In honor of the most recent Hallmark holiday, I want to write about something, because that would indeed be a change, and to write about a subject near and dear to my newly single heart (the divorce is final May 19th). Recently, a total hack writer and “researcher” Kay Hymowitz wrote an op-ed piece in City Journal about what some are calling the “Peter Pan” syndrome. In short, men are not getting married in the numbers they used to or as young as they used to. Mrs Hymowitz, who for her research read a few Maxims, watched the Man Show, but didn’t actually interview men (and I wish I was making this up, but this is by her own admission), has ascribed this trend to men not growing up. Apparently, wanting a life of your own choosing, even if that means having casual sex, playing video games, and partying with friends, makes one a child. For her, men need to have kids and wife to be an adult. However, she doesn’t really address who these “boys” are randomly hooking up with (unless she was trying to subtly imply that around 60% of men are secretly gay or bisexual), and she seems to think that responsible women should be shopping, gossiping with friends, and otherwise enjoying life (again, her words). Apparently, she couldn’t be bothered to think about an alternative explanation: marriage is, on average, a no win situation for men, and we are starting to wise up to that.
Now I should say that yes, there always exceptions. Everyone’s girlfriend is “special”; every woman is “different”, so it is with a heavy heart that I am going to actually have to look at statistics and information, as well as the nearly meaningless anecdotal evidence. Legally, marriage is a bad deal for men. Prenups help, but can be gotten around by a clever lawyer. Let’s say you are a man, live in a community property state (which a good deal of the states are), and you are married for 7 years. At that point in many states, you could come home and find her in the process of sleeping with the milk man, and it wouldn’t matter. If you divorce (or more likely, when she divorces you; most divorces are initiated by women), she gets half of all the assets, and you probably will be paying her alimony. Sure she cheated, sure she might have exposed you to a whole host of disease, but it doesn’t matter. And it gets better. Let’s say she gets pregnant by the milk man; the kid would be yours, legally. You would have to prove, on your dime, that the kid is not related to you to get out of child support payments, and even then you have to prove it in a certain span of time (in some states its 6 months or less). Sometimes even with proof, the court will order you to pay the child support, and if you don’t, it’s off to jail with you. This happens because, when married, the husband is assumed to be the father of any of the wife’s children, even she has been unfaithful. Add to that the built in bias against men in family court’s, and where is the legal benefit in marriage for men? You can get all the same medical benefits and such from power of attorneys, and with a lot less risk.
According to pretty much every study done on the subject (Dr. Pepper Schwartz actually has a few good relationship studies published, if one is looking for a good read), marriage does indeed kill sex lives. Cohabiting couples have more sex than just about any one, except for gay men (I know, I was surprised too). Why is this? There are plenty of reasons that are proposed, the most likely (i.e. put forward by some researchers who think they have an idea) is that the cohabiting is like a probationary period for a job, and the partners (usually the female one in this case) is putting forth more effort till the deal is sealed. Now here is where anecdotal accounts come in to play. Married men, on average, are not happy with their sex lives it seems. Most commonly, they seem to be told that their partners are too tired, too stressed, or that they are not interested. Sometimes the wife will say that the husband has gained weight and as such is not attractive any more. All well in good, except that often times it seems like it’s more than that. Here is the thing, and whether the basis for this thought is true or not is unimportant, at least in terms of its effect on men getting married: men these days seem to expect women to pay mind games. We do, because we are told so by women usually, and because the shows made for female viewers (Sex in the City et al) pretty much tell us you all do. So it’s hard to believe, as a man, that you are always “tired”. We are expecting you to use sex as a weapon once you know we cannot easily find another supplier. Moreover, if you were always in the mood before the wedding, why should things be different afterwards? What is different, other than there is now a piece of paper saying you can try and take half my stuff, my 401k, and my paycheck? Sure, kids can have an effect, but then, according to most valid studies, kids at best have no effect on a relationship, and at worst ruin them, so that’s to be expect. But still, why would a man want to get married if he knows that doing so is going to kill what sex life he has, especially when knows he will be expect to not look elsewhere for it?
Now, I don’t expect all this to sound like a well written, scientific research paper, because it’s not meant to be. The thing is, more and more men are thinking like this. I know I am not a misogynist, and most men these days truly are not I feel, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is no logical reason for men to enter into marriage. Why work harder (for instance, in an op ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, it was suggested that men, in order to get their spouse to sleep with them, should basically do all the house work.) for something that we are, thanks to more liberal cultural values, able to get without marriage and thus with less risk and work? Why should we run the risk of being saddled with some other guy’s kid, alimony, and passionless marriages at all? Is love the reason? If that is the case, then we are already ruined as a species. If “love” is only proven by a legal document provided by the state and kept by legal threat, then is love really worth it?
