Why More Men Than Ever View Marriage as a Bad Deal

Over the last few decades, we’ve seen a revolutionary change in the way marriage works in America.

In your great-grandparents’ heyday, relationships were more about raising a family and making a living than love. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any love involved; it just means the motivations were often a little different than they are today. Women wanted to get out from under the same roof as their parents and have kids. When a woman found a decent man who treated her well and seemed like he could provide for her and her children, that was often enough of a foundation to build a marriage. After all, the country was much poorer then, so her parents couldn’t necessarily support her and she didn’t have a lot of job options. A husband was the best financial option most women had back then.

Today, most women can take care of themselves and those who can’t have the federal government helping them, so they don’t NEED a man to take care of them financially. Combine this with the fact that financial opportunities for uneducated and unskilled men are dramatically reduced from the pre-shipping container/pre-computer age and marriage has been forever changed. That male dockworker can no longer support a family by himself and even if the wealthier, more educated female executive were to marry him (and she probably wouldn’t because he has less status than she does), the marriage would be far less stable because financial need wouldn’t hold them together.

This has a lot to do with why divorce happened much less frequently in the past. Not only was it a little scandalous to get divorced, a woman had a lot more worries about how to pay her bills if she decided to go her own way. That combination of financial need and social stigma held people together. Consider that “the 1967 crude (divorce) rate was 8.7 times as large as that for 1867” and it becomes obvious that marriage was a much more certain bet for previous generations of Americans.

As the need for financial security has fallen away, “love” has become the primary motivator of people who want to marry. The problem with that is that love can be one fickle b*tch.

For most people, that hot, passionate love driven by hormones that makes you crazy for someone else typically doesn’t last forever. Additionally, as people say, “familiarity breeds contempt.” When a woman is on year three of sex with the same person, she just picked his stained underwear off the floor again and what she thought were cute little idiosyncrasies early on have started to get on her nerves, “love” has turned out to be a much less effective cement than financial necessity. That’s very important because almost 70 percent of the time the woman is the one who files for divorce.

Given that we have a justice system that rewards women and punishes men at every opportunity during and after a divorce, it’s no surprise that women are more likely to be the ones ending the marriage. Courts heavily side with women over men when it comes to custody of the children. Chances are if you’re a man in a battle for custody, you’re going to lose and then you’re going to be forced to pay through the nose for the privilege of not getting to spend as much time with your kids as you like. Speaking of which, financially, the courts still act as if we’re in the thirties. Certainly, there could be a situation where a significant alimony payment would be the only fair solution, but that should be a fairly rare occurrence in this day and age.

Imagine a secretary who makes $30,000 a year who marries a CEO making 10 million dollars a year. Five years later, they get divorced. How much does she deserve? Most women would say “half.” At least “half” of what he made while they were together. The honest answer a lot of men would give you would be “nothing.” You know how much she contributed to the man’s success in his career? Nothing of significance. How much is she worth in the working world after the marriage? About the same as she was before, plus she’s had the advantage of having her much richer husband buy her things for years that she’ll take with her. Do you know what he should owe her in that situation after five years of marriage that didn’t work out in the end? Nothing, just like she owes him. Yet and still, in many states, her husband would be expected to keep her living in the “style to which she has become accustomed.” This is exactly the reason that any MAN WHO ALREADY HAS MONEY is crazy if he doesn’t insist on a prenuptial contract before a wedding. Is that romantic? No, but neither is giving a woman who hates your guts half your money. Does it imply you’re not 100 percent sure the marriage will last? Yes, it does, but in a world where divorce is so common, no one can really be sure a marriage will last anymore. You can claim otherwise if you like, but you’re just whistling past the graveyard. I’ve known women who divorced a husband because he lost his job and had trouble finding another one; because she wanted to relive her party years at 35 years old with two kids; because she decided her husband wasn’t manly enough; it goes on and on and on. What I am telling you is that there are no guarantees and your sweet, reasonable honey who loves you to death may decide she wants out of the marriage and turn into a monster once she has a lawyer whispering in her ear during the divorce. Guess what? Usually, the guy never sees it coming.

This can lead to a situation where you’re paying for the lifestyle of a woman who doesn’t want to be with you anymore and is using your kids as a weapon against you while you struggle financially. I know more than one man who has been in this situation. Almost every man does these days. Some people would tell you that’s just the price of marriage. “Hey, if she’s not worth that, then don’t get married.” But how often does the opposite situation happen? How often is a woman stuck paying the bills for her ex-husband while he has the kids after he decided he “just wasn’t in love” anymore? I’ve never heard of a situation like that, although I’m sure it has probably happened. This is an enormous risk that marriage entails for men, but generally not for women.

You also can’t underestimate the impact of having reliable female birth control and women pursuing their careers. Between college and many women trying to climb the career ladder, marriages are occurring later than ever. There was a time in American history when 80% of people were married by 21. That is no longer true.

Barely half of all adults in the United States—a record low—are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data. In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years.

The longer you wait to get married, the less of a chance there is that the marriage will produce children. Take the potential of having children out of the equation and marriage is even less appealing to many men. Keep in mind that single women can now easily avoid pregnancy and have become much more promiscuous than they used to be. Does that mean every single guy is getting laid left and right? Not at all, but it does mean that sex is much more available to the average single man than it was 100 years ago. In other words, even if a man never gets married, he doesn’t have to forego sex. In fact, he has the opportunity to have sex with multiple women, an attractive proposition to most men that would be denied to him if he were married. On top of that, he doesn’t have to take on any burdens. He’s not financially responsible for his girlfriend. He doesn’t have to take care of the kid she had with another guy five years ago. There’s no potential for a brutal divorce if things don’t work out. Typically, women are the ones who grew up dreaming of the perfect wedding and the commitment that followed. Most men just grew up dreaming of having sex with beautiful women.

At one time, those two fantasies had to merge. When our society was less promiscuous, the man needed to get married to have regular access to sex. He got what he wanted and she got what she wanted. Is that still true today? The numbers say “No.”

Back in the early 1990s, the average American had sex about 60 to 62 times per year, but that number dropped to less than 53 times per year by 2014. Among married couples specifically, the drop was even more dramatic - from about 73 times per year in 1990 to 55 in 2014. This actually brings the sex lives of married couples below people who've never been married, who have sex about 59 times per year as of 2014. So if you’re a man, getting married may very well mean LESS SEX and with the same woman instead of potentially sleeping with multiple women. It also means risking a soul-ripping divorce where the court system will be stacked against you. Oh, and don’t even mention the old, “Getting married? Wow, I’ll be treated like a king!” fantasy that men had once. Today, you’re more likely to be treated to demands that you do half the weekly housework.

When you look at that sort of thing, it’s easy to understand why some men are simply opposed to marriage. I am not one of those men, but I will tell you the scales have tipped too far against men in marriage. By that, I mean that unless something changes that shifts the institution of marriage back onto more favorable ground for men, marriage will have great difficulty recovering in America. Since marriage is one of the most important building blocks of a successful society, that’s something none of us should want.

Those numbers cannot be correct based on CDC reports:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm

2014: 6.9% rate per 1000 population is marriage rate, and 3.2% is divorce/annulment rate. Which means the rate of divorce to marriages is less than 50% range. 3.2 % of 1000 is 32, and 6.9% of 1000 is 69; that means 47 of those marriages survived of the 6.9% marriage rate.

Where are the statistics page for the other percentages?

That’s exactly the kind of smarmy crap that makes American women so unbearably obnoxious.

For those guys who haven't figured it out yet, women are hardwired to have very little empathy for men. They can break a nail and cry and demand that the world stop, but a man with a knife through his chest just needs to stop being such a big baby. Meanwhile (most) men are hardwired to be over-sympathetic to women.

In other words, never look to a woman to sympathize with your plight, especially when that sympathy might interfere with her sense of entitlement.

we older men should communicate these lessons to younger men.

choose the women you associate with wisely and be extremely clear headed that you can be thrown in jail and your life ruined just because she feels upset.

Ask around, most of us would be shocked at how many of our buddies have been ‚convicted‘ of domestic violence.

THE ACTUAL CDC STUDY ASCRIBES A 68-70% PROBABILITY OF A FIRST MARRIAGE LASTING 10 YEARS.

Check it out. On page 18, Table 7...there it is, in black and white.

Despite what the media says, America remains an nation largely of married folks. Using the IRS’ SOI data, 54 million filers in 2014 out of 149 million filers were Married filing jointly, with about 29 million being married filing single. That’s a whole lot of married people.

The divorce rate is not 50% - this is one of the most abused statistics out there...the divorce rate is NOT the quotient of annual marriages and divorces...the divorce rate is #of annual divorces divided by number of marriages at the beginning of the year.

While the 2014 divorce total of 814k excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, and Minnesota, let’s be conservative and gross up 814k by 20%/close to the percentage of electoral votes those states represent...about one million divorces versus about 64 million marriages (54 million married filing jointly couples plus 29/2 million married filing single) is 1/68.5 or a 1.5% divorce rate. BOOM!

No, the NUMERIC TRUTH is Americans love marriage, love the institution of marriage, and have not caved in to magazines and the media, pushing an anti-marriage agenda. Americans voting with their lives generally belie that false narrative.

Lets see how to get only 6.6% of marriage survive 10 years.

In the same data it also states the marriage rate is 6.8 per 1000 and divorce rate is 3.4 per 1000.

So it seems 50% marriage will last.

From the pew research site, it states that 40% of marriage is remarriage. So the rate for divorce + remarriage is 6.12 while the marriage rate is 6.8. That means first time marriage that end in failure can go up to 90%.

However it should be less then 90% because we are not accounting for people who married for more then one time get divorce again. If we use the statistic of 40% of divorce are from remarriage and should not be counted again, first time marriage failure maybe as low as 70%.

So it is at minimum 70% and maximum 90%. Given that some people have surviving second marriages, or dies before getting second / third divorce, the numbers move closer to 90%.

For whites, the remarriage rate is 60% so the minimum failure rate rise to 80%. So it is likely 90% of brothers that marry are divorce at least once.

So yeah 90% of first time marriage failure does not seem too exaggerated. And the non white brothers first marriage failure rate does not fall too far behind.

So we know the 50% marriage failure rate is a lie, they just need to hide the remarriage statistic.

This is true but marriage can be just as bad for a woman with money, if not worse. If the husband messes up, he has spent HER money, doesn’t help with the kids, how is that not a bad deal for the woman? I’m with the burnt guys here, as a woman, because I gave and gave and gave and ended up screwed. Not seeing the upside to marriage unless you literally approach it from the start like a full on business deal. I was a dumb romantic.

But it soon became evident that they were not I interested in equality, but in superiority.

This bothers me about the gay agenda. At first I was supportive of human rights, being treated kindly, rights of hospital visits, family inheritances etc. now it’s gone to gay people wanting more rights than straights, especially social advantages.

Oh. I was exactly like your wife. I’m not bragging, I’ve got my faults and all, but I was loyal and devoted and generous and understanding...

So I had to use my good retirement $ to support myself and the kids when he took time off from all responsibilities.... I now 20-20 hindsight see no advantage to me for having been so devoted and loyal and loving.

Please read your own link, and the “ Marriage the First Ten years.” It says Women have a 50% chance of divorce in first ten years...

Overall, marriage is now under the 50% mark, but not 68-70% in first ten years, as I read your link!

I am not against marriage, I have a good one. And if CA were included it might raise the divorce rate. Read your own link article that says it is about 50% for women in first ten years.

Also the link statistics includes deaths, which they said are rare in 1st 20 yrs of marriage. In the CONCLUSION it said Women/Men in first marriage at 20 yrs was 52% for women, and close to same for men, forgot %.

There is a point around 10 yrs, it is what DoodleBob said, on the chart...68-78%. Which is close to the 47 marriages succeeded(68.1%) vs 69 marriages (ALL pr 10000, less 22 divorces, that I found using the CDC stastics, I posted.

THE LONG VIEW at 20 years, even in DoodleBob link, does take us back to the 50-55% range....sadly.

I was lucky that a friend of mine worked with a govt. lawyer;

My ex had been sleeping with her boss (bank boss.. go figure), and I finally caught them.
I was willing to forgive her, but she wanted to go where the money was (her boss).

My MIL was threatening to drain every penny from my life, until my friend talked to her and threatened to publicly publish all of the gory details of what caused the divorce in the first place, backed by his lawyer friends (and copies of ex’s e-love-mails back and forth with her boss)...

MIL never bothered me again, and all I lost was my life with my ex.

(BTW, FIL was on my side and called his daughter a filthy slut, right in front of me)

My apologies, but Table 7 is quite clear that the percentages of surviving ten years is 68% for women and 70% for men. Indeed, on page 7 the narrative is clearer:

In 2006–2010, the probability of a first marriage lasting at least 10 years was 68% for women and 70% for men. Looking at 20 years, the probability that the first marriages of women and men will survive was 52% for women and 56% for men in 2006–2010. These levels are virtually identical to estimates based on vital statistics from the early 1970s.

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