlds apart.
Look up MGTOW on you tube. It isn’t just one or two MRA’s And it isn’t just middle aged white men either.
Dalrock your articles are full of real world truth. You seem to be able to articulate it with real human emotion as the truth plays out in real lives. There are many men that understand and know something is wrong and the country is on a path to MGTOW. And it is the young men that haven’t married that is the group that seems very aware. They know marriage and any kind of vows or promises from a woman is total bullshit. And have adjusted how they see women.
Dalrock, very good post. Nova, very good comment.
Biblical marriage does not have any moral meaning in today’s society. What replaced it was a state institution with much different rules and customs. For a custom or institution to exists there needs to be not only benefits seen by the parties engaged in it, but there would be social (moral) pressures to reinforce the customs values and severe state sanctions (see current divorce laws) levied against those who violate the tenets or principals of the custom. To see the value of a custom to a society you need to look at how many participate is said custom and their general attitudes about it.
That said, nobody enters into a biblical marriage today. What we enter into is a state created and controlled institution where there is no moral force binding the parties together. The only force that binds state marriage participants is the sanctions levied against the man. For those when the marriage break up, as most will do because state marriage is designed to not be a lifelong commitment, they teach their children exactly what they are supposed to.
Marriage as it is called today is based upon encouraging the choice addiction of women and providing the necessary resources to her while she seeks out another mate. The men in the article have just accepted the truth of the matter and instead of getting all angry about it and maintaining any pretence of a masculine frame, they agree with their wives that it is not better to fight but to negotiate.
Nothing will change about modern marriage because there are no severe moral and legal sanctions for those who violate marital commitments. This will not change either. The money and influence and power involved in the modern marriage/divorce industry are far more influential than those who want to restructure our current society to accept the virtues on biblical marriage. If men and women were really concerned about marriage, or legal cohabitation as I think that definition is more apt, they would choose to not participate in it and encourage others to also not participate in it. It is like a faulty product, people tell other people not to buy it and if the campaign is successful the manufacturer would likely stop making the product, recall the bad ones and issue a new product for the consumers. Modern marriage is just like that, consumerism and all. Except that it is not a faulty product to half of our countries population.
@Lyn87
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/what-is-modern-marriage-for/#comment-135678
Minesweeper says:@August 29, 2014 at 1:08 pm
Divorce is not a lie and neither is the article. Its the honest truth. Most men hurt so bad they want the pain to go away so they will give anything to their ex wives thinking (although incorrectly) that the pain will stop sooner. Thats all this is. Divorce is part of state marriage, its just the other component.
Lyn87 says:
August 29, 2014 at 1:45 pm
Just Saying says:
August 29, 2014 at 12:55 pm
You boast about bedding married women. Alright, they’re bad – and they’re oath-breakers. So… you didn’t break your word because you didn’t give it. You want a freaking cookie?
You’re still a scumbag.
You say, “remaining honor bound is foolish when others will rake you over the coals if they can.” No, it doesn’t make you foolish… it makes you a decent human being – an honorable man. Christians are called to do the right thing regardless of what others do, encourage, or allow. If you think you’ll get a pass for what you do, you are in for the rudest surprise of the ages – eternal damnation.
Did he ever say he was a Christian? What is moral code is he violating? Or is it because he does not follow YOUR moral code he is a scumbag? Not defending his actions one way or the other, but your remarks are interesting. I wonder how you would operate in a SHTF scenario.
@monkey
“No fault divorce” is the lie, because fault is always assigned – almost always to the male.
Again, its just another lie upon lie. Almost everything feminism has stood for and campaigned for can be found out to be a lie. It’s only when you take that fact in, then in a strange way it all makes sense. It’s almost as if the females all know its a lie, its just the men who have believed them and then changed the world to suit.
I cannot think of a single thing feminists have campaigned for in my lifetime (40 years or so) that isn’t a bare faced lie that they somehow managed to convince the politicians that is the truth.
The dodgy dossier mistake – repeated ad infinitum.
Minesweeper,
I would say its a lie that divorce can be painless, and that kids are not affected (that bad) …… insert other feminist and trad con lies. What the fems, progs and the modern church are doing is trying to minimize the various opposition to divorce and the various “do not get married” campaigns.
Bango Tango says: @August 29, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Do you think Christianity and its common values would be a detriment to ones no shit physical survival in a SHTF or societal collapse?
Chris Nystrom @ 11:42 am:
“I may be Captain obvious here, but I wonder if it is rational to expect a secular society to have Christian values?”
It is rational. The nuclear family has long been regarded as the foundation of stable societies. Such stability is valuable to atheists as well as believers. Ignoring the religious context, Christian sexual morality also has the objectively verifiable benefits of reduced venereal diseases, stronger guarantees of paternity, stronger emotional-sexual bonding, better quality of childcare and, of course, less need for the hassles of divorce. You don’t have to be a Christian to gain these benefits. Other Christian values like honesty, loyalty, patience and charity also have universal appeal.
Look at all the sexually frustrated men, drugged-up women and broken-home children. Nobody likes our current system. Nobody but our elites, and when a loving God made Hell he must have been thinking of such monsters.
JDG @ 4:03 pm:
“Face it, those of us with Christian values in this country are finding our selves further and further distanced from those who allow popular notions to rule the day, in fact worlds apart.”
That’s probably a good thing, if people see the great gulf between Christ and the world while being forced to take sides. Methinks Churchianity can’t escape the fate of serving two masters for much longer.
Lyn87 would join up with my guerrilla brigade in the SHTF scenario. We’d accept him despite his fondness for stone-age religious superstition, because he’s a stand-up dude we could count on, and that means more than disagreeing about gods and other imaginary friends.
All together, we’d hunt and kill these “rugged individualists” who would make easy targets as they tried to plunder shops and loot homes. Then we’d establish a new society on the ashes of the old one.
Start the world.
Boxer
You can file this under: Well that didn’t take long
First gay marriage, the:
https://gma.yahoo.com/sister-wives-star-kody-brown-wins-case-against-175720352–abc-news-celebrities.html
Ooops
On further reading this has more to do with cohabitation
Boxer,
Thats all well and good, but one thing we talk about in our survival classes is the subject of right and wrong. What would be considered acceptable actions when your life or the lives of your friends and loved ones depends on it? Would you kill to eat, for weapons and ammo? Would you steal these things? What about a starving mob that just wants your food. How would you deal with that?
I think many otherwise good men would have to abandon rethink many of their beliefs and principles.
Dear Monkeywerks:
I enjoy your blog. Please see below…
The best short essay I’ve found lately is Alain Badiou’s work on Evil. You can find that at Amazon for a few bucks if you’re so inclined.
http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Essay-Understanding-Radical-Thinkers/dp/1781680183
Basically, you need to look at life as a series of events. Every event carries within it the possibility for truth, and you need to find and appreciate this truth, and (most importantly) to be faithful to it. Truth is never “politically correct”, in that its quality is to bring us toward a higher level of consciousness, and the status quo never likes truth for this reason.
This is a very contra-Kantian understanding of right and wrong, in that every event (Badiou describes them as singularities) needs to be appreciated for its own qualities. No “categorical imperative” can exist which will satisfy right-v-wrong in every possible scenario.
Two other great books are Epicurus’ “Vatican Sayings” and Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”. When I get asked what people should read, I always encourage these two together, because they approach the topic from very different viewpoints; and, I think they serve to show the complex nature of ethical questions.
Best, Boxer
Ah, a small epiphany. I’m reminded of people who don’t have a strong belief in the afterlife, or who don’t like the “negative” teachings of Christianity like sin and eternal punishment. Often they prefer to skip the funeral and go straight from the wake to the lunch, saying that we should celebrate the person’s life rather than sorrowing over his death. (Yes, we should celebrate his life, but not by using that to avoid the issue of his death, which is what they do with it.) So just as every life comes to an end, so they see every marriage as having a start and an end, and the best marriages are those which are ended when the ratio of good/bad times is as high as possible. Sure, they’d say some marriages, like the ones that make it on Paul Harvey, have an end-point of the death of one of the spouses, but that’s just happenstance; others will have an ideal end-point somewhere after the high point on the happiness chart and before the lowest point.
Looked at in the other direction, I suppose this is why assisted suicide also has grown in popularity. Just as a marriage should be ended as no-muss-no-fuss as possible while things are still peaceful, a life should be ended when the fun times are past and before anyone has to deal with too much suffering.
In both cases, it comes down to personal convenience and not letting anything — even the lives of others — interfere with one’s own comfort. Married couples should divorce before they have to struggle or anyone has to hear them fight. Elderly people should off themselves so no one will have to sit and watch them fail. Babies with birth defects should be aborted so they and their parents don’t have to deal with that difficulty. It’s all the same mindset.
“Chris Nystrom on August 29, 2014 at 11:42 am
I may be Captain obvious here, but I wonder if it is rational to expect a secular society to have Christian values? I mean, of course any society that has turned it’s back on Jesus is going to wander off and do un-Christian things and have non-Christian values. I think that it is important to remember that the problem is not that they do not honor marriage vows, but that they do not know or accept Jesus. Until that is fixed nothing else matters.”
This struck me too. It’s crazy to have non-Christians taking part in a Godly practice, not knowing what it is they’re doing. Unregenerate people taking part in something that is only for the regenerate is a recipe for disaster. The “Marriage” of the secular is “Marriage 2.0” and really has nothing whatsoever to do with Godly marriage. Marriage 2.0 merits no respect whatsoever; it’s garbage, fit for the dung hill only. Garbage in, Garbage out.
To expand on what Okrahead and Dalrock already said: yes, an amicable divorce is preferable to an ugly one. But here’s the problem with that: if a couple is capable of divorcing amicably — especially when there are children involved, which raises the stakes drastically — they were capable of staying married and making it work. When one spouse hates the other too much to tolerate marriage any longer, any chance at “amicable” is well in the past. The choice isn’t between amicable or ugly divorce; it’s between staying married or getting divorced.
Another thought on “amicable divorce”: let’s say you know a couple whose marriage has gone sour. They had several good years and have a couple kids to show for it, but for the last three years, they’ve been fighting a lot, there’s almost no sex anymore, and the kids are getting freaked — one is falling asleep in school and the other has started to wet the bed. Now divorce is on the table, and really getting ugly.
So one of your friends says, “It’s too bad they didn’t divorce a few years ago when it could have been amicable, like that Paltrow chick. They and their kids would be happier, they’d all remember the good years instead of these painful ones, and they could even still be supportive of each other instead of tearing each other down.”
Ok, but even if you accept that — how were they supposed to know? When things were still good, how were they to know that a few years of pain were coming up? Were they supposed to break it off after their first fight? The first time she told him to sleep on the couch? The first time one smacked the other? Also, bad times always have good times mixed in, so it often seems like better days are right around the corner. There’s just no way to tell how bad things are going to get until they do.
So as plenty of others said, beating me to it before I got around to posting my first comment: if you can still be amicable, why would you consider divorce (unless you’re some kind of Hollywood oddball)?
“Do you think Christianity and its common values would be a detriment to ones no shit physical survival in a SHTF or societal collapse”?
No it wouldn’t be a detriment. That’s wasn’t my point. Whoever holds those values even in a non SHTF/collapse scenario are usually better off or at least less dysfunctional then those who don’t. But trying to convince people of that if society as whole is doing the opposite is a hard sell, especially when immediate gratification is so instinctual. I really meant reproductive strategy, not just basic survival and I’m primarily referring to women. Sorry for being unclear.
Boxer,
First off, thank you for your endorsement. I will look into those books.
I think we would probably agree on more than we disagree on many things. I hope that you and others here are not judging me on some of my rhetorical and theoretical positions as an effort by me to legitimize overall bad behavior. That said I do believe the line between right and wrong can and is often a grey one depending on the specific event. This includes the morality of sex in and out of relationships and specifically marriage.
Seeing as you read those books how did those authors approach the basis of their morality? Was is biblically inspired or did it come from self, their upbringing and current social mores?
Bango,
My bad. I was asking generally, but your the points were good.
Cali,
I think most people fear death. Along those same lines they fear anything that is perceived as negative, unhappy, or that messes up the party.
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 7:37 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> Cail Corishev commented: “Since marriage vows have no moral meaning, > divorce doesn’t involve breaking any vows. Ah, a small epiphany. I’m > reminded of people who don’t have a strong belief in the afterlife, or who > don’t like the “negative” teachings of Christianity like sin a” >
Dear Monkeywerks:
You consistently talk about interesting stuff, so I don’t care whether I personally agree with it; but, you’re right. I’m sure we agree as often as not.
None of those guys are/were Christians. Badiou has been an atheist his whole life, and Epicurus and Aristotle predated Christianity by 500 years or so.
Epicurus was, unlike many Greeks of his time, a strict materialist and a complete unbeliever in any sort of afterlife or cosmic purpose. He believed that individuals ought to do what gave them the greatest happiness or pleasure (hence the term Epicurean).
If he were alive today, he’d be the first to point out that PUA types and carousel riding sluts are among the most unhappy people alive. Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll are not bad things, to an Epicurean, but in order to gain happiness from them, they should be put in their proper context. A married man who gets sex from his wife twice a week is much happier, and enjoys sex much more, than a cad who lives in the brothel and gets sex multiple times per day. In the latter case, sex itself loses all its exciting aspects and just becomes a chore. In the former, it is part of a healthy, balanced life. Epicurus called this a “cheerful poverty”. You’re supposed to save things for special occasions, and the waiting for them actually is pleasant in itself. Thus, being married would be “right” and being a cad would be “wrong” in an Epicurean ethic.
Anyway, I hope that is helpful. Smarter dudes than I abound here, and it’d be fun to get some more views on these guys.
Boxer
Does divorce make people happy. A study confirming that couples that stay together during the rough patches are generally happier.
http://americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/does_divorce_make_people_happy.pdf
Other interesting articles
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/03/encouraging-marriage-and-discouraging-divorce
http://marriageandfamilies.byu.edu/issues/2001/January/cohabitation.htm
http://sws1.bu.edu/afnewman/papers/marriage-nber-jul26.pdf
Reminds me of an epiphany about that very subject. It seems once you had a deep love for the woman that you had sex with, casual sex without love losses its allure regardless of the amount. If you ate filet (insert fav food) everyday you would also tire of it. Maybe thats why men have such a hard time with being starved of sexual and other intimate affection from their wives.
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> Boxer commented: “Dear Monkeywerks: You consistently talk about > interesting stuff, so I don’t care whether I personally agree with it; but, > you’re right. I’m sure we agree as often as not. Seeing as you read those > books how did those authors approach the basis of the” >
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This tends to lead to marrying early, i.e. by about age 20, or not much later, because people are not going to wait much longer to start having sex. The notion of marrying by age about 20, however, was reasonable in biblical times, but it is not reasonable now.
In biblical times, average life span was less than 30 years. Thus, if people were to reproduce, they had to do so fairly early in their lives. Additionally, if they married a person who turned out to be inappropriate for them, they did not have to suffer for decades—they would be dead before then.
Nowadays, average life span is greater than 75 years. Thus, people can reproduce in their 30s (or 40s). Additionally, if they marry a person who turns out to be inappropriate for them, they will have to suffer for half a century (assuming no divorce, as Dalrock advocates)—an extremely long time.
People develop during their adult lives. People do not know who they are at age 20. Moreover, marrying so young often leads to marriages of people who lust for each other but do not have strong non-sexual compatibility—and that will lead to severe problems in the long term. Yes, some marriages at that age can work really well. There is, however, a substantial risk in marrying so young: a risk of either divorce (if such is allowed) or half a century of misery.
The biblical approach was appropriate then. It is wrong now, at least on rational/objective grounds. If you want to say that the biblical approach is what your religion tells you to do, then fine. (I am not Christian/Jewish/Muslim.) Otherwise, the argument that marrying early is rational or better for society does not seem to be valid.
Finally, delaying marriage to age about 30 obviously leads to other problems. I am not proposing answers here. I am just saying that the severe problems with marrying by about age 20 have not been adequately considered.
@Douglas7
Psalm 90:9-11 For all our days pass away under your wrath;we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy,or even by reason of strength eighty;yet their span is but toil and trouble;they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger,and your wrath according to the fear of you?
“People do not know who they are at age 20.”
Is that an real thing, or just a fiction that people believe as a result of our society’s current obsession with delaying adulthood further and further?
Douglas7 said:
“The biblical approach was appropriate then. It is wrong now, at least on rational/objective grounds. If you want to say that the biblical approach is what your religion tells you to do, then fine.”
The biblical approach is only “wrong” by your “rational/objective grounds” which are of no use to me as I can provide rational arguments to all your reasoning. People pairing early, growing into adulthood together could just as easily develop similar personalities as a result of their familiarity. Why are we to believe they will be so dissimilar 5-10 years later? Further why are similar personalities the antidote for divorce? Many couples thrive as a result of being opposites. A shy girl who loves her outgoing husband. Your reasoning sounds like pop psyche to me which I discount completely. People are divorcing because it’s been made too easy and sold by the divorce machine as a cure all. This site has explored the stats that around half, as I recall, of divorced people regret decision later in life.
“the biblical approach is what your religion tells you to do, then fine.”
This is what I absolutely don’t understand about secular people, particularly men… Why else marry?
If the moral component of marriage is removed, why would any man in western society bother with marriage? Why? What for?
* Sex is available without marriage
* Cohabitation is available without marriage
* Children born out of wedlock in the US, 40%
*** Marriage is now legally meaningless to men except for the financial obligations ***
So, okay, biblical/moral marriage isn’t relevant to you. What are you doing here? There’s lots of easy sex just waiting for you out there, either free or very inexpensively. You don’t need no stinkin’ marriage, times a wastin’!
The problem is that biblical no longer exists for any age people decide to marry. You dont have to be a Christian to see that under the old rules marriage was a benefit to society and good for both men and women. Now its an industry and bad for men and children.
And the growing up, not knowing who you are thing, the purpose of marrying young is to grow up and go through life with your spouse. You are not supposed to have all your stuff and then show up to the marriage table. Thats not marriage but a business arrangement. Going back to what worked back in the day, a man and woman would build their lives together, which strengthened the marriage and led to stronger families.
Only women marrying in their 30’s are a problem. For men it does not matter. Personally I don’t understand any man who would marry a woman who cannot have children for him, as thats the only useful thing marriage might be good for. However that’s no guarantee.
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 9:52 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> Douglas7 commented: “lifetime marriage being the moral place to pursue > sex and romantic love This tends to lead to marrying early, i.e. by about > age 20, or not much later, because people are not going to wait much longer > to start having sex. The notion of marrying by age ” >
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Dalrock: The other problem is what it teaches the children. Their family was just broken apart and their lives turned upside down. When they ask who did such a terrible thing to them, the parents answer:
The example you cite is two adults attempting to carry on amicably. You instead focus on broken vows and terrible terrible things. The children will focus on their example – two adults reaching a mature conclusion to an untenable proposition – lifelong monogamy.
Dalrock: It also teaches them in the most up close and personal way possible that neither of their parents believe that solemn vows have any moral force at all.
It’s Churchianity that advocates lifelong marriage no matter what the cost, no matter what the risk because it’s ‘biblical’. And no matter what form marriage takes it must still be embraced – till death do you part – because it’s the moral thing to do. That’s why many Christians find themselves in the awkward position of defending an institution that has been thoroughly hijacked and corrupted by feminist legal maneuvering. You simply can’t reject the institution of marriage, no matter how corrupted because it’s inextricably tied to your religious beliefs.
Likewise is it so inconceivable to allow any sort of amicable dissolution or alternative to the marriage? I suspect the children will learn a powerful positive lesson from all of this. Namely that people do not have to destroy family bonds just because they are no longer romantically attached to each other. Would you have it otherwise Dalrock? Would you have the children seething that their parents not stubbornly adhered to a relationship that’s not working? Do you even know what their vows actually were? Toxic relationships produce as much harm as messy divorces. Why not applaud two adults who appear to avoid both? Rhetorical. We know why…
Legal Marriage is a sham and an abomination of it’s old self. Cleave to it at your own peril.
Newly Married, Guilty for Leaving Home
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=905826
How do you successfully tell a guy no?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=905743
—
Marital Classes/ Marriage After 2 Months
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=905860
Well, looks like Xantippe, BlueEyedLady, and FrenzyJen are doing their best to represent Jezebel on CAF.
“A man proposes too soon? Must be a criminal, an abuser, or both”
Societal Decay, it’s just a fancy way of saying people don’t ever grow up if they don’t have to. If you let them party through their 20s on school loans and credit cards, most will happily do so, and then tell you that they didn’t know who they were or what they wanted at 18. First World Problems. In contrast, my grandparents all figured it out by 16-20, because it was the only way to get on with life.
Human nature hasn’t changed in less than a century (or ever), so what’s changed is incentives. Change the incentives, and today’s layabouts and dorm sluts could be responsible parents and citizens who “found themselves” by 18 again.
Marcus, that ‘tell a guy “no”‘ thread has got me laughing my arse off. These are the same chicks who write about how guys must approach them to get past their defenses in order for them to get dates.
The cuntesses are out in full force on those Catholic Forums. Many white knighting manginas too.
Having recently gone through the “mommy and daddy will always be your mommy and daddy” and “mommy and daddy will always love you” experiences I can relate to this sentiment expressed in the comments. Although I fully stood by and sincerely mean(t) this to my son, I always and still feel like I, we, let him down. Truth be it, at this point, I am ‘over’ and ‘moved’ on, at least in mind and body. But my spirit still feels immense sorrow and guilt towards my son and the let down his mother and I made by ‘seperating’. As I’ve mentioned before, in our case I guess I should be fortunate that we never got married but… this is not what I feel to be right, at least the dissolution of the family unit so to speak.
I also feel my son deserved and deserves better from both of us. I was, am ready. Even after everything. Simply because my spirit, my core, my core values tell me that my son and I didn’t get a fair shake in all of this. I have no choice but to fall in line and poster up a make belief “all is gut” life, the whole while perpetually struggling with a failure that is not completely of my own doing. As my son grows, he re-visits and his understanding is growing.
He is wonderful, bright, has a joie de vivre. However, as best as we have made efforts to keep things as smooth as possible, and we’ve done good, I still feel and find that he is lacking in that he is being raised without much sense of a family unit. Understanding, appreciating the value of a relationship between two consenting adults, a commitment to support each other, through good and bad, encourage and help develop each other, to be strong and loving people… ya, well, I really do my best. So as with many children from seperation, he is surrounded by a lot of love, plus a lot of what I call ‘guilt love’, over compensating.. which sometimes has bad effects. (wanting to make everything perfect for him). Instead of being raised by his parents_, he is being raised 1 on 1, two equally split, single parent situations. Two sets of everything. And that bs line about how great it is to have two sets of everything.
I know I sound resentful, and I suppose there is truth to that. However I have made my peace for the most in that I have met these recent challenges by turning inward and really inspecting my core values and standing by them, what I truly believe to be correct, appropriate and most importantly fair.
Now, I couldn’t be bothered with relationships, let alone looking. Too much trouble and soceity hasn’t been teaching people the same values that ring true to my core, nothing a convenant, nor a signed paper can enforce. Simply, a bond through responsibility to raise your kin. What can be more important?
We shouldn’t be celebrating seperations, especially when kids are involved. These are adults choices and we stick them into our the lives our our children who we are responsible for, without accepting their own natural desire – to see mommy and daddy ‘work things out’, you know, that part about the ‘good _and_ bad’? And not jumping ship the first chance you get? And making like, oh, well no big deal. Hey kids, we’re having two parties…!
Peace
“thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves.”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
They never had the values to begin with, or if they’re older they’ve forsaken the values. In that sense, no Christian values. And if they don’t have Christian values are they really Christians or are they unregenerate?
No, just one master. Not the right One, either.
Sure it’s reasonable. It’s happened in the past, even in the US. The problem is that the churches have become “secular society” and turned their back on Jesus. Therefore, they do un-Christian things and have non-Christian values. So the churches have not been salt of the earth and light of the world for quite a while. This is the chief problem that needs fixed. But most are blind to it – I know I sound like a broken record as much as I’ve said this.
I don’t mind them thinking idiotic things, or just being SJWs. The problem is that they can’t be reasoned with (I guess I repeat myself on that last one). I refer mainly to Xantippe, FrenzyJen, and BlueEyedLady, who are all incredibly dishonest in their commenting. Besides that, they can’t (even with help) recognize how many fallacies they utilize in their comments. Xantippe’s favorite is probably the strawman; BlueEyedLady’s is definitely the ad hominem/poisoning the well (which many have called her on); FrenzyJen seems to like the hasty generalization.
The problem is (and this is quite common in social sciences and liberal arts – see Sokal on that one: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html) is that other commenters approve of the conclusion (that one of them draws) regardless of the process to arrive at said conclusion (fallacies, etc). It could be complete gibberish (as is often the case for the comments of individuals named above (X,F,B)), and yet people would still agree with them.
The whole of CAF is frustrating that way – it’s (almost entirely) a hivemind that has rejected reason.
@ Cane Caldo, August 29 at 9:19 pm
In biblical times, there were a tiny number of wealthy people and almost everyone else was poor. People who were wealthy often lived to their 70s or 80s. People who were poor rarely made it to 30. Thus, it was known that people were well able to live to their 70s or 80s, but almost all people died by 30.
@ embracing reality, August 29 at 9:44 pm
My comment said nothing about similarity; rather, it referred to compatibility and appropriateness. Hence your counterargument seems to be purely rhetorical.
Likewise, your comment mixes up “moral” with “biblical”. This site has seemed to argue for marriage on non-biblical grounds. I am disputing such arguments. I am certainly not disputing the desirability, even essentiality, of (possibly non-biblical) morality.
You advise me to go out and have lots of easy sex. My N is in the hundreds, with a wide variety of girls.
I have a broad knowledge, and perspective, that I believe can be used to challenge some of the arguments made on this site. If you do not want those arguments substantively challenged, then you must not be confident of those arguments.
@Ra’s al Ghul says:
August 29, 2014 at 2:00 pm
It’s because it’s the PD ones who scream the loudest and have got the entire landscape terra-formed into what they demand. They are of course all rabid feminists. I’ve not met a Feminist who doesn’t have a serious PD yet (that includes the men).
Before these women were regarded as the crazies who no one believed, now every word that falls out of their mouths is regarded as gospel.
The lunatics ARE running the asylum and have managed to change all the rules.
@Just Saying says:
August 29, 2014 at 12:55 pm
Correct, although I wouldn’t want your lifestyle for myself (been there long time ago), I can see that you are ahead in figuring out the rules of the game and also who you are playing against. The entire manosphere is essentially composed of men being dragged out of a cultural lie into the light of the truth.
And it’s gonna be a painful lesson.
@Monkeywerks from August 29, 2014 at 7:55 pm:
One contention – how to get rid of survivor bias? If there is correlation, then causation might go both ways (people who stay married, are happier / people who are happier, stay married), even without a possible third factor that remains unaccounted for.
Bingo !
@ Douglas7
Historical life expectancy rates usually have more to do with very high levels of infant and child mortality than with the actual lifespans of people who survive to adulthood. Where did you come across the thirty-year figure, and in what context?
That is rich!
It is all well & good that rich celebrities can have an amicable divorce: they have the luxury of their riches to know that they can carry on with little disruption in their standard of living.
Couching this conversation that celebrities are somehow the IDEAL when it comes to marriage OR divorce is laughable; they are the 0.1%. Their lives do not reflect our lives.
Everyday people are struggling to make ends meet in an INTACT family, let alone one that has been gutted by a divorce.
Divorce is a business model, and businesses need customers. The law profession isn’t going to suddenly change their adversarial business model. Nor are governments going to suddenly take the yoke off of men caught up in the divorce industry.
I have seen this animal from the inside working for the Attorney General’s office. Lawyers only need to ‘jack up’ one side of the equation (usually her), and the fight is ‘ON’.
Amicable divorces are a rarity among the masses, as someone (usually her) is usually trying to flee with as much riches on the way out the door as humanly possible. All the while, the divorce lawyer jacking up her expectations of her ‘cash & prizes’.
Make divorce less palatable to a woman (as FH says) by allowing their standard of living to drop post-divorce; and sit back and watch divorce statistics plummet.
OT Dread Game Report
Mrs. Gamer has been bugging me about getting a new toy for her, so while we were out running errands I took her to Cirilla’s to get it and some DreamGirl black lingerie for her to wear.
I was getting ready to go out dancing last night, then Mrs. Gamer showed off her new lingerie. Well, I did my duty to her as regards “to have and to hold” over a period of a couple of hours*. I got some dried fruit, a bottle of Chambourcin (a red) from a local vinyard, some smoked almonds, and some chocolate truffles I had lying around**. I located a scented candle. I put on some musk and headed back to Mrs. Gamer. We tried out her new toy. It really wasn’t needed, but she wanted it and it wasn’t too expensive, so I got it for her. A good time was had by all.
So, the time spent meant that I was late getting out dancing. The late crowd at bars tends to be a hookup crowd. Where I was going, this wasn’t the case. Anyway, I told Mrs. Gamer that I was planning on going out dancing. She threw a major fit–it was totally an insecurity test. Then, about 30 min. later, she was very open to being kissed. I stayed home. Maybe a mistake. Later came another major insecurity test (about 1 a.m.). She took her laptop and headed downstairs to sleep. She’ll probably be friendly to me again when she awakens.
Anyway, I thought it worth looking at the issues that Mrs. Gamer raised:
1) The other night, I danced with a pretty, blonde new-college-grad wearing cute shorts (not so short as to be slutty) and boots who said that she had a good time dancing with me. Other married men didn’t dance with her. [Guilty as charged. I danced with a pretty girl.]
2) Other married men only dance with their wives. [Total nonsense. There are some submissive betas who only dance with their wives and others who are are less submissive to their wives but lack the confidence to approach new women to ask them to dance. Lots of men dance with women besides their wives.]
3) Other married men don’t go out dancing alone. [I haven’t canvassed this, but I know some bf’s who go out dancing alone. Some married women in my social circle also go out dancing alone and I have no evidence that they aren’t chaste.]
4) Dancing is a contact sport and I enjoy touching other women. [Guilty. So what? I am still chaste.]
5) I am addicted to dancing. [Ok, I enjoy it. I use it for exercise, getting material for my book, and to make social contacts. So?]
6) I associate sex and dancing. [Guilty. This is a longstanding social view and I have a lot of company. In the past, dancing was used as training wheels in finding a mate. However, dancing isn’t sex, nor is it more sinful than sex, Baptist opinion notwithstanding.]
7) I make her look bad by dancing with other women. [Total nonsense. It’s the exact opposite. She gains social standing if her husband is a hawt guy.]
Anyway, I didn’t argue much with Mrs. Gamer since her amygdala was making decisions for her and her cortex was hamsterizing. I gave her time to recover control from her amygdala.
Mrs. Gamer said that she wanted to stay home instead of going out dancing with me. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Mrs. Gamer is concerned that she cannot compete with young women. However, they cannot compete with her romantic attraction for me.
Dread Game works. Soft Dread is exemplified as standard behavior for lovers in the Song of Solomon as I plan to show in an upcoming post. Mrs. Gamer is hot for me and is mostly very content; she has a problem submitting and fights for control. I am very bonded to her.
* Third time Mrs. Gamer wanted to play fun and games in 24 hours. She flirts with me a lot when we are running errands, when meeting in passing at home, etc. Mrs. Gamer doesn’t often say “no” any more.
** We eat the dried fruit, then take a little red wine. The combo works nicely. The almonds are to give our palate a break when changing from fruit/wine to the chocolates.
@Casey says:
August 30, 2014 at 8:32 am
Yep, move the threatpoint back to the man. It’s the only solution that works.
This subject is one of my pet peeves, the farce and charade that is the vast majority of modern marriages. I can’t stomach listening to ” for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do we part” …OH PLEASE!!!!!
I come from a rather large extended family so I attend way more of these circuses than I care to, BUT, that said, a few observations:
1) I see more and more guests skip the church and head right to the reception.
2) I hear a shocking number of long married wives (wed in the 50’s and 60’s, still married) who express dismay at girls reciting “traditional” vows…to love, honor and “obey” their husbands. These older, alleged mentor, women are telling the new brides to never be a doormat to their husbands.
3) The priests and ministers are simply a mockery to their respective faiths. I’ve seen high fives from a Catholic priest to a couple, movie reviews for sermons, analogies of canoes on placid lakes, anything but solid gospel.
4) I’ve seen ministers recite the couples hand made vows, giving these empty words a church sanction….we promise to fulfill each other, love each other no matter what, support each other, always be there for each other …blah blah blah
5) my god the brides and brides maids are getting fat.
6) when I suggest to my fellow guests that the real reason for a wedding invitation is to compel us, the friends and family, to hold them to their vow, there is laughter or incredulity. Yes the vow was to God, but society always knew a vow needed “right now” social sanction for the parties to be pressured into keeping it. This is why you stand in front of everyone you know and swear to that list! duh!
I love asking the new brides, when they do the round robin table visits, to tell how she knew “he” was the “one”…..The groom is right there, so are your family and friends, ok snowflake, lets hear it!
The stammering, the vapid first date tale, the observation about his smile, car, outfit, build, whatever…it’s a hoot. But it is also how I predict the length of the marriage…and not to boast, but I can usually nail it to within a month of dissolution with about 99% accuracy.
@Douglas7
You went to public school, didn’t you? You must overcome that, and go educate yourself.
Gamer:
“** We eat the dried fruit, then take a little red wine. The combo works nicely. The almonds are to give our palate a break when changing from fruit/wine to the chocolates.”
The almonds are probably the most important part of that, followed by the chocolate. In fact I would recommend every man here eat 20 almonds a day because of the benefits it has on your testosterone.
Buck:
“But it is also how I predict the length of the marriage…and not to boast, but I can usually nail it to within a month of dissolution with about 99% accuracy.”
You can make money on that in Vegas . . .
@ Michel Mason, August 30 at 8:25 am
As an example, in ancient Egypt (Middle Kingdom) average lifespan of peasants—as indicated by graves—was less than 30 years. There are many references for this, but I do not know them from memory.
A brief google search turned up Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt (Princeton, 2001) stating the following.
@ Michel Mason, August 30 at 8:25 am
As an example, in ancient Egypt (Middle Kingdom) average lifespan of peasants—as indicated by graves—was less than 30 years. There are many references for this, but I do not know them from memory.
A brief google search turned up Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt (Princeton, 2001) stating the following.
Here is an interactive graph to illustrate how much lifespan has changed even just during the past 150 years in the U.S. (to sieve out infant mortality, click on “Age 5″).
http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US39-01.html
There is an excellent interactive graph that goes back to 1800 for most countries at
http://www.gapminder.org/world
—although this does not sieve out infant mortality.
CC to Societal Decay
If you let them party through their 20s on school loans and credit cards, most will happily do so, and then tell you that they didn’t know who they were or what they wanted at 18. First World Problems. In contrast, my grandparents all figured it out by 16-20, because it was the only way to get on with life.
Cail has the right of it, incentives and expectations matter. I have some relations who did geneology work on various branches of the family & prior to the 1960’s most of the ancestors were married off by 22 or so. In fact one ancestress who married when she was 22 was pretty much a spinster by then, in that place and time.
Looking at the same thing from a different angle: spend time around tech school / skilled labor community college students. People whose are working to pay their own way through welding, automotive, HVAC, cosmetology, medical tech, etc. These people are typically 18 – 22 years old, just like college students at Enormous Party U. but they generally are more cognizent of time and money. Whether the expectations come from family, or their own peer group, or inside, they are present, and the outcomes are obviously different.
I’m guessing that such people probably don’t read the supermarket magazines as much as some others.
Regarding mining and agricultural workers:
They typically experienced the greatest hardship of all people throughout history, whether slave or free.
@ Cail:
“Another thought on “amicable divorce”: let’s say you know a couple whose marriage has gone sour. They had several good years and have a couple kids to show for it, but for the last three years, they’ve been fighting a lot, there’s almost no sex anymore, and the kids are getting freaked — one is falling asleep in school and the other has started to wet the bed. Now divorce is on the table, and really getting ugly.
“So one of your friends says, “It’s too bad they didn’t divorce a few years ago when it could have been amicable, like that Paltrow chick. They and their kids would be happier, they’d all remember the good years instead of these painful ones, and they could even still be supportive of each other instead of tearing each other down.””
This is actually a pretty good description of every marriage, good ones included. Every marriage – every single one – goes through rough patches. And most marriages have times of real hardship. Job loss, prolonged physical or mental illness, family problems, disagreements based on opposing views and there’s real entrenchment with husband and wife having dug in their heels. All these things are seemingly insurmountable. But what seems to be the case is that in a marriage, things will look up if you wait them out and stay together. I seem to recall Dalrock posted something about that a long time ago.
This is why lack of attraction is such a problem in marriages, I think. What’s going on is that women marrying in their late 20s or early 30s are marrying men they’re not attracted to at all, or are not as attracted to as they were to the men they had sex with before. So they’re not really bonded to their husbands – the bonds are nonexistent; or they’re not strong enough to withstand the real hardships that come. Whereas, if one marries his/her “one and only”, the bonds forged between young adults in the fledgling marriage cause them to know literally no other way of adult life. They don’t know any other way to live, so the only alternative is to remain together, tightly bound. Those bonds are so strong that nothing from without can rip at them. Those bonds can be torn asunder only from within (adultery).
Cail Corishev says:
August 30, 2014 at 1:03 am
This pushing back of the age of majority (functionally not legally) drives me crazy. College students are treated like children, rather than being held to the appropriate adult standards, and predictably they respond by behaving like children.
The truth is people do develop over their lifetime. At 30 you aren’t who you were at 18. This is simply a function of learning and life experience, and it never ends. Misinterpreting this as “finding yourself” or some other new agey crap gives the impression that there is some magic age threshold at which you suddenly become a whole/complete person.
It is misguided to use this threshold as a reason to avoid decisions such as marriage, or worse, use it as an excuse for bad behavior.
In fact the concept of adolescence (teenagers) is a product of modernity. Earlier, life consisted of two phases: childhood and adulthood. Adolescence was the product of larger societal forces more so than biology (although there is an argument for a biological basis). Today virtually no one in Western culture denies the validity of adolescence. What we might be witnessing is the invention of another phase of life, the post-adolescent. This is not a stretch of the imagination considering the delaying of marriage and childbirth. I’m not advocating for this–I think it would only serve to further weaken our society–but I definitely see it as a possibility.
Deti, Hence the no rings for sluts rule, or as GBFM says “the one cock rule”. When women were less promiscuous they simply bonded better to their husbands. With female promiscuity as it is, that biological process simply does not happen as much or as strong as it it. I call this a micro evolutionary event.
As for women not marrying men who they are attracted to as much as their previous lovers, see above. So does game fix this? As you may well have seen most men reject examining themselves in such a way that would allow them to learn and use game, so the problem snowballs.
The ONLY way to even attempt to fix this is society wide changes in values promoting old school values. However I dont see this happening. Maybe the less cynical do.
On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> deti commented: “@ Cail: “Another thought on “amicable divorce”: let’s > say you know a couple whose marriage has gone sour. They had several good > years and have a couple kids to show for it, but for the last three years, > they’ve been fighting a lot, there’s ” >
@monkey, indeed, which is why young marriage is probably the only way, rather than mid 30’s with high N count.
funny how it is all coming around
“Look up MGTOW on you tube. It isn’t just one or two MRA’s And it isn’t just middle aged white men either.”
I’ve been a Christian since I was 19, and I’ve been a MGTOW since I was 13 – yeah, early Red-Piller. I know that God created men to be the more aggressive of the genders, but even so, I know from reading and listening that more of us are foresaking the increasingly amoral sham that is Western marriage, and I don’t foresee marriage rates getting much higher anytime soon. Good.
I am getting to the point where, before I respond, I may have to ask couples who invite me to weddings if they really mean to be married for life, for richer and for poorer, and in sickness and in health.
I am also getting to that point where I may not give wedding presents to marrying couples until their tenth, twentieth, or even thirtieth anniversaries.
Western marriages are nothing but a joke.
Dalrock, perhaps what we see in these propaganda stories is the beginning of a new “anti-shaming” movement. We already have fat acceptance, it dates to the 90’s. Slut acceptance is still not quite mainstream yet, but there’s a lot of effort going into it both from 3rd stage feminists and their manbooby white knights in various quarters.
Clearly we are overdue for “divorce acceptance” not as a de facto condition, but as something to be pushed and celebrated. It is the next logical step beyond the whispers.
And, not to name any names, but “Fat-divorcing-slut acceptance” clearly is the avant garde…
Even the young ones have 15-20 by the time they are 25 years old. Cant win.
I will relate a family story that relates to the concept of “getting married too young”: my father always told us that it’s not a matter of finding the right person, it’s a matter of being the right person. With the prevalence of “soul mate” BS that abounds in romantic stories for young women, especially in fantasy, I think that concept is one that is important to impart (and continually reinforce) to little girls as soon as they hit the “I love princesses and romance” stage. That’s not to discount the importance of discerning whether or not a prospective mate has compatible life goals – guy who wants 12 kids should not marry girl who wants 2, for example – and guiding principles (matching morality). But as others have stated, people develop over the course of their lives and there’s no point at which personal development stops and you can say, “Ah, I have arrived.” Don’t get married with the intent to change your spouse, but DO get married with the intent to change alongside your spouse, with the goal to become ever more compatible as time goes on. People say things like, “We just grew apart over time,” as if this is something that just randomly happens and not an admission of total failure as a couple!
Douglas7 announces:
“I have a broad knowledge, and perspective, that I believe can be used to challenge some of the arguments made on this site. If you do not want those arguments substantively challenged, then you must not be confident of those arguments.” woo…
Some of “substantively challenging” arguments you’ve presented so far, from your “broad knowledge”
“People develop during their adult lives. People do not know who they are at age 20.”
This is not profound knowledge. People can change and particularly change their mind at any point in life. People stay married because they’re committed to make it work and compromise. This is no argument for delaying marriage.
“marrying so young often leads to marriages of people who lust for each other but do not have strong non-sexual compatibility—and that will lead to severe problems in the long term.”
The notion that Christians are marrying exclusively for or even mostly for sexual compatibility is absurd. People can grow together or apart at any point in life, it’s a matter of choice and priorities.
You offer nothing substantive and your “arguments” miss the entire point here anyway. For those who believe in the biblical God and therefore biblical marriage, sex = marriage inside God’s will. Sex outside means the potential of hell. Those are the Christians choices. “Compatibility” is irrelevant in this equation. If you’re not a Christian your opinion on the subject is also irrelevant, what the hell do you care about marriage, especially biblical marriage? Debating you further is more wasted time for anyone who believes in Biblical marraige.
Once again monkeywerks throws his poo in my general direction, then licks his paws.
What monkeywerks fails to understand is that I did not pronounce a verdict of scumbaggery because JS violated MY moral code, but because he boasts of violating GOD’s moral code.
But since he monkeywerks cannot seem to quit when he’s behind, he doubles-down on his insanity by questioning how I would do in a SHTF scenario. I assume he means to infer that I am not as… Tough?… Savvy? As he imagines himself to be. Not to worry, monkeywerks: I spent more than two decades in uniform and did a combat tour, and I have led men in harm’s way. But if it makes you feel better – if the world as we know it ends I would expect little trouble handling internet poo-flingers like you.
Oops – “infer” should say “imply”
@theasdgamer
Odd. If it is a social dancing group, people tend not to hook up as the network is very very very very small. Where I go, generally people go alone, but the couples tend to only dance a couple times with each other, generally with other people. The mark of the couple is 3 songs in a row rather than one or two… As long as you aren’t buying girls multiple expensive drinks or picking up numbers, what does she have to be mad at?
@douglas7
Do your references have stats for the size and number of orphanages that would have been necessary if that were true? Building them would have occupied all the time of Egyptian men. Egyptian women would have been famous throughout the ancient world for their enormous gallon-jug breasts; necessary to feed the babes of women dead by (an average of) 30. Otherwise: You’d run out of peasants within a few very short generations.
Unless, of course, what your stats are actually representing is a helluva lot of people dying very young (before the age of marriage). In which case, no one was calculating that they should “marry by 20 because they were going to die in 10 years”. You’d just hope to make it to whatever age, and then get married if you do.
@Lyn87: You’re still a scumbag.
Hmmm… I never said that I was a “nice guy” – yet what does it say about women who will betray their marriage vows to have sex with a “scumbag”? Especially, when their husband or boyfriend is paying for them to get away ? Yet you have no names for them? Hmmm… Interesting…
you are in for the rudest surprise of the ages – eternal damnation.
I will have good company then. Yet, who is more to blame? The guy that had sex with a woman once 30+ years ago, or the woman who lied about it, and made the husband pay for those 30+ years? Who is more deserving of your condemnation? Look, it doesn’t matter to me – I just think that men need to know how “trustworthy” women are in general.
You hear about it all the time – the guy that finds out “wifey” has been lying to him, and wasn’t the chaste little thing she portrayed herself to be, but was called “Football Peggy” in college because she was f**ked by 4 years of teams… It’s common for women to decide, to keep that hidden. Of course today – that is more and more difficult as videos tend to pop up… Then it’s time for that good ole fall back, “I was drugged and raped…” Yeah.. Right…. But hey… I’m just saying…
Could we discuss how lifelong permanent marriage is not a good solution?
“Good” in whose opinion and by whose standards, John N?
Just Sayin’ pretends that I have criticized his adultery while excusing that of his partners. Apparently he’s new here – as I have done so continuously and vociferously for years.
The reason I called you a scumbag is because you have admitted to being one. The reason I did not address your whores is because they are not present for me to do so. Tell them to sign and and I’ll be glad to call them scumbags, too.
And if you think you will enjoy the “good” company in eternal damnation, you’re going to be unpleasantly surprised.
@John Nesteutes –
Could we discuss how lifelong permanent marriage is not a good solution?
It’s not clear from the above sentence: are you arguing for the “not a good solution” idea you just mentioned? Or against it?
Because I really hope you’re not arguing for it. I just wrote a lot of words in the other thread about how, while I disagreed with your position on pacifism, the personal attacks you were receiving weren’t justified and I had a lot of respect for most Mennonites, you included, because you were genuinely trying to be disciples of Christ. I hope you’re not about to make me retract those statements by arguing for an anti-Biblical position like “marriage shouldn’t be lifelong”.
“Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.”- Friar Lawrence (via Shakespeare)
Dave:
“I am also getting to that point where I may not give wedding presents to marrying couples until their tenth, twentieth, or even thirtieth anniversaries.”
So you’ve elected to never buy a wedding present again. Good for you.
On life expectancy in historical times. I do a lot of genealogical investigation here in Mexico using church and civil records copied by the LDS church and accessed via Family Search.
I worked through several years of death records in the 1800’s for a nearby municipio (county) using a spread sheet. In most years, age at death averaged around 8 or 9. Yet, there were always a few individuals who died in their 70’s and 80’s; once in a great while even their 90s. The averages were so low because most babies died, period.
I suppose I could dig into spread sheet math and figure out what the life expectancy was for those who didn’t die before age 10, or any other age cut-off.
To this era, the 21st Century, in rural Mexico a third birthday party is still a big celebration. It is obvious to me that this tradition started when few babies lived to be three years old.
When you live past a certain age, you accumulate many interesting anecdotes in your mind. The bad news is once in a while, you share them with an unwilling audience, heh heh.
Some years ago, before I retired from the large international corporation, our department had a nice meeting room for our monthly bull meetings. It had carpeted floors; two sets of lighting, one of them dimmable, lots of chairs, and a gigantic table so everyone could sit around it. A nice table with excellent varnish.
One day at a meeting one of the techs blurted out “LOOK! BUTT MARKS!”
We all looked where he was pointing and sure enough, there were two round marks buffed into the varnish, exactly the right shape and distance for butt marks. You could even distinguish the ‘around and around’ from the ‘up and down.”
Talking about breaking up a meeting early! Hee, hee.
Later that day the table was sent out for re-finishing.
The funny part was I happened to know that room was kept locked up when no meetings were scheduled, and the keys were stored in a locked drawer of the department secretary, a married woman.
Management had to have known that, as well. Yet no one was fired. And, that decision had to be made by: the department manager, also a married man. No need for Sherlock Holmes to analyze that one.
Living to Age 5 is normally the hardest part of human survival. We take supremely low child mortality rates as given in the modern world, but it’s very new. Once you hit about 20, it’s really just the standard “accidents, occupation and plagues” before you die of old age.
In the ancient world, it’s the occupations that’s normally the problem.
No more lies.
No more marriage.
No more children.
No more human race.
@GreyGhost
“”There are many men that understand and know something is wrong and the country is on a path to MGTOW. And it is the young men that haven’t married that is the group that seems very aware. They know marriage and any kind of vows or promises from a woman is total bullshit. And have adjusted how they see women.””
Correct! This is how I see it as well.My friends and co-workers converse on a daily basis with men in the 23 to 30 range.They work at brokerage firms etc.I have noticed in the last 10 years that most of these guys have no ambition to get involved with a woman and be dragged through the court system.They have seen it via their relatives,parents,friends etc.I have heard a lot of harrowing tales as they have confided in myself and friends.This is good!….it shows me that they are observant! They look up to us for advice on career and investments etc.Another thing that I have noticed is the lack of respect that they have for women.They have told me all the stories about the office skanks. The one thing that stuck out to myself and friends was how many of these idiot women are using the internet and webcams.I have seen it first hand as they have showed me recorded episodes of the office skanks.Now I admit that we had a really great laugh but,these women think that it is increasing their “hotness” to the male dating market.WOW!….how delusional can you get! The other thing that I have noticed is how they treat women today.I mean they treat them like garbage.We have talked extensively to these up and coming lads about their “game”.These guys are ruthless! We have all had women that we have P & D’d.But,these guys look to emotionally scar these women…..and they are doing a good job!..Their motto..”F*** em!…treat them like the pigs that they are”. And the wimmin love it?…..WTF?
Mark
Just home from work. The trend is growing and I’m helping it along. I always advise young men to adopt or use surrogates. Gay marriage and gay men are going to really spike the demand for surrogacy and when that cash cow gets up and running the industry will have single men being marketed to. The thing about MGTOW/fatherhood is the incentive to produce will return. But women will be cut out. I’m a family man at heart and I don’t see any reason to let some cunt stand in the way of that. If you just have to have a wife marry some chick but the children are yours. 90% of the bitch problems are solved.
As soon as the tipping point is reached I’m going full mangina, white knight male feminist. The whole morality of love, be true to yourself. My new mantra for the girls will be don’t rush into marriage, try to get an education, date different people until you are ready, don’t let yourself get tied down. Hell yeah I’m going to be one swell pro equality for all guy. Inertia and friction, a lot of friction getting men to understand MGTOW. The fun part will be the inertia when the MGTOW train starts rolling. To keep the fun going the inertia of the feminist herd has to be maintained to create the most entertaining hysteria. The herd will shift but the laws of misandry will remain. Friction like we have never seen getting the herd to stop the misandry train and then get it going in reverse. Women’s magazines will be like ready comic books (I liked Calvin and Hobbs).
Good luck and have fun fucking them whores out of their fertile years. BTW if you know any doctors see if you can find one that can help develop a test to check the effects of Gandarusa for a guy that is using it that he can do himself.
Note how Boxer silently dates the origins of Christianity to the mid second century A.D. Epicurus may be found, according to Dante, in the sixth circle (heresy) of Hell. The Greeks were entirely unaware of The Jews.
Do Devout Catholics get married earlier than the general population
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=905998
Freaking Out (relationship issues)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906034
Is it okay for a Catholic woman to say she only wants 2 kids and use NFP to do so?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=905993
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement
@ The Brass Cat, August 30 at 1:32 pm
Definitely. This is a consequence of most people having life spans well over twice as long as they did centuries ago. This is one of the points that I have been making. If you agree that there nowadays is a post-adolescence, then consider that marriage should wait until that is over.
Obviously there is no “magic age” threshold. It is a question of degree. A person will have developed far more at age 30 than at age 20. Marrying at age 20, with lust as a huge driving factor, is much more likely to lead to a marriage of people whose personalties are incompatible. Really, I think this is clear.
Broadly, people seem to measure time in proportion to the length of their lives. E.g. five years is twice as long for a 10-year-old (half his/her life) as it is for a 20-year-old (a quarter of his/her life). One implication is that additional development, or additional life experience, decreases exponentially with age. For example, people develop much more during ages 20–29 than during ages 30–39, even though both time spans are 10 years long.
Marriage is supposed to be a picture between Christ and the Church. When they get together, people get born again and the angels in heaven rejoice.
If you are a Christian couple trusting God with your family, and another baby is born, you get nervous laughter and scornful looks.
I’m not a Catholic, but I like Humanae Vitae as it codifies some common sense in marriage. It rightly predicted skyrocketing divorce rates, the objectification of women, coercive population control, and exploding immortality across the board.
That’s why contraceptives were illegal in this country for so long. How long can a free republic last in a decadent culture that scorns it’s own biology?
@Robin Munn
I phrased poorly when I said “Could we discuss how lifelong permanent marriage is not a good solution?”
My position is that lifelong permanent marriage is a good solution. I’d like to stop talking about the theology/doctrine/exegesis of such, and instead discuss how it might be bad from a manosphere perspective.
My experience so far is that the gains of permanent marriage restraining women from frivolous divorce far outweighs any losses from men in sexless marriages or with cheating wives being unable to remarry.
But I’m open to being challenged. I think this is a doctrine that could bring a great deal of life elsewhere in the church.
That ex-husband in the “thoughtful and tender undoing” of his marriage would have to be a hot contender for Beta Of The Year. Plenty of women’s underpants sold minus the gusset from where he came from.
One of the foundation stones of this new morality is “not to judge”. Divorced women quickly tell us “not to judge”, to not be “judgemental”, and – get this – “where is your Christian charity? God says Don’t judge!”
This is used as a shield of course. They know they are wrong morally and want to escape the consequences.
Perhaps here is a good, non-religious, non-doctrinal statement of my position.
A man is a fool who marries a woman who does not believe that she must not do these things:
– Pray or prophesy without properly covering her head and hair.
– Dress immodestly, wear expensive clothes, wear gold jewellery or complex hairstyles
– Plan to be anything other than a keeper at home of her children
– Tolerate or condone Christians remarrying after divorce for any reason
– Tolerate or condone sexual immorality, including homosexual acts
– File lawsuits, including filing lawsuits (including plaintiff in a divorce suit) or criminal charges against her husband.
– Attempt to change her husband other than through prayer and setting an example of righteous behaviour.
– Attempt to hold her husband accountable. (She should choose a husband who is in fellowship with other Christian men, but she leaves it up to them to hold him accountable.)
– Refuse to submit to her husband, unless she is facing a choice between obeying God or a man. (A wife may refuse to commit adultery at her husband’s behest, or to deny Christ, for example. But such a grievous situation must result in her seeking help from the church’s leadership, which should start with her consulting older women she is herself accountable to.)
– Allow herself to have frequent friendship / companionship with other women who do not believe the same way she does.
– Attempt to train / disciple herself from lots of books, worldly sources of wisdom, TV preachers (Joyce Myers, Joel Osteen, etc.), etc. instead of being instructed by older women in the church who in turn display proper headship towards their husbands.
– Allow herself to be taught by a woman occupying an unbiblical position of authority / leadership such as pastor, minister, bishop, etc. (anything beyond deaconness).
@greyghost
The MGTOW train is already rolling. I know plenty of relatively unattractive, beta-seeming males who break up with their girlfriends, go into an FWB zone for a while, and then just sort of don’t bother with girls for a while.
None of them are interested in being married. Nearly all the men I work with (who aren’t religious) are divorced and don’t really have any plans to be remarried.
Marriage 2.0 will be dead within my lifetime, other than a few adherents of the Church of Feminism who will continue to worship before Andrew Dworkin to the day they die, seeking penance for their sins of micro-aggressions, even the ones they sinned unknowingly.
Most men I know seem to be trying to figure out how to live life without women because women are just way too much trouble. Even having sex with them seems to be too much trouble, or the things women want are just too perverse.
@theasdgamer
I questioned my church’s teachings against dancing my whole life.
Then I met you.
It all makes sense now.
@Casey
The divorce/family destruction industry is indeed in need of new customers, and as marriage rates plummet, the pressure in the USA to turn cohabiting couples into de-facto marriages will mount, as it already did in Canada and Australia. (@Mark has commented a bit about this – six months with a woman, poof, alimony for life. So Canadian men throw out their girlfriends before they hit the 30 day mark where you’ll need a legal eviction. It truly is bizarre. Although it’s a bit encouraging to see worldly friends of mine refusing to live with their girlfriends.)
They (the family destruction industry) are also turning their focus on stable religious married couples with lots of kids, with the implication we have “widespread child abuse”. “Child abuse” includes, where I live, teaching one’s children during school hours that homosexual behaviour is immoral. Thus homeschooling parents must be careful not to talk about it during school hours. Eventually, parents teaching children any sexual morality that goes against the dominant culture will be criminalised and evidence of child abuse.
This has all happened before, and will happen again. Men must stand firm.
@Dalrock
The far bigger problem is that Christians don’t have Christian values.
“For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” (1 Co. 5:12)
I really do not expect worldly people to have Christian values. Most of my focus with worldly people is on leading them to Christ. For example, one young man is struggling with being an alcoholic and has no drivers licence due to excessive drink driving. I don’t really bother telling him to stop drinking; instead, I show by example and by words that Christ can set one free of addictions.
“God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”” (5:13)
We are to judge within the church, but we leave judgment for those outside of the church up to God. Worldly authorities and nature itself eventually does a decent job of this. The fellow with the string of drink driving arrests will eventually end up in prison, or dead after driving his baby momma’s car into a post.
But within the church? Anyone I know who claims to be a believer, but regularly engages in drunkenness, will experience the full force of judgment from me. Christians are actually supposed to judge one another.
A divorced woman who claims to be a baptised believer showing up in church must be judged and exhorted: “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.”
Christians who do anything other than exhort, discipline, lead by example, and either lead to repentance or disfellowship such a woman are not Christians themselves. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
The power of Christ is that divorced, immoral women, even those who grew up as believers, can find repentance and turn back to God. I worship with these people across the aisle from me every Sunday. Formerly sinners, saved by grace, and with the manifestation of that grace bringing righteousness both inwardly into their hearts and outwardly into their lives.
“And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”” (John 8:11b)
re: Opus, August 31, 2014 at 3:17 am:
“Note how Boxer silently dates the origins of Christianity to the mid second century A.D. Epicurus may be found, according to Dante, in the sixth circle (heresy) of Hell. The Greeks were entirely unaware of The Jews.”
The Septuagint, translated about the 2nd century BC, would seem to say otherwise.
Boxer recommended Nicomachean Ethics for this readership – I second that. It literally has the power to make the receptive reader both more ethical, and smarter, IMHO.
Catholicism and Judaism are both Aristotelian. It is possible, though not necessary, to be Protestant and not be Aristotelian. To be Catholic and not Aristotelian is to be Catholic in name only and really to be kidding oneself. I wonder which circle of hell Aristotle inhabits.
Through Aquinas and Maimonides we learn from Aristotle – the pagan – that our deposit of consciousness and agency is a participation in the mind of God and that the Divine, while a prime source – uncaused in itself, is nevertheless not the machine – Deus, is not, machina.
“…materia prima…is endowed with the intellectual faculty, possesses a special property by which each individual, according to the degree of his perfection, is enabled to manage, to calculate, and to discover what is conducive both to the temporary existence of the individual and to the preservation of the species. All other movements… by the individual members of the species are due to accident; they are not, according to Aristotle, the result of rule and management … Aristotle sees no difference between the falling of a leaf or a stone and the death of the good and noble people in the ship; nor does he distinguish between the destruction of a multitude of ants by an ox depositing on them his excrement and the death of worshippers killed by the fall of the house when its foundations give way.”
Moses Maimonides
That we learn these things from pagan, Maimonides advises, “You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.”
Greyghost:
“Gay marriage and gay men are going to really spike the demand for surrogacy and when that cash cow gets up and running the industry will have single men being marketed to. The thing about MGTOW/fatherhood is the incentive to produce will return.”
It would be interesting to see the results of a generation of children raised by single fathers. It cannot be worse that what the single mothers have created.
John N:
“The MGTOW train is already rolling. I know plenty of relatively unattractive, beta-seeming males who break up with their girlfriends, go into an FWB zone for a while, and then just sort of don’t bother with girls for a while.
None of them are interested in being married. Nearly all the men I work with (who aren’t religious) are divorced and don’t really have any plans to be remarried.
Marriage 2.0 will be dead within my lifetime”
Considering how fast men get chewed up that are still foolish to marry, it should be over soon. Dalrock still thinks men in general want to marry. The millennial generation and below have a very different perspective on things.
The rate of divorced men getting remarried has gone from 100 per thousand a year to 30 in 40 years. There are a lot of long term marriages out there that a propping up the illusion that marriage is still going strong but that won’t last much longer.
There’s a lot of societal inertia on this. A normal man wants to have exclusive sexual access to a woman and be guaranteed that her children will be his. In most societies throughout most of human history, he could accomplish that by marrying — therefore, men wanted to marry. Marriage was the means to the end, not the end in itself.
Now, marriage no longer offers that guarantee, at least not much more strongly than simply shacking-up and being long-term boyfriend and girlfriend. But nothing else has shown up to replace marriage in making that guarantee, and men still want that exclusivity, so most will still marry and hope for the best. Changes at the margins can have a powerful effect, though, especially if the men who back away from marriage are the most attractive ones.
I don’t know many young men, but if what I’m hearing here is true, there’s been a big shift in young men’s thinking in a single generation, as they’ve adjusted to feminism and the carousel. It’ll be interesting to see if women adjust as quickly to win those men back. We could see a growing group of girls in the next generation rejecting their mothers’ power-suited career-girl feminism, going overtly feminine with dresses and bringing back the home-ec or finishing school attitudes about becoming marriageable young ladies.
This tends to lead to marrying early, i.e. by about age 20, or not much later, because people are not going to wait much longer to start having sex. The notion of marrying by age about 20, however, was reasonable in biblical times, but it is not reasonable now.
Not moral, however, for sex to take place outside of marriage. No Christian can morally support that, as it is clearly not moral from a Christian perspective.
@ Novaseeker, embracing reality
This blog has often claimed that there are strong non-biblical arguments for its positions on marriage, sex, etc. I am challenging some of those arguments.
If you, or anyone, want to claim that your actions are determined by what the Bible says, that is fine. Biblical/Christian positions, however, are not relevant for my challenges.
You should either defend the non-biblical arguments or say something like “we accept that there are no strong non-biblical arguments”.
(I noted the above earlier, and hope that makes it clearer.)
Douglas7 says:
August 31, 2014 at 4:22 am
I’m not implying that a post-adolescent phase is good, necessary, or even a biological reality. Being an adult means taking on responsibility, so given the opportunity many young adults are quite willing to adopt post-adolescent behavior/lifestyle. It is being encouraged institutionally. For example, they can stay on their parents’ health insurance until 26. And college is basically summer camp with booze and parties. Even the young adults who are not in college will participate in this lifestyle. The critical question here is does societal acceptance of a post-adolescence result in a net benefit for society?
Yes, I’ve seen statistics showing that marriages at younger age have a higher divorce rate. Most of those marriages are based on romantic love (lust). (Maybe it is different for courtships where the families guide the relationship, but I’ve never been involved with courtship so all I can do is speculate.) But, late marriage has its own set of problems that are major tradeoffs for the divorce rate… If your goal is a big family marrying late is counterproductive. Late marriage causes bonding issues because of the high number of sexual partners. Also, if you are the man, you have the pleasure of knowing you are the man she had to settle for after she sampled a dozen more sexually appealing men.
Bonding happens when you grow together as a couple. A later marriage may have less bonding even if they are more technically compatible (more shared interests, etc.).
@ Isa
The mark of the couple is 3 songs in a row rather than one or two… As long as you aren’t buying girls multiple expensive drinks or picking up numbers, what does she have to be mad at?
I don’t buy women drinks or ask for numbers. If they offer them, I only text to say where I’ll be dancing on a particular night as part of a spam text to my dance list. Two dances in a row Is my limit.
It’s about a woman’s emotional centers. If she feels unhappy about some event, blame a man. It’s biological. Also, dancing resembles mating in some respects, so emotional centers get activated, then the cortex hamsterizes an explanation that blames the man.
Issues arise about enjoying the physical contact. Actually, when you’re busy leading complex patterns, those thoughts don’t even have an opportunity to arise. If you’re just chatting and doing the basic step, maybe–typically that’s more of an issue for beginners. Even then, they probably have to concentrate on doing the basic step and keeping time.
Making an issue of dancing with other women likely also is a play for dominance. She is trying to impose her ethical frame.
Aristotle is in the First Circle which is really Limbo (along with Averroes and Avicenna). I am not quite sure therefore why poor Epicurus and the Epicureans (obviously where Boxer is headed) is up in the Sixth Circle – though of course the further in you go the worse it gets. Dante had one-itis and needed Virgil to hold his hand all the way to Beatrice (in Paradise) having found himself in a gloomy wood midway in this our mortal life.
@ Opus, Bluedog
Note how Boxer silently dates the origins of Christianity to the mid second century A.D. Epicurus may be found, according to Dante, in the sixth circle (heresy) of Hell. The Greeks were entirely unaware of The Jews.
The Septuagint, translated about the 2nd century BC, would seem to say otherwise.
Then there’s Nero’s persecution. All easily explained by Christians having access to a Tardis.
@theasdgamer, re: Nero’s persecution.
I believe you made a joke – but I’m sorry I need it explained. My kid loves Dr. Who but I’m kind of media stupid that way.
@Opus,
re: “Aristotle is in the First Circle which is really Limbo (along with Averroes and Avicenna).”
Touché.
Yeah – after I wrote that as a rhetorical I literally googled “what circle of hell is Aristotle in” and that came back – reminded me my dear old mother had taught me that once when explaining Limbo. That also suggests though that in divine time, he (and they) are no longer there, as the release of souls from Limbo, the first circle of hell, is the Catholic interpretation of the idea that Christ descended into hell after the crucifixion. Of course we’re stepping into the rhetorical, but I think at that point or this, we are arguing about the number of angels on a pinhead, if arguing at all.
@Douglas7
No, you aren’t. If there is a post of mine you want to argue against, find it and explain where I’m wrong (preferably on the post you are refuting). What you are doing here is endlessly changing the topic and declaring yourself the victor.
You should either defend the non-biblical arguments or say something like “we accept that there are no strong non-biblical arguments”.
Actually I don’t care what the secular arguments for and against are — it’s a moral issue about sexuality, full stop, from my perspective. Any argument which argues in favor of extramarital sexuality, or a “marriage culture” which is based on rampant extra-marital sexuality occurring prior to marriage is morally bankrupt, so the secular arguments in favor of that are irrelevant for me.
Catholicism and Judaism are both Aristotelian. It is possible, though not necessary, to be Protestant and not be Aristotelian. To be Catholic and not Aristotelian is to be Catholic in name only and really to be kidding oneself.
Eastern Orthodoxy is not particularly Aristotelian — if anything, its general approach is closer to Platonism in some respects, but not in others.
@ Bluedog
@theasdgamer, re: Nero’s persecution.
I believe you made a joke – but I’m sorry I need it explained. My kid loves Dr. Who but I’m kind of media stupid that way.
The Tardis allows travel to any point in time and space. Hence, Christians from the second century could go to the first century to be persecuted by Nero if they had a Tardis.
Although I do not doubt that Aristotle influenced Christianity (Augustine for example – and probably Islam through those two Muslims I mentioned, especially Averroes with his ‘commentary – on Aristotle – vast’ as Dante puts it), to perceive Aristotle as a sort of proto-Christian is both to do a disservice to Christianism and also to Philosophy. Aristotle is not doctrinal unless you count the Prior and Posterior Analytics – which are on Logic – as dogmatic. Aristotle always reminds me of a school-master and his writings read like tentative notes for lectures.
I would have thought that Epicurus with his obsession with happiness might appeal to Americans.
I recall that The Tardis has already been to Rome at the time of Nero. Despite the best efforts of The (1st) Doctor the city still catches fire.
There is no such thing as marriage in a matriarchal society. So I’m rather non-plussed by this: the divorcing parties are simply acknowledging the lack of existence of something that never existed in the first place. The definition of a matriarchal society is one in which the children are considered to primarily belong to the mother, not the father. Until THIS problem is acknowledged and recognized (and it is likely a cold day in hell before any Church says anything about this; there was NO religious opposition to “tender years”) every supposed “answer” is spitting in the wind.
Douglas7 it appears part of your confusion in the length of life in ancient times is that you keep saying average when you mean life expectancy. Average is not a useful metric for assessing a length of life comparator. The general life expectancy reported for ancient times means the length of life an average new born will live. The life expectancy of a 20 year old was more like 50-60 years.
Anyway – not that important but the difference is important in understanding the ancient world. As someone said the biggest gains to life expectancy come from imporoving infant mortality.
As others said – rich people can do lots of dumb things plebes like me cannot. Divorce amicably when you are both millionaires is not tough. Jewels husband, if he is savvy, can get all sorts of cash and prizes.
This is a great message Darlock has been hitting. The secular world thinks all things are sanctified by our feelings. This was CS Lewis warning in the Abolition of Man. Basically we will elevate chemical impulses in our bodies to our gods that sanction whatever we wish.
@Just Saying
To a certain extent women have always been like that – … That is why they were “controlled” because left to their own devices they deteriorate into anarchy
My siblings and I observed this when my Dad died – Mom went crazy, money vaporized – and my sister virtually quoted the bolded about my mom, in response to Mom’s occasional comments that Dad was a control freak.
“A quite special place in this long development belongs to Saint Thomas, not only because of what he taught but also because of the dialogue which he undertook with the Arab and Jewish thought of his time. In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between them.
…
“This is why the Church has been justified in consistently proposing Saint Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology. In this connection, I would recall what my Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, wrote on the occasion of the seventh centenary of the death of the Angelic Doctor: ‘Without doubt, Thomas possessed supremely the courage of the truth, a freedom of spirit in confronting new problems, the intellectual honesty of those who allow Christianity to be contaminated neither by secular philosophy nor by a prejudiced rejection of it. He passed therefore into the history of Christian thought as a pioneer of the new path of philosophy and universal culture. The key point and almost the kernel of the solution which, with all the brilliance of his prophetic intuition, he gave to the new encounter of faith and reason was a reconciliation between the secularity of the world and the radicality of the Gospel, thus avoiding the unnatural tendency to negate the world and its values while at the same time keeping faith with the supreme and inexorable demands of the supernatural order’.”
Fides et Ratio, John Paul II
____________
Aristotle is not doctrinal, but Catholic and Jewish inquiry, including inquiry into scripture and tradition, sews its way through Aristotle – and nothing less than dogma requires it in the case of Catholicism.
Convention tends to put Augustine and Aquinas on different sides of the aisle – where we don’t reject Augustine, but we tend to think of him as heading in a direction with the best input of Plato, but then corrected rather materially – and essentially – sine qua non – without which nothing – by Aquinas through Aristotle.
A Catholic reading of scripture considers the text, considers the context, considers the early church and then asks, “what did Thomas say?” The nature of the divine, the nature of the trinity, the nature of Christ … using the insights provided to us by the Sage, Aristotle, what did Thomas say?
The result is a confusion of cognates when non-Catholic Christians talk with Catholics. Often not knowing why – because too few Catholics understand their Aristotelian roots, Catholics really, really mean something different, when using the same words. The common denominator (“remainder” might be the better metaphor) is almost always Aristotle, which is unnecessary to the Protestant exegesis, but implied in the Catholic form. And that’s only where it begins. To remove Aristotle from the inquiry at this point is to render a new religion. You can think about the divine in a pre-Thomist or pre-Maimonides way and still be a Protestant Christian, but I doubt such an understanding may be said to be Catholic.
Cail:
“But nothing else has shown up to replace marriage in making that guarantee, and men still want that exclusivity, so most will still marry and hope for the best.”
Ah but there’s the rub, there is No Guarantee. At all. Anymore. Not to exclusivity. Not to the children being his. (the never was if the WWII stats of a 25% cuckold rate back then is true.
There is a more modern guarantee of paternity and that’s a DNA test better then marriage.
“I don’t know many young men, but if what I’m hearing here is true, there’s been a big shift in young men’s thinking in a single generation, as they’ve adjusted to feminism and the carousel. It’ll be interesting to see if women adjust as quickly to win those men back. We could see a growing group of girls in the next generation rejecting their mothers’ power-suited career-girl feminism, going overtly feminine with dresses and bringing back the home-ec or finishing school attitudes about becoming marriageable young ladies.”
Possible, Cail, but the problem here is the same social inertia you’re describing. The direction and momentum has shifted the other direction and its going to take more than that to change the direction.
The average marriage now is 8 years long. Think of all those people being married for 50+ years currently that a skewing this. The divorce rate in California is 79%, again think of all the long term older couples that are skewing even that.
The divorce rate per thousand marriages is going up, the number of marriages per thousand is going down. And I don’t see this changing, especially as the more attractive men avoid marriage more and more, what is left are the desperate men that are willing to pay full price and they are more likely to end up in the meat grinder because they are unable to keep their wives satisfied.
Plus the number of women with personality disorders isn’t lessening, its increasing and every man and woman raised by a single mom (now 40% of the children in the U.S.) have never had long term relationships, healthy or otherwise, modeled to them.
What I’m seeing is more alienation between the genders under 30. Even blue pill men recognize it, they just blame men for the fact that the young women are messed up more than they have ever been.
The California consent laws are just more of the direction things are going. Most young men are living in their separate spheres of sports and games because anything less than a green light from a woman is too much risk for too little reward.
You couple that with the nature of women being such that only at their most desperate do they ever express an obvious open green light.
Again, if you want to restore marriage, 2.0 has to be utterly destroyed, suffrage has to be repealed, the welfare state has to be dismantled, no fault divorce removed, VAWA and domestic violence laws have to be repealed, sexual harassment laws have to be repealed, the apostate churches have to be destroyed and a reborn Christianity has to flourish.
I don’t see those things happening without either an Act of God and/or the destruction of western civilization, or an extremely blood and protracted civil war throughout the west.
Because all of those things that have to be done require women to sacrifice power and the vast majority of women will not give up anything unless it has no use to them anymore.
Dalrock says:
“No, you aren’t. If there is a post of mine you want to argue against, find it and explain where I’m wrong (preferably on the post you are refuting). What you are doing here is endlessly changing the topic and declaring yourself the victor.”
Well played sir, douglas7 is nothing more than a polished atheist troll ultimately looking to argue, with anyone, about the whole premise of Christianity, existence of God etc. There are sites for people bored enough to waste time on that tired dead end argument without disrupting the subject here. I’d like to see these types tossed in the bin.
Opas – I would have thought that Epicurus with his obsession with happiness might appeal to Americans.
Good one!
I interrupt the spirited debate here on Dalrock to bring y’all a bit of comick relief…
http://acculturated.com/is-chivalry-too-risky/
Make sure to read the comments. Feel free to leave your own, if you have the inclination.
Boxer
Also the Satellite of Love, with the same fiery results.
Women love “closure.”
@Novaseeker
The thing is, there are plenty of quite strong secular arguments for traditional marriage. There just aren’t any strong arguments for the kind of marriage Doug7 likes (the kind where the vows don’t have moral meaning). Fatherless homes are a disaster for children, especially as they become more of the rule than the exception. Weakening and delaying marriage is a disaster for our economy, as it removes the incentives for young men to work hard in preparation to lead a family. The carousel (which is what has filled the vacuum) is also a disaster for women, despite how enticing it is.
But this isn’t about any such discussion. If it were, Doug7 wouldn’t be so careful not to:
1) Advance any argument of his own.
2) Argue against any specific points I’ve made either on this post or any others.
This is about Doug7 repeatedly declaring he has won an argument without ever offering one.
Dalrock,
I think most men here and even most men in general (religious and secular) would agree that only sanctioning sex within marriage is a fine idea and even preferred considering the many benefits. I may be reading too much into it but I think that possibly Doug7’s point may have been that our society has done a 180 and is encouraging (thus legitimizing) sex outside of marriage and for the most part punishing those men who wish to maintain a higher standard of behavior via the divorce industry and how virgin men generally do not get to choose the top shelf women because of preselection, hypergamy, and the feminine imperative which is all largely unchecked and detrimental to stable courting, mate selection and marriages. I can expand on this if you do no understand.
On Sun, Aug 31, 2014 at 8:05 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> Dalrock commented: “@Novaseeker You should either defend the > non-biblical arguments or say something like “we accept that there are no > strong non-biblical arguments”. Actually I don’t care what the secular > arguments for and against are — it’s a moral issue about ” >
Ras al Ghul
My thinking on the idea of the family man/MGTOW and the use of surrogacy is the near beginning of genesis where God says you need a helper. She is a helper. The trouble man has is when he elevates women and not woman(wife) which should be based on her behavior. Western civilization is literally founded on gina tingle. MGTOW family men will still be s productive out of necessity for the sake of his progeny as man would for his wife before feminism. Society wins civilization prospers and grows. When a man has full auhority over his children that is not based on their mothers gina tingle we have rational and confident men. No woman can resist submission to such men. the herd will remove the laws of misandry for there own selfish interest no virtue empathy or kind understanding required. Women can be the same nasty bitches they are right now and behave as if they are angels. All a wicked façade but good enough. (best you can expect from a woman today) The kids will do fine and as I said before Christian men GTOW ( I may get band for That) Or beta men GTOW as family men I will bet my life and soul on,will not with full effort duplicate what the baby mommas and single moms have done in Detroit, Chicago, etc. The prisons across America and the west are full of single mother raised children.
The question here is it biblical for men to under mine misandry and feminism in such a way and is that pleasing to god. I know it is unpleasing to righteous men. Would a man seriously interested in pleasing god in spite of man’s traditions and beliefs find unbiblical a family man GTOW. Getting the job done with out her because we can. The same technical wealth that allows feminism used to undermine it and crush it.
Dalrock & Monkey,
I don’t think that is what he is saying.
I think what he was trying to say is that (at the time when the words of God were put into the Bible) ordinary people did not live long. So getting married young made perfect sense because…. you were dead if you waited too long. More to the point, because people didn’t live very long they didn’t have long to wait to have their marriages end by the hand of God if they were sick of their spouse. So of course, it was so much easier to get (and stay married) for a lifetime when God’s words because The Bible because people lived much shorter lives.
I don’t even know where you are going with this.
Doug openly admitted that his N count is in the hundreds. If we take him at his word, then his looks, intelligence, charm, athleticism, physical height, and earning power places him in the top 1% of males. Good for him. And if what he said is true (an N count in the hundreds) then its entirely possible that he he wound up f-cking (and running) from the majority of these sexual encounters (ie: he f-cked ONLY for conquest, never for love.) That would only make sense since he couldn’t possibly have hundreds of sexual “relationships” unless he lived as long as Methusilah. We can also extend that and say the 100-500 different women he bedded, its entirely possible that this cad of a man took the virginity from (perhaps) 10% of them. In a way, this Don Juan of a man (if you believe what Doug is saying) is the lion king of the pride, the ultimate alpha male.
So if you are reading Doug, with an N count in the hundreds, let me ask you…. why are you here?
Take a look at this article and check out the comments
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/there-will-be-gray-area-when-nfl-implements-domestic-violence-policy-211326437.html?bcmt_s=p&bcmt=1409493615608-eee37fc0-b79d-4ebe-bd60-c69da1c05c28&_profileOut=comment
@Monkeywerks
@IBB
This is my point. No one knows what Doug7 is arguing because he has been extremely careful not to make an argument. The closest to an argument is his hand wringing around longer modern mortalities and the problems this creates for lifetime marriage. But even here, he sort of dances around the issue instead of putting a stake in the ground. It is a good thing for him too, because not only has he wildly overstated the mortality of those who made it to marriageable age in the past, but he is ignoring the quite obvious fact that divorces are least common during the time in life he claims has suddenly made lifetime marriage insufferable. It would have been embarrassing had he made such an argument in earnest.
Doug7 doesn’t like the point of this post, but he can’t seem to find an argument to refute it. There is no need for everyone to continue to try to guess at whatever argument Doug7 might have meant had he been able to form an argument. Instead, he should put on his big boy (or as I strongly suspect strong independent woman) pants and do so him/herself.
@Brass cat
I concur:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200703/trashing-teens
Sure some my object that is because of lifespan increase. Yet adolescence is a fairly recent phenomenon.
@IBB
One more point. The men who actually have very high N counts won’t be found hand wringing about how marriage just lasts too long, can’t we change society’s institution to make it better for them? They don’t want to marry, as they think marrying is foolish. But they also typically see the destruction that removing the meaning of marriage vows is doing to our culture. Anyone who questions this should check out Heartiste or ROK.
Doug is something else. Doug is highly invested in marriage, but he/she just doesn’t want the vows to have moral meaning. This is the position of a feminist, not a player.
Has shell returned?
At what point do you just give up?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906236
Adolescence is what happens when women get the right to vote, and they think that 16 year old girls are babies, as one fiend said on a blog recently. They demand child protection laws which prevent putting kids to work when they are ready to start their life’s work. So, they run around, what I call “raping and looting.” Basically bored sh*tless, thus nothing but trouble.
Try to explain to Mexican kids in English class what the word, “teen-ager” means, they don’t get it.
Here in rural Mexico there is little adolescence, because when the kids are big enough they go to work with their parents.
Last month, my builder had several projects to do at my house. He was getting desperate for money, because due to a chronic illness he can’t do heavy work any more and here no one pays you for sitting around telling other workers what to do.
His fourteen year old boy came and worked with him, doing all the heavy work. Strong lad.
So that kid doesn’t bother with adolescent nonsense. He did a man’s work and his family got to eat. He knew he was doing a man’s work, and he understood the money was going to his parents.
With him working and his dad telling others what to do, his dad got full pay. The kid looked very proud of himself. He did not expect part of the money.
Thank the dearies for adolescence and the miseries involved with it.
As far as 16 year old girls being babies, if they are raised by AW, they probably are. I am going to repeat the story I told some time ago.
Around 2000, I was walking down the street in this little village. A baby came running across the street and hugged me as high as she could, right around my knees, and said affectionately “Great Uncle!”
Ever since then, she calls me grandpa and her whole family accepts me as her third grandparent. I am often invited to family reunions.
When she was 8 I went to her house to help her with her English homework. Her mom wasn’t there. There aren’t enough guns in the USA to force me to enter a house of a little girl when her mom isn’t there. But, this was Mexico.
While I was there, she gave her little brothers baths, and washed their clothes by hand and hung them to dry. When her mom came home, mom didn’t even blink that I was there with her little daughter. In the USA, I’d still be in jail, heh, heh.
Later the girl cooked a meal and served her mother, who has bad arthritis in her joints. Let me repeat, she was 8 and she was already capable of caring for a family. Yet, in the USA we have adult women who aren’t ready.
Jewel: “For some time we have been engaged in a private and difficult, but thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves.” Uh-huh. How much you wanna bet that process entailed more yelling and door-slamming than thoughtful discussions and tenderness? Folks can put a happy face on divorce all they want, but that happy face will never be anything but a lie.
Dalrock: “The other problem is what it teaches the children. Their family was just broken apart and their lives turned upside down. When they ask who did such a terrible thing to them, the parents answer: ‘Why no one, silly! This kind of chaos is normal, and you should be happy about it like mommy and daddy are. Now sleep well!’ ”
YES. The damage “friendly divorce” does to the children could be even worse for this reason: the damage is more insidious. As the children mature, they are not able to address and move past the scars, because they are constantly told their wounds never existed. Their whole life they are told that what they experienced was healthy and normal. They don’t feel healthy and normal, but thanks to constant reassurance from today’s culture that everyone was “better off” because mommy and daddy “just weren’t good for each other,” they are less likely to understand WHY they feel unhealthy, abnormal, insecure, etc. And so they are more likely repeat the cycle.
Lin
From Marcus’s link up above.
Are these the kind of woman men are meant to marry? Ones that either love scumbags or ‘settle’ and thus destroy a good man’s life with their constant peddling that he was the inferior man for her? Never mind the thread poster having being divorced before, these women all seem to be in relationships where sex is ongoing but they’re wondering whether marriage is on the cards or not…? Are they dim? I would flatly state that these women should not be getting married, nor should they be enticed by priests to do so. They need to be taught the goodness of a single life lived for God and Christ, not for themselves.
A big ‘Thank you’ to Catholic Forums for once again proving that most women are not marriage material.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906236 from above
Yeah, she was one messed up dearie. Sounds like perfect mates. Physically attracted. Complement each other’s personalities. She knows they will lead each other to Heaven. But, he doesn’t breathe fire into her soul as she thinks should be normal, like the scum bucket she had before.
Her grandma and her great-grandma and her great-great-grandma etc. would tell her, “Sounds like a marriage blessed in Heaven, so what is your problem, stupid b*tch.”
it is all about discipline, and sounds like she not only doesn’t have any self-discipline, but doesn’t even understand it.
Dr. Laura has said repeatedly over the years to women, “If you treat your husband as if you love him, YOU WILL LOVE HIM.”
When I first heard Dr. Laura say that, I was skeptical. But, after much thought I think she is right. I base this on the fact that most AW treat their husbands as if they hate them, and thus they do hate them.
Erma Bombeck, I think it was, who said being truly loved means your husband holds your head when you get sick and are puking. Also, lets you put your cold feet in his back when you go to bed to warm them up.
Doug7 doesn’t like the point of this post, but he can’t seem to find an argument to refute it.
Oh, someone’s not haaaaaapy that divorce shaming still exists? Gee, I wonder where that came from…
Anonymous Aged 72
Erma Bombeck, I think it was, who said being truly loved means your husband holds your head when you get sick and are puking. Also, lets you put your cold feet in his back when you go to bed to warm them up.
But that would make “love” into actions rather than feeeelings. Can’t have that, can we?
From Marcus’s link: sounds like her ability to bond was broken by her previous relationships. She says she’s physically attracted to him — enough so to move to a new city to be near him — so it’s not the issue we talk about sometimes where a woman finds a man eligible but isn’t attracted to him. She IS attracted, and all the other right elements are there, but still something is missing. I’d say that “something” is the bonding that happens automatically when a healthy woman attaches herself to an attractive man. She’s felt it before, or she wouldn’t recognize the difference, and this time it’s not happening.
Then the woman who responded to her, who’s sticking with a screwed-up man even though she knows marriage would be a disaster, IS bonded to him and “in love,” so that’s all that matters to her.
@infowarrior1
Thanks for the PT article.
Some gems from it…
Interesting bit of info about males marrying in their teens. I’ve seen stats that contradict that elsewhere.
I’m inclined to agree with Robert Epstein (quoted above) for the most part. However I do think adolescence is a real life phase that everyone goes through, just that in our society it is drawn out and amplified. They are in school until 18, or even longer if they go to college, and neither of these are anything like real-world experience. If anything these institutions retard some aspects of development.
A post-adolescent phase is being invented today. Delayed marriage is a factor in this, but really the factors include delayed EVERYTHING. This new phase will certainly come with many hidden costs; society needs young adults to be productive.
But that would make “love” into actions rather than feeeelings. Can’t have that, can we?
Participants of the current moral environment seem to be okay when love is a verb that the man performs, but love is something that happens (emotional/tingles) to a woman. She “just can’t help herself.” But if a man just can’t help himself, he has a problem.
Face it, if we want to keep families in tact we are going to have to “oppress” women.
Dalrock,
I don’t think Doug will be back since Doug hasn’t addressed any of your comments.
NOOAI
I have a coworker who openly admitted to me that he was a royal pain the @ss all the way through his divorce. That was by design on his part. He fought it all the way until the courts and the judge had to step in and grant the divorce (by law) unilaterally. In otherwords, the law says she can end it for no reason with or without his consent, it just takes much longer. He made it go as long as he could by never signing anything. And even when the marriage was dissolved, he refused to sign anything. Right to the bitter end, he never gave an inch until government came in and took everything away from him.
I asked him why he did all this and he said it was for his kids. He wanted his two children to know that staying married to that b*tch of a mother that they had was what he was willing to do (for a lifetime) if for no other reason than to make his children whole. And they understand that. And it paid off because both his children went to the judge and asked that their father be given primary custody (which he now has.) So he’s got the kids and she is ordered to pay HIM child support (which she never does because she never has any money.) She let the house that the kids grow up in slip into foreclosure so she is renting an apartment and lives check to check. And the kids hate it when they have to go and be with their mother every other weekend. And their father is free to denigrate their mother any time he sees fit (which basically means, even in front of his own children.) So what was gained by him being a pain in the @ss? He got his kids and he doesn’t pay child support. His children KNOW that their father loved them and would have gone through Hell remaining married to their mother if she would have let him (which of course, she didn’t.)
Of course, I am one of the only people in the office that talks to this man socially. The women in the department hate him for what he did to his ex-wife but he doesn’t care. Nor should he.
@Ras Al Ghul
Considering how fast men get chewed up that are still foolish to marry, it should be over soon. Dalrock still thinks men in general want to marry. The millennial generation and below have a very different perspective on things.
Indeed. I posted a list earlier of qualifications a woman should have, and any man who marries a woman who lacks those things is, frankly, a fool.
The rate of divorced men getting remarried has gone from 100 per thousand a year to 30 in 40 years. There are a lot of long term marriages out there that a propping up the illusion that marriage is still going strong but that won’t last much longer.
That’s what I am observing as well, at least on my side of the border. Many people who do get married have cohabited for 10-15 years first and already have kids, so marriage is just a piece of paperwork for them.
Marriage as an institution for actual family formation / societal stability is already dead, frankly, outside of tight knit religious communities.
innocentbystanderboston says:
September 1, 2014 at 3:31 pm
“So what was gained by him being a pain in the @ss? He got his kids and he doesn’t pay child support. His children KNOW that their father loved them and would have gone through Hell remaining married to their mother if she would have let him (which of course, she didn’t.)
Of course, I am one of the only people in the office that talks to this man socially. The women in the department hate him for what he did to his ex-wife but he doesn’t care. Nor should he.”
Good story, IBB, and I agree with your views on it. However, I’m curious; how did the women in the department find out the details about his divorce?
“@Ras Al Ghul
Considering how fast men get chewed up that are still foolish to marry, it should be over soon. ”
But… but… it’s abusive if they can’t all get married when they want. I’m just waiting for this to be flagged as the next war on women.
I doubt it will be over soon, its a war of attrition as far as the rad fem’s are concerned. And they ain’t conceding an inch, can’t have them losing any gains now, no matter how expensive they have been to obtain.
@John N
“I posted a list earlier of qualifications a woman should have, and any man who marries a woman who lacks those things is, frankly, a fool.”
see Matthew 5:22 and maybe be more careful, wouldn’t want you tasting hellfire now. I don’t doubt for a second God will be telling men to marry women who unfortunately don’t fit your ideal description. I doubt you will understand that.
IBB, that is a good story. What a strong man he must be. Everyone–family members, friends, the judge, the lawyers, had to have been discouraging him from the long, drawn-out tactic. Telling him HE is the bad guy.
The funny thing is, if you don’t tell the kids who the bad guy is in the divorce, they will just pick one out of their own limited perspective. It’s instinct to try and figure out why a Bad Thing happened.
That coworker of yours, his children were protected from some of the scarring of divorce because only one parent was the bad guy. In the “it’s no one’s fault, we just fell out of love” divorce, in reality both parents are bad guys. All the while claiming they are perfectly respectable and doing what is “best for the whole family.”
It’s twisted, and it makes me angry, even while I love the people who taught me this lesson.
Lin
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It is possible to have an amicable divorce.
From the beginning, the kids switched houses every week. We had few assets and no debt to divide. We divorced without lawyers or mediators and she agreed to a maintenance level I proposed that I’d gotten from a friend who divorced three years prior and had a bevy of lawyers involved. The child support is calculated via spreadsheet where we live.
It is most certainly true that my actions are predicated on what I perceive is most beneficial for my children without regard to my feelings on the matter.
She decided we were getting divorced, but I had to file the papers. She had moved out, and moved on both mentally, emotionally, and physically. I was no saint, but I would not have divorced her but for her adulterous affairs. By the criteria put forth around these parts, I was frivorced.
I’ve worked two jobs these last six years in order to provide a decent life for me and my kids even while basically supporting a second household as well. Few men would have the opportunity to do as I’ve done.
I don’t bad mouth their mother, and I don’t mention why I filed. Their mother AFAIK doesn’t bad mouth me. Into this neutral environment, the kids are able to observe with their own eyes their parents and come to their own conclusions.
One point I make to my kids regularly is that my experience is that far to many people give no thought to teaching their children how not to end up divorced. I’ve made a primary goal to help my children attain a level of maturity to enable them to wisely choose a spouse instead of choosing someone to fill the neediness of immaturity.
Of all the things she did that pissed me off and were contrary to a successful marriage, I would have stoically endured them, but the adultery I would not.
In the years since, I’ve matured and changed and become a man who could likely have been successfully married for life. These days, I have no idea where things will go. I’ve no interest in women my age(40 something), no interest in a woman with children, no interest in a cock-hopping modern woman, and the young Orthodox woman I meet are looking for what all their peers are looking for, a tall, good-looking, rich, never married, man of their faith, with no children, and I can’t blame them. I’m looking for the same.
Unicorn Hunter: “Into this neutral environment, the kids are able to observe with their own eyes their parents and come to their own conclusions.”
Kids come to their own conclusions no matter what, but that’s not ideal. Children can’t effectively think thru things beyond their understanding and control. I don’t doubt for a minute that you did what you thought was best. But if you let your wife ‘frivorce’ you, when in fact she cheated on you, well. . . she should have been the ‘bad guy’ in the divorce. Perhaps you let your wife off the hook in an attempt to make the whole thing less painful for the family.
In my experience, unfortunately, that only makes matters worse for the kid. That child grows up and marries, not knowing what kind of scars are carried into the new marriage.
My best,
Lin
In a divorce there is always a bad guy. Kids will figure out the circumstances at some point. When this happens they will often have to relive the pain in order to work through it. The feminine imperative tells men that the children do not need to know anything. The FI tells men to shut up and play nice. I would think that children deserve the truth from the beginning. They deserve to know that yes mommy broke her promise (vows) to daddy and mommy wants the divorce and daddy does not. Or, if the husband decides to divorce his wife for her infidelity; mommy broke her promise (vows) to daddy, and what she did was so bad that daddy cannot simply ever forgive mommy.
Let’s look at it another way. A mother divorces for her infidelity. She had a daughter. The daughter watches what occurred, but was told the same old trope that it’s nobody’s fault, mommy and daddy love you still, blah, blah. Daughter learns this lesson. She learns that she can commit adultery and that it is ok. She also learns that she can divorce and will likely not have to suffer the consequences. If sons are observing this it is much worse. They will learn that a woman can disrespect him and he is not to do anything about it.
Either way the children will learn something. It’s not wrong to point out who the bad guy is and in most cases it’s the mother.
Luke,
I have no idea. I think he probably just told them the truth (that he tells his kids point blank what a b-tch their mother is) and their sisterly devotion to their own gender, they were forced to alienate their co-worker. What choice did they have? Of course they took Eve’s path. Remember we are talking about the feminist imperative here with women who have no moral agency.
One won’t even look at him as she walks by his cube. Its real creepy, but at least he kept his integrity.
NOOAI
Exactly. You are not protecting your kids if you agree to the divorce (that you don’t want) amicably and respectfully. Dig in your heels, be the @sshole, never sign even one piece of paper, and have the government forcibly take away something that you hold sacred. Your children (who want their parents to remain married to one another, particularly if their is no abuse) will love you for it. And be open with your kids about the kind of monster their mother is for blowing the whole thing up. They will (eventually) forget about their mother and their father will be their lifelong ally. I have seen this happen, but it does takes years. Ironically, the times I have seen this happen, it is usually the daughters that come around first and choose to be with their dad over that b-tch of a mom.
IBB,
> And their father is free to denigrate their mother any time he sees fit
That is something I correct him on, if I were in a position to do so. Their mother is still their mother. She may suck, be horrible or whatever; but she remains their mother. I will bet that attitude will have negative consequences down the line, especially as the children grow and see a more complete picture of life. They may still find her to be horrid, but that connection has ways of pulling at you and pushing you away from those who fight against it.
My dad had serious problems (though mild by any standard in stories like yours) and my mother didn’t say much outrightly bad, but I know enough things irked me when she did give voice to her frustrations, especially now as I see things more completely with my own experiences. I can’t recall him ever bad mouthing her, though I could swear that never happen outside of his blaming her on his deathbed for taking his virginity.
Cutting down their mother may seem just, but it is both bad from a bitterness point of view and for his children. I doubt he would care what I think, but I have experience on the other side of this thing and find that conduct reprehensible for that reason.
I have no problem with his fighting the divorce stuff.
I would also oppose the idea that we can ever make it “acceptable” for the children. Telling them the “it takes two” lie has problems, but so does the “he/she was a complete scum.” Their world is still torn apart and they will have consequences for that, whatever route is taken. Thinking otherwise has far too much wishful thinking and is really only focused on the desires of the parent rather than the child.
Shutting up may be necessary for your child. Dumping all your pain where they can hear is making them be an emotional tampon for you! Doing so outside them regularly will spill over in one way or another on them when you are with them even if you seek to stay quite. Get healed and go forward and stop living in the past. Be truthful, but get over pain. It may be a lifelong process, but you must do that.