Want to win? Have a good wife.

“Are you drunk?”  “It’s my birthday.  Again.” – The Experts

I ate an abacus – it’s inside what counts.

So, it’s St. Valentine’s day.  Again.

For this year, I decided to go into the deeply romantic box of ideas, and got The Mrs. a bottle of scotch.  Not great a great bottle of scotch, because that’s what I always give her for Christmas (saves on thinking, gents).  Well, this wasn’t a great bottle, but it was also not something you’d use for lighter fluid, either.

Not that The Mrs. won’t drink lighter fluid (don’t ask me about that story!), but because The Mrs. sounds like Kim Carnes afterward.  Anyone else but me listen to Bette Davis Eyes and not think “Marty Feldman Eyes”?

Regardless, here is why I enjoy my time with The Mrs.  As a part of our conversation, we discussed the evolution of modern warfare from the United States Civil War, and World War I.  In it, I brought into play the idea that the Germans had totally melted the minds of the French.

Why do French ghosts smell so bad?  They are covered in sheet.

Why?  Let’s go back to the Franco-Prussian war.  Not Franco-American®, because there were far fewer Spaghetti-O’s® back in 1870.  And Chef-Boyardee™ was still Chef Notbornyet.  Sorry for the digression – it turns out that I bought The Mrs. some scotch, but she bought us some wine.  And by us, I mean me and her, not you and me and her.

Our conversation wandered, and I pointed out the reason the French were such wussies was because of the Franco-Prussian war.  It seems, the French had a far superior rifle, the Chassepot (pronounced “frog hat spinner” because the French don’t even pretend that letters have meaning).  This means that the German soldiers had to attack (they’re Germans, they’re always attacking) for 200 yards (17.3 kiloPascals) while being shot at with relatively accurate rifles before their rifles could shoot back.

You’d think this would mean an easy French victory.  Nah.  The Germans were surrounding Paris within weeks, because, always remember the first dictum:  the French can only win a war in which all of their opponents are French.

Then, The Mrs. demanded (on Valentine’s Day) that we watch either a documentary on WWI or All Quiet on the Western Front (new version, which I had not seen yet).  I bring this out not for any other reason than to brag.  Chocolates?  Flowers?  Nah.  Scotch.  Rom-coms?  No.  The Mrs. demanded we watch a war movie.  It’s like Christmas and we talk about the geopolitics of WWII and The Mrs. demands we watch Patton.  Again.

I found a corpse along the road with no arms, head, or legs.  The local police are stumped.

This isn’t entirely bragging, since this is Wednesday and we’re supposed to talk about money.  How do war movies, moderately priced scotch, and romantic discussions about warfare have anything to do about money?

It has everything to do about money.  Everything.

Women can make or break a marriage.  Modern societies, especially in the United States, give women an out, and incentivize them to break up marriages for fun and profit.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s a Tweet® from a Twunt©:

When I first read this, I thought it was sarcasm.  It’s not.  I feel sorry for her wine and cats.

Yeah, she said that.  It’s an awful sentiment that an elected official could say that and remain in office.  I’m beginning to understand why they burned witches at the stake, and becoming much more amenable to that idea.  After a fair trial, of course.  I’m not suggesting that South Dakota do summary executions, but I am suggesting they bring back witch burning.

The economics of the love in 2023 are heavily skewed against those who would love.  In my mind, love is the glue that holds the atom of civilization together.  That atom?  The family.  And no matter how you slice it, there is no world where two women or two men can have actual children, so they cannot form the nucleus of the family.  Unless cats are children.

The economic incentives right now are against child rearing.  It’s amazing to see the number of criminals with no fathers in their lives.  It’s amazing to see the number of children coming from “blended” (i.e., divorced parent) families.  Here in Modern Mayberry, about (Pugsley’s guess) 65% of the kids come from intact, two-parent families.

In my mind?  That’s a number that’s amazingly low.  Sure, I was adopted, but I was adopted into a family where my Mom and Dad had been married for 26 years before I was adopted and The Mrs. family was stable for 61 years until The Mrs. father passed on.  Sure, my family had ups and downs, but their marriage was approximately as stable as helium or the Democrat’s hold on counting votes.  Neither of Ma Wilder or Pa Wilder needed nor wanted surprises.

What they call Frodo if he had lost a leg instead of a finger?  A Hoppit.

Today?  Husband won’t agree to a new dining room table?  Divorce him.  Most divorces are initiated by women.  Because?  They’re unhappy.  I understand that’s a reason, but it’s not a good reason, since, until the caffeine kicks in around 11am each day, I’m unhappy, too, and you don’t see me firebombing Dresden.

But those are the women who even bother to get married.  There’s a deeper pathology here.

What incentive to men use to improve themselves, to work harder, to get into shape, to earn money?

The prospect of wife and family.  If that isn’t there, why bother?  It’s easier to eat Cheetos® and play Call of Duty™:  Ukraine™ on their PS3©.  I’ll admit that this isn’t an attractive mate, but is it any different than a 34-year-old women who has had sex with 143 guys?  Women think their value shouldn’t be based on the number of sexual partners they’ve had, but, dudes, who wants to own a pair of shoes owned by 143 other dudes?

Yeah.  No one.

The structure of incentives is important.  Right now, men are incentivized to eat Cheetos™ and play vidya games.  Right now, women are encouraged to have sex with all the men, and then try to find someone after they’ve gone had sex with all the men, gone to graduate school, lost their fertility, and bonded with wine and cats.

Ugh.

Economics is about incentives.  Give incentives to women to not marry and then divorce at the slightest provocation?  Men will turn into Tostito® munching morons.  It’s simple.  And then both will be sad.  The 45 year-old wine aunt?  She’s not happy, she’s just out of options.  The 30 year-old man-boy?

He’s just looking for a wife, children, and to make a place in society.  That’s it.

Not pictured:  The Mrs.

I’ll say this again – my Gen X road was easier than the Zoomer and Millennial kids.  A young man faces women that are hostile.  That turns him into a man that’s not prepared.  If I might make a modest proposal, let’s bring back shame for women.  And let’s bring back pride for men.

Seems like a fair deal.  And, honestly, the best St. Valentine’s Day present that they could have.  Unless their wife demands they watch a war movie before sending them out to smoke a Rocky Patel® cigar in the hot tub so they can finish watching the documentary about the Franco-Prussian War after having a few glasses of wine and scotch.

Hope you had a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

38 thoughts on “Want to win? Have a good wife.”

  1. ” but is it any different than a 34-year-old women who has had sex with 143 guys? ”

    …Got me a REAL Treasure!

    i’ll stick to the 💖 Theme, time is of the essence, in a minute.

    Copy/Paste from a TBP dribble…
    _____________________________-

    ‘Been Hand-Making one for YEARS for The Boss…THAT will never change. (THIS Morn. ‘Reception’? Spectacular!) ⚡️

    Typically? Purty good about the card thingy, ESPECIALLY on this day’s auspicious occasion.

    In addition to ‘Home-Made’, Historically? ‘Twas 3 – 4 days of…Woe is me!, Woe is me! The trials & tribulations. The wailing, & moaning. The Gnashing of teeth. Traveling hither & thither…in hot pursuit of the ‘Puuurfect’ card for my BABY!

    💡 She is the Brains of the Operation.

    This Year, We shopped together, a joint critique, each others selection. Don’t even bother signing them anymore, we BOTH KNOW who/what the Other is.

    Still. It’s Exciting to exchange them!

    We both tear up a little. Shake hands, and then engage in a VERY passionate Kiss! 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨
    LOTS of Tongue. Too.

    Basically? A reenactment of our Wedding Vows.

    Then? We put the cards back in the rack from whence they came. 1st year we did this…SURE she won’t blush when the other shoppers start clapping. Next Year.

    The $ saved covered the tip @ the Mexican joint.

  2. You, you just brought back a memory. I can’t for the life of me recall who did this, but back in the early 90s or thereabouts, someone redid the old Turtles song ‘So Happy Together’ and added an extra individual into the lyrics, so where you posted this: “Why? Let’s go back to the Franco-Prussian war. Not Franco-American®, because there were far fewer Spaghetti-O’s® back in 1870. And Chef-Boyardee™ was still Chef Notbornyet. Sorry for the digression – it turns out that I bought The Mrs. some scotch, but she bought us some wine. And by us, I mean me and her, not you and me and her.” I thought of those lyrics instantly. Imagine me and you, and her and her and me and you…. Anyway, it adds this 3rd person all through the reworked song. Anyway, I tried to find a link but came up short. If you weren’t expecting to hear that, it was great. Even after I knew it was a parody it was still fun to listen to.

  3. The greatest impediment to stability is confusing love with happiness. People are led to believe that unless they are “happy”, they must not love one another. Being in a loving marriage for coming up on 31 years next week is a major component of my happiness but there have been plenty of times when I wasn’t happy but that didn’t matter because our marriage is about more than happiness and it is about more than me.

    1. Yep, that’s the truth.

      Second truth is not always being “Right”. Often the skirmish isn’t worth the squeeze.

      Works for long lasting friendships too.

      My beloved is my best friend.

  4. I know I’m being programed by the societal short attention span…or is it my ACDC ADH never could figure it out….Love your columns or blog or whatever; I just never make it past half way through. Your post….too much rambling….side humor…way too distracting. I guess Ill try a different tactic tomorrow.

  5. 45 years last July, and I’m still amazed that she can put up with me. (Even I can’t!) Thanks for those thoughts. They helped remind me why I think family is of primary importance.

  6. My Valentine’s Day “present” dealt with maybe the most dysfunctional, now ex-dysfunctional, family in the USA. Had biz up in Charlotte, left home real early, as it’s a 4 hr. drive.

    Drove back after a biz lunch. Through Walterboro. Parked and walked around the courthouse, built circa 1822. Two layers of barricades, Sheriff’s Deputies and city fuzz everywhere. Two Court TV trailers, MB Sprinter Vans from every TV station in SC, Charlotte & Savannah.

    Talked to one Court TV techie. “Zoo?” Him – “Big time.” “What do you do in the weekends?” “Go to Hilton Head & golf.” “You should try Beaufort.” “No, more hot chicks in HHI.”

    So, it’s now 144 instead of 143 for the 34 year old box wine cat chick.

  7. Teh Utubes have put a lot of this woman in my suggestions lately.

    JustPearlyThings

    She talks alot about the straights young men are in today, and what little young women bring to the table. I’d never heard the term “body count” used as the kids today use it before listening to her. She’s brutal to her guests in the most low key way….
    ‘
    n

    1. Them: What’s your body count?
      Me: What?
      Them: Your body count?
      Me: What?
      Them: How many women have you slept with?
      Me: Oh, thank god, I thought you saw my basement.
      Them: What?
      Me: What?

  8. My bride is ex Army and we did Mexican and don’t always drink beer but we did XX. Would not want to live without her, she is tolerant of me.

  9. So those of us locked into stable, satisfying, monogamous, heterosexual unions that produced viable offspring are now the dangerous extremists? When did this happen?

    No, don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know. What I do want to ask is, When was the last time you saw a happily unpaired woman over 35 who felt no void in her cat-collecting, wine-guzzling, wage-slaving life? It has been my experience that those ladies who left themselves stranded without a seat when the music stopped are by far the saddest, most unpleasant and downright demented harridans of all.

  10. Really dodged a bullet with my first experience at marriage lasting only 3 years. Was completely emotionally broken by the divorce and lies she told everyone to get one. Was very lucky to get out with a minor loss of funds being only a lowly Airman back in the day. Met my current wife a few years later and we feel hard for each other. She had also just left a very bad experience with an abusive boyfriend. On 25 February it will be 40 years as man and wife. Not too bad as we each have type A personalities and have managed to coexist in a loving relationship without killing each other (so far).

    I have watched numerous friends get raped by family courts during divorce and the trend I have seen is once the kids are fully grown the woman losses her mind and decides she is “not happy” taking the man for all he is worth. Being in a military community the husband losses 50% of his retirement after just 10 years of marriage, almost as much out of his current pay, as well as being made homeless when the house is awarded to the unhappy wife and the husband gets the mortgage bill. With so many young guys growing up and seeing how their fathers are treated by the system it is no wonder the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) movement is gaining steam. Had I not met the loving wife I was so lucky to find in this clown show of a modern society I would probably be a single X-Box warrior dwelling in a foul-smelling man cave.

    1. I’m happy where I am – I look back on it all and The Mrs. and I work well together. My past? It’s all a graph – the ex’s and the whys?

  13. Bringing back shame, alone, won’t cut it.
    If you’re bringing back public stocks, pillories, the lash, scarlet letters, head-shaving, and Committees of Vigilance, we can talk.
    No, seriously.

    Okay, not going to do that? Slackers.

    Here’s a far easier one: Outlaw no-fault divorce. Ban it outright. Marriage is forever, unless abandonment, abuse, infidelity, or prison step in. And abuse isn’t “leaving the toilet seat up”, or “buying the wrong brand of corn”, or the other 3000 silly-ass reasons 50% of married women hork up on command like your cat with a furball, the minute something better comes along, as they leave skidmarks out of the vows and down to the county clerk’s office.

    Too harsh? We’ll water it down even farther.
    You can still bail the hell out for nothing, and everything.
    But the bank account gets split down the middle the day you file, they toss a coin to award child custody, the other spouse (of either sex) has to pay a fixed, nationwide-fixed amount per child until they turn 18 – no more and no less – and whenever a marriage is so dissolved, neither partner gets to keep anything. No alimony for either partner. Alimony is indentured servitude, and outlawed by the 13th Amendment. Any property from before the marriage reverts to its prior owner. Any joint property is liquidated, the partners split the 90% right down the middle, and the state (or the lawyers) get the other 10%, and that’s the end of it.
    Any state found to be awarding child custody to 51% or more of either sex in any year forfeits all tax revenue for that year, and the receipts from same to be divided equally between the 49% wronged.

    Oh, and one other thing: abortions require the consent of the father. No unanimous decision? No unilateral choice. It took two of you to make the baby, so it now takes two of you to abort it, if you’re married.
    But as a sop to those who can’t keep their legs crossed until marriage, if you keep the kid borne outside marriage against the consent of the father, you – the mother – are awarded sole financial responsibility for that child’s upkeep until majority. By law. You can keep any child; you cannot keep the man’s wallet. If you bore the child out of wedlock, you made that choice. Now you get to own it, and the bill comes due every mealtime, for decades.
    You don’t need shame when bastardy comes with a financial disincentive. Again.

    Kids are no longer bargaining chips, marriages aren’t for-profit institutions, and husbands and fathers are no longer cash cows for milking on the feminazi ranch.

    Don’t like that? Suck it.
    It shouldn’t be any great hurdle for all those Strong and Brave™ women in society we keep hearing about to know that when they get married, they’re choosing a partner for life, not a mealticket for life, and the incorporation cannot be dissolved lightly, nor inequitably.

    Without those changes, marriage is dead, even if married folks don’t know it yet.
    Take away all the financial incentives for childbirth and abortion, as well as for divorce, infidelity, abuse, etc., and you can have the civilization your grandparents had.
    Do it not, and things continue to spiral into the ground, gloriously aflame.

    “It’s amazing to see the number of criminals with no fathers in their lives.”
    Know what’s not amazing?
    To see the number of fathers with no criminals in their lives.

    Stop treating fathers and husbands as disposable items, as if they were tissues, and civilization thrives.
    Nothing less will suffice.

    1. Extra side-benefit?
      With virtually no payday worth having in divorce cases, and only at-fault divorces being litigated, the blood-sucking divorce lawyer industry dries up and blows away, overnight.

      Then a lot of lawyers would have to get more honest work, like used car sales, working in porn, or playing piano in a brothel.

      1. Wish in n one hand, and defecate in the other, and tell us which one fills up first.

        When you take the guardrails off of society, it runs off a cliff without any further pushing or prompting.

  14. John, when I grew up almost everyone in our small town among my friends had two parent families. I did not even know people got divorced until my best friend’s parents did in the 7th grade. Among our friends and acquaintances, we are one of a rather rare group that are either still married or still on the first marriage. Remarkable what a difference a generation can make.

    I would concur that for both sexes, the incentives for marriage are not present. But that is the outcome of a First World view. Likely as things continue to collapse, such things will be revisited on purely practical survival means.

    1. They will, because this is the only way that society can function. Soon enough, Clown World will melt away.

    2. In our family and social circles (25-40yo milenials), only one couple has suffered divorce (the childless couple where she just ‘wants to be happy’). Some places are more retro.

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