Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The gist of the article is people are waiting longer to get married. I think that is great - I never could understand getting married young. Everyone changes to much, doesn't really know what they want, and have wild oats to sow.
People aren't waiting longer as much as they are forced to wait. This is caused by:
- poor job prospects for men. (women too but this is less of a factor)
- hypergamy having an increasingly major effect. Women want it all and will not settle, if at all until they are in their late 30s. Few can get what they want when young since there are 5 women angling for every "eligible" male.
- education taking longer and longer, combined with massive debt.
- the internet informing young men of the pitfalls of marriage.
- a pickup culture that means that desirable males (who could easily get married) are choosing to put it off almost indefinitely, frustrating women who want to settle.
Hmmmm. Been married, been divorced. My situation was the worst possible scenario for divorce. My wife never worked in her life, not uncommon when we were married. It meant that she got substantial maintenance (alimony) one of the houses, cars, furniture, so on. She will get the maintenance till she is 65, at that point she can collect half my social security until her death assuming it still exists in 15 years. I hold no grief over this but because of this going forward I am unlikely to marry. I can afford the first hit but at my age I cant do another one and still be able to travel and do the things I want to do in my retirement. It for me is a simple decision. Marriage brings me nothing in particular I need but carries risk since I'm almost certain to be the burdened partner in a divorce. It is sad to me that this comes down to a simple numbers game but there it is, marriage is probably not in my future. They only way I would do it is if the lady in question had considerable assets and income of her own along with a prenup that precluded any other settlement than half of the gains attained during the marriage and excluded gains on monies and assets attained before the marriage.
Hmmmm. Been married, been divorced. My situation was the worst possible scenario for divorce. My wife never worked in her life, not uncommon when we were married. It meant that she got substantial maintenance (alimony) one of the houses, cars, furniture, so on. She will get the maintenance till she is 65, at that point she can collect half my social security until her death assuming it still exists in 15 years. I hold no grief over this but because of this going forward I am unlikely to marry. I can afford the first hit but at my age I cant do another one and still be able to travel and do the things I want to do in my retirement. It for me is a simple decision. Marriage brings me nothing in particular I need but carries risk since I'm almost certain to be the burdened partner in a divorce. It is sad to me that this comes down to a simple numbers game but there it is, marriage is probably not in my future. They only way I would do it is if the lady in question had considerable assets and income of her own along with a prenup that precluded any other settlement than half of the gains attained during the marriage and excluded gains on monies and assets attained before the marriage.
I can understand why you would be risk adverse. One shouldn't gamble if you can't afford to lose. But one thing I've learned in life is that sometimes fear of taking risks can actually be riskier than taking the risk.
Have you given any thought to what you are risking by not remarrying? I ask you that question because you said that marriage brings you "nothing in particular" then you said it makes you feel sad. If you truly believe it has nothing to offer you, what is there to be sad about?
I keep a pretty clean house but I can see that I'm not marriage material. Of course, decent people seldom are.
You not being marriage material is not a qualifier for a decent person. Although, if you leave women alone, and don't subject any to your laundry list of gender issues, then that is decent of you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by West of Encino
Straight up. As a teen, I opposed rap lyrics that were misogynistic. But after seeing how females really are, I started singing off those lyrics.
But you're right. Men aren't misogynists on purpose. Women create sexists and their own enemies.
I've stated this so many times on this forum that I wish I could just have it as a sig. The women you know; the women willing to associate with you do not represent all women. Rap? As if all women are ghetto and live within the confines of the culture sexist urban rap addresses.
I suspect that the "researchers" (actually women's studies types) only interviewed men who were married less than a year.
Instead of suspecting why not just google it?
Married individuals live longer.
The author is male hailing from the school of public health @UCLA. The effect is stronger for men.
"Results showthat for each marital status group, by age and sex, married persons have the lowest suicide rates and young widowed males have exceptionally high rates."
via the Division of Injury Epidemiology and Control, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333.
Much of the data collected for examining the health and wealth benefits of marriage are not coming from women's studies. It's public health and the information is available in census.
Quote:
Of course, as Braunwyn demonstrated in another thread, women really don't know what men in their social circle are really thinking. Why would married men confide in women? It's all stiff upper lip! Too expensive to do otherwise.
I don't know why you would assume to know the mindset of the men in my social circle. Your misery may want the company, but the only company you have is perhaps other troubled men complaining on the net. From my pov I cannot relate to the too expensive assertions. Most of my female friends earn slightly more than their husbands, tho only 10-30k save a couple of friends, just as I earn a bit more than my husband. We're all on equal footing financially. I don't see how it would pan out in a divorce court for a man earning 60k/yr to have to pay alimony to a woman earning 70-80k/yr. Of course, many of you feel that supporting your own children following divorce is a slight against nature. All well.
More importantly, and bizarrely, is that the complaints of high divorce costs for some men don't jive with the constant assertions that men don't care what women earn. Men don't care about a woman's education. Men don't want to hear about it. Men only care about how a woman looks and will marry down. So, sure. Many men will marry down, have a poor earner of a spouse, divorce will come, and then they complain that they have to continue to provide financial support.
Granted, the lot of you are not likely to have the wherewithal to connect the dots here, but stupid doesn't provide a pass for anything in life. Financially, women do want to marry up or at least equally. To me, equally is within 10-30k. That's simply smart.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
26,700 posts, read 41,742,544 times
Reputation: 41381
Quote:
Originally Posted by Braunwyn
Instead of suspecting why not just google it?
Much of the data collected for examining the health and wealth benefits of marriage are not coming from women's studies. It's public health and the information is available in census.
More importantly, and bizarrely, is that the complaints of high divorce costs for some men don't jive with the constant assertions that men don't care what women earn. Men don't care about a woman's education. Men don't want to hear about it. Men only care about how a woman looks and will marry down. So, sure. Many men will marry down, have a poor earner of a spouse, divorce will come, and then they complain that they have to continue to provide financial support.
The bolded idea is just something to think about. How would you feel if you if you paid for a car with cash, it dies, you get the insurance and property taxes on it (Kentucky has car taxes) canceled on it and someone comes up and wants you to pay $300 a month for something you have no use for and went through the proper channels to get rid of. That is exactly why I think the alimony idea is completely beyond logic.
I say it like this; "what did you do to get by before you met me? Get to doing it now I'm gone."
Child support is totally different. I think that both parents should contribute to the financial well-being of children but I think this also gets a little foolish sometimes too.
Hey, how about we apply your logic to other situations and see how that pans out? You were saying that if they didn't experience marriage/divorce, they don't have the right to comment on it. Well, I say bull****. I don't need to personally experience illness to understand that it hurts. I don't need to experience any number of things, to know that I don't want them. I don't need to learn from my own mistakes when there are plenty of others that made the same mistake and suffered for it. I'd rather learn from these people instead.
Im not saying they dont have a right to comment, but their authority means squat if they have never been married or divorced. If you are going to make critical commentary about marriage and divorce you should have some prior experience to support your statement.
In divorce there is alway 3 sides to the story.
It is the same as telling parents how to parent when you have no experience with children. Sure you may know you dont want kids without actually having experienced having kids, but you really have no business telling anyone what its like raising kids.
I know I dont want to experience having cancer, I know its devestating by listening to those that have gone thru it, but I would never try to tell them what its like.
See how that works.
Everything you described happens even if two people are married. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what is the purpose of marriage in modern society? Is it nothing more than a religious doctrine that supports a multi-billion dollar industry?
Though I would like to find a SO, I don't really see that marriage is essential to having a long term relationship with somebody. To women, it's an entirely different animal. Most grow up dreaming of that special day when they tie the knot.
I'm a man, and I have dreamed of that special day when I can join my life and heart, in marriage, to the right girl as a total, enternal bond of love and commitment, for just about as long as I can remember. Not ashamed to admit it, either...some men really do dream very much, of being married. Others don't want to get married. And that's OK -- different strokes for different folks, and all
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
26,700 posts, read 41,742,544 times
Reputation: 41381
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2mares
Im not saying they dont have a right to comment, but their authority means squat if they have never been married or divorced. If you are going to make critical commentary about marriage and divorce you should have some prior experience to support your statement.
In divorce there is alway 3 sides to the story.
It is the same as telling parents how to parent when you have no experience with children. Sure you may know you dont want kids without actually having experienced having kids, but you really have no business telling anyone what its like raising kids.
I know I dont want to experience having cancer, I know its devestating by listening to those that have gone thru it, but I would never try to tell them what its like.
See how that works.
And watching my mother's marriages fail isn't experience?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Do you mean marrying for money-related reasons, for example?