TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Replace Conflict With Harmony in Romantic Relationships
Date: 05/02/2025 Length: 00:37:23
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings Happy Warriors, and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi as always, reveal how the world really works. Thanks for being part of the show. And thank those of you who are happy warriors, members of the Happy Warrior community, you know that you have a special members bonus podcast waiting for you on the members page, on your We Happy Warriors website, and thank you for being part of our community. Those who are not yet, why don't you consider doing so. And there is a special offer. Use coupon code, save 10, SA, v, e, the number 10, one, zero, and join our happy community of Happy Warriors this happy day. So want to talk about today how relationships need balance, right? What is what does that mean? Well, it means that, almost without thinking, in an sort of intuitive sense, people maintain a balance in relationships. So, for instance, friends, you won't find that, you know, if there are two couples that are friendly, it's not likely that they'll meet up for dinner at one couple's house repeatedly, and never at the others. They usually balance it off. Or if one couple hosts at a restaurant, then some other time the other couple does. But there's a sort of general balance in the case, you know, if it's invitations or whether it's favors, and you might well say, you know, I can't ask them for this favor, because, you know, we've, we've asked them for favors the last three times, and we sense that you are overwhelming the balance. It's no longer in balance and that's just how people function with parents and children. There's also a balance. There is love and protection and support provided from the parent side. And in return, children deliver love and respect and help and so on and so forth. That's, that's, and so it's, it's understandable. There is a comfortable balance that prevents anybody from feeling exploited and getting resentful and in general, it's never good to be only a taker, only a receiver. It's good to be a giver as well. It's one of the great things about becoming a member of the happy warrior community. You get to help other people as well as the receive help from them, again, maintaining balance in the relationship. Because without balance, resentment can set in and it can end the relationship. Now how's about when it comes to romantic relationships between a man and a woman? What is the balance there? And that's worth thinking about, and I'm going to detail that out very specifically in the special bonus podcast for we happy warriors, for members of the community. But for the moment, what I want to do is I want to take a look at the history of feminism. What caused this in very real and practical terms, and it's important because so much of the unhappiness felt today by women and so much of the lack of performance by men is a result of the last 50 and 60 years of feminism. But let me explain it all starts at the university campus. Okay, that's where it begins. What is it that began? Let me explain. I think that you might be shocked by this American figure. What percentage of American high schoolers end up spending a few years in a college or a university. And even more surprising is when I tell you that the figure the answer has been pretty stable since about 1970 what is the answer? The answer is above half between 55 Five and 70% 55% 6065, 68% one year, 70% another year. It's a lot of children. It's a very high proportion. So I want you to think about what it is that happens, how, what, what what is this? So more than half go to school, so half of them originally, half of them are women. Today, it's a little more than half are women. So you've got a very large proportion of young women going on to college, where they become influential and affluent in general, having that college behind them, more so than today, but for many, many years, that tended to take a cohort, more than half of the of young women going on to college. Now what happened at college? Well, this is where I have to tell you the sad and well, it was the sad truth. The birth control pill arrives in about 1962 and in a very short space of time, it penetrates the culture, and it up ends what was conventional sexual morality. Because up until then, every man knew, every woman always knew, but every man also knew that intimacy could result in a life changing phenomenon, namely a child, and so there was a certain seriousness associated the idea of casual sex didn't exist. Hookup culture didn't exist because everybody understood that there was a potential serious implication here that could affect the future for all time. And so people, generally speaking, were somewhat careful. And there was also the culture of male responsibility and accountability and gallantry and men was sort of sensitive of not becoming CADs, not being horrible, horrible people, and how you treated the woman in your life had had a lot to do with what sort of person you were and what sort of person you became. And so 1962 that changes, and the culture changes very rapidly. The pill goes on the market in 1962 and it ushers in the sexual revolution. That's it takes off there and then, and that coincided with the adoption of the Vietnam War as the cause of young people. In other words, it's what made young people feel noble and sacrificial and that they really cared. This wasn't just about themselves. They were really trying to improve society. And so the anti war rallies were wonderful places for young people to go, because they were away from home, they were away from supervision, and they turned into
Daniel Lapin 8:30
exactly what you would expect. And so you had a complete change in the way, particularly young men, but everybody looked at sex. It started challenging traditional gender roles and challenging family structure. But all of it, and this has happened at earlier times in human history, all of these noble sounding cores are, we're examining the structure of families and looking at alternatives and bringing freedom, all these were ways of justifying looser sexual standards. That's essentially what it's always been, and, and, and what it was during the 60s. And so then what happens? And this is where I think it gets to be really interesting and obviously I think very important, is that there is no balance in the male female relationships at this point. What do I mean by that? Well, what is the balance structure between a male and a female in a romantic relationship, and I'm going to tell you the answer is that the man the woman provides obviously access to physical intimacy and the love and the fear. Feeling of connection and belonging. That's what she provides. And she, of course, provides children in a in ideally in a stable environment, giving the man what he could never have by himself, a family children. And what does he give in return? What stops him being nothing but a taker, a recipient in this and there's only one thing he can provide, if you think about it, the one thing he offers is financial support, and so the balance of the relationship is maintained by him saying you do not have to worry about anything outside of our unit, I will see that we have food and shelter and defense and protection, and you in return, me make a home that when I walk in, I'm surrounded. I find myself in this cocoon of love and closeness and belonging and children. Yeah, that is the deal. That is the fundamental deal. And you see that without it, you've got a real problem. And the problem is that the man is a perpetual sexual supplicant, and when he is denied access to physical intimacy, he gets cold and remote and withdrawn and angry because he has to beg. He feels that what he doesn't have is a woman giving herself to her man in a spirit of not only love but gratitude and appreciation. He does something for me as well. And so the the culture is overwhelmed at the moment by resentful women. They do the housework, and they go for it, to keep a job and provide income, and they look after the children, and they clean the house. And they're expected to roll over and provide intimacy whenever the husband reaches for them or where the man reaches for them. And so, not surprisingly, with no balance in the relationship, they feel resentful. This is one of the whole reasons that in an ideal situation, and I realize that it's almost impossible. We live in a time today and in a world today where this is hard to achieve, but I think it's still valuable for me to at least describe what it is in its absolute sense, and that is a situation of a traditional marriage where the husband provides everything that the family needs in the form of income and protection, and the wife creates the home and the love and the cocoon and the affection and the children and the family and the and the warmth, and that's always the deal. Why? Because it is the only circumstance in which it would be completely natural for the woman to feel suffused by a subconscious surge of warmth and gratitude for her husband who makes this possible, and he feels the same way, because she's the one who makes what she makes possible happen and so when she yields to her husband. It's not with a spirit of resentment. Oh, not again, but it is. This is part of what I bring to the relationship, and it makes for what is potentially a far superior kind of relationship hard to attain today. I know it goes without saying, but at least we should know how the divinely designed system actually looks. And so what went wrong in the 60s is that this very large number of women in America, right, it's, it's more than half, and it tends to be the half that is going to be well educated, well positioned and probably influential. And these women are finding during and it starts in the 60s and goes on into the 70s and goes on. Certain things happen in the 80s already, but such as the AIDS outbreak and all of a sudden, some breaks were put on. But during this period, meanwhile, you've got a very large and very influential cohort of young American women who are being a. Are maltreated by men in unbalanced relationships. See what I'm saying. I hope I'm making this clear so they're in college and the pill is being dispensed wholesale. I mean, meaning all the time, free by universities themselves are dispensing the birth control pill to young women, and so why shouldn't they view sex as men do, and they were conned by older women who were intoxicated with the power they had of influencing this young cohort of women and making them behave in a way that resembles men, and it doesn't work, the women feel resentful. So you've got this vast number of influential young women in America beginning to dislike men. Why? Because they are providing something that is incredibly valuable, namely themselves. And the men are treating it casually, and nobody's even realizing that the actual act of physical intimacy creates a bond which is very powerful, far more so in the woman than in the man, and so when he doesn't call the next day and maybe doesn't call for a week, she feels resentment and anger, rightly so, because last night, we were like a husband and a wife. We were as close as could be. There were even little parts of my consciousness that was saying, this could be forever. This is it, and I love him so much, and then you discover that to him, it meant very little. There was no forever. And year after year after year, this corroded the souls of these young women, making them more and more anti guys. So it's not surprising that the next thing that we see cropping up on university campuses around America is women going off men altogether and hanging out with women, and they came. They they used the name of lesbian, and they are. They consider themselves to be part of the homosexual community, and but in reality, in reality, this was merely a reaction to the intense resentment they were feeling towards men.
Daniel Lapin 17:44
And one of the things we know is that during that period of the 60s and 70s, there was a little phrase lug they called, and women sometimes said to themselves, I'm a lug. And that stands for lesbian until graduation, because their belief was that after graduation they would encounter a proper man, a worthwhile man, and there would be some value to that. That was what they were expecting. But, you know, it's the notion that they were really homosexual. It's simply not true. They were just so turned off men by the treatment they'd been subjected to by men that they and they became ready and willing fodder for the feminist organizations. Now I understand if you find yourself somewhat surprised at the idea of this natural balance between a man and a woman. It almost sounds like prostitution. It sounds like Love has no place. After all, what he provides the money and she provides the sex. I mean, is that what you're really saying? And the answer is, no, of course, there's much more to it than that. First of all, money is no small thing. It's a very real thing, and the ability to provide it reliably is very much a part of a man and secondly, the connection is not one way. It's a very profound and deep connection. But yes, there is a gratitude on both sides. You know, men pursue physical intimacy more than women. I mean, right, you only have to know about who are the customers for the huge porn industry, the pornography industry online. So yeah, men pursue physical intimacy in a different way, with more order and more determination and more recklessness than women do, for sure and upon receipt of it there, there is a feeling of closeness. And gratitude. Men work on themselves. Many bad men work on themselves to get rid of those feelings and to not catch feelings. Women have learned this shockingly self destructive behavior as well, and speak about not catching feelings, but on in the sort of online advice venues and and on the platforms where there's correspondence and people talk to one another, I find one of the most interesting sections are where women write in about their upset and unhappiness, the fact about the fact that they've dated a man for X number of years, and he's he's not talking marriage, and he promised me that he would, and he said he when we, when we were originally got together, he told me that he had the same interest I did. He wants marriage and family. But it's been five years, six years, four years, seven years. I mean, we talk about girls who invest a lot of time in these go nowhere relationships and she's writing, you know, to to the platform saying, How do I get him to marry me? How do we bring this to a marriage? And people answer, and, you know, some say you wasting your time. If he wanted to, he was gonna, he would have done it already. Others have tips and guidance, but nobody says at least very either. I haven't seen people say, Listen, what do you care about marriage? It's just a piece of paper. After all, you've been together with six years. You know you own a house together, you might even have a kid together. What do you what do you need the marriage for? And you almost never see that, because everyone knows what you need the marriage for. That is the permanence and the finances. That's exactly what it is. It's a legal system to make sure that the man lives up to a financial obligation that was always understood to be an inextricable part of the romantic relationship between a man and a woman. And you know, that's why the in all the romantic novels, both you know, the Jane Austen as as well as the modern harlequin romances, the guy, the ones aim for women. The guy is always wealthy. He's always got money. He's always successful. That is an integral part of the deal. Now, am I saying that the person who is not doing well, the man who is not doing well, financially well, you're doomed? No, that's not true. First of all, and this is a lot of the work that I do, it's not only the coaching I do, it's the books I've written and the courses you will get on Rabbi Daniel lapin.com you can, without question, improve your earning ability, depending on you know, where you Are, circumstances and conditions. You know, nobody can turn a klutz into a ballerina. That's not going to happen, and you're not going to become no matter what. You're not going to become a billionaire. But you don't have to live a very, very full, satisfying and happy life, a life for which your soul overflows with gratitude. You don't need to make a billion dollars, but you need probably, depending. You know, if you're a young guy, you need more than you're making right now, and yes, it will impact your romantic life, no question about it. Now guys who don't like this reality, instead of understanding how the world really works, many guys shake a defiant fist at reality, and they yell out, gold digger. She's just a gold digger.
Daniel Lapin 24:14
Well, and what are you exactly? What if she's out looking for a guy with money, what are you exactly out looking for? And you'll quickly see that if you're going to throw the pejorative of gold digger at the woman, she can come back with some fairly choices of her own as to what you are. That's not the point. The point is that both provide something in a balanced relationship, and it's a totally legitimate thing for a woman to look towards a man's financial resources. And the reason she wants marriage is she wants to know that she can relax into this relationship. And even bring a new life or two into the world, or three or four or five, knowing that marriage is a reality, because at least with marriage, you can't just walk out overnight, even if there's a problem, at least with marriage, there's a cooling off period. It takes time. You can't just terminate it quickly. And so the likelihood of the lady and her children having a man in their lives and a father in their lives and a supporter in their lives, yeah, goes up when there's marriage. She knows that, and that's why she's writing in and saying, Oh, I don't know what to do. We've been together for five years. And he gets angry when I bring up marriage. He says, Stop pressuring me. And I don't laugh, because I read the human tragedy behind these letters, but I do know exactly what's going on as would you if you if you read them and you saw them as well. So, yeah, that is, I'm afraid, the reality of what is happening in this part of the world right now, in a traditional marriage. Yeah, that's why traditional marriages are called traditional because they worked for a very long time. Today, I agree it is very much more difficult, but I have, I have said this before, particularly to young men, between the ages of 13 and 23 you should be preparing for your proposal to the right woman, and that proposal should be something along the lines of, I would like to ask you to marry me and to give me the ultimate honor of taking care of you and providing for you. I know you can provide for yourself, but I'm asking for the honor of being able to do it for you and traditional marriage, yeah, it doesn't mean she she's not going to work. Doesn't mean it means she can't work. Doesn't mean she won't work, but it means that the ultimate financial responsibility for the couple, the marriage and the family is not going to be on the wife. That's, that's, that is the main thing. So, yeah, these, these are, in many ways, theoretical principles, just because in today's climate, it would be so difficult. I mean, certainly for couples who've already been married for a few years, they are already realities. There are patterns, things, things are very difficult to change, very hard to say to your spouse, this is the basis on which we got married. This is the way we've been operating for the last few years. But now I'd like to change I've often seen this, for instance, in terms of one spouse decides to become religious or the other way around, both spouses were religious. They both got married in a faith atmosphere, in a faith community, and now one of them is walking away from that. You know, does the marriage stay together? Doesn't it's all very, very complicated stuff, no question about it. So I don't want to place the entire blame of everything that is going wrong in society, including the declining marriages and the bad situation of men. You know, it's not all the birth control tablet. It also coincided with a secularizing trend in America, where all of a sudden, where it was taken for granted that God and faith were a part of American life, even if you yourself, you know you yourself, may not have been a particularly religious person, but you certainly paid homage, as it were, to the fact that the culture was a religious culture. Sunday was the day of the Lord. Sunday in most towns and cities in America, people went to church, and if they didn't, it was a quieter kind of a day, but because there was an understanding that religion and faith played an important role. So that goes away and feminism comes in. Feminism is we hate men at its root. Now, I know that many feminists will say, What are you talking about? Rabbi Lapin, it's not true. We don't hate men. Yes, you do. You may want to adjust the verb hate. You may want to use the word loathe. You may want to use the word contempt or disdain, but basically, feminism is hostile to masculinity. You don't mind feminized men, but you do object to men who are men. And because you have are trying to prove a non reality. You are trying to prove that there is no difference between men and women. You end up doing stupid things. Meeting your boss in his hotel room is just plain stupid. And deep down, you know that dressing provocatively is a Come on. You know it is, and it's stupid getting drunk and using that as an excuse is a cop out. Crying rape doesn't change the reality it is a cop out. And you deep down, you feminists know that, but you've been sold a bill of goods. Now, not only sold, you've bought a bill of goods, and you've really bought into it. And so there you are. What do you expect? Meanwhile, because of the the influence and the power of this huge group of American women, educated, influential, powerful going through the university system, emerging with a deep dislike of men, and very committed to the idea of undoing the anti women bigotry and the patriarchy of the years and so As the pressure mounted on you to find ways to improve the state of womanhood. One of the things you did was you did away with men's natural, hard wired instincts to protect and look after women. You did away with that, and you replaced men with the government, not a good move, but that's what you did, and the impact on men. We only have to take a look around us to see there was a woman called Patricia Schroeder who served in the United States Congress, and she was single handedly responsible for doing a huge amount of damage to the United States military and so the the diminished status of military service, it's gone. We're living in, I think, maybe the first generation in all of American history where the elite class in politics, in media, in entertainment, in business, the entire elite class of men have no military service in their background. Hardly anyone. There's no prestige attached to military service anymore. And I think that this is one of the things that President Trump is really changing dramatically when one can, but one can but hope that
Daniel Lapin 33:09
part of this thing of hostility towards men is again a softening of American society. Education Today is essentially all aimed at girls, not at Boys. They've diminished the amount of play time and recess. They've diminished the sports. They've diminished the competitiveness in sports. All of these things because education is aimed at the girls, not at the boys. Basic K through 12, education is oppressive to anybody with physical energy, which means basically the guys and they've created a dreadful environment in gigs, government indoctrination camps for boys and so now, oh, boys aren't getting into university. The women are outnumbering men and you Yes, absolutely. What do you expect? And it's not only that, but you're finding a diminishing of the prestige of guys who build things you know, guys who build the roads that Feminists can drive to their cushy jobs on and guys who build the plumbing systems that make it possible for comfortable people to take a shower. All of these jobs that need to be done and and have to be done, these are being portrayed in increasingly negative terms. There are some people really doing really important work. Mike Rowe, for instance, there are a lot of people who really are doing important things to try and rebuild the centrality of manual jobs, jobs of people who make things and fix things in America and and. That is, that is hopeful and very, very encouraging, but for the most part, the culture is hostile to men. Raising sons today a real challenge, much easier to raise daughters. There are problems and challenges there too. Don't worry, but in raising sons to be masculine, if, if the job falls on the shoulders of a single mom, it's incredibly challenging. I'm not going to lie to you. It is incredibly challenging for a single mom to raise a real man. Is not easy at all if she is a widow, much easier than if she's a divorcee, and we've spoken about that. The reality is that it is very masculinity per se, has been under attack in America for years, and it continues that way, and so your son is eight, 910, 11. Where is he getting the idea of what it means to be a man? That's a really important question to ask yourselves, and it's something I am going to be talking about more in the future. But that is enough of a very contentious and challenging topic for today, I hope that I will hear from you on the website. Let's let's hear what you think and and any questions, observations or problems that you have. I would love to hear about that. So thanks very much for being part of the rabbi Daniel Lapin show. Don't forget to go to the website at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com where you can use the code save 10 in order to get a discount membership in the we happy warrior community. And those of you who are Thanks for being part of the community, I hope you enjoy your private bonus show that will be up very shortly, but by the time you hear this, it might be up already. And I wish you a wonderful week moving onwards and upwards with your families and your finances, your faith, your friendship and your fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless you.
