Meet David French, your next president

boing
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Yes, it would be nice if we could all be responsible. I still contend the situations are different. Depending on when deployed, they can be gone for like a year with limited contact. I assume you aren’t a mercenary or involved with organized crime where a news report won’t trigger feelings of dread that you could be dead. And like I said, people prey on women whose husbands/BFs are overseas.

I can’t support his decision if it was a sort of “putting my foot down” kind of thing, but mutually agreed upon sounds reasonable. What works for some people may not be the best thing for others YMMV.

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Lol are you seriously blaming women for this shit?

Especially when you focus on the selection bias of people who feel obliged to get married early and spend long distances apart? Of COURSE there’s going to be problems with many of these relationships.

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Where did I blame women? I missed that.

In fact if anything I was distrusting of predatory men.

Of course this is assuming it was a mutually agreed upon arrangement, which Kevin Robillard seems to agree it was.

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They’re very different. My dad is retired military. I would never insult service members by comparing my circumstances to theirs. I still contend an adult woman is an adult woman regardless of those circumstances. And hey, maybe I’m wrong about this, but there’s a subset of Christian conservatives who treat women as though they lack the will-power or brains to resist being seduced or tricked into bed. This guy sounds like one of them in that his wording sounds a lot like theirs…but as I said, I could be wrong.

I support any couple’s right to conduct their love life however they see fit, even if it is the man putting his foot down and the woman accepting it. But when that man makes it part of his statements as a public person, especially a politician, I’m going to evaluate it for how I think he seems to view women, which doesn’t seem to be with a lot of trust in their moral character sans her man around.

FWIW, I get what you’re saying, and you’re right that soldiers (of both sexes) have a legitimate reason to find ways to avoid the strains that deployment put on their spouses and their marriages. This sounds like more than that.

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Sure, statistically he has reason to be worried about the long-term fate of his marriage. But if you can’t trust your girlfriend not to cheat on you (and that matters to you), then maybe you shouldn’t marry her. Why on earth would you marry someone you don’t trust?

And there are not any circumstances under which it’s okay to tell your wife that she is not allowed to have male friends. That is straight-up abuse.

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In fairness, if we take French’s description at his word, he doesn’t say he choose the rules unilaterally, only that they resulted from a discussion with his wife.

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It still sounds crazy.

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No argument there.

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I see your point, but was it a “statement” he made as a “politician”? It isn’t like he is running this as a slogan for a campaign, but a jab by a political pundit from a book written 5 years ago.

I didn’t realize this till just now either, that twitter link was actually two links, one to twitter and one to a National Review article. I guess they wrote a book together about the often times unseen consequences of war on the home front. So while I haven’t read a book, I don’t think anyone can get an honest feel for what was going on in their relationship from a couple pulled quotes in an article. I am sure any honest book about the affect on war on a family isn’t going to be all puppies and rainbows. But maybe showing their dirty laundry can help others going through a similar situation.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931722900/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

This is nothing new. My ex-mother-in-law said that her father was gone for months at a time fighting in the Polish Home Army, and that family and friends were encouraging her mother to leave him, for one reason or another. Basically he was never there and accused him of running around, etc.

It is more complicated than that. Would you want your kid hanging around other kids who you knew stole, kicked puppies, and drank and did drugs? Sure, you raised them right. You trust them. But do you really want to increase the chance that they bend to peer pressure, or get into trouble just because they were around it?

Or maybe you know someone on a diet or an alcoholic who would rather not goto krispie kreme or to a bar and be exposed to temptations.

And again, I know married people with joint Facebook accounts not because they don’t trust each other, but because they don’t want to deal with any of the BS they have seen other go through.

ETA - and I know more than one person who one day had their bank accounts emptied and wife and kids moved out of the house, and they are half a world away completely gobsmacked. They trusted their wives 100%, had no idea anything was wrong, hell one of them had some sexy time on the computer the day before. Poof. Gone. The one thing keeping them going every day just went to go live with some other guy. So I guess laying down some ground rules to make everyone feel better I don’t think is a bad idea.

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Point taken. But still the words of a candidate (however unrealistically) for the highest office in the land. They’re going to be and should be examined under a microscope.

Again, not comparing my situation to that of a deployed solider. But two of my wife’s old friends told her pretty much the same thing, that a man who spent months at a time in Japan and Hong Kong couldn’t be trusted. She found their heartfelt distrust of me quite amusing.

If they’re adults, as his wife presumably is, then I would absolutely trust any child of mine to exercise his or her good judgement. But this isn’t quite analogous. Even one’s adult child is not a peer. One’s spouse should be. And it wasn’t certain kinds of men he asked her to avoid; it was (as best I understand it) all men. That, to me, telegraphs a lack of trust in her judgement, and it seems unlikely that lack of trust his wife’s judgement is unique to her.

Simply put, there’s a type of man who thinks women need to be protected from masculine wiles, and unless I misreading what French wrote, he strikes me as just such a person. Again, maybe I’m wrong about that, but when it comes to a candidate for president, it’s the sort of question of personal character one would want to at least investigate.

Mind you I don’t think French is a bad person. Just another (maybe unwitting) jester in old-guard social conservatism’s march toward immolation. And I can’t drum up a lot of sympathy for them, because I think they did it to themselves. They sowed the double-down on bigotry, spitefulness and obstructionism; now they’ve reaped the Trump.

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ETA - and I know more than one person who one day had their bank accounts emptied and wife and kids moved out of the house, and they are half a world away completely gobsmacked. They trusted their wives 100%, had no idea anything was wrong, hell one of them had some sexy time on the computer the day before. Poof. Gone. The one thing keeping them going every day just went to go live with some other guy. So I guess laying down some ground rules to make everyone feel better I don’t think is a bad idea.

Dude. If somebody’s wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner is going to pull a stunt like that, do you really think ‘ground rules’ are going to make the slightest difference?

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And I know some women who’ve had that happen to them. What’s your point? I don’t understand how abusing a partner through this controlling behavior is at all related to these stories of yours.

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Maybe. Not every affair starts with two people looking for action. Many start with one person taking advantage of the situation. So if one isn’t out there it is less likely to happen.

I mean, doing something or not doing something to make a spouse or GF/BF feel better about something is pretty darn common in a relationship.

My point is a mutual agreement isn’t necessarily a sign of abuse or controlling behavior.

If your significant other wanted you to not communicate with someone, would you consider their request, or be like:

85ea8cb8b88b753985536075ef528975.jpg720×405 57 KB

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I really want to get a job taking stock photographs of tired military personnel in transit. I’d make a killing.

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I have never heard about him until now. He may be a horrible person. Or if that is the worst skeleton in his closet he would be freaking Rainbow Brite compared to Hillary or Trump.

I guess Rob thought it interesting because Trump called someone a cuck at some point? But past that it just seems like a shit ton of conjecture and assumptions from a few quotes from a 270+ page book. But hey, it’s politic, I really shouldn’t expect anything different than that. Haha!

I guess I have just heard enough horror stories to be empathetic to their situation.

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I don’t think anyone is getting rich taking stock pics.

Selling them, maybe.

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I would be shocked if “The Mechanics of Gay Sex” isn’t a popular series of porn films.

4215926-men-changing-a-wheel-under-the-sun-Stock-Photo-men-mechanic.jpg1300×846 193 KB

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I mean, doing something or not doing something to make a spouse or GF/BF feel better about something is pretty darn common in a relationship.

Well, yeah. But people who aren’t controlling assholes trust their partners to understand what would and wouldn’t be hurtful to them. And again, if your partner isn’t willing / able to abstain from behavior they know would hurt you (and vice versa, it must be said), your relationship is fucked.

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Wanna go halfsies on registration fees for sleepysargeantstockphotos.com?

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I don’t think that is true either. People make mistakes all the time and yet salvage relationships. Just look at the Clintons.

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