The Mystery Of Modern Marriage

What the hell is it with this marriage thing? Why does anyone other than a dimwitted shoe salesman sign up for this idiotic deal? Now, let me point out I speak here of marriages where the woman just stays home and looks after the house and kids, and the man goes out to work in an office or factory. If the woman works part time so that her home duties and her part time work add up to the 40 – 50 hours that her husband does outside the home, I have no problem with that, what gets me is that so many men still fall for the traditional marriage wherein they do most of the work and the woman gets most of the benefits.

Take a working class stiff making 500 dollars a week. Since in most couples the man makes most of it and the woman spends most of it, you can assume you will be giving her at least 300 of those dollars. And in return you get what? Sex? No, that’s not part of the contract- we all know you can get married and never get laid again, so sex isn’t it, so sex is no reason for a man to get into that particular yoke.

A housekeeper? Perhaps, providing you haven’t been stupid enough to marry one of those women who expects you to do the house work when you get home from the office, but even then, for 50 dollars you can get a nice lady to come over once a week and do all your cleaning for you. And she isn’t going to take half your money and the house if she ever decides she’s had enough of picking up after you, so no, a housekeeper is nowhere near a good enough reason to get married.

Love? No. Obviously you don’t need marriage for that – to take a famous example, look at Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn; 25 years and counting and no marriage, so love aint a good reason to get married.

There are those who will point out that married men live longer, but even if that is true one has to consider that this handful of years is added to your old age, not to your youth or middle years, so instead of dying a slightly decrepit 72 year old you die a very decrepit 78 year old! Whoopty doo! And even for those who want those decrepit years, is that worth all the risks, especially to a male psychologically strong enough to overcome an upbringing that tells him that when he gets sick he should hang tough instead of going to the Doctor? Watch your own diet and nag yourself into going to the Doctor and again, you find yourself with no need for a wife.

So there seems to be no rational reason to get married – no guarantee of cleaning and housekeeping services, no guarantee of sex, no guarantee of love and romance, so why do so many men get married when they would never do this as a business proposition? Imagine if a friend came to you and said “Let’s start a company. You get to put in most of the money and most of the work and I get at least half the profits.” You’d tell him to go and perform an anatomically impossible act! Yet chances are that sooner or later this is exactly what you will do with a woman, despite the fact that such a situation is even worse than our hypothetical company as it involves the emotional risks of a break up, and the very big chance of coming to be seen by your kids as “that guy that comes round every other weekend”. Even in purely monetary terms marriage is a stupid thing to do, much less with these added emotional risks! What intelligent woman would fall for such a deal? In fact, how many stupid women would fall for such a deal? Yet every day thousands of intelligent men across the world sign up for this bizarre form of modern slavery – even Einstein did it! Twice!

So why do otherwise intelligent men get themselves into an absurd situation that even most unintelligent women would balk at ? Personally I think the answer is simple – they’ve been told to. As males we have been brought up to believe that we are supposed to eventually set some woman up and look after her; women on the other hand have not been raised to believe that their purpose in life is to spend 40-50 hours per week in the office or factory while their man stays home doing 20-30 hours of child care and housework and siphoning off at least half their money, so even the stupid women would recognize this deal as being an invitation to become the opposite sex’s beast of burden.

Male or female most of us spend our lives doing what we are told, even if what we are doing is bad for us. But obedience is not enough- it must be unthinking obedience and so one of the things we are told to do is not think about why we do these things. So take the advice of someone smart enough to have never married - if you’re thinking of marriage then truly think about it, don’t do it because it is expected, don’t do it because you think it will raise your social status, don’t do it because you’re afraid of losing your woman- think about it. Weigh up all the good and all the bad, and if you still insist on getting married, don’t come crying to this little piggy when she gets sick of you and takes your kids and your money and leaves you the proud owner of a cardboard box with a prime location over a heating grate.