Shocker: People Who Will Stay Together Longer More Likely to Marry

Our "friends" at the Institute for Family Studies published another marriage-seller piece, this one by Harry Benson, who is Research Director of the UK-based Marriage Foundation.

After all, marriage rates have been falling across the developed world since the 1970s.

Good.

Cohabitation has become normalized.

Shacking up is almost as bad as marrying. Don't do it, guys.

People talk about long-term committed couples and relationships as the equivalent of marriage.

What makes something marriage, if not committing to be together?

Open Letter to Dennis Prager Regarding Encouraging Men to Marry

Dear Dennis Prager:

I'm a married father, and I earn my family's income. I wanted to get married, I was careful about who I sought as a spouse[1], and, statistically, we married at the right ages and were on track to have a successful marriage[2]. We both wanted to have children, and we did. Prior to having the children or even getting married, we agreed on how they'd be raised.

I've been gainfully employed since I was in high school, and even spent several years before I married working over seventy hours per week. I moved out of my parents' home for college shortly after graduating from high school and never moved back.

I haven't played video games since early adolescence. I have never abused alcohol or any mind-altering substances. I've read through the Bible multiple times and have studied it for decades. I have been a regular participant in adult fellowships at church that centered on marrieds and married parents, and I was steeped in the "Focus on the Family" outlook on family life. I have voted for conservative Republicans whenever I could since as soon as I could vote. I'm a longtime regular listener to your show (a P1, for sure), a reader of your columns, and have purchased and read through at least one of your books.

I've watched the Prager U videos dealing with marriage and male-female relations multiple times.

I say all of that to let you know where I'm coming from. I'm a supporter, not a hater.

Now, my point.

It's irresponsible and unfair for you to say men aren't real men unless they marry.

It is my position that most men shouldn't marry, and those who don't are still real men.

There are many men who marry because they are too weak, passive, desperate, or unwilling to be responsible for themselves. Almost all men who legally marry these days are ignorant, delusional, or masochists.[3]

Dennis Prager on the Burned "Excuse" For Not Marrying

Dennis Prager has one of the best talk radio shows and writes some of the best columns and books. He is generally a social conservative. He's a religious Jew, and if I understand correctly, he aligns most of all with Conservative Judaism. While many social conservatives rail against divorce, Prager does not. Nobody can accuse him of being a "hypocrite" for being twice divorced. (He is currently married.)

I haven't heard him or anyone else explain why he has been through two divorces, and I wouldn't expect him to. For all I know, he was a great husband in both cases and his wives simply decided to leave. I have not heard him talk about the conditions and results of his divorces, either.

Prager unabashedly promotes marrying.

Here's a disagreement I have with him.

He scoffs at the fear of divorce preventing people from (re)marrying, citing that we don't stop driving because of getting into car accidents.

Well, putting aside that some people do stop driving because of an accident, let's explore this analogy. I've heard Prager cite this analogy when addressing that a man who has been burned by divorce himself - rather than citing the divorce of his parents or siblings or friends - and is reluctant to remarry. I've never heard him ask if the person who is reluctant to remarry has minor children. Chances are, they do.

"Second" marriages with minor children have a 70% divorce rate, and that's only counting the ones that end in legal divorce, not the ones where couple is miserable (or the husband is) or separated or the marriage would have ended in divorce if a spouse hadn't died before it could happen.

Let's say that in buying and driving your first car, that no matter how good you took care of it, no matter how much test driving* you did, no matter how well you drove, it didn't stop someone else who was driving it from crashing it. As a result of that accident, you lost custody of your children, you had to leave your home, you had to pay for two legal teams, you lost half of everything you'd earned, you had to make ongoing payments to the person who crashed your car (and rather than being appreciative and apologetic, that person constantly badmouthed you to anyone who'd listen), and you had to pay a percentage of your salary to children who now hate your guts. You can even remove some of these results from consideration.

Let's say there was a 70% chance of  the same thing happening if you bought another car and let someone else drive it (which is what breadwinning men do when they marry). Would it be a good idea for you to do that?

Now add in that you can either 1) get everything you got by buying and driving your own car without doing so, or 2) live a nice life without those things.

Would it really not be valid to be "afraid" or reluctant to buy another car that someone else could drive?

Prager does acknowledge that some men are unfairly screwed over by family law and courts, and he regularly discusses the difficulties between men and women. But he has this thing about how you should fully experience life, and about how marriage makes people better, and that a guy isn't a real man unless he's supporting a wife. This is despite his insistence that dependency, when it comes to government programs, hurts people. As far as fully experiencing life and making people better, there are people who have, intentionally or accidentally, been left in a wilderness and have had to struggle to survive and make it back to civilization. That was a life experience. That made them a better person. Should we all do that, too?

Prager, at least weekly, says that happiness is a moral obligation. For some people, avoiding remarriage helps them stay happy.



Dr. Laura has taken a different approach. She strongly discourages people with minor children from remarrying, But if someone doesn't have minor children and is reluctant to remarry because of being burned in the past, or is already remarried and is not feeling secure in the relationship because of what a different spouse did in the past, she will point out that they aren't with the same person. True, but there commonalities in the laws, and courts and culture. It's a little like saying "Sure, someone stole your car when you were in that other city, but you're in this city now, with different people." It's not irrational to think there's a good chance the car may be stolen. That's one reason we have insurance. When it comes to remarrying, the best insurance is not to do it at all.



*Test driving can mean any number of things: dating, courting, fornication, shacking up. People can "test drive" without fornicating or shacking up, but others do test drive with those things. I don't recall if I've ever heard Prager's view on the moral status of intercourse, other forms of sexual interaction, or literally sleeping together. But let's not deceive anyone. There have been people who've shacked up and later decided to end their marriages, but there are also people who didn't even fornicate who've gone through divorce, too.

Twitter Disclaimer

I'm on Twitter. Here is my disclaimer.

1) When I tweet my own statements, they are my own personal statements, whether sarcastic or ironic or not. They don't represent anyone or anything else, such as an employer.

Faith

This entry is about my faith. If you have no interest in reading about that, then ignore this entry and read whichever entries here look interesting to you. Or, go do something else entirely.

"Why Can't Men Be Upfront and Honest?" - Part 5

In Part 1, I explained that men who get scarce around certain holidays and special days keep women from thinking of them as husband material, and thus are avoiding leading women on.

In Part 2, I explained that "bad boys" who aren't forthcoming and honest are rewarded with NSA sex.

In Part 3, I explained how this sorts out the women who are leading men on.

In Part 4, I showed how women often aren't upfront and honest.

Here in Part 5, I will be upfront and honest.

Here's honesty for you.

Male nature is such that what we want is frequent sex, and a variety of it at that, including what you might think of as perverted or degrading sex. We want sex with multiple young, hot women, whether one at a time or in groups. We like seeing their bodies, we like seeing them do sexual things. We want to have sex with just about any woman we see who isn't hideous. We want good food, especially if someone else is preparing it. We want appreciation, gratitude, admiration, and respect. We want to feel accomplished, and like heroes or conquerors. We want to hang out with the guys sometimes, away from women.

In this nature, we DON'T want to jump through a lot of hoops to get what we want. We don't want to pledge and live out being exclusive to one woman. We don't want our ears talked off with the same complaints over and over again, especially about something we can't or won't change; we don't want to hear criticisms, nagging, griping, whining, or endless babbling about subjects we don't care about. We don't want to pay your bills, pay your way, dance, buy you flowers or chocolates, or buy you a ring. We don't want to get "honey do lists". We don't want to be subjected to PMS, mood swings, deal with your catty friends or whacked out family, or raise another man's kids. We might be willing to do/endure these things to get what we want or because we have been indoctrinated/trained to think we're supposed to. Men who run game well mostly don't do these things.

If we could have our way, you'd have great sex with us whenever we want, never let yourself go, stop talking our ear off, take care of the kids until they are old enough to play ball or fish with us (if we want kids), keep the house clean, do the laundry, make our meals, get along nicely with our family and friends, and otherwise stay out of our way. This isn't to say we don't enjoy hanging out with you or that spouses aren't friends (especially if our testicles have just been emptied and our bellies are full - otherwise, we're focused on getting there), but there's a whole lot of things in relationships we don't naturally want to do.

There are always a few men who object. "I like dancing! I like taking a woman out on a really nice date!" There are always exceptions, outliers, guys who are in denial or have denied themselves, and not everyone wants exactly the same thing all of the time. Again, some men are sticking with an indoctrination/training or think they have to do/say these things to get what they really want.

I'm sure many of you women reading this are saying "There are things we want and don't want, too, things we tolerate in men that we'd rather not have deal with!" EXACTLY!!! That's why I encourage men to stay free. For every Free Man, there will be a free woman (unless she insists on being a sister wife or a mistress.) I encourage men to NOT subject women to things they don't want; don't get possessive of them or demanding of their time. Keep interactions to a bare minimum.

Here's an example of  guy who was doing it right.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4