Wanting to be a Husband or Father

Guys, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a desire to be a "husband and father."

What I mean by that is that most people want some amount of companionship, and most people want to reproduce.

Society has traditionally channeled these into marriage. When most of us were living on family farms, that made sense. A man could get his own farm hands (and before that, hunting assistants) by growing them himself. Eventually, he'd get injured or ill or otherwise feeble and his progeny could take care of him and then bury him. To get those farm hands, he needed at least one woman. The woman would also provide companionship for him. He had incentive to protect her and the young children and make sure they had food to eat, and to teach those children (what some might call "mansplaining"). A woman could often feed the youngest children from her own body via breastfeeding.

For a man, underlying the desire to raise children was his desire to create his own assistants and allies. The desire for female companionship usually, conveniently, enabled the creation of those children.

But life has changed.

Do you really want to be a husband and father? Or is it that you have a desire to have sex and you think the only or best way to do that is be married? Is it that you want you want to pass down what you know and you think being a father is the best way to do that?

We don't live on rural family farms anymore.

Children are not ours. They belong to the state - functionally, not morally.

You can have sex and other forms of companionship without signing a terrible state contract. You can have professional assistants without having a wife or children. You can pass along what you know to people you never meet. You can hire professional caretakers and service providers, especially if you've invested your earnings well.

Do not equate a desire to have sex with a desire to raise children. Children are one natural result of sperm entering egg. But that doesn't mean you actually want to be a father in today's world just because you want to have sex. Get a vasectomy, and you have have sex every day without having any children.

Do not equate the desire of wanting to have sex or other forms of female companionship with wanting to sign a terrible state contract, or even agreeing to supposed exclusivity. You can have female companionship without those things.

Do not assume you have to pursue everything you desire. Most of the marriage sellers out there will tell you it's destructive to pursue everything you desire. And they are right. They just don't apply that to getting married, or even more, they tell you to get married even if you don't want to!

Maybe you even have good reasons you want to marry and raise children (most people don't... they just go ahead and do it... if you're a man who thinks he has good reasons you can leave them in the comments). But even having good reasons to might not (and probably doesn't) override the good reasons NOT to.

Life has changed a lot since most people lived most of their lives on family farms. It has also changed a lot in just the last 40 years. In modern countries, women have full access and opportunity both in law and culture. They can thrive independently, just like a man can. If you're fortunate to perceive you had the kind of family life in your childhood that you want to recreate, well, you can't. Life has moved on. And being the father is far different than being the son, especially the son decades ago. Or if you have terrible memories of your childhood you want to ensure you're going to do it right in defiance of what you had, you can't be sure you will.

Laws, culture, and the socialization of women have all changed; overall, it has become worse for husbands. Male nature, including male sexual nature, hasn't changed. But more and more people don't care about the needs of men.

You might be able to think of men who appear to have beaten the odds; they've been married a long time, maybe even raised kids, and it doesn't look like a train wreck. But every single one of them, if they're not clueless and if they were to be fully honest, would tell you it was a lot of hard work and there were very tough times along the way. They might bookend that with "But it was worth it." Was it though? Just about anything that was worth it could have been achieved without a terrible state contract. People hate to admit major decisions in their life, especially ones that took a lot of time, money, and effort, were a mistake or a net negative.

Think very, very carefully about what is you're really feeling. Wanting sex isn't wanting what our laws and culture now call marriage. Even wanting companionship isn't. Wanting to teach, mentor, or lead younger men isn't the same thing as wanting to be a father in today's world. Wanting to leave a legacy or pass down your heritage isn't the same thing, either. And if you think you do want to marry and father children, consider that it might still be an overall bad idea to do that.

If you still choose to do it, at least you have been warned.

Don't forget that when you're going through the hellish marathon, when you realize you're a beaten dog: You were warned, and you chose it.