BUCK writes:

An entry at VFR discusses and links to an article by Daniel Greenfield in which he discusses a possible way to restore America through by limiting immigration, cultural secession and by properly marshaling the forces of traditionalist demographics. Greenfield discusses how the Amish and Chassidic Jews successfully segregate their culture from others with little friction. He mentions a Chassidic community that was visited by Oprah that had no idea who she was. I found the video.

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FITZGERALD writes:

This post at What Women Never Hear is spot on, especially these first few paragraphs:

[Men and women] differ in so many ways. Women seek emotional fulfillment and they go after it. Men expect sexual fulfillment but they also expect not to have to work hard for it. They will work hard to conquer a woman but not work hard for sex with her afterward. Read More »

IN CONTINUATION of the discussion about refusing state marriage licenses, Jeremy Morris writes:

America has been reduced to a culture filled with distractions, light shows that do nothing more than hold our attention just long enough to cause us to forget our duty to God almighty. It is the “Vanity Fair” of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Its days are numbered, the evil that is rampant can only destroy itself eventually. The hold it has on people will eventually be loosened. Similar, to how the beauty and distractions offered by a luxury cruise liner can only hold the passengers attention so long before they realize it is sinking. No matter what the people in authority over the ship say, the discovery of its true fate is inevitable. The crew down below are the first to realize with absolute certainty that the ship is bound for a watery grave. The story of the Titanic is a great metaphor for what is happening to America as we speak. Many will perish in the confusion, many more will perish in denial. My sincere prayer is that Christians will break the hold that “Vanity Fair” has upon them, remember their duty to God, and seek him before it is too late. Read More »

AIDAN writes:

Hello, my name is Aidan and I am 18 years old. I recently started to read this blog and I must admit it’s amazing and relieving to have people to agree with and be open with. Most of the time, I would have to hold my tongue not only to be courteous but to keep from being hated/resented for what I think. I get this wonderful feeling when I read this blog. I have a few questions if that’s alright with you.

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JEREMY writes:

I recently read several posts and commentary about sexual harmony in marriage on your website and I thought that my experiences might provide some insights.

My wife and I are in our late twenties and have been married for nearly five years. Read More »

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MARIA writes:

I feel there are parallels between the situation of your reader who no longer finds her husband desirable and my own. I am also in my late twenties and married five years.

My husband, two months after our second child was born, confessed to twice, on separate occasions while I was visiting relatives, arranging a rendezvous with someone else. (Once he kept his engagement, but left upon arrival; the second time he never went.) I forgave him immediately, but it took a long time for me to trust him again. I felt horrible doing it, especially since I had forgiven him, but I “checked” his email for months. I knew he knew and I’m thankful he was patient and understood that he needed to gain my trust again, and never said anything to me about it. Read More »

ADVICE COLUMNISTS are shills for the feminist-dominated psychotherapy industry. No matter what a reader’s problem is they invariably recommend professional therapy. Here is a columnist who tells a man who has sex with his wife as little as once every six months that he should get counseling for himself. This man is supposed to crawl in a state of incapacitating starvation to a therapist’s office, shell over $100 bucks a week and sit for hours considering what he is doing wrong.

Here is my advice to this man. Read More »

THE latest big news regarding marriage is that premarital sex was always normal in America. That’s right. If you thought there was something called the sexual revolution, you were wrong.

In today’s New York Times, Ross Douthat, the “conservative” columnist, writes about the impossibility of a “traditionalist utopia” in which the only sex is married sex. He states:

No such society has ever existed, or ever could: not in 1950s America (where, as the feminist writer Dana Goldstein noted last week, the vast majority of men and women had sex before they married), and not even in Mormon Utah (where Brigham Young University recently suspended a star basketball player for sleeping with his girlfriend).

The study cited by Goldstein and others is, “Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954-2003,” by Lawrence B. Finer. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which funded the study, Finer proves “[C]ontrary to the public perception that premarital sex is much more common now than in the past, the study shows that even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 had sex before marriage.”

Actually, public perception holds that the sexual revolution began in the 1960s. Those who were born in 1940 would turn 20 in 1960. Therefore, this study does not deflate the general impression that premarital sex was not widely accepted in the past and dramatically increased in the 60s.

The age of the first sexual encounter decreased over the course of the years included in the study from 20.4 to 17.6. The study did not examine whether the first sexual encounter was with a future marriage partner or how many partners on average respondents had.

The idea that trends in premarital sex in America have differed little over the years is not proved by this study.

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DOROTHY writes: 

I read this article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago about a woman writer who happily spent part of her honeymoon alone and it stays in my mind. I cannot stop thinking about it. It is very sad to me. But the woman who wrote it is happy. I am astounded that she is so quick and happy to toss away the burden of a husband immediately after they are married.  Read More »

HERE ARE more interesting comments from readers regarding “Game,” which many readers say is a nihilistic, anti-Christian, hedonistic form of manipulation of women. There is no question that it often is. We are all agreed on that. However, one reader adds another impassioned defense of Game and advocates a Christian interpretation of it that rejects hedonism and recognizes the moral responsibility of both men and women in marriage. 

Mark Richardson writes:

Youngfogey wrote that “the core of Game is manly virtue.” I have to disagree with him on this.

What Game teaches is that women are sexually hypergamous, meaning that they will be attracted to men who demonstrate higher value (DHV). You demonstrate higher value as a man by adopting an attitude of “amused mastery” and by learning how to fend off the “beta tests” sent your way by women. You are supposed to assume that, as the one having higher value, it will be the woman who will want to be with you, rather than you employing romantic supplication to try to win her over.

There are other techniques as well (e.g. “contrast game”) and advice on how to present yourself. That’s the kind of discussion that tends to dominate at Game sites, rather than a focus on manly virtues.

It’s true that Game teaches that men will do better if they show masculine self-confidence, but I haven’t known it to venture much further than this.

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YOUNGFOGEY writes:

It seems to me that a portion of your readers have fallen into some common misconceptions about Game.

First, as I wrote, at the core of Game is acting like a man. That means being aggressive, that means having a plan, that means pursuing what you desire, living with honor and, I think (as a reflection of my Christianity), protecting the weak and, if you can find a woman who deserves it, providing for a wife and children. In this way, the core of Game is manly virtue. The thing about virtues is that they are not natural. They must be practiced, put on from the outside in. So, of course there is a tension between authenticity and the practice of any virtue. To say that Game is manipulative simply because it involves the practice of virtues that are immediately present seems more than a little unfair. Read More »

MARIANNE writes:

Your blog continues to be fascinating and I am a big fan.  

But I’m writing to express a concern, and I hope you will not take it the wrong way, because I truly admire so much of what you have to say. My concern is this: I think it’s a mistake to encourage a man to use “Game” techniques on his wife, even as a last resort, if his wife is treating him with contempt. Read More »

YOUNGFOGEY writes:

What struck me most about your reader’s note in this entry was the admission that this guy’s wife holds him in contempt. My guess is that she doesn’t despise him because he wants children and she doesn’t. She probably despises him because he has been neutered by the culture, offers her very little in the way of direction and leadership and refuses to even attempt to get the upper hand in marriage. The wife may treat him with contempt because he is simply too beta. Maybe she doesn’t want to have kids with a guy like that.

I know I am writing about a situation I have no first hand knowledge of, but the situation I have described is so common that it’s not unreasonable to assume this dynamic is at play. The first step for this guy has got to be to step up the alpha, then worry about kids.

I know you may be loathe to recommend it but this might be a guy who could benefit from reading some Roissy or Athol Kay. Read More »

A READER writes:

Dear Professor Wood, 

Thank you for your teaching. Your site shows the young generation of women and men, my nieces and nephews and the children of my friends, a path which they see rarely on campus or on the job. One young man whom you influenced was recently baptized (Eastern Orthodox) at age thirty. 

You have written much about divorce, especially when children are involved, but I have not seen the following situation addressed. What is a man to do who was married while young to a woman who became increasingly feminist and refused to give him children for years, and continues to refuse to do so? What should we, his friends and relatives, encourage him to do (having already encouraged her to change her heart)? I might add that she is angry, bitter, spiteful and treats him with contempt. At this point, he still wants to have children, but no longer trusts her as a wife or mother. 

Were they Catholic, an annulment might have been in order (or would it not?), but they are not.

 Sincerely Yours,

A grateful reader

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TODAY’S journalists are so quick to provide every mind-numbingly boring detail about their chaotic personal lives and so upfront about how indifferent they are to their children. This writer, in his description of his recent “courtship” in The New York Times, talks about his two children from two different women as if they are luggage stowed in the backseat, which presumably is what they are. He focuses instead on the extremely banal details of  divorce and remarriage. He writes:

We took an apartment together as our relationship deepened. She grew close to my boy, became pregnant with our child, and we considered our options for the future. Discussions regarding marriage occurred, predicated, of course, on the completion of my divorce. (It was a source of much joking at Harper’s — another thing I’ll truly miss — that my second child came before my first divorce.) But neither of us wanted to rush things. It felt unseemly to dive immediately into a new marriage so soon after the formal dissolution of an earlier one. We’d make our wedding when we wanted, we agreed, not merely when permitted by the state or demanded by a sense of social propriety.

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NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is divorced, has been living with his girlfriend, the Food Network celebrity Sandra Lee. Under Catholic canon law, that makes him guilty of “public concubinage” and he is not entitled to take communion. While many thousands of Catholics appear to be unaware of canon law, Cuomo cannot plead ignorance. As reported in The New York Times, Edward N. Peters, a consultant to Vatican court, has publicly criticized the governor for continuing to receive communion and has called for denying him communion. This is a positive development.

By the way, Cuomo took his young daughters to the gay pride parade in Manhattan last fall. He is an exemplary Catholic all around. Read More »

I’VE OFTEN wondered why more people who have divorced their decent spouses don’t later publicly regret their selfishness and tell the whole world just how stupid and thoughtless they were. Probably because repentance hurts or because many people who initiate divorce are too far gone for self-reflection. Here, however, is just that: a woman who has devoted a blog to describing her divorce and its effects. She confirms my point. Divorce is spiritually destructive to those who initiate it. She writes:   

If you have forced a frivolous divorce on your spouse and children, you will never be able to shake off the stench of your selfish act. You will have to explain it to people you date and to their families and to their children and to the people your children marry and to your grandchildren when they start to ask questions about your life. Probably you will be ashamed to tell them the naked truth because it will reveal your selfish, frivolous character and there is nothing you can say to sugarcoat this huge personal defect without resorting to half truths. They won’t say anything to your face, but they will discuss it when you leave the room and they will question your suitability as a potential family member…as well they should.

Relatives and friends who witness divorce and say nothing, imposing no shame on the one who initiates divorce and pointing no fingers, are selfish too. It is not kind to withhold judgment.

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TRAVEL THROUGHOUT America, into small towns, or big suburbs or dense cities, and you will find the phenomenon of single motherhood. One of the most obvious developments of recent years is the lower middle-class white girl who comes from an intact or relatively intact family and who ends up as a single mother. She finds herself in this situation because she is anti-abortion and yet not anti-fornication. There is no pressure on her to marry and yet there is the good and healthy moral incentive to refuse abortion.

She may be cheered by friends and religious organizations for her decision to have a child. And, refusing abortion is the right thing to do. However, it is easy to confuse this heroic decision as something that makes single motherhood right and good. Unless both abortion and unwed pregnancy are stigmatized, social conservatism becomes an unwitting promoter of single motherhood.

Abortion rates have fallen in recent years while single motherhood has increased precipitously. Here is a 2008 piece by Selwyn Duke on the relation between anti-abortion sentiment and the growth of single motherhood. The answer is not for anti-abortion efforts to become less zealous.  Both abortion and single motherhood were shameful fifty years ago and the incidence of both was much lower.