Why men won't marry!
Find a Conversation
| Mon, 10-16-2006 - 2:16pm |
This is a spin off of my thread on "How many women feel this way?", which basically centered around a discussion I was having as to why women aren't finding mates even though single men abound, and if that was a sign of things to come, who was suited better to live alone decade after decade: man or woman?
Anyway, this weekend a few of the guys got together for Football Sunday, and the topic of an article came up that was written by Matthew Weeks. It had been emailed to us last week by another friend and we all agreed to the jist of it..., that basically there was no good reason whatsoever to get married. That came from 5 single guys: 2 engineers, one cook, one fireman, and an office manager. I'm really curious what you women feel about it????
Instead of posting the link I will simply paste it here:
*****The Marriage Strike
By Matthew Weeks
For those of you who know me in real life, this will not come as a surprise, but I have no designs on ever getting married. Now, it appears I am not alone in my disposition.
"Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage," a study released by researchers Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, concludes that men are, indeed, more apprehensive about getting married than before.
"The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in our nation's history," Mr. Popenoe remarked in the Washington Times. "If this trend of men waiting to marry continues, it is likely to clash with the timing of marriage and childbearing for the many young women who hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with declining fertility," he continued. You know this is a collegiate study when an examination of a trend that is affecting men is used to fret about the state of women.
The study contains several possible explanations for this phenomenon, based on interviews with 60 single men, 25 to 33, who live in four parts of the country. While that level of measurement certainly is not statistically significant enough to reflect any kind of a national trend, responses generally revolved around the possibilities of suffering huge losses if the marriage ends in divorce. ("An ex-wife will take you for all you've got" and "men have more to lose financially than women" were common refrains, the study reports.)
To humor the study's results for a few minutes, let's examine whether or not these young men's concerns are justified. If we accept the old feminist argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is undeniable that -- given the current state of the nation's family courts -- divorce is slavery for men.
Take a hypothetical husband who marries and has two children. There is a 50 percent likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does, the odds are 2-1 it will be the wife who initiates the divorce. It may not matter that the man was a decent husband. The reality of the situation is that few divorces are initiated over abuse or because the man has already abandoned the family. Nor is adultery cited as a factor by divorcing women appreciably more than by divorcing men.
The new trend that has taken hold of the court system is what as known as the "no fault" divorce, in which the filing party needs only to cite their general discontent with the marriage in order to be granted a hearing. Women initiate these unilateral divorces-on-demand 3 times as often as men.
While the courts may grant the former spouses joint legal custody, the odds are nearly 40 to 1 of the wife winning physical custody. Overnight, the husband, accustomed to seeing his kids every day and being an integral part of their lives, will now be lucky if he is allowed to see them even one day out of the week.
Once the couple is divorced, odds are at least even that the wife will interfere with the husband's visitation rights. Three-quarters of divorced men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and 40 percent of mothers studied admitted that they had done so, and that they had generally acted out of spite or in order to punish their exes.
Then, of course, there is the issue of financial losses due to court-imposed payments. In the end (99 times out of 100), the wife will keep most of the couple's assets and --if they jointly own one -- the house. The husband will need to set up a new residence and pay at least a third of his take-home pay to his ex in child support, on top of whatever alimony payments the courts impose upon him. These can run as high as another third of his income. (Add the cost of taxes to that and the man gets to keep exactly 13% of his take-home pay -- he'd better pray that's enough to keep him alive.)
But as bad as all of this is, it would still make our hypothetical man one of the lucky ones. After all, he could be one of those fathers who cannot see his children at all because his ex has made a false accusation of domestic violence, child abuse, or child molestation. Or a father who can only see his own children under supervised visitation or in nightmarish visitation centers where dads are treated like criminals.
He could be one of those fathers whose ex has moved their children hundreds or thousands of miles away, in violation of court orders, which courts often do not enforce. He could be one of those fathers who tears up his life and career again and again in order to follow his children, only to have his ex-wife continually move them.
He could be one of the fathers who has lost his job, seen his income drop, or suffered a disabling injury, only to have child support arrearages and interest pile up to create a mountain of debt which he could never hope to pay off. Or a father who is forced to pay 70 percent or 80 percent of his income in child support because the court has imputed an unrealistic income to him. Or a dad who suffers from one of the child support enforcement system's endless and difficult to correct errors, or who is jailed because he cannot keep up with his payments. Or a dad who reaches old age impoverished because he lost everything he had in a divorce when he was middle-aged and did not have the time and the opportunity to earn it back. Our imaginary man might consider himself lucky if he knew what his life could have been.
Over five million divorced men in America are currently experiencing the situation I just outlined. Without a doubt, their stories and experiences are heard by unmarried men. Can anyone truly blame the men for having apprehension? They stand to gain little and lose everything they've worked for in their entire lives should they "take the plunge", so to speak.
So ladies, if you have a problem with this, speak to your feminist brethren. This is the legacy which they have left behind. By erasing the stigma of premarital sex and encouraging physical liberation, they have eliminated one of the most powerful incentives in history for men to tie the knot. By advocating government as a surrogate husband in the case of single motherhood, they have eliminated the disincentive for women to file for divorce. And through decades of litigious activism, they have given rise to the bloated and intrusive family court system and stacked it so egregiously against the men of this country that it now appears they are subconsciously engaging in what could be called a "marriage strike", preferring to play the odds rather than assume a massively disproportionate amount of risk.
As for the men, make no mistake, they are slowly beginning to realize that the power is now in their favor. They have more and more perfectly legitimate reasons for remaining unmarried every day. Given a choice between not marrying one's lady friend -- assuming no risk whatsoever and still having the historical benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.) available to them, or marrying the woman and having a 50-50 chance of their lives being utterly destroyed should the woman so much as be "unhappy" with the marriage, the decision is a no-brainer. What women perceive as a "fear of commitment" is really nothing more than a pragmatic assessment of the odds facing men in the prospect of a marriage.
Therefore, the trends evident in this study are not much of a surprise. I would wager that if the study were conducted nationally, similar results would be produced. Of course, such a study would invariably seek to address the grievances of the dejected single women of the country. My advice to them would be simple: offer to sign a prenuptial agreement that outlines the exact terms of a possible divorce: how assets would be divided, how any alimony and child support would be handled, and other vital elements that may be causing apprehension. And don't be insulted if your potential mate asks you to sign one, or if he desires terms that will be equitable to him. No matter how strong your love may be for one another, the demand for eligible bachelors willing to commit to marriage is currently exceeding the supply, and if you won't sign it, odds are that there's another woman out there who will.
End****
Now I would go so far as to say that this may even be the reason men are unwilling to get emotionally tied to women too. I mean, if you know you're not going to get married..., and you are in a sexual relationship with a woman..., wouldn't it be best to not let yourself fall in love with her? It would be best to just have fun until things started getting all emotional and intense..., and then just move on. Or like in my case..., don't even date at all..., just live your life fulfilling your sexual needs through "friends with benefits".
Adrastos

Pages
Boy did you get it all wrong with my post.
My point was that people need people. People can devote as much of their lives to their art, passions or religion but they still need people. Mother Theresa still had a companionship in her life even though she never married. She found value in other people. The men that were interviewed in the article were more concerned about money and material things as excuses not to marry.
I specifically said companion. If you have a companion in life, then who cares what the circumstances of that companionship are? Companion in my world does not equal to the opposite sex. If its a very good friend, fine. If its a FWB, fine. If its a long term gf/bf fine. I dont care what other people do as long as they live their own lives and are happy. My definition of a good life may surprise you and it definitely does not require a "man."
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I can assure that my obssession with the opposite sex is pretty low and my world doesnt revolved around men. I would say that my current long-term relationship and its circumstances speaks of it.
We'll agree to disagree I suppose.
Again, the post was about men who find more value in money and material things than people. And my post was about value in PEOPLE. See previous post.
Not sure where you came up with the idea that I believe that people should stay in unhappy or abusive relationships. Dont think that was even implied.
Oh, but I don't have a problem with it. At all. If men don't want to marry, then more power to them. Why should I care? At any rate, I have a wonderful husband. But even if I didn't, it wouldn't be the end of my life.
The fact that men go on these ridiculous diatribes leads me to believe they doth protest too much about not wanting to get married. Its a free country (at least here in the U.S.) and if you don't wanna get married, then you don't have too!
Leafy,
Hahaha ... that's exactly what I think when I read another one of these posts. The more someone says he or she doesn't want to get married, the more I think they are needy and have a great desire to find a partner. Or why waste your time worrying about it and putting posts up on ivillage?
Feisty
"" how men value their money and things more than love, so they don't marry since they could end up losing all of their money and things in a divorce. ""
How about that they loved the woman & she turned into a shrew & took everything. That the man was so heartbroken that he was nothing more to a paycheck to her. So he resolves to not let that happen, to himself, to a buddy, to a stranger. Once bitten, twice shy.
That's what I got out of it.
So many people (men & women) are still stuck on the notion of Man as the Great Provider. He should make more money, he should work, she should stay home with children. I've met more than one couple where she works, makes 6 figures, & he stays home with the kids.
This resurfaced a little out of nowhere...but just thought I'd throw my two cents in since I wasn't on this board when it was originally posted.
Marriage is a creation of society (in my opinion....albeit an old one) and many people stay together, perfectly content and committed, for years upon years without that formal "married" title stamped on them. Personally, I have no problem with it. Right now I do see myself getting married someday, but if "men" don't want to, "men" don't have to. I don't care. I do feel, however, that the author of this article is using these stats to the benefit of his own cause without there necessarily being any causation proven...and we forget that WOMEN are also getting married later, too, because we don't feel the need to settle down at 22 and become a housewife and mother. So I'd put the phenomenon more on women then men; WE want to get married later, we CAN get married later.
I DON'T necessarily think focusing on other things is such a terrible idea, in a sense, because I would think it's beneficial to individuals and the marriage itself (or so it would seem, what do I know?) for both people to be reasonably financially stable and have a sense of direction in life before committing to another person for the rest of their lives.
Maybe I'm idealistic, maybe I'm an optimist, maybe I'm too young to be fully jaded about this yet, but I can't stand when people say that people are getting horrible or worse or whatever. Compared to what?? Compared to some unrealistic standard that doesn't exist?? Other than that, the only thing I can compare people today with is the oppressed, patriarchal American society of the past. Sure, that was all well and good for white males, but what about the rest of the population?? Women had no options other than to be a wife and mother, minorities often had even less choice than that...no voting, no freedom, no say in very much...I think society's always going to have its problems, but what's SO bad about today??
(A certain very famous talk radio host to a young man wondering if he should get married someday)
" Don't. Just find a woman you hate, buy her a house and be done with it. 'Cause that will be the end result anyway."
First of all, I think that's absurd. I will be perfectly content if I'm not married until I'm 30. Not married is different than being single; I don't want to be single until I'm 30, but I'm comfortable not making that commitment until then AND I'm an intelligent, talented, and I like to think reasonably attractive woman. I'll probably have the chance to get married, but I also don't want to get divorced, so I'm going to KNOW it's right before I get into it, to know what I'm in for. For me, it has nothing to do with money, I'd prefer to at the very least be ABLE to support myself and I want no part in taking a man I used to love for all he's worth, I'm just not spiteful. I just have no interest in going through the emotional pain and angst of a divorce. People rushing into marriages to early is precisely what CAUSES many divorces.
>> It was meant for the woman to be in the house and the man the provider!
People CAN do both. I think both parents should care for their children and THAT is what's a problem with parenting today. Some men think they do enough of their part bringing home the bucks without doing much else to help raise their children. I think it's fine (and smart) for women to want to raise their children, but I also don't think that means they can't have a career and a life...one of my best friends is 23 with two children and started her own, now quite successful, business.
Ha. As much as I don't like this certain famous talk show host, that is kind of funny. :)
Marriage/divorce does make me nervous, but I like to think it can work...and I do see that in some people. I think some people just rush into it too quickly with the wrong person.
Maybe the answer comes down to this-- THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES IN LIFE. And once everyone in our modern world accept that fact everyone will be happier and more willing to open their hearts to the possibilities of life and love.
Marriage is a risk. Leaving your job for greener pastures is a risk. Buying a home is a risk. Living is a risk. You can go to the doctor for a sore throat and fever and walk out with a diagnosis of cancer. You can eat all the health food and exercise every morning and still, you can get sick and die young. How does that saying go? Man plans, God laughs.
So what does the writer of this article suggest men do? Find an occasional friend with benefits who he can order up like a pizza because that will guarantee financial stability? And just cower away in solitude avoiding the chance that he could get divorced?
For that matter, why doesn't he just tell his readers to stay in the same job and give up your dreams because it's too risky to do otherwise. Never buy a home because it's too risky and there's a risk of foreclosing if the market crashes.
While he's at it, why doesn't he tell them to avoid travelling because there's a chance the plane might crash?
Or you could drive to the local drug store and get into an accident leaving you paralyzed.
The possibilities are endless.
Pages