Matrimony, Holy or Otherwise

You certainly can’t say that TBP doesn’t offer opposing points of view. My main article argues that marriage would solve many of the problems of poverty. Fred shits all over marriage in his rant today. You can decide who is right or wrong.

 

Guest Post by Fred Reed

A Movable Concentration Camp

If you are a young man, and contemplate matrimony with the love of your life, it is well to look at marriage from the standpoint of reason rather than sentiment. Men are, after all, male, and occasionally capable of reason. The first question to ask yourself is: Why marry? What would you gain? Would your troubles disappear? Would sex be better? Would food be more savory? Would you get tax breaks, enjoy more freedom? Do stock options come with marriage?

Is there any practical advantage at all?

For you, I mean. For her, the advantages are considerable, and the drawbacks few. Your salary will allow her an upscale house, something more important to her than to you, which on the odds she will get in the divorce. Marriage locks-in child support. Since men die younger, she will get to pick your bones. For her, it is a good deal.

For you, no. Marriage has one purpose only, which is to get her legal hooks into you. Do not forget that American women, under the evanescent ivory skin, are eternally adolescent spoiled brats, feminine as a wrestler’s jockstrap and primed, as soon as life’s inevitable shocks come, to blame men for their unhappinesses. That means you.

Do not dismiss the foregoing as clever cynicism. Nobody goes into marriage expecting divorce, but it comes very frequently, and she really does get the house and the children. In divorces, men lose. Your child support will be based on what the judge thinks you should earn—this is called “imputed income”—so that, if you are a stock broker, you cannot decide that you would rather work on a fishing boat in the Caribbean. If the judge thinks you may be a flight risk, she can confiscate your passport. Your wife’s lawyer may advise her to accuse you of sexually molesting the children. (So help me, this happens. In a divorce, the man wants to get out, the wife to get even.) You may be denied visitation.

In the eyes of the court, the children are her property, to be done with as she chooses. She may remarry with an Air Force colonel she met in a meat bar, and be stationed in Okinawa. So much for your kids.

She can ruin you at any moment. Can and, not unlikely, will. When the moment comes, you will be astonished at how much she knows about divorce law, how vicious she can be. In marriage, you are betting your future on the flip of a loaded coin.

The sensible conclusion is that you are better off single, building a career or whatever you want in life, and dating such flowers as drift by.

Should you marry, the pleasure will be fleeting. Remember that women work on the principle of bait, switch, and fade. From fifteen to, say, twenty-five, they are dreams afoot, cute, with perfect skin and aerodynamic lines. That is what you think you are marrying. Add five or ten years, ten or twenty pounds, and the lack of any reason to continue being charming—and you are going to spend the rest of your life with it. Too many men marry the package, and only discover the content when it is too late.

Matrimony is seldom a happy state in America. Given that something like half of marriages end in divorce, you can bet that a lot of others almost do. Of the remainder, probably more are contented than happy.  Resignation is not pleasant, but often the best you can hope for.

Live with her i f you must, but don’t marry her. A woman cohabiting has at least some incentive to be agreeable. A married woman does not. Worth pondering is that, in a time of declining economy, feckless government, and political instability, the fewer responsibilities you attach to yourself, the better.

The very idea of marriage is problematic. In many ways, men and women are incompatible. Exceptions and degrees, yes, but on average women are more domestic, materialistic, fearful, totalitarian, and comfortable with routine. This means that to the extent you have masculine interests, you will find her to be an anchor. This doesn’t mean only that she won’t like that awful motorcycle or that noisy Corvette thingy. She won’t want to live in a small condo in the funky part of town, go to the shooting range, or scuba dive.

It is said that marriage rests on compromises, but in fact it rests on concessions, and you will make all of them. You will find your social life gravitating fast to other married couples. She won’t want you to have single female friends (nor will you want her to have single male frieds: Marriage is based on mistrust.). Worse, she won’t want you to have single male friends. She will want you where she can keep an eye on you. Forget going out with the guys.

Children, which she will persuade you that you want, on thought you probably don’t want. They are an ungodly burden until they reach adolescence, at which point they become ungodly monsters, before leaving for university and becoming ungodly expenses.  Babies are cute, but they smell, make noise, and require constant attention.

You may well find that you do not particularly like your children. You probably have certain tastes in regard to character, intelligence, and so on. Your children may not have these qualities. In romantic theory you should love them because they are yours. In practice you have to say that you do.

One reads today that young men have turned to pornography and masturbation instead of having a normal, healthy interest in women—“normal,” and “healthy” according to women. This is debatable. A man who sits home choking his chicken does not have to put up with irrational behavior, unreasonable demands, PMS, nutty mood swings, “relaltionship” talk, or unending expense. Masturbation seldom involves separation. Even an American judge is unlikely to award child support for imputed children. Porn offers more variety that the average girlfriend. In terms of cost and benefit, flogging the bishop can make much more sense.

If you look at marriage analytically, you see that it is designed entirely to benefit her, not you. It is a raw deal. In return for bad sex, you tie yourself to a rapidly aging, plumping member of a sex that doesn’t like you, has little in common with you, and will control every aspect of your life until the breakup. Ask yourself, “Do I really like talking to her as much to guys, or am I attracted only to her pearly skin, her ruby lips, and other short-term investments?” Or, “If she were male, would I think she was interesting?”

Conservatives rumble about the declining white population, the need to keep up with the Chinese, and the economy’s dependence on housing starts. You might respond, “Bugger off.” It isn’t your problem. You owe nothing to a society that stacks the deck against you. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

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hardscrabble farmer

Sounds like a man who chose poorly.

My wife has done more for my life than I could begin to describe.

“Would your troubles disappear? Would sex be better? Would food be more savory?”

Mostly. Yes. Yes.

I always feel sorry for people who either don’t find that kind of spouse or who enter into marriage as if it were a purely business arrangement.

Billy
Billy

I agree with HS – sounds like Fred got soaked, then developed a case of buyers remorse… sour grapes.

The missus and I are coming up on 20 years together soon… our son is a great kid. Couldn’t ask for better.

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

starfcker
starfcker

Marriage is the answer.

Faux Queue
Faux Queue

“So, are you married or happy?”

Curly, Three Stooges

Welshman
Welshman

Good rant Fred. Fred I think has a Lantino lady. If you are going to be sucessful, it takes two, so the marriage thing works for me, but Fred makes very good points about American women.

Mark
Mark

If you haven’t been totally metro-sexualized by the Joos on Madison avenue you must agree the Fred has his points.

Your supposed to believe what you’ve been conditioned to believe until you’ve experienced a more routine primal experience. Where your ancient ancestors poke a hole in your brain washing and you experience what it is to be. And be alive.

Wonder why there has been no hint of civil unrest? Probably, all the men have been decked out scarfs at pretending a museums. Or going on Cruise ships or lounging at the beech.

Now some of you don’t get it. Because your not supposed to get it. The conditioning has been a success.

Fred is preaching wisdom here.

DC Sunsets

32.5 years of marriage.
3 sons.
All three sons married to nice girls.
One grandchild.

I concur with HSF, Fred married poorly the first time and I wonder if he understands how his anti-child rant falls on his daughters’ ears.

Unless one is a masochist, life is about trying to find and stay on Happiness Path, which is located (if you’re fortunate) on Happiness Plateau.

As the topography implies, once on Happiness Plateau, traveling around on Happiness Path, the goal is to STAY on the path and not veer into the ditch or, worse, run right off the edge of the plateau.

We are social creatures. We need and desire the company of others, the more committed to us and reliable the better. That’s the purpose of partnership.

Does Fred think his same-sex buddies, who come and go over time, are better partners? Why did he find a down-on-her-luck single mom in Mexico to nurse him as he passes through old age to his final destination?

Properly understood, a man and woman grasp that their own Happiness Path is found in the happiness of the other. I’ll grant that if you accidentally choose a vampire instead of another human (they come in both male and female versions) then they will quite certainly suck the life out of you. That’s the horror against which Fred rants.

From what I’ve seen, the signs that the other person was a vampire were plain to see. In a guy’s case, often he’s infatuated with the bitch, and amazed at his luck of finding such a pretty (often young) thing that will toot his flute. Others around him can probably see she’s a harpy, but T&A clouds his mind, and women are biologically programmed to play men like skilled musicians. It took me into my 50’s to see how common is White Knight Syndrome and how women coax it from men.

(As an aside, this is why I think that OFTEN, when a man is accused of statutory rape of a 15 year old girl, it was she who was setting him up from the start, even if he’s 30. Ironically, when a 15 year old boy is induced to screw a 30 year old woman, it’s ALL about POWER. In this regard, society has always had this “crime” totally backwards. Girls and women play men like the fools we are, in general.)

The trick is to find a girl who is NOT like the others. They exist. I married one, a pretty, sweet-natured, wonderful person who filed the sharp spikes off my persona and with whom I raised three wonderful sons. We made and make each other better. This is what I hope for my sons, and what it appears they each found.

Fred is right on one note; most women are throw-backs. Modern society is toxic to the more social sex, and “women’s rights” has corrupted the majority to the core, just as Lord Acton’s famous dictum describes. Women were always more powerful than men, and prior to the 20th century legal structures only balanced that condition. Those counterbalances are long gone, and both men and women are the worse for it.

Sadly, this is making most men throw-backs, too. Our modern society has made narcissistic witches of girls and permanent children of boys. The women got what they wanted…a perfect example of “be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it.”

Exceptions to this new normal exist. Young adults should seek the needles in the haystack.

DC Sunsets

Mark, I’m sorry son but you’re clueless.

Life is NEVER about sitting in the crowd, wallowing in what the herd around you experiences. Your comment strikes me as very present-oriented, as though you’ve not been around long enough (as an adult) to see what things were like before the present lunacy.

Today’s folly is about trust spread out ocean-wide, micron-deep. The way life works, however is when trust is spread out no farther than your arm’s reach and as deep as a mountain valley in Switzerland.

No wonder so few people “get it.” They cannot see the forest because all the trees obscure their view.

As an aside, it is no secret to me why so few people get better with time. Without an absolutely trusted partner to assist, how can anyone self-improve? My wife has helped me hone and polish almost everything I now know about life. Without her, my focus would be poor, and I’d likely be stuck in misunderstandings in which I wallowed when I was 22.

Such tragedy, that so few people’s journey in this life leads anywhere at all.

DC Sunsets

Here’s a thought:

Women are often like a sphere…relatively undifferentiated. (I write, here, of the non-vampires.)
Men are like a Morning Star weapon, all spikes and power, sometimes irrational and dangerous and self-absorbed.

A girl who is sweet-natured and of at least average intelligence makes a great partner. If she’s attractive as well it’s a trifecta, but in my experience essentially zero girls who were truly beautiful when around 15-17 years of age will be sweet-natured. Being orbited continuously by males corrupts their personalities and transfigures what is inside to be as ugly as the outside is breathtaking. Today’s 5’s think they’re runway models so even being passable in appearance can yield a vampire in this toxic stew of a society. It’s tricky.

In partnership with a (non-vampire) man, a sweet-natured, reasonably intelligent girl will file off the razor-edges of his persona while he raises her insight and intellect to a plane she would not have otherwise reached. Through his influence her undifferentiated “sphere” becomes unique and respect-worthy, while through her influence he makes himself a truly powerful, self-controlled man with purpose beyond the hedonism of a child.

The only pretty girls I’ve seen remain sweet-natured appear to have one thing in common: Either they bloomed late (unnoticeable at 16, homecoming queen at 17), they were isolated from social contact by illness/injury during the critical 15th year, or they had a physical deformity that was surgically corrected close to 15. I’m not sure what makes boys vampires or not.

Tommy
Tommy

Fred’s advice is the recipe for loneliness. Sounds like a great rant for a bachelor’s party.

Scene: Guy about to get married is nervous and his buddy is the best man (who both understands but wants his friend back from the clutches of marriage). The groom asks his friend, ‘do you think I’ll be happy?’ To which the friend says, ‘…..yes, you just won’t know you are’.

Okay monkeys, what movie is that from?

Pirate Jo
Pirate Jo

Recipe for loneliness? I dunno – reading comments like that makes me think no one understands introverts, even though introverts are like half the population.

Billy
Billy

Hey dc, I might offer an insight… personal experience.

I’m not sure what makes boys vampires or not.

I wasn’t one of those Golden Children growing up – where everything seemed to go right for them growing up. Didn’t have the best clothes and was sort of a galoompah growing up. I was always bigger and stronger than the other kids and sort of awkward. Daddy recognized that early and capitalized on it. He had me lifting free weights when I was 10 years old.

Coupled with Mamma’s pacifism (Don’t fight, don’t hit back, etc), that made me an easy target for the kids with a smart mouth… which meant I had to endure literally years of little pissants and their abuse, but was forbidden from doing anything about it.

Which bred resentment on a massive scale.

When I finally broke those chains – and a couple pissants in the process – it was truly liberating. By the time I was 17 or 18, I was reveling in my power. I started attracting females who otherwise wouldn’t have looked at me twice only a year or so earlier. By the time I was 20, I was that guy – the arrogant Alpha asshole you love to hate. Tall, well built, chiseled good looks, succeeding at everything I tried, but a complete narcissist. Live at the gym, worship the sun, kick ass take names, etc…

My mistake, I let my guard down and got involved with a vampire who devastated me emotionally and left me in debt. Didn’t get married, thank God, or any children with the harpy. She was unbelievably beautiful, but hollow inside. Just, nothing…

That sort of anguish turned me against women for a long time. I pretty much regarded of them as toys and there for my personal amusement, and I treated them as such. Hadn’t one shown me that they’d all do me like that, unless I did them first? Result: Long string of very attractive females the I used and then tossed aside like an old shoe…

I have to say that the vast majority of them were American females and just as hedonistic and narcissistic as I was. I literally was one of those vampires you’re talking about…

That all got reversed when I met my wife.

Growing up in post-war Germany, she was exotic, pragmatic, thoughtful, empathetic, smart as hell and it didn’t hurt that she was the proverbial Late Bloomer and gorgeous. And I realized what a colossal narcissistic asshole I had been, and if I wanted anything to do with this woman – and I did, in the worst way – then I needed to square my shit away.

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson – she made me want to be a better man. That was almost 20 years ago.

Yes, I can still fall back into the “Everyone sucks but me” mode and look down on others, but it’s largely reigned in. Rough edges – the worst ones, anyways – smoothed out. Actually doing things for others, and at least trying to feel empathy for the misfortune of others…

It’s not all violins and roses. Both of us have strong personalities, but like things to be “just so” – and sometimes those things clash. But, on balance, she’s enriched my life like no other person ever has. She saved me – or rather, motivated me to save myself. Supported me, even when I was in that dark place after the military….

And for that, she has my loyalty and my love forever.

TE
TE

People, and women can be as guilty as men, that view the assets and money acquired over marriage as “theirs” because one partner didn’t contribute exactly 50% to checking, make me crazy. My job as a mother/wife is 24/7, 365. I don’t clock in and clock out, I don’t get sick days, I don’t get a retirement plan or 401(k) or health care. And I sure as hell don’t have the means to support myself in old age as a 24/7 wife and mother.

But then again, I’m the rare female that got screwed good and hard during my first divorce, all because I did not, could not, pay a lawyer(‘s ransom) to fight my ex. And I dared to work and go to school, which was viewed as a negative by the judge. Really, all I wanted was my freedom from constant stress and angst, and a few family treasures (actual worth of nothing), and to have both parents actively involved with raising our son. So I took next to nothing and worked myself whole.

He still bitched and moaned, but didn’t stop him from marrying, and divorcing, again. That one hurt him more, as karma was a real bitch. I didn’t laugh, really. Ok, I’ll pay for it, but it felt good.

Bad, abusive, dangerous, filled with want or addiction, marriages are not magically “better” for children, just because some man of god or statist put their stamp of approval on it.

Those marriages are life lessons to be learned, then to flee from. I apparently, did not learn the lesson I was supposed to as 25 years later, I am revisiting the same with a change of flavor.

Which doesn’t negate the reality that welfare has made it super easy for the narcissistic, lazy and unreasonable to stick somebody else with the bill for their children.

So much must be destroyed to be born anew. That scares me.

overthecliff

Almost everything Fred says about women and children is true. However, they AIN’T all like that and I love mine.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

I have been married for 45 years. We are together 24/7 and work together at the office. We are one.

duckhunter
duckhunter

I agree with both the article, and hardscrabble. You would understand if you knew my wife.

Thing I miss most from being single: my 20×16 house. So small and cheap to live in and quick to clean, with a lawn that took an hour a month to maintain. Now I live in this monstrosity.

A. R. Wasem
A. R. Wasem

Fred makes valid points about the legal “system” and in various other areas as well. Obviously he’s talking the averages, not the outliers. One thing for certain, if a man has any substantial financial assets at all prior to marriage a Prenuptial Agreement prepared by an expert “family law” attorney is essential. BC-LR to all

DC Sunsets

Billy the way you were raised is common, and quite predictable in the result. I often think that what I term, “consequentialist thinking” is as rare among parents as it is among the general population.

We all must take self-respect from where it comes, and “fixing” our weaknesses is often the best we get. It’s surely all I get.

I raised my sons to see interpersonal violence in two very distinct forms: Not worthy of involvement and life-depends-on-it. None of them engaged in the usual fights despite being the geeky braniacs who normally attract bullying like white on rice. Give no offense, take no offense. In a peaceful environment, it’s a winning strategy; I worry that it’s less ideal if things become a lot less peaceful.

I did not and still do not understand people. I used to be called “Mr. Spock” as a pejorative, not because I was a Trekkie (I’m not.) Eventually I came to understand why those calling me that were right. I still largely interact with people more by mimicking others around me than I do by inferring how to behave. It’s astonishing I’ve spent 25 years in outside sales. I must be a good mimic.

That I found a young woman with whom to share a good life is testament to the flexible nature of the female sex. After 32 years we’re still finding new planes of companionship.

DC Sunsets

@ARW, anyone with substantial assets might consider a living trust, too.

The trust can be structured so that wealth passing to the next generation is not subject to a spouse’s grasping fingers in divorce. This is, in all likelihood, how generational wealth is protected over long periods of time. Trustees can only be those related by blood or legal adoption.

This might remove some of the temptation for a young woman (enabled by current law) to camouflage her vampiric nature too well, sucking in the unsuspecting son.

(For the record, I’ve only seen one girl hide her nature that well. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious.)

Persnickety
Persnickety

I’m married, and love my wife, and expect we will stay together for life. All that said, legal marriage, as it now exists in the US, is a terrible deal for men. The only benefit I see is that some couples will have a lower effective tax rate – and only if one earns much more than the other. Many dual earner couples will have a higher tax rate by being married. Beyond that, the legal side is all bad, and Fred’s sour grapes are right.

If I did it again I would choose the same woman as my life partner, but probably not get married. And I think she agrees, being very practical and seeing the financial downsides as well. If we weren’t married she would get extensive government money and free health insurance, without our lives being much if any different from they are now.

I would encourage younger people to couple up like married couples, but carefully consider and generally avoid marriage in the eyes of the law.

Anonymous
Anonymous

What exactly does an introverted female who sought the divorce and has not remarried have to add to this discussion? Probably not much.

Fred sounds bitter – and if he chose poorly, as I did, he only has the mirror to blame. Not knowing what you want in a spouse – not knowing yourself in any great measure – is not an excuse for going off on the person you married.

As for the unfairness of the divorce laws I see it as the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction – as usual. So for every “Fred” screwed over by his poor choice and an unfair divorce system I have to think of the millions upon billions of women in the last few thousand years who stayed in relationships, as chattel, living a pure hell of beatings, abuse, rape and torture because to leave meant poverty, death and a complete loss of children.

Societal collapse didn’t begin with the no-fault divorce.

As for all these spoiled American women – I know they’re there and see them all the time and to my amazement they always seem to be the ones that get the guys.

Over and over and over …

Olga
Olga

That last was me.

Simon Jester
Simon Jester

I am sick of all these commentators spouting off about their perfect marriages to their perfect wives… In every race there will be one winner and a whole lot of losers… So to poke the stick into the hornet’s nest, here goes…

Women have been the property and chattel of men for almost the entirety of human history. Female promiscuity has been tightly controlled with violations resulting in the death or the economic suicide of the adultress for almost the entirety of human history. Why is this? If a behavior is almost universal then there must be a pretty compelling reason to do so.

Women are the physically weaker sex. Of course there are exceptions, but that women are physically weaker than men is axiom. End of story. Women do not make war or do the backbreaking physical labor that helps send men to their graves years ahead of the gentler sex. Women do not rape. And I am not talking about statutory rape here; I am talking about physically dominating and forcing their will upon another; it doesn’t happen. So what is my point? My point is that men and women have defined roles and responsibilities, created by biology and thousands of generations of human evolution. Biology compels reproduction; women have evolved to seek stable partnerships with men because the physical act of survival means that they are disadvantaged and are further burdened by the necessity of caring for small children who need vast amounts of attention that cannot then be given to securing food and shelter. However; women have also evolved to seek the best possible mate to pass their genes on with. That may not necessarily be the man best suited for long term material and economic support. This creates a powerful incentive to be unfaithful but the cost of such discovery means those most successful have also developed an equally impressive ability to deceive and manipulate. Men have no similar compulsion; they do not need to be as discreet in their dalliances since their biological imperative is to mate with as many women as possible to spread their genes. These conflicting imperatives have been controlled through human history by the institution of marriage or it’s equivalent, which is present in all cultures as far back as recorded history can trace. Social customs have also evolved to ensure that women, who have always been the property of men, remain under tight control to attempt to ensure paternity, and to discourage other men from messing about with the property of a rightfully jealous man.

Our modern era is an aberration in many ways, but nowhere is this more evident than in the relations between the sexes. Prosperity brings rule of law and liberalism instead of brute force and physical domination. Ours is (was) a very prosperous society and it shows in the laws we pass and follow, and in the effeteness of modern men. Tell me that family courts and custody arrangements will survive long past the coming breakdown in our economic system? Or widespread female employment? Physically demanding labor has been and will always be done by men. When it is critical and absolutely must be done, it will be done by a man. That almost the entirety of heavy industry, transportation, self defense, and infrastructure construction and maintenance are done by men is very compelling evidence of this. The professions where women dominate; services, health care (as nurses, not doctors), admin, and teaching, all fall into the not-essential-for-the-survival-of-the-species category. A city can survive it’s schools being closed indefinitely; it cannot survive its power grid and water infrastructure being shut down indefinitely.

Our social customs and the upside down world we inhabit are the result of prosperity (prosperity derived from untold numbers of energy slaves created by the use of cheap oil replacing the physically demanding world of our ancestors). That prosperity is fleeting, and when it goes, so goes the world of female equality and indeed, dominance of men. Marriage has always been about a man controlling his property to ensure other men do not cuckold him, and women ensuring that they are able to secure what they otherwise would not for themselves and their children. Regardless of what Hollywood makes of romantic love, the true state of relations between the sexes is that both ruthlessly use each other for their own selfish ends and will always do so.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

Sounds to me like some of you guys are pussy-whipped.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Olga says: That last was me.

Olga, I took it as a joke, things you share with your buddies at the bar, complaining about the raw deal they got while secretly enjoying the fact their woman is not nearly the harridan most women are reputed to be. This is the first article I have enjoyed from this author. I have truly hated some of his other topics. (See, Stuckwad, I CAN hate). I believe old Fred has been listening to El Doggy’s daily 15 minutes of guy wisdom which boils down to this main message: do your due dilignce before marrying anyone, or anybody, as they say down south.

ASIG
ASIG

There are what, about a half a dozen or so guys here saying they have the perfect wife and great relationship, well that’s great. As a matter of fact before the SHTF on my 20+ yr marriage I would have said all the same things. Then a freak set of occurrences fell into place and I discovered my wife to be one phenomenal liar.

So I agree with this quote from the post by Simon Jester:

Referring to women – “ This creates a powerful incentive to be unfaithful but the cost of such discovery means those most successful have also developed an equally impressive ability to deceive and manipulate.”

But lets just stick to facts:

Infidelity Statistics

Below are compiled statistics on infidelity and marriage:

Percentage of marriages that end in divorce in America: 53%

Percentage of “arranged marriages” (where parents pick their sons or daughters spouses) that end in divorce: 3%

Medical field(s) with the highest divorce rate: psychiatrists and marriage counselors

Percentage of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional: 41%

Percentage of men who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had: 57%

Percentage of women who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had: 54%

Percentage of men and women who admit to having an affair with a co-worker: 36%

Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity on business trips: 36%

Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity (emotional or physical) with a brother-in-law or sister-in-law: 17%

Average length of an affair: 2 years

Percentage of marriages that last after an affair has been admitted to or discovered: 31%

Percentage of men who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught: 74%

Percentage of women who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught: 68%

http://www.infidelityfacts.com/infidelity-statistics.html

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

TE says: So much must be destroyed to be born anew. That scares me.

I used the story of monkey trapping, putting a treat in a hollow tethered coconut, the monkey would not let go of the treat and couldn’t pull his paw out of the coconut. That happened to my with my ex-gf. People don’t change and they keep attracting abusers with their victim personality. If you want different results you have to make the necessary changes in manner, attitude and expectations.

To be born again is easy-peasy, my daughter and I helped a woman who had stalled out in the middle of the street, she said no one would stop for her because she wasn’t young or pretty. She said she had been looking to buy heroin. She said she wanted to quit but.. I said, would you like me to pray for you? She said, I have heard some Mormons say you have to do a lot of things.. I said, no, we just pray. Right about the time we were done, all of two minutes, the cops and a couple of fire trucks showed up. The gas station attendant had reported an accident, I suspect they wanted to rescue the white woman, they kept asking her what happened and completely ignored me. They were disappointed to hear I’d helped her push her car and that she only had her hands up because we had been praying.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

EC

Do you pray before or after you visit the blonde lady who is not the church lady?

Gayle
Gayle

AWD would love Fred’s little essay.

Gayle
Gayle

Olga says

As for all these spoiled American women – I know they’re there and see them all the time and to my amazement they always seem to be the ones that get the guys.

I read an informative book once called Why Men Love Bitches.

Burticus
Burticus

Marriage can be great. Just avoid gubbermint-sanctioned marriage!

hardscrabble farmer

The parable of the two meals;

There was once in the kingdom two meals. The first meal was made in a restaurant. On the wall of that restaurant hung a framed certificate from the state that stated the restaurant had been found to have a rating worthy of a capital ‘A’. All who entered the restaurant could marvel at this wonderous document before being seated by their server. However, back in the kitchen there was such a confusion of languages and of practices, so much left undone by way of sanitation and food temperature controls, such a low quality of product due to a corporate supplier who always made a point of finding the least expensive food, often frozen and sometime years after it’s harvest that it was not possible to put together a eal worthy of the name. The owner of the restaurant was so crippled by legal requirements and forced postings of rules in multiple languages- often placed so that they could be read by employees who were themselves unable to read in their own language- that he was unable to cope with the demands of his customers. And while there were numerous pots and pans and utensils, they were frequently unwashed because cutbacks had to be made in the potwashing department to allow for newly mandated increases in wages for the servers. The appliances once sparkling and high tech were now crusted in baked on scum and hardened grease because butter was too expensive, while corn oil was still affordable. The refrigerators were dirty and home to numerous bacteria colonies so that you could taste them in the salads when you took a bite, despite the cloying taste of artificially flavored bottled dressings. The food would frequently be fried in old oil, left to languish on the pass through for periods of time before the indolent and underpaid waitresses would deign to pick it up so that it had cooled and the sauces had congealed. Often the diners would complain and send back the meal for correction, offending and upsetting the underpaid cook who would do sometimes terrible, often unsanitary things to the meal before sending it back out to the customer. In the end the patron, his digestive tract newly filled with nutritionally dead matter and germ colonies by the millions, not to mention the cooks “special sauce”, would go home to a mild case of intestinal distress and a lighter wallet.

A few miles away there was a small house on a hilltop. It was surrounded by a gardens in full bloom of health, tended to by a family who would plant and harvest by the season and eat their meals from the bounty it provided at the peak of production when each vegetable and fruit was at the height of it’s growth and potential. The father would venture into the garden with his son at the end of the day and pick whatever looked best to them for their evening meal and bring it back to the house where they would wash it clean with water from their well. The mother and daughter would work together, side by side at a humble table making fresh pasta with eggs they had just fetched from the henhouse. Their kitchen was small, the selection of pots and pans small, but meticulously well maintained and sparkling clean before each use. They added ingredients like maple syrup they had produced themselves, butter the younger girl had made from fresh cream and sea salt and ground meat from an animal they had seen born on their pasture, had raised to maturity, had slaughtered, butchered and stored with theior own hands. As they prepared their meal they spoke excitedly- in a common language- about the day’s work and other things that both interested them and tied them together. They all did this without thought of compensation beyond each other’s company and when they finally sat down at table to their modest, but delicious fare, their bodies flushed with nourishment, they spoke in glowing terms of flavor and composition and they ate until they were filled. What was left over was shared with the herd dogs, the barn cats, the chickens and the hogs, all of whom enjoyed it immensely.

MORAL: A government certificate is worth the paper it is printed on, nothing more. What matters is what the individual brings to the table.

DC Sunsets

@ ASIG,
Careful, the only objective statistic you cited is the divorce rate, and that is for all marriages. Because once-divorced people have higher rates of marriage failure, the number of serial divorces skews that figure. Only something like 23% of first marriages fail, which is bad enough, but less that half the figure people love to cite.

The other stats are social science JUNK. If you examine the methods of essentially all social science research, even referring to it as science is an insult to the English language.

People lie on surveys all the time.
Most surveys are drowning in sample bias because participants self-select.
And worst of all, such unscientific surveys based on just a handful of participants get Big Headlines and are then endlessly cited from then on.

I trust practically nothing reported about sex, marriage, infidelity, etc.

As regards infidelity, DNA mapping was done on a population in the UK sharing the same surname. They dug up an ancestor for DNA comparison and found that the putative father at each step in the family tree was, in fact, EXACTLY who he was supposed to be.

That’s science. And in that case it put a total lie to the notion that women cheat at any significant rate, totally rendering the “surveys” bogus.

Remember, Lot’s of people appear to have an interest in promoting deviancy. They endlessly tell us that deviant behavior is normal, perhaps to rationalize their own bizarre acts.

Fidelity is normal.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

HSF

A great deal of truth in your words, people look upon government as god and embrace the rules and regulations. They should get back to the Eden that God provided for us.

A Money Guy
A Money Guy

This may be one of those rare instances where either/or doesn’t work and both are right. Having been there, done that, Fred makes point after point that is unarguable. Quinn says marriage promotes social stability and helps solve the poverty problem. I’m sure it does, sorta.

The rub comes with the cost/benefit analysis. Guys pay, wives not so much. Same story on steroids if you divorce because the courts would rather have you pay than “society”. Ergo, you lose. The courts have the power and they couldn’t care less if you have to live in your 10 year old car.

I would say the culture has failed, as in American women are not properly acculturated. They are spoiled and nasty shrewism is thus encouraged. They do not grow up (nor do the guys, however). We see evidence of this failure as the schools attempt stridently to feminize the boys. Another example, girls are not trained to be honest to counter their genetic inclination to lie. Not to say that males are paragons of honesty (Jon Corzine jumps rapidly to mind).

Women are allowed to spoil themselves at our expense and they are in their clever way smarter than we are, like it or not. So we lose. With women, their weakness is their strength and with the institutions of society lined up on their side, they can club us senseless with them. Which they do.

Fred says it ain’t worth it and he’s probably right. Quinn says more marriage means less poverty and he’s also right.

Women are supposedly the weaker sex. I say we are because we do entirely too much short-term thinking with our Johnson.

This is all theory of course so, as Quinn says, you decide, but it makes sense to me. I am married for the second time to a “good Catholic girl” who works hard and cares for me well. I work hard to make the relationship work and I think I am both pragmatic and generous in nature. We are fortunate to have no debt. So far so good and going on 30 years. On the very rare occasion that her feminine side causes her to cross lines, I call her on it and she relents. I think I am lucky. It is a partnership. The first instance of my weakness was a total disaster.

Sensetti
Sensetti

I was married 31 years too two different women. I”ll get married again just have to find the right lady.

I’am looking for a woman 80+ years old with an extensive cardiac history, loooooaded with cash. If you know my dream girl send her my way!

A Money Guy
A Money Guy

Enlightening analysis, Simon Jester.

ASIG
ASIG

Dc

“People lie on surveys all the time.”

No doubt. And that works both ways. I would suspect that more lie and say they are faithful then those that are actually faithful and lie and say they mess around.

You site DNA testing as scientific proof that women don’t cheat. So what you’re saying is only when a child is produced and DNA testing is done and shows the child to be not from the husband then that counts as cheating. Screwing around as long as no child is produced and even if the person admits to it doesn’t count from what you’re saying.

overthecliff

@ASIG—what a revelation: The crotch is the root of most marriage problems!

Heywood Jablomi
Heywood Jablomi

I hate to break it to you Billy: you’re STILL a colossal narcissistic asshole…please, for the good of mankind, swallow your tongue.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

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AW, Bea left me an Easter egg.
1. The church lady is my wife, formerly the sexy mulatta.
2. The Beautiful Blonde is my co-worker, a hell-on-wheels ex beer bitch who doesn’t take shit from nobody. Of course I pray, I ain’t no fool. If I may refer you to Stucky’s cartoon depiction of the old gal…

Jessica ,
Jessica ,

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