You Don't Need a Girlfriend

Boys and men need to know that they don't need a wife and don't even need an exclusive girlfriend.

When I was growing up, what I learned from media - everything from advertisements to movies to television shows to books and especially music - was that "everyone" had a girlfriend and then a wife. If there was a breakup with the girlfriend, you had to find another girlfriend. This was how to be happy. Guys who didn't have a girlfriend or a wife, if they weren't gay or Catholic priests, were losers. My parents didn't tell me that, but they had each other. I didn't have an older brother to show me any differently.

It wasn't until I was heading into my mid-twenties that I finally realized what a load of crap that message was.

A really awful engagement was ending and I realized I'd rather be alone the rest of my life than endure any more of that.

I could have saved myself all sorts of trouble, all sorts of negative thinking going all the way back to sixth grade, if I had learned that it is OKAY, even preferable, to NOT have an exclusive girlfriend. Ever!

Now, when I say "exclusive girlfriend", I'm referring to the mindset of a boy or naïve man. Very few girlfriends are actually exclusive in the long run, even if the guy thinks she is. At best, most are exclusive for right now. But I digress.

You can have a great, full life, even lots of sex if you want it, without ever promising exclusivity. Being free of an exclusive girlfriend means you decide what to do with your time, money, and everything you own. You make the decisions about your work, you decide what you're going to eat, you decide where you'll go and when, what you're going to watch, who you're going to spend time with. You don't have to defer to, or argue with, a woman. You don't have to spend ridiculous amounts of money on things you don't want or you won't use or enjoy. There will be plenty of women to date, especially since they don't need to be wife or even girlfriend material. If a "new" woman catches your eye, you can ask her out. You're not cheating. If you're with a woman and she does something you don't like, you can leave - immediately, without explanation. No arguing, no counseling or therapy, no apologies and begging to get back together or be let out of the doghouse, no trying to smooth things out between her and your family and friends. None of that crap.

If you're still in high school, you might be thinking "But who am I going to go to the dances and parties with?" If you really want to go to school dances, you can go "stag" as we used to say, unless you're at a weird school that doesn't allow that. I don't remember any of my school dances being any fun. Movies make it look like all sorts of exciting and fun stuff happens, but that's crap. Maybe that's because my time was before girls started freakdancing. I enjoyed my proms enough, I guess, but in retrospect that was more of a self-fulfilling thing, and I would have been fine if I had realized I didn't need to be there and didn't go.

Anyone who tells you that you need a girlfriend, and especially if they tell you that you need to get married, is selling you something.

I'm what most people would call an Evangelical. I'm familiar with the (Protestant) Bible. It doesn't mandate marriage for today's believers. I can't argue with every religious organization that's out there, but if they profit from weddings and couples counseling, they have an immediate financial incentive in you marrying. If they worry about fornication, they want you married. If they want new tithe-payers/servants they want people to marry and have children. They might point to the beginning of Genesis with the "multiply" thing, but even if we take that literally and as a command, it has been fulfilled.

If you're in some organization in which marriage is pretty much mandatory, like the LDS (Mormon) church, or your family is urging you to marry, insist that you take marriage so seriously that you won't marry until you find a compatible woman, and keep telling them the women you've interacted with haven't been compatible. If they actually want to argue with you about that and demand to know how they weren't compatible, tell them it is private. You can keep doing that and never marry (or you can leave the organization... which I realize is extremely difficult in some cases.)

Being free is enjoyable, and, if you do things right, can make you better off than the average husband. You can learn to enjoy it and be happy if you're not already.

There are free men all around you living great lives. You just need to look. They tend not to draw attention to themselves. Those "happy couples" you see? You have no idea what is going on behind closed doors. Most of them will divorce or be (or already are) miserable. Marriage, as it is today, is a  terrible deal for most breadwinning men, and you're probably better off refusing to participate.

You were born without a girlfriend. You naturally don't have a girlfriend. Having a girlfriend/wife is an option. You have to opt-in for it to happen. Chances are, though, you're better off staying free. You can still date, even date the same woman on a regular basis. But don't marry, don't live with them, don't impregnate them, don't co-sign for anything with them, and don't spend more than $40 per date on them. It's best if she doesn't even know your real name or where you really live. You want to keep things so that when it's no longer pleasant for you, when she starts making demands, you simply walk away. She won't have anything of yours you want, and vice-versa. She has her own place.

Stay free. Being free doesn't make you a loser. It can make you an big winner in life.