Love (making) & marriage.

Hello.

   I don't know what is more disquieting:

1. That my attention was brought to a thread on Mumsnet and I clicked on it.
2. That the thread in question was initiated by a bloke.
3. That the bloke in question used the acronym AIBU (no? Me neither, I had to look it up. It's Mumsnetese for Am I Being Unreasonable). It is obviously not the first time PseudoDad has posted. 
4. That he went on Mumsnet - a bottomless swamp filled with stay-at-home mothers, snapping and spewing and squirming with bitterness and loathing as they reminisce of a time before birthing over a midday glass of chardonnay - with the opening line 'AIBU to ask for more sex'. A brave man. Or a fool. His issue being once every six months is somewhat insufficient*. 

   No need to recount what happened next. So far there have been 308 replies. All very delightful. In any case, there are two ways PseudoDad could broach the topic with his wife.

1. Look to the original definitions of marriage**.
   
   The Bible gives this reciprocal approach:
   The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. (1 Corinthians 7:  3-4)
   
   The fifth 'mutual duty' between husband and wife, according to Islam states:
   To pass the night with one another. Women must tend to their husband’s needs even if they don’t feel that need themselves. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “If a man invites his wife to his bed and she refuses, and as a consequence he goes to sleep angry, then the angels curse her until she rises.” [Sahîh al-Bukhârî].
   
   The first duty of a wife, again according to Islam is:
   Obedience. A wife should be as obedient as she can to her husband. This preserves the family and protects it from collapsing. This is part of Islam’s organizing of the family structure. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was asked: ‘Which women are the best?’ he answered: “The one who pleases him when he looks at her, obeys him when he asks something of her, and is not disobedient in herself or her money in what he hates.” [Musnad Ahmad]
   
   The Jews reckon that every wife should be ruled by her husband.
   
   
2. Get the fuck off Mumsnet and talk to your wife, knobhead. Because in the end...

...it's all a load of Bovine Skittles!

*PseudoDad, that is way too little. 

**Please read to the end of my posts before you lose your head, and PseudoDad, please don't take my advice as she will probably slap you in the face!

TV or not TV, that is the question.

Hello.

   There was a time you would buy the newspaper on a Sunday with its forty-seven supplements and it would give you a week's worth of reading. Then private television decided to dedicate channels to news, all day every day. After that came the world wide web, the boom of mobile phones which was followed up by social media. The result? More and more outlets chasing the story and thus the rise of sensationalism. Dog bites man, non-story. Man bites dog, however. Who is going to read a well-written piece of researched journalism when they can see an Egyptian lion trainer being mauled to death on the online version of a national "newspaper" (this story, with the video ripped from LiveLeak, is actually the top story as I type these words). Ah, long gone are the days of the Fleet Street hack. Long live the media consumer who has now been trained to stay up-to-date and, consequently, addicted to news. Bad news. And this can have psychological impacts even on the sanest and most optimist of minds.

   Our obsession with news - or rather being the first to know - is mournfully fascinating. But it is evolving into something more. Since the online papers have allowed us to comment on the piss poor drivel they publish, they have learnt pretty quickly that badly researched articles or non-stories about some person with a sex-tape will rile people up. People will actually click on it, without reading, just to leave an angry comment. The publisher shows click-rates to its advertisers, not time on page data.

   The main culprits for clickity-click shit-stirring are the DailyMail.com and the Independent's i100. Both despise each other but their tactics are exactly the same: politically-leaning, selective, non-researched, bad news in order to breed frustration and madness in the poor souls who happen upon their websites. But the latter has reached a new low today with an 'article' that, at first glance, seems to dispense fact-based advice to failing couples.

   The piece suggests that television is the ruin of marriages. The source? A woman called Dushka Zapata. Her qualifications? No idea. She works in PR and Communications. She writes stuff on Quora like 'How to be ferociously happy' and other opinion pieces. I am all for freedom of speech and personal opinion. But don't pass it off as fact! Because the researched fact of the matter is that shared media (for example, watching TV with your partner) predicts greater relationship quality. That is, having a binge of your favourite show on Netflix with your loved one can create more closeness in a relationship. Whatever goes on in Dushka Zapata's private life, and how much TV she watches, are her prerogative. If getting rid off the TV bettered her relationship, so be it. Good. I hope she is now having lots of chats and sex with her partner. But here is my opinion: stop reading shit-stirring online 'newspapers' because in the end...

...it's all a load of Bovine Skittles!

Sources :
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/08/what-all-this-bad-news-is-doing-to-us.html
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dushka
http://spr.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/07/26/0265407516660388.abstract
http://lifehacker.com/watching-tv-with-your-significant-other-might-improve-y-1784898093
https://www.quora.com/profile/Dushka-Zapata