Answering Marriage Seller Assertions, Talking Points, and Questions - Part 1

 

 Marriage sellers are varied. The ones I'm familiar with include:

• religionists (who are usually trying to get you to marry within their denomination or cult, but if you're not going to they at least want to behave in their approved way)
• sociologists who are likely to be religionists or dependent on them for funding/publicity
• your mother
• Dr. Laura Schlessinger
• Michael Medved (basically a combo of his wife being a sociologist and them being religionists)
• Dennis Prager (religionist, but might be a religionist because of his emotional fixation on marriage)
• Matt Walsh (religionist)
  

While I list specific names here, most of the tactics they use to sell marriage are used broadly by marriage sellers that might include your aunt or your pastor. Just to be clear, I am what many people would call a religionist. I'm a Bible-believing, praying, churchgoer. But since I do read my Bible, I'm aware that there is no clear Biblical command in effect for all Christians to marry, certainly not for them to get a license to do so from a secular state.

If you're going to discuss why most men should avoid marrying, especially if you're going to have an audience, it might drive the point home if you say "terrible state contract" instead of "marriage."

I plan to post [have since posted] a series providing answers and responses to common talking points of marriage sellers.

I'm starting with a very common one used by almost all of them.

Married men earn more, are wealthier, are happier, are healthier, live longer, and have more sex.

Response:

Like so many claims of marriage sellers, these claims rest almost entirely on perceived correlations and statistical trickery, not provable causation. Marriage sellers want you to think that if you marry, you'll be better off in all those ways. However, what is really going on here is that all unmarried males are lumped together, including divorced men and men who are unable to attract a wife. Women are more likely to marry and stay married to a man who has/earns more money, is happier, is healthier, and with whom she is having a lot of sex. Poor, sickly, unhappy men are less likely to be having a lot of sex or attracting or keeping a wife. Also, males who die young are less likely to have married. Duh!

These claims never separate out men who have their act together and intentionally avoid marriage. Many of them are better off financially, have better overall well-being, and have more and better sex  than most husbands. Plus, they are free, with their residences and overall life the way they want, not the way some woman wants.

What marriage sellers don't point out about finances is that my never-married counterpart only has to earn 51% of what I do to be better off financially than me, and doesn't spend money on goods and services that aren't to his personal benefit; he gets to make all spending decisions for his earnings, and nearly everything he buys is less expensive because he only needs to buy for himself.

The one thing I'm willing to concede is that a wife nagging her husband to go to the doctor can help him live longer. However, men can be nagged to go to the doctor without signing a terrible state contract. I cut out the "middlewoman." Also, consider: What are those extra months/years like? Should a man trade a lifetime of freedom for those months?

The fact that married men are taller is a clue of what is going on with these statistics. Marrying won't make you taller. Women marry taller men.

The fact that divorced men are usually lumped together with all other unmarried men is misleading. Family laws, family courts, ex wives, and their lawyers often work a man over, leaving him in terrible shape, at least for a while; even before divorce, marriage might have hurt him a lot, but since he escaped or was dumped his conditions are attributed to the "unmarried" in the stats.

It’s dangerous to imply or outright tell someone that signing a terrible state contract or marrying will make them better off or happier. When it doesn’t, they might make their spouse or others miserable or otherwise harm them.

That's a lot to say. If you only have a few seconds, say:

None of those studies separate out men who have intentionally avoided marriage, who can be much better off than most husbands.

Read Part 2 here.