Do Not Get Married

Many men blunder naively into marriage.  They are like greenhorn recruits, wandering blindfolded through a minefield, whistling a happy tune.   

I need to cover the basics, and it doesn’t any more basic than this: do not get married. 

Here are 13 reasons. I could name more, but I figured I’d stop at lucky 13.

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1. Lethality

I try to keep things light, but this one isn’t even remotely funny. After a divorce, men kill themselves seven times more often than women do.  Men’s suicide rate – which is already three and a half times higher than women’s – doubles after a divorce.  By contrast, women’s suicide rate remains constant after divorce [1]. 

That should tell you something. 

Divorce hurts men in a way it does not hurt women.  Among those who commit suicide after a divorce, 88% of them are men.  Not only can divorce be financially, relationally, and emotionally ruinous, it can take your life. 

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2. Not Your Choice

In all likelihood, whether you get divorced will not be your choice — it will be your wife’s.  Women initiate 80% of divorces [2].  Women are overwhelmingly the ones to call it quits in marriage. 

Divorce can involve painful losses, expensive legal battles, and years of agony.  Divorce can damage your health and shorten your life.  In all likelihood, whether you undergo this ordeal will not be your choice – it will be hers. 

Why would you give another person that level of control over your fate? 

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3. Say Uncle

When you marry, you sign a legal contract that makes the government a third party in your relationship.  You are now subject to a ream of laws that you did not know existed (don’t worry, you’ll learn about them when you get divorced). 

You have invited Uncle Sam to be a part of your relationship.  When you get divorced, guess what?  Uncle Sam wants a three-some!  Bend over, it’s time for your perverted Uncle to have his way with you. 

Why sign a contract that makes the government a part of your relationship? 

It’s not only that you’re inviting the government in.  You’re signing a contract that women are incentivized to break. 

If you owned a business, would you sign a contract with another agency, knowing that the other agency could benefit by breaking the contract, at your expense? 

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4. Loss of Children

Plan on having children?  Then plan also to have your heart torn out by the family court system, which awards custody to the wife 90% of the time.  Your relationship with your children will be whittled down to an occasional weekend visit. 

I don’t have kids myself, so it’s hard for me to imagine the pain these men feel, but I’ve heard hundreds of very sad stories, and for every story I’ve heard, I’m sure there are thousands more.  Men all across the globe have had their hearts broken by this process.    

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5. Loss of Freedom and Power

Marriage is disempowering.  As a married man, you will have less freedom to do what you want, when you want.  You will have less control over your life.  You will have less power to decide where your money goes.  You will have less power to decide where your time goes.  You will have less power to decide where your attention and energy go. 

Retain your freedom.  Retain control over your time, money, attention, and energy.  Don’t get married. 

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6. Child Support

The family court system is biased against men [3].  The stories are legion.  The family court will treat you like a tool from which financial resources are to be extracted, nothing more. 

Child support payments are frequently set at levels that disregard the man’s ability to pay.  There is no accountability for how the ex-wife spends the money, whether on the children or new drapes.  If a man fails to keep up with payments, he is shamed, threatened, arrested, and thrown in jail.  He will likely lose his job as a result, but he won’t lose his obligation to keep writing the checks. 

Listen, guys.  When you marry, you place your nuts in a vise operated by a system that does not give two shits about you.  Please do not do this to yourself.  Until these systems change – and there is no reason to suppose they will – do not get married. 

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7. Alimony

You may also have to write checks to your ex-wife to support her lifestyle.  Again, payments are determined by the family courts, who are not your friend.  If you are a high-earning man, the payments can be ridiculously high. 

In some cases (e.g., if you are married for 10 years in California), you can be ordered to pay alimony for the rest of your life.  Imagine that for a minute.  You write a check every month for hundreds or thousands of dollars to a woman you left behind a decade ago.  You write that check every month, month after month, year after year, until the day you die.

What a great deal marriage is!  Where do I sign up? 

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8. Money Pit

Marriage and divorce are expensive.  Here are a few of the costs. 

Average cost of a one-year courtship and wedding: $44,000.  

Average cost of a contested divorce: $30,000.  And that’s just in legal fees. 

You lose half your assets in divorce.  The price tag depends on how much wealth you’ve accumulated and your individual contributions.  Yes, there are some situations where the wife earns more than the husband, but that doesn’t help, since it raises your risk of divorce by a third. 

Average costs of being married: can’t say exactly, but you’ll be spending more than when you were single.  Women carry more debt than men.  Women spend more than men (e.g., they account for 80% of consumer spending).  Generally speaking, women prefer bigger homes, bigger cars, fancier furnishings, fancier dining, more expensive vacations, etc.  It all adds up.  And that doesn’t include the cost of raising children, which runs about a quarter million per little angel. 

If you get divorced early in life, before you have accumulated much wealth, you’ll take a softer hit, and you’ll have time to recover.  If you get divorced later in life – and so-called “grey divorce” is the fastest rising category of divorce – you will get walloped harder, and you may not have time to recover.  Say goodbye to your retirement. 

Then there is child support and alimony, which I mentioned earlier.

By the way, don’t count on a pre-nuptial agreement to save you from any of this.  Judges throw pre-nups out all the time, on the flimsiest of pretexts.   

Recognize that divorce is a multibillion-dollar industry.  Corporations, institutions, and thousands of professionals (judges, lawyers, social workers, clerks, etc.) make their living on divorce and its fallout.  Don’t marry.  Don’t support the institutions and people who profit from your misfortune. 

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9. Marriage Changes Women

Women often have marriage as an important goal.  When they get married, they have achieved that goal, so it is natural for them to relax their efforts.  Typically, the changes don’t happen right away.  First there is a honeymoon period of a year or two.  But then, gradually, she will relax her efforts. 

For instance, she may become less pleasant or less affectionate.  She may complain more.  She may gain weight and stop making efforts to dress up.  She may become preoccupied with external activities.  There are many possibilities.   

If you’re contemplating marriage, you should be aware of this pattern.  The sweet, lovely woman you are engaged to may become somewhat less sweet and lovely after the marriage. 

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10. More Stress and Clutter

Marriage means more stress and more complication.  Women come with baggage.  Yes, men do, too, but you were already carrying that.  Women come with new suitcases full.  They also come with in-laws, some with financial problems, some with health problems, some with a penchant for drama.     

All of this means that, by marrying, you are inviting more noise, clutter, and stress into your life.  Say goodbye to peace and quiet. 

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11. Standard Risk

You probably know the stats.  Half of first marriages end in divorce.  Two-thirds of second marriages implode.  Three-quarters of third marriages end up in the wood chipper.  Unlike most things, marriage isn’t something you get better at with practice.  The more you do it, the worse you get. 

I suspect that 50% is an underestimate for people getting married today (see below), but even if it’s “just” a 50% risk, why take it? 

If a plane had a 50% chance of crashing, would you board it? 

If a doctor told you that an elective surgery had a 50/50 chance of leaving you maimed and disfigured, would you say, “Ok, sounds good, doc, let’s do it”? 

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12. Modern Risk

The 50% divorce rate lumps everyone together, including those who married a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.  The risk of marrying today may be quite a bit higher. 

Here are some data that support men’s intuition, which is a lot better than what we get credit for. If a woman has a lot of sexual partners before marriage, she is a poor bet as a marital partner.  The more sexual partners she has had, the less likely she is to form a stable, successful marriage.  That is not surprising, when one thinks about the dynamics involved [4]. 

When a woman’s partner count reaches about half a dozen, her risk of divorce rises to 70%.  And when her count reaches 16 to 20 range, her risk of divorce rises to 80%. 

How many sex partners does an average woman have today, prior to marriage?  A 2018 survey put the number at 19 [5].  Based on the data above, that puts her in the 80% risk category.  That is, if you marry an average modern woman, your chance of successful marriage is about 20%.  Good luck with that. 

Even if you distrust those specific figures, the overall pattern ought to give you pause, especially if you’re considering marriage today. Things have changed. Women have become more promiscuous, both because of dating apps (and their bastard offspring, the hook-up culture) and because of cultural messaging that they should be highly sexual. Although the changes wrought by dating apps are too recent to get a good feel for their long-term impact, the data are not encouraging.

Although you’ll often hear a 50% divorce figure bandied about — which is bad enough — the actual risk of marrying an average modern woman, with her high partner count, may be substantially higher.  

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13. The Ditch

Even if you escape divorce and manage to remain married, chances are you won’t be all that thrilled about it.  Most long-term married couples aren’t particularly happy or satisfied.  They avoid divorce, but it’s sort of like swerving to avoid an accident, yet ending up stuck in a ditch. 

We know people stay in marriages for all kinds of reasons – the kids, religion, fears of being alone, financial worries, not wanting to start over, habit, commitment, etc. 

Ask yourself, “How many of my long-term married friends are truly happy and satisfied?”  It can be hard to say for sure, because we only know the public presentation, not what goes on behind closed doors.  Personally, I’d guess about a quarter, maybe a third.  The rest seem to be muddling along, not particularly happy or satisfied, affectionate or enthused, sort of going through the motions.    

It’s hard to get good data on marital satisfaction rates, but if we use sexual satisfaction as a proxy, Laura Berman, PhD., psychologist and sexpert, reports that 80% of long-term married people are sexually dissatisfied; only 20% are satisfied.  And note, that is “long-term married” people – i.e., the 50% who did not divorce. 

If we assume the 50% who did divorce were also dissatisfied (a fair assumption, I think), then that would mean the overall chance of ending up in a long-term, satisfying marriage is about 10%. 

Congratulations to those who have pulled it off, but I don’t like those odds.

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Where I’m Coming From

I’d like to clarify that, as I present this list, I do not have any personal animus against marriage.  Most of these points did not pertain in my own marriage.  I initiated the divorce myself; our split was amicable; I did not have alimony or child support payments; Uncle Sam kept his pants on; I didn’t lose any children (because I don’t have any); I hadn’t accumulated much wealth, so I didn’t lose much.  I have no bitterness or hurt about my marriage.  I learned a lot from the experience (mainly, that I don’t want to be married).   

I’ve learned a lot about marriage since then, and I want to pass it on.  Many men have woken up, but many are still asleep, like I was 20-some years ago – wandering blissfully through a minefield, blindfolded.  I escaped with minimal damage, but many men do not.  They get their metaphorical legs blown off.  I want men to know what they’re getting into.  

Don’t get married, guys.  It is a bad deal and a foolish risk.  Be aware also that cohabitating exposes you to many of the same risks that marriage does, depending on state law. 

If you still want to get married despite knowing all the downsides and dangers, well, at least you’re not going in blind.  I wish you the best.  And to be sure, there are some people who make marriage work.  Maybe you will be one of the fortunate ones.  Good luck to you. 

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References:

[1] https://mensdivorce.com/suicide-rates-high-divorced-men/

[2] https://www.divorcesource.com/blog/why-women-file-80-percent-of-divorces/

[3] See, for example, Helen Smith, PhD, Men on Strike.

[4] https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2010/09/sexual-partner-divorce-risk.html

[5] https://www.insider.com/number-of-people-americns-say-theyve-had-sex-with-2018-8