Does A Wife Have a Duty to Have "Relations" With Her Husband? Conjugal Duties
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Summary
How much sex should each spouse be obligated to have with the other spouse? Is sex a part of conjugal duties? Is consent a fundamental part of a good conjugal contract? How old is too old for a woman to get married if she wants to have sex with her husband?
Transcript
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hello everyone we're so glad to have you back at base camp today we are going to talk about
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conjugal duties that is to say how much should each spouse be obligated to do sexy times with
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the other spouse and is that important well yes and consent in marriages and everything like that
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would you like to know more the reason i wanted to do this particular topic is because when fundy
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snark channels when the channels that make fun of conservatives have their pearl clutching i cannot
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believe they said that yeah moments yeah one of the most classic is around a wife's conjugal duties
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the idea that a wife either would not have the ability to decline consent in a marriage or
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um that a wife would have a duty to have sexual relations with her husband
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yeah something so we hadn't actually talked that much about this as a concept before simone and
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it's just something that hasn't really come up with us because i've never understood i yeah i guess it
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didn't occur to me that you would ever say no if i wanted to do something so i am wondering how do you
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like what yeah what are your thoughts on this topic do women have a conjugal duty to their husbands
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my and i'm sure you can predict this my response is it all depends on what the relationship is founded
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on if the relationship is founded on sex then absolutely if everything is predicated on that
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if you know that your partner married you because they wanted to have sex frequently or because they
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found you sexually attracted and and wanted to have sex with you regularly and are marrying you for
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sexual access that is part of your obligation a really common stereotype of relationships so it's
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common as a stereotype because it's true is that really high wealth high value men may marry a trophy
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wife who is much younger perhaps not as professionally or financially successful but very sexy for that
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sexual access and in that case it would be insane for the young woman who ends up getting married
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to act as though it is anything but absolutely her conjugal duty to satisfy this husband this partner
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sexually as long as they're married no matter how she feels like she should behave as long as he is
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keeping up his end of the bargain which typically is i'm gonna you will live in luxury you will get
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jewelry you will get clothing you will go on you know fancy trips have the best food whatever so i think
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the the whole point is and this is why relationship contracts are so important partners need to know
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what is being exchanged before they get married because it is 100 your obligation in fact i'm so
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vehement on this that let's say i'm a young beautiful woman and an older man marries me because they want to
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regularly have sex with a young beautiful woman yeah let's say i'm courting leonardo dicaprio and i'm
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18 right i think that it is my duty we have to put the leonardo dicaprio chart on the screen here
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what age is it when they turn 23 i think it's like 24 or something like that it's quite it's
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mid-20s and along those lines i think he's a really great example here i would put in our relationship
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contract if i were to marry leonardo dicaprio as that he would have every right to sleep with
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whatever woman he chooses and i may even offer to help source those women after i age out of his
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attractive age range if i want to maintain that relationship in other words if i want to continue
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to be his wife and continue to have access to presumably his wealth his connections whatever
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like the whatever he brings to the table that i would then need to continue to provide that item
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of value i want to word what she just said differently because it's funny you're taking an incredibly
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uh some people would say conservatist extremist position and they're immediately flipping
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to a progressive extremist position this is what pragmatism looks like pragmatism is unmoored
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from political bias so you are saying that okay if you are a woman who's coming into a relationship
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without bringing much to the table in terms of your own career or really anything else like you
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would see in a typical trophy wife right in that case just undisputedly every time conjugal duty is
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obviously what's expected because that's what's being traded for yes but in the case of leonardo
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dicaprio you pointed something out you pointed out an individual and we will say that leonardo
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dicaprio has a very strong preference for women between a certain age range exactly regardless of
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how disgusting you as an individual find that or we as society may find that you're just basically
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throwing that out the window you're basically being look i am like a restaurant server girl and
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somehow i got leonardo dicaprio fabulously wealthy famous person to marry me right i'm gonna be happy
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with that but i also see this trend in his past dating life which is he always leaves people at x age
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so how can i create a deal with him where being in a relationship with me is still something that is
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on the aggregate desirable to him even when sexual relations with me are no longer desirable because
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i think we what you have to do is actually parse out the thing of value that the person wants in a
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relationship and the thing of value in this case is sexual access to a female under we'll say 24
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years old and so if you are no longer a female under 24 years old you're gonna have to figure out
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how to either end the relationship in an amicable way so there has to be like a really good prenup
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it's okay when i turn 24 here's we get the divorce and then i get this much money yeah yeah you would
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need a really strong prenup if you were going into it this way because you want to just like literally
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plan for it like we have a birthday party that's an equal divorce party the lawyer's already paid for
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all these things or you have to have a contingency plan i want to add though that there's another
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part to this that i think is really important that shows up a ton in the fundy commitments to sex oh but
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i also want to hear what you think of age gap relationships before you go into this a lot of
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people would be like it's just fundamentally unethical how young the women he's sleeping with are
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yeah i i don't think that those women are unaware of what's going on this is not a situation in which
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they aren't aware of the fact that they're trading their beauty and youth for power and fame
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i would argue i think you're right like at a at some level they must understand what's going on
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however i would also say that um they may not realize that essentially he is spending their most
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desirable years or they are spending their most desirable years on an individual who is going to
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leave them and they won't be able to attract the same quality partner they will when they're older
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just because yeah but also society doesn't tell women that they're spending their most desirable
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years on university and career without getting married thereby wasting their ability to secure
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one of the good males before all the males get taken so i i'm sorry i love this take hold on before
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we go to the thing that the funding community does your take is age gap relationships are wrong
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not because of coercion or power differential i.e the reasons progressives think age gap relationships
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are wrong your take is age gaps relationships are wrong because it uses up a girl's best market years
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without her having full knowledge that she is spending those years and that's where the unethical but you
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say that they are not differentially wrong when compared to what all other girls are doing so you don't
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complain but if it was one of our daughters you likely wouldn't allow them to do that it's not
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that i wouldn't allow them our daughters would understand the opportunity cost of that choice
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and i think there's something very different from opportunity cost knowledge and i think what's more
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commonly implied is that oh these men are so much older and more experienced they'll win every single
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argument but i'm like excuse me who do you think is more manipulative the 54 year old man
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or the 23 year old girl like the girl is going to school this son of a bitch i i just don't know
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what else to say no i i actually love this we have an amazing relationship and it's very physical
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i mean he still pushes all my buttons people say oh but he's so much older than you and you know what
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i'm the one having to push him away we both have so much in common we both love soup and uh we love
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i would argue that if you just look at this from an outsider's perspective you have a young
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underemployed 23 year old girl who is dating a billionaire guy or multi-millionaire guy who is
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the one that you think is the manipulative one here and here i'm going to play a clip from best in
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show of of the girl who's dating like the old guy who's about to croak and you know is sleeping with
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the her trainer like the she's actually a lesbian and she's just dating him obviously for money but
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like who do you really yeah i do love that where they're like oh it must be the guy who's manipulating
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the girl like what a a silly and misogynistic thought to have yeah there's also this concept
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of financial abuse right we're like when a partner it could be female but typically it's the men who
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are accused of this the male breadwinner or the wealthy male in a trophy wife situation
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financially abusing his wife because he has access to all the money now obviously there are some
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cases of genuine almost captures where you know women are totally disempowered they have no ability
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to get out of a relationship but most of these situations are people coming in with full knowledge
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of the fact that they are going to be financially dependent on these men and then they claim that
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they've been financially abused by their spouses um when you know they could just get a job and it's
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just that they don't want to get a job and i'll never forget you and i were when we first acquired a
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travel management business and airlines still gave away business class flights to agency owners and we
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were on a business class we would never normally pay for a business class flight no but this is how
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we got it was great and there was this woman who sitting next to us who had bought two seats
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yeah because she just wanted this seat next to her empty yes now she was in telling us that she was
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getting divorced from her husband because he was financially abusing her and i was like i hadn't
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heard the term before i go like what do you mean by that and he goes she said i was just wasting money
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all the time and i didn't understand the value of money and now that i'm out of that abusive marriage
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i'm free to live my life and here i am being like excuse me you bought two business class seats next to
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each other yeah you may have had a point yeah this is one of those am i the asshole situations
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anyway you did not say anything there but anyway i most i feel like a lot of the complaints in that
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realm as well in terms of age gap relationships are overblown people getting into them often and this is
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something that is very controversial but quite honestly their other options are worse than the
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suboptimal relationship i'm not saying it's ideal to be married to someone who you may not have that
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strong of an emotional connection with or you may have married you don't find them attractive but they
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give you a lifestyle that you really want but then again maybe your other options are to be to be
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working at a starbucks and you really hate customer service or to be doing a door-to-door sales job i don't
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know something you pointed out in previous episodes is people talk about the quote-unquote abuse that
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happens in a marriage when they are contrasting that with sitting at home and having all the money
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you could ever want in the world instead of the hardship of a day-to-day office job or low education
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job yeah which is generally going that sets the bar of what is more abusive than that pretty high so
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let's go down the argument that you were going to make initially which is something you've noticed in
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fundy relationships yeah so what's often talked about and implied within fundy or even just
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conservative or traditional relationships is this the husband gets sex whenever he wants it and the
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wife off will never say no and it just happens and that it's often not when the women write about
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their encounters their intimate encounters there's not a lot of foreplay like whatever it's it just
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happens and then it's over and then people like ben shapiro have talked about things like female
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lubrication not being a real thing according to his wife or something and one really gets the impression
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that a lot of these more conservative religious wives are technically not withholding sex but as far as
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i'm concerned they are not offering their part of the bargain because they are starfishing which is to say
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they're just lying back and taking it for the country when i think that if you're if a person
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marries you male or female i do not care for sexual pleasure your job is to understand what their sexual
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interests are and to meet those sexual interests satisfactorily and i will say the one universal thing
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that seems to be so common across most genres is is enthusiasm from the partner is oh my god
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i love you i cannot wait to do x to you i cannot wait for you to do x to me oh my gosh i am loving
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this yes blah blah blah like just lying there and taking it is it's almost worse than denying it
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which i think is but i also think this is likely a two-sided thing so okay an interesting thing about
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ben shapiro's case is you may not know this but if he was actually practicing a conservative jewish
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lifestyle one of the responsibilities and i forget the word here but there's three core
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responsibilities a husband has with his wife and one of the three is to make sure that he is sexually
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satisfying her right and so he is technically failing at being a jew if this is accurate that he is not
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pleasing her and i think that this comes to a point here that you made which which is just really
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important which conjugal duty i would actually argue and i think you argue this as well is almost
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like less like if it's less than what is actually expected of an individual totally you don't have a
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like a conjugal duty if you are just performing a conjugal duty you are not performing the role in the
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relationship the sexual role in a relationship that's actually expected of a partner what is actually
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expected is that you take the satisfaction of your partner as seriously as almost anything else as i say
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the only two responsibilities you have above your spouse's well-being is to god and your kids and
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after that your spouse comes above yourself significantly above yourself and that means that you should
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attempt to understand exactly what they're into it's not like a i'm just having sex with you
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and we're done it is let me fully understand and if you read something like the pragmatist guide to
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sexuality you'll see that the way sexuality actually works is it's like this giant circuit board basically
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of knobs it's not like a few things that may arouse people there are and you can go through the book
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hundreds of things that commonly arouse people these are certain emotional states certain
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environmental stimuli certain visual stimuli different ways of interacting some people are
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very sexually reactive meaning that they do not feel arousal or attraction to somebody just for being
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around them but they do when the person is engaging them and you you and somebody like that might be
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like you just said oh i'm sexually reactive therefore i'm never going to pursue my partner sexually
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right and it's why is that the case and it's like doesn't turn me on to do it it's stop does it actively
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cause you great discomfort to pretend like you're really interested in your partner and start a
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relationship sometimes you're like no not really a bit of larp in the beginning isn't that much of a
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problem then why aren't you doing it if it makes your partner significantly happier this is what
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you're doing and here i would note that where there is the exception is in some individuals because the
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way sexuality works we talk about this in our sexuality book is it is a scale from arousal to
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disgust it doesn't stop at nothing yeah disgust is part of the sexual system you can watch our other
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videos on this but it's basically an inverted sexuality anything that arouses of a large portion of the
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population is going to discuss some other portion of the population anything that disgusts a large
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portion of the population is going to around the small portion of the population but what this means
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is that sometimes partners will have really high disgust reactions to a specific thing that you may be
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into now so that could be something like anal like just no anal like a rule no anal ever because that
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would cause me such discomfort that whatever pleasure you're getting from that is just not worth it
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for our net productivity and desire for each other and that's okay it's okay that one partner is like
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something that you like causes me great disgust and distress the problem is when instead of being i
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guess negative in terms of the things you're taking off the table okay this i don't like this i don't
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like this i don't like is coming at this these are the 10 things that are approved because that is
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almost certainly not going to overlap with that's not even like you went and investigated and tried
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to understand what your partner is into right yeah but here is where sexuality gets really interesting
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i think from a conjugal duties perspective um which is it is possible to have a relationship where
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conjugal duties are not expected oh totally when is that the case that is the case when it is explicitly
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stated before the marriage happened that is when that is the case and why do i say it needs to be
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explicitly stated before the marriage happened or in a marriage contract or something like that
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that is because in our society right now if you are getting into a marriage the default assumption is that
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that marriage is going to have a sexual component and so if one of you goes dead bedrooms that is
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turning your back on a component that was a presupposition when the marriage happens and if
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you have that presupposition you're like yeah but then i just can't bring myself to sleep with my
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partner anymore then that's a serious issue and there are multiple ways to resolve it it could be
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because your partner has let themselves go yeah in which case they actually violated the contract as well
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so long as you had attractiveness clauses or no i'd actually say i'm talking default societal
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assumptions i think if you guys agreed nothing before you got married and then after you got
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married one of you gained a significant amount of weight and then the other person starts that's
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fair yeah i would say that's fair yeah okay if however you two are equally fit as when you got
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into the relationship and one person stops i would say no that's a foul and that with that foul that
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doesn't necessarily mean the marriage has to break up but it means that person now has the right to
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look for alternate sources of sexual release yeah and i think that's super underrated in that i think
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with especially male sexual interests this is not so much the case with female sexual interests
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just saying basically if you can't get it with me you're welcome to get it somewhere else as the wife
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is a huge negotiating point that can really keep marriages together because sometimes women lose their sex
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drives sometimes women just aren't that into it and i think there's a long history of established
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older wives who've maybe had a few kids knowing that their husbands are having affairs knowing that
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their husbands sleep with other women or have mistresses and being like pretty cool with it and
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having otherwise quite functional relationships because it's just understood hey i'm not the person
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who's going to provide that part of our relationship anymore someone else is going to do it but i'm glad
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you're getting it somewhere and so what simone is saying is that if you are a woman you can augment
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your value to particularly high status men by altering the expected contract that you're getting into
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relationship with them in and allowing them to sleep with other people now a lot of people are like
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ew gross like how could a woman do that but the problem is is that if you are dating like the
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creme de la creme of society like billionaires and stuff like that movie stars pretty much because
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we hang out adjacent to these classes of people i'd say 70 80 percent of their relationships are
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structured this way well just a business relationship imagine that you're establishing
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a contract with a vendor and you'd like it to be a full service contract and it starts out full
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service let's say you're a resort working with a client and you want that client to always stay at
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your resort or something and you have restaurants you have a spa you have hotel rooms and they you
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know and and other services tours and they use all of that for several years and then they decide you
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know what i really want sushi and and you don't have a sushi restaurant and there's one right across
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the street like why is it so impossible that they could get some service somewhere else and then
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utilize all of your other services appreciate them hold on i want to be clear simone i think that this is
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something that is only viable for basically billionaire class men i do not think that this works for men
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below the billionaire class so two quick side notes here when i say billionaire class men billionaire
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class men doesn't necessarily mean that they are literally billionaires it just means that they are the
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highest status men within their domain of respectability so for example a president or
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a famous philosopher or something like that and i should also note here that i am explicitly saying
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men it does not appear just anthropologically speaking that any society i'm aware of has been
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widespread and successful and allowed women to take multiple partners the reason being is that women
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unconsciously bond with their sexual partners much much more than men do so even if a woman is just like
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well i want to try something else for a short period the net effects on her emotional state long term
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are going to be much more impactful than the net effects on the male's state long term the only case
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where i can think of it being okay or for a relationship to be able to stay stable with the wife sleeping with
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other partners is if the husband is specifically into that and the wife is also into that i guess because
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the assumption is that other women that they would be with would ultimately want a full-time
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relationship as well no it's because i have no idea where you're going with this no
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like regular polyamory as practiced within our society is just completely unstable it doesn't work
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however historically speaking people who would have been billionaire class even in monogamous
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societies even in catholic europe for example all a lot of i wouldn't say all but a lot of the french
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monarchs for example a lot of the monarchs more broadly had mistresses i don't even i i don't
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i can't imagine there was one that did not have mistresses yeah so the even within traditional
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christian value systems if you're talking like lovers yeah yeah yeah if you go back and they're like oh
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this wasn't true in the 50s excuse me do you not think the billionaires in our society in the 50s do
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you not remember like kennedy and the famous scandal with him and who was it marilyn monroe the
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billionaire men so why is this the case that the absolute creme de la creme men in our society
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generally have a choice as you've all seen on the news our country is facing a major crisis why why are
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rich successful men suddenly going out and trying to have sex with lots of women why would a man
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who's famous and makes tons of money use that to try and have sex with lots of different women
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and these rich celebrities have perfectly good wives at home why would they even think of sex with others
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damn it i want answers of course we all know the normal healthy male thinks only of sex occasionally
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has no desire for sex with multiple partners yeah that's definitely true yes we all know that go on
00:25:06.160
to better understand the sex addiction outbreak we've been running tests on chimpanzees
00:25:11.760
but now see this chimp here now watch we're going to give it a lot of money
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and what's it doing now making a public apology on its talk show
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it's because they are the most desirable class of humans in society by that what i mean is if you
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look at how partner sorting happens and i'll put a thing on the screen here so you can see
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desirable women have it good but not that good because for a desirable woman if i'm a top one
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desirable woman the problem is that the top one desirable men don't just have me to choose from
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they basically can choose from any of the groups of women they'll choose within the top 20 of women
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often i will only choose a one person man so i actually have a fairly hard time securing a man
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and if a woman who is in the top two percent or top five percent tells that guy hey look i'll let
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you sleep around and i top one percent women aren't coming to them with that proposal then they're not
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going to stick with me and so that's why these men become used to these kinds of proposals from women
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and so and it's because it becomes a cultural norm in their communities that they adopted
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do i think it leads to better relationships than the type that i have no it just becomes a cultural norm
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in their communities so i'll word this differently i i actually think if you are a top like billionaire
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class guy and you get used to this you will never be able to have a life as happy as my life
00:26:56.560
and that's one of the things that i often look at where i'll look at the billionaire men in our
00:26:59.920
society and i'm like wow they live in such poverty i don't know what to call it like spiritual
00:27:04.240
poverty when contrasted with my life however if i was a billionaire would i not act the way they act
00:27:11.440
would i actually and when i say a billionaire i've been a billionaire for 10 years or whatever not
00:27:15.520
like if me today with my value system and my wife and my family and all the hindsight that gave me
00:27:20.720
suddenly became a billionaire but if i had done the whole ultra hard work thing for ages and ages and
00:27:26.320
gave everything up and then began to socialize with women again and i hadn't done it since i was in high
00:27:31.280
school or i hadn't fully you know their mental perspective is quite different from the rest of
00:27:36.320
society so i understand it but i think it's like a temporary optimum and it isn't the maximum optimum if they
00:27:42.720
could get above that and then try to structure a wholesome life i think that some billionaire class
00:27:48.400
men rarely in history did structure wholesome lives and they ended up with like uniquely good
00:27:55.120
relationships yeah this is actually kind of messed up when you think about it that once i believe as as a
00:28:02.800
man well and as a woman as a woman it's shown you know once you get above certain levels of wealth
00:28:07.520
the probability that you get married or get into a happy relationship are very low there's those
00:28:13.200
studies of women who win a large amount of money and and what actually happens is they just divorce
00:28:19.120
their husbands um but but as a man that you can be super super wealthy and not have access to the
00:28:26.240
levels of happiness and contentment that i have access to it's it's not that you literally don't have
00:28:32.560
access to them it's just that the way the world is structured makes it astronomically harder for them
00:28:39.920
to access this lifestyle than it is for me to access this lifestyle so you can take someone like
00:28:45.600
elon who i have enormous respect for do i think that he would be much more contented and satisfied with
00:28:51.680
his life if he tried settling down with one person and bought a farmstead and moved to a more remote
00:28:59.760
work situation and was able to spend you know more time with his kids and more time with one partner
00:29:08.320
who he was really invested in absolutely i i do not think that he has access to the quality of life
00:29:15.360
that i have access to yet i believe he has done more to make the world a better place than i do
00:29:22.880
and thus deserves more which is um sad and then you could look at the the other ultra wealthy
00:29:29.680
people that have i guess i'd call them sort of serial monogamous relationships that is you know
00:29:34.480
monogamy with divorce so they have you know some simulacrum of a monogamous life but i think they
00:29:41.680
even have less happy lives than someone like elon so here i'm thinking of someone like a jeff bezos
00:29:46.400
you know when i look at the ways that this this woman who you know took all this money that he made
00:29:52.320
and really didn't contribute much of anything is spending it on she could not have been a pleasant
00:29:56.960
person to be married to she just seems you know a complete npc which would be so sad to be married
00:30:03.600
to or or you know speaking of npcs who could be like well what about mark zuckerberg you know he
00:30:09.440
seems to be in a stable long-term monogamous relationship but i'm not really convinced that
00:30:15.280
he is not he just seems fully urban monoculture to the extent that he is just one of those npc memes plus
00:30:25.040
and i think that the level of happiness or really the depths of emotions that are accessible by
00:30:32.080
somebody in an npc state are fairly limited and this is another problem that we see because i think
00:30:39.680
this is a mistake that that jeff bezos made which is yes you can be ultra wealthy and in a totally
00:30:46.080
monogamous relationship but if that person is a total npc it's just not going to be interesting this
00:30:51.360
is why for elon i'd recommend you know if he was going to settle down with someone settle down with
00:30:56.320
somebody who's weird and interesting and willing to go against social mores like grimes for example
00:31:03.280
i think would be a very good long-term partner for him and i think that when he had tried long-term
00:31:07.440
relationships to begin with the problem is that the people weren't as weird as him and it's also
00:31:13.840
something where i reflect on you know when the media is mean to me or when people in public are mean to me
00:31:18.000
and they're like oh malcolm you you monster you x y z i often have to take a moment to reflect on
00:31:26.720
how good my life is and it's it's almost impossibly good it's almost impossibly good when i reflect on my
00:31:36.480
life these days it feels like sort of the before scene in like a punisher movie or something like that
00:31:42.320
which creates this sort of dread that i guess i i constantly feel like it can't be this good and
00:31:49.440
the way that i have come to terms with that is to consider that this must be a reward for me tanking
00:31:59.520
all of the hate that my wife and i get publicly and all of the threats that my wife and i get publicly
00:32:06.080
and that we are being rewarded for the difference that i hope we are well not i hope i know we are
00:32:15.040
trying to make in the world and i hope that is realized in the world and i guess i could see my current
00:32:21.680
undeserved contentedness as a sign that we might be successful with this
00:32:26.800
so long as we can tank through all the hatred but there is a final thing that i wanted to say for
00:32:31.920
normal men and we can do a whole episode on why i don't think like polyamory often works for
00:32:36.000
middle-income people okay but because i've had more time to see the outcomes of it with my friend
00:32:42.000
group longitudinal research we hang out with a lot of like tech guys in california okay longitudinal
00:32:48.320
anecdata yes yeah and my anecdata is it basically never works actually i can't think of a single
00:32:55.520
no i can think of one long-term instance where it seems to have worked do i know it yeah yeah but i
00:33:01.520
don't know yeah don't name names yeah i don't want any new names i don't know it's public seems pretty
00:33:06.320
happy i wouldn't name names okay i'll take that out but so the but what i was going to say is the other
00:33:13.840
thing that's worth noting is alongside conjugal duties is there's a few things to accept here sex
00:33:20.560
non-reproductive sex is inherently sinful all non-reproductive sex is basically a fetish
00:33:27.200
it is pleasure for pleasure's sake even if it is a bonding ritual now so so it's sinful
00:33:33.280
if you like us do not think that happiness has inherent value i'm talking about in our system and
00:33:41.200
i think yes in most i say real christian systems i know there's some christian systems that have moved
00:33:47.600
to this worship of the flesh where it's oh in marriage sex is a holy thing always and i am like
00:33:54.400
no no reproductive sex is but sex more broadly i don't think that is true you are using another
00:34:02.880
human's body to masturbate it is a form of sin it takes away from your time that you are being productive
00:34:08.160
but that doesn't mean that because we all sit we aren't jesus right so we all do things that are meant to
00:34:16.000
satisfy ourselves and as a partner to your spouse while you have a duty to help uplift them as a
00:34:23.600
person and improve as a person you also have a duty to max out their happiness debt i'd say the
00:34:30.000
little green triangle on a sim your duty to your spouse is to make sure that's always as green as
00:34:34.800
possible and what that means is not just sex and that's the important thing is it means that you need
00:34:43.680
to understand the sins that they are not currently working on and allow them to indulge in those
00:34:52.480
sins where so long as they are making improvements in other areas with men this means that because a
00:34:58.880
lot of women don't desire sex in the same way men do in a long-term relationship right but they have
00:35:05.600
other sins for example desiring status signaling jewelry such as or desire fancy trips or furniture
00:35:15.520
whatever it might be and you have a duty in the same way that they have a duty to try to help maximize
00:35:23.520
your mood and self-perception as you are working on that together right you have a duty to them in the
00:35:29.600
same regards yep and so i would say that it is as bad if you have the financial resources to invest
00:35:36.880
in things like that unless you explicitly agree to not before the marriage and that's why marriage
00:35:41.040
contracts are so important because otherwise you're operating on society but within societal defaults i
00:35:46.400
think that there is some duty to supply the woman especially if that woman is doing her job and trying
00:35:53.600
to make you as happy as possible to supply her with the things that she needs for the same sort of
00:36:00.160
validation that you're getting from that sex and that might be jewelry it might be pearls it might be
00:36:05.600
nice furniture it might be a pet for example there are many self-perception modifying things it's just
00:36:12.800
that one of the most gendered towards men is sex and yet our society has built this bizarre
00:36:19.520
consent concept today and i'm not saying that consent doesn't matter at all but i'm like when
00:36:26.720
you just are like consent is like a steel thing that can never be crossed you end up with this really
00:36:33.360
horrible framework where a wife can just always say no right like just no we're not having sex anymore
00:36:40.640
and consent and you can't get mad at me for saying this and it's like that's silly the way this works
00:36:46.560
in real life in a family where like you're actually have a caring relationship with your partner is one
00:36:52.160
person i value this and the other partners i value this or i'm not in the mood for this today could we
00:36:56.880
do it this time or under these other conditions for example my wife would say these days i've got a
00:37:03.920
small infant in the room i don't want to hire a nanny to bring to deal with the infant i don't want to
00:37:08.320
put the infant in another room while we're having sex so let's wait until the infant is old enough
00:37:12.800
um that it could be with somebody else or that i feel comfortable leaving it outside the room for
00:37:18.880
a period of time that is a completely reasonable thing to say and i think that consent absolutism
00:37:27.120
removes reasonable conversations from the table i think the thing i have problems with around the way
00:37:33.920
consent is being framed in modern society is that denying consent is treated as a costless
00:37:42.480
activity instead of an activity that needs some level of explanation which allows something to
00:37:49.360
happen like you know for example a stay-at-home wife who isn't really contributing much of anything to a
00:37:56.080
relationship just constantly denying a man consent like permanent consent denial and thinking that the
00:38:04.400
relationship can stay stable and that then if he wants a divorce or he wants to leave or he wants to
00:38:12.240
cheat that he is 100 at fault and there is no culpability upon the person who was denying
00:38:18.880
consent um it is not that i don't think that consent shouldn't be respected absolutely it is that we
00:38:26.480
should not because we respect consent so seriously that we should not act as if denying consent bears some
00:38:36.080
cost i think i guess i'd call it like informed consent which is to say the denial of consent
00:38:43.280
with an explanation that is time-gated or resolvable like i don't want to sleep with you now because
00:38:50.800
i find you unattractive due to your weight gain that's fine because that's you know okay well so
00:38:55.840
lose weight then i'll want to sleep with you again but what were you going to say because you really
00:38:59.360
wanted to say something consent matters also if if someone feels like they're having genuine
00:39:06.400
non-consent with anything in a marriage and that's not necessarily with intimacy it could also be with
00:39:12.880
a partner for example making purchases that are not approved that is a form of infidelity period
00:39:20.960
yeah i wouldn't even say it's a form of infidelity i'd say it's so i do agree that
00:39:25.120
in that sense consent matters so what i'm saying here is feeling like it there is demanding that a
00:39:33.280
person obeys your consent request without consequences for denying consent by that what i mean is if a wife
00:39:45.280
continually declines consent without any real reason that that would be a case where uh a husband would be
00:39:54.320
justified in becoming angry and saying that the wife is violating the assumptions of their marriage
00:40:02.160
in the same way where it is a violation if a woman like takes a bunch of money or spends a bunch of
00:40:08.160
money without the man's consent but it is also a violation if the man never ever grants consent for
00:40:14.640
the woman to splurge on herself yeah i would also say though when you get to a point where relationships
00:40:21.600
involve asking for things like let alone denial just asking for things is being if i always have to
00:40:31.200
ask you for sex something's gone wrong if that's an important thing in our relationship and if you
00:40:38.880
always have to ask me to clean up something's gone wrong one when in an ideal situation relationship
00:40:45.520
requests should be like improv the answer is yes and but also you should be like the ultimate servant
00:40:52.000
to your partner because you are unified with them toward a larger goal you should be anticipating their
00:40:57.440
needs like you said putting them only after god and your children and doing everything you can to make
00:41:03.680
their lives more enjoyable but if they're not doing the same your relationships on thin ice
00:41:09.120
so and that's that's a really great point is that concepts like consent as progressives use the term
00:41:17.520
begin to not make sense in a well-structured relationship because in a well-structured
00:41:23.200
relationship both people generally consider the needs of the other before their own needs i would never
00:41:31.600
question that simone is definitely in almost everything she does during the day always putting my needs
00:41:37.520
before her own and as such i feel comfortable in everything i do always putting her needs before
00:41:43.440
mine so when there is arguments the arguments are often about something that i want to do for her
00:41:51.520
and she feels is unjustified oh i want to splurge on you is this and you're just like no i don't want
00:41:56.880
this are you wanting to splurge on me with something and i'm like no it wouldn't make me happy enough
00:42:01.760
to offset the cost and so we're not going to do that right now no i will say that sometimes
00:42:07.520
i bring things up where i know that i want something that is not in the best collective
00:42:12.720
interests of our family and our those are never things that hurt me it's like you coming to me and
00:42:18.160
saying can i do i have permission to not go to this party it's never like a favor you're doing when
00:42:23.120
it comes to the things for me they are always done and often and this is another thing i think
00:42:27.920
is really important and i would consider a duty of a spouse if you're considering the duties of your
00:42:33.440
relationship it is to notice and think and show appreciation for the things your spouse does
00:42:42.800
without telling you or request and that this appreciation cannot run dry just because your
00:42:51.040
relationship has existed a long time and i also think that's like a meaningful flirtation and dating
00:42:57.120
strategy in general that retard level relationship action is things like your eyes are so pretty you're
00:43:04.880
so beautiful you're so handsome whatever and i tell you gorgeous all the time but that's
00:43:08.800
retard level compliment what i think gives people the most sense of satisfaction the greatest dopamine hit
00:43:16.240
is when people recognize actions that they've taken things for which they actually have responsibility
00:43:22.480
okay women can put a lot of effort into their appearance but then you can recognize wow the
00:43:26.960
way you styled your hair today it's just incredible how to braid your hair that way or but it should be
00:43:31.600
around your actions or wow the way that you immediately anticipated the kids were going to freak out when
00:43:37.600
this thing happened and you made sure that they were okay it just really made me feel fantastic and i can't
00:43:42.480
thank you enough like complimenting actions or complimenting moments so much more meaningful than just
00:43:48.320
compliment or complimenting attributes over which people have no control and haven't put any effort
00:43:52.640
because any anyone even people who actually aren't working that hard feel like they're putting in some
00:43:57.920
kind of effort even if it's getting out of bed or like getting dressed and being recognized for stuff
00:44:02.640
that they personally put energy into gives them much more of a dopamine hit than stuff that they don't
00:44:06.800
feel like they worked on that day yes and yeah no absolutely i a hundred percent agree with you and
00:44:13.040
that's a great way when you're thinking about how do you actually make your partner feel good it's notice
00:44:16.960
the things that they're putting effort into and compliment those things and but it's just also
00:44:22.400
important because if they do something like even if it's it's my wife's duty to do the dishes is no
00:44:27.840
she's choosing to do the dishes and you need to show appreciation for that every time yeah it's one of the
00:44:33.200
things of value that partner offers in the relationship if you don't value that then why on earth should
00:44:39.920
they be putting in the effort yeah and well then they won't feel delight or appreciation now the final
00:44:44.160
thing i'm gonna note here because it was something that i noticed when i was ruminating on the point
00:44:48.400
i had made earlier i was like no it is actually traditional in christian cultures for the very
00:44:54.080
wealthy and most powerful men to have multiple partners and then i thought of an exception it is
00:45:00.080
normal in catholic and orthodox countries it is not normal in protestant countries consider king
00:45:08.160
henry the eights he had to literally have his wives killed to get additional women he had a son
00:45:16.160
with a side chick oh he did yes okay i'm wrong yeah sorry men are men he did he did have side
00:45:23.920
chicks you're right even in protestant countries you had it yeah and the side chick wasn't the problem
00:45:27.920
the problem is that the son was the legitimacy he wanted a legitimate heir yeah all right so even there
00:45:34.080
just always i i love when people appeal to a christian traditionalism that is just a complete
00:45:40.320
fabrication of what actual christian history was like and it's no they're there nice try this was
00:45:47.520
actually more complicated than that which is always interesting to me or they'll be like in the bible
00:45:52.960
it was always one man and one woman and it's it definitely was not you have the case of oh god
00:45:59.200
what's the case i'm thinking of where the guy was too old and so his wife said he could sleep with
00:46:03.840
their slave to have a kid oh yeah yeah that story was always so weird to me yes sarah hagar
00:46:11.760
and abraham literally the source of the abrahamic tradition so it's in all of the abrahamic tradition that
00:46:19.840
that this is not like the most it it is actually really interesting to me and we'll do another episode on
00:46:25.440
this this larp of the christian lifestyle that doesn't match lifestyles in the bible or that are
00:46:33.600
described in the bible but instead matches hollywood's description of a christian in the 1950s
00:46:40.800
which was like never like a real thing and it's just interesting to me that people will say
00:46:46.720
with such conviction these are christian values when they are not the values of the bible or historically
00:46:53.200
christian communities but they are just so convinced that they're christian values and
00:46:58.480
it's baffling to me but it shows you how like cultural consensus works people always want to
00:47:03.520
believe everything is archaic when often it's not one of the episodes will do when i get around to it
00:47:10.640
and i do need to do it because i have too many pro-jewish episodes and i need to do an episode that's
00:47:14.720
going to make people think oh jews aren't going to like this which is on how quickly the jewish
00:47:18.960
religion has evolved recently and that the medieval jewish religion and culture is almost
00:47:25.680
completely disconnected from modern the modern jewish religion i'm dying to hear more about this
00:47:30.560
yeah you keep a lot of of research but here for people who don't believe me for example i will put on
00:47:38.000
a screen right now a picture of a medieval catholic and a picture of a modern catholic now i am going to
00:47:46.160
put on the screen a picture of an ultra conservative medieval jew and a picture of a
00:47:51.600
ultra conservative modern jew and for those who are listening on podcast and don't know what medieval
00:47:57.280
jews looks like they look like they are wearing a go piece as a hat and they are wearing green and
00:48:03.840
it's got like a ball with the top of a hat and you know what modern jews look like they have like
00:48:08.720
long curly hair things and all sorts of other i should note here for anyone who's like oh you're just
00:48:14.480
talking about fashion what does that have to do with religious identity um the episode the reason
00:48:20.240
why it needs the whole episode is actually going to go over all sorts of traditions and things that
00:48:25.680
are core to the religious tradition um and show that uh you know around 50 or more are modern in
00:48:33.440
the same way that like if i'm looking at an amish community and you ask an amish community when was
00:48:37.520
your community founded and they'd be like well it's the death of christ and it's like well i mean
00:48:41.600
but from an outsider's perspective when was your community founded because when i look at amish and
00:48:47.520
i'm like this is what makes you amish um you know you're talking about like the 1800s um so and i also
00:48:54.560
need to note this in the context of i'm not really saying it's a new religion it's more this that in the
00:48:59.840
same way that some languages like when you're looking at language groups uh you will find that some
00:49:06.560
languages are incredibly preserved and change very very little over history and other languages evolve
00:49:13.040
incredibly quickly um and yet because they completely replace the iteration that came before
00:49:20.080
them it makes sense to call them the same language even though they would be completely uninterpretable
00:49:26.080
to people you know maybe even a few hundred years apart um that's sort of what we're talking about
00:49:32.000
here so it's a tricky subject and deserving of a full episode are you looking up medieval jew no i just
00:49:38.400
wanted to say if people are really interested in catholic where there's this particular podcast on
00:49:45.200
catholic fashion that i thought was absolutely fantastic i just think religious fashion is really
00:49:50.960
interesting yeah no no i i think it's really fascinating as well anyway love you today simone you are
00:49:57.520
amazing and i hope our fans are having a wonderful day and that we'll we can get feedback on the
00:50:04.080
lavalier system yeah i'm excited for it love you gorgeous love you too
00:50:13.120
man i'm so happy now you know that feeling at the end of the day when you've eaten all the frogs you've
00:50:19.280
eaten all of them so many frogs how am i coming through by the way say something more hello simone i
00:50:26.000
am excited to be talking to you today yeah sounds not as good as the super high quality mics but at