Does A Wife Have a Duty to Have "Relations" With Her Husband? Conjugal Duties

A
Hello, everyone. We're so glad to have you back at basecamp. Today we are going to talk about conjugal duties. That is to say, how much should each spouse be obligated to do sexy times with the other spouse? And is that important?

Well, yes. And consent in marriages and everything like that. Would you like to know more? The reason I wanted to do this particular topic is because win fundy snark channels. Win the channels that make fun of conservatives have their pearl clutching.

B
I cannot believe they said that moments. One of the most classic is around a wife's conjugal duties. The idea that a wife either would not have the ability to decline consent in a marriage or that a wife would have a duty to have sexual relations with her husband. Mm hmm. Yeah.

A
Something along that. So we hadn't actually talked that much about this as a concept before, Simone, and it's just something that hasn't really come up with us because I've never understood. Yeah, I guess it didn't occur to me that you would ever say no if I wanted to do something. So I am wondering, how do you like what. Yeah, what are your thoughts on this topic?

B
Do women have a conjugal duty to their husbands? My, and I'm sure you can predict this, my response is, it all depends on what the relationship is founded on. If the relationship is founded on sex, then absolutely. If everything is predicated on that. If you know that your partner married you because they wanted to have sex frequently, or because they found you sexually attracted and wanted to have sex with you regularly and are marrying you for sexual access, that is part of your obligation.

A
A really common stereotype of relationships. So it's a common as a stereotype because it's true, is that really high wealth, high value men may marry a trophy wife who is much younger, perhaps not as professionally or financially successful, but very sexy for that sexual access. And in that case, it would be insane for the young woman who ends up getting married to act as though it is anything but absolutely her conjugal duty to satisfy this husband's partner sexually, as long as they're married, no matter how she feels like she should behave, as long as he is keeping up his end of the bargain, which typically is, I'm going to, you will live in luxury, you will get jewelry, you will get clothing, you will go on, you know, fancy trips, have the best food, whatever. So I think the whole point is, and this is why relationship contracts are so important, partners need to know what is being exchanged before they get married because it is 100% your obligation. In fact, I'm so vehement on this that let's say I'm a young beautiful woman and an older man marries me because they want to regularly have sex with a young beautiful woman.

Yeah, but say I'm courting Leonardo DiCaprio and I'm 18, all right? I think that it is my duty. We have to put the Leonardo DiCaprio chart on the screen here. What age is it? Would they turn 20?

I think it's like 24 or something like that. It's quite. It's mid twenties along those lines. I think he's a really great example here. I would put in our relationship contract, if I were to marry Leonardo DiCaprio, that he would have every right to sleep with whatever woman he chooses.

And I may even offer to help source those women after I age out of his attractive age range if I want to maintain that relationship. In other words, if I want to continue to be his wife and continue to have access to presumably his wealth, his connections, whatever, like the, whatever he brings to the table that I would then need to continue to provide that item of value. I would have word what she just said differently. Because it's funny, you are taking an incredibly, some people would say conservatist extremist position and immediately flipping to a progressive extremist position. This is what pragmatism looks like.

Pragmatism is unmoored from political bias. So you are saying that, okay, if you are a woman who's coming into a relationship without bringing much to the table in terms of your own career or really anything else like you would see in a typical trophy wife. Right? In that case, just undisputedly, every time conjugal duty is obviously what's expected because that's what's being traded for. Yes, but in the case of Leonardo DiCaprio, you pointed something out, you pointed out an individual.

B
And we will say that Leonardo DiCaprio has a very strong preference for women between a certain age range. Now, regardless of how disgusting you as an individual find that, or we as society may find that, you're just basically throwing that out the window. You're basically being, look, I am like a restaurant server girl and somehow I got Leonardo DiCaprio, fabulously wealthy, famous person to marry me. I'm going to be happy with that. But I also see this trend in his past dating life, which is he always leaves people at x age.

So how can I create a deal with him where being in a relationship with me is still something that is on the aggregate desirable to him, even when sexual relations with me are no longer desirable, because I think we. What you have to do is actually parse out the thing of value that the person wants in a relationship. And the thing of value in this case is sexual access to a female under, we'll say, 24 years old. And so if you are no longer a female under 24 years old, you're gonna have to figure out a how to either end the relationship in an amicable way. So there has to be, like, a really good prenup.

A
It's okay. When I turn 24, here's. We get the divorce, and then I get this much money. Yeah. Yeah.

B
You would need a really strong prenup if you were going into it this. Way, because just, like, literally plan for it. Like, we have a birthday party that's an equal divorce party. The lawyer's already paid for all these things. Or you have to have a contingency plan.

A
I want to add, though, that there's another part to this that I think is really important that shows up a ton in the funding commitments to sex. Oh. But I also want to hear what you think of age gap relationships before you go into this. A lot of people would be like, it's just fundamentally unethical how young the women he's sleeping with are. Yeah, I don't think that those women are unaware of what's going on.

This is not a situation in which they aren't aware of the fact that they're trading their beauty and youth for power and fame. I would argue. I think you're right. Like, at some level, they must understand what's going on. However, I would also say that they may not realize that essentially he is spending their most desirable years, or they are spending their most desirable years on an individual who is going to leave them, and they won't be able to attract the same quality partner they will when they're older, just because.

Yeah, but also, society doesn't tell women that they're spending the most desirable years on university and career without getting married, thereby wasting their ability to secure one of the good males before all the males get taken. So I. Sorry, I love this take. Hold on. Before we go to the thing that the funding community does, your take is age gap relationships are wrong, not because of coercion or power differential.

B
That is the reasons progressives think age gap relationships are wrong. Your take is age gaps relationships are wrong because it uses up a girl's best market years without her having full knowledge that she is spending those years. And that's where the unethical. But you say that they are not differentially wrong when compared to what all other girls are doing. So you don't complain.

But if it was one of our daughters, you likely wouldn't allow them to do that. It's not that I wouldn't allow them. Our daughters would understand the opportunity cost of that choice. And I think there's something very different from opportunity cost knowledge. And I think what's more commonly implied is that, oh, these men are so much older and more experienced, they'll win every single argument.

A
But I'm like, excuse me, who do you think is more manipulative? The 54 year old man or the 23 year old girl? Like, the girl is going to school this son of a bitch. I just don't know what else. I actually love this.

B
We have an amazing relationship and it's very physical. I mean, he still pushes all my buttons. People say, oh, but he's so much older than you. And you know what? I'm the one having to push him away.

We both have so much in common. We both love soup and we love snow peas. And talking and not talking.

We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about.

I would argue that if you just look at this from an outsider's perspective, you have a young, underemployed 23 year old girl who is dating a billionaire guy or multimillionaire guy who is the one that you think is the manipulative one here. And here I'm going to play a clip from best in show of the girl who's dating, like, the old guy who's about to croak and, you know, is sleeping with the, her trainer. Like the. She's actually a lesbian and she's just dating him, obviously, for money. Like, who do you really?

Yeah, I do love that. Where they're like, oh, it must be the guy who's manipulating the girl. Like, what a silly and misogynistic thought to have. Yeah. There's also this concept of financial abuse, right.

A
Where, like, when a partner, it could be female, but typically it's the men who are accused of this. The male breadwinner or the wealthy male in a trophy wife situation financially abusing his wife because he has access to all the money. Now, obviously, there are some cases of genuine almost captures where, you know, women are totally disempowered. They've no ability to just get out of a relationship. But most of these situations are people coming in with full knowledge of the fact that they are going to be financially dependent on these men.

And then they. They claim that they've been financially abused by their spouses when, you know, they could just get a job. And it's just that they don't want to get a job. And I'll never forget, you and I were, when we first acquired a travel management business. And airlines still gave away business class flights to agency owners.

And we were on a business class. We would never normally pay for a business class flight. No. But this is how we got very frugal. It was great.

And there was this woman who, sitting. Next to us who had bought two seats. Yeah. Because she just wanted this seat next to her empty. Yes.

B
Now, she was in telling us that she was getting divorced from her husband because he was financially abusing her. And I was like, I hadn't heard the term before. I go, like, what do you mean by that? And he goes, she said, I was just wasting money all the time and I didn't understand the value of money. And now that I'm out of that abusive marriage, I'm free to live my life, and here I am being like, excuse me, you bought two business class seats next to each other.

Yeah, you may have had a point. Yeah, this is one of those am I the asshole? Situations. Anyway, we did not say anything to her, but anyway, I most. I feel like a lot of the complaints in that realm as well, in terms of age gap relationships are overblown people getting into them often.

A
And this is something that is very controversial, but quite honestly, their other options are worse than the suboptimal relationship. I'm not saying it's. It's ideal to be married to someone who you may not have that strong of an emotional connection with, or you may have married. You don't find them attractive, but they give you a lifestyle that you really want. But then again, maybe your other options are to be to be working at a Starbucks and you really hate customer service or to be doing a door to door sales job.

I don't know. What you pointed out in previous episodes is people talk about the quote unquote abuse that happens in a marriage when they are contrasting that with sitting at home and having all the money you could ever want in the world, instead of the hardship of a day to day office job or low education job, which is generally going, that sets the bar of what is more abusive than that. Pretty high. So let's go down the argument that you were going to make initially, which is something you've noticed in fundy relationships. Yeah.

So what's often talked about and implied within fundy or even just conservative or traditional relationships is this. The husband gets sex whenever he wants it, and the wife often will never say no, and it just happens. And that it's often not. When the women write about their encounters, their intimate encounters, there's not a lot of foreplay, like, whatever, it just happens, and then it's over. And then people like Ben Shapiro have talked about things like female lubrication not being a real thing, according to his wife or something.

And one really gets the impression that a lot of these more conservative religious wives are technically not withholding sex. But as far as I'm concerned, they are not offering their part of the bargain because they are starfishing, which is to say they are just lying back and taking it for the country. When I think that if you're. If a person marries you, male or female, I do not care for sexual pleasure. Your job is to understand what their sexual interests are and to meet those sexual interests satisfactorily.

And I will say the one universal thing that seems to be so common across most genres is enthusiasm from the partner is, oh, my gosh, I love you. I cannot wait to do x to you. I can't wait for you to do x to me. Oh, my gosh, I am loving this. Yes, blah, blah, blah.

Like, just lying there and taking it is. Is almost worse than denying it, which I think is. This is likely a two sided thing. So an interesting thing about Ben Shapiro's case is, you may not know this, but if he was actually practicing a conservative jewish lifestyle, one of the responsibilities, and I forget the word here, but there's three core responsibilities a husband has with his wife. And one of the three is to make sure that he is sexually satisfying her.

Right. And so he is technically failing at being a jew, if this is accurate, that he is not pleasing her. And I think that this comes to a point here that you made, which. Which is just really important, which conjugal duty, I would actually argue, and I think you argue this as well, is almost like, less. Like, it's less than what is actually expected of an individual.

Totally. You don't have, like, a conjugal duty if you are just performing a conjugal duty. You are not performing the role in the relationship, the sexual role in a relationship. That's actually expected of a partner. What is actually expected is that you take the satisfaction of your partner as seriously as almost anything else.

B
As I say, the only two responsibilities you have above your spouse's well being is to God and your kids. And after that, your spouse comes above yourself, significantly above yourself. And that means that you should attempt to understand exactly what they're into. It's not like a, I'm just having sex with you and we're done. It is.

Let me fully understand. And if you read something like the pragmatist guide to sexuality, you'll see that the way sexuality actually works is it's like this giant circuit board, basically, of knobs. It's not like a few things that may arouse people. There are, and you can go through the book, hundreds of things that commonly arouse people. These are certain emotional states, certain environmental stimuli, certain visual stimuli, different ways of interacting.

Some people are very sexually reactive, meaning that they do not feel arousal or attraction to somebody just from being around them, but they do when the person is engaging them. And you and somebody like that might be like you just said, oh, I'm sexually reactive, therefore I'm never going to pursue my partner sexually. Right. And it's, why is that the case? And it's like, doesn't turn me on to do it.

It's like, stop. Does it actively cause you great discomfort to pretend like you're really interested in your partner and start a relationship? Sometimes you're like, no, not really. A bit of LARP in the beginning isn't that much of a problem. Then why aren't you doing it?

If it makes your partner significantly happier, this is what you're doing. And here I would note I that where there is the exception is in some individuals, because the way sexuality works. We talk about this in our sexuality book, is it is a scale from arousal to disgust. It doesn't stop at nothing. Yes, gut is part of the sexual system.

You can watch our other videos on this. But it's basically an inverted sexuality. Anything that arouses a large portion of the population is going to discuss some other portion of the population. Anything that discusses a large portion of the population is going to arouse a small portion of the population. But what this means is that sometimes partners will have really high disgust reactions to a specific thing that you may be into now.

So that could be something like anal, like just no anal, like a rule. No anal ever. Because that would cause me such discomfort that whatever pleasure you're getting from that is just not worth it for our net productivity and desire for each other. And that's okay. It's okay.

That one partner is like something that you like causes me great disgust and distress. The problem is when instead of being, I guess, negative in terms of the things you're taking off the table. Okay, this I don't like. This I don't like. This I don't like is coming at this.

These are the ten things that are approved because that is almost certainly not going to overlap with. That's not even like you went and investigated and tried to understand what your partner is into. Right? Yeah. But here is where sexuality gets really interesting, I think from a conjugal duties perspective, which is it is possible to have a relationship where conjugal duties are not expected.

A
Oh, totally. When is that the case? That is the case. When it is explicitly stated before the marriage happened. That is when that is the case.

B
And why do I say it needs to be explicitly stated before the marriage happens or in a marriage contract or something like that? That is because in our society right now, if you are a marriage, the default assumption is that that marriage is going to have a sexual component. And so if one of you goes dead bedrooms, that is turning your back on a component. That was a presupposition when the marriage happened. And if you have that presupposition, you're like, yeah, but then I just can't bring myself to sleep with my partner anymore.

Then that's a serious issue and there are multiple ways to resolve it. It could be because your partner has let themselves go, in which case they actually violated the contract as well, so. Long as you had attractiveness clauses. Or I'd actually say, I'm talking default societal assumptions. You guys agreed nothing before you got married.

And then after you got married, one of you gained a significant amount of weight and then the other person started. That's fair. I would say that's fair. Okay. If, however, you two are equally fit, as when you got into the relationship and one person stops, I would say, no, that's a foul.

And that with that foul, that doesn't necessarily mean the marriage has to break up, but it means that person now has the right to look for alternate sources of sexual release. Yeah, and I think that's super underrated in that I think with especially male sexual interests, this is not so much the case with female sexual interests. Just saying, basically, if you can't get it with me, you're welcome to get it somewhere else. As the wife is a huge negotiating point that can really keep marriages together. Because sometimes women lose their sex drives, sometimes women just aren't that into it.

A
And I think there's a long history of established older wives who've maybe had a few kids, knowing that their husbands are having affairs, knowing that their husbands sleep with other women or have mistresses and being, like, pretty cool with it and having otherwise quite functional relationships, because it's just understood, hey, I'm not the person who's going to provide that part of our relationship anymore. Someone else is going to do it. But I'm glad you're getting it somewhere. And so what Simone is saying is that if you are a woman, you can augment your value to particularly high status men by altering the expected contract that you're getting into a relationship with them in and allowing them to sleep with other people. Now, a lot of people are like, ew, gross.

B
Like, how could a woman do that? But the problem is that if you are dating, like, the creme de la creme of society, like billionaires and stuff like that, movie stars pretty much, because we hang out adjacent to these classes of people, I'd say 70, 80% of their relationships are structured this way. Well, just a business relationship. Imagine that you're establishing a contract with the vendor, and you'd like it to be a full service contract. And it starts out full service.

A
Let's say you're a resort working with a client, and you want that client to always stay at your resort or something. And you have restaurants, you have a spa, you have hotel rooms, and they and other services, tours. And they use all of that for several years, and then they decide, you know what I really want? Sushi. And you don't have a sushi restaurant.

And there's one right across the street. Like, why is it so impossible that they could get some service somewhere else and then utilize all of your other services? Appreciate. I want something clear, Simone. I think that this is something that is only viable for basically billionaire class men.

B
I do not think that this works for men below the billionaire class. So two quick side notes here. When I say billionaire class men, billionaire class men doesn't necessarily mean that they are literally billionaires. It just means that they are the highest status men within their domain of respectability. So, for example, a president or a famous philosopher or something like that.

C
And I should also note here that I am explicitly saying men. It does not appear, just anthropologically speaking, that any society I'm aware of has been widespread and successful and allowed women to take multiple partners. The reason being is that women unconsciously bond with their sexual partners much, much more than men do. So even if a woman is just like, well, I want to try something else for a short period, the net effects on her emotional state long term are going to be much more impactful than the net effects on the male's state long term. The only case where I can think of it being okay or for a relationship to be able to stay stable with the wife, sleeping with other partners is either the husband is specifically into that and the wife is also into.

A
That, I guess, because the assumption is that other women that they would be with would ultimately want a full time relationship as well. No, it's because I have no idea where you're going with this. No, like regular polyamory as practiced within our society is just completely unstable. It doesn't work. However, historically speaking, people who would have been billionaire class, even in monogamous societies, even in Catholic Europe, for example, all of.

B
A lot of. I wouldn't say all, but a lot of the french monarchs, for example, a lot of the monarchs more broadly had mistresses. I don't even. I don't. I can't imagine there was one that did not have mistresses.

Yeah. So even within traditional christian value systems, if you're talking, or gay lovers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you go back and they're like, oh, this wasn't true in the fifties. Me do not think the billionaires in our society in the fifties, do you not remember, like Kennedy and the famous scandal with him?

And who was it? Marilyn Monroe? The billionaire men. So why is this the case that the absolute crim de la creme men in our society generally have a choice? As you've all seen on the news, our country is facing a major crisis.

D
Why? Why are rich, successful men suddenly going out and trying to have sex with lots of women? Why would a man who's famous and makes tons of money use that to try and have sex with lots of different women? And these rich celebrities have perfectly good wives at home. Why would they even think of sex with others?

Damn it, I want answers. Of course, we all know the normal, healthy male thinks only of sex occasionally and has no desire for sex with multiple partners. You're actually right, of course. Definitely true. Yes, we all know that.

Go on. To better understand the sex addiction outbreak, we've been running tests on chimpanzees, but now see this chimp here? Now watch. We're going to give it a lot of money.

B
Yes.

D
And what's it doing now? Making a public apology on its talk show.

B
It's because they are the most desirable class of humans in society. By that, what I mean is if you look at how partner sorting happens, and I'll put a thing on the screen here so you can see desirable women have it good, but not that good. Because for a desirable woman, if I'm a top 1% desirable woman, the problem is that the top 1% desirable men don't just have me to choose from, they basically can choose from any of the groups of women they'll choose within the top 20% of women. Often I will only choose a 1% man. So I actually have a fairly hard time securing a man.

And if a woman who is in the top 2% or top 5% tells that guy, hey, look, I'll let you sleep around, and I top 1% women aren't coming to them with that proposal, then they're not going to stick with me. And so that's why these men become used to these kinds of proposals from women. And so it is because it becomes a cultural norm in their communities that they adopted. Do I think it leads to better relationships than the type that I have? No, it just becomes a cultural norm in their communities.

So I'll word this differently. I actually think if you are a top, like, billionaire class guy and you get used to this, you will never be able to have a life as happy as my life. And that's one of the things that I often look at, where I'll look at the billionaire men in our society, and I'm like, wow, they live in such poverty. I don't want to call it like, spiritual poverty when contrasted with my life. However, if I was a billionaire, would I not act the way they act?

Would I actually? And when I say a billionaire, I've been a billionaire for ten years or whatever, not like me today with my value system and my wife and my family and all the hindsight that gave me suddenly became a billionaire, but if I had done the whole ultra hard work thing for ages and ages, and gave everything up, and then began to socialize with women again, and I hadn't done it since I was in high school, or I hadn't fully, you know, their mental perspective is quite different from the rest of society, so I understand it, but I think it's like a temporary optimum and it isn't the maximum optimum if they could get above that and then try to structure a wholesome life. I think that some billionaire class men, rarely in history, did structure wholesome lives, and they ended up with, like, uniquely good relationships. Yeah, this is actually kind of messed up when you think about it, that once, I believe as a man, well, and as a woman, as a woman, it's shown, you know, once you get above certain levels of wealth, the probability that you get married or get into a happy relationship are very low. There's those studies of women who win a large amount of money, and what actually happens is they just divorce their husbands.

C
But as a man that you can be super, super wealthy and not have access to the levels of happiness and contentment that I have access to. It's not that you literally don't have access to them, it's just that the way the world is structured makes it astronomically harder for them to access this lifestyle than it is for me to access this lifestyle. So you can take someone like Elon, who I have enormous respect for, do I think that he would be much more contented and satisfied with his life if he tried settling down with one person and bought a farmstead and moved to a more remote work situation and was able to spend, you know, more time with his kids and more time with one partner who he was really invested in? Absolutely. I do not think that he has access to the quality of life that I have access to yet.

I believe he has done more to make the world a better place than I do and thus deserves more, which is sad. And then you could look at the other ultra wealthy people that have, I guess I'd call them sort of serial monogamous relationships. That is, monogamy with divorce. So they have some simulacrum of a monogamous life, but I think they even have less happy lives than someone like Elon. So here I'm thinking of someone like Jeff Bezos.

When I look at the ways that this woman who took all this money that he made and really didn't contribute much of anything is spending it on. She could not have been a pleasant person to be married to. She just seems a complete NPC, which would be so sad to be married to. Or, you know, speaking of NPC's could be like, well, what about Mark Zuckerberg? He seems to be in a stable, long term monogamous relationship, but I'm not really convinced that he is not.

He just seems fully urban monoculture to the extent that he is just one of those NPC memes. Plus. And I think that the level of happiness or really the depths of emotions that are accessible by somebody in an NPC state are fairly limited. And this is another problem that we see, because I think this is a mistake that Jeff Bezos made, which is, yes, you can be ultra wealthy and in a totally monogamous relationship, but if that person is a total NPC, it's just not going to be interesting. This is why, for Elon, I'd recommend you know, if he was going to settle down with someone, settle down with somebody who's weird and interesting and willing to go against social mores.

Like Grimes, for example, I think would be a very good long term partner for him. And I think that when he had tried long term relationships to begin with, the problem is that the people weren't as weird as him. And it's also something where I reflect on, you know, when the media is mean to me or when people in public are mean to me and they're like, oh, Malcolm, you monster, you. X, y, z. I often have to take a moment to reflect on how good my life is.

And it's almost impossibly good. It's almost impossibly good. When I reflect on my life these days, it feels like sort of the before scene in, like, a punisher movie or something like that, which creates this sort of dread that I guess I constantly feel like it can't be this good. And the way that I have come to turn terms with that is to consider that this must be a reward for me tanking all of the hate that my wife and I get publicly and all of the threats that my wife and I get publicly, and that we are being rewarded for the difference that I hope we are. Well, not I hope.

I know we are trying to make in the world, and I hope that is realized in the world. And I guess I could see my current undeserved contentedness as a sign that we might be successful at this, so long as we can tank through all the hatred. But there is a final thing that I wanted to say for normal men, and we can do a whole episode on why I don't think, like, polyamory often works for middle income people, but because I've had more time to see the outcomes of it with my friend group. Longitudinal research. We hang out with a lot of, like, tech guys in California.

A
Okay. Longitudinal anecdote. Yes. Yeah. And my anecdote is it basically never works.

B
Actually. I can't think of a thing. No, I can think of one long term instance where it seems to have worked. Do I know it? Yeah.

Yeah. But I don't know. Yeah, don't name names. Yeah, I don't want any names. I don't know.

It's public. Seems pretty happy. I wouldn't name names. Okay. I won't take that out.

But. So the. But what I was going to say is the other thing that's worth noting is, alongside conjugal duties, is there's a few things to accept here. Sex, non reproductive sex is inherently sinful. All non reproductive sex is basically a fetish.

It is pleasure for pleasure's sake, even if it is a bonding ritual. So it's sinful if you, like us, do not think that happiness has inherent value. I'm talking about in our system, and I think in most, I say real christian systems. I know there's some christian systems that have moved to this worship of the flesh where it's, oh, in marriage, sex is a holy thing always. And I am like, no, no, reproductive sex is.

But sex more broadly, I don't think that is true. You are using another human's body to masturbate. It is a form of sin. It takes away from your time that you are being productive. But that doesn't mean that because we all sit, we aren't Jesus.

Right? So we all do things that are meant to satisfy ourselves. And as a partner to your spouse, while you have a duty to help uplift them as a person and improve as a person, you also have a duty to max out their happiness, stat. I'd say the little green triangle on a sim, your duty to your spouse is to make sure that's always as green as possible. And what that means is not just sex.

And that's the important thing, is it means that you need to understand the sins that they are not currently working on and allow them to indulge in those sins, where so long as they are making improvements in other areas with men. This means that because a lot of women don't desire sex in the same way men do in a long term relationship. Right. But they have other things, for example, desiring status signaling jewelry, such as. Or desiring fancy trips or furniture, whatever it might be.

And you have a duty in the same way that they have a duty to try to help maximize your mood and self perception as you are working on that together. Right. You have a duty to them in the same regards. Yeah. And so I would say that it is as bad if you have the financial resources to invest in things like that unless you explicitly agree to, not before the marriage.

And this is why marriage contracts are so important, because otherwise you're operating on societal defaults. But within societal defaults, I think that there is some duty to supply the woman, especially if that woman is doing her job and trying to make you as happy as possible, to supply her with the things that she needs for the same sort of validation that you're getting from that sex. And that might be jewelry, it might be pearls, it might be nice furniture, it might be a pet, for example, there are many self perception modifying things. It's just that one of the most gendered towards men is sex. And yet our society has built this bizarre consent concept today.

And I'm not saying that consent doesn't matter at all, but I'm like, when you just are, like, consent is like a steel thing that can never be crossed. You end up with this really horrible framework where a wife can just always say no, right? Like, just no, we're not having sex anymore. And consent. And you can't get mad at me for saying this.

And it's like, that's silly. The way this works in real life, in a family where like you're actually have a caring relationship with your partner is one person I value this and the other partner's I value this, or I'm not in the mood for this today. Could we do it this time or under these other conditions? For example, my wife would say, these days I've got a small infant in the room I don't want to hire a nanny to bring to deal with the infant. I don't want to put the infant in another room while we're having sex.

So let's wait until the infant is old enough that it could be with somebody else or that I feel comfortable leaving it outside the room for a period of time. That is a completely reasonable thing to say. And I think that consent absolutism removes reasonable conversations from the tape. I think the thing I have problems with around the way consent is being framed in modern society is that denying consent is treated as a costless activity instead of an activity that needs some level of explanation which allows something to happen. Like, you know, for example, a stay at home wife who isn't really contributing much of anything to a relationship, just constantly denying a man consent.

C
Like permanent consent denial and thinking that the relationship can stay stable and that then if he wants a divorce or he wants to leave or he wants to cheat, that he is 100% at fault and there is no culpability upon the person who was denying consent. It is not that I don't think that consent shouldn't be respected absolutely. It is that we should not because we respect consent so seriously that we should not act as if denying consent bears some cost. I think. Guess I'd call it like informed consent, which is to say the denial of consent with an explanation that is time gated or resolvable.

Like, I don't want to sleep with you now because I find you unattractive due to your weight gain. That's fine, because that's, you know. Okay, well, so lose weight then I'll want to sleep with you again. But what were you going to say? Because you really wanted to say something.

A
Consent matters also if someone feels like they're having genuine non consent with anything in a marriage, and that's not necessarily with intimacy, it could also be with a partner, for example, making purchases that are not approved. That is a form of infidelity, period. Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's a form of infidelity. I'd say it's so. I do agree that in that sense, consent matter.

B
So what I'm saying here is feeling like it, demanding that a person obeys your consent request without consequences for denying consent. By that, what I mean is if a wife continually declines consent without any real reason, that that would be a case where a husband would be justified in becoming angry and saying that the wife is violating the assumptions of their marriage in the same way where it is a violation if a woman like, takes a bunch of money or spends a bunch of money without the man's consent. But it is also a violation if the man never, ever grants consent for the woman to splurge on herself. Yeah. I would also say though, when you get to a point where relationships involve asking for things, let alone denial, just asking for things is being if I always have to ask you for sex, something's gone wrong.

A
If that's an important thing in our relationship, no, I agree with that. If you always have to ask me to clean up, something's gone wrong. One, when in an ideal situation, relationship requests should be like improv, the answer is yes. And, but also you should be like the ultimate servant to your partner because you are unified with them toward a larger goal. You should be anticipating their needs, like you said, putting them only after God and your children and doing everything you can to make their lives more enjoyable.

But if they're not doing the same, your relationships on thin ice. So that's a really great point, is that concepts like consent, as progressives use the term, begin to not make sense in a well structured relationship. Because in a well structured relationship, both people generally consider the needs of the other before their own needs. I would never question that. Simone is definitely in almost everything she does during the day, always putting my needs before her own.

B
And as such, I feel comfortable in everything I do, always putting her needs before mine. So when there is arguments, the arguments are often about something that I want to do for her and she feels is unjustified. Oh, I want to splurge on you as this? And you're just like, no, I don't want this. Are you wanting to splurge on me with something?

And I'm like, no, it wouldn't make me happy enough to offset the cost. And so we're not going to do that right now. No. I will say that sometimes I bring things up where I know that I want something that is not in the best collective interests of our family and our. Those are never things that hurt me.

It's like you coming to me and saying, can I do I permission to not go to this party? It's never like a favor you're doing when it comes to the things for me, they are always done and often. And this is another thing I think is really important. And I would consider a duty of a spouse. If you're considering the duties of your relationship, it is to notice and think and show appreciation for the things your spouse does without telling you or request.

And that this appreciation cannot run dry just because your relationship has existed a long time. And I also think that's like a meaningful flirtation and dating strategy in general. That retard level relationship action is things like, your eyes are so pretty, you're so beautiful, you're so handsome, whatever. And I tell you, gorgeous all the time, but that's retard level compliment. What I think gives people the most sense of satisfaction.

A
The greatest dopamine hit is when people recognize actions that they've taken, things for which they actually have responsibility. Okay. Women can put a lot of effort into their appearance, but then you can recognize, wow, the way you styled your hair today is just incredible. How did you braid your hair that way? Or, but it should be around your actions.

Or, wow, the way that you immediately anticipated the kids were going to freak out when this thing happened and you made sure that they were okay. It just really made me feel fantastic. And I can't thank you enough. Like complimenting actions or complementing moments. So much more meaningful than just compliment or complementing attributes over which people have no control and haven't put any effort.

Because any, anyone, even people who actually aren't working that hard feel like they're putting in some kind of effort, even if it's getting out of bed or like getting dressed and being recognized for stuff that they personally put energy into gives them much more of a dopamine hit than stuff that they don't feel like they worked on that day. Yes. No, absolutely. I 100% agree with you. And that's a great way when you're thinking about how do you actually make your partner feel good?

B
It's notice the things that they're putting effort into and complement those things. But it's just also important because if they do something, like, even if it's my wife's duty to do the dishes, is, no, she's choosing to do the dishes. And you need to show appreciation for that every time. Yeah. It's one of the things of value that partner offers in the relationship.

A
If you don't value that, then why on earth should they be putting in the effort? Yeah. And one, then they won't feel delight or appreciation. Now, the final thing I'm going to note here, something that I noticed when I was ruminating on the point I had made earlier. No.

B
It is actually traditional in christian cultures for the very wealthy and most powerful men to have multiple partners. And then I thought of an exception. It is normal in catholic and orthodox countries. It is not normal in protestant countries. Consider King Henry VIII.

He had to literally have his wives killed to get additional women. He had side checks. He had a son with a side check. Oh, he did? Yes.

Okay, I'm wrong. Yeah, sorry. Men are men. He did. He did have side chicks.

You're right. Even in protestant countries, you had it. And the side chick wasn't the problem. The problem is that the sun was the legitimacy. Yeah.

All right. So even there, just always. I love when people appeal to a christian traditionalism that is just a complete fabrication of what actual christian history was like. And it's. No, they're.

A
Nice try. This was actually more complicated than that, which is always interesting to me. Or they'll be like, in the Bible, it was always one man and one woman. And it's. It definitely was not.

B
You have the case of, oh, God, what's the case? I'm thinking of where the guy was too old, and so his wife said he could sleep with their slave to have a kid. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That story was always so weird to me.

C
Yes. Sarah Hagar and Abraham, literally the source of the abrahamic tradition. So it's in all of the abrahamic tradition that this is not, like, the most. It is actually really interesting to me. And we'll do another episode on this, this larp of the christian lifestyle that doesn't match lifestyles in the Bible or that are described in the Bible, but instead matches Hollywood's description of a Christian in the 1950s, which was, like, never like a real thing.

B
And it's just interesting to me that people will say with such conviction, these are christian values when they are not the values of the Bible or historically christian communities, but they are just so convinced that they're christian values. And it's baffling to me, but it shows you how, like, cultural consensus works. People always want to believe everything is archaic when often it's not one of the episodes we'll do when I get around to it, and I do need to do it because I have too many pro jewish episodes, and I need to do an episode that's going to make people think, oh, Jews aren't going to like this. Which is on how quickly the jewish religion has evolved recently, and that the medieval jewish religion and culture is almost completely disconnected from the modern jewish religion culture. I'm dying to hear more about this.

Yeah, you keep a lot of research, but here, for people who don't believe me, for example, I will put on a screen right now a picture of a medieval Catholic and a picture of a modern Catholic. Now I am going to put on the screen a picture of an ultra conservative medieval jew and a picture of a ultra conservative modern jew. And for those who are listening on podcast and don't know what medieval Jews looks like, they look like they are wearing a go piece as a hat, and they are wearing green, and it's got like a ball at the top of a hat. And you know what modern Jews look like? They have, like, long curly hair things and all sorts of other.

C
I should note here, for anyone who's like, oh, you're just talking about fashion. What does that have to do with religious identity? The episode, the reason why it needs a whole episode is actually going to go over all sorts of traditions and things that are core to the religious tradition and show that around 50% or more are modern. In the same way that if I'm looking at an amish community, and you ask an amish community, when was your community founded? And they'd be like, well, the death of Christ.

And it's like, well, I mean, but from an outsider's perspective, when was your community founded? Because when I look at amish and I'm like, this is what makes you amish. You're talking about, like, the 18 hundreds. So. And I also need to note this in the context of, I'm not really saying it's a new religion.

It's more this that in the same way that some languages, like, when you're looking at language groups, you will find that some languages are incredibly preserved and change very, very little over history. And other languages evolve incredibly quickly. And yet, because they completely replaced the iteration that came before them. It makes sense to call them the same language, even though they would be completely uninterpretable to people, you know, maybe even a few hundred years apart. That's sort of what we're talking about here.

So it's a tricky subject and deserving of a full episode. Are you looking up medieval jew? No, I just wanted to say if people are really interested in catholic, where there's this particular podcast on catholic fashion that I thought was absolutely fantastic, I just think religious fashion is really interesting. Yeah. No, no, I think it's really fascinating as well.

B
Anyway, love you to Desmone. You are amazing. And I hope our fans are having a wonderful day and that we can get feedback on the Lavalier system. Yeah, I'm excited for it. Love you, gorgeous.

Love you too.

A
Man, I'm so happy now. You know that feeling at the end of the day when you've eaten all the frogs? You've eaten all of them. So many frogs. How am I coming through, by the way?

Say something more. Hello, Simone. I am excited to be talking to you today. Yeah, sounds not as good as the super high quality mics, but at least now you can talk freely.

B
Yeah, sounds not as good as the super high quality mics, but at least now you can talk freely.

A
Yeah, sounds not as good as the super high quality mics, but at least now you can talk freely.

Does A Wife Have a Duty to Have "Relations" With Her Husband? Conjugal Duties

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Defining Conjugal Duties

3: Age and Power Dynamics

4: Cultural and Societal Norms

5: Conclusion

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Content Warnings:

Transcript