Will Smith showcases the shame of being Blue Pilled.
Readership: All; Men;
Theme: Faux-Masculine Archetypes
Author’s Note: Some comments from readers have been implemented into the text. Links to the original comments appear in the initial words.
Length: 2,600 words
Reading Time: 9 minutes + 11:45 minutes of video clips.
As a case study of the boring loyal dude, I present to readers Mr. Will Smith, AKA The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire. Given Will Smith’s stellar career in the arts, music, and entertainment that stretches back to the late 1980s, most readers here might not think of Will Smith as a boring loyal dude. However, what you are about to read should convince you of this unfortunate truth.
Let’s briefly review Will and Jada’s lovelorn relationship.
1994: Will meets Jada Pinkett on a set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Jada auditions to play Smith’s girlfriend. A few months later, Will divorces his first wife, Sheree Zampino.
December 31, 1997: Will and Jada get married in her hometown of Baltimore on New Year’s Eve. In a 2019 People cover story, Jada recalls “infuriating pressure” to marry Will after getting pregnant with their son Jaden. “I never wanted to get married. But my mother was like, ‘You have to get married’ — she’s so old-school — and Will wanted a family. So I said, ‘All right, maybe it’s something I should do.’” IOW, she settled.
As can be seen, their relationship had an ambiguous start. Jada was reluctant to marry Will, but they got married because of pregnancy. After about 14 years together, their relationship slowly disintegrated.
2011: Rumors circulated that Jada was dating her Hawthorne co-star, Latin music superstar and J.Lo’s husband at the time, Marc Anthony.
2013: Rumors surface that Will Smith had an affair with Margot Robbie while filming Focus. There was also talk about Will and Jada having an Open Relationship (OR).
Very high value men might have affairs with other women, but they would never call it an “Open Relationship” because this implies that the wife is making the rounds too and that he is OK with getting cucked. Thus, an OR is hardly ever spearheaded by married men with children. More often than not, ORs are instigated by bored housewives longing to relive their days on the CC. The husband is forced to accept it in order to preserve the semblance of a family, whether or not he has a corresponding side piece in tow.
2015: The 43-year old Jada meets a 22-year-old August Alsina for the first time and an “entanglement” ensues and continues until 2022.
Compare the difference in Jada’s attire and body language when she’s with Will (left) and when she’s with Alsina (right). With Will, she’s dressed rather plainly as far as starlets go. She shows utter boredom and subtle contempt. Her eyes are dull and lifeless. She’s wishing she were somewhere else — anywhere else. With Alsina, she’s wearing a black and gold teaser showing lots of skin. She has an ear-to-ear mischievious smile, eyes full of hedonic lust, and she bends her left knee and opens her legs to him. Notice how her right foot is pointed squarely at Alsina and touching his foot, indicating that she’s totally open to him.
July 21, 2017: While promoting her upcoming film Girls Trip, Jada goes on Watch What Happens Live! and says that the craziest rumor she’s ever heard about her and Will is that they’re swingers. “That’s the craziest one,” says Jada. “It’s constant. And I’m like, ‘yo, I wish. I wish.’”
December 21, 2017: Will posts a long, simp-worthy Instagram for his 20th wedding anniversary with Jada.
“Love is Like Gardening… I have learned to focus on HELPING you to BLOSSOM into what YOU want to be (into what you were born to be)… Rather than Demanding that you become what my Fragile Ego needs you to be.”
Between 2019 and 2022, Alsina writes three songs with references to his “entanglement” with Jada, indicating that their affair is ongoing.
June 30, 2020: The “entanglement” begins to unravel. While promoting his upcoming album The Product III: State of EMERGEency, August Alsina sits down with The Breakfast Club’s Angela Yee and claims that he “gave years of his life” to Jada in a romantic relationship with Will Smith’s blessing!
On a side note, observant viewers may notice the change in Alsina’s appearance since he first met Jada (see previous photo). Before, he was rather masculine, but clueless. After, he’s much more aware of himself, but he’s soft and feminized (e.g. he’s self-conscious, touches his hands, talks about his feelings, has feminized gestures, bleached hair with pink highlights, pink glasses, gaudy dangling jewelry…). This is the effect that cucking cougars have on young men.
On another side note, the fact that Alsina is openly talking about his “entanglement” with Jada is a sign that he has grown out of the infatuation and is now moving on. In essence, this is a confession that releases him from her P power. IOW, their relationship is over. This is one reason why men and women having illicit relationships prefer to keep it all secret, because once they spill the beans, the magical power of sin is gone.
July 10, 2020: The now infamous Red Table Talk occurs. Jada Pinkett Smith openly confesses to having a “relationship” with August Alsina, a man 21 years her junior! Certified cougar status. Although Jada confirms that she had a “relationship” with Alsina, she denies that Will ever gave his blessing, claiming the two were separated at the time. Her confession confirms that her relationship with Alsina has run its course and she’s moving on too.
Here, Jada confess her relationship with Alsina as a “healing relationship” and she avoids calling it an “affair”. All throughout the talk, Jada is evasive and using soft coded euphemisms for her sins. She would not talk this way if she and Will had already “agreed” to have an open relationship. This is why I believe Will never agreed to having an “OR”.
As you can see, Smith is obviously heartbroken in the Red Table Talk video. The editing and commentary brings it out.
As for Jada, she is laughing and carrying on, but every time she looks at Will, there’s contempt in her eyes. No respect at all. That look at 3:11 says, “He’s cool with everything. Whew… I got away with it!”
At 3:35, Jada explicitly says, “This is not about getting anybody back…”
Will responds, “For me it is.”
She shakes her head and says, “If that’s what you want…”
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she was thinking to herself something like, “You’re such a boring loyal man… I deserved this affair!“
I’m sure she expected to get a much softer, more compliant response from Will by telling him about her adulteries on a live feed. Furthermore, she’s attempting to play it down like it’s no big deal — and he goes along with it, laughs and makes jokes about it! Certified simp status!
So in the end, Will chose to stick with his explicitly disloyal wife who cucked him off with one too many men and then slyly bragged about it to his face in front of the world. Now he’s the epitomy of ignominous shame!
After such a flagrant figurative slap in the face in public, it’s not to be unexpected that Smith would resort to a literal slap in the face in an effort to assert his masculinity and retain his dignity. Guilt, shame, turbulent jealousy, harsh cruelty, and physical violence are the ripple effects of sexual sin, gradually propagating outward from the source to everyone near.
March 28, 2022: Chris Rock makes a bad joke about Jada at the 2022 Oscars. In response, Will Smith slaps Chris Rock on stage and cusses him out. F bombs and all. Will brought “West Philly” to the Oscar’s. Then Smith wins an Oscar, and in his award speech, he goes on about race, and his people, and standing up for women, and everyone applauds.
It is morally inept to have an accepting complacent attitude about blatant sin, which Smith has been in the altruistic habit of displaying. So it is satisfying to see him finally grow some balls and take action. But IMO, this is a soft response. Chris Rock, as well as all the other men who were pussyfooting with his wife, should be served a knuckle sandwich with a little more sauteed knuckle in it. If not, then there needs to be delivered some kind of message in no uncertain terms that such behaviors will be met with consequences and retribution. Also, the deft responsiveness of this action assigns guilt to those who are guilty. (Rock’s red face and stumbling hesitation after being struck indicates that he felt guilty for a moment.) Otherwise, said behaviors will continue with added reckless abandon. The responsibility for taking said action lies primarily on the cucked husband and his true friends.
But the boring loyal dude won’t do this. Instead, he covers the transgressions in his search for love (Proverbs 17:9). In this case, it is a wife’s love which was carelessly withheld from him and freely given to another man (or men). The next day, Will Smith apologizes to Chris Rock in a tweet.
The expected natural result is that the forning, cucking, and clucking will continue. The disrespect will grow, and the extramarital affairs will carry on unabashed. Jada will become known as another Hollywood hoe hoe, and Will’s reputation and state of affairs will gradually decline into ignominy. He can’t blame God for this.
Epilogue
Will Smith spent 30 years building up a brand as one of the most likable, most bankable stars ever. And he very well might have just destroyed that through his hapless marriages.
Smith’s main failures are as follows, in decreasing order of catastrophic significance.
- Not being able to keep his d!ck in his pants.
- The blindness resulting from his misplaced priorities on women, sex, and maybe fame as well, led to his poor choice of a wife — twice!
- He’s not been able to run a tight ship in his marriage.
Of course, not all the blame falls on Will. It is obvious that Jada did not respect him from her heart, as she was hesitant to marry him. (See Scott’s Axiom.) But I also suspect something happened between them that turned out to be the last straw. Either Will did something, or failed to do something along the way that caused his wife to lose what little remaining respect she had for him, or she just got tired of pretending to be a wife and mother. Or both. It could have been her affair in 2011, or his in 2013, or maybe animosities had been simmering for a long while before this, or maybe he took a clumsy stab at establishing Headship, and this is what prompted the affairs. It’s hard to say.
In spite of this debacle, and his lackluster response to it, I have to say that among all the famous men in secular culture, Will Smith has been an exemplary role model for young men throughout his career, and he is still to be admired for his contribution to the arts and entertainment. During his early career in music, he was renown for being the only “clean” rapper in town. Ironically, his upstanding clean-cut image is exactly what makes him “boring”.
Conclusions
It should be well noted that Feminism is founded upon an unshakable faith in men’s benevolence and the inexhaustible supply of good will from men. As such, the boring loyal dude is inadvertently promulgating Feminism. Will Smith makes this abundantly clear.
Hallmark traits of the boring loyal dude include…
- He is altruistic without purpose.
- He has a weak commitment to his own purposes.
- He has a poor self-esteem, i.e. a poor understanding of himself.
- He makes stupid concessions, such as agreeing to be in an “Open Relationship“.
- His thoughts and purposes are fem-centric or self-centered, poorly developed, or entirely absent.
- He fails to teach and discipline the female, especially in response to her disrespect and poor behavior.
- He is quick to forgive, ignore, or cover an offense, usually done in an effort to preserve the relationship or (re)create love.
- He will easily abandon, modify, or postpone his purposes in favor of the woman’s preferences, or under duress of her empty threats and fitness tests.
- He has a poor recognition of personal boundaries and therefore neglects to define, maintain, and enforce boundaries in a relationship on an ongoing basis.
- His authority is weak or faltering because he prioritizes his relationship over his mission. This also undermines his ability to employ various forms of married Game.
- He doesn’t understand that forming a vision, determination, detachment, and setting boundaries are necessary to maintain Frame and make progress towards his life purposes.
Moreover, just as the “nice guy” is not at all nice, the boring loyal dude is not at all loyal, and may not appear boring either. On the outside, he appears to be extremely faithful and/or loyal, but this is a facade. In many cases, extreme irrational loyalty is based on guilt, false guilt, or a deep, incorrigible hunger for love. Inside, the loyal dude struggles to maintain an attitude of detachment, or worse, he doesn’t recognize that authentic faithfulness requires some amount of detachment. Smith wouldn’t be half as loyal to his wife if he himself didn’t engage in extramarital affairs.
Last of all, deti gave us a biblical archetype of the boring loyal dude in the story of Samson and Delilah. In this parallel, Jada is Delilah; Will Smith is Samson. Smith is a broken man, and Jada broke him. Or, rather, he allowed Jada to break him. His wife cucked him and humiliated him in public numerous times and then forced him to sit there while she had a tell all about it on her Facebook show and wouldn’t even be completely honest about it. The entire sordid series of events has destroyed Smith. Or, he’s allowed it to destroy him.
Topics for Discussion
There’s much to be learned from poor Will hunting for love (and sex), holding fast to the dreamy Blue Pilled notion that altruism and loyalty will cut the wedding cake anew.
As such, there’s so much to talk about here…
About their marriage
- They had a defacto “open relationship“, even though they avoided calling it this.
- They were “on a break”.
- Jada is literally Tupac Shakur’s alpha widow – she’s still pining away for him!
About the affair(s)
- Was there any basis to all the rumors?
- Will had an affair in 2013.
- Jada cucked Will. Cougarville. Motor boat. Show boat. Big time.
- It’s taken for granted that the illicit lovers, Jada and August roundly escape censure, but all the shame and disgrace alights on the cucked husband Will.
- Meanwhile, men of lesser status committing much lesser transgressions are lectured about womens rights and sexual harassment.
About the Red Table Talk
- Jada insisted that Will go on her show and talk about her cucking him!
- Jada displayed a complete lack of remorse.
- Jada’s use of euphemisms and doublespeak to avoid telling the truth about her conduct.
- Why did Jada choose to “confess” this publicly on her show? Was it just to rub it in his face?
About the incident with Chris Rock at the Oscars
- Was this real, or was this staged and scripted to boost falling Oscar show ratings? (Rollo thinks it’s staged.)
- Jada’s manipulation of her husband – one minute Smith is chuckling; then after Jada rolls her eyes and shows her disapproval at Rock’s comments; Smith has to “white knight” for her because “Mama’s unhappy”.
- August Alsina may not have been there in person, but he was at least one proverbial elephant in the room.
- If anyone else did what Smith did he would be escorted out and charged with assault. Smith had the full authority to smack Rock because of his status of (1) being an Oscar nominee, and (2) being Jada’s husband.
- If a man did that to a woman who was trash talking his wife, he would be in handcuffs, and there would be GoFundMe’s for the slapped woman, “even if she deserved it”.
About the significance
- Toxic masculinity.
- Toxic femininity.
- What is the effect of race on all this? Would it be different if the participants were white? Asian? Other races? Mixed race?
Feel free to spend a while Red Pilling this whole mess. Anything we can glean from it will help us further understand the boring loyal dude archetype.
Masculinity Rating
Strength: 2-5
Honor: 0-4
Authority: 0-3
Respect: 0-2
Purpose: 3-6
Average Score: 2.5
H/T: LastHoldout
Related
- Dalrock: Boring loyal dudes (2011-7-18)
- Dalrock: Disrespecting respectability, dishonoring the honorable. (2015-7-9)
- Dalrock: An unshakable faith in men’s benevolence. An inexhaustible supply of good will from men. (2018-9-7)
- Dalrock: It was time to settle for a boring loyal dude. (2019-3-25)
- Vulture: A Timeline of Will, Jada, and August’s Entanglement (2022-4-7)
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I find it likely that:
Jada was into Will at the start because of his fame as the Fresh Prince.
Once she got into a relationship with him, it soured because he probably acted “beta” and unmasculine in the relationship. This explains her unwillingness to marry him both in word and action. If he was masculine / alpha then she would be all up on him to get pregnant AND marry him.
Will is the SIMP nice guy who thinks he can win his wife’s love a la Hollywood romance movies (which, by the way, are thoroughly false). You can’t negotiate attraction. Jada never wanted the marriage in the first place. This explains all their subsequent behavior, that Jada wants an open relationship to be with men she finds attractive while Will is constantly trying to “win her back.”
Will should let her go and get therapy. Don’t be with women that don’t want to be with you.
Other thoughts (obviously, secular in nature since they’re not Christian):
I don’t think Will slapping Chris is a soft response. It’s entirely misdirected. If you watch the video, Will initially laughs at the joke, but after he looks back and sees that Jada is not amused, he explodes into the SIMP nice guy role to “defend her honor” and slaps Chris. Will’s anger should be at his wife in the first place, but he shouldn’t even have let it get to the point to be angry. If she doesn’t want to be there just let her go. No need to get angry over her wanting to get out when she didn’t even want to be there in the first place 20+ years ago and her actions have been consistent with that ever since.
Also, Jada bears some of the blame for not filing for divorce. Disrespecting your husband is also disrespecting yourself. She is making herself look worse the longer this goes. If you don’t want to be there just leave.
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I’m firmly with DS’s take on the slap being misplaced due to the initial laughter and then obvious supplication to Jada. Slapping Rock was one of the least masculine approaches he could have taken and the over the top yelling after the slap just made it worse.
Some form of checking Jada over being able to laugh at herself some and take a bad dated joke would have been a much better approach. If he really did think that Rock crossed the line he could have encouraged him to get better writers or offer help to come up with better material.
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Serves him right for being such a cuck. He was defending the honor and dignity of a woman who has neither.
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I viewed Will Smith’s actions as profoundly feminine. That was a mild, harmless joke that was not delivered in a malicious way. He had an initial reaction, saw that it was not met with approval by someone whose approval he desired (his wife, so okay that makes sense). So he switched into emo-mode like a woman would and did what he thought he needed to gain approval, like a woman would. Then he started in on a screaming and ranting tirade, the kind of feminine behavior typical of men who have been raised by women without a strong masculine example.
A masculine response (this is according to men I respect, it’s not my own declaration), would have been to step to Chris Rock later and express his disapproval and the fact that Jada’s feelings were hurt. Rock probably would have offered a public apology in response. I thought Chris Rock was the more manly figure in this episode. He barely stumbled, kept his wits about him, and kept the event moving forward. That took great self-restraint. Not all violence is manly, which is where Smith got it totally wrong.
The assertion that he married poorly “twice” is an assumption I don’t think is necessarily well-founded. It’s already been established in the post that Will Smith had issues with fidelity. I recall very clearly how Jada Pinkett, was adored and pined over by black men in the early 90s when her star was beginning to rise. She was, along with Nia Long, the “it girl” of black Hollywood. The fact that Will fell in with her and for her while he was still married shouldn’t speak poorly of the wife he divorced. That’s especially true now that we see how he simps around after Jada begging her for her affection and love. Unless there is proof otherwise, he presumably already had that, but he wanted to be “Jada’s man” and that’s exactly what he ended up being.
Years ago (couple of decades now, I’d guess), I saw an interview someone did with the husband of the heretic preacher Joyce Meyer. It was so striking, which is why I never forgot it. He said someone walked up to him in public and said, “Aren’t you Joyce Meyer’s husband?”. and his response was, “No. Joyce Meyer is my wife.” He was basically telling them not to get it twisted. No matter who is in the spotlight, she carries his, not vice versa. Will Smith volunatrily gave Jada the keys to the car and allowed her to reign over his domain.
Jada’s star faded pretty quickly, while Will’s rose into the stratosphere. There was no reason why she shouldn’t have been grateful, and a little awestruck, at the fact that she was married to Will Smith. This wasn’t like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie where both people were equally rich and famous.
His own insecurity, coupled with her own very toxic upbringing, doomed this marriage from the start. This is the kind of instruction she received growing up (she talks about how her grandmother taught her to “self-pleasure” when she was 9 years old, and the reason why is even more scandalous for a married woman to embrace):
Will was in over his head from the beginning. He should have stayed married to he woman who was with him back when he had nothing. He probably wouldn’t be living through this hell right now if he had.
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Come again? Jada’s grandma taught her to dildo herself?
I assume it’s “You can’t depend on men — this is so you’re not dependent on them if you feel desperate” sort of thing. You would think this would be more prominent in the black community given higher rates of men who bolt.
Betcha she’s thinkin’ about a particular man when she’s “pleasuring” herself. I guess she’s technically independent (“Don’t need no man”) when she’s doing it.
Is she thinking about Will or Tupac when she’s “doing it” by herself — “I don’t need no man” ???
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Yeah, that was basically grandma’s point. The video is just s short 15 second clip where she explains why her grandmother exposed her to this experience.
Kind of wierd, but it explains a lot.
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I’m younger than Jada. My grandfather didn’t teach me to play with myself and I’m pretty sure he would have thought any man who taught his grandson something like that was an insane pervert. Maybe things are different for women.
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No Cameron, things are not “different for women”. I highly doubt very many women of our generation (you are GenX, am I right?) taught their daughters such things. I had to look up Jada’s age. Maybe it’s because you’re just a year behind my husband IIRC, but I tend to think of people in their late 40s as my contemporaries.
Seriously, has any young person in the history of the world ever needed to be taught that????
Jada Pinkett was clearly raised by dysfunctional, toxic women. I’ve only ever seen a few clips from that Red Table talk show with her mom, and it’s crystal clear that these are women who are not suited to be anyone’s mother, let alone wife.
Will simply screwed up, because he was raised with a traditional, mostly Christian understanding of marriage but like King Solomon, he allowed his heart to be turned away by a beautiful, pagan woman.
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If you only knew…
Elspeth, we live in a society where, 60-80 years ago, family physicians “cured” young “frigid” married women by manually massaging their clitorises until they orgasmed. The doctors literally masturbated their patients.
I could tell you stories otherwise, but I won’t.
The answer is YES, young people all through history have had to be taught about their own bodies and how to masturbate. Particularly when all you’re ever taught about sex before age 17 is that sex is “dirty” and “nasty” and “you shouldn’t be doing anything like that” and “if you even so much as think about sex you’re going to hell where you’ll burn forever in a lake of fire built just for you.”
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Yes deti, I am familiar with some of the Victorian medical practices designed to cure women of “hysteria”, LOL.
Maybe my statement “in the history of the world” was a bit hyperbolic, but I don’t think it was hyperbolic by much. Particularly over the past 50 years or so.
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My grandfather was a family physician who graduated med school in 1947. Pretty sure he didn’t masturbate his female patients.
Who knows how people learned that stuff. For us in middle school, the boys started making jokes at lunch where they made the hand motion, made a shooting sound and pretended to catch something (at first, I had no clue what that “something” was supposed to be ) in their milk cartons.
Culture was different in the 80s, at least where I lived. It was considered shameful to do that. Not even so much from a Christian prudish point of view as from a “You’re a loser, you pervert!” point of view.
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I don’t recall anyone talking or joking about it when I was a kid. That wasn’t my point. I had a friend for instance who discovered how things “worked”, she said, in a hot tub sitting on the water jets when she was 10.
I never imagined openness about such things, because yes, there is shame attached to it. I wasn’t promoting it. I just assumed, whatever that says about me, that most young people figured that kind of thing out on their own, even if accidentally. Not that they were purposefully or enthusiastically “Rah! Rah! Masturbation!”
As for the medical thing deti mentioned, that was the Victorian period — before your grandpa’s time. Doctors were supposedly curing “hysteria” in married women.
Kind of gross, but it was a thing.
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Yes E. I know you weren’t promoting it or saying it was celebrated among your peers. I was responding really to both you and deti and merely explaining my experience in the 80s.
It was subject to a lot of jokes but at the same time shameful not so much from a Christian perspective as “you’re pathetic.”
A common joke was to insult a kid whose last name was “Bates” by affixing the title “Master” to his name. If the guys wanted to pick on another guy one thing would be to say he did that. Now people brag about doing that.
Just noting the cultural changes that’s all.
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Cam,
In his book, Everything you always wanted to know about sex; Dr. David Reuben talks about male masturbation. The way American boys learned about masturbation is the same way boys learn about everything else: One of their close friends who knows more about it shows them how to do it by doing it themselves. It’s literally, “OK, that’s how you do it; now you try.” He even describes groups of boys masturbating together (in each other’s presence, not masturbating each other) in a “race” to see who reaches orgasm first.
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deti, the closest thing I remember was “pissing contests” (no one called it that but I assume it’s where the term came from) where boys would see who could pee the farthest e.g. everyone lined up on the edge of a canal. Can’t imagine they were playin with it in front of other guys – but people are weird who knows.
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That sounds gay, and I do not believe Dr. Reuben is telling the truth.
If Jada’s mom wasn’t such a public train wreck and admittedly a harlot, I would’ve questioned her story about the grandmother.
On that note, I’m out. The men can confirm or deny my suspicions about Reubens’ claims.
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That does sound gay. I don’t remember anyone talking about that. At some point I heard the phrase “circle jerk” but it sounded like a disgusting urban myth. Yeah I would think a sexologist and his patients would be a self selected group.
I’m sure weird stuff happens but that ain’t normal. Maybe why they were seeing a sex therapist.
Yes Kinsey was a world class perv and also a liar who falsified his “research” and should have been thrown in jail for his “research.”
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You really believe Reuben published what he knew to be lies, after interviewing and treating hundreds if not thousands of people? You really believe he would lie about it?
Who would know more about the sex lives of men – a male psychiatrist who had treated men; or a middle aged woman married to a bull alpha and who has 5 daughters?
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Kinsey interviewed and treated a lot of people too, and he turned out to be a fraud. Sex therapists, and the people who go to sex therapists, are a self-selected group.
I may be a middle aged woman married to a man who admittedly had a successful and active social life pre-marriage, but I’ve spent my life around men. Grew up in a house of men. Married a man who grew up in a house of men. Men have had a much greater impact on my life than women until very recently.
No one is going to convince me that normal heterosexual men, not even as teenaged boys, sat around in a room together with their junk out masturbating. Not as a normative thing that most boys did.
But David Reuben is the expert, LOL. What do I know? One of my cardinal sayings is, “I think I’m right, but I may be wrong.” And it’s true. I may be wrong, so I will stipulate that.
I have an affinity towards you deti, and I don’t like it when we argue, so thank you for the dialogue.
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When I was in the 8th grade, one of my classmates told me he hosted a “Baiting party” which had a dual meaning. He invited some of his friends as well as some effeminate guys in our class. He told them they would turn off the lights and then everyone can start masturbating. He and his friends wouldn’t do it, although they made noises like they were. After a few minutes, he turned on the lights and they would mock and ridicule the guys who had their d!cks out.
From what I’ve heard, women are worse, much worse. I knew one woman who had a birthday party a couple months after she got a divorce. More than one of her female friends who came to the party gave her a dildo or a vibrator as a gift. They talked, joked, and laughed about how it was much better than a man, because they are bigger and longer, they don’t go soft, you can always come every time, you can change batteries if they lose power, you can always hit the right spot, you can use it while sitting at your desk at the office, you don’t have to worry about it jumping to another woman, you can change from one to another without feeling bad about it, etc.
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Yes, you’ve spent your life around men — only one of whom you’ve ever had sex with or talked about sex with and NONE of whom you’ve talked about masturbation with.
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Apparently, Jack and deti had some freaky childhoods.
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Maybe it’s an upper middle class thing. Never heard about anything like that. I thought it was weird that our swim team held a shave party in a hottub where they shaved each others’ bodies for swim meets. Mixed sex – don’t know who shaved who and didn’t really want to know.
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I was on the swim team. Never did – or heard of – anything like that.
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Yes. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are public figures. You get talked about in the media. You get criticized, sometimes unfairly, sometimes quite mercilessly. When you’re at awards shows and you’re nominated for something, people talk about you — and your spouse, and your kids. They make jokes about you — sometimes cruel, sometimes tasteless jokes. And you just have to deal with it even if you don’t like it.
That’s one of the costs of fame — you get made the butt of jokes sometimes. People talk about you and hold you up for criticism. Both of them should know that — particularly when they have gotten fantastically wealthy using their bodies, their looks, and their outward acting talent. Their bodies, physical appearances, and public personae are the tools of their trades. Those things are fair game for criticism and Pinkett in particular should know that.
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We don’t really know why Will Smith and his first wife, Sheree Zampino, divorced. What we do know is that Zampino divorced him; that Smith describes it as his “ultimate failure”, and that Smith was infatuated with Pinkett before he’d met and married Zampino. Smith says he feels (!) he was “always supposed to be with Jada.”
— Nicki Swift: The Real Reason Will Smith And Sheree Zampino Divorced (2020-9-9)
— The Things: Why Did Will Smith And His First Wife Sheree Zampino Divorce? (2022-4-2)
What a mess. See, this is what happens when a man pursues a woman who feels, “Eh, OK, yeah, sure, I guess so.” Even if that man is Will Smith. This is what happens when you pursue women; and don’t let the women who are interested in you come to you.
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So Jada Pinkett was a source of infatuation. The fact that a man of his stature was gripped with the same infatuation with this woman as the average teenaged boy in the hood speaks volumes. The public sees 6’2″ handsome superstar, but that’s not what he sees. According to Will’s own words, he always wanted Jada more than he wanted Sheree Zampino. Poor woman was never going to be the one so no wonder she was unhappy.
Will sounds more and more feminine with every bit of information that is revealed. That was a really interesting link, deti. He married the fantasy of what he thought marriage to Jada would be like, she was still pining over a man with a much harder and rugged persona (a lot of that was fake, too). What a mess indeed.
Royce White put it this way:
It’s a case study in how litle stature matters if the man doesn’t recognize his own value.
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Every man needs to have “Recognize your own value!” imprinted on his brain with its related axiom, “Don’t accept anything less than your value!” Will Smith is a real life public service announcement of what happens when you misvalue yourself. The more you know …..
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One thing about dissecting celebrity men’s lives that I like to keep in mind, whether it be someone like Will Smith, Brad Pitt, or some other big name celebrity male, their lives are similar to ours in some ways and very different at the same time. Similar in that they are men and they sin, they too suffer the consequences, and we can learn from them as examples. However, they’re different in that when they sin and start to suffer the consequences, they have the resources to mitigate the damage where as the average man does not.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone like Will Smith get “treatment” and get “re-made” as an A-List Alpha male movie star, and have some new woman (women) fawning all over him. Not saying this will definitely happen, but I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it did. For the average man, this doesn’t happen. I’m not saying it’s all “wonderful” for these celebrity males as they move forward with their lives, but at least the damage and effects of sin can be mitigated by their money, fame, celebrity status, etc. The average man, in my experience working with men, suffers greatly, and has great difficulty mitigating the effects of the sin moving forward. Not impossible, especially with God’s help, but infinitely more difficult.
I just got through talking with a younger man in my men’s group who shared with me what he’s going through in his life. Classic case of the blue pill, beta male we talk about here all the time. Going through a divorce, a couple of kids, the wife cheated on him, the wife’s mother and grandmother are all behind her; and the kicker, he’s getting ready to go into the Family Court with her where he ‘hopes’ to come out of it with a workable arrangement with the kids, child support, etc. Good luck. Lamb to the slaughter, and he doesn’t have Will Smith’s resources to hire a powerful lawyer who might mitigate the damage for him from some feminist female judge.
This is why, IMO, we need to attempt to
blue pillRed Pill the beta’s BEFORE they “sleep walk” their way through our gynocentric societal minefield and get themselves “blown up”. Tall order I know. In having done men’s work for the last five years now, I’ve run into this stuff time and again with men of all ages because they, generally speaking, have NO CLUE what they’re doing out there in the world of women. Other than trying to have some sort of workable relationship with a woman to get laid on a regular basis, either as a single man or married guy, a lot of this stuff that we talk about that looms in the background, cheating wives, cucking, Family Courts etc, they find out about it when it “hits them in the face.” AND, unlike Will and other male celebrities, they can’t mitigate the damage when the sh!t storm hits because they lack the resources to combat it effectively. Plus most of them are an “emotional wreck” because they’re finding out, many for the first time, that our society and the relationships encountered therein are NOT what’s portrayed by movies or Disney, or what their single mothers’ taught them about women. It’s sad and it’s painful to watch or listen to. I know from first hand experience trying to help them after the “storm” has hit. It’s not easy, and it’s not pretty either.LikeLiked by 4 people
Don’t you mean “red pill” the betas?
Yeah, on a similar note, Smith is Exhibit A how a man can be fantastically financially and professionally successful and still be a hopeless hapless blue pill beta cuck who can’t manage his own home. He can run and build a wildly successful business; but is disrespected and used, and ignored in his own home. I’ve seen it too many times to count.
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Correct, meant red pill.
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Don’t forget a few other things in the timeline.
Late 1980s: Jada Pinkett meets Tupac Shakur at the Baltimore School For the Arts. The two strike up a friendship. She appeared in two of his music videos. Sometime between their meeting and 1995, the two develop a very close relationship — some say a sexual one.
1994: Shakur is convicted of sexual assault.
1995: Pinkett contributes $100,000 to Shakur’s bail so he can remain free on bail pending appeal of his sexual assault conviction.
September 13, 1996: Shakur is murdered.
Then the timeline picks up with…
December 31, 1997: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett marry in her hometown of Baltimore. Pinkett is pregnant with her first child by Smith and would later give birth to Jaden Smith about 7 months later in July 1998.
The timing clearly shows Pinkett is Shakur’s alpha widow. No question about it. Shakur is literally cvcking Smith from the grave.
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New one — totally original phrase deti! LoL!!
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Corey Holcomb had an interesting take with the whole 2Pac/Jada issue. He pulled no punches on Jada.
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Exactly.
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He definitely was the nice guy of rap/hip hop like Sinbad was the nice guy of black comedy. 80s-90s white people ate that stuff up: “Sinbad said he would NEVER tell a joke that would embarrass his parents!!” (little hearts and flowers after the quote).
Will seems masculine to us because he’s a six-two, handsome, charismatic movie star. The gangsta rappers used to make fun of him for making “rap for white people” because he didn’t rap about murdering people, his genitals, or pimping his ho’s. Maybe Jayda didn’t find him very masculine by comparison. I don’t know her background, but I’m sure a lot of black girls grow up seeing gangsters as the epitome of masculinity.
Not the ones whose old-school Christian fathers don’t put up with that nonsense of course.
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That means being black is all about murdering people, bragging about your genitals, and pimping hoes. Were those guys working for the KKK, or something?
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In a sense yes, although as useful idiots. Sadly, most of the “You’re acting white!” people are too stupid to recognize they’re denigrating themselves.
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In the UK its called “takin’ the p!ss”, and not being able to “laugh at yourself” shows your immaturity. In a way, this was Smith’s way of practicing “game” so to speak. You see, when he sees a real masculine guy like August or other men like that who are younger…. and after reading all the info and getting advice on “how to be a man”, he TRIES to behave Red Pill in a manner of going up and punching a guy. Forget the “insult” to his wife……….. When someone disses you… you go up and slap ’em.
That is how Americans solve problems today. Someone said something you don’t like? Go hit em. Beat em up. Shoot em. Threaten them with violence…
Smith’s actions were “trying” to show up to his wife that he can be “masculine” just like guys like August… and usually if you don’t have the attitude, confidence, looks, swagger, and / or a combination of all of these…. you end up looking like Will Smith — a fool.
Just like 99% of men who go “out there” and “put the work in” and try Game.
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How is white-knighting for an adulteress “red pill”?
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How is it not? This red pill teaches, shows, and expects men to cater to women on “what they like and what they find attractive.”
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LastMod,
No. I don’t know why you continually insist on getting this wrong.
Your notions of what the Red Pill is about constitute a contorted and cynical Purple Pill. The Blue Pill explicitly “expects men to cater to women.” The Red Pill points out the error of this and teaches the opposite. Teaching men what women like and what they find attractive is Red Pill, but the emphasis is about understanding female psychology and how to manage it, which is an area that needs to be emphasized because most men are cluelessly Blue Pilled, as RPB pointed out.
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Because, if there’s one thing all red pill men agree on, it’s that playing Captain Save-a-Hoe is foolish.
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No matter who or whatever else August Alsina has done or created, he will always be best known as “that guy who Jada cheated on Will with”.
Apparently, by his own report, Alsina is very ill and near death with an autoimmune disorder. Divine retribution?
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In LA, everyone is still “walkin’ a line” about the incident. No one is coming out too much one way or another for the fact they don’t know what to say and the REACTION it would get. Everyone here is so concerned about what other people think in that industry.
For example, concerning their marriage, some have said, “Well, thats a black thing” (regarding open marriages)…. so the issue is evidently about “white standards”: These standards on marriage, making it about race. Will Smith has more money than I’ll ever have. More fame. Prestige. He and his wife are hardly victims of “racial” standards. White marriages are faring no better than black ones, if truth be told.
A few have quietly mentioned, “Well, it was just a joke”, and you’re in Hollywood, in the public spotlight. This is going to happen.
And the usual, “You cannot be saying things about women like that!”, and the standing up to defend his wife from a very “hurtful, cruel joke” about some rare condition she has.
We always assume if a person is attractive, or has money, or is on TV, then they “must” be a good person.
My take is that most Hollywood people are really messed up. Pills. Abysmal personal lives. Drugs. Sex addictions. Kid f*ckers. Too much money, boredom and too much free time.
Smith is a good actor. That’s about it.
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Really? Because when we heard about the whole open marriage deal (whereby the wife is free to step out), a couple of our daughters said, “That sounds so white.”
Black men having a problem staying at home? That’s old news. We cannot even count the number of women who have stayed married to unfaithful men. The marriages eventually fell apart, but usually not soley because of that. Conversely, I cannot think of one (NOT ONE) black man I know in real life or from afar who stayed married to an unfaithful wife until Will Smith, LOL.
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From my youth the black families where the couple got married and stayed married seemed to have good marriages. It’s like the ones who survived all the challenges to marriage in the black community seemed to be rock solid. It doesn’t sound like a black thing to me either but I’m not an expert.
We knew one couple (indirectly – friend of a friend) with 6 children and an open marriage. They were white, husband ex-Army (Afghanistan). The family had financial issues and lived with a couple we knew for a while. The wife (not the open marriage couple the hosting couple) came home one day and found her (not open marriage) husband in bed “cuddling” with the open-marriage wife. Big shock – open marriage couple is divorced now.
I think Liz said she’s seen a lot of the open marriage thing among Air Force couples and I got the impression it was white couples.
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Interesting. Among white couples, it’s precisely the reverse: If a man cheats and is discovered, he can almost always count on his wife divorcing him (especially if he’s a bottom 80%er who cheated with a hooker or a sugar baby (but then I repeat myself). This is so because an unattractive man cheating is just the worst — the way white women view this, there is “no way on God’s green earth she should have to put up with that nonsense from a (n unattractive) husband. Girl, you don’t have to take that. You can do better! You go out and you get a better man!”
It is of course very, VERY different if the man cheating on her is physically attractive. She will usually stay with that man, because she knows she has done very well, she can’t do better than being “the wife of very attractive philanderer”, and it’s better to be Mrs. Very Attractive Philanderer with access to all the money than Very Attractive Philanderer’s Ex-Wife who depends on child support and maybe some alimony.
If a wife cheats and is discovered, her husband will almost always stay and “try to work it out”, but they still usually divorce because by the time she’s resorted to stepping out, she’s just done with the marriage and with him.
“And is discovered” or “gets caught” is key here. Usually, undiscovered cheating stays concealed, and they stay together, even if it’s a subpar marriage.
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Maybe it’s a Hollywood thing? 😉
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@ Cameron:’
From my youth the black families where the couple got married and stayed married seemed to have good marriages. It’s like the ones who survived all the challenges to marriage in the black community seemed to be rock solid. It doesn’t sound like a black thing to me either but I’m not an expert
That sounds exactly right to me as well. Besides us, we are acquainted with two other black couples who seem to be joyfully going the distance. The refrain is universal (from white and black people alike is, “You guys are #marriagegoals”. Not always quite like that but I have a white friend who said that o me once. More than once I have heard (and heard it said of another one of the aforementioned women, “The way you love that man is commendable”.
I think us on the ground average black women who did good have the good sense to know we did good and not f it up.
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Oh. Last thought.
I have had many women, mostly white but a few of other ethnicities, compliment me on the one hand and on the other say outright, “I’m not going to treat my husband like that. I can’t. He’s not God”.
Which strikes me because I know, better than anyone that my husband is not God, and I’m certain he doesnt feel worshipped. 😆
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Elspeth, linking your two comments.
“You guys are #marriagegoals” ” “The way you love that man is commendable”.
They can see it but won’t adopt it. Won’t even try to.
Reminds me of a girl I know from high school who’s screwed up her life (primarily by screwing over her first husband and replacing him with r a rich jerk). “I just want a sixty year marriage like my grandparents 😦 !!!!!!”
Then be like your grandmother!!
Also, how can I help feeling like your friends’ admiration for how you’re doing things, awareness of your success, but refusal to even TRY it themselves is a result of it feeling icky, wrong, etc. to do that with THEIR man. I.e. they didn’t get a SAM (yes I know some of your friends push back with you being this way with SAM).
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That would be true in a society operating on some moral foundation, but that’s not the current larger society in which we live, and it certainly is not the society that celebs like Will and Jada live in. “Slore” is the IN thing in such a society (or if not “IN,” it certainly is not frowned upon). Jada won’t suffer any negative consequences at all, especially given the race and sex factors at play.
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I didn’t think about this until just now, but you’re right. In any kind of functioning society, no one would publicly air their emotions, feelings, and thought processes, about everything, all the time. In general, our current internet/entertainment/social media societal setup encourages people to feel all over the place, all the time, to everyone, everywhere (including here, and anywhere else people talk to each other on blogs or podcasts).
Before the rise of the internet and constant connectivity, there was much more activity and far less cogitating, ruminating, and feeling in public. This started with reality TV, Oprah, and Jerry Springer: constant emoting coupled with a demand that others validate and affirm your constant emoting. We are now to the point that public emoting masquerades as “deep thought” and “insight” and “breakthrough”. This is so everywhere – in therapy, in church, in public discourse, in social interaction. This is what Jada was doing on that Red Table Talk. Her public emoting and emotional evisceration of her own husband on video in real time is presented as deep philosophizing about the Meaning of Life, Love, Relationships, and Marriage. She allegedly reached “real insights” and “breakthrough”. She was so “open” and “raw”; she was just “keepin’ it real”.
No. She was airing her dirty laundry in public, at her husband’s expense. She was doing nothing other than feeling her feelings, in public, at her husband’s expense. I have never before seen a man literally destroyed, in real time, before my eyes, in the third person. I saw it during that Red Table Talk.
What Jada has been doing, and what we as a society are doing, is substituting our navel gazing our feelings in public, splaying them publicly for all to see, while passing it off as profundity and insight.
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The fact that there is no shame in Jada over what she’s done and that the common refrain from those around her is not that she should be ashamed, is indicative of a society that has broken free from the social mores that once bound it together. Experiencing shame is what happens when you break a longstanding moral or social standard, mainly because the culture around you enforces its standards and shame is most definitely one of the tools of enforcement.
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In such a society. God will definitely avenge himself. Especially if repentance isn’t forthcoming.
We must ask God to deal with all these injustices.
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The difference here though is that no one is publicly dragging their families’ names and images into the public square to be dissected and analyzed, a la the Smiths, The Heard-Depps, etc. Or even some less famous folks would apply.
Carl Trueman talks about how technology caused man to be able to “bend reality” in ways that were not possible 100 years ago, and the result being our tendency to shed the limitations of the concrete world and substitute our own reality as supreme (even if it only exists in our minds).
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Will could have been a boring loyal dude with his first wife, but he wasn’t that loyal. And now decades later, and multiplied by thousands, his chickens are coming home to roost with this cancer he is attached to.
My wife tried to cheat on me with a local when we took a vacation out of the country I entirely paid for. I can understand the pain of being cucked at that level. Looking back, I lived my life in a way where God didn’t owe me any favors, so it was one of the things that led me in another direction.
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In a traditional healthy marriage environment women are happy with a boring loyal dude. In the dysfunctional mainstream marriage environment women expect excitement 24 hours a day. This is impossible, which is why so many men are frustrated and confused. The immigrant in LastMod’s example wasn’t an exciting alpha male but he has a good marriage because he is in a traditional healthy marriage environment.
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Let’s not lay this all at women’s feet. Will Smith could have married a boring, loyal woman. Instead, he chose to marry Jada. He even dumped his first wife for Jada, and Jada proceeded to make his life very exciting, in the sense that a train wreck is exciting.
Men whine about women chasing bad boys, all the while chasing harlots.
Yes, Jada is despicable, but Will Smith inflicted Jada on himself. He’s a fool.
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If someone has a spouse and good friends before they become famous, they should regularly thank God for that and do everything to preserve those relationships. Once they are famous you never know if people are loyal or not (and they are usually not).
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And, by the way, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about “How could Will Smith have known?”
Jada’s relationship with Tupac Shakur was public knowledge. It was also public knowledge that Jada helped bail Tupac out after he and his buddies gang raped a woman (for which he was convicted).
What does that say about Jada’s moral character?
…and Jada isn’t even beautiful.
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This is a good point often forgotten.
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I agree men aren’t above criticism in this regard. My guess is most of the guys complaining about women chasing badboys aren’t chasing harlots. Although I suppose it depends on your definition of harlot. A premarital notch count of 1 could be considered a harlot by some. If that’s the case, there’s practically nothing to chase but harlots.
I can’t imagine Will Smith has ever complained about women chasing bad boys.
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Cameron,
It’s pretty common. For example, Kevin Samuels died while screwing some random THOT he picked up.
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Oscar I have to confess I don’t know much about Kevin Samuels. I watched a bit of some of the videos you guys posted – very funny and true!! I don’t know if he complains about women chasing bad boys or if his gig is just to make women face reality about their own value to men (and just the basic idea that they need to THINK about their own value to men). Dunno if Mr. Samuels complained a whole lot about the bad boy thing. If he did and/or made moral judgements while sleeping with hoes then he was a hypocrite.
It’s hard to tell if people are sincere or just taking advantage of a money opportunity – e.g. monetizing youtube videos.
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Cameron,
Kevin Samuels, like many red pill content creators, told women that they needed to stop riding the carousel, and get serious about marriage. Who were those women riding on the carousel? A lot of bad boys, of course. Then, just as many other RP content creators, he was helping women ride the carousel.
I’ve said this here before. I don’t want to hear any whining about immoral women from men who indulge in immorality with women.
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This IMO is what diminishes some of the content creators in the Manosphere. I think some of them (many of them? most of them?) are secretly, or not so secretly, wishing they had Stacy or Amber for at least an evening, if not for an STR, even after ragging on about “304s” in podcast after podcast they put out. I get the feeling that the “5 to 7, modest girl next door” seemingly revered by the ‘Sphere content creators as a some sort of “lost icon” from yesteryear, is not what they really want (lust after?). It’s Miss Stacy or Miss Amber with her great looks and even greater baggage.
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A lot of them are having Stacy or Amber for a night or two. See Kevin Samuels.
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Some men who have scored with supermodel types will tell you that it only takes a short time with a “10 B!+ch” to make you swear off the breed forever.
I’ll take their word for it. I’ve seen enough “10 B!+ches” in action with other men to know that I never want to cross paths with one, let alone sleep with one (and this from a man whose own wife is, in his opinion, an 8 for her age group).
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Feeriker,
So, you hit the sweet spot on the hot/crazy matrix. Well done, sir.
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OT:
Scott,
I was down at “the grove” near CBS Television City / Fairfax doing some light shopping after work, got a coffee and did some people watching.
Going to get an agent to be a “background person” in TV shows and the like. Gorgeous evening as usual here… They have music playing on the pedestrian mall / area at “The Grove”. This song came on. From fall 1984. I hated this song at the time….. but it was the first time I have heard it in probably 35 years or so. I smirked to myself when it came on, and for reasons unknown… you came to mind. It’s a very LA type of song. It was loud enough. Kind of fit the mood.
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Always thought that one had a good beat.
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Fall of ’84. I turned 10, the Transformers toys were introduced and I would listen to Video Soul on BET (gangsta rap didn’t exist). Good times.
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That fall I entered high school 9th grade (1984). It was a surreal time because I had turned 14 but I didn’t go out too much. My older brother was always sick, and I wasn’t allowed to have friends over because my older brother was always sick.
In June 1984 my father took me on my first “real” backpacking trek. We hiked the high peaks region of the Adirondacks. A week in the deep forest. Climbed New York States tallest mountain (Marcy) and other high peaks in the Adirondacks (Colden, Algonquin, Wright, Skylight, and Sunrise). I have been temped to go back and ascend Marcy again but no; never will. That hike I went on in that long ago summer of 1984 I want to keep pure in a memory with my late father who loved camping.
As I recall I was starting to “demand” what I would wear clothing wise and took a serious interest in what I was wearing. School shopping late that summer I recall was a headache with my mother. I recall we went to the then “brand new” Crossgates Mall in Albany and also over a weekend in Freeport Maine with the family, visited LL Bean and a few other stores I liked.
I listened to a lot of radio back then. All kinds. We didn’t have cable, and even if we did want it……no way we could get it in my area until the mid 1990’s. One TV in the living room. Nearest neighbor two miles down the road. The nearest village a nine mile drive, and only a small grocery, a post office. Gas station. A pub. Going into Lake Placid or Plattsbugh back then was treat…not an every week thing.
I got to go roller skating here and there. I remember Christmas 1984 was when I got my new skis, which I did not expect. Long time ago.
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Yeah for some reason I got pretty anti-social outside of school starting in the 9th grade. Had friends in school but didn’t have them over much. That’s an awkward age – 14/15 was my least favorite age growing up.
I too got picky about clothing around 14. I wanted to go to the surf shops and get all the cool brand clothes that surfer kids wore: Quicksilver, Billabong, etc. I even tried surfing for a while – didn’t get very good. My 3 year older cousin (c/o ’89) was a very popular surfer, very handsome, athletic (baseball) etc. Definitely wanted to be like him.
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That’s funny Cameron. In 1983 it was the last year I could attend the YMCA Summer Camp on Lake George. My parents sent me every summer for a few weeks. In 1983, I was sent for the whole ten weeks of summer vacation (my Nan in Wales died, mom had to go back for a month, my Aunt Mary came to stay and help my dad run the house with my older brother who needed care, my parents agreed it was better for me to be “at a camp” than at home….and even then, if we were not camping together. Dad and I really didnt get along. Mom was the salve between us).
It was the last summer as a “kid” even though I was 13. Canoeing, camping, hijing, weekly huge campfires, meals in that old lodge that was built in 1905. All the boys who were sent for summer and age 13 were bunked in one cabin, actually the best one. It had a view of the lake and a small stream flowing nearby that you could follow a few miles to the main road and hitch hike into Lake George Village……imagine that, hitch hiking as a 13 year old today? Our Counselor was a twenty year old collge kid from Dartmouth and he didnt get upset when we all would smoke behind the cabin between activities and at night….and it was the first time I witnessed (accidently) an adult having sex.
Its easy Cameron now to suffer from “good ol days” syndrome at our respected ages now. The water was wetter back then. Summers hotter and longer. The corn was just sweeter. You follow me?
That Toto cassette (with that hit ‘Africa”) seemed to be playing the whole summer of 1983, along with that “Night and Day” cassette by Joe Jackson and of course “Hall and Oates”
After that summer…..it was more expectations at home. Then I went to West Germany for that year. Started working on weekends. Boys school. SATs,…….life
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I never got to go to a summer camp. But you’re right that 13 is about the end of childhood. That was a fun summer – lots of good time with cousins.
My favorite song on that Toto album is “Rosanna” even though “Africa” gets more radio air time.
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Joe Jackson “Night and Day” released fall 1982. Big monster hit was “Steppin Out”. Joe Jackson was a new wave rocker from ENgland who was an ‘Ameriphile” and lived in New York City. Still one of my fav top-forty / pop albums of the 1980’s to this day. A lot of guys relate to Joe.
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Summer Camp… Yes, this movie from 1979 reminded of the camp I attended from 1979-1983. Hilarious movie. Anyway….
Meatballs (Bill Murray)
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Ah yes, one of the 80s “big bands.” I was in my early 20s then, stationed in Southern Europe as a seagoing legionnaire/mercenary. On the whole I enjoyed 80s music more than I ever did 70s music when I was in high school. I agree with you; this brings back a certain nostalgia.
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My local coffee shop put out a second tip jar. The first was labeled “Chris Rock” and the second “Will Smith”. Chris won by a very large margin.
Weak, eager-to-please men are still not respected.
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I wonder if you put out a tip jar and labeled it “Brain Transplant For Brandon,” would anyone contribute?
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Clever idea by the coffee shop! Yes, Chris Rock jar would get my tip too!
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I think Chris would get so many tips that they’d either have to empty the jar multiple times per week, or set up additional jars.
BTW, I miss Chris’s standup comedy from 1995 – circa 2008. I still ROTFLMAO every time I watch it.
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Chris Rock standup (from “Bring the Pain” I think):
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I strongly disagree.
No adulteress is worth fighting for, or fighting over. Like I’ve told my boys, a woman who’s worth fighting for won’t give you a reason to fight over her.
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Oscar.
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Behold, I have reaped that which I sowed when I afflicted RPA with “Dude Looks Like a Lady”.
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#Karma
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Dear Jack,
I think I owe you an apology. My reason for posting the Jada Pinkett Smith video where she says her grandma taught her the art of self pleasure actually had an on topic purpose. Namely, to show that this woman had been raised in a toxic ethos and with an unhealthy understanding of men, sex, and marriage.
Sorry about the spin off into “all about self-love…”
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The spin off was my fault. Not off topic for the site though since something about that topic was posted recently. You know me – whore of babylon Augustine-Manichaen repressed – gotta weigh in.
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Off topic: It’s a good thing she’s pretty, because she has nothing else going for her.
https://gab.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/posts/108286454891574835
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Nasty mouth on her which makes her physical beauty useless, IMO.
The neighbor woman across the street burned her kitchen up. She didn’t even think to turn the burner off. I had to go in and put out the fire. She seemed to be having a panic attack.
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cameron,
Panic attack? Maybe. For certain she’s clueless about what to do after her initial attempt made things worse by spreading the grease fire and she does not appear to have learned the skill of controlling her emotions. I’ve witnessed a similar type of emotional spiraling with my wife on multiple occasions and it’s as if her brain goes through a thought pattern where she quickly arrives at “Oh defecation! I just (fill in the blank horrible outcome)!” instead of taking a deep breath and thinking through the problem.
In Lauren’s particular case you can ding her for not knowing how to put a small grease fire out. The bigger issue is that she lost the ability to think and became dangerously irrational. If she’d calmed herself enough to think about using her phone to google how to put the fire out that at least would have shown a decent head on her shoulders and emotional control in the face of glaring ignorance.
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RPA this woman was literally hyperventilating and had to sit on the ground. I’ve read that panic attacks are a real, physiological thing that is found either mostly or exclusively in women. Apparently men are fairly immune to them. One of my wife’s friends gets them too.
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I don’t necessarily fault women for not being calm during stressful, dangerous events. That’s why they have men. It’s even a little bit attractive that they need us to save them even if I don’t want them burning my kitchen down.
The least attractive thing about the woman was her potty mouth. Give me an average looking girl who only has sweet things coming out of her mouth rather than a “hottie” who talks like that. Heck, give me a homely woman with a sweet mouth over that.
That’ just me.
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I personally wouldn’t be too harsh on her for her chosen vocabulary, but I’m more concerned with the intent of the words rather than the words themselves. On top of that a kitchen grease fire certainly qualifies in my book as an “Oh $h!t” moment.
There is something about the idea of a panic attack that doesn’t sit well with me. The very word “attack” suggests that something is happening to someone outside of their control. It’s implied helplessness in what should be an otherwise chemically balanced person. Since you mentioned Lauren’s reaction as mainly a female phenomenon, let’s identify the issue for what it is in the vast majority of the cases, women not putting in the work to learn and practice self control in stressful situations.
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That definitely wasn’t a panic attack. You’ll know one if you see one. They start hyperventilating.
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Gonna respectfully disagree. She says “f_ck” a bunch of times. And online in front of the world. That’s skank or skank-like. And her ass hanging out of the back of her apron. Sure she’s “hot” but not wife material. Jessa Duggar’s Fat Friend before her.
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All she had to do was put a lid on the pan. Her mother failed her.
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JDFF FTW
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Would that be the woman in the video linked here?
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I THOT so.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Dexerto/status/1524467841642160133
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The video is from @kjanecaron on Twitter and Instagram.
Take one guess as to why she is popular.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FShfcpZXwAMOnWa?format=jpg
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What we witnessed with Lauren is a successful flash point experiment followed by an emotional response that quickly overwhelmed her when she couldn’t figure out what to do. My favorite part of the whole video is that her appeal for help is to people on social media as if their presence on screens could somehow be used to reach through the electronics to put the fire out.
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Concerning panic response:
When a person faces an overwhelmingly stressful situation, their brain’s frontal lobe pretty much shuts down, they lose the ability to reason, and their fine motor controls are greatly diminished. That’s what you saw in that video.
Each individual’s threshold for stress is different, but on average men have a higher threshold for stress than women do. Obviously, there are exceptions. See emergency room nurses.
Also, training helps. In the military, we practice battle drills over and over again so that, when the shooting starts, we can react without thinking, because odds are that you’ll have a really hard time thinking.
In combat, men rarely rise to the occasion. They fall to the level of their training.
Ultimately, a person’s threshold for stress is innate. That’s why Special Forces guys tend to be really mellow. They naturally operate at such a low level of anxiety, that when the shooting starts and everyone else is panicked, they’re barely at everyone else’s normal level of anxiety.
But yeah, that girl’s mom failed her. She should have been taught that all you have to do is put a lid on a burning pan to suffocate the fire. She is not wife material. She’ll be used for recreational purposes only, until players don’t want her anymore, and some foolish “nice guy” puts a ring on her finger.
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She’s not wife material but IMO it’s not because she didn’t know how to put a kitchen fire out. That would be nice of course as would being a good cook. Those are nice things but I have other priorities and she could be trained in things like that even by a husband.
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Cameron,
I can agree with that. The lack of domestic skills, the potty mouth, the slutty dress, and the attention-whoring on the internet are all symptoms of the same problem.
She wasn’t raised right.
JDFF FTW
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I heard a stat the other day, don’t know if it’s true or someone just pulled it out of their @ss, that 97% of modern women under 40 are unmarriageable now for some of the reasons you guys sighted above. That struck me! Only 3% are marriageable? Wow. The implications of that going forward. Far reaching if true.
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RPB,
I doubt it’s 3%. I have one boy approaching marriage age, so I may have more to report in the next few years.
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It’s pretty horrifying, when you stop to think about it, how many generations have gone by of “Her momma failed her.”
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Feeriker,
On average in the US, we’re on the 3rd generation of “Her mom failed her.” Individuals vary.
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I wonder which one of these male archetypes a man who trys desperately online to out a blogger who says things his wife doesn’t like is. It’s almost another level I’m having a hard time classifying how weak and pathetic it is. Maybe sockpuppet?
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White knight.
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O/T: Lysa and Art TerKeurst are divorcing after all. And they’re gonna duke it out just like nonChristians do. Because, you know, there’s her income from the “ministry”. (That’s her income, don’tcha know. Not their income. HER income.) And no way will she give him any of that cash without a fight.)
Just look at her ruthlessness. She took him back but made him sign a postnup. Now that they’re divorcing, she demands that the judge enforce it as written. (Hmm – when men ask for prenups to be enforced, what usually happens?) He wants alimony because he’s financially dependent on her. She claims he shouldn’t get alimony because he cheated on her. (Hmm – I know men paying alimony to wives who cheated on them.)
It’s always about money and power with women and divorce. Always, always, ALWAYS – even if the woman involved is in “Christian ministry”. This is why when divorce happens, the gloves have to come off and you have to be prepared to fight for what you must have.
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Link to the latest on Lysapaloooza:
https://www.christianpost.com/news/lysa-terkeursts-husband-spent-over-100k-on-extramarital-affair.html
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Several years ago (2015-ish), some moms from the co-op our kids were in decided to read one of her books, Unglued: Making Wise Choices in the Midst of Raw Emotions. If the book isn’t a kids book or 80+ years old, I rarely enjoy non-fiction written by women. But I’m learning to be a team player, so I read it and it was actually pretty good. Not C.S. Lewis good, but a cut about that awful Rachel Hollis (who also incidentally recently divorced).
Having watched a friend go through a divorce where she was pulling out all the stops but her husband still couldn’t keep his junk at home. (They were missionaries, not at all rich, and he also spent a ton of money on his side pieces.) I’m hesitant to harp on LT for this breakup.
I do, however, agree that LT should not be able to walk away without keeping him in the “lifestyle that he was accustomed to” for at least the next 5 years. This goes double if there are any minor kids who will have to spend weekends with him. If the sexes were reversed, he would have to do so, despite being the wronged party.
If I recall reading it correctly, the reason R&B singer Mary J. Blige performed at the Super Bowl this year was in part because she needed to get back out there and tour to keep up with her alimony payments. It happens, but most of the time the women get off easier than a man would,
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E:
In a marriage this long, she needs to carry him for life. If the genders were reversed, that’s what the ruling would be.
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2, Every married man has to be mentally prepared to go scorched earth if divorce happens because he has no power to stop it in today’s world. The odd effect of this mental preparation is that in correctly orienting the husband’s mindset towards his wife from an value/authority standpoint, he greatly lessens the chance divorce will happen.
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In fairness, I have seen cases in wife breadwinner divorces where wife has paid temporary alimony to a husband. The most is 3 years. I have also seen the same cases where wife breadwinner has been ordered to pay the husband’s attorney fees.
I have never seen cases where a wife has been ordered to pay indefinite/lifetime alimony, even where the husband is statutorily entitled to it. I really don’t know if this is because the husband agreed not to receive it, or didn’t ask for it.
And, yes, agreed as to men’s mental preparation for divorce. Once that Rubicon is crossed, he has to adopt a “point of no return” attitude and steel himself to make some very, very hard decisions.
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Art is in the usual position of a working wife, but whose wages are less than that of the breadwinner husband.
Lysa’s ministry, Proverbs 31, had gross revenues of $7,358,000 in 2019 and expenses of $6,177,000 that same year. One can expect it’s done at least $5 million in 2020 and 2021. Surely it pays her a salary. Lysa is P31’s main asset. She’s a “key man”. And this would not necessarily include Lysa’s income from book sales. It does include income from speaking engagements, though. I think it’s safe to presume P31 pays Lysa (its primary moneymaking asset) a healthy six figure salary. It’s got to be at least $300,000 per year and that’s probably an underestimation.
So, yeah – she very well might have to pay some alimony, if the post nup didn’t eliminate it. I can tell you right now that a wife in Art’s position would certainly be getting alimony, and in this state a wife in Art’s position would be getting indefinite/lifetime alimony.
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It also has the unfortunate — and pretty much unavoidable — side effect of slowly creating feelings in the hushand of distrust, if not eventual contempt for the wife. He will very likely come to see her as the enemy, a “cold war adversary” who is simply waiting for the right opportunity to attack. This will only exacerbate any conflict that will arise between them, and thus make divorce a form of self-fulfilling prophesy.
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Rhetorical question: will Lysa continue her P31 ministry, post-divorce (again, it’s rhetorical; no need to answer)?
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It’s always about money with the majority of Christians today. They mirror the world.
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Yup. I get really irritated with people who deny this, as it’s so obvious that denial just makes them look like idiots.
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Are you sure? I read that he is a businessman and owns a Chick-fil-A in Charlotte, NC. By the way, their daughter Ashley is also divorced.
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Wow, what a mess. Why, yes, I’d love to get Christian family and lifestyle advice from these people . . .
Not only do you not want to be famous, but you don’t want to be married to a famous woman. You will never come first, and her ego will be gigantic.
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If Art Terkeurst is indeed a successful businessman — and I have never seen a Chick-fil-A in the southeast that didn’t have lines wrapped around the building, 🙂 — then nope, nope, nope. She should not be carrying him for the rest of his life. If he is doing well enough financially, and he was truly the unfaithful partner (yeah, I know it takes two to ruin a marriage in most cases), then he needs to make a clean break and move on.
I do believe she should have to pay him some kind of settlement, because as is often the case with mommy bloggers who blow up and make millions, their husbands were bankrolling the lifestyle that freed them up to do that.
I am a traditionalist. I do not believe in equal rights, and I believe that the provider duties rest primarily with the husband, not the wife. If, as in this case and others we have witnessed, the wife ends up making ridiculous amounts of money compared to the husband, that’s a complication that seems to almost universally doom a marriage.
If I were to write a best selling book tomorrow, I will make every necessary legal arrangement required to ensure that SAM is a full partner in every penny earned because there was no way that happened without his financial support paving the way.
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I looked it up. He owns a Chick-Fil-A about 15 minutes from where I live.
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Joe:
Art was a Chick-fil-A owner in the time BC (Before Covid). Restaurants nationwide, especially fast food restaurants, took nose dives in the post-Covid era. He might still be a Chick-fil-A franchisor, but that doesn’t mean he’s flush.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If breadwinner husbands have to carry dependent wives; then breadwinner wives have to carry dependent husbands. IMO, Lysa needs to get her — and P31’s — checkbooks out.
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I’m not convinced Art is successful, post Covid.
Nope. She needs to carry him for life. I haven’t seen any proof he’s “financially successful”.
He needs to fleece her for every last red cent he can extract from her. She wants out? He needs to make her pay. Sure, he can make that clean break – just as soon as she buys him out.
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I can tell you right now that if everything else were exactly the same and only the genders were reversed, with Art being the wildly successful Christian “minister” and Lysa running a glorified greasy spoon, Art would be writing her checks for the rest of his life or her life, whichever one ended first. I can guarantee you that if the genders were reversed, he’d have to pay her forever.
He should get every last penny out of her that he can. That’s what she would do.
Equality’s grand, aint’ it?
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Deti:
Post Covid, in the southeast, at least in FL/GA and when we were vacationing in NC last October, Chick-fil-a is doing fine. Pass by one and the double drive through lines are wrapped around the buildings and out into the streets.
The southeast (predominantly red states) re-opened and rebounded very quickly compared to the rest of the country. I’m not a huge Chick-fil-a fan, but there are a lot of them down here and I pass them regularly.
Even during Covid, the guy we know who manages a local Chick-fil-a said business was brisk and steady. I would argue that Lysa’s “business” took more of a hit than Art’s during Covid.
You’re an attorney, so you know that the courts will sort out the financials, and they’ll be able to determine if Art’s restaurant has suffered. If it has, then okay. But if it hasn’t, then my original assertion stands.
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We can agree to disagree. Fair is fair. And it wouldn’t matter if Chick fil A’s are doing fine. Sounds like she’s doing better than he is financially. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t ask and she would assert his financial health, not his pre-reconciliation infidelity, as a reason for refusing alimony. (The main reason alimony isn’t awarded is because the person asking for it doesn’t need it – not because the requesting party cheated.)
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In Missouri, Chick-fil-A had lines wrapped around the block all through COVID. They adapted more quickly and successfully than pretty much any other restaurant. I’d be surprised if it hurt them at all.
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thedeti – Chick-fil-a operators are doing just fine. The company will take roughly 2 years of screening and waiting out a guy to see if he really determined to be a CFA operator, which means that the men they get are quite alike in drive and commitment. The “buy in” for a store is only 5k because when CFA feels they have the right person, they don’t want money to be an issue keeping the right person from the work. So Art doesn’t have any debt on the building or store. Technically, CFA corporate owns every store. Their operators are guys they partner with to run them.
Most first year operators make 80-90k getting the store off the ground. It goes way up from there. A store with decent volume should expect a couple hundred thousand a year for the operator. If they aren’t doing that, they are doing something wrong. Lysa almost certainly makes substantially more than Art because of her media presence, but he’s not hurting at all.
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OK, so if all this is true about Art doing just gangbusters business selling hormone laced chicken sandwiches to people, then he didn’t need to ask for alimony, and Lysa should have asserted to the court that he doesn’t need alimony.
The proper response to “I want alimony” is not “He shouldn’t get alimony because he’s a cheater”; it’s “He shouldn’t get alimony because he doesn’t need it — he’s making a henhouse full of money selling tasty deep fat fried chicken sandwiches.”
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I agree 100%. However, women lead with and argue from our emotions 90% of time. In her mind, it probably doesn’t matter if he needs it or not.
The issue is that he doesn’t deserve it.
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First. You own a franchjise of Chick Fillet, or McDOnalds, or Taco Bell……or a 7 Eleven (which I worked at for two years).
Once upon a time, if you owned a McDonalds franchise or a 7 Eleven or Subway…you could actually have a decent living. Today? A person has to own 3 maybe 5 and then you’re really doing well, or starting to.Even if its doing “gangbusters” business, most restaurants in the franchise world are ona RAZOR thin profit margin.
The franchise system is glorified pyramid scheme. In order to grow you profits you have to own more, open more and thus saturating the market and at the same time you pay a larger sum BACK to the parent company.
It was once respectable and looked up to. Today, its a glorified Amway Salesman with ten times the regulations, and profits robbed by the parent company. Oh, Chick Filet is only “christian” in states where ist “good business” to say so.
They are all open on Sundays here.
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“The issue is that he doesn’t deserve it.”
So that’s the real issue, isn’t it? It’s just that you don’t like Art. You think he’s scum. Well I think Lysa’s pretty crappy here for spending her entire marriage putting her “ministry” over her husband and her marriage. I also think she’s pretty crappy here for not following scripture here and not working it out with her husband and for resorting to courts when our scripture clearly says that we believers aren’t to do that. She’s duking it out like an unbeliever. Great “Christian” example, Lysa TerKeurst is.
Well I’m not so quick to condemn. Deserve’s got nothing to do with it; and besides, we don’t get to decide “deserve”.
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So that’s the real issue, isn’t it? It’s just that you don’t like Art. You think he’s scum.
You’ve been making a habit lately of deliberately interpreting everything I say in the worst possible light. And you’re wrong. Again. I thought I made myself crystal clear , but before I bow out I’ll try one more time. I said that the issue is that she doesn’t think he deserves it, which is why she is leading with the “he cheated” defense instead of the “he doesn’t need it” defense of what she consider “her money”. Feelings, not law or logic.
I don’t know if he does or not , honestly. On balance (and I repeat myself again), women who start these blogging ministries/writing careers as stay at home wives, which then blow up into multi-million dollar enterprises, owe their husbands generous settlements when they divorce. Why? Because (and I have been saying this IRL for years), the only reason they were free to be able to do that kind of thing at a full time level and grow it is because someone else was keeping them clothes and fed.
But that’s a different topic from whether or not I think a woman should be on the hook to take care of a man for the rest of his natural life. Women and men are not interchangeable, and their God-given duties are not interchageable, and as a believer I refuse to buy into the current cultural zeitgeist simply because “equality, baby. like it or lump it”.
You disagree, and that’s cool. I understand, but please do not accuse me of saying things I did not say.
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@ Jason,
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Chick-fil-A is not like other franchises. The people who run individual restaurants are not owners. They’re operators. It only takes $10K to become an operator, but operators don’t get to keep any of it, or pass it on to their children. Nor does Chick-fil-A allow operators to operate more than one restaurant.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/chik-fil-a-franchise
On average, a stand-alone Chick-fil-A restaurant makes $6.5 million/year in gross revenue (no other fast food chain comes even close), and the operator gets a percentage.
https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/chick-fil-best-franchise-investment
Because Chick-fil-A is a privately owned company, they’re not required to publicize all their financial information, but depending on which source you believe, on average Chick-fil-A operators make somewhere between $250K and $350K/year on average.
And that’s for one restaurant.
The downside is that you never get to own the restaurant.
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An average Chick-fil-A operator makes $250K a year… for $10K they can become an operator? Sounds like a pyramid “franchise” scheme to me. No one is making $250K a year for running a Chick-fil-A. No one. The corporate office I am sure is doing very well.
Avon Corp (the former CEO is an Alum of my college class of 1974, she told me how the whole thing is set up when I was on the Board of Trustees….when I still had optimism for the world) has the classic pyramid scheme model. Initial investment. Lots of press about “all the money you make” and how “easy it is to do” and “anyone can do it” company is PRIVATELY held (huge red flag right there, usually means its a pyramid scheme) and yes…the people who get on board initially DO make the money and do well. Avon’s heyday was from the 1960’s thru the mid 1980’s. The pyramid couldnt grow anymore and the the model couldn’t keep up with changing markets and tastes. Also, other companies began making better products at almost the same cost…
There are different cuts or levels to the franchise industry. McDonalds and Pillsubry (which owns Burger King) are traded. So, you get to see the books….. a man like you says, “Oh, Chick-fil-A is beating them 20 fold”, or some outrageous number forgetting they can say what they want and publish what they please. Its not a ‘christian’ business. Its a “small c” christian business. Claiming some values but they caved to pressure from the whole gay thing, and BLM lobby too. They’re workers make minimum wage and its hardly a career where one can start at the bottom and get to the top……..
The former CEO of Avon who I knew. Started as an “avon lady” after college to get started. By 1980. She was the CEO.
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No, you didn’t say that. You did not say, “She doesn’t think he deserves it”, which would imply Lysa’s judgment of Art.
You said, “He doesn’t deserve [alimony]”, implying it was your judgment of Art. Your words referred to your thought processes; not others’ thought processes.
Thanks for clarifying what you intended to say.
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FWIW, I had lunch with a friend who heard Lysa speak at his church a while back. She trashed her husband, who was sitting in the front row. She didn’t take accountability for anything. He sent her an email flaming her for her behavior. He told her that she should resign from the ministry. Not surprisingly, she didn’t respond.
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I don’t know much about Chic-Fil-A but you would think they could get competent restaurant management for less than $250K to $350K per year. Their product practically sells itself (if only by reputation).
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@ Jason
Again, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re spouting emotion and ignoring facts, as usual.
Chick-fil-A operators get paid a percentage of their individual restaurant’s grossrevenue. The average Chick-fil-A restaurant’s gross revenue is $6.5 million.
$250K is barely 3.8% of $6.5 million.
There’s a reason why Chick-fil-a only accepts 0.15% of the people who apply to be operators.
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Lastmod, you are dead wrong on CFA operators and Oscar is right. I was one of 10 final candidates out of over 10,000 for a corporate job with them. Between the job application, being on a church elder board with a CFA operator and having a friend that is the VP of construction for all their properties, I can attest that if you try to think to explain CFA’s way of doing things based on the logic of how other companies operate you’ll be wrong more than right.
They are HIGHLY selective for cultural fit, both for the corporate office positions and even more so for storefront operators. My interview process took 9 months for a financial analyst position. They make you wait to see if you really want to work for CFA or if it’s just a job to you. The store operators take closer to 2 years before you get approved. If you are that committed to CFA and they think you’re the right guy it’s a 10k buy in. They make near 6 figures the first year and goes up quite a bit after that. The 250k-350k for a store operator is common.
Between the vetting process to find people who are really committed to CFA and the pay, operator retention at storefronts is north of 95%. People rarely ever leave and there are tens of thousands waiting to take the operator role if one does become available. At the corporate side, they consider everyone like family and they are committed to treating employees like a big family. They have created an arboretum like compound in the middle of an urban area with walking trails so employees can get out of the building. There is a full gym, with racquetball ball court and trainer led exercise classes. They encourage everyone to eat together like family so they have a cafeteria style restaurant with chefs that make lunch for anyone that wants it. Employee retention at the corporate office is over 90%.
If you are their type of person (that is conservative Southern Baptist type) then CFA is a great place to work.
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Now given CFA’s selectiveness for certain qualities in operators and that all the stores are corporately owned, Art TerKeurst could be in trouble with corporate. Cheating and divorce are not expected behaviors of operators. His work as an operator could be in jeopardy.
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I think there is some conflation of a Chick-fil-A operator with a regular Chick-fil-A restaurant manager. The guy running the Chick-fil-A making $250K isn’t a store manager. He’s operating the store as an owner, with the aforementioned limitations.
One of the things I find interesting about Chick-fil-A (and Cam mentioned this) is its reputation as something it clearly cannot possibly be. I can’t count the number of Christians I’ve spoken to over the years who assert that Chick-fil-A’s food is somehow more nutritious than McDonald’s or Wendy’s. When I push back and say that it is impossible for the chicken they’re buying at the volume they’re selling it to be any better than the chicken McDonald’s is selling, I am told, “But they fry their’s in peanut oil!” Okay, that is slightly better than vegetable oil, but the chicken is still big ag farmed and hormone laden, and Chick-fil-A is pretty expensive for a fast food joint.
I’ll always choose a decent burger over a chicken sandwich because beef and chicken, so unless I’m treating my kids to one of their frozen lemonades, or we’re hanging out with other Christian families, I skip it. It’s over priced. And yet, the lines wrap around the building. One of the shopping centers we frequent is a nightmare near the Chick-fil-a because the lines spill out into the intersection.
Interestingly, on the “no outright ownership” and “no passing it on” note, I spoke to an operator last month when I was treating my kids to a frozen lemonade. For some reason he felt like chatting with me for a bit. so we talked about faith and family and life in FL and a few things over a 5 minute period. One of the things he mentioned was that his grandfather operated a Chick-fil-a and that was where he got his first job. I wonder if that connection smoothed his path to becoming an operator.
Anyway, RPA and Oscar are right. Whatever you think you know for sure about the fast food franchise model, it probably doesn’t apply to the Chick-fil-a model.
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Interesting Elspeth. A good manager can ensure a restauraunt is very profitable particularly where the brand name sells the product. I’m still confused as to why they’d need to pay a (separate) operator all that money.
My son worked at a Chic Fil-A in high school. About the only thing he noticed quality-wise is the food is fresh not frozen (not sure how much that matters).
It seems like a yuppie fast food restaurant to me. Like the SUV moms who take their kids there do it to avoid the “riff-raff” at McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. The high prices accomplish this.
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A good manager can ensure a restauraunt is very profitable particularly where the brand name sells the product. I’m still confused as to why they’d need to pay a (separate) operator all that money.
It’s not a salary. It’s a percentage of profits based on the fact that they are an “owner” of sorts. Don’t forget that the operator put up 10K as seed money towards becoming an operator, not to mention the nearly yearlong investment in training and hoop jumping. The idea, as RPA explained, is that you want a stakeholder, not just an employee. A true stakeholder will always outperform a manager, even a good manager.
The operator hires his own managers and employees, and he is highly motivated to hore well, because the amount of money he makes is directly tied to the amount of money the store makes.
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I have a big family, so we rarely eat out. If we eat at Chick-fil-A, it’s not for the food. It’s not any better than any other fast food chain’s food.
We go there for the customer service. The restaurant is always clean, the employees are always friendly, and everyone treats you like they actually want you there.
And no, I don’t feel the least bit of remorse about avoiding the rif-raf at McDonald’s.
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Yep. Art’s Chick-Fil-a opened at the same time a McDonald’s did in a new shopping area. The former usually has double lines backed up throughout the drive-thru, and the latter has almost no one. Vastly different customer service.
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I recently started a job at a company with a sterling reputation for customer service. Guess whose customer service they highlighted as an example to follow in their new employee training?
Chick-fil-a.
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Makes sense – I’m just amazed that the percent is established such that the average “operator” makes that much. Maybe it’s my experience but corporations that profit share are WAY less generous – they want to maximize profit. I get that a person has to invest $10K and a year but you’re going to do as well or better than a doctor? Pretty good return on your investment/risk? Versus hundreds of thousands in debt for a doctor, a dozen years or whatever.
I’ll take Chic-Fil-A FTW!!!
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Cameron,
Given Chick-fil-A’s selection process, you’d have a much better shot at becoming a doctor.
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OT, but raw meat for the manosphere:
https://listverse.com/2022/05/12/10-reasons-women-marry-serial-killers/
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List Verse is my happy place!
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That’s good, because Lysa is at the ready to give it to you, without any shame or irony. /sarc
It never ceases to amaze me how so many (supposedly) self-respecting men just do.NOT.get.this.
Hey, guys: God did NOT intend for woman to upstage you as a man. If any woman insists on putting her own career and FAME ahead of you, then get the h311 as far away from her as you can. If you’re married to her, tell her it’s you and her family, or her career — NOT BOTH. PICK ONE.
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Well, it ain’t been all melocotones y crema, but on the whole I must admit that I’ve been very blessed. My biggest challenge in the future will be to keep her from the “Pastora” temptation and influence. One thing I’ve learned is that female influence in the leadership of Latin American evangelical churches is reaching HERETICAL levels. That will be a point of potential contention.
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I’ve been shocked at denominations that used to not even allow women to wear pants in church that now have “pastoras”.
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Off topic:
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That needs to be made into posters and t-shirts.
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on boring loyal dudes:
that’s 99% of all of us. Men in this forum inculded. For example: I could be in a Learjet with Princess Kate, writer Bret Easton Ellis with the best conversations getting ready to skydive naked while gakking up the best Columbian that would make Tony Montana envious into a plie of money that would cover the basics for the rest of my life….
And that stil would never top the time in 1992 a few of us guys took a cow from a local farm, broke into the Administration Building on campus brought that cow upstairs (cows acannot walk down stairs…hee hee) and let ol Lulabelle mess that place up good. We also gave her an Ex-lax to loosen her up a bit. It was college prank for the history books.
What is “exciting” about you all now? As compared to some “boring” dude. I would wager most of you…..work, come home. None of you are taking wild river raft rides on the weekends down the Mekong from the highlands in Thailand.
A single guy or gal may have some more “interesting” stories but that doesnt make them exciting. Plenty of boring loyal dudes served in the military, and defeated the Nazis and Imperial Japan…..plent of boring loyal dudes went to college.
WIll Smith maybe boring and loyal…but he has left a bigger c*m stain on the world than all of us combined….so the joke is probably on us
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My husband certainly qualifies as a boring loyal dude by this definition. But I’m not bored.
More than that, he us known as a man whose wife adores and respects him.
Will Smith is famous and rich (and very good looking). Yet his wife cucks, humiliates, disrespects and dishonors him for sport in front of a worldwide audience.
No sane self-respecting man would choose Wills current plight in exchange for a quiet happy life with a faithful wife.
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Elspeth. He did that. In the end, he decided to be a fool. The funny thing is, as much as everyone is blaming this woman… I never really heard of her before this whole thing with the slap on Rock… Heck….. I didnt even know he was married. To me, WIll Smith is still “The Fresh Prince” on many levels — a movie star. I remember the news a few years back about an open relationship with his wife…. and at that time, I was surprised that he was married.
As I learned in AA and NA, “In the end, you are responsible for your own choices”, and Will is for his. We can blame his wife. We can chastise her for how she had cucked him…. Well, he’s the one allowing it, and with him, his excuses are few. He’s rich, good looking, and talented in his career. He’s been a fixture over the decades.
Again, we assume that for people like Smith… If something wrong happens, then it must be the wife’s fault. It must be drugs. It must be race. It must be something that happened to him when he was eight….
He did what he did himself. The wife didn’t make him do it. No one put a gun to his head and said, “You go up there and slap that guy for saying that!”
It’s like when I hear police and teachers b!tch, whine, moan, and complain about how hard their jobs are, how little they are paid, how no one “respects” them, and how rough they have it: No one “made” them be a teacher or a cop. No one put a gun to their heads and said, “You will be a cop or else I am going to kill you!”
Gang members are infiltrating the LA police force… and NOTHING is being done about it. The second in command of the Fresno Police is DEALING drugs. Nothing is being done, oh wait….. he was forced to resign WITH a pension. Teachers abusing children and their Union comes to their defense. “Oh, ummmm… You can’t fire that teacher!”
In the end, Will Smith did what he did by himself. He will have to face consequences, despite how “evil” his wife is… and she may very well be…. Her career won’t be hurt by this. Why? Because she didn’t go up and slap Rock.
A thief in the park who mugs people but then gives the money he steals to the poor is STILL a thief in the park who mugs people.
The world doesn’t care if he is cucked, and actually it shouldn’t…. It should focus on what he did. He should pay. I pay enough right now for the choices and mistakes of others, and the discussion here is doing the same…. Make this woman pay for him. Make the rest of us pay by doing something.
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Apparently you missed the part where I said, “Will Smith inflicted Jada on himself. He’s a fool.”
…and “I don’t want to hear any nonsense about ‘How could Will Smith have known?’”
So, you’re seeing things that aren’t there, and you’re not seeing things that are there.
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I think the “boring loyal dude” trope was clearly described as a relationship archetype, Jason. No one would argue that Will Smith is a boring man, nor that the average husband is super exciting.
I thought it was mostly about the importance of how the woman a man marries perceives him, not the way he is perceived by the general public. No one lives and sleeps with the general public.
I actually feel sorry for Will Smith. Unlike many here, I actually have watched a man I know and love be completely destroyed and humiliated by his wife in real time (and watched as her church tried to defend what was completely undefensible based on his admitted imperfections). His situation almost made this one look tame by comparison.
I admit that stuff like this animates me, and I probably do tend to default to blaming the wife pretty quickly. But as my husband reminded me at the time, this man walked eyes wide open into a situation with a woman of questionable character, so he owned some share of his misery. So you’re right. Will Smith did choose this willingly, and it is wrong to put the total onus on her.
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Elspeth,
Your assessment of the post is correct.
Yes, I do too. I’ve enjoyed his contributions to entertainment since the late 80s. He is a better man than 99% of Hollywood, and yet the Blue Pill is indiscriminating. Tragedy happens to the best of us.
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I think she was briefed by her attorney because the “he cheated” defense squares nicely with North Carolina law regarding alimony. It seems that Lysa knows or suspects that Art would most likely be deemed the dependent spouse based on their respective incomes. So the “he cheated” defense would disqualify him from alimony pursuant to North Carolina law, as follows –
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Did you see anyone here claim to be “exciting”, or are you arguing with the voices in your head again?
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We are all boring to women who are not loyal. I know an ultra F boy. We went out to dinner at a hip place on two occasions. An attractive server comes up and basically begs him to unblock her on social media. This happened twice — both times we went there! She was willing to shame herself in front of his friends. He didn’t even respond to her request either time. His longest relationship ended with forced celibacy for 9 months. It doesn’t matter what a man looks like, how much money he has, being a bad boy, or how many women want him… If she doesn’t plan on being loyal with him, then she’s not going to do it.
The same thing has happened to me too. Everytime I go to the grocery store, a cute girl bats her eyes at me, but I can’t get a less attractive woman to have sex with me. It sucks that she’s the only one I can’t impress. It’s like comparative score college football. One great team blows everyone out and you’d think they can beat anyone. But then they lose to a garbage team. Once you add the defense and offense stats, the eye test, you could swear this could never happen, but it does. Being attractive means you can get better women to look at you, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get better women. But sure, even if you don’t have any chance, getting more attention is better than nothing at all.
After I became Red Pilled, I started watching womens’ interactions and being more conscious of my frame. I found that it only takes just the slightest slip and you’ll lose them. Yawn once and it will turn them off. Like, so what if I can’t sleep? So what if I lose some money on a business deal? Apparently, the least sign of weakness will make them get uncomfortable and then angry. They don’t want anything besides displays of strength. I can’t tell them my life story. I have way too many problems. So I can’t date them. I’m not some endless pile of walking success. I have endured months of bad weather and being down and out. I lost money, I had everything break down, I had nothing but poor bids in my business… If I had a wife at those times, I could never tell her about any problems I might have because she would get angry. So while I’m by myself, I can at least talk to myself and work through the problems without adding the troubles of dealing with an angry wife on top of it.
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Off topic: I stopped at an ExxonMobil station today, and it was out of gas. That’s never happened to me before. The next couple of years should be fun.
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The collapse is about to become truly palpable.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but a very big part of me is going to be feeling a delicious sense of Schadenfreude at watching a nation full of self-obsessed, shallow, solipsistic, amoral imbeciles getting its just comeuppance (and yes, I’m well aware of the fact that I’ll be suffering the wrath of God upon this nation along with everyone else, but at least I’ll understand WHY).
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When I was younger, I used to wonder why God withholds His judgment for so long. Then I re-read the Old Testament and thought about all the decent people who suffered right along with their wicked neighbors. Now I get it.
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Yeah, when the critics get mad at God for clearing out the Promised Land I invite them to read Leviticus 18. Those people carried on like that for 400 years. One should marvel more at God’s mercy than his wrath, as He could have acted much sooner (and He could rightly act against our countries any time).
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Indeed. Of all of God’s attributes, His Mercy is the one that I truly cannot fathom — and, I confess, the one I find the most difficult to accept.
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@ deti:
The quote from my initial comment (copied and pasted)
Paragraph alignment was misleading, but I thought it was clear what I meant.
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I have a question for Elspeth.
To what extent do women feel attraction/Tingles towards those men that they like to argue with? Is there anything to that, or is the ongoing argumentation just an entertaining, mildly dramatic method of feeling connected and relevant and that’s all?
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No. I don’t think women necessarily feel any tingles to men they argue with. If you mean in an online context. I can only speak for myself, but I’m a pretty visual woman, so it’s the latter (entertaining, and I enjoy philosophical discussions).
I was probably handicapped from birth. Arguing with brothers (and brothers’ friends), then engaged in all kinds of debates with brothers in law (including what would be considered red pill before the term was anything more than a line from The Matrix).
It is not at all uncommon for my husband’s friends or particular male relatives to specfically ask me for a woman’s take, even though they live with a woman and can egt her take. I think they want to hear a certain thing and they know I’ll say it.
If you’re specifically asking why I argue with deti (Since he’s the only one I go back and forth with), it’s partly because we’ve been doing it for so long and partly because I actually think deti is mostly right, but lacks balance. So I push back against him because frankly, that’s what I do., and we have had a long term friendly blogging relationship.
Believe it or not, SAM appreciates my perspective even when it’s different from his. So we have some spirited philosophical discussions as well. I’m a lot mote measured and respectful and mindful of who is who here, but we have them. I’m opinionated, for better or worse.
Funny story: My daughters are friends with this young guy (He’s a little too young for them but they get on well). My girl said that he thinks I’m the smartest woman he ever met. I have no idea why he would say that, other than it is well known that I loathe feminism.
All that to say (and I hope it answers your question), I find the directness of men refreshing because it’s what I grew around all my life. I don’t like ambiguity and men tend not to be ambiguous.
I am finding that as women get older they are a lot less finicky, more direct, more able to take an unvarnished, unpolished opinion. That’s been pretty nice.
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I wouldn’t have guessed women necessarily feel tingles for men they like to argue with even in person. A fictional example would be Carrie Fisher arguing with Harrison Ford in The Empire Strikes Back. That relationship and her tingles was plausible because Hans Solo is a 6 foot, handsome, dominant male who kinda takes what he wants e.g. grabs and kisses her without asking. He’s kind of a “charming jerk.” Bit of a jerk – not too much of a jerk. My wife thinks Bill Murray is a charming jerk – he’s charming even when he’s a bit mean.
A jerk that can be tamed, softened – he’s really loving deep down inside – not a monster. That’s probably the right level of jerkiness for tingles for the average woman. Of course, some women get tingles from monsters.
I imagine tingles come from his physical attractiveness (size, athletic body, handsomeness) and from his personality dominance.
Aquaman makes women tingle. A HS friend’s wife posted online how she likes to play with herself (the language was clear if slightly less direct than that) to a book of Aquaman pictures. He actually bought the book for her!!! She’s glad she has a “confident” man such that this doesn’t bother him. No kidding – all of this on social media for the world to see.
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Women can be affected by men’s words Thete’s a reason why womens pregerred choice of porn is literary.
But in this context, men would have to be very good at mixing words just so, and these types of forums don’t usually produce that kind of writing or reaction in women.
Cane Caldo was probably the only sphere guy I noticed that was evoking something in the women. Some of the stuff they would say! He was a good guy and I think he knew fir sure when Some chick got a little to open describing her intimate life with her husband.
He kicked the gals out after that because he was not just a gifted writer, but a good man.
Plenty of men were regular visitors and commenters at TC. For a year or two (or however long we kept it alive). There were daily debates and arguments, but I never sensed anything that resembled tingly tension between the men and women.
Some of us just like politics, of all stripes.
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Men’s words can be conveyed over film just as easily. I suspect the thing with romance novel pron is that words can be INCREDIBLY descriptive. In the 8th grade a girl brought one of her mom’s romance novels and read it to me on the bus. It was extremely, graphically detailed and there’s something about the pace that these verbal descriptions can go at that I suspect contributes to tingles.
Girl was natty by the way – flashed me her 13 year old boobs because I did the “BOOBLESS” (55378008 – you need the right font for it to work) calculator trick on her. Public school.
I’ll have to go back and read Cane Caldo very carefully and take a bunch of notes. Just kidding!!!
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No movie can ever be as vivid as the imagination. That’s one reason why the book is almost always better than the movie, regardless of the genre.
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My ex-wife was being who she was. But I do not escape blame: I accept that I chose poorly, that I saw the red flags and married her anyway. And then I didn’t deal with her nature well at all. That is on me. Boring loyal dude gets beat over the head, Case #24974816, recognized only by his original family.
I meet women online and in real life, and there is a definite aversion on their part toward my type. Part of that, I think, is that I’m onto them and they know it. So it’s “Next!” for them.
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Me too, and probably 90+% of all married men.
Every woman has red flags, but men move forward anyway because they naively assume that these issues will be resolved somehow. In one sense, believing that the issues will be resolved is an expression of faith, but because of Blue Pill saturation, it is a poorly informed faith. In another sense, believing that the issues will be resolved somehow is utter foolishness! The difference is that some issues can be resolved, but there are certain issues that are not able to be, and never can be resolved — not even by God! So the difficulty in vetting (in addition to overcoming the blinding obsession) is to know which red flags can be resolved, and which ones cannot. The value of the Red Pill is that it gives men a better understanding of which issues can never be resolved.
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Yes, I think a good future discussion on here would be some sort of categorizing of red flags. It may have been done already, but this is one subject men, especially young men, need to really go to school on. I’d assert that there are red flags that are significant and require discernment (Is this manageable or a deal breaker?), red flags that are definitely deal breakers (see you later sweetheart!), and red flags where the man better get the he!! out of dodge as fast as he can at the first wiff of it. Better yet, with the “get out of dodge flags,” never even enter into any kind of relationship with them in the first place. In other words, spot it coming and run the other way, DOUBLE TIMING IT out of there.
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RPB,
I categorize them by racing rules.
Green flag = go
Yellow flag = caution
Red flag = stop until the cause is cleared
Black flag = disqualified
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Oscar,
Cool way of looking at it! Can you elaborate on it a bit for us non-race fans? I get the general idea and knew what the flag colors meant, but are there any nuances to this system that might be helpful?
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Yup. Once you absorb the RP, you develop an almost visceral reaction to the ability to see through their facade. They, in turn, have a corresponding ability to detect this reaction and realize that you’re not about to become a victim. This leads them to move on and look for another more promising mark.
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I’ve experienced this too. Being Red Pilled is the best defense against female parasites and predators. A new Axiom!
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Wrong. Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones and steroids in poultry. Purchase any package of frozen or fresh chicken in the supermarket and the package will clearly state the chicken is hormone free. Companies (e.g. Perdue, etc.) try to toot their own horn by claiming their chicken is hormone free, but in small print on the package it will state that Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones and steroids.
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Now that you mention it I think that’s correct. I think there’s something similar with milk if you read the fine print.
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I stand corrected, Joe. Thank you.
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Are you kidding me? Nobody believes the government. I lived in the vast California valley where a ton of food is produced for the USA…the HUGE Foster Farms chicken processing plant in Livingston you can smell for miles away…..no way are all those chickens “free range” running around that “cooped” place and not on hormones, injected with all kinds of chemicals and who knows whatever.
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I meant to share this earlier, and forgot. As far as how the world perceives you, boring is the way to be successful. Dave Ramsey’s organization conducted a study of 10,000 millionaires to determine what they have in common, and the one word that comes to mind is “boring”.
https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/the-national-study-of-millionaires-research
Most millionaires work regular jobs (the two most likely are engineers and accountants, the most boring people on Earth), avoid debt, spend less than they make, pay off their houses early, and invest regularly (primarily in their company’s 401K). If they start out with debt, on average they reach millionaire status 15 years after paying off their debts. Millionaires are hard working, frugal, diligent, and follow systems and procedures.
In a word, boring.
All of which lines up perfectly with the Book of Proverbs. It’s almost as though the Holy Spirit knew a thing or two when He inspired King Solomon to write the book.
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Yes, that’s me exactly: bachelor’s degree at a state school, CPA, worked my way up to VP, no debt, etc. God has blessed us so we can give generously. Living below your means is fun and low-stress.
I meant to post this here but accidentally posted it on another blog with a similar post: Re. boring: I’m probably in that category, but people are often intrigued by our ballroom dancing. We joke that if a CPA marries a librarian, you are scientifically proven to be the world’s most boring couple, so you better find an interesting hobby.
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Not having a woman in your life also helps to save money. Women and “frugality” are generally diametrically opposed to one another. Indeed, women react to the concept like Superman reacts to kryptonite or snails react to salt.
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I can vouch for this having been married for three plus decades now. Even though I’m married to a woman who by typical female standards (the female spender stereotype) is not a spendthrift, she still does not come cheap. That’s one thing men need to realize if they get married, even if the woman is not red flag spending-wise, she’s still going to cost you quite a bit. It’s the same with children. There’s no way around it really, unless you’re married to the unicorn of unicorns monetarily speaking, i.e. a female miser, you’re going to end up spending some significant coin having her in your life.
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True, but most millionaires are married, so there’s that.
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Oscar,
Are they millionaires because they are married or in spite of being married? Is there some characteristic inherent in the mindset of men who have the discipline to become millionaires that also makes them more apt to marry so your statement is more correlative in nature than causative in nature? Are most millionaires married because they avoided the wealth destroying meat grinder of divorce? If so, is there a group of men who would be millionaires had they not married? Evidence would suggest that men are better able to recover and rebuild financially after divorce better than women.
Is that evidence that RPB’s experiential knowledge has merit?
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I tend to believe they are married because they are millionaires. If he got married before he became a millionaire, then his wife had the good sense to recognize his potential and support him during that time. If he got married after he became a millionaire, then his wife had the good sense not to blow it up.
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A lot of millionaires marry for the fact of “legacy.” Many know “you can’t take it with you” and its a status thing too. Many do marry well, or the right type of woman I would suppose. Hollywood is an outlier. Many in Hollywood are at almost insolvency.
David Bowie was once interviewed in the early 1980’s. During the interiew, the interviewer said, “But you are rich and famous, sold millions of record…”
David didn’t give the usual “blame the music companies”, although that is a truth in some situations.
He said, “Dont fool yourself. Right now, I have my three cars. I do own two homes and maybe have $5K in the bank. Also remember when I made the “Young Americans” album in 1975, and it became a huge seller and had several top hit singles….. remember I recorded that in Philadelphia because my tour ran out of money and I couldn’t get back to England. That album was a hunger / pay the bills album. That drove me and the band to produce a really good product. Luther Vandross and David Sanborne were crucial in helping me when I went without pay for weeks.”
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RPA,
Most millionaires get married long before they become millionaires, and stay married. It’s part and parcel of the stable (i.e., boring) personality that leads to success.
Many Androsphere content creators like to say that women don’t care about your struggles. They just wait at the finish line and screw the winners.
You don’t want that kind of woman. That’s the kind of woman that’ll bankrupt you and leave you.
If you read Proverbs 31 with the cultural context in mind, you’ll see that the woman described there is grandmother age. Girls got married between 14 and 16 back then, so that means she struggled right alongside her husband, who now has so much status that he sits at the city gates with the other wise old men.
That’s the kind of woman you want.
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Jason,
Like I said, most millionaires get married long before they become millionaires, and stay married. It’s not about status or legacy.
Then they’re not millionaires. If you make $1 million and spend it all, you’re not a millionaire. You’re broke.
Most millionaires don’t even make $100K/year.
A millionaire is a person whose assets, minus their liabilities, equal at least $1 million. Pretty much anyone can get there, but it takes knowledge of how money works, and a lot of self control, and few are willing to exercise self control.
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Then they’re millionaires on “paper” meaning like the dot.com era in San Francisco. All these “millionaires” and a crash came. Poof! Back to pretty much $65K a year.
Most millionaires also come from inherited wealth……. meaning, grandpa left them the house, and they sold it. A great uncle left a few thousand acres to the grandson in Nebraska, right off the interstate, and he sold it.
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Jason,
Man, you love to take the exception, and try to make it the rule, don’t you? The vast majority of millionaires are not San Francisco techies.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, as usual.
That is a fact, not an opinion. I get that you don’t like the facts, and why, but that doesn’t make them any less factual.
By the way, that could have been you. If you had invested the bonus you said you got at IBM, it would be worth over $1 million today, even if you’d never added to it. If you’d continued adding a few hundred bucks a month to that investment over the years, it would be worth multiple millions today.
You chose otherwise. And here you are.
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Further to my comment on millionaires and marriage, those men who are “wage earner millionaires” (i.e., men who have been frugal, saved cash money in a manner that keeps the tax man away, and have been fortunate enough to be able to invest in non-Wall Street assets) have also managed to marry unicorns (i.e., women who are not spendthrifts). Yes, a non-spendthrift woman IS a unicorn, regardless of her other personality attributes. The inability to budget, save, or live within her means is essentially a genetic characteristic of the modern western (specifically, American) woman. Any woman who is an exception to this is a precious rarity. Most women DESPISE frugal men. Any man married to a woman who not only hasn’t reduced him to a paycheck-to-paycheck existence, but supports him in his frugality and shares his high time preference outlook is married to the rarest of exceptions. Most men’s wives are a drain on their finances.
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Over 80% of millionaires are wage earners, and there are 22 million millionaires in the USA, so there must be a lot of unicorns out there.
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How many of those 22 million are married?
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86% are married, and 65% are on their first marriage.
https://millionairefoundry.com/millionaire-statistics/
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I think this just shows how much the right woman can positively affect your finances and the wrong one negatively. I don’t know about anywhere else in the country, but here, if you work a job, save, add assets, it’s not unattainable. However, if you throw a divorce rape into the mix and decade or two of child support that gets blown on vanity shopping, then that’s enough to cut a man down, even in his peak years.
That happens in a high number of marriages, and considering over half of adults are single, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of lower income men are in the divorce bracket.
I got divorce raped at 31, which allowed me plenty of time to work and build. Child support ends next year. If it happened in my mid-to-late-40s, then maybe not. I plan on working until I die anyway. I am not sitting around deteriorating.
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Locusts,
Correct. It’s true in every area of life. A good woman adds value to a man’s life in ways no one else can. A bad woman can destroy his life like no one else can.
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