Why Bother
February 13, 2008
5:22 AM CST
The non-lawyer half of the InstaCouple says this:
“Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them.”
I think women don’t understand how clinical men can be when it comes to analyzing a relationship. (Note: just because we don’t talk about our relationship with you, doesn’t mean we don’t analyze it.)
Here’s how I explain it. I think that men keep a running ledger going in their subconscious—all the good/great things about their relationship on the one side, and all the bad/terrible things on the other. At some point or another, if the perceived negatives outweigh the positives, the man will quit the relationship—I mean, just bail out of the whole thing—and usually with a swiftness and finality which confounds women.
Because we’re guys, we don’t talk about this much—even, or especially with other men, and hardly ever with women. But it’s a plain fact.
Now, because we’re guys, certain things have a disproportionate effect on both the good and bad things: on the good side, sex, food and shared interests being probably the best examples; on the bad, infidelity, constant nagging and invasion of privacy constitute the negative. The degree of each, good or bad, will vary among individual men, of course. Some men will put up with almost anything if the sex is of the “bed on fire” variety, for instance, while others will walk out of a relationship for something as trifling as compulsory weekly visits to Mom (hers).
Frankly, it doesn’t matter what these things are. What’s important is that they are each weighed, and applied to the ledger. And when the negatives consistently outweigh the positives, the man will say (to himself), “You know what? This isn’t worth the hassle. The hell with it.”
And once that decision is made, the relationship is over. Now, it may take a long time for all that to happen. Men are not accounting machines, and this is not a daily, or even a regular process. But it takes place in every man, sooner or later, when the negatives get too much to live with.
What’s interesting about all this is that as men grow older, the process becomes a lot quicker—mostly, it should be said, because younger men can put up with almost anything if they’re getting laid. As men get older and sex becomes less important, however, the “bullshit” factor and the tolerance thereof become more important.
I am not interested, incidentally, in hearing the female side of this. The topic is “why men are putting off getting married”. Here’s why.
All the great advantages of the women’s liberation movement have created an environment which, frankly, does not leave men with much. We can’t flirt with women at school, college or at the office anymore, because one man’s “flirting” has become another woman’s “sexual harassment” and the punishments for such transgressions are not only severe, they’re permanent—crippling a man’s career and prospects thereof.
When a woman can get pregnant outside wedlock, and still hound a man forever for child support (with the enthusiastic support of the State), is it any wonder that men, even though ruled by their sex drive, might actually step back a little and think with their heads? And once married, if a divorce becomes a later reality, he stands a real risk of losing access to his kids forever, because if Milady is feeling vengeful—and most do, in a divorce—the merest suggestion of “endangerment” or “violence”, and he is completely screwed, forever, even if the allegation is a complete falsehood.
I am not denying, by the way, that men have brought a lot of this on themselves. But remember, men are more clinical about relationships than women are. It is an absolutely certainty that men read all the news about some guy losing his right to own a gun just because a spiteful ex-wife filed a nonsensical claim of “abuse”, or guys getting ruined because of an intemperate offhand comment at the office, or even, good grief, getting hit up for child support after having been an anonymous sperm donor—and ask: ”Looks like the rules are all in her favor. Remind me: what’s in this ‘marriage’ thing for me , again?”
And the fact that women have become more sexually liberated doesn’t help matters. The old saw is true: why would a man go to the trouble of buying, stabling and feeding a cow, when milk’s available at the supermarket?
Remember: the early post-adolescent years are the time in men’s lives when they are most ruled by their sex drive. If the drive can be constantly sated by willing women, can anyone be surprised that when the sex drive starts to fade in importance, men look at all the other parts of a relationship, and find that the game just isn’t worth the hassle?
At ages 19 to about 27, men are at their most vulnerable for marriage, because the nice thing about married sex is not that it’s necessarily great, but that it’s pretty much always available, without too much work involved.
But if during those early years women don’t get their hooks into a man soon enough, the job becomes progressively harder as the man ages. So if women spend those early adult years building themselves a career and “fulfilling themselves” at the expense of getting married, they will find that when they do finally want to settle down and get married, men are no longer as welcoming as they were before.
And the foundations of all that were put down when women tried to stop men from being like men. Even with sex involved, men will always apply “The Ledger” to a relationship. Without sex, men are, quite simply, unwilling to put up with all the shit that a woman brings to the party. And when men feel that the dice are constantly loaded against them, they’ll simply refuse to play the game, at all.
None of this, incidentally, applies to the lucky men and women who found their soulmates—but I have to tell you, life isn’t much like the deliriously-happy couples on eHarmony.com. For every blissful couple in the ads, there are literally millions for whom a relationship is not a joy, but a wearisome chore.
What feminism hath wrought is simple: if men are to treat women as equals, then they will treat them like men—or at best, they will not treat them like women.
One more time: I’m not interested in hearing The Other Side Of The Story from women. We’ve heard little else for the past thirty years. The question was: why are men getting married later, if at all?
This post is the answer, and women should not be shocked by its conclusions.
The saddest part of this is that all things being equal, most men actually enjoy being married, and look forward to it. It’s nice to have someone to come home to, someone with whom you can just be yourself, and someone to share the wonderful joys of having kids. And don’t kid yourselves, the sex is great. A buddy of mine, married to his childhood sweetheart for over twenty years, put it to me this way: “A lot of the time, the sex [between longtime marrieds] is fine, or just so-so. But every once in a while, it’s fantastic, tremendous, brilliant, and better than you could ever ever get from a stranger.”
The men who are resisting being married are cutting themselves off from all this—and women should ask themselves why this is the case, without resorting to the “men are just refusing to grow up” bullshit. They’re not refusing to grow up: this is the reaction to the constant belittlement and the infantilizing treatment they’ve been exposed to all their lives.
Thanks to no-fault divorce laws, men are essentially handing their balls to women to crush any time they want, and all too often, the woman does so. That certainly doesn’t add to a man’s willingness to marry.
