I agree with several points made by both Mr Man and Natural Born Cynic here, personally:
Realism makes it impossible for me to wholly agree with MrMan that marriage (which he has succeeded with, but mistakenly over-idealizes as something that would help most men) is supposedly going to lead to either sexual satisfaction, or lasting personal satisfaction, because most married men I've observed are a bunch of miserable little old hens dominated by shrew wives who usually end up divorcing them and destroying their financial lives, and sometimes their families, as well. (And I never wanted that to be so! It's quite sad, it's just that's what I've all-too-often seen to be the case, even amongst supposedly religious people.) I'm glad
@MrMan is happy with his, but it's unrealistic to think just getting married is going to work some kind of magic via divine intervention.
However, I strongly agree with:
MrMan wrote: ↑February 11th, 2023, 5:38 pm
You can try to have lots of friendships, but your friends marry off and get busy with family or move away. If you don't have a family, it puts you at a disadvantage socially.
I agree with this. This is something I've seen as a strength amongst Africans and some islanders: They have a big extended family that is a wonderful resource for them. I personally have consistently had a bunch of FWB girlfriends (quite valuable and we make each other happy, but not the same as a real family or "clan'), I have my old male friends I've known from childhood who are like "brothers" to me and I value that too, but they're frankly a bunch of !@#$ed up jerks with drug and alcohol issues (not saying I'm not a "jerk" either, but just telling it like it is), and then on the family side, there's mostly older people who I care about but would frankly be better off if I didn't have to deal with them....
But if you have a big extended family, there's more of a valuable clannish network that can help you on all kinds of levels, from networking to working out solutions for care of elders, and many other things. (We'll get back to this topic later, I like it.)
All this praise for what I called the "extended family" doesn't hold with delusional people with only one wife and a few kids though. I'd love for the happy "nuclear family" ideal to work out, but I'm not convinced it usually does (which I agree is sad). Many times that is a recipe for total disaster in the modern day jewnited states, especially if they disastrously got into an idealistic hodler marriage without a bullet-proof prenuptial contract to protect their financial assets from their wives (or husbands, if it's the wife who is the breadwinner).
How many cases have we seen even posted on this forum of that, like the old worthwhile guy who was once a traditional hodler with a wife and kids busting his ass at a job his whole life, then got divorced by his dissatisfied shrew wife who devasted him financially, separated him from his children, and then left him alone having a triple-bypass alone, then considering suicide... until he fortunately managed to get "Happier Abroad" and marry some little Pinay village girl? But he was one of the lucky ones for even being able to pick up the pieces. So I don't see why there's any value in men like him having previously haven fallen into the TMM pit-trap, just because tradcon believers said so based on their ideals.
@Natural_Born_Cynic
If you marry the wrong woman then your life will turn up side down and sideways. It's like playing with Russian Roulette.
And besides, the state will take care of your parents via Social security and old people apartment. And you don't need to get married and have kids to be compassionate.. you can give your compassion in homeless shelter or volunteer work.
Heheh, the state only takes care of them if your parents actually earned enough to get a good yield off their SS. I know all too well the alternative situation, where the old-folk didn't earn worth !@#$, then you have to deal with them just of out what Confucius called "filian piety," sigh.....
But other than that, I agree:
Honestly, the only men who should seriously consider a marriage are probably those with abnormally high confidence and skill with women to begin with (which tend to the opposite of those who do marry, even if MrMan is a rare exception), and even then 100% of men should get a bullet-proof prenuptial contract to protect their assets.
Those prenups protect women from loser husbands as well (I know some women who have to pay crappy men they unwisely married alimony, LOL), so it's not a 1-sided thing, just common sense if hodlers actually have their $$ where their mouth is about signing up for TMM contracts.