Marriage and the mature man (analogy)

[Mr.Positive]

As mature men, sometimes we look back on life and question whether we made the right decisions, whether or not "the one that got away" from us was a mistake, or a blessing. This is normal.

For this post, call me mr.negative. As much as I like to have a postive outlook on life, and the challenges we face, marriage is a gamble given our conditions in society. No two ways about it, it's a flip of the coin...a 50% pass or fail.

As single guys, we are happily playing away in our sandboxes. We have our toys, dumptrucks, tractors all set up just the way we like 'em. We have that sandcastle we built in the corner...life is great.

Then women start to come and go in our sandbox. We play with them, have fun, sometimes they leave and go to another sandbox. Sometimes we kick them out because we found out they were playing in a lot of other sandboxes, or they don't play fair...whatever.

We go back to playing away and life is still great.

However, along comes one woman...yet this woman is different. We have so much fun with her in our sandbox, we start to think that we never want her to leave. Life is so much better, with her, we can't remember how great it was without her...then marriage.

Day 1 of marriage, you notice that she put little flowers all over your sandcastle.."what? we think..that's not right" so we take the flowers off. She then puts them right back up. Then we notice that she put pink ribbons on our dumptrucks and other toys. She's not playing fair!! We can't have this!

So, we get up to leave the sandbox. She then reaches into our shorts and grabs a testicle. She won't let us leave! What is going on?

We then run to Mom.."Mom, Mom, help! She's not playing fair!". Yet to our shocking surprise, Mom (marriage law) sides with her.

Mom says "It's her sandbox now, you must obey, you must keep her happy or she will kick you out of the sandbox forever."

Then, your new wife walks over, grabs your testicle again, and then pulls you back into your "her" sandbox. The sandbox is not fun anymore, you are now jealous of all your friends who have their own sandboxes.

And that's marriage...

I think we should change the traditions of marriage to something more modern..

Instead of a wedding band after we say our vows, we should immediately have one testicle surgically removed. We then should wrap that testicle up nicely with a bow, and give it over to our new wife. I guarantee she will be smiling.

That's not soo bad though...God gave us two testicles! We can get by with one, right?!

It's not over yet though, next is a test of faith. We then hand our new wife a scapel, drop our pants, and take a whole bunch of sedatives and pass out. When we wake up...we are hoping/gambling that we still have that one testicle left.

When you get married, you give over one testicle, but remember...she has two hands. We're hoping that she doesn't try and take the other one.

After having many friends get married, the happily married ones were able to keep that last testicle. Their wives, while still holding the other one, held it very gently...and overall, their sacrifices were for the better.

Seeing many friends who have had thier lives destroyed by marriage..well, they have no testicles left now. They are working on trying to grow them back.

 

[WestCoaster]

Interesting analogies. My happily married friends have both their testicles and are the leaders of their household with great, supportive wives. Each guy and his wife also have their own hobbies and friends and time away from each other now and then. The analogy that you automatically give up one testicle is pretty far off.

My unhappily married friends lost their nads long ago, spend all their non-work time with their mean wives, who demand tons from them. These wives barely tolerate their friends or outside interests and call the shots in the marriage, while the "man" wimpers.

Married AFCs are pathetic because there's little hope of them changing; single AFCs have greater hope of changing. Correct, it is a crap shoot ... some of my friends' wives are totally different than the woman they dated. Like many American women, they've become extremely bitter and have senses of entitlement.

If done right, marriage is a great thing, IMO. Choose wisely.

 

[Mr.Positive]

If done right, marriage is a great thing, IMO. Choose wisely.

I agree totally..however, even in marriages where the man leads, the woman IMO, still has a testicle. I should say legally has a testicle so to speak, because of the 50/50 split in "no fault" divorces, should the marriage dissolve.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

I agree totally..however, even in marriages where the man leads, the woman IMO, still has a testicle. I should say legally has a testicle so to speak, because of the 50/50 split in "no fault" divorces, should the marriage dissolve.

Marry a woman with more loot than you! Fair is fair!

 

[joekerr31]

marriage is a tough thing. in today's day and age its not easy to put that much trust in another person - to bind your life with theres and assume that they wont take advantage of you in the process.

its the same for both men and women.

there are TONS of women who get abused in marriages. who marry controlling men. who marry men with alcohol problems. etc.

the problem with marriage is that 90% of the peopel who go in to it do so because either they want to check that item off on their life's 'to do' list or because they are afraid of being alone or because they think they will have some fairy tale story book marriage that you see in sappy hollywood movies.

the reality is that nothing changes when you get married other than you have less freedom than before, the novelty of your partner wears off and you have an endless series of increasing responsbilities (mortages, kids, etc.) the benefits potentially are that you have someone you trust and who supports and shares with you through all of life's ups and downs.

so you had better make damn sure that you respect the character and belief system of hte woman you are marrying, otherwise it will be one hell of an ordeal long term.

the best indicator of whether a marriage will last, in my opinion, is the degree to which two people's belief systems overlap. the more the two of you see the world the same way, the better the chances of the marriage lasting.

so atheists shouldn't marry christians.
rich people shouldn't marry poor people.
materialists shouldnt marry idealists.
introverts shouldn't marry extroverts.
fat people shouldn't marry thin people.
educated people shouldn't marry uneducated people.
etc.

if you pair a fat, rich, introverted, educated, atheist with a poor, extroverted, thin, uneducated christian the marriage has a .0000001% chance of lasting.

because when a marry gets tested, and they all do, the less you share overlapping belief systems about the world the more chance there is that you will end up on opposite sides of the line fighting each other.

the more you agree on the world, the easier it is when things are tough to come together and support each other.

 

[Desdinova]

Day 1 of marriage, you notice that she put little flowers all over your sandcastle.."what? we think..that's not right" so we take the flowers off. She then puts them right back up. Then we notice that she put pink ribbons on our dumptrucks and other toys. She's not playing fair!! We can't have this!

It's interesting how most people on this site see this as a given, that a woman will naturally come in and take all the power and we have to surrender to it, especially after marriage.

I'm going to tell you that this is how it happens for AFCs. It's the AFCs who hand all their power over to the woman and let her control the relationship and both of their lives.

A Don Juan will ensure that a woman will get consent from her husband before doing any re-decorating. In fact, working together to make these decisions should be established even before marriage is contemplated. Women don't turn into b1tches overnight. If your wife (or future wife) is treating you like garbage, it's likely that something went wrong early in the relationship, and it's become worse.

A house doesn't fall apart in one day, it takes years of neglect (or bad patch jobs) for it to become unrepairable. The same goes for any relationship. If you fix your relationship issues before they become big problems, things will go much better for you.

So, we get up to leave the sandbox. She then reaches into our shorts and grabs a testicle.

If you made things clear early in the relationship, she would know better than to grab that testicle. She would know that she gets thrown out the fvcking door if she tries anything like that.

When you get married, you give over one testicle,

She only gets one (or two) testicles if you hand them over to her. Refrain from handing them over, and she won't cause you any pain.

 

[Mr.Positive]

Desinova, you bring up some great points, and I agree with you..

However, it's an idealist attitude I think. The reality is that men give up a HUGE amount of control over our lives if we get married. I don't see any way around it, given our society today.

I know this is a negative attitude...but I've seen good men, maybe not true DJ's, but definitely not AFC's, get burned badly when their women completely did a 180 turn, once they became their wives.

The balance shifts to a woman's favor with marriage.

I guess my main point is that marriage should not be a life goal for men anymore.

If we do meet that quality woman out there, that would make a great wife for us, that's could be a good thing.

However it should not be a life goal.

It's always the good men, not necessarily the AFC's, that get screwed it seems.

Sorry for being so negative...

 

[joekerr31]

marriage use to be regulated by social norms and institutions.

divorce had a stigma associated to it. you had broken your vow to god. you had gone against the norms of society that marriage is built around commitment. etc.

only in cases of abuse was divorce considered ok.

we no longer have social norms. heck, most women get patted on the back when they get divorced 'GOod for you girl! you go girl!"

whatever.

marry a high quality woman or you're f*cked.

 

[WestCoaster]

marry a high quality woman or you're f*cked.

Very true, men don't take this seriously enough, IMO. I've never been married, but my miserable married friends say it's way better being single your entire life than to be married to a beyotch ... same guys said when their marriages were going good, that's better than being single. I agree on both counts.

Sadly, American culture trains a lot of women to be mean.

 

[STR8UP]

Then women start to come and go in our sandbox. We play with them, have fun, sometimes they leave and go to another sandbox. Sometimes we kick them out because we found out they were playing in a lot of other sandboxes, or they don't play fair...whatever.

And sometimes dig a hole and poop in the corner.

That's why you gotta be real careful who you let play in your sandbox.