Why men aren't marrying

OP....

talked semi-reasonaly about some gender issues. Agreed with a lot of it.
Starting to bring himself down by complaining about welfare to go along with his gender issues...

....and OP fails

 

i think some of the blame is on the parents as well. in my circle of friends a lot of their parents keep literally nagging and complaining on the subject of why haven't they (my friends) gotten married yet and had kids. most of my friends are in the 27-35 age bracket. it sounds like the parents have some inborn timer kicking in once their kids are past ca 25 or so, and the older they get the more panicky and insisting the parents get on the marriage issue. there exists this expectation in the parents' head that their adult kids should marry, have kids, and if they haven't done so then they should be pressured and reminded of the subject (as if they would suddenly forget the possibility of marriage on their own) as often as possible.

what is it their business, i wonder. it's not your life, not your say, so keep it shut. i don't know for sure, but some guys might conform to their parents' pressure like this. and weirdly, it's usually mothers who do this, fathers, at large, tend to leave their adult kids alone and have an attitude along the lines of 'there's-enough-time-for-that', 'no-rush'.

so there is a definite tendency toward insisting on marriage in principle alone from female direction, whether it's females who want to become wives or females who are mothers of their adult children.

so i do understand how a guy can get frustrated when pressured like this. what i do not understand is why men give in to this when they do not want to marry. i don't know, i've always done what i wanted to do and pushed my will through so it seems so easy from my perspective to just say no to any outside pressure whatever the subject is. and people don't even try to pressure me to anything because they've learned i would just tell them to go to hell and do it my ways anyway. so it works. i don't know why it doesn't work for other guys?

a close relative of a friend of mine is 37 or 39 and he's a bachelor. he has a wife with whom he's lived together for ca 20 years now. they have 2 kids. her parents try to hint ever so ''subtly'' (not really) to get him to marry her. his parents are fully satisfied with how things are. at one family dinner her mom asked his parents why he hadn't proposed to their daughter yet. she kept bugging them about it, and finally the guys' dad replied, ''it must be that your daughter doesn't quite have what it takes then''. that shut that woman up quick. hasn't opened her mouth on the subject since.

my uncle is a bachelor. he's in his 50s. lives with the same female for over 20 years now. they have a son. never even intends to get married. has it all. the houses, the kid, the dog, the cars. why would he need to add marriage to this? there's absolutely no reason to justify such a thing. everything works exactly the same as for married couples in their household. so why can't other guys who don't want to marry but do so anyway do it this way as well?

it puzzles me. i don't know why guys marry, fully knowing the risks, and --more importantly-- not even fully wanting to get married, and then complain about it later. isn't it easier to not just marry in the first place?

 

lol@ this first post of this thread (all I've read so far....okay, and not even that... just some of it.) the funny thing is...get married or don't. No one cares. But the funny thing about you saying "so what (or whatever you said, lol) if we just wanna have fun...blah blah blah" and "there are NO benefits to a guy getting married".... the FUNNY thing (so far in this thread) to me is that by the time someone is done "having fun" and maybe wants to get married.... well, the joke would be on them if they chose they want to later... (I should say the joke COULD be on them) because by that point, most of the women worth marrying... already married. Oh and the benefits of marriage? Well, if you had a good marriage (just like any good, long-term relationship even if it's not marriage per say)--- those benefits would be realized later. After the gloating guy is done having fun and getting old and health issues and friends not around.... oops, no one around for companionship anymore. Now of course that would only apply to the benefits... or what is missing...from a good marriage or relationship. But believe me, they do exist and I can guarantee my husband realizes the benefits of being married to me.

 

OP has a point, but he's speaking purely from generalizations. Women are seen as the ones who have all the legal advantages in marriage and divorce and that they are going to take full advantage of the edge they have. They trap men and have them cater to their every need, such as purchasing them rings, jewelry, goodies and giving them status by being able to ride in a nice expensive car and being able to say that their kids are all fed without WIC and stamps. They like the benefit of marrying a man with a big expensive house that they OWN not RENT. In short, women are looking for a man who can provide its in their nature.
Not all women are like that though, there are those out their who don't give a shit how much you make. But they still want you to be there for them, hold the door open, respect them, and provide for them as best you can(so long as your trying with all your might they don't care if your on stamps, and if your feeding the kids with WIC).
My recommendation to men who are deathly afraid of being taken advantage of by a gold digger is to toss all the gold aside, and step down from your high paying job as a doctor or lawyer before you get married. If you don't have any gold to dig, then the gold diggers will be weeded out.
To be honest, I feel that this is just another one of the disadvantages of middle class life. If your college educated and making quite a bit more than your average joe working in a call center or stocking shelves at a grocery store, your going to attract women who will not compromise on having all the things appropriate for a certain level of "status". So if your single, just out of college with a high paying job and you love living life cheap with a crummy clunker and a not so nice home your going to surprise any woman who was attracted to the fact that you got "x" job which they know pays a substantial salary. Then once you marry.... well.... there going to expect to reap all the benefits of middle class living, and unless they are miserly(women generally are NOT even the poor ones they just dont buy a bunch of junk cuz they dont have the money in the first place).

 

The most worrying trend for me is the tendency of some governments to deem couples legally married by sheer fact of having had a long relationship as comfirmed by witnesses whether or not the marriage actually took place. I think it would behoove men to keep updated on these laws.

Women are nowadays the biggest voting block in most countries and they have precedents of lobbying governments to intrude upon men's intimate lives in ways convenient to women only.

There's no doubt in my mind that marriage (and often childbearing) is solely about money; a financial calculation for women and nothing else. Every other hypocritical euphemism women use for marriage (same as they do with sex), the L-word being foremost among them, is poorly disguised. It's enough to take a look at the financial standing of the men the overwhelming majority of women want to marry. NAWALT notwithstanding. Actions speak louder than words.

 

^I dont know ANY women who married for money. What a bitter and sad worldview you carry around. I can only deduce that you either only know rich guys and therefore run into gold diggers more than the average person, or else your mother did something once upon a time to really color your view of women in a negative way.

 

now that's not necessary really. a guy can have a negative opinion on women and had a good/decent relationship with his mother.

a lot of women also talk shit about men, in generalizations like Cherea did about women. doesn't mean all those women had a shitty dad, or had the dad do something to them to arrive at such attitude. or do you think so?

 

Nah I was more or less being facetious. Cherea's perception of women just really annoys me. I dont really care how he arrived at his opinion, I just know its misguided.

 

:troll: OINK

 

In my case.

Money.

/

 

Generalizations about men are widely accepted and aren't part of the politically correct project of rolling back freedom of speech, first by making use of the woman hater card (race card, homophobic card, etc.), deflection shaming tactics (can't get laid, must have problems with mommy, bitter), and then actually criminalizing any and all criticism of so-called minorities as "hate speech."

 

Oh good fucking god. I wasn't being entirely serious about the whole mommy issue thing AND , more importantly, i responding to a ridiculous and extremely sexist, insulting generalization you made about women. Do you even listen to yourself? Your hypocrisy and self righteousness is comical.

 

I mean, seriously?

Hilarious.

 

Speaking from experience and the ability to subjectively look at the past there are several things that I think apply. First it's maturity or immaturity. So many males don't mature to adulthood concepts until around 30. At least I didn't. The little head is in control of the big head! How can you make a rational decision on many things when your motivation is to satisfy the little head? The same applies, IMHO to education. How can you make a rational and correct decision on education, career, love, marriage and parenthood when the big head is not in control. I understand that this is somewhat of an exaggeration but what percent does it apply? More than we can really know or want to know, I suspect. When the draft was removed as a requirement for all males things changed and not for the better it appears. Not suggesting that we revert back to it but it is a topic for discussion.

With over 50% of the marriages failing what male in his right mind wants to fail? The sex free society appeals directly to the little head concepts without the probability of failure......right?

In retrospect would I have made different decisions than I did? Absolutely and my marriage has not failed but changed my life in many ways that I wish I had not had to deal with.

 

How would you define those concepts? My husband says his father told him that an adult man constantly sacrifices everything for the good of his wife and children. That's why my husband only considered serious relationships with women who have a nontraditional view of marriage. He wanted nothing to do with the old ways of thinking.

 

I see you still haven't matured enough to stop being a sycophant and telling them what they want to hear in order to get approval.

 

Clearly, men are incapable of rational thought. They should not be allowed to hold decision making positions. Women should rule the world. Then there would be no war.

Men, in their irrationality, criticize the idea that there would be no war if women ruled. They demand irrational man-things like "evidence" to support the claim.

 

this doesn't make sense. you say 50% of the marriages fail. but the people who get married do not get married expecting to fail. they expect to be on the other side of that 50%. nobody goes in wanting to fail at it, and the fact that half of the marriages do fail doesn't mean any particular marriage will end up on the rocks. and nobody even knows their marriage will fail when going into it. it's something that usually comes out after years of experience of living with another person. sometimes it includes reprioritizing some aspects of life. until it actually does fail, most people try to make it work.

also, increased rates of divorce are a byproduct of our more global society and a higher degree of personal freedom. we're all more free to live our lives the way we want to. the degree of personal freedom is at its zenith compared to any other time in history. it's no surprise more marriages fail, actually it makes perfect sense.

besides, it's not just marriages that fail. it is relationships that fail. marriage is a relationship first and foremost, just because it's legal doesn't cancel that one out, or make it any different in nature. and if you count all the relationships that fail, then they are probably at a higher rate of failure than actual marriages themselves. so it's the failure of relationships we're really talking about, not the failure of marriages.

and it is better that people who are not compatible with one another break and go on to live their lives separately than forcing themselves to be in something that they don't want to be part of. back when the marriages didn't fail this much, this was the case. people were forced to tolerate the marriage and the relevant circumstances against their will. today, we don't have to do that. and this is why divorce rates are up. it's not some magic or ill that has mysteriously befallen our society just now. it's the unavoidable consequence of personal freedom.

and not such a bad consequence compared to the alternative. considering most failed marriages fail from ill-informed decisions or unrealistic expectations, then most failures are really due to not having weighed the decision as seriously as should have been done. considering the participants usually go in it expecting it to last till the end of their lives or at least a few decades, they should really put some more weight into their decision than something as flimsy as ''i think it's time'' or peer/parental pressure, or kids. no surprises there when a marriage built on above mentioned grounds fails. so sometimes it's that individual decision-making factor that is a larger component in marital failure than some inherent fault in the relationship per se. if you're really high on making it last, and see that as a priority then put some more brains into it when you make the decision.

 

GREAT POSTING, and thank you for it. A little late for me. Getting married ruined any chance I have for even some peace of mind. Forget about happiness or joy in being alive. Nothing but unwanted obligations. This man knows what he is talking about. ...Oscar

 

This is the part of it that really bothers me, and I don't see anything changing to improve it in the future.