Speaker 1: Today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I cook one way, she cooked another, which is
Speaker 2: one of the downsides in her marriage. Because I put
Speaker 2: on fifty pounds.
Speaker 3: You put on fifty pounds because you cook.
Speaker 2: I cook and she cooks a different way. But we
Speaker 2: taught each other how we cook, and we both cooked
Speaker 2: very well.
Speaker 3: I see you put on fifty pounds in four years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you need more yardwork. See that's that's your problem. You're
Speaker 3: sharing the yard work.
Speaker 1: That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of hours
Speaker 1: of Dennis's lectures, courses in classic radio programs. I had
Speaker 1: to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennisprager dot com.
Speaker 3: I am old fashioned.
Speaker 2: I like two sexes.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I think all of a sudden, I
Speaker 4: don't like being married to one is known as a
Speaker 4: new woman.
Speaker 3: I want a wife, not a competitor.
Speaker 4: Competitor, competitor, talk about it.
Speaker 5: Bit is crying in the morning thing depression.
Speaker 3: You know, let's get that fixed.
Speaker 1: That's what men think, isn't it what Unless you've got
Speaker 1: the answer, unless you can say, oh, I know this
Speaker 1: bloke in the essex rodical fix that, and there's no
Speaker 1: point bothering.
Speaker 5: How do you write women so well?
Speaker 4: I think of a man and I take away reason
Speaker 4: and accountability.
Speaker 1: I love him.
Speaker 3: I love him and I don't care what you think.
Speaker 6: I love him for the for the man he wants
Speaker 6: to be, and I love him for the man that
Speaker 6: he almost is.
Speaker 3: What do people have rows about him? Money? Sex, sex, money,
Speaker 3: he wants, she doesn't want, she wants, he doesn't want women.
Speaker 7: I've always been a big problem to me, doctor Fusspender.
Speaker 3: Are you listening, doctor, Yes, yes, yes, go on, go on.
Speaker 3: This is the Male Female Hour on the Tennis Prager Show.
Speaker 3: Every week at this time I devote an hour to
Speaker 3: men and women. I call it the Male Female Hour
Speaker 3: because it's it's even deeper than just man women Man
Speaker 3: women is the higher part of our nature. Male female
Speaker 3: is the basic part hi everybody. This is Dennis Praeger
Speaker 3: and today's subject is the notion that a marriage should
Speaker 3: be fifty to fifty. This is one of the great
Speaker 3: movements of my time, ushered in by the baby boomer generation.
Speaker 3: You know how I feel about my generations and intellectual innovations.
Speaker 3: So I shan't go afield on that one. But that
Speaker 3: has been a very basic one, and I'm sure that
Speaker 3: many many marriages have in very with a very good will,
Speaker 3: with a desire to have a good marriage, embrace the
Speaker 3: idea of fifty to fifty. In fact, if you did,
Speaker 3: and what is fifty to fifty, I was going to say,
Speaker 3: In fact, if you did, I want you to call me.
Speaker 3: In fact, I do. This is one time where I
Speaker 3: invite calls very quickly because I want to know how
Speaker 3: you have accepted or if you even tried the fifty
Speaker 3: to fifty. Fifty to fifty is very simple to explain.
Speaker 3: We share income and we share duties. That's it very simple,
Speaker 3: and it makes a lot of sense in theory. If
Speaker 3: we're both going to work for the income, then we
Speaker 3: should both do the dishes. We should both make the beds,
Speaker 3: we should both diaper the baby equal number of times.
Speaker 3: Or I handle the urination and you handle the defecation.
Speaker 3: However you split the duties. No pun intended, but it
Speaker 3: came out anyway. In fact, that was a pun too.
Speaker 3: All right, We'll leave it at that. Anyway, That's what
Speaker 3: I want to talk to you. About because in theory
Speaker 3: it sounds great, but I think in practice it has
Speaker 3: probably caused more attention in marriages then it has joy
Speaker 3: because what happens is that you keep scorecards. Well, I
Speaker 3: did the dishes yesterday, you should be doing them today.
Speaker 3: I vacuumed on Wednesday. It's it's now Saturday. You should
Speaker 3: be vacuuming whatever. Whatever it is, it's got to keep
Speaker 3: If it's going to be fifty to fifty, by definition,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to keep score. And then one
Speaker 3: will resent. Do you do you pull your weight in
Speaker 3: the marriage. That is why guys so often have women
Speaker 3: share the dinner a bill when they're dating. This is
Speaker 3: a mentality that has developed among many men and women
Speaker 3: young middle aged. Now everything is fifty to fifty one
Speaker 3: eight prager seven seven six one eight pr ager seven
Speaker 3: seven six, and that is eight seven seven two four
Speaker 3: three triple seven six. Do you know a couple that
Speaker 3: has attempted fifty to fifty? Did you as it worked
Speaker 3: out fifty to fifty income, fifty to fifty house duties?
Speaker 3: Because you read all the time about the feminist lament
Speaker 3: that well, by golly, she now works outside of the
Speaker 3: house and is still the primary caretaker of the house.
Speaker 3: What a bum deal. Well, I so don't think that
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty works. That I would argue something that
Speaker 3: you may not expect from me, and I will in
Speaker 3: this case, I will even personalize it. I would rather
Speaker 3: be the house husband and house an homemaker full time
Speaker 3: then have a fifty to fifty deal. I so want
Speaker 3: one hundred or not well ninety if you will. I
Speaker 3: so want to be responsible for one specific thing as
Speaker 3: a man. That's men need to feel that they are
Speaker 3: responsible for some achievement, and I would be. I would
Speaker 3: not feel demean if it so worked out. If I
Speaker 3: were married to a woman who made a lot more
Speaker 3: money than I, I'd be very practical. You were in
Speaker 3: the money, I'll take care of the home. But the
Speaker 3: notion of everything fifty to fifty, fifty to fifty income,
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty house duties, it may work. And by
Speaker 3: the way, if it works for you, I want you
Speaker 3: to say so, I wanted to work for if anything,
Speaker 3: my view is whatever works in a marriage, I wanted
Speaker 3: to work. That's my bottom line. But when I address
Speaker 3: specific issues, I think that some which sound good cause
Speaker 3: more tension then they do. Love and joy between a couple.
Speaker 3: Fifty to fifty is an example of something that I
Speaker 3: believe caused more attention. That does not mean that a
Speaker 3: man can never help in the house, of course not.
Speaker 3: And it does not mean that a woman cannot work
Speaker 3: outside of the house. No. But fifty to fifty is
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty. All right, Let's take your calls here,
Speaker 3: and in some cases it works, and I'll begin with
Speaker 3: one just to show you that I want to be
Speaker 3: fair on this, but I let me put it to
Speaker 3: you this way, since my bottom line is what can
Speaker 3: help your marriage. If it works for you, I don't
Speaker 3: want you to change it. I don't. In other words,
Speaker 3: it's not a moral principles, it's instrumental, not morals. In
Speaker 3: other words, what works. I think that for most people
Speaker 3: it doesn't work. But if it does work for you,
Speaker 3: keep going. And I want to say that in advance. Alrighty,
Speaker 3: and let's go to the one that works immediately, and
Speaker 3: that is in Irving, Texas. Irving, Texas is known for
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty marriages. Hi, Roy Dennis Prager, thanks for calling.
Speaker 2: My pleasure, Thanks for letting me through.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, I'm fortunate.
Speaker 2: That this is my second marriage. We've been married for
Speaker 2: four years. We both cooked together. We both enjoyed and
Speaker 2: doing long work together, yard work. We clean the house together.
Speaker 3: Now when you say you clean it together, you mean
Speaker 3: at the same time.
Speaker 2: Well, technically we'll set aside of one hour on Saturday
Speaker 2: morning and with only two of us, I run the
Speaker 2: vacuum and dust and she cleans the bathrooms and we
Speaker 2: clean the kitchen together. And that doesn't always work that
Speaker 2: way because sometimes I work on Saturday mornings, and you know,
Speaker 2: some we have a lot of give and take in it.
Speaker 2: We don't hold a scorecard, as you say. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like when we cook. You know, I cook one way,
Speaker 2: she cooked another, which is one of the downsides of
Speaker 2: her marriage, because I put on fifty pounds.
Speaker 3: You put on fifty pounds because you cook.
Speaker 2: I cook and she cooks a different way. But we
Speaker 2: taught each other how we cook, and we both cooked
Speaker 2: very well.
Speaker 3: I see you put on fifty pounds in four years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you need more yard work. See that's your problem. You're
Speaker 3: sharing the yard work. All right, I thank you kindly.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, it's been four years and a second marriage,
Speaker 3: and obviously they're not having kids in this second marriage,
Speaker 3: it would have mentioned that, and so that's really where
Speaker 3: a lot of the fifty to fifty problem arises. In
Speaker 3: any event, if it works, it works, although he seemed
Speaker 3: to say to suggest that there will be a lot
Speaker 3: of flexibility. Dottie in Houston, Texas, Hi, Dottie, Dennis Prager.
Speaker 8: Hello, thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 3: Thank you for calling. I, like.
Speaker 7: Your first caller, was married once am now married again,
Speaker 7: and my experience is very different. In my first marriage,
Speaker 7: it was fifty to fifty. We both worked, we both
Speaker 7: shared duties, and what I ended up with was a
Speaker 7: man who wasn't my leader and I couldn't respect. So eventually,
Speaker 7: after fourteen years, the marriage did fall apart because the
Speaker 7: man who wasn't the leader decided he couldn't be a
Speaker 7: father and supports and left. Now my second marriage, I
Speaker 7: do the dishes, I cook the foods. But I do
Speaker 7: so because I choose and I want to, and it
Speaker 7: makes me very happy taking care of this man who
Speaker 7: is my leader and whom I respect a great deal.
Speaker 7: And all those times, yeah, I wish you know, come
Speaker 7: and help a little bit. At the end of the day,
Speaker 7: I am much more happy, and so is he. Because
Speaker 7: even though he doesn't expect me to do these things,
Speaker 7: because the norm today is, you know, share duties, do
Speaker 7: fifty to fifty. Anything else, if he asked me to
Speaker 7: do them, he probably was guilty.
Speaker 3: All right, all right, it sounds good. Well, I'll have
Speaker 3: some reactions when we come back.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 3: Dennis Prager here, this is the Male Female Hour. And
Speaker 3: it's a very tough subject because it sounds so good
Speaker 3: and I mean it. And you know, one of the
Speaker 3: tricks in life is not to always ascribe to people
Speaker 3: you differ with bad motives. I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people are very good motives on this issue and want
Speaker 3: marriages to work. I certainly do, and if fifty to
Speaker 3: fifty works for your marriage, you absolutely should pursue it.
Speaker 3: And I mean that as not in any way I
Speaker 3: am not compromising with any values and b I am
Speaker 3: not patronizing you. That is what I believe if it works. Frankly,
Speaker 3: I think if just about anything works that for a
Speaker 3: given marriage. I don't believe in an open marriage. So
Speaker 3: if you say it works to you know, wife, swapping
Speaker 3: and husband swapping. I don't agree with that because of
Speaker 3: moral grounds, but within the bounds of the ethical and
Speaker 3: the moral, if it works, then do it. But my
Speaker 3: argument this hour of the male female hour is that
Speaker 3: for a lot, for more people, in my opinion, for
Speaker 3: more people than not, fifty to fifty doesn't work and
Speaker 3: causes tension because people then start to keep a list,
Speaker 3: and then they get angry. They resent, well, but I
Speaker 3: did X yesterday. Why aren't you doing X today? Or
Speaker 3: why aren't you doing why? Because I do X, you
Speaker 3: do Y. I do the dishes in and and you
Speaker 3: do the beds, and you read articles and you read
Speaker 3: the literature. So many women are particularly annoyed because they
Speaker 3: work outside the home and did expect therefore that half
Speaker 3: the home work be done by the man. But most
Speaker 3: guys pay lip service to that ideal when they're in
Speaker 3: college because that is the home of utopian thinking and
Speaker 3: therefore say oh, I'm totally for fifty to fifty. And
Speaker 3: then they get married and then they become a guy.
Speaker 3: They revert to male nature, which is why it's called
Speaker 3: the male female hour. Now regarding the last call, obviously
Speaker 3: most of us don't use the terminology leader. But for
Speaker 3: those for whom it works, that's fine. But I will
Speaker 3: use terminology that is more modern or more contemporary, and
Speaker 3: that is being able to look up to your man.
Speaker 3: Women want to do that. Men want to love their
Speaker 3: women and cherish their women and protect their women and
Speaker 3: a woman. That's not the same. Verbiage for a woman
Speaker 3: to a man, which is part of the fifty to
Speaker 3: fifty battle, was oh, everything he feels toward her, she
Speaker 3: should feel toward him, and vice versa. But doesn't work
Speaker 3: that way unless you believe the ultimate fifty to fifty
Speaker 3: principle that men and women are basically the same, which
Speaker 3: is the genesis of all of the nonsense that arose
Speaker 3: in the sixties and seventies. One Aide Praguer seven seven
Speaker 3: six And in Cypress, California, it's Paul, Hello, Paul, Dennis Prager,
Speaker 3: Hi Dennis, Thank you, Michael, thank you for calling.
Speaker 9: Dennis.
Speaker 5: You hit a major reason why in my marriage and
Speaker 5: is a boor. She believe in the fifty to fifties.
Speaker 5: She was raised in in that kind of theology, and
Speaker 5: I wasn't. I was thought that love is sacrifice, and
Speaker 5: you can measure how much someone loves you by how
Speaker 5: much they're willing to sacrifice for you. In the fifty
Speaker 5: to fifty arrangement, there's no sacrificing. One person is doing
Speaker 5: something simply because the other person did something.
Speaker 2: There and when you keep.
Speaker 5: Score, there is no one person getting up on another
Speaker 5: where a sacrifice takes place. For example, if she cook
Speaker 5: me dinner, she would tell me how you do the dishes,
Speaker 5: because I could do dinner. But I would always tell her, no,
Speaker 5: I'm doing the dishes because I love you and I
Speaker 5: want to rest. You could meet dinner because you love
Speaker 5: me and you want me to be healthy. Not because
Speaker 5: one did the other, but because of that, and because
Speaker 5: by nature, men tend to forget, women tend to keep
Speaker 5: the memory of the score a little more live. Eventually
Speaker 5: the marriage collapsed because we never learned as a couple
Speaker 5: to make sacrifices for one another.
Speaker 3: All right, all right there and go there. There's a
Speaker 3: case where where it didn't work. I happen to believe
Speaker 3: that's why this is such an important subject and somewhat complex.
Speaker 3: I do believe in the concept of a contract. I
Speaker 3: guess it comes in part from being a Jew, and
Speaker 3: in Jewish marriages that is what it's called. It's called
Speaker 3: a contract. It's very it's very, it's it's it's almost
Speaker 3: like a deal, which I happen to think is a
Speaker 3: good thing. I like that. I don't want to base
Speaker 3: everything just on on the notion of love, because love fluctuates,
Speaker 3: but a deal doesn't. A deal is permanent, or at
Speaker 3: least I mean permanent so long as you stay married,
Speaker 3: and the Judaism divorce is allowed. But there is a
Speaker 3: contract called a katuba which the man gives the woman.
Speaker 3: I owe you this, you owe me this. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's ancient stuff, it's but the concept is is good.
Speaker 3: So I do believe that we owe each other things.
Speaker 3: I just don't believe that it's that the owing is
Speaker 3: on how work and diaper cleaning. Although I must say
Speaker 3: I happen to have loved diaper cleaning. There's no rhyme
Speaker 3: or reason to it. I am not grossed out by it,
Speaker 3: and b I thought it was a riot. I have
Speaker 3: one video of me doing it, which I cherish, but
Speaker 3: that's a separate issue. Nevertheless, I see I actually think
Speaker 3: that an ideal. An ideal is really where one does
Speaker 3: become the primary breadwinner and one does the primary housework.
Speaker 3: That's the ideal. It can always work. I fully acknowledge
Speaker 3: that usually it's the man. But as I said to you,
Speaker 3: and we're all just giving our own experiences and opinions here,
Speaker 3: I would rather be full time homemaker than a fifty
Speaker 3: to fifty person where I took if I took care,
Speaker 3: if I could marry, if I did marry somebody who
Speaker 3: may you know, millions of dollars. I'm not going to say,
Speaker 3: you know, give up the job and so that we
Speaker 3: can both work fine. And believe me, see, I happen
Speaker 3: to think that it is an underrated form of work, homemaking,
Speaker 3: and that's underrated a in its value. We should do
Speaker 3: that a separate time. Why I not, but not only
Speaker 3: is it underrated in its value, that somehow going to
Speaker 3: an office is on a higher social level for some
Speaker 3: reason than taking care of a home. I don't understand
Speaker 3: that for the life of me. But I'll go even further,
Speaker 3: even in sheer enjoyment of life. The fact is that
Speaker 3: in many cases you have time to read. Certainly as
Speaker 3: the kids get older, you have time to read. You
Speaker 3: have time to listen to talk radio. You know how
Speaker 3: many of my half of My listeners are female, and
Speaker 3: a lot of you are at home, and I am
Speaker 3: your intellectual company because you're a three year old just
Speaker 3: can't discuss the meaning of life quite as well as
Speaker 3: I can. And so I am in your life and
Speaker 3: you have this time. Your husband probably doesn't have this time.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot to commend itself. I could live
Speaker 3: that life. I believe I could live that life, but
Speaker 3: I could not live. And I'm being only open. I
Speaker 3: may be dead wrong, and that's fine, but there's not
Speaker 3: right or wrong here. I'm just offering the problems of
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty where you work it out. God bless you.
Speaker 3: But I think in most cases it has led to
Speaker 3: much more attention than joy. Back in a moment on
Speaker 3: the Male Female Hour. This is Dennis Prager.
Speaker 1: This episode of timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.
Speaker 3: All right, everybody, you're listening to the Dennis Prager Show,
Speaker 3: and the fifty to fifty question is the subject on
Speaker 3: the Male Female Hour? Does fifty to fifty work? I
Speaker 3: did the dishes yesterday, you do them today. Of course,
Speaker 3: there are fifty fifties that can work. See, I really
Speaker 3: need to be fair to myself. I do believe in
Speaker 3: dividing duties where one is predominantly in charge of the
Speaker 3: home and one is predominantly in charge outside of the home.
Speaker 3: I do believe in that. In other words, I believe
Speaker 3: in fifty to fifty in the sense that you both
Speaker 3: have to make the house and family work. Of course
Speaker 3: I believe that. But the fifty to fifty that I
Speaker 3: find problematic is different. It's where we do the same
Speaker 3: things fifty to fifty, not the different things fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3: And let me say on behalf of guys out there,
Speaker 3: because I find myself often in the position of explaining men,
Speaker 3: because guys are often very self conscious or even afraid
Speaker 3: to talk about their nature to their wives. Which is
Speaker 3: a very very real problem and another subject for another time.
Speaker 3: But guys need to feel that they are appreciated for
Speaker 3: something that is uniquely theirs. It theoretically could be you know,
Speaker 3: you know, painting the house. That doesn't matter what it is,
Speaker 3: but that is our And now women or at least
Speaker 3: feminists not women, will dismiss that as of the fragile
Speaker 3: male ego. You know, I'll tell you why that disturbs me,
Speaker 3: not because I'm a man. It disturbs me because of
Speaker 3: the lack of self awareness on the part of any
Speaker 3: female who says that because she doesn't have uote unquote
Speaker 3: fragile areas, only men have fragile quote unquote areas. The
Speaker 3: ideas is just absurd, and it is Society works out
Speaker 3: best where men feel that they have had their maleness
Speaker 3: expressed and where women have had their femaleness expressed. But
Speaker 3: in a society that makes war against the notion of
Speaker 3: masculinity and femininity, there's nothing to express. There's just humanity
Speaker 3: to express. There are no more men and women, there
Speaker 3: are just humans. In fact, there aren't even humans. There
Speaker 3: are just living beings earth citizens. Alrighty, let's go to
Speaker 3: some more of our calls here and your calls actually
Speaker 3: back to Texas and Grapevine and Wendy. Hi, Wendy, Dennis Praeger, Hi,
Speaker 3: Dennis doing well. Thank you, Wendy.
Speaker 8: That's an honor to speak to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 8: The reason I was calling is because you know, I've
Speaker 8: tried to do this fifty to fifty thing for We've
Speaker 8: be married for seven years and I finally decided to
Speaker 8: stop working and stay with the baby and my husband's working.
Speaker 8: And I'm very grateful for that opportunity because a lot
Speaker 8: of moms don't get to do that. And I guess
Speaker 8: where I struggle with is this whole I guess I'm
Speaker 8: still viewing it as fifty to fifty in some ways.
Speaker 8: But he gets to leave work at five o'clock, he's done,
Speaker 8: and he comes home, plops his button couch, watches TV,
Speaker 8: you know, whatever whatever he does. And I'm still working
Speaker 8: till eleven o'clock at night, you know, putting the kids
Speaker 8: to bed, doing everything. And it's not until I you know,
Speaker 8: I feel like I'm nagging.
Speaker 3: What has he done from five to eleven?
Speaker 8: Pretty much just his own thing? I mean, watches sitcoms, computers.
Speaker 6: That's it.
Speaker 8: And I've I find myself, hey, feeling guilty because Okay,
Speaker 8: I'm the home. I'm the home you know, careas Yeah.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't like you were off from nine to five.
Speaker 3: You are a on vacation from nine to five yourself,
Speaker 3: right exactly.
Speaker 8: So I mean I think that you're right though my father,
Speaker 8: I talked to him all the time and he goes,
Speaker 8: you know, I need to be because you love him
Speaker 8: you want to cook and clean because you love him, because.
Speaker 3: You know yeah, but well you know this is a
Speaker 3: very hard for me because the last thing I want
Speaker 3: to do is add any any difficulty in your situation.
Speaker 3: I want you to for things to work out, but
Speaker 3: I just I just need to say to men here,
Speaker 3: if you spend from five pm till bedtime just doing
Speaker 3: your own thing, it strikes me as to say the
Speaker 3: least problematic. I mean, I why did you marry to
Speaker 3: be alone on your own the whole time you're at home.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment. You're listening to the
Speaker 3: Dennis Prager Show, The Male Female Hour. I'm Dennis Prager.
Speaker 3: This is the Male Female Hour. A couple of important
Speaker 3: thoughts here. I've been talking to you this hour about
Speaker 3: the difficulties for most couples of the fifty to fifty
Speaker 3: proposition of I did the beds yesterday or I did
Speaker 3: one bed, you do one bed. I mean that may
Speaker 3: make it sound silly, but there are people with that mentality. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I believe that you both have to carry the weight
Speaker 3: of a family if you have a family, or of
Speaker 3: a home if it's just the two of you. Of course,
Speaker 3: and in that sense, I'm radically fifty to fifty. You
Speaker 3: do X, I do Y. Of course I believe in that.
Speaker 3: But that we both do half of X, and both
Speaker 3: do half of WHY and half of Z, and half
Speaker 3: of A and half of B and half of C.
Speaker 3: Then it becomes you can have the real problem of
Speaker 3: having somebody count and find that they've been cheated. Now
Speaker 3: I want to say, with regard to the last call,
Speaker 3: another thing, the guy who comes home and plops himself
Speaker 3: on the sofa and watches TV all night, that's not
Speaker 3: a fifty to fifty issue. That's a marital problem. I alan,
Speaker 3: I think we should address that issue on another male
Speaker 3: female hour. The first. There are many aspects to that.
Speaker 3: One is the role of television in marriage. My own
Speaker 3: view is that as a social force, television is ninety
Speaker 3: five percent destructive if all. In fact, I have an
Speaker 3: essay in the favorite of my four books, and I
Speaker 3: love all my four books, like Loving Your Children. I
Speaker 3: love all, and I do deeply, But my favorite is
Speaker 3: Think a Second Time. It's forty four essays. One of
Speaker 3: the essays is things I'd like to see. One of
Speaker 3: them is that some infection infected television transmitters and caused
Speaker 3: them to malfunction. I can only imagine good things happening
Speaker 3: from the demise of television. I remember putting the immorality
Speaker 3: of a partei aside the obvious immorality of a parte.
Speaker 3: South Africa had a very interesting social experiment. They allowed
Speaker 3: television much later than almost any other Western country. Every
Speaker 3: social index in South Africa declined after television came into
Speaker 3: the country. Everything possible. It was worse for marriages, it
Speaker 3: was worse for a crime, it was worse for grades
Speaker 3: in school, it was worse for kids' relations with parents.
Speaker 3: Every possible indicator decline. Television is a social disaster and
Speaker 3: often a marital disaster, although you now have the alternatives,
Speaker 3: obviously of internet. But I would like to do an
Speaker 3: hour on my belief that the more time a couple
Speaker 3: spend together, the better it is for them, which runs
Speaker 3: against a lot of people's thinking. You need your space. Everybody,
Speaker 3: you know, this is common parlance now since the sixties,
Speaker 3: he needs a space, And I believe that. I believe
Speaker 3: that there's an element of that, But overwhelmingly my experience
Speaker 3: has been that the more time that couples spend together
Speaker 3: the better, not the less so I want to do.
Speaker 3: I want to do, even to the extent of working together.
Speaker 3: Couples that work together seem to have really worked out
Speaker 3: a mayor. They become partners in the best sense of
Speaker 3: the term. You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, The
Speaker 3: Male Female Hour, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Gary, Hi, Gary, thank
Speaker 3: you for calling.
Speaker 4: Hey, didn't how you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm well the fifty to fifty.
Speaker 4: What I've got to deal with is a lot of
Speaker 4: times some of the women say they want fifty to fifty,
Speaker 4: but then when it actually comes to it, there's still
Speaker 4: a difference between men and women. My wife, if we
Speaker 4: were driving down a street and it's rain and muddy
Speaker 4: and we have flat tire, and I looked at her
Speaker 4: and said, I did the dishes last night, you get out.
Speaker 3: Well, that's right.
Speaker 4: We've got in our marriage. We married over twenty years,
Speaker 4: and there's just certain things we automatically know she's gonna do.
Speaker 4: We automatically no, I'm gonna do. She works twelve hour shifts,
Speaker 4: she comes home, mixed dinner, does the dishes. I help
Speaker 4: with housework and do all that type of stuff too.
Speaker 4: But when the plumbing goes out and we need to
Speaker 4: crawl into the house and cut the pipes and stuff.
Speaker 4: I don't look at her and say, oh, it's your
Speaker 4: turn to do that. She knows that that's what I'm
Speaker 4: gonna do.
Speaker 3: That's mine. Yeah. I think that there is a calm
Speaker 3: that in most marriages, where there is a delineated set
Speaker 3: of expectations. He does X, I do Y, he does Z,
Speaker 3: I do A. I think that that is as a
Speaker 3: general rule. Not only do I think that it brings
Speaker 3: more of a calm, I also think, and you don't
Speaker 3: have the counting, I also think that it's calming for
Speaker 3: another reason. It's then I know what's expected of me.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's my province. That that's it. I'm I'm
Speaker 3: the governor of plumbing. That's it. I'm the governor of dishes.
Speaker 3: It's I think that for most Again, there are always
Speaker 3: people for whom a general rule does not apply. I
Speaker 3: acknowledge that. All right, what eight I mean it's giving
Speaker 3: you the number right now? Is only Pavlovian response. Alrighty,
Speaker 3: let's go to uh Cleveland, Ohio. John, Hello, John, Dennis Praeger.
Speaker 9: Thank you, Dennis.
Speaker 3: You totally derailed me there.
Speaker 2: I was sitting here pondering what is my core point?
Speaker 6: And I was about to day that.
Speaker 9: It's when my wife expects me to do certain things.
Speaker 5: Uh, when when things go bad.
Speaker 3: Too bannerd he's breaking up there and then on his
Speaker 3: Cleveland cell phone. All right, we'll be back in a moment,
Speaker 3: believe it or Now we're up to the final segment.
Speaker 3: I'll try to take as many of your calls as
Speaker 3: possible from around the country. You can also email me,
Speaker 3: and I love reading your email reactions to any of
Speaker 3: these hours at the Prager Radio or Dennispraguer dot com.
Speaker 3: You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 3: You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show the Male Female Hour,
Speaker 3: and it's a good time to remind you that I
Speaker 3: have a four CD set out about male sexual nature
Speaker 3: which has helped a lot a lot of marriages and
Speaker 3: a lot of girls, teenage girls understand how they come
Speaker 3: off and understand boys. I commend it to your attention,
Speaker 3: and it's at Dennispraguer dot com. Prager Radio is everything
Speaker 3: with the radio and columns in Dennis Prager, is my
Speaker 3: all of buying CDs from my three hundred on the
Speaker 3: Bible to whatever else the subject might be. Or eight
Speaker 3: hundred two two five eighty five eighty four. Call eight
Speaker 3: hundred two two five eight five eighty four and over
Speaker 3: to Fort Worth, Texas. Christina. Hi, Christina Dennis Prager.
Speaker 9: Hi, Dennis, thank you so much for taking my call.
Speaker 3: Thanks for calling.
Speaker 9: Your show is an inspiration to me as an individual
Speaker 9: and to my marriage of eight years.
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 9: I just wanted to say that when responsibilities are delegated
Speaker 9: in a marriage, then they're more completely taken care of.
Speaker 9: He takes care of this, she takes care of that.
Speaker 9: Somebody has to be in charge, and if nobody's in
Speaker 9: charge of particular areas of life, then things often fall
Speaker 9: through the cracks. And then then you can go into
Speaker 9: the blame game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, inevitably. All you know, while I took
Speaker 3: the garbage yesterday, why is it piled up today?
Speaker 9: Exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: But if one person's in charge of garbage, that ends
Speaker 3: the issue. And men love it, by the way, we
Speaker 3: love being assigned a task. I'm not kidding. That is
Speaker 3: our nature. You give a guy, a task, by golly
Speaker 3: gets done. But if you tell a guy, we'll both
Speaker 3: share it. And when you feel like doing it, because
Speaker 3: you're such a loving husband, it's not going to get done.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's not. And it also provides a wonderful model
Speaker 9: for raising your children, a model of communication and expectation
Speaker 9: for you know, teaching them how to live their lives
Speaker 9: and how to engage in their relationships.
Speaker 3: Yep, well said, Well said, Christina. You have lucky kids.
Speaker 3: Let's go to let's see here. Sarah, Marietta, California. Sarah, Hi,
Speaker 3: Dennis Prager, thanks for calling.
Speaker 6: Hi, how are you good?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: Thank you for taking my call. I was calling because
Speaker 6: when I've been married for nine years, I have three children,
Speaker 6: and when I first got married, the advice that somebody
Speaker 6: gave me was that one person.
Speaker 3: Oh bubba, that was my fault. What you got. The
Speaker 3: advice you got was one person.
Speaker 6: What can have a career and one person can have
Speaker 6: a job.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 6: But you can't both have a career and children because
Speaker 6: it does not work. And I've graduated law school and
Speaker 6: I chose to stay home and take care of my
Speaker 6: children while my husband has the.
Speaker 3: Career and it's worked out, and it's worked out.
Speaker 6: It's worked out for nine years so far, and we
Speaker 6: have three beautiful children.
Speaker 3: And your brain is not atrophy. That's another subject. Does
Speaker 3: your brain atrophy if you went to law school and
Speaker 3: become a homemaker. That's a really good subject. A lot
Speaker 3: of women fear that it doesn't happen. All right, my friends,
Speaker 3: this has been the male female hour on the Dennis
Speaker 3: Prager Show.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Speaker 3: Adam Carolla is my guest.
Speaker 10: Exgo screwed up dessert because I go, what's the difference
Speaker 10: between a bagel and a Danish?
Speaker 3: And somebody said sugar.
Speaker 10: And they said, okay, well, when we make our desserts,
Speaker 10: let's just make it all sugar. That'll be the best
Speaker 10: assert in the world.
Speaker 3: And so they melted down.
Speaker 10: They shaped it in the form of a cacus and
Speaker 10: they said, this is the greatest dessert ever and everyone
Speaker 10: went fat, as your people would say, because you need
Speaker 10: things in the dessert.
Speaker 3: Your people.
Speaker 1: Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with
Speaker 1: Dennis Prigger. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prigger.
Speaker 1: Visit Denisprigger dot com. For thousands of hours off Dennis's lectures, courses,
Speaker 1: and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles,