10 Reasons Not To Marry - Why Men Should Avoid The Trap

[Winston]

http://socraticsociety.wordpress.com/20 ... nd-reason/

(N.B.C.) Why do people marry? / Is marriage beyond reason?
Posted on May 26, 2008 by unswsocrates | 15 Comments

By Signe Jørgensen

It seems to me that the reasons people have for marrying these days are not logically convincing.

The only reason that could be convincing is if you are religious, (though not logically, because there is very little logic in religion), and want to be united in the eyes of God.

However, more and more people have civil ceremonies, or only marry in church because it is expected or tradition to do so, not out of any real devotion.

So if God is not a factor, then why bother marrying at all?

The argument that was presented to me, when I asked some of my friends, was that a marriage was a deep emotional commitment between two people. People want to proclaim their love for one-another in front of their friends and have a party.

I can understand that, but what is the difference between just standing up in front of your mates and yelling, ‘We love each other, and we’ll stay together always!’

Yes, there is a marriage certificate that you get to sign and take home (whoopee) and the state will recognize you as a couple. That’s nice, but it is just a piece of paper, and you can get that same recognition without marrying, as in a de-facto relationship.

Even the legal benefits of marriage are not substantial, and are essentially the same in a de-facto.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of marriage is very romantic, and sweet.

But I also think that it is completely unreasonable to expect someone to promise to love you forever.

Even with the best intentions, and I’m sure people who marry have the very best intentions, you cannot promise something like that.

What if you fall out of love with your spouse? Then you would have broken the promise that is the very basis of your union.

At the very most you can promise to try to love somebody, or take care of them, or treat them with respect. And some people believe that this is what marriage eventually becomes under any circumstances; affection and friendship. But that again poses the question: if you think that this is what marriage is going to turn into, then why bother at all?

Surely it is just as fulfilling to live together, build a family together and grow old together without marriage as it would be if you were married. The piece of paper, the official recognition of your union, won’t affect the relationship on a personal level.

It seems to me that it is an old-fashioned ritual, and cannot be argued for in any reasonable sense. Emotions seem to be the main drivers, rather than logic, and people seem quite happy for it to be this way. They want the fairytale; “all is well that ends well�.

[Fenix]

Good essay, but men are still going to get married just like men are still going to date American women. Nothing you can do about it. Many men on here seem to want a long-term relationship and a family, and i bet half of the men on here will get married. I don't want kids. I don't believe in marriage. I agree with a lot of posts in this thread. I know many successful married couples. Many married for 40 years or more.

[Winston]

"In our part of the world, where monogamy is in force, to marry means to halve one’s rights and to double one’s duties." - Arthur Schopenhauer

Do you guys believe that claim that married men live longer? Is that true, or just propaganda?

[well-informed]

Propaganda i think, but it doesn't really matter in the broad scope of health. Women live longer than men on average 7 more years and with good reason

Working (to satisfy her lifestyle) for 40+plus years will do a number on your body physically which are what many marriages are today. Working your ass off for a woman that gets on your nerves

Do married men have the option today of just coming home one day and saying….honey…..I’m sick of my job so I’m quitting……I’ll stay home and look after the kids and house……you’ll go work full time and give me all your money. If you don’t like that then I’ll call the cops and get you removed……and you can send your money from whatever little room or bed sit you find to live in.

[djfourmoney]

Propaganda i think, but it doesn't really matter in the broad scope of health. Women live longer than men on average 7 more years and with good reason

Working (to satisfy her lifestyle) for 40+plus years will do a number on your body physically which are what many marriages are today. Working your ass off for a woman that gets on your nerves

Do married men have the option today of just coming home one day and saying….honey…..I’m sick of my job so I’m quitting……I’ll stay home and look after the kids and house……you’ll go work full time and give me all your money. If you don’t like that then I’ll call the cops and get you removed……and you can send your money from whatever little room or bed sit you find to live in.

Well obviously you would have talked about possibly quitting without doing so. Then suddenly one day you did, it might be a shock, but if you have some sort of idea of what you would be doing post-employment she will be supportive or you married the wrong woman. If a woman automatically assumes that you not working means you're on a one way trip to Working Class/Working Poverty, you need to get the divorce papers ready if she's not supportive.

I don't know why so many people assume things will go horribly wrong if you don't appease a woman and her family. Again you married the wrong woman.

[Winston]

Hi all,
I've added more points and paragraphs to this essay, split reason number 2 into two reasons, and added two more reasons for men not to marry below, bringing the total reasons to 10 now. Hope you enjoy the new parts.


4. You can never make any new friends of the opposite sex again, without your spouse becoming suspicious or jealous.

Guys, I'm sure you already know this, but when you are married or in a committed relationship, you aren't really allowed to make any new female friends, or else your wife will become suspcious and jealous. This means that you will be forced to keep them from her, because if she does find out, she will demand that you hide nothing from her and let her see all the communication/correspondence you have with your new "female buddy". If that happens, it goes without saying that you won't be able to show any affection or say anything "sweet or caring" to your new female friend, not with your wife watching. LOL. Now, doesn't it suck to not be able to say what you want and feel to another female?

(Now this is a little ironic because for some reason, by some act of Murphy's Law, when you are single, such opportunities to come across great females you have a lot in common with do not occur as often as when you are already taken or attached. That's the tragedy of life - for the universe only gives you what you want when you are no longer able to have it anymore...)

Furthermore, your wife will usually demand that you tell your new female friend that you are already taken, and that next time you meet her, to bring her along to show her that you are taken - thus stifling the possibility of anything growing between you and your new "female friend". Your wife will not let you see your new female buddy alone, but will require you to meet with her as a "couple", if at all.

What this means is that if in your everyday affairs, you come across a charming endearing female who enjoys talking to you, and has something in common with you or a common shared purpose with you, or has attractive qualities you like which are lacking in your spouse, you cannot really befriend her or get to know her without getting into trouble with your wife and ruining the peace in your marriage. Now doesn't that suck?

To avoid that, you'd have to hide your new female friend's number in your cell phone, and hide her emails in your computer, etc. (You know how it is.) It's a very hard game to play, obviously, and the more you do it, the more suspicious your spouse will become, and start checking your cell phone and emails. Eventually you end up getting caught. And when that happens, it creates a scene... which goes without saying. LOL

I'm sure you guys out there have experienced this - when you are in a committed relationship but constantly have another female that you care more about and is more interesting to you on your mind, to the point where your partner has to inquire: "Why do you seem so distracted lately?" Now doesn't that scenario suck? LOL

As the old saying goes, "The trouble with resisting temptation is that you may not get another chance." - Edwin Chapin. And in this case, you are likely to succumb to the adage that, "You regret more what you didn't do than what you did." So much for restriction and suppression.

10. Marriage was created to benefit society and women, NOT men.

Given all the disadvantages mentioned above, marriage was clearly created to benefit society and women, NOT men. It provides a proper environment for children to grow up in, gives women security while raising children, and stabilizes the structure of society, preventing "free men" from doing whatever they want and following their hearts and passions. While doing so, it treats men like wild dogs who need to be locked and chained up lest they roam free.

This is why society rewards marriage with tax breaks, economic perks and bonuses, and punishes divorce with such harsh consequences. Of course, society HOPES for a win-win situation in which men are "happily" married, so that both men and society get what they want. But that is often not the case, for the reasons mentioned above.

You have to remember that society is not there to give you freedom or truth. It is there to CONTROL you and mold you into a certain way that will best serve its interests. This is why society treats you like a product on an assembly line in a cookie cutter factory, and assumes that you are the same as everyone else.

[Winston]

Check this out. My essay was posted on the Roosh forum, and got a lot of replies.

http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-8984.html

[Winston]

Here is some wise marriage advice from a wise father's letter to his son that I found. It contains a lot of good wisdom.


PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE

popularly attributed to Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
from a book entitled Letters to My Son, A Father’s Wisdom on Manhood, Women, Life, and Love written by Kent Nerburn

I have never met a man who didn’t want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn’t fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering days and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other’s presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other’s foibles.

It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed.

It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset.

Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other’s laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality. This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility.

One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again.

If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can’t accept, you will inevitably come to grief.

Look at the way he/she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.

There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation.

Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed.

We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful
than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presences, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom…endlessly.

[xiongmao]

I started looking for an Asian wife, but I'm going off the whole marriage thing. For one thing I was reading my pension plan update and I realised my wife would be entitled to a big chunk of that should we ever divorce.

For another, I happened upon this by sheer chance...

The Manipulated Man

You might be surprised to hear that it's actually written by a woman. The author Esther Vilar is now a hero (or should that be heroine?) of mine. I ended a relationship because of her. I was dating a Chinese woman who didn't want sex until she was ready, but she sure as hell didn't want me having sex with anyone else. Textbook Esther Vilar!

Please read about her theories - usually it's only married men who come to realise what a mistake marriage is!

[ErikHeaven]

ESTHER VILAR is the truth indeed. I think i am changing my views on marriage myself. I see no purpose in it period. And yes great article Winston.

[Iawesome60]

Ladies and gentlemen, I heard this story on YouTube. Then, I found the article. A 99 year old man divorces his wife after a 77 year marriage. Dang, that is a pretty long time. I hope no man or woman have to go through anything catastrophic like this.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/12/30/99- ... 0s-affair/

[Winston]

Hey check this out. My 10 reasons not to marry article has gotten a lot of heated comments from women on YourTango and on Facebook. Have a look:

http://www.yourtango.com/2011125487/10- ... avoid-trap



There are also many heated replies on both sides in the ATS forum and David Icke forum at the links below.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread791638/pg1

http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=193714

[Cyrus]

hey Winston.

I can't speak on behalf of marriage or "marriage like" relationships because I've never really had one or wanted one.

I think another poster who explained marriages in other countries that work because they're more 'open' is right.

I see very close couples, and I've been in love. I think it's great. And, we all want things to last. Ironically, tying yourself down isn't what makes it last.

My grandmother had a secret relationship with someone for SIXTY years. Why did it outlast every marriage? Because they weren't tied to each other.

I tend to disagree that "guys pursue girls like dogs chase cars"... sounds like "in the matrix" thinking. It goes deeper than that. Humans are not biologically monogamous.

This goes for girls and guys. When we go out in public we are drawn to people. You can't avoid having sexual thoughts.

So when a huge part of life gets stifled, I feel like people blame their spouse. Women want security, but when the tiger they tamed becomes a house-cat... they get bored, they cheat, who can blame them? I think women actually cheat more than men. Marriage isn't proper for either sex.

So if you want to be with someone forever, only see them once a week and allow each other to do your own thing.

If you want to raise a family, allow discreet relationships and make it an open-marriage.

Forcing commitment is really a response to a feeling of insecurity. What better way to guarantee someone isn't going away then make vows? But relationships built on insecurity or co-dependency don't work.

Something about culture needs to change to adapt to the real world.

[DarrenFW]

Its not a committee decision!

Its your life and you don't need some punks on a message board dictating private things like your sex life, your political opinions, your decisions on other things like religion, etc.

f**k all that noise.

If you don't want to get married, fine. If you do, fine.

If you're out to tell others what to do on these matters, GO f**k YOURSELF.

[Winston]

Very one sided it´s like making many points about why not
to f**k girls. That would be a project for MGTOW.
Look at Nr. 10. Specially for "Beta man" it was a big
chance to get a woman and to have children. It was more of
a win-win game. Otherwise it would not have lasted so long.

This essay is really little bit immature. Sorry Winston. At least
you should try to make it more balanced.

Most man can´t handle to be alone. That´s a fact.

Then you also have to make points about why not to have a
child. At the end of the day you have to make points about
why living makes no sense and why you should kill yourself.

Men are biological machines, they are not here to calculate like
computers without aim.

And I am saying this as a guy who will not marry and doesn´t want
children

Of course most men don't want to be alone. I don't want to be alone either. No marriage does not mean being alone. It just means living or cohabitating with your partner without an "artificial bind". That being said, I am not telling everyone not to get married. Some people are happily married and need that kind of commitment. I'm just saying that people should CONSIDER the logical reasons on the other side that do not support marriage. I don't know if I will get married or not. Even though I see a lot of logical reasons against it, if I was in love with someone and didn't want to lose them, I might decide on marriage. Who knows what that kind of love would do to me. So this is not written in stone. It's just another side of things to consider.