Transcription
So, if you're a man over the age of 35 who has been married and divorced, let me ask you this question. Why would you consider getting married again? Really, what's in it for you?
There are so many other options that we look over. And I think that we need to stop and reconsider what's really on the table here. If you've been through marriage once and you got out of it relatively unscathed financially, well, you probably paid an enormous price emotionally and psychologically, not to mention just the immense inconvenience of it all. But if you're like most men, you probably had to pay a financial price to go along with it as well. That comes with a legal contract that you adhered to or you are being adhered to regardless of whether you knew about it and you didn't even sign it. This is like one of those end user licenses. When you uh got your marriage license, you didn't realize there was a box that you checked that said you will sell your soul to the state if you get a divorce. Not even sell it. You'll you'll give it away. You'll you'll have to give it up for free.
So, today I want to talk a little bit about what are the other options on the table because there are some other ways that you can achieve most of the same things without all the risk. And it gives you a lot more flexibility and you can have everything that you want that goes with it. You just have to be a little more creative. This is life 2.0. Let's talk about it.
I sometimes wonder why women would want to get married. I mean, really, the whole court system and the way it treats men is kind of a slap in the face to women. I mean, they're the ones who have been screaming about equality since the beginning of, you know, the 1960s or whatever, and now they've got it plus some. They're more than equal. Why would they want the state through the court system to reward them during a divorce? It's almost like they're not adults. It's like they can't take responsibility for their own decisions and their own actions. So when the courts step in and they say, "Oh, you're the adult man. You need to take care of this child, this woman for the rest of her life because she made the decision to have a family with you and she decided that she was going to stay home with the children. And because she made these decisions, you are obviously the beneficiary of all this. And now you must pay this enormous price because this woman cannot possibly take care of herself." Why is that even on the table? I mean, aren't we at the stage now where we're all full-grown adults and we can make decisions for ourselves and be responsible for them? I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it always amazes me that women aren't standing in front of the courthouses screaming no alimony because alimony is just basically a way that the state is telling women that they're incapable of taking care of themselves. That's basically what it is. It's like, yeah, it's still 1955 and clearly you're a dependent and a man now must take care of you for the rest of his life. Doesn't make any sense to me. But I am digressing here.
Let's get on with friends with benefits because that's what I really want to talk about today. I don't see the problem with friends with benefits. Now, I know a lot of you guys scream about religion, but I got to tell you, marriage was a late comer to the whole religion story. Um, there was God long before there was marriage. And I'm not so sure that God has a whole lot to do with it, to be honest with you. I think it's more along the lines of the church wanting you to take care of orphans and children and women way back in the day. And now, well, they can take care of themselves. At least the women can. I mean, sure, you got to take care of your children, but there's court systems to make you do that. So, why would you um get married? You don't need to get married. You can still be responsible for your children. Hell, you can still live with a woman, at least in the United States, in most places. And we can change the laws because we are a democracy technically still as far as I know. But we can change those damn laws. You can say, "Yeah, there is no cohabitation issue, you know. So if you cohabitate with a woman for 20 years, she has no rights to anything, you know, and why should she? She's a freaking adult. She's an equal. She's our equal. Why should she get anything out of this story?" You know, you guys in Australia, from what I heard, you live in a democracy, too. I think you guys need to take this up with your courts. I don't understand why women are so willing to submit to this idea that they're not equal and admit to it. And claim responsibility for being a dependent, you know, like, "Oh, we couldn't possibly take care of ourselves. We couldn't possibly be responsible for our own decisions." But friends with benefits, we could have a system that removes the state from relationship management altogether, and we could all hold each other accountable for our own decisions. Now, it may mean that more children are raised in, you know, daycare centers, but it's hard to imagine much more than what we have now. It seems like 60 or 70% of the kids are being raised by strangers. So, it's not like moms are really staying at home home all that much to begin with. It's really hard walking today because the snow started to melt. The snow is especially slippery. But friends with benefits is obviously a much better option coming out of a marriage especially or out of a divorce than getting into another situation, another uh marital situation. Having a contract manage your relationship seems stupid. I mean, I hate to say it, but it just seems stupid. Especially if you've already gone through a divorce, because chances are it's going to happen again. The state's going to be double dipping on your paycheck garnishment. You know, they're encouraging it because they see the upside to them. You know, you really are as a man kind of taking the place of the state here because the state really took your place early on, you know, and now they're just getting you back. They're saying, "Okay, now you got to take our place. You've got to be responsible. You got to be the one that pays all these bills."
The old story about friends with benefits as far as women is concerned is they don't like it. And they don't like it because they're giving away their sexual opportunity without getting a commitment in return. Which seems kind of silly to me because they're giving away their sexual opportunity anyway. I mean, how many people are getting married these days without having slept together to begin with? Now, I'm sure that it does happen sometimes, but it's a very, very small minority. The um truth of the matter is the vast majority of women have been giving away their sexual opportunity since they turned 16 years old or earlier in many cases, and they're doing it without even thinking about commitment. So now, why is it they get to a certain age where they want to have babies and they want this commitment? You see, if you're the father of a child, and sometimes even if you're not the child's father, you're just married to the mother. But if you're the father of a child, you have a legal commitment to uh care for that child financially. You are going to have to pay no matter what. You know, unless you leave the country or something like that. Um, so the commitment thing is kind of a red herring. I don't think it's real. I think that the commitment thing goes back to um the benefits that come from marriage. Quite honestly, when you get right down to it, women know that they have the upper hand in relationships where there is a legally binding commitment because the state will take their side and commit and uh and defend them essentially will give them the uh the benefits that they're seeking. I think that most women when they think about divorce, one of the primary issues on their mind is they're going to be financially taken care of. So, they don't have to worry about what comes next. While men, on the other hand, of course, not only losing their partner, their wife, their the love of their life, who's now telling them that they don't want to be with them anymore, um, but now they're also going to lose a big chunk of their ability to take care of themselves financially and maybe even into their retirement. The courts literally will just pull that money away from the man and give it to the woman as a consolation prize for the divorce, even though 75% of the time she's the one who is going to initiate it.
So going back to my initial question, if you have been married, you're 35 or older and you have been divorced, what is the motivation? And I'm serious. What is the motivation to get remarried? If I were to write a constitution for life 2.0, it would basically have something to the to the tune of it is every man's right and privilege to have a relationship with a woman. As long as he maintains his authenticity and authority over his own life, he should be able to come and go from relationships as he sees fit. He can make commitments but without legal binding contracts. So if a man in life 2.0 says, "I love you," that will be the case until it's not. And women should be able to accept that. The irony is even in marriage, most men are committed to the relationship. Once a man gets into a relationship and he sees a woman as his own, it takes a lot to pry him loose from that. You know, he will stay with that until the end. We are just that way. And I don't know what it is. If we're just dumb or if we're just, you know, don't lazy. Maybe it's just laziness. That's probably more like the case. But we do it. We stay right in there with them. So, why on earth would you not consider a friends with benefits relationship? I think the most difficult thing is convincing the girl you're dating that friends with benefits is a better a better idea or cohabitating in some kind of non-legally binding way is the way to go.
I was down here last week and I noticed all these twigs floating around in the water and now it's becoming apparent that we are working on a beaver dam here. These are the first little pieces of the dam coming together. So, this whole area will be flooded in a week or two. They're doing a pretty good job. Looks like they have another dam just down the stream a bit if you can see it there, but it got broken up the last time it flooded. So, they're coming back. They're going to do it again. This time, they're going to build it around these rocks where it's safer. So finding the right woman to have a friends with benefits relationship with is probably the biggest challenge. You have to make some compromises here because obviously you're not going to find ideal. Um, but you can find someone who is someone that you can live with in the, you know, theoretical way. I mean, now she's living with you, but she's, you know, you can deal with her. Um, women who are really career-oriented and have dedicated their lives to a career make great friends with benefits. Um, these are people who are not family-oriented to begin with. Um, they just like having a a regular date, someone they can be with, go to the, you know, the shows with, go to, uh, out to dinner, take the parties. You can just be their plus one, you know, and in return, you know, you're going to have this friends with benefits relationship. And it could go on for years like this, you know. She could just be your casual incoming and going kind of person. And I mean that literally and figuratively. You know, you can have everything that you want from that relationship if you play your cards right. You just can't allow yourself to fall into that trap of the conversation about where's our relationship going? Because the only answer to that is, I don't think is, I think we're fine. You know, I think that everything is perfect just the way it is. I can't imagine that relationship could be any stronger. I love you with all my heart. You're the center of my life. I just don't want to have the law involved in my relationship with you. Plain and simple. And by doing that, you're setting up your boundary. You are making it very clear to her what you will and will not do. And if she wants to push that issue, well, you can just end the relationship and find yourself a second, you know, a third or a fourth girl to to hang out with. But you don't need to accept that this woman is going to um push you into marriage. I think that we have this scarcity mindset. I I know we do. Men have a scarcity mindset when it comes to women. They think, "Well, I've got one. I'm so lucky. I don't want to lose it. You know, it's like you got this one penny. You found it on the floor and you think, 'Ah, my lucky day. I've got my penny.' You know, well, the world is filled with trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. Why would you hang on to that penny like it's the only one on the planet?" You know, there's lots of opportunities out there. You just have to make yourself available to them and make it your interest, your target, your focal point to find someone to fill that role in your life. If you make it that, then you play it like a game. You don't act like it's an emotional roller coaster. You just see it strategically as to what are you looking for and where are you going to find those people and how do you put yourself in the right place at the right time to meet those women. I guarantee if you give it some thought, you know where these women are. You know the bars they hang out at, they go to. You if you go to bars these days, it's mostly just women. There aren't very many men there. So, you could have the pick of the litter. You know, you can lay down terms. You know, a lot of these women just want some kind of commitment. They just want somebody to hang out with. You can be that guy. You can be that guy.
Divorced women with no children who are 40 years old or older are your target market. These are women who've already been through divorce. They don't necessarily want to jump right back into marriage again anyway. They have no children for you to have to stepfather. Hopefully, some poor guy is paying for them, so they don't need your money, you know? And you can just be that guy that uh is spending the night with her, you know what I mean? You can just be that guy that takes her down to dinner. You can just have your regular dinner dates and stuff. You don't need to put a lot more energy into it than that. Um, you just need to make sure that she's over her ex. You don't want to get involved with someone who's got a lot of emotional baggage and she talks about him all the time because chances are you're going to get into a complicated situation. You do have to look at the complications. So money is the most common complication that you come across in these kinds of relationships. So, you need to have a lot of strong boundaries around money in terms of what you're willing to do and not willing to do because it's really easy to find yourself shelling out big bucks to entertain some girl, some woman, and that's not what you're in for. You know, you need to be clear about what it is you you want and what it is you don't want and be um firm about setting boundaries around those things that you don't want so that you're very clear to her what you're willing to do and not willing to do. Because if you're weak at this point, she'll rage your wallet by crying about going to Paris this summer or, you know, spending the weekend in um in the Caribbean. And if you don't want to do that, don't do it. If that's one thing you want to do, if you if you're in for that, you love to travel and you want to spend all that money, then do it. But just be clear about what you're willing to do, what you're not willing to do. Now, the more you're willing to do, the easier it is to find that friends with benefits kind of person because they want someone who will be their plus one, but they also want someone who will at least pay their own way. And if you can pay her way as well, well, now you're now you're getting everything you want. You know, you're you're basically it's basically like hiring a pro. But we won't go down that path.
Now, here's where you can kind of get into a little bit of trouble with friends with benefits women because a lot of them are crazy. Um, and they're going to use the friends with benefits carrot to lure you into a relationship. So, you got to be really acutely aware of all your red flags that you're watching for. You definitely do not want to get into a situation where you've got some kind of victim mentality or that damsel in distress or the, you know, the love bomber or, you know, you got some kind of a covert narcissist. You want to make sure that you're clear of all of those things. So, I would recommend that you become friends, and I mean really friends with this woman before you start claiming your benefits. You need to get to know her well enough that you're willing to allow her into your life beyond just that friendship role. And quite honestly, the friendship role probably makes a lot of sense for any kind of relationship. Because if you're going to keep a woman around for a while, you know what's going to happen? She's going to get old and she's going to get crotchety, you know, and you want to make sure that you actually like this person before you um have any kind of long-term relationship with her, unless you're planning on just churning and burning, unless you're just going to have one after the next after the next after the next, which is certainly something a lot of guys do and do with a lot of joy and and um and they can do it well and they can do it without hurting anybody's feelings because they make the their um boundaries clear right from the very beginning.
What's really fascinating is if you tell a woman right from the very beginning that you're not going to get married and she still stays with you, well, you have set a boundary and you have basically created the frame of this relationship from the very beginning. If you make that clear early in the relationship that you're not interested in marriage and she's still hanging out with you, the only way this thing goes is friends with benefits. That's the key is you have to lay out your boundaries early in the relationship. Now, don't make it the first thing you say. You can't just walk up to her and say, "I'm not interested in marriage. My name is John." No, you got to get to know her first. You know, go on a few dates, get to know her. Um, hang out with her. Don't sleep with her. Um, at least give her the boundary before you take her to bed. That way, if things break off, there's no hard feelings and you can just go about your path. And who knows, maybe she'll introduce you to someone that she knows. But if you lay down that boundary early in the relationship, you will establish the path that relationship is going to be taking from here on out.
Other boundary that you need to consider is if you've got kids and you got family, which most of us do, um you've got to be clear about whether or not this woman's going to have any involvement with your kids or your family, or if so, at what stage in this relationship. I would recommend that you wait at least six months into a relationship before you start bringing her around your kids. And I would do that and just tell her, "Look, it's a safety mechanism. I don't want uh my kids to become attached to you and then for us to have a breakup and you know, then it looks like um you know, they uh they get their hearts broken. They start asking questions and I don't want to answer tough questions to my kids about you." So, just make it clear right from the very beginning that um you know when it comes to family and children that you're not going to be introducing her for at least 6 months and really maybe even a year. And if you do introduce her, you know, she's always your friend. That's all she is. This is my friend Jill. Don't say this is my girlfriend. This is my I don't know what else you would call her. But you do not use that terminology that they use in high school. You know, this is my friend. That's it. That's all they need to know. And I would not be planning sleepovers with Jill while your kids are there because they will figure that out. They will know exactly what's going on. And that will get back to your ex-wife and everybody else and it becomes problematic for you. So, you want to avoid as many complications as possible. Money being the primary one. Commitment obviously is a huge one. Um laying down your boundaries. Um watch for your red flags. And if you can do all of that, then I think that you can have a really good, healthy, long-term relationship with a woman without getting married, without having that legal entanglement.
All right, you guys, that's all I got for you today. I certainly hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have, please like and subscribe. If you know someone who might need to hear this information, please share it with them. And until next time, please remember, stay healthy and stay single.