Conservative Influencer Cheating Scandal: Was The Manosphere Right All Along?

When the new year began, I decided that one of my goals would be to make an even more aggressive defense of marriage and family life, and to encourage people to have a lot of children, because if we’re going to save Western civilization, that is the only way to do it.

These are topics that we discuss fairly often, in various contexts — and for good reason. Marriage is a sacrament, and the foundation of the family, and the family is the foundation of human civilization. My plan was — and still is — to take this message, which I’ve been preaching for as long as I’ve had a platform to preach it from, and advance it in an even more deliberate way. We were going to talk about some of the potential pitfalls, as we often do, while focusing on the importance of finding a spouse and raising a family.

Then the Elijah Schaffer story broke — revealing that Schaffer, a conservative commentator who is married and has children, was apparently having an affair with Sarah Stock, a conservative commentator who at the time was dating the man she would eventually marry. The timing is interesting because it’s a story that perfectly illustrates the counterargument — the reason why so many young people are so reluctant to get married and have children.

As to the specifics of this scandal, I will cover them in some detail in a moment, not because this is a “drama channel” but because it’s the kind of thing we must contend with if we want to make the case for marriage and family life. I think that those of us on the pro-family side, oftentimes, haven’t done a good enough job acknowledging and accounting for the enormous risks and downsides to marriage that young people are confronting, at increasing rates, no matter how hard they try to find a compatible, moral, Christian spouse. This is the catch-22. Our culture is decaying, and in order to stop the decay, we need people to form stable and loving families. But it’s harder to form stable and loving families while the culture is decaying.

People in the Red Pill and “manosphere” spaces have been making this point for a long time, and they’ve taken an enormous amount of heat for it. Entire shows on Netflix have been written about how awful their opinions are, and how they’ve created this “manosphere” that traffics in dangerous misogyny, and so on. But the truth is, when the writers’ rooms at Netflix are so enraged about your views that they start putting you in their shows, then it means you’re probably onto something.

Now, let’s talk about this issue from the perspective of a young man. And to anyone who accuses me of only blaming the woman in this story, keep in mind that I recently spent a good amount of time discussing why Schaffer was wrong to cheat on his wife, and how married men should behave so that they don’t commit those sins.

Today, however, we’re going to flip it around and focus on the other side. Because here’s what the story demonstrates: It’s not enough to say that you should date a woman who goes to church, who says she opposes abortion, who says that she’s never slept with anyone outside of marriage, who spends every day talking about conservative principles for a living, and who will literally stand by your side, in front of the Pope, as he blesses both of you. A woman can do all of these things, and convince you that she means every word of what she’s saying, and that she’ll be a fantastic mother to your children. And then you can find out one day that, in fact, she was lying to you the whole time. She was actually having an affair with her boss behind your back. She was grinning as the Pope blessed your relationship, while she was thinking about her other boyfriend. And here’s the thing: if you don’t learn the truth soon enough, then she could, not too far in the future, walk away with half of your assets, including your house, along with alimony for life.

This is not some fantastical, hypothetical scenario. It’s what just apparently happened to the man who was engaged to Sarah Stock, who briefly went by the name Sarah Setka. Sarah is a relative newcomer in the whole “trad woman conservative influencer” space. She put out posts like this one, when she got engaged. This is from August of 2025.

Credit: @sarahcstock/X.com

She writes “I won,” along with a picture of her engagement ring. And Charlie Kirk, who was actually an honest and wholesome person, responded, “Congrats, marriage is amazing.”

Then there’s this post from Sarah Stock, which she wrote in November of 2024:

Credit: @sarahcstock/X.com

The post reads:

The idea that women who are waiting until marriage are doing it to manipulate men into marrying them so they can leave and take all their money is kind of schizo IMO and you probably have a point-zero-one-percent chance of that happening. Anyone who is going to be a forever bachelor and never procreate because they’re not willing to take that risk, especially with a woman they love and trust, is NGMI (meaning, not gonna make it). Waiting till marriage also has statistically BETTER results for the marriage.

Six months later, in April 2025, Stock announced that she had converted to Catholicism.

Credit: @sarahcstock/X.com

Stock wrote, “I am officially CATHOLIC.” And then she wrote, “Ave Christus Rex,” meaning Hail Christ the King.

And here’s her photo, with her husband, receiving the Pope’s blessing:

Credit: @stpaulsbhm/Instagram.com

I am not prepared to say, as many have, that her conversion was a scam, and that she never meant anything she said. I can’t see inside her soul. Only God can figure that out. It’s perfectly possible for a person to profess a certain belief, and hold that belief, and yet act contrary to it. We all do that, to some extent. We are all sinner. And yet it’s also clear that Sarah was also putting together a carefully crafted image. Before she was engaged, she appeared on a podcast in which she claimed that she would abstain from sex until marriage — in contrast to some other women on the panel, who openly admitted that they were extremely promiscuous.

Watch:

Sarah Stock CLAIMS to be a VlRGlN and waiting for marriage on the whatever podcast?! BODY COUNT REVEAL?! Was she LYING?! pic.twitter.com/vo8Vv2cNNM

— Brian Atlas (@BrianAtlas) February 4, 2026

Credit: @BrianAtlas/X.com

The point of showing you all of these tweets and images and videos is not to gawk at the destruction of a marriage, or to gossip about lurid details — of which there are plenty, in this case. We could fill a whole show full of those details, if we wanted to. Instead, I’ll simply say that Milo Yiannopoulos has alleged, with a substantial amount of evidence, that Sarah was in fact sleeping with her boss (Elijah Schaffer, who runs a small conservative media company called Rift TV), up to the moment she became engaged to another man, named Will. In other words, the allegation is that Sarah was cheating on her boyfriend, and future fiance, with her boss — who was a married man at the time, with children.

And the allegation is backed by an audio recording, which Yiannopoulous obtained, though it’s not clear how. There’s no reason for us to play it here. There are other allegations, even darker and more depraved, that have been made and which I certainly can’t substantiate.

In response to all of these allegations, Sarah didn’t issue any kind of specific, targeted denials. She didn’t dispute the accuracy of any of Yiannopoulos’ claims. Instead she posted the following message to her account on X.

Credit: @sarahcstock/X.com

Credit: @sarahcstock/X.com

A lot of what has been said about me is completely untrue. That being said, there are mistakes/unwise decisions I have made that I deeply regret. I have sinned. I apologize to everyone who has been scandalized by this. Please pray. Logging off now.

And then, shortly afterwards, Sarah deleted her account entirely.

If you follow this scandal on social media, you’ll see that most people — as expected — are talking about it with a sick kind of glee and satisfaction. But we should never find satisfaction in the sins of others, especially when there are real victims involved — spouses and children. My point is not to gloat. I have no reason to, anyway. I have nothing personally against anyone involved in this scandal. The point is that this story is not the exception. It’s not happening out of nowhere. There’s nothing aberrant about it.

As we talked about yesterday, Elijah Schaffer’s behavior is all too common among men. And Sarah Stock is all too representative of how many women — though certainly not all — think and behave these days. These types of women don’t see men as potential husbands, to whom they will devote themselves, and for whom they will be a loyal and loving helpmate. They see men as tools they can use — dishonestly — for a specific purpose. Consider the fact that, as of the most recent data, roughly 70% of divorces are initiated by women. That’s according to research from the American Sociological Association, but plenty of other sources agree on that point. In fact, the number rises to between 80 and 90% when you only look at highly-educated women.

Here’s a quote from the American Sociological Association, to give you an idea of how they frame the data.

Study author Michael Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University … found that women initiated 69 percent of all divorces, compared to 31 percent for men. In contrast, there was not a statistically significant difference between the percentage of breakups initiated by unmarried women and men … ‘Women seem to have a predominant role in initiating divorces in the U.S. as far back as there is data from a variety of sources, back to the 1940s,’ Rosenfeld said. ‘I think that marriage as an institution has been a little bit slow to catch up with expectations for gender equality.’

So that’s how Left-wing academics present the data. They blame marriage for “being a little bit slow to catch up with expectations for gender equality.” They don’t blame men for cheating on their spouses, because, according to the data, that’s not what’s actually driving the high rates of divorces initiated by women. But they also know that they can’t blame women, because every academic — without exception — is forced to embrace feminism as a religion. So they settle on blaming the institution of marriage itself, which ironically enough is exactly the same conclusion that anti-feminist Red Pillers come to, just by a different route.

And yet, if you ask women, they’ll tell you exactly why they’re getting divorced.

Take a look at the data here:

Credit: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The primary reasons that women give for divorcing their husbands include feeling that they aren’t getting enough attention, their husband is holding back their career, and that they “grew apart.” In other words, the woman got bored. Like Sarah Stock, they wanted to try something new. And they convinced themselves that there’s nothing wrong with giving another man a try. And there’s nothing stopping these women from walking into a courtroom, telling the judge they’re bored, and taking 50% of their husband’s assets — along with alimony. Even in conservative states, they can get away with that. They can seize your home. They can seize your retirement account. And they don’t even have to lie about what they’re doing. That’s where the law is, right now.

Among other reasons, this is a major problem because marriage is directly tied to the continued existence of civilization. Plenty of data shows — as you might imagine — that marriage is directly linked to fertility rates.

Credit: @FT/John Burn-Murdoch

If we want to reverse population decline, then encouraging young people to get married is the way to do it. But it’s a tough sell for young men as long as the law remains so archaic, and so obviously rigged against them. So why haven’t any conservative states abolished no-fault divorce? Or at the very least, why haven’t more states abolished the idea that women are entitled to 50% of their husband’s assets, even if they’ve been cheating on him the entire time?

As far as I can tell, in the vast majority of states — whether they’re community property states or not — a woman can cheat on her husband and still receive half his assets. There are exceptions, including Texas. But this is the norm. And that needs to change. In most cases, women should get zero dollars if they initiate a divorce. They should get absolutely nothing. In fact, they should be fined for wasting the man’s time, and behaving like a harlot. That’s not a punitive solution. It’s one we obviously need, because the current system is pathological in how it destroys the lives of innocent young men.

In fact, we should really be discussing criminal penalties for adultery. There would be nothing unusual, historically, about dispensing prison time, fines, or corporal punishment for adulterers. What’s unusual is having no such penalties in place. We are one of the few societies in history to not treat adultery as a criminal matter. And I see no evidence that our approach is in any way superior, or brings about better results.

It’s tempting to think that reversing this entire system is impossible. But it’s not. And more to the point, there’s reason to believe that, in general, conservative women are much less of a danger on this front.

Take a look at this data, from the U.S. General Social Survey, which was republished by the Substack “Age of Infovors.”

Credit: @FT/John Burn-Murdoch

It shows that the average number of children that are being born to Left-wing families in the United States is declining significantly more rapidly than the number of children who are being born to conservative families. In other words, Left-wing birth rates are falling far faster than conservative birth rates. Conservatives are presumably involved in more stable and fulfilling marriages — the kind that aren’t ended early due to an affair, or a deceptive spouse. So when you hear about falling birth rates, and the collapse of civilization, you should know that the people who want to destroy civilization are going to destroy themselves first. And while that’s not necessarily an ideal state of affairs, it’s better than the alternative.

Credit: CDC

And when you zoom out even wider, there’s some other interesting data in the latest statistics on birth rates. According to preliminary 2025 birth rate data compiled by the CDC, which looks at the mother’s ethnicity, white non-Hispanic birth rates have actually increased over the past year, and now account for more than 50% of all known births. Meanwhile births from virtually every other race and ethnicity have declined sharply, which is a big change from recent years. That includes Hispanic births, Asian births, black births, and Pacific Islander births. The implication of this data is that foreigners aren’t replacing the native American population to nearly the extent that they were under the Biden administration. Closing the border and deporting illegal aliens has had a direct effect. It’s reversed the demographic change that Democrats have attempted to engineer.

Imagine what these numbers would look like if conservative states decided to actually do something to encourage even more marriages. That doesn’t mean providing more welfare, or handouts. (There’s plenty of evidence that from the Nordic countries, which have a lower fertility rate than we do, that more welfare doesn’t produce more children. And more welfare definitely isn’t guaranteed to provide more stable family units, as the Civil Rights era demonstrated in this country). What’s needed is a re-thinking of divorce law and the contracts that young men are being asked to enter into.

Now, all that said, how could I — after acknowledging these serious pitfalls — still promote marriage and family life? What’s the upside? How could it possibly be worth it, given the risks? That’s the question, and it’s a fair one.

I saw a recent clip of Andrew Tate posing this exact conundrum.

Watch:

Andrew Tate breaks down why there is zero point in marrying a girl: pic.twitter.com/P9huL6Ynfl

— Prime Tate (@primetateHQ) January 26, 2026

Credit: @primetateHQ/X.com

It is a fair and logical question. But the premise behind it is not fair. I’ve already acknowledged that those of us on the pro-marriage side can sometimes be too quick to discount the possibility that a young man gets married and winds up humiliated, betrayed, and broke because of it. We sometimes talk about marriage as though the divorce rate were zero percent. But on the other side, people like Tate talk about marriage as though the divorce rate were 100%, as if no couple in history has ever managed to stay faithful and monogamous till death do they part. He treats the potential downsides of marriage as guaranteed, and the upsides as if they don’t exist at all. But they do.

And in fact, on second thought, the question — what will I get out of it? — is not entirely fair. I can’t say what you will get out of marriage, because I can’t look into your future. I can’t control for every possible factor. I can’t force you to choose the right spouse, nor can I force you or your spouse to do all the things in a marriage that are necessary to keep it stable and happy. But I can say what you can get out of marriage — and what a great many men, billions throughout history, including myself — 15 years in, with six kids — have gotten out of it.

What you can get is the love, fidelity, and lifelong companionship of a woman who you love, and who is devoted to you, and to whom you are devoted in return. What you can get — what billions of men have gotten — are children you love and who love you; who carry on your legacy, your bloodline, and your family name. You can have a family that is stable and whole, one that gives you a sure sense of purpose every single day of your life — a family you live with, share your life with, serve and lead and raise.

You can get love, meaning, purpose, and legacy. That’s not an emotional argument because those aren’t mere emotions. They are real. They are nothing less than the greatest things life has to offer. There is nothing greater — nothing that can bring you more joy or make your life more worth living. So what you get, or can get, in a word, is everything.

But it should also be said that, as men, our concern should not be only what we get. “What do I get?” is a fair question, but it should not be the only one. Tate says he has kids anyway, so he doesn’t need marriage. But what would his kids get out of him being married to their mother? They would get a stable household with a father who is present every day — leading, guiding, and teaching them.

It’s true that you can have kids without getting married. Plenty of people have done that. But all of the studies, all of the research, and all of our experience as human beings show that children are in a far better position — with far better outcomes — when their father is married to their mother and present in the home, providing not just financial support but a daily example of how to live. That’s what your kids get. Now what do they get out of you sleeping with other women and refusing to be a stable presence in the home? What possible benefit does that bring to them? What do they get? If you want to live a meaningful life as a man, if you want to be a great man, you need to be motivated by more than just a quest for “what you get.” There has to be a sense of obligation and duty. That is what has driven every great man in history. Tate talks a lot about escaping “The Matrix.” But the question “what do I get?” all by itself will not lead you out of The Matrix, but deeper into it. In many ways, “what do I get?” — the single-minded quest for pleasure and personal gain — IS The Matrix. If you want out of it, you need to ask not just what you get, but what your duties are, what your obligations are, what your purpose is, what you should do.

If we zoom out even further, who else stands to gain from you getting married and having children with your wife? Everyone. Civilization itself. You cannot pretend to care about the future of Western civilization while making a choice — to not get married and have children — that, if everyone made it, would result in the extinction of the very thing you claim to want to preserve.

I am not saying that your primary motivation for getting married should be the preservation of Western civilization or the continuation of your bloodline. But these are benefits, and very important ones. Why should we get married and have kids? Well, if we don’t, civilization collapses, the human race goes extinct, and nothing matters because nothing will exist anymore. That seems like a relevant point. And it’s one the anti-marriage side of the argument never addresses. If every man followed your advice, human society would disintegrate. That strikes me as a pretty serious flaw in the plan. It strikes me that a plan must be bad if full adoption of the plan would bring about the annihilation of the human race.

And yet, yes, there are still risks, risks I’ve already acknowledged. Risk you can’t protect yourself from with 100% certainty, but you can account for them to a very significant extent. We can put laws in place to account for them. And in lieu of that, you can account for them personally. It’s possible that a truly sociopathic con artist can scam you into getting married to them while expertly disguising their true nature, but in the vast majority of cases there are extremely obvious red flags that someone is untrustworthy and disloyal, flags you can pick up long before marriage if you’re paying attention. If she’s spending a lot of personal time with her male boss — or any other man — for one thing. If she seems to enjoy the attention of men who aren’t you. If she’s an e-girl begging for attention online all the time. These are all things that are fairly obvious. You can identify them and suss them out, if you keep your eyes open. And yet risks remain.

But there are also risks on the other side: risks to rejecting marriage and family life. And I don’t just mean the risk of civilizational collapse. Andrew Tate says he doesn’t need marriage because he can get any woman he wants, have a bunch of kids, and financially provide for all of them. That may be true in his case, though I still believe he and his children would be better off if he were married. But how many men who take that advice will end up with a life that even vaguely resembles his? Point-one percent? Less?

The reality is that the vast majority of men who don’t get married will not end up with a harem of attractive women. They will end up alone, lonely, no wife, no children, and little in the way of financial success. Most people who reject marriage will die broke and alone. That’s not merely a risk. For many, it’s the outcome they are actively choosing. And they choose it because they fear that if they do get married, they might end up broke and alone anyway. And they might. But choosing a bad fate that is almost certain because you fear a bad fate that is merely possible is, to put it mildly, illogical.

Does that mean a young man or woman should rush blindly and recklessly into marriage? No. There are risks involved. We should change laws and put policies in place that reduce those risks and offer greater protections against them. But anything worth doing involves risk. And if starting a family isn’t worth doing, then nothing is.

For almost every man, fatherhood and marriage are a vocation given by God — to lead, provide for, and love his own family. Don’t let anything, or anyone, scare you away from it. You can avoid the Sarah Stocks of the world by abandoning the very idea of marriage. And if you’re a woman, you can avoid the Elijah Schaffers by doing the same. But years from now when you are on your death bed, surrounded by no one, with no one to mourn you, and no one to carry on your legacy and bloodline, or even place flowers on your grave, will you feel relieved that at least you were never divorced? Will you be happy about the chance you didn’t take? Or will you wish that you had given yourself to someone, and created a family that would outlive you, because what was any of it for, if not for that?