In her article “
8 reasons straight men don’t want to get married“, Dr.
Helen Smith did an excellent job summarizing the popular reasons men say they
are postponing or outright declining the many charms and benefits of marriage –
well, benefits
for gay couples, anyway. With the recent Supreme Court
decision dumping the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in favor of gay marriage,
we can expect
the argument that gay marriage somehow undermines straight
marriage will continue to heat up.
In my opinion, this has things completely backwards – straight marriage is so
badly and terminally damaged that the expansion of gay marriage will have
little impact on the death of heterosexual nuptials – if anything, successful
gay marriages will illuminate the many failures of hetero marriage that are
causing men to flee from it.
Why is that? I’ve compiled my own, personal list of 11 additional reasons why I
avoid marriage, and interestingly, my reasons are largely independent of the 8
reasons identified by Dr. Smith. Some of these reasons are deeply personal to
me, but in the hopes that they might resonate with men who are conflicted on
the subject of their own marital futures, I offer them up as an additional
perspective as to why the single life is preferable:
1. Your wife won’t be able to manipulate you by withholding sex.
While some people (ok, women mostly) treat marriage vows as loose, conditional
suggested guidelines, when I make a vow, I’m going to keep it. If it is within
the capability of my mind or body, then I am both loyal and stupid enough to
believe that a promise is a promise, and that “integrity” includes keeping
one’s promises, especially in the face of adversity. So, if I promise fidelity
to one woman, by God, the Universe, and Everything, I’m going to keep that
promise.
I also have always had a large sex drive – I was hitting on my babysitters when
I was 4 years old for goodness sakes. Even now in my mid-50′s the fires of
passion still burn hot in me.
The combination of these two factors mean that I would be extremely vulnerable
to a wife to wanted to manipulate me by denying sex – I’d have no recourse in
law or morality. A man who coerces a woman into sex is viewed as a rapist, but
a woman who coerces a man by withholding sex is a feminist hero?
You go, grrl. Out of my house. NOW. And no, I am not going to marry you, *****.
2. You won’t have to lose your vintage porn collection.
My first college girlfriend got me a subscription to Playboy magazine for my
birthday in 1978, and although we broke up my senior year, I collected issues
of the magazine until the spring of 1992, when my cohabiting girlfriend at that
time discovered them and had an extreme screaming meltdown. She kept screaming
for hours as I hauled them out to a dumpster. Then, she withheld sex for six
months as a punishment for my transgression. I loved her dearly but her
jealousy never waned, and eventually I had to break with her, as I was unwilling
to live my life in a constant state of sexual starvation.
3. You can drive any car that suits your fancy.
Until I became comfortable with the notion of Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),
I often chose my car with an eye toward the sort of woman it might attract.
This left me with several expensive, high-maintenance models that looked pretty
but didn’t suit me. I didn’t like the cars, either.
I now drive the perfect car for me – a 2004 Prius with moderate hail damage. My
Prius is now old enough and ugly enough that it is a total chick-repellent. The
hail damage
increases the gas mileage to the point where I can drive
from Dallas to Chicago on one or two tanks of gas, perfect for the day I become
a MGTOW ghost – and, it is whisper-quiet at low speeds, so quiet that later
models had to add
faux engine noises for safety reasons.
Of course, if you get married, your wife will withhold sex until you buy her a
gas-guzzling, planet-killing SUV so that she will feel slightly safer when she
totals it. She’ll hate your car, whatever it is you drive.
4. You won’t have to compromise your religious beliefs, or lack thereof.
Although my mixed-up family has deep Catholic/Lutheran roots, I’ve been an
atheist since early childhood. I hear no voices in my head, divine or otherwise.
Technically, I think I’m actually a non-coherentist agnostic, in that God-talk
is largely nonsensical to me, but when you say “agnostic”, many believers
(particularly here in the Bible Belt where I live) take that as an invitation
to regale you with whatever voodoo is talking in their heads that day. My
inaccurate claim to atheism is safer in the sense that it allows me to be
written off as a lost cause without having to engage in gobbledygook.
Women, in my experience, are much more “spiritual” than men, in that their
overwhelming anxieties drive them to seek comfort and support through faith. I
don’t fault them (much) for that, but I sure as hell don’t want to marry it, or
compromise my professed faith to placate hers.
5. You won’t have to watch/hold/carry/rebuild her ****ing purse.
Dealing with a woman means being subjected to “female redecoration syndrome” –
her constant, endless drive to change both her husband and her environment, and
her oblivious dismissal of her man’s reluctance to do stupid things on her
behalf. Reasonable things one might be able to work out with a reasonable woman
(if such could be found), maybe, but going shoe-shopping with her when she
already has a closet full of shoes? No, thank you.
6. You can undertake risky ventures without being undermined by your wife.
8 years ago an artistic entertainment district that I loved was falling on hard
times just as my corporate career reached an impasse. So, I dumped my house and
job and started my own entertainment business in that district. No woman would
have tolerated a man who was as married to my business as I was (and continue
to be) – women love commitment until it becomes slightly inconvenient for them.
I know this in part because my live-in girlfriend enthusiastically supported my
new business venture right up to the point where she bailed out 4 months in.
Now, I can gloat – the district is now thriving and the NYSE-listed corporation
I left died in January, and my work has brought me a bit of respect. The
girlfriend found a new man, picked up his meth habit, and was in prison when I
last checked.
7. Your vacation time is your own.
I dislike vacationing intensely – maybe I’ve got a touch of
Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies or some such, but I’m happiest when I’m working
steadily and routinely. Vacationing with a wife would be agony for me even if
we could agree where to go (no chance of that), and letting a wife vacation
without you is marital suicide.
8. You won’t be humiliated in public by someone you loved and trusted.
When withholding sex fails to move you, or maybe she just nuts out one day, but
women cannot seem to resist the urge to humiliate their husbands in public, rat
on their sex lives, or whatever. Such behavior is a deep betrayal of the trust
one should invest in one’s significant other, but I’ve never seen any woman
ever be able to maintain the slightest degree of discretion about her husband’s
quirks, foibles, or personal secrets.
9. You won’t have to serve as your wife’s proxy thug.
Women love using and testing their men by having them perform acts of violence
at their behest – this gives women protection and deniability in the ensuing
physical and legal melées. We see echoes of this whenever some feminist idiot
wanders in here and demands we do something – anything – to stop rape, or
online harassment, or whatever other bug just crawled up her thigh. This
damsel-in-distress trope is nothing more than the bullshit manipulation of men;
it criminalizes men and robs women of their agency.
10. You won’t suffer the marriage tax penalty – or subsidize her shoe
collection.
Marriage is an economic disaster for men – not only in divorce, alimony and
child support, but also in a happy marriage.
Women rarely deign to marry impoverished men, or even men
who earn less than they do. This means that those “lucky” married men suffer
double-extra taxation – not only will your wife burn though your money, but the
federal tax structure (in the US, anyway) is generally higher for the married
than for two single people.
11. You won’t have to suffer her physical assaults on you.
The current feminist culture supports the right of women to physically assault
men at any time for any reason. There may be good explanations for this from
evolutionary psychology – women hit men when men show some emotional weakness
as a way to get them to “man up” in the face of the woman’s need for a strong
protector. Men are shamed and discouraged from reporting these assaults, and
state and federal laws driven by the Duluth Model of gender violence often
result in the arrest of battered men, rather than the women who attacked them.