article: Why men need marriage

[MatureDJ]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...01/11/gIQALubyqP_blog.html?wprss=guest-voices

 

[L B]

I was very confused skimming that. I think I just got dumberer.

 

[Scaramouche]

Dear MDJ,
Well it may be an Old King James version,but my Bible says in Ephesians "Wives be loyal to your husbands IN ALL THINGS",as to Corinthians"Better marry than burn" that is also swept under the carpet.
But MD what is happening in the Ukraine?is there truth in the rumour that you will soon be home,with your prvick in a splint?

 

[Serg897]

This article is garbage for many reasons and on multiple levels. Besides the obvious folly of looking at a 2000 year old book of fairy tales for wisdom on ANY subject, the article never actually tells us why men supposedly need marriage at all - all it is generalized attacks on men who arent willing to settle down and raise a family in their 20's, and putting the blame squarely on them for the increase in single adults (while absolving women of any responsibility, which anyone with half a brain on this forum knows is absurd).

The message that article tries to promote is exactly the opposite of what this forum is about.

 

[Rollo Tomassi]

Driscoll is just selling his book.

However, compare and contrast this 'guru' selling his product to PUAs doing the same.

 

[Findog]

I think men benefit more from marriage than women do. Studies bear that out. It's better for a man to be married or a life-long bachelor than get divorced. Married men live longer than divorced men or life-long bachelors. Also, Driscoll conveniently forgets to mention the fact that we have a divorce rate in this country of 45-50 percent for first marriages and women initiate two-thirds of all breakups and divorces. Family courts are weighted in favor of mothers. Men have more to gain and also way more to lose by getting married. It is a huge opportunity but also a huge risk. Women, on the other hand, can simply walk away knowing that they're gonna get half of his paycheck and primary custody rights unless they have substance abuse issues or something else similar, etc....With the way things are set up now, a man needs to qualify a woman very carefully before getting married. And no matter how much qualifying you do, you never know for sure how your marriage is going to turn out. My mom probably in a million years would never have guessed that the smart, funny, good-natured guy she was marrying would 35 years later be a degenerate alcoholic. I think most men would at some point rather have a family than "be alone in the strip club on Christmas Day" but if somebody wants to do the latter, it doesn't necessarily make them a bad or irresponsible person.

Also, I think women as a rule are equally to blame for the decline in marriage rates and the trend of getting married later in life. Both genders are in a state of arrested development. There's a lot of reasons for that, one of the big ones being we're an affluent first-world society that makes it easier for people to delay adult responsibilities. It is unfair to only single out men. He cites the Kate Bollick article in the Atlantic to support his thesis that men are failing in their responsibilities to grow up and be adults, but my takeaway from that article is that Ms Bollick has only herself to blame for being 39 years old and a bachelorette. Yeah, there are a lot of idiot guys out there, so if you are a marriage-minded woman, that means you don't get too picky when a good guy comes along that wants the same things you do. Ms Bollick FOREVER gave up her right to complain about men when she ditched the Alan guy in her article. I've been Alan myself before and I just don't have any sympathy at all for her dilemma and others like her:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/8654/

And as for Driscoll's astonishment that the woman in his church had never been married despite being attractive and a good person with lots of desirable qualities to offer a man...if that is indeed the case, then she has undoubtedly had no shortage of suitors in her life and opportunities to marry. And not all of them would have been boys in adult bodies. She's either too picky or has some sort of commitment phobia if she's smart, attractive, professional successful, and has basic interpersonal skills.

 

[pinhas]

I stopped reading after "I am a pastor and my bible says.."

 

[Findog]

Also, why do people have to be married to not be considered failures in life? What is up with this false dichotomy of you're either a family man of good morals or a degenerate that hangs out in strip clubs?

 

[wait_out]

What goes around comes around.

THOSE are words to f*n live by!

 

[gimmeyofonenumba]

I'm a born again Christian. There is also a verse later in The Bible explaining how it is perfectly fine to be single. It is recommended that we marry in order to avoid fornication. Besides the sacrament if marriage is deeply flawed anyways,With people nowadays getting married for the wrong reasons and wrong intentions.

 

[Burroughs]

What about WOMEN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO MEN!!

Hmmmmm

does this concept even exist?

Til it does all the marriage shaming crowd should go fvck themselves.

 

[Jitterbug]

A man needs marriage like a bicycle needs a license for a pet fish. Which reminds me of the Monty Python skit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmyHup4TpkU

 

[sodbuster]

Those studies have been done to death. BUT they don't factor out the fat slob who couldn't get married,the sick and lame that no one would marry or the self destructive men who died before they GOT married...they show up on the single column.

 

[Julius_Seizeher]

Isn't it such a mystery how altruism only seems to apply to men?

There is a common theme where a man should sacrifice his life to the country, sacrifice his independence to a woman, sacrifice his wealth to those who could not earn it.

The notion that any man (that is, a human being who lives as a man) needs marriage is patently absurd. I don't need marriage for "self-fulfillment" or any of that new age bs that crawled out of the swamp of zen buddhism, I don't need marriage to be responsible, and least of all do I need marriage for my physical health lol. I've been seeing that one all over the place.

Man exists as an end in himself. He cannot live for others and they cannot live for him, and any man who needs marriage is not seeking a lover, but a protector. A protector from loneliness, from any perceived cultural pressure, a protector from social ostracization. Men do not require protectors.

A man is what he is, which means that he is the sum of his character values and the virtues by which he pursues their actualization. A man is what he values, what he creates, what he initiates, what he builds, what he produces. And his own happiness is the ultimate goal of all his rational activities.

If he should choose to marry, it should only be from a selfish desire to do so, from a selfish realization of his values in his lover. To concretize: as much as I value my independence and the values it allows me to pursue, I could fall for a hot Libertarian babe who loves capitalism and individual achievement as much as I do. I could only experience a deep, honest love for someone who values the things I do; I could never pretend (or desire) to love someone for the sake of getting married, for any dubious reasons that did not corellate to my own self-interest.

 

[sodbuster]

Well said

 

[Poonani Maker]

Also, why do people have to be married to not be considered failures in life? What is up with this false dichotomy of you're either a family man of good morals or a degenerate that hangs out in strip clubs?

I believe that no matter Where you work, unless it's a gay bar or the like, people view you as "less" of a man if you aren't married, especially if They themselves Are married. I get this "pressure" all the time. Most of these guys I work with are Only married because of the handsome paycheck they bring home. Until they became permanent, the girls they were with held out on getting married. Once permanent, they all seem to get hitched almost immediately. It's a wait and see for certainty (from the woman's perspective) for future prosperity and safety of her future children one day or currently.

That's why I Never tell a woman what I do, and let her love me for me, because before, when I was Totally down on my luck, and fvcked scraping by (Never in debt, I might add - just didn't spend a dime I didn't have to to make it through), women hardly ever showed me the attention and willingness to listen and be a good girl to me like they do now. It's $$ signs in their eyes and social acceptability in their mind, even though I'm roughly the same person I was when I was making less than $27K a year, even $19K at times just drifting along suffering cause of my upbringing (bad parental/family/friends influence) and my lack of knowledge of the world around me then. Once I became adept and thus, physically and mentally sound on target, sharp and intensive, then the successes started rolling. It takes serious fighting and work to gain traction on a goal, but once you're on the runway, you've then got a destination.

I've reached that destination and am enjoying the fruits right now, but I still get shamed (mostly by marrieds) for not either "trying" to get married or considering their "friends" as possible marriage potential. Seriously, how can someone else know what I like sexually? Whoever these people propose me date or get to know is always my age or older, medium to fat, or with children. I shut them down immediately, telling them that I don't want to get married. If the ones (who are my type) that I am currently seeing want to get married, it probably won't happen, unless she absolutely meets my criteria, for me. Many of the women I meet don't. They always fvck up, even after 3-6 months of fvckin. It never does stay the course. She always fvcks up, whoever I'm with. If they say I'm being harsh or unreasonable, then fine, I'm not for you. Leave.

 

[Zarky]

If you have to quote the bible to convince somebody to do something, you know you have a pretty bad argument.

 

[Julius_Seizeher]

"What is up with this false dichotomy of you're either married and honorable or a bum hanging out in a strip club?"

Now we're getting somewhere. It is a false dichotomy, that is to say, a dichotomy that is not supported by the facts of reality--much like the older and deeper one that made it possible: the moral vs. practical dichotomy.

The choice man has given himself, via the altruist morality, is that he can either serve as a sacrificial animal for others or exist as a mindless brute, as an Attila who climbs to great heights on piles of human corpses and thus sacrifices others to himself.

The choice altruism gives us is to begrudgingly accept masochism--under the threat that sadism is our only alternative.

Most of you probably endorse the moral vs. practical dichotomy, even if unknowingly. Every time you think that morality is designed against you, that to be moral involves some kind of sacrifice and renunciation, you accept as a corollary that to be happy, to profit, to win, to achieve requires you to be immoral. It isn't true.

I could lay the whole thing out, but I'm going to let you go find it for yourself. Seriously--the moral vs. practical dichotomy is a philosophical cancer to mankind and it wrecks your own individual mind and self-esteem. Look into the debunking of moral vs. practical and you will begin to answer many of your questions.

 

[Nutz]

Terrible article chock full of shaming language about men going their own way and how women are complaining about not being able to have their cake and eat it too. If this guy really wanted to change things for the better, he'd be throwing money at state legislatures to fix the family court system and make the institution of marriage a good thing for men. Right now it's a hugely in favor for women AT THE EXPENSE of men.

 

[Jitterbug]

Have you ever seen a company that manages to sell their product by making commercials that shame their potential customers into buying it?

Our product is the best thing that will ever happen to your life, and you must be a loser if you're not falling over yourself to buy it TODAY!!!

And there's even no fvcking special sales!