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March 29, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:45
Spouses Owe Each Other Sex?!?
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Well, good afternoon.
Hope you're doing well.
A couple of questions from listeners.
Sorry I didn't get to these earlier.
Hello, Stefan.
Recently I had a discussion with a couple of liberals about universal human value.
My view is that a human's value is on a great scale in an almost infinite number of situations related to the specific person.
Their view was of the value.
Value is part of our existence.
We are human, thereby we are valuable.
Does being human mean that we are valuable?
Well, of course, this, as usual, depends on what your definition of value is.
Value is one of these words that has many different applications, of course, right?
So, some of the more obvious ones could be what you value, right?
You value certain things.
Other people value other things.
Could be material things.
Could be virtues.
Could be your child.
Someone else's child is in danger and my child is in danger.
I will save my child first because my child has more value to me, but the other parent is going to save their child first because their child has more value to them, and so on.
So, there are values that you value for yourself.
There are values which exist independent of you, such as if you want to find out the truth about the universe, you have to use the scientific method.
So, the truth value, the truth of the universe requires that you hold the Scientific method has a value, and so on.
If you are religious, of course, then God values you and your virtues, and so on, which is nice.
In an economic sense, if you create something that somebody else wants to pay for, then they value it to the degree to which they're going to pay for it.
So, we are human, thereby we are valuable.
Value is a relationship, right?
Value is always in a relationship.
I value philosophy.
I value my wife and daughter.
I value this community.
I value the truth.
So, it's my relationship with something.
Value is always compared to what?
If someone is alone on a desert island, he doesn't have any relationships with anyone.
He may value becoming free or getting free of the island or being rescued and so on.
The question is, of course, valuable to whom?
Valuable for what purpose?
So, a human being relative to himself may hold values, but the value we have to others is dependent upon the utility and virtue that we have for them.
If my wife became an evil person, incomprehensible, but if she did, Then she would not be quite as valuable to me.
The same thing would be if I became an evil person.
So saying human beings have value, the question is, to whom?
To whom?
There's no such thing as value that's in you, like your spleen or your bowels or something.
The value is not embedded within you.
Value is a concept, and that is a relationship of preference in a relationship, right?
It's a relationship.
Sorry, that's a very bad way of putting it.
It is the preference we have for things in a relationship, right?
So if I prefer to have a dollar and not a pencil, then the pencil seller keeps his pencil and I keep my dollar.
If I prefer to have the pencil rather than the dollar, then the pencil has more value to me than my dollar.
The dollar has more value to the pencil maker than his pencil.
Therefore, we exchange.
Does being human mean that we are valuable?
I would say that the value has to be for someone else.
Because being human, we're not talking about can a human being alone on a desert island value things?
Well, of course.
Of course, he can value survival.
He can value food, shelter, rescue.
He can value going over his memories.
He can value songs to keep him sane that he can sing.
But I don't think that's what...
I don't think what they, that's what they mean.
What they mean is, do you have value to others?
And I think what they're saying is that we owe human beings, we owe holding human beings as valuable just for being human beings.
And I think that's a nice sentiment, but I'm not really sure how practical it really is in manifestation.
So, for instance, over the few minutes that I've been recording here, probably a dozen or twenty people have died across and around the world.
And do I care?
Well, of course, if I were to stop and hear the news and see the pictures, then it would tug at my heartstrings and so on.
But when you think of the amount of absolute tragedy that is going on around the world, you kind of have to not think of it.
In order to get anything done.
And of course you can, if they're liberals, you can say to them, oh, okay, does Hitler have value?
Does Stalin have value?
Does Mao have value?
Heck, you can show them my Wikipedia page and ask if I have value.
And it seems that they would not say that.
It seems that they would back away from those statements.
Does a malevolent person...
Who goes against political correctness?
Does he have a value?
Because that's not really how liberals tend to work.
Liberals tend to divide people into good and evil and break moral rules for people they perceive as good and lie about and slander those they believe are bad.
So I think it's just a sort of female sentimentality stuff.
It's kind of a thoughtless, back-patting kind of goopy sentimentality.
Like, all human lives have value.
And it's like...
Well, you know, what does that mean?
What does that mean in practical terms and value to whom and based on what?
So it's sort of the female approach of saying, you know, all children's drawings are beautiful.
Well, I mean, I kind of agree with that.
I mean, when my daughter first started drawing things, I found them beautiful because she's my daughter and it was really cool to see her mind develop in that way.
And I loved her creativity and all of that.
But are they going to hang in galleries?
Are they going to be looked at as examples of great art, you know, a century from now?
No! Right?
So, there's an old Charlie Brown cartoon about sentimental grandmothers, right?
And I think it's Linus says to, what, Sally?
I can predict what parents are going to say.
Right? And she says, no, you can't.
And he says, okay, take these two pictures to Grandma.
Picture I drew and a picture you drew and ask which one is better.
And she's going to say, I think they're both very nice.
So she takes the picture she drew and the picture Linus drew to the grandmother and the grandmother says, of course, I think they're both very nice.
She says, wow, that's amazing.
Do another one, right?
So then he says, go to grandma and ask, well, there's a Mother's Day and there's a Father's Day.
Why isn't there a Children's Day?
And grandma will say, because every day is Children's Day.
And so, and that's just this kind of, I think they're both very nice, every day is Children's Day.
There's just a sort of sentimentality that goes along, and not just women, but it's a little bit more women than men.
There's sentimentality that goes along, well, all human life has value, and everybody's special, and it's just, it's just nice brain goop that makes people feel good, and makes them think of themselves as good people, but it has all the rigor and spine of a statue made out of jello.
All right.
Somebody says, I know you've answered this before in a few different places.
I ask this because some of it is scattered through different podcasts.
How did you go about talking to your mother and family of origin about the abuse you faced as a child?
What did you prepare ahead of time?
What backlash were you expecting?
Were there any legal ramifications?
Somebody asked me that, maybe it was you before.
I don't know what you mean by legal ramifications.
Did they ever harass you after you broke ties?
Oh, yes, I'm sorry.
I think I answered this before, so I'll just touch on it again.
I've been planning on talking to my family of origin about the abuse I faced from my parents, from their kids, from their friends' kids, who sexually abused me at the age of four to five, the extreme bullying I faced in school, workplace.
Yes, I did talk about this before, and yeah, please don't do anything that's dangerous.
I think you answered this question.
Asked this question, sorry, in another venue.
And in terms, I can't remember how much I did talk about in terms of preparation, but I was...
In therapy, which is where it's very helpful to talk to.
No, no, this is before I went to therapy.
My apologies, this is before I went to therapy.
Well, I just talked about the things that I remember, the things that happened, and really noted their response.
And I saw this very cunning look, almost like a demonic position, this very cunning look come into my mother's eyes, and I could see her exactly calculating how much she would have to admit in order to keep me around.
I could see this.
I could see her running that calculation very clearly.
Well, she couldn't admit nothing, because then I'd just leave.
She could admit a little bit, but not too much.
And then she admitted a little bit, but not too much.
And then she blamed the doctors for filling her full of poison.
So, yeah, I saw that really cunning calculation, and it was then that I realized that there was really nothing of my mother left to interact with, that it was all a bunch of defenses, right?
A hide of bright armor, as I once described another family member.
So, your defenses are designed to protect you, but it's like taking a greenhouse and walling it up from all outside light, side and top.
Well, nothing's going to get through that greenhouse.
No tree limbs are going to break through it.
But because you've walled up your greenhouse, your plants all die.
So, that which you have designed to protect...
You have destroyed.
Defenses can very easily overwhelm the personality they're designed to protect and starve it of feedback and connection and truth and oxygen.
So that was the situation, and I saw that pretty clearly.
Daisy says, Hey, Steph, in a few of your latest call-ins, you said that it is okay for a man to stop working if the woman is not having enough sex with him.
So it would be fine for a woman to refuse to have sex with her husband if he isn't making enough money.
Yeah, so Daisy, you're just constantly reinterpreting things.
Sorry, it's a little bit annoying.
You're constantly reinterpreting things.
And I've never said it's okay.
I've used it as an analogy.
I've used it as an analogy that if a woman, because a man, if a woman is staying home, right, with kids or without, then they've entered into an agreement wherein the man provides money.
And the woman cannot get money from elsewhere if she's not working, right?
And if a woman says to a man, I'm going to marry you and we are going to love each other, then she is entering into a covenant which says, I am preventing you from having sex with anyone else.
And so the covenant, in the same way that a man who says don't work and stay home, is saying I'm preventing you from getting money from yourself or anyone else.
So there's a responsibility of provision when you voluntarily enter into a monopoly, right?
There's a responsibility of provision.
Now, of course, a woman should not have sex if she is not wanting to have sex.
But of course, there's lots of things that men and women can do to make sure that sexual interest remains high.
So you go on to say, would it be fine for a woman to refuse to have sex with her husband if he isn't making...
Enough money.
How is marriage not prostitution if a woman is obligated to have sex?
At least a prostitute doesn't have to wash his dirty sock and underwear.
Why is his work an act of love, but her work cooking, cleaning, childcare gets belittled and down-taught?
See, this is the kind of thing, like, you're just, you're taking your own bitterness and you're injecting it into a conversation where there's just a...
It's a way for women to understand men, right?
It's because...
So, I'm not sure how...
How is marriage not prostitution if a woman is obligated to have sex?
See, from a male perspective, this is kind of incomprehensible, just so you understand it.
Because, I mean, men, in general, very much enjoy sex.
It's a blast.
It's a lot of fun.
You know, if you were to say to a man, well, you have to go and work a hard manual labor job in the cold, or you can have sex, men would be like, well, gee, I would really like to have sex.
That would be...
That would be much better for me.
So, for a woman to say, obligated to have sex, she's not obligated to have sex, of course not.
And the man is not obligated to pay her bills.
She's not obligated to have sex.
So, if she doesn't want to have sex, then she can say to the man, you can have affairs.
Right? She can open up the marriage on the man's side.
But... If she were to say ahead of time, right, in the marriage vows, if she were to say ahead of time to the man, I am going to require a monopoly on your sexual activities.
You can only have sex with me, and I reserve the right to withhold sex at any time for no particular reason.
I mean, a particular reason, of course, is, you know, you've had an operation, or you're really stressed, or stress can help, right?
You know, something's going on, like your mother just died, or, you know, things.
Obviously, there would be no particular sexual impulse there, and a man would be a complete cat and a monster to expect sex in those situations.
So, it is just...
I don't like to see women, or men, of course, engage in this kind of fraud.
So, if a man spent a lot of money on a woman, he got married, and then he put her on a ridiculously tight budget, she would say, well, hang on a second, what happened?
Like, you were a free-spending guy.
Then we get married, and now I can't spend a thing, right?
That would be a problem.
And if a woman has a lot of sex with a man during the dating and courtship phase, and then gets married, and then, for some reason, the sex stops, that's a kind of fraud, right?
A man...
I mean, it's sort of like saying that you can test drive a car for a year, but then when you get the car, it's not going to work, right?
So... The reason that men and women get married is they date each other, and that is the test drive of the relationship.
And given that most people have sex before marriage now, so you are test driving sexual compatibility, sexual frequency, sexual desire, and lust and all of that, and sexual availability.
And if the woman has a lot of sex with the man, they get married, and then she stops at some point having sex with the man.
Again, I'm obviously taking things out of the equation like, Illness or trauma and things like that.
Well, that's kind of a, that's a kind of fraud, right?
And that's not, that's not good.
That's not good.
And, you know, the other thing too is that there are times, I've talked about this before, right?
So there are times when I haven't wanted to do a show for whatever reason, right?
I've got a bit of a headache or I'm kind of tired or I've had a tough day for whatever reason.
And it's very rare, but there are times.
And so what I do is I sit down and I start the show and it ends up being a lot of fun and I get into it, right?
If I simply took my own desires as the only reason to do anything, I don't think I would achieve very much.
And I think there must be times in a marriage, of course, right, where you kind of get into it, right?
Maybe you don't feel like it too much, you start, you get into it, so...
I don't know, it's just odd how...
And say, if a woman, so at least a prostitute doesn't have to wash his dirty sock and underwear, why is his work an act of love, but her work...
Gets belittled and down-talked.
So that's entirely your own issue.
It has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about marriages where the woman is dominating the man through the withholding of sex.
She is punishing and controlling the man through withholding of sex.
In other words, she doesn't have some hormonal issue.
She doesn't have some sort of vaginal discomfort.
She's not depressed.
So, it does happen, right?
I mean, certainly men in the past, particularly before women could work, men would sometimes withhold money from women as an act of punishment.
And that would be very tough for the women.
And there are times when women, and men do it too, right?
But there are times when women withhold sex from a man as an act of punishment and dominance and to force compliance.
Well, that's not good.
That's not good.
I don't think that couples should have that as an option.
I think it gives too much power.
If a man says to a woman, you don't have to work, and then withholds money from her, then that's too much power, right?
If you're going to say to someone, I have a monopoly, then you can't use that monopoly as a form of power.
It's a division of labor, right?
And if a woman says to a man, if you don't do what I want, I'm not going to have sex with you, That is a destruction of the marriage vows.
And that's way too much power for a woman to a man.
And it could happen the other way too, of course, right?
But the typical scenario, if you're going to say to a man, you can't sleep with anyone else and I won't sleep with you because you're not doing what I want as a sort of form of control or bullying or punishment or whatever.
You know, sort of the typical scenario that the man doesn't do what the woman wants.
The woman gets, quote, upset and then just, quote, isn't in the mood and so on, right?
As opposed to talking it out, she just acts it out.
So, that's kind of what I'm talking about.
It's not a healthy power to have in a relationship, to have a monopoly and then use it to bully and control people.
That's not good.
Oh, right.
And then there was another one about just poor.
Sorry if I've done some of these before, but I really did want to get some thoughts down in particular about the sex question.
So, when I talk about the analogy of a man Who's the sole provider of income?
I'm not saying, of course, that couples shouldn't talk things out.
The couple should talk.
If you have conflicts, you should talk it out and figure it out and sort it out.
But it's a way for women to understand the man's perspective, right?
So a man, maybe it's a way of putting it with regards to sex.
A man can get into the mood, quote, the mood, maybe a little easier than the woman.
But the woman can get in the mood, too.
If the man makes jokes, and if the man does a funny dance, and, you know, breaks the tension, you know, whatever it is, right?
Then women can get more in the mood, and when you have that power, because a lot of times women will say, well, I'm just not in the mood, and if the man continues to try to seduce her, she gets more angry, more upset, and then she considers him a bully and insensitive, and it just gets really, really downhill, and then he may want to stop.
Trying to be romantically or sexually playful with his wife, and he may sort of withdraw.
And that's really bad for marriages as a whole.
So, I think, certainly if there's something that the man is doing that is off-putting to the woman, then he needs to work on that and change that.
And if there are health issues, they should be addressed.
And, you know, if you're unattractive and fat and, you know, whatever, your hormones are all over the place, then that should be...
Dealt with and worked on as a whole, for sure.
But a woman has a responsibility, if she's going to get married to a man and claim a monopoly on his sexual activity, then she has a responsibility to make sure that the lines of communication with regards to sex remain open.
That's really all I'm talking about.
So the analogy that I use...
Is if the woman says, because it's just UPP, that's all it is, right?
It's just UPP.
So, if a woman says, I don't, I'm not going to have sex because I just don't feel like it in the moment, right?
And if that's something that she's doing as a form of control, well, that's fine.
Then all we have to do is universalize that, right?
I mean, this is not the most complicated philosophical thing that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Right? So if the man, if the woman doesn't have to be, and I'm not just talking about sex, but romantic or affectionate, if the woman doesn't have to be romantic or affectionate because she doesn't feel in the mood, then clearly that's a universal principle.
And then the man can justly say, I don't feel like doing the dishes.
I just don't feel that we're close enough.
I just don't feel like I'm in the mood.
I don't feel like going to visit your mother because I just...
I don't feel like it.
I don't feel like I'm in the mood.
I don't feel like going to work today.
I'm just not feeling it.
I don't feel like I'm in the mood, right?
So, it's not specific to sex, right?
It's just a genuine...
Sorry, it's a general principle.
It's a general principle.
Now, of course, I do understand that sexuality or romance or fun or cuddliness or whatever, the physical contact that is the essence of marriage, I understand that that is not...
The same as going to visit your mother.
But the principle is the same, right?
So if the man says, well, I don't want to go visit your mother because she's always kind of belittling me, right?
She's always kind of belittling me.
Then it probably would fall upon his wife to have a talk with her mother and say, look, my husband perceives, and I actually can see where he's coming from because he gave me some examples.
My husband is perceiving that You are belittling him, and so he doesn't want to come over.
So, you know, if you've got an issue with my husband, please talk to me about it, and let's sort this out.
So you get to the root issues, right?
But what will often happen is the man says, I don't want to go visit your mother.
I don't feel like it.
And the woman's like, well, you have an obligation, and she's expecting you, and she's always been nice to you.
She just kind of makes him, or really tries to make him.
Go to visit the mother rather than dealing with the root issues.
But she does not give him permission to just say, I don't want to go visit your mother.
I don't want to do the dishes because I just don't feel like it.
I don't feel like we're close enough or whatever.
So then you have to get to the root issues and you have to figure out why you don't want to do the...
I mean, people don't really want to do the dishes, but we do it because it's helpful to our partner and so on, right?
Make them happy.
General principle of a loving marriage.
And so with regards to sexuality, If the woman consistently does not want to have sex, then it's important to get to the root issues of why.
And that's what I'm saying, is that people have a responsibility to get to the root issues and to resume the expected and advertised behavior, right?
Because dating and courtship and being engaged is an advertisement for marriage, right?
And it is selling a false bill of goods to have a lot of sex during dating and courtship and engagement and the honeymoon and then not have much sex at some point, right?
Again, barring medical and blah, blah, blah, right?
So, all I'm saying is that it's a way for women to understand that the man does things even when he doesn't feel like it and finds a way to get into it.
And if the man really doesn't want to do something, then you need to get to the root issues.
And solve it, but you can never use a monopoly to bully and to get your way and to punish and to manipulate.
And you need to get to the root causes of why that dysfunction exists in the relationship.
And the root causes could be, to some degree, the man's fault and issues as well.
It could be any number of other things, but simply withholding sex in a marriage without trying to get to the root issues.
I mean, of course a woman is perfectly free to do that.
But she is breaking her marriage vows.
And again, I'm not saying that the woman should have sex when she hates it or loathes it or doesn't like it.
That would be repulsive, of course, right?
But marital partners do have the responsibility to get to the root issues as to why the marriage isn't working.
And if the woman is controlling, manipulating, and punishing a man, which does happen, let's be honest, by withholding sex, then that's a very dysfunctional paradigm or relationship and getting to the root issues of what's going on.
It's probably very, very important.
And so my analogy of, if the woman says, well, if I don't feel like it, I don't have to do it, that's fine.
But then, in order for there to be a fair and equitable marriage, if the man does his, quote, duty, like goes to the dishes, goes to work, goes to visit his mother-in-law who he doesn't really like, if the man does his, quote, duty, but then the woman doesn't do anything she doesn't feel like, that's a bullying and dysfunctional relationship.
So I'm perfectly fine with women saying, I'm not going to do what I don't feel like doing.
That's fine.
But then the man also has that same right.
Because if you claim a right to not do what you don't feel like doing, if you claim that right and then you attack someone else for claiming that right, then I'm not talking about you, the questioner, but the woman or the man in that situation is just a hypocrite and a bully and the relationship is going to go very, very badly indeed.
So hopefully that makes sense.
I appreciate everyone's questions.
Lots of love from up here.
Talk to you soon.
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