Friends don’t let friends marry friends, or drive drunk.
David Popenoe’s new study published yesterday, “The State of our Unions,” demonstrates what most young men already figured out after they saw what their dads went through: If you never marry you never pay the penalty of divorce. Though Popenoe is the national cheerleader for marriage, his new study suggests something very different. As stated in the report:
“The most noteworthy changes this year are the continuing decline of the marriage rate accompanied by an increase in the number of cohabiting couples; a small increase in the percentage of children living in fragile families and born out of wedlock; and a sharp increase among teenage boys in their acceptance of unwed childbearing….”
That’s right boys, if you never marry, you can keep your car and your house and even your retirement. The cost of child support is tolerable, but the violence of joint property distribution is a 90-mile-an-hour car wreck. But what is truly best, is that if you never marry you are more likely to keep the woman you love too. There is no monetary or legal incentive for her to leave you or you her.
What Popenoe is telling us, whether he means to or not is that guys have finally figured out that the divorce industry is a booming predatory industry that eats, for the most part, straight men. If divorce is the retroactive transformation of marriage into prostitution, marriage is the contract that transforms love into slavery. John Stewart Mill in the Subjection of Women called marriage the last form of legalized slavery in the West. Little did he know how right Hegel was too: In any master/slave relationship inevitably the slave becomes the master and the master the slave.
Yes, marriage in this litigious age is dangerous, too damn dangerous for straight men. And today’s young men wisely figured out they only had to resist marriage to escape the twin perils of angry feminism and liberal legalism. But the lesson was never that far away, no further than Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Yes, women want sex and love too, just like men, and they too will stop all their wars if that is the only way they can have love and sex.
So, don’t give in boys. Don’t do it. Understand the real message in Popenoe's study, stay away from the diamond-ring counter. I know she is beautiful. She always is. But, now, finally we can have love and partnership and avoid the malice of marriage. Boys, just say no… to drugs and matrimony, and whatever you do don’t get nostalgic. If you do, just ask some old guy who lost it all because he signed the document that enslaved him to a life of spousal support, and cold cereal for dinner every night so he can afford McDonald's on the four nights a month he’s allowed to have his kids over for dinner.
Article comments
1 - Mark Ruffolo
Thanks for help to send the message that marriage is a bad deal for men.
After three years of marriage, my wife divorced me. Privately she told me she was unhappy and I did not make her happy. Publicly she called me abusive. Blessed with an only son born May 3, 2000, Mark Anthony.
Without due process, but as a matter of routine, after a fifteen minute discussion before a Kane County, Illinois family judge, I was awarded four days every month to parent our son; ordered to pay $2,600 in support; $200,000 of my savings frozen; and, an order of protection entered against me for my wife.
After three years, over one hundred court calls, $150,000 in legal fees, and three jobs, I lost a successful career; involved in a dozen incidents calling for police; imprisoned; filed for personal bankruptcy; car repossessed; and evicted from my apartment, but won joint custody in Illinois to which 17% of fathers win. Last February, however, my wife in retaliation had my visitation suspended, and still the Kane County Circuit Clerk refuses to accept $15,000 in proof of payments as credit for court ordered support paid.
I do not beleive most marriage end with this much drama, however, when push comes to shove, a woman knows that she is king of the castle as she has the courts, culture, friends, and family to support her.
I regret saying, "I do," but miss a son and wife.
Mark Ruffolo, M.S., M.B.A.
Chicago, IL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers'_rights
2 - Natalie
Well there's a reason why the majority of marriage break-ups are originated by women, and women are happier after marriages have ended. (And it is not financial situations - women on average are far poorer after divorce than men).
It is that women were and are still putting far more into marriages than men - far more housework, far more childcare and (perhaps most important of all) far more emotional effort. Men get the benefits; women get the dirty dishes and to write the thank-you cards.
If you want relationships - whatever their legal status - to last, behave like a decent human being.
And if it doesn't work out, accept that you have no claim over another individual's life and move on. (If police are called, you've done something wrong, whether or not you've broken the law.)
And no, I've never been married, and never wanted to be, having seen from a young age women getting a rough deal from an institution set up to benefit men.
3 - Marty
Marriage isn't the problem Mark. Divorce (or rather, people foolishly making life-long blood oaths that they are incapable of keeping) is the problem.
Yes, divorce is an admission that "we never should have married each other at all", but that is hardly the same as "we should never marry".
No, two people who are unprepared or incapable of keeping their committments should not make them. For the rest of us, marriage is a wonderful thing.
4 - Silas Kain
Marriage is nothing more than a creation of a private corporation -- and the government has these corporations file reports every year, they're called IRS 1040 returns.
5 - Steve S
For me, life wouldn't be complete without the partner that you build a home, a family and a lifetime of memories with.
The way society is set up, it's all so much easier to do jointly, if you get to check the 'married' box.
Now if you don't get married, how can you build what I described in the first paragraph (assuming you would want to).
Perpetual dating? Or maybe only one person on the mortgage, so when the relationship breaks up he won't lose his home? What about what all the person who wasn't on the mortgage get? Screwed?
Whether you commit to each other legally or just in your heart, the division of stuff upon breaking up should follow the same course. I realize it always doesn't but it should.
Maybe I was raised too old fashioned, and put too much sentiment into marriage. I do agree it's a business arrangement (contractual), but at the same time, it speaks volumes to me about the strength of the relationship, if I hold back on any commitment vow going into it, 'just to be safe...'
6 - Outlaw
I'm telling my sons to never marry, my wife cheated, when I found out, she took me to court accused me of beating her and the kids. I was kicked out of my house the next day, and have to pay her 1/2 of my wages. After running up legal bills to prove I didnt, she gets custody, the house, half of everything. And I get to live in a 1 bedroom apartment, visiting my kids 2 times a month. Everything I worked for goes down in the drains, and I never commited 1 crime, yet I'm treated like a criminal. I should put a bullet to my head and let you tax payers pay. Change the fucking laws.
7 - Natalie Davis
Mr. Outlaw, I sympathize. The laws often harm rather than help and it is clear that changes need to be made to make them more fair. Was it proven that your ex-spouse lied? Was there an investigation into the accusations against you? Were you acquitted? (Don't worry, I am well aware that a finding of jury doesn't mean you weren't in truth innocent. The justice system often gets it wrong.)
As horrible as your situation is, however, it doesn't refute what is factually true: In the vast majority of cases, women and kids end up with the short end of the financial stick after a divorce. That may be less true now than it once was, but not by much.
Again, I am so sorry to hear about your situation; you are in my prayers.
8 - RJ
"(If police are called, you've done something wrong, whether or not you've broken the law.)"
Well, that's a lie.
ANYBODY can call the police, for ANY reason. And, once the police arrive, it's ususally a matter of he-said, she-said.
And guess which story is going to be more believable to the cops? The sobbing female claiming abuse, or the outraged man, denying it all?
Yep. Men get screwed. And not in a good way.
9 - carmine
Steve S.,
If you found a woman with integrity to marry you, you were lucky. With the enormous profit incentive to divorce, kiss your wife and cherish her. Today she is the exception, or she just makes more money than you. See my previous entry regarding divorce and prostitution. I believe in marriage too, but not for straight men in America with the laws as they are. Shacking up is the far wiser path these days, and the Millennial kids born after 1980 figured this out. Good for them. Oh by the way I now have a wonderful wife, and it took three tries, and I hold my breath every day. Love rocks, but divorce law subverts it. Popenoe is simply scamming us based on his holy roller sociological rubbish. Marriage is a thing of the past, Popenoe mourns this, but I thank God for the sake of my two sons!
10 - Natalie Davis
*giggle*
11 - Steve S
carmine, I have a partner of almost two decades, we have never been married. As such, we have the individual protections in place, although often willingly sign them away in exchange for something jointly.
Also, having both of us have self-sufficient salaries from the beginning, is a factor in how we see things, so I couldn't become a victim of the horrible situations of marriage that you talk about, although I'm sorry to hear that they exist and hopefully we can all do something about them.
I can tell you plenty of horror stories though of couples/relationships that went through absolute nightmares because they were void of the recognition of marriage in one form or another, so it is a two way street.
Better to fix the divorce situation, rather than abandon marriage, don't you think?
12 - swingingpuss
hee-hee ;) ;) - Carmine, perhaps you should check out Steve's site - a very family-oriented blog
13 - freeza
marriage rules! those who divorce do it for petty reasond and are too hasty in getting married by marrying with a month or 2 instead of a few years!
14 - Natalie
A balanced view - marriage is not some unchanging institution.
15 - carmine
Steve,
I am a straight Log Cabin Republican. Straight people messed up marriage, and from my local experience, the Gay community seems to be fixing it. That is why I joined the Log Cabin Republicans. Good luck. We straight couples surely screwed it up, so I always vote for legalizing Gay Marriage! Please do not stop fighting. Canada won it. We straight guys need your help here!!!! Thanks.
Jim
16 - Lisa McKay
The problem, of course, with all of these "I'm a man and got screwed over by my ex-wife in the divorce" stories is that we only ever get to hear one side of the story. A decent marriage is actually very good for men - statistics show that married men fare better than unmarried men in terms of health outcomes, life satisfaction, and other measurements. It takes two people to make a marriage succeed, and when a marriage breaks up, the only logical assumption is that it took two people to make it go wrong. The degree to which a spouse feels vindictive in a divorce proceeding is probably proportionate to how badly they perceived themselves to be treated in the marriage. It's probably not a good idea to ever take one side of a "he said/she said" as the truth, since the truth most often lies somewhere between the two extremes.
And Ms. Davis is correct when she points out that it is still more often the woman (and her children) who fares badly from an economic standpoint in a divorce, which is one reason why some women opt to stay in crappy marriages for longer than they should.
17 - Jocko
Men should not get married. The system that imposes child support involves no Jury trial, and you are not given an attorney if you cannot aford one. This in itself is a dangerous truth but it gets worse, the system flat out favors women, and if you are a low income male you will not get custody or joint custody, and truly you will be lucky if you ever get regular access to your kids again.
There is a moron who has responded to these postings, who is babbeling about jury trials. Ignore that fool, as they have never been divorced.