kinda like this reply ....
i'm slow these days, but sometimes slow can be gooooooood ... (?)
Posted on 10/22/2002 11:24:51 AM PDT by shrinkermd
(Preface and Explanation)A special essay on young, not-yet married men’s attitudes on the timing of marriage finds that men experience few social pressures to marry, gain many of the benefits of marriage by cohabiting with a romantic partner, and are ever more reluctant to commit to marriage in their early adult years.
Available evidence on marriage trends over the past four decades indicates that marriage has declined dramatically as a first living together experience for couples and as a status of parenthood. However, in recent years, there are signs that some marriage-weakening trends are slowing or in some cases leveling off.
Marriage has been much in the news lately, but we hear little about the actual state of marriage. How is marriage faring in American society today? Is it becoming stronger or weaker? Sicker or healthier? Better or worse?
Answers to these questions from official sources have been hard to come by. The federal government issues thousands of reports on nearly every dimension of American life, from what we eat to how many hours we commute each day. But it provides no annual index or report on the state of marriage. Indeed, the National Center for Health Statistics, the federal agency responsible for collecting marriage and divorce data from the states, has scaled back this activity. As a consequence, this important data source has deteriorated. Neither the Congress nor the President has ever convened a bipartisan commission or study group to investigate and report on the state of contemporary marriage. And no private agency, academic institution or private foundation has stepped forward to take on the task of monitoring the indices of marital health.
The neglect of marriage is all the more remarkable because mating and marrying behavior has changed dramatically in recent decades. Although some measures of these changes, such as the rise in unwed childbearing, have been duly noted, discussed and monitored, the state of marriage itself has been slighted. Why this is so remains a great puzzle. Marriage is a fundamental social institution. It is central to the nurture and raising of children. It is the "social glue" that reliably attaches fathers to children. It contributes to the physical, emotional and economic health of men, women and children, and thus to the nation as a whole. It is also one of the most highly prized of all human relationships and a central life goal of most Americans. Knowledge about marriage is especially important to the younger generation of men and women, who grew up in the midst of the divorce revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, and are now approaching their prime marrying years. Without some sense of how marriage is faring in America today, the portrait of the nation’s social health is incomplete.
The National Marriage Project seeks to fill in this missing feature in our portrait of the nation’s social health with The State of Our Unions. The report is divided into two sections. The first section is an essay in a continuing series devoted to exploring the attitudes toward mating and marrying among today’s not-yet-married young. The second section includes what we consider the most important annually or biennially updated indicators related to marriage, divorce, unmarried cohabitation, loss of child centeredness, fragile families with children and teen attitudes about marriage and family. For each area, a key finding is highlighted. These indicators are updated annually and provide opportunities for fresh appraisals each June.
We have used the latest and most reliable data available. We cover the period from 1960 to the present, so these data reflect historical trends over several decades. Most of the data come from the United States Bureau of the Census. All of the data were collected by long established and scientifically reputable institutions that rely on nationally representative samples.
Key Points and Executive Summary
The mating and marrying behavior of today’s young single men is a topic of growing interest in the popular culture and among young women. To a large degree, this popular interest reflects the delay in the age of first marriage. Both men and women are putting off marriage until older ages. The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in the nation’s history. (The median age for women stands at 25.) However, it is men more often than women who are accused of being "commitment phobic" and dragging their feet about marriage. Our investigation of male attitudes indicates that there is evidence to support this popular view.
The men in this study express a desire to marry and have children sometime in their lives, but they are in no hurry. They enjoy their single life and they experience few of the traditional pressures from church, employers or the society that once encouraged men to marry. Moreover, the sexual revolution and the trend toward cohabitation offer them some of the benefits of marriage without its obligations. If this trend continues, it will not be good news for the many young women who hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with declining fertility.
The ten reasons why men won’t commit are:
1. They can get sex without marriage more easily than in times past
2. They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying
3. They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks
4. They want to wait until they are older to have children
5. They fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises
6. They are waiting for the perfect soul mate and she hasn’t yet appeared
7. They face few social pressures to marry
8. They are reluctant to marry a woman who already has children
9. They want to own a house before they get a wife
10. They want to enjoy single life as long as they can
About This Study
For the past three years, as part of its Next Generation Program, The National Marriage Project has been conducting research into the attitudes toward dating, mate selection and marriage among young, unmarried adults. Last year, we reported on the results of a national survey of young men and women, ages 20 to 29. This year, we take a closer look at a select group of young, heterosexual, not-yet-married men.
As a first step toward understanding male attitudes about marriage and their timing of entry into first marriage, we conducted focus group discussions among not-yet-married heterosexual men in four major metropolitan areas: northern New Jersey, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston. The participants, sixty men in all, came from a variety of religious, ethnic and family backgrounds.
These men range in age from 25-33. The majority are employed full-time, with reported annual incomes between $21-$35,000 and above. Most have had some college or hold a baccalaureate degree or better. No one reports ever being married. Three of the men have a child.
This report highlights key findings from this preliminary study. These findings are impressionistic and exploratory but they provide valuable leads for further research into changing male patterns in the timing and commitment to marriage.
The Unsettled Life
For the young men in these groups, the early adult years are a time of insecure job and residential attachment.
More than half report having changed jobs in the past five years, and twelve said they had been laid off or unemployed during that same time period.
Living arrangements also tend to be fluid and unstable. The men report a variety of living arrangements since leaving the parental home. It is common for a young man to shift from sharing an apartment with roommates to cohabiting with a girlfriend to moving back in with one or both parents and then, perhaps, leaving home and living on his own again. A couple of the men moved back home to help a parent who was sick or recently widowed, and at least one moved back into the parental home because his parents said they would "do everything" for him.
Compared to work or living situations, friendships tend to be a source of more secure and stable attachments. Many of the male participants say they hang out and socialize with friends they have known since their high school or college days. These friendship groups can be male-only or can include women friends as well. These groups go out to clubs, bars, sports events, or spend time together in private apartments.
Meeting Women
Men say that they meet women in a variety of ways: through friends; at bars, clubs and Happy Hours; at work; and through casual encounters at the gym or the grocery store. When and where men meet women influences their expectations for a relationship. They view the women they meet in bars and dance clubs as casual sex partners rather than as "marriage material." According to the men, the common and mutual understanding between men and women is that bars are for sexual hookups. "When you meet a girl in a bar, they’re the worst . . . twenty different guys have hit on them already." Clearly, the amount of alcohol consumed is a factor, as is the time of day. For example, when men get together with women during the "happy hour," after work, they may be meeting in a bar, but they engage in a different kind of socializing. They are likely to be in the company of friends and to drink less. Consequently, a woman they meet in a bar after work might be someone they would be interested in for more than casual sex.
In general, a time and place that is conducive to a conversation with a woman is more likely to lead to something more than casual sex, they say. However, several men said that they felt awkward striking up a conversation with a woman. "It’s damn hard to get the courage to go up and talk to someone," one man admitted. Some say that it is easier to get to know a woman if they are introduced by friends. And they are also more likely to contemplate a serious romantic relationship with a woman they meet through mutual friends.
Men are generally opposed to having a romantic relationship with a woman who works in their place of employment. If you break up, they say, "she’s on the other side of the cubicle."
The Internet is an increasingly accepted and popular way to find romantic partners. Some men say that it is good way to generate a high number of prospective candidates. However, no one reported achieving a long-term relationship as the result of an Internet contact, and several commented that deception and misrepresentation were commonplace.
The men say that they rarely ask women out on a date. "That’s the old way," one man commented. "I’ll meet them and we’ll just hang out," one man said. Some contend that women don’t want to be asked out on a formal date because the women themselves are
not ready to be in a serious relationship. Generally, men hold the view that you should become friends and get to know each other by hanging out before you go out on a date.
Men are divided over the question of who should pay for a date. Most believe that men should pay if they are the ones who ask for the date. However, others think that it is acceptable to split the costs of a night out or let her pick up the check occasionally. "Why shouldn’t you both pay?" one man asked, "You both work." Another commented: "Sometimes a woman wants to pay, so she can feel a little independent."
The Big Turnoffs
Men expect the women they date to be economically independent and able to "take care of themselves." This represents a major change from earlier times. Moreover, this expectation figures in one of the most common dating complaints among these men. They resent being evaluated on the size of their wallet, their possessions or their earning potential. Therefore, they say, they are turned off by "golddiggers. " Likewise, they avoid "material girls," women who are into "the big house and car."
A woman who wants a baby is another dating turn-off for these men. They fear that she might use them to achieve her goal of having a child and even to "trick" them into fathering a child.
These men also say that they try to avoid going out with women who already have children. Some say they are uncomfortable in the presence of a woman’s children and not eager to be thrust into the role of a play "daddy." Moreover, they feel bad if they establish a relationship with the children and then break up with their mother. Finally, they want to avoid competition and conflict with the children’s biological father. One man says that it is easier to date a woman with children if the father is entirely "out of the picture."
Sex for Fun and Fear of Paternity
Half of unmarried men, ages 20-29, agree that there are people with whom they would have sex even though they have no interest in marrying them, according to last year’s Gallup survey commissioned by The National Marriage Project. More than half of unmarried men, 20-29, agree that if two people really like each other, it’s all right to have sex even if they have known each other only for a short time. Although young men are more likely to hold these views than young women, there is widespread agreement about the prevalence of casual sex in today’s youthful dating culture. Among all young adults, 20-29, eight in ten agree that it is common for people in their age group to have sex just for fun without any expectation of commitment. This view is more strongly held by those with higher levels of educational attainment.
However, once they have casual sex, men say, they are less respectful and interested in pursuing a relationship with a woman. "If a girl wants it on the first night we go out, I definitely lose respect for her, ‘cause she’s probably doing it with someone else." They are more likely to "take it slow" sexually when they are romantically interested in a woman. Again, this is consistent with the Gallup survey. Seventy-four percent of single men agreed that if you meet someone with whom you think you could have a long-term relationship, you will try to postpone sex until you know each other. Apparently, "waiting" for sex typically means holding off until the fourth or fifth date, though one man said he waited seven months. At the same time, some men expressed the opinion that it was up to the woman to hold them in check. "We’ll always push for more," one said.
Men realize that casual sex places them at risk for STDS, including HIV, and also at risk for unplanned fatherhood. Their concern about "diseases" and pregnancy is further heightened because a significant number admit that they don’t use condoms every time they have sex.
For some, the risk of unwanted fatherhood arouses more worry than the risk of disease. With DNA testing, it is now possible to establish biological paternity beyond a reasonable doubt and thus to hold men legally responsible for the financial support of any child they father. These young men express concern of "spending my life connected to someone I’m not in love with." They worry that a woman who got pregnant after casual sex might deny them the opportunity to get to know and bond with a child whom they are nonetheless legally required to support. Moreover, they are concerned about the financial burden associated with unwed and unplanned fatherhood. "For eighteen years, it’s like $70,000 or $100,000 dollars," one man remarked. Their anxiety is greatest when it concerns the risk of pregnancy that might occur as the result of a one-night stand. As one man put it: "If it’s a girl I just met in a bar, I used to wake up in a cold sweat worrying about pregnancy."
Some men express resentment toward a legal system that grants women the unilateral right to decide to terminate a pregnancy or to have a child without any say-so from the biological father. There is also mistrust of women who may "trap" men into fathering a child by claiming to be sterilized, infertile or on the pill and then to exploit his resources in order to have and rear a child "of her own."
At the same time, these men are generally accepting of the social trend of women having children "on their own." "I could deal with a woman using a sperm donor a lot better than I could deal with a messed up marriage," one man remarked.
Living Together
Cohabitation is a common and popular form of romantic partnership for young adults today. Slightly more than 44 percent of single men, 20-29, agree with the statement that they would only marry someone if she agreed to live together first. Close to a third of the men in this study say that they have lived with someone in the past or are currently cohabiting with a girlfriend.
There are several reasons why men say that they choose to live with girlfriends. One is to test compatibility for marriage. They believe that living together is a good way to get to know a woman intimately, since "it’s the little things" that can wreck a marriage.
Another reason has to do with the convenience of having a regular sex partner. Living with a woman reduces the risks of sex with a stranger. Men believe that they can dispense with condoms if they are in a monogamous living together relationship. Moreover, they can avoid the time-consuming effort of searching for a sex partner when they have one living at home.
Also, there are economies of scale associated with shared living. One man commented on how helpful it was to have a girlfriend who could look after the house, pay the bills and take care of the dogs when his work took him away from home for extended periods of time. Several others noted that they were better able to save for the purchase of a house if they lived together. For some, this economy was associated with shared plans for future marriage, or at least, future joint home ownership. For others, buying a house was part of the try-out for marital compatibility. "If the house works out, then maybe we’ll talk marriage," one man said.
Moreover, for some men, cohabitation is desirable because they are less answerable to their partner. "We have an interesting relationship," said one cohabiting man. "I come and go as I please . . . as long as she understands, we’re together . . It’s the same as being married. We’re totally happy."
Finally, these men see living together as a way of avoiding an unhappy marriage and eventual divorce. This view is widely shared among people their age. Sixty-two percent of young adults agree that living with someone before marriage is a good way to avoid eventual divorce, according to last year’s Gallup survey for the National Marriage Project. "Everyone I know who’s gotten married quickly – and failed to live together [first] – has gotten divorced," one man said. Another commented: "It should be a law, you should move in together and have a one year trial period. Then you have to wait another year before you have kids."
Many men also fear the financial consequences of divorce. They say that their financial assets are better protected if they cohabit rather than marry. They fear that an ex-wife will "take you for all you’ve got" and that "men have more to lose financially than women" from a divorce.
Several men expressed the opinion that there was little difference between the commitment to live together and the commitment to marriage. According to them, marriage is "just a piece of paper," a "legal thing" that you do for family and friends. One observed that cohabitation was just like being married, so why go through the hassle of an expensive ceremony and legal contract? However, this was not the majority view. Most men put marriage on a higher plane of commitment than a living together partnership.
Marrying a Soul Mate
Most of the men in these groups want to marry at some future time in their lives. They expect their marriages to last a life time. Like the majority of young adults today, they are seeking a "soul mate." They envision a soul mate as a woman with whom "you are completely compatible right now," "someone you’re not putting on a show for," the one person you connect with. Notably, they emphasize a soul mate’s willingness to take them as they are and not try to change them.
Until they find a soul mate, however, they are willing to wait. They don’t want to "settle" for second best in their choice of a marriage partner, though they don’t have the same standards for a choice of a live-in girlfriend. Indeed, in some cases, they see her as a second best partner while they continue to look for a soul mate.
The Timing of Marriage,
Men want to be financially "set" before they marry. For many men, this means owning a house before they marry. However, most of the men in these groups are not yet homeowners, and some are living with a parent, relatives, roommates, or girlfriends.
Most men had no ideal age or timetable for their own eventual marriage. They say: "I’ll know when I’m ready" and "Whatever happens, happens." One man referred jokingly to the Larry King syndrome: you can get married and have kids at any age.
A number of the men stated that having children was the main reason to marry. However, these men are in no great hurry to have children. Unlike women, they have no biological clock to impose a strict time limit on fertility. Several men expressed a desire to have children at a young enough age to enjoy them. As one put it, "I don’t want to be a grandfather to my kid." But for most of these men, having children was a remote life goal. At their age, they did not yet feel ready for the financial responsibilities or disruptions of a child. Some recognized that children would burden their relationship with their partner, and that the presence of children would require compromise and change. Notably, none of these men expressed a burning desire for children, a view that would likely have been different if the study participants had been childless unmarried women of similar age and background.
Few Social Pressures to Marry
Today’s young men encounter few, if any, traditional pressures from religion, employers or society to marry. Some men in the group reported mild, teasing pressures from parents who wanted grandchildren, or from married buddies, but they shrugged this off. A few noted that they first began to think about marriage when their friends began to get married. However, since some of their friends’ marriages seemed ill-advised or doomed, they were not unduly influenced by peer pressure to marry either.
The New Work/Family Bargain
Men support the idea of women working outside the home. Indeed, most say that they expect their future wives to work for pay outside the home. Underlying this expectation is the idea that women should be independent-minded and pursue their own career interests. As one man explained: "I like the idea of marrying someone with drive. I would expect her to want her career just as bad as I want mine." However, most of the men describe the advantages of having a working wife in affective rather than strictly financial terms. That is, they think that a wife who works is likely to be a more interesting companion than one who isn’t employed. "She doesn’t have to have a big income, but a career, a life of her own" said one man. "She definitely has to work . . . or in the evenings, it’ll be a one-sided conversation," another observed.
When children come along, however, men think it is preferable for one parent to stay at home or for relatives or grandparents to provide childcare. The overwhelming consensus is that you don’t want to put your children in "stranger care." A number of men say that they will stay home with the children if their wife makes more money and prefers to be the primary breadwinner. However, the men who expressed interest in becoming stay-at-home dads tended to be less well educated and less well employed than other men in the group, so it may be that their relatively poorer employment prospects make the idea of staying at home with children attractive in theory. (However, it remains to be seen whether they would continue to hold this view if they actually had the responsibility of full-time house and childcare, or whether they would prove themselves to be competent primary caregiving parents.)
Divorce Is Too Easy
Like other young adults, these young men are highly critical of divorce. They think couples are too willing to call it quits without trying to work through difficulties in a marriage. As one observed: "One fight, and it’s like ‘I’m out of here.’" Some attribute the readiness to divorce as part of a societal trend toward narcissism, consumerism, and "too many choices." "You used to fall in love with the girl in your high school English class. Now you have more choices and you get married and then three years later, a better one comes along," commented one man. Others believe that both men and women are more independent and need each other less: "Now women are making as much as their husbands so they can say ‘see ya,’" one said. Finally, these men cite the legacy of parental divorce as a factor contributing to a persistently high divorce rate: "We figure ‘hey my parents got divorced, so we can get divorced.’" A couple of men expressed the opinion that living together before marriage lowers the level of commitment to marriage and thus contributes to a greater propensity to divorce, though this was a minority view.
However, despite the strong and pervasive criticism of divorce, the men generally feel that children are better off if their parents divorce rather than stick it out in an unhappy marriage. They concur that this is the better choice even if the couple does not fight but simply has "fallen out of love." They say that "children are smarter than you think and can pick up on parents’ unhappiness." Apparently they believe that a child’s intuition that parents may be "out of love" is more harmful than the actual experience of parental divorce. Clearly, these men consider and evaluate marriage as an intimate couple relationship rather than as a child-rearing partnership. Thus, the perceived quality of couple satisfaction is more important in deciding whether to stay in a marriage than any perceived harms to children that might come from parental divorce.
What’s the Future of Marriage?
Overall, men are not optimistic about the future of marriage as a lifelong commitment. They are acutely aware of the risks of divorce. Although they hold out the hope that their generation will work harder at marriage than baby boomers, they say that they are already seeing the first wave of divorces among their friends and this shakes their confidence in the future. Also, they believe that adults continue to change and "grow" and this makes it much harder to stay married to one person for a lifetime. One man said that he thought a contemporary marriage partnership of equals is more difficult to achieve than the traditional marriage with strict gender roles.
As with the respondents in our earlier focus groups and surveys, these men do not believe that there is much that can be done to strengthen marriage on a society-wide basis. However, they do favor education on how to have and sustain successful relationships and marriages.
Concluding Thoughts
Men see marriage as a final step in a prolonged process of growing up. This trend has a positive side. Men who marry at older ages are likely to be more financially stable than men in their late teens and early twenties. Further, men who marry at an older age may have gone through a "wild oats" period and may be more dependable and mature husbands and fathers.
At the same time, there is a potentially negative side. Financial stability, often equated with owning a home, comes before marriage in their personal priorities. However, pegging the timing of marriage to mortgage rates may substantially delay marriage, especially in more difficult economic times. Further, a prolonged period of single life may habituate men to the single life. Some of these men have spent a good part of their early adult years living with parents, roommates or alone. They have become accustomed to their own space and routines. They enjoy the freedom of not having to be responsible to anyone else. Like Henry Higgins, they fear losing their solitary pleasures by "letting a woman in their life." More than a few men expressed resentment at women who try to change them. "Women look at men like computers; they always want to upgrade," one said. Some of the men describe marital compatibility as a matter of finding a woman who will "fit into their life." "If you are truly compatible, then you don’t have to change," one man commented. Another man, who was a member of a band, said that he was grateful that his live-in girlfriend didn’t give him a hard time about his late nights and the time he spent socializing with his bandmates after their gig.
In the past, of course, men might drag their feet about getting hitched, but there were pressures to wed. Marriage was associated with growing up and taking on male adult roles and responsibilities. Parents expected sons to leave and set up their own household. Now the pressures are mild to nonexistent. Boys can remain boys indefinitely.
In addition, some of the traditional community and family forces that might encourage single men to learn the habits of compromise, give-and-take, and fitting in with others are weakening as well. Young men today live in a peer world. Some have grown up with only one or no siblings. As young adults, they may have little experience or contact with children in a family household, something that was more common for unmarried young men in times past. Even meal times can be solitary.
Perhaps the most significant factor contributing to male delay of marriage is the rise of cohabitation. Men can get many of the benefits of marriage without the commitment to marriage, or, as they often point out, without exposure to the financial risks of divorce. Cohabitation gives men regular access to the domestic and sexual ministrations of a girlfriend while allowing them greater legal, social and psychological freedom to lead a more independent life and to continue to look around for a better partner.
The men realize that women face time pressures to marry and bear children. At the same time, however, they express little sympathy for women’s circumstances. Several men took the view that men had to be careful because women "want to get married just to have kids." Moreover, as noted above, there was strong sentiment that an unmarried woman who already had a child was less desirable as a date, and certainly less desirable as a prospective marriage partner.
The vast majority of young women today hope to marry and have a family. Men also share this aspiration for marriage and family. However, unlike women, they can postpone marriage for a longer time without losing the chance to have a biological child. Consequently, men’s reluctance to marry makes it harder for peer women who are in their prime marrying years to achieve their desired life goal. As one man put it, "That’s their issue."
i'm slow these days, but sometimes slow can be gooooooood ... (?)
However, things have changed.
The question is simply, "Why marry?" As a young man full of dangerous steroids, your answer will probably be, "Ah, because her hair is like corn silk under an August moon; her lips are as rubies and her teeth, pearls; and her smile would make a dead man cry." This amounts to, "I'm horny," with elaborations. It is as it ought to be. The race continues because maidens are glorious, and striplings both desperate and unwise.
Note, incidentally, that by the time October rolls around, corn silk is shriveled and brown.
Why marry, indeed? In times past, marriage occasionally made sense. Life on a farm required two people, a woman to work herself ragged in the cabin while the man carried heavy lumpish things and shot Indians. Later, come suburbia, the man did something tedious in an office and the woman did two hours housework and stayed bored for six. It worked, tolerably. In the Fifties, nobody expected much of life. It generally met their expectations.
And there was sex, though not enough of it -- the scarcity being the propellant behind matrimony. Back then, before the miracle of feminism, women had not yet commoditized themselves. A lad had to pop the question before he got laid regular. Women controlled the carnal economy and, in a world that was going to be boring anyway, that was probably a good thing. At least kids had parents.
Times change. Some advice to young fellows setting forth:
First, forget that her lips are sweet as honeydew melon (though not, of course, green). It doesn't last. One of nature's more disagreeable tricks is that while men are far uglier than women, they age better. Remember this. It is useful to reflect in moments of unguided passion that, beneath the skin, we are all wet bags of unpleasant organs.
Soon you will be a balding sofa ornament and she will look like a fireplug with cellulite. Once the packaging deteriorates, there had better be something to get you through the next thirty years. Usually there isn't.
Prospects have improved for the single of both genders. Sex is nowadays always available. If you don't marry Moon Pie, which would be wise, you may get another chance when she comes back on the market with the first wave of divorcees. It's never now-or-never. Getting older doesn't diminish your opportunities. As you gain experience, you will recognize the tides, the eddies, the whirlpools of coupling -- the urgency of the biological clock, the lunacy of menopause. Men by comparison embody a wonderful clod-like simplicity.
As you ponder snuggling forever with Moon Pie, compare the lives of your bachelor and your married friends. The bachelors come and go as the mood strikes them, order their apartments with squalid abandon, drive Miatas or Harleys if they choose, and live in such pleasant dissolution as is consonant with continued employment. The married guy lives in a vast echoing mortgage beyond his means, drives sensible cars he doesn't like, and loses his old friends because he isn't allowed to hang out with them.
Self-help books to the contrary, marriage does not rest on compromises, but on concessions. You will make all of them. Perhaps it doesn't have to be this way. But it is this way.
Moon Pie has only one reason for marriage: to get her legal hooks into you. She doesn't think of it in these terms, yet, and she has no evil intentions. She just wants a nice quiet home in the remote suburbs where she can live uneventfully, raise progeny, and keep her eye on you.
If you think surveillance isn't part of the contract, try going out late with your old buddies. Marriage is an institution founded on mistrust. If she thought you would stick around if not compelled, she wouldn't need marriage. She wants monogamy, at least for you and, with some frequency, for herself. She knows viscerally that you would prefer the amorous insouciance of an oversexed alley cat. You know it consciously. Marriage exists to control the male, until recently a good idea. Now, however, she can support herself, and doesn't need protection. She doesn't need you, or you, her.
She will, however, want to have children. Women do. At which point, God help you.
Given the schools, drugs, latch-keyism consequent first to working parents and then to divorce, and the cultural pressure on children to be slatterns and dope-dealers, reproduction is a gamble. You may not even particularly like them, or they, you. Nobody talks about this, but how many people do you know who hardly talk to their grown children?
And you've just tied yourself into twenty years of raising them.
The moment Junior enters wherever it is that we are, Moon Pie will have you screwed to the wall. She won't think of it this way, yet. She'll be delighted with the cooing bundle of joy, his little fingers, his little toes, etc. But divorce usually comes. The chances are two to one that she will file: Women are more eager than men to enter marriage, and more eager to leave it -- with the kids, the house, and the child support. It won't be amicable, not after seven years. You will be astonished at how ruthless she will be, how well she knows the law, and how utterly hostile to divorcing fathers the law is.
You don't understand how bad the divorce courts are. You probably don't know what "imputed income" is. You think that "joint custody" means "joint custody." Think again. Quite possibly you will have to support her while she moves with your kids to Fukuoka with an Air Force colonel she met in a meat bar.
In short, marriage often means turning twenty-five years of your life into smoking wreckage. Yes, happy marriages exist (I personally know of one) and there are the somnolent marriages of habitual contentment or, perhaps, of quiet resignation. But the odds aren't good.
Permit me an heretical thought. In an age when neither sex economically needs the other, in which women do not need protection from wild bears and marauding savages, not in the suburbs anyway, perhaps marriage doesn't make sense, at least for men. The divorce courts remove all doubt. A young fellow might do well to stay single, keep his DNA to himself, pick such flowers as he might find along the way, and live his life as he likes.
Fred Reed
'Reassuring" is NOT what we are doing! In case you missed My previous comment, I am not some starry-eyed -or cynical- youngster enguaging in some manner of fraternal bewailment session. I am well past the twenty-something mark, and I find Myself in total agreement with many of the opinions posted here. By far the majority of us are remembering past experiences that put us in the mindset we are now, not spouting delusional fantasies about how women are generally so evil. These are what have actually happened either to ourselves or someone we knew.
I never argued that women do not take a risk in the marriage, but theirs is far smaller than the one we males take. None of this has been about dwelling on negative potentials, it has been a generally honest attempt to present the risk assessment summary to those women -and others- who do not seem to understand why we are so reluctant to marry. It has not been a "Women Are So Evil Because..." thread. Listen to these blokes, they are attempting to honestly tell you why. Not attempt to portray you and all other females as the millstone of society.
It is not that women are "so evil", not at all.
But what is true is that the evil half of the masculine archetype predominates in the media and public discourse, while the benign half of the feminine archetype is the one most likely to appear on TV, in the press, and in the legislatures.
Each of these is a distortion. Correction of the feminine half of the issue requires adding negative images to the positive. Correction of the masculine half requires adding positive images to negative ones.
Good call. Over at mensnewsdaily.com there is a forum board with a number of postings about male-bashing commercials. With these commercials, the theme tends to be that women can have it all, and men are disposable. Interestingly, that is the prevailing theme of the divorce industry too.
Good post. Fred Reed hits the nail on the head.
I disagree most vehemently. That may be true for some in the younger generation, but it is too much an over-generalizaion.
And anyways, who can truly say what it means to "be a man"? When I was involved in the previously-mentioned relationship where a child was involved, I went to work every day, did the laundry, cooked, and took care of the child as soon as I arrived home because the mother was "'tired because I've been taking care of a baby all day!" Even with all that, she still accused Me of being an @sshole because I stood firm on several issues.
I believe I was 'being a man' when I worked.
I believe I was 'being a man' when I did the cooking.
I believe I was 'being a man' when I did the laundry.
I believe I was 'being a man' when I took care of the child.
I believe I was 'being a man' when I took a strong stance on an issue.
But the last one was the one she used as her main complaint.
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