T is for This requires comment...

One thing that is true about humans is that they do something, and then make up the reasons for it later.

In this case we have what I am sure is a lovely woman (Hannah Seligson), explaining why she isn't getting married.

Apparently there are 'un-travelled continents and four more career paths to explore'.

And there are. Career paths and continents, which can't be explored if:

1) no one has a very high-paying career to pay for them, and
2) no one has been roped into a divorce settlement to pay for them.

Now I do think Hannah is probably a decent partner, as she tracks her purchases with an eye to dividing it up based on who paid for what, and tries to avoid the messy divorces of the previous generation, but I wonder...

I wonder if she really would, after a 12-year non-married relationship, walk away with just the things she personally bought - or if she would walk across the street to the lawyers office, and discover that palimony is just as good as marriage, and take her ex 'partner' for everything she could get. I can hear her muttering about how 'that bastard took the best years of my life', and feeling all justified as she turns him into a slave for the rest of his.

Unfair? Unrealistic? Not if you look at the statistics. No, unfortunately, financially enslaving your ex is big business, and if Hannah resists the temptation, she is the exception, not the rule.

The delay in marriage might have something to do with unexplored contients and careers, but it is, in my opinion, mostly about men avoiding slavery.

Why did this particular essay tweak me enough to post? Because it reeked so strongly of sour grapes. Rare is the man who doesn't want to find a good woman, and raise children with her. Even more rare is the PERSON (no sexism in this post) who can resist enslaving their ex and ensuring their future casual explorations of careers an continents when the state hands it to them on a silver platter, courtesy of the partner whom they now dislike.

-And the tightness of the marriage market is all about this. With a judiciary/legal system that thinks that men were built to support women, no matter WHAT they do (no fault, remember?) marriage is going to become more and more rare.

It's not about 'adulthood', or the length of 'careers' - marriages and kids were more common when we were mostly working on farms and in sweatshops, and when 'success' was something that never happened. And it isn't about exploration, although the exploration is in there, but mostly by the women, and at the man's expense.

My Best To You In Your Struggles

-M

G is for Game

Heard of 'Game'? Know what a PUA is? Know who Roissy is?

See, I'm a bit older than some, and was happy to catch my second wind (i.e. become separated from my ex) when I was flush with income and working in a big city, in circles with a lot of lovely women, -oh, and mostly I love to just chat with folks. So I didn't need 'Game', I had natural (or un-natural) 'Game'. (If you have money, and a gift for a bit of gab, what else do you need?)

But for those of you who just tuned in, and to whom these words are odd, let me bring you as up to speed as I can.

Apparently, in 2005, a book called 'The Game' by Neil Strauss was published that told a purportedly non-fictional/autobiographical tale of a man's indoctrination and ascent in a society of 'Pick Up Artists' (PUAs) - becoming an expert - who was eventually christened 'Style' (His mentor had the moniker 'Mystery'). Here's the wiki writeup, go read it, I'll wait.

Funny thing is, the whole thing reeks to me of the '70s and leisure suits, but it probably seems that way to me because I actually remember the '70s and leisure suits - and is a sign that this kind of thing has been going on for a long time now, and this is just the latest incarnation - perhaps a slightly more technical one, which relates to our increasingly complex way of living.

So basically, what Game tries to be, if I haven't missed the key points, is to treat relationships between men and women like a game, and to adjust one's actions and inputs so as to achieve certain goals - in this case, getting the woman in question into your bed - but perhaps also to engineer your relationship in such a way as to achieve maximum ongoing satisfaction.

Anyway, I am noticing more and more about 'Game' in the MRA (Men's Rights Activism) world, (like here at Oz Conservative, and here at In Mala Fide) and I think it is an expression of some people who are following to a degree the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) paradigm. PUAs/Gamers are looking to achieve sexual satisfaction, without having to live into the standard roles that society sets for men: Alpha Male, or Wage Slave.

For a summary of Game, perhaps here is a good place to look.

Oh and Roissy? I read him as a gamer, but kind of famous, and with a game plan that can extend to longer term relationships, although his view of women is, naturally, not the most positive in the universe. (Yeah, I know; 'pot, meet kettle' - but can you blame us?) Look here for a proposed Roissy Manifesto.

What does gaming look like? Well here is a brief vid of Love Systems on Tyra Banks providing a few pointers to an awkward young fellow. Not real gaming, but you start to get an idea.

Now, there are those who criticize 'Gaming' the system from a couple points of view:

1) Isn't it unethical to pretend to be someone you are not/act in unusual ways to get somewhere with a woman - isn't it misleading?
2) Isn't this bad for the men involved, and our culture?

Now I can hear both of these criticisms, and I relate. On #1, it seems to me, a real man would be himself, no? On the other hand, when faced with a blatantly unfair 'game' where the other participants are not being anywhere near themselves (lipstick? blush? perfume? hair removal?) and are liable/likely to revert to a much scarier form once they 'have' you, perhaps 'Game' is very defensible. Especially when the culture/system we are playing into punishes long term relationships by USUALLY taking half of your assets, and potentially half of your income, and your progeny.

Wait, I saw a good comment on this lately... ...here it is, on View from the Right:

While I don't subscribe to Roissyism, I understand the viewpoint.
The only thing the modern American (Western) girl has to offer me is sex. Which I'm not willing to pay more for than a tequila shot and a lie to the face. After the fact, what does she have to offer?

Is she going to be my life partner? No. Is she going to be my helpmate? No. Is she going to be the mother to my children? No.

Then she isn't worth 50 percent. She certainly isn't deserving of presumptive paternity (20 percent for 18 years for some bastard that isn't even mine).

We live in a culture that encourages divorce, out of some misguided need to liberate women from the "oppression" of marriage. And we have a legal system that rewards women for divorce.

Why do you think the divorce rate is so high? Why do you think that over 70 percent of divorces are filed by women, after only a few years? Why do you think it is that 1/3 of the paternity tests performed prove that the husband is not the father of the child? It couldn't possibly be that the culture and legal system make it profitable for women to divorce their husbands and commit infidelity, could it?

She gets a title, a house, a bank account, income, insurance, and guaranteed child support (regardless of who the biological father is). He gets a roommate and obligatory sex, on occasion.

Is there any other legal contract whereby one party can arbitrarily change her mind, for no reason and without penalty, and walk away with half of everything? No.

Is there any other legal contract whereby one party is required to pay child support for a third person who is not party to the contract, because the second party ran around behind his back? No.

Change the culture and change the law, if you want marriage to mean anything.

Change the culture so that women are held responsible for the consequences of their decisions and actions. Change the law so that the biological father is responsible for child support.

Unless you do that, marriage is a loser's contract for a man. Until such time, the best strategy is simply to buy her a tequila shot, lie to her face, have sex with her once, then dump her in the morning before she wakes up. Replace her with another bar slut the next night.

Which brings me to point #2 - what is the net effect of 'Game' on society? Isn't it bad? I suspect it is probably bad, but I think it is unavoidable. To the degree that long term relationships with women are dangerous, men are going to persue short-term relationships instead.

This isn't even a necessary part of 'Game', just how it can be, and often is used.

And this goal, the 'short term relationship' as the commenter above posited, is driven by the strong natural drive for sex, the danger of relationships, and also by the (sometimes accurate, sometimes not) perception of the women we meet as shallow, grasping and not worth our time - not worth the time of a long-term relationship - especially in view of the cost.

But even placing the blame for the effects of 'Gaming' for short term relationships where it belongs, what are the likely effects?

• Men become outwardly more adapted to charming and bedding women quickly.
• Probably more women will have children without any apparent father.
• Men will probably more often live lives that are freer of encumbrances, at least until they actually fall in love.
• Marriages will become more rare.
• Men will wait for someone who is worth committing to, rather than seeing ''sex" as being the same as "marriage".
• Perhaps, just perhaps, women will find ways to sweeten the pot - making marriage worthwhile to suitors. Dowries are seen as a primitive concept, but in a world where women can steal 'legitimately' half of a man's posessions, and enslave him for life, if a woman came to the marriage with a significant pool of assets herself that was turned over to the man, then marriage might be more attractive.

Hmmmm - seems like some of these things are happening already.

I think some form of 'Game' is natural in the relationship space, and has gone on forever. The real change is in men's realization of how deadly serious the 'Game' has become - it has changed our goals, and it is changing our culture.

And what do I think of the 'Game' providers/consultants who charge thousands to help men buff their 'game'? Sounds like a lot of money, but is it really any different that an 'image consultant' or a 'career coach'? If you have the bucks, and you think it will help, give it a shot. I'd start by reading the source materials, and saving my money. :)

Your comments and thoughts are welcome - please hit the ‘Donate’ button, if you can.

My Best To You In Your Struggles

-M

Update: Good grief: THL (a contributor to this blog) has already been big in the Roissy world, and I didn't know it. I have to set up a blog reader or something. OY! I noticed that he had gone Galt (a little background, also here), but he has also gone Truther! It's a messed up world! I don't share his trutherism views, but I want to know how to go Galt in my own life. Really. It's kind of like an economic MGTOW.

M is for Men, and Millionaires

Saw a news item from The Star Ledger at NJ.Com, and just immediately, immediately felt the hot breath of institutionalized misandry... ... Let's start with the title:

Judge dismisses millionaire's suit against his former wife

Now, in the case in question, we have a severely alienating former wife (how severe? try claiming to your kids that your ex has hired a hit-man to kill you), who has traveled across state and country lines to hide herself and his children in a friendly venue.

What venue did she choose? Three guesses, and the first two don't count:

New Jersey.
New Jersey.

and the one that counts:

New Jersey.

But what is the headline? It is about this RETIREE man's 'millions', not about the kidnapper's flight across borders, her lies, or her choice of venue.

Hello! First of all - it is misandrous to look at a case of kidnapping and alienation, and make the title about the supposedly deep pockets of one of the parties. If the woman had millions (and if we look at the settlement, it seems she does) we wouldn't be mentioning those in the title (and we don't).

Second of all - it is misandrous to look at a retiree, and call him a millionaire. If I were at retirement age, and had a house to my name and the assets necessary to keep me in some form of comfort for the rest of my life (kind of the definition of 'retirement') I would be... ...A MILLIONAIRE... (oooh-aaaah). Houses here in NJ, and also in many parts of Canada easily go for half a million, and that is just for your generic, middle-of-the-road house. So there is half your mil there. Now just look at what our putative millionaire needs to make it through the rest of his life. Imagine he lives 10 years. 50K x 10 years = another half million. And that isn't a rich lifestyle, or even allowing for inflation. And would they be mentioning these 'millions' if we were talking about a woman? No, we'd be talking about the man who stole his children and fled across state and international borders.

Third of all, it is particularly misandrous to look at a man in court, and particularly pick up on his net worth. Men go to work, they earn money. It's what they do. You might as well make a big deal about a seagull flying, or a mole burrowing. But apparently men with money, men earning money, men working to earn money, and men trying to keep the money they earned are all wrong/evil, and so that becomes the headline, not the Canadian kidnapper with the 11-odd million in Canadian Dollars who fled to the US/New Jersey.

The article gives us some background, so the writer (Margaret McHugh) did her homework, thank you very much, and perhaps we can blame the editor for the misandrous title.

But the article also reminds us of how much we have lost:

"New Jersey law simply does not allow recovery for the causes of action Segal asserts," [judge] Rand wrote, citing the 1935 Heart Balm Act that abolished causes of action for alienation of affection.

Nowadays, a man can be divorced without cause, and without recourse, and becomes subject to the theft of his children, half his assets or more, his future income, plus (of course) child support, and he cannot, under any circumstances, raise the behaviors/actions of his ex-wife in court and hope to win compensation.

The bias fairly drips from Judge Rand's pen:

Even if the Heart Balm Act didn't govern, Rand wrote he would have thrown out Segal's civil case anyhow because Segal failed to show Lynch's actions rose to the level of intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress.

"If Segal has become emotionally estranged from E.S. and W.S., it is, to a large degree, the result of his own actions and not because Lynch 'intentionally and maliciously' poisoned their relationship," Rand wrote in the 29-page decision.

[...]

Rand criticized Segal for continuing "to file highly-publicized, vindictive and baseless lawsuits against the children's mother."

Let's see - claiming to your children that their own father hired a hit man to kill you? Running across state and national boundaries to hide so that a private investigator must be paid to even find you and the children you abducted? Nope, no reason to assume anyone was harmed there. No basis, no basis at all.

And part of the article is about how the husband filed the suit in an unusual court - but no wonder:

Last month, Family Court Judge Thomas Weisenbeck dismissed Segal's attempt to cut her spousal support, saying Segal made the same unsuccessful arguments in Canadian courts, and he ordered him to pay her $7,000 legal tab.

The husband already has seen what FAMILY courts in NJ do at some length. You go to court, and pay the wife's tab AND yours, so you can lose.

Finally, way, way down in the article we see:

In 2005, a Canadian court awarded Lynch $11.1 million (estimated at $10.3 million in U.S. dollars) in spousal and child support. She received two properties that Segal contends grew in value and are worth far more than her award.

Interesting. We call the husband a 'millionaire' in the title of the article, but did we bother to look at the (stolen) net worth of the wife?

Finally, it might be worth noting that Segal never married Lynch.

That's right.

She stole his children, and 11.1 Million Canadian Dollars, plus legal fees, all for being a 'Common Law Wife'. Segal lived with Lynch for five years in Toronto.

That's right: five years of 'unmarried life' = 11.1 Million Canadian Dollars, plus the right to steal your children.

And here is what far too many men try to deny - not marrying your partner does not protect you from anythnig. The state has made any kind of long, middle, and even short term relationship with a woman a very dangerous proposition for men.

No wonder the marriage rate is in the can, and older women might as well try and piss up a rope as try and get hitched. No man with an ounce of fiscal sense is likely to gamble that this wife might not change her mind on a whim, and turn his 'golden years' into years of slavery, while stealing his kids.

And a big shout out of 'Congrats' to New Jersey for being the international venue of choice for alienating moms.

Well Done, Well Done Slytherin, I mean, New Jersey!

My best to you in your struggles.

-M

J is for Juxtaposition

Two things happened recently that are interesting in their juxtaposition;

The first thing was that someone sent me a note with various links pointing out how many women advertising in the singles markets specify that they do not want divorced men, and especially not divorced men who have had kids.

Do you get that? While enjoying the vast powers that the western world lavishes upon women – in this case the right to pauperize and enslave men while simultaneously stripping them of their children – they are not willing to take on men who have become the victims of this power.

They only want the richest fruit, the fresh spoils, oil from the first squeezing – the extra-virgin man, still full of assets, income and energy.

Not for them the men who have been already plundered by women just like themselves.
Did someone protest? Did someone say that I don’t know that these women, who don’t want to date divorced men, are plunderers?

If they are not plunderers, not hoping to find themselves as slave-owners, why are they insisting only on the rich spoils? If they really want a nice man, why insist that he never have been stripped? Clearly, the assets are what they are asking for. And if they are not abusers, not oppressors, where are their voices speaking out against the enslavement of men?

No, every day they step over the unshaved, divorced man who sleeps by their door, who has no place to live because he has been stripped of all his assets, and can no longer work profitably because the government takes the majority of his income. They walk past the single father who is desperately trying to connect with his child on his once-every-two-weeks visitation. They ignore the quiet divorced man in the office, whose shabby suit and threadbare ties reflect the meager subsistence that the courts allow him. They are on the prowl for fresh meat.

Fresh meat! It’s out there!

And they complain that there are no available men – but what they mean is that there are no rich merchant ships to plunder, no fat gazelles nearby to eviscerate. No, these women are plunderers. They might hide behind religion, or family, or concerns about how difficult life might be when you have to balance budgets, and worry about step-children, but the fact is that they are the predators, who stand silently while men are pillaged by others of their clan, while always thirsting for blood, always sniffing the air for the scent of prey, always hunting, hunting, hunting for the next ripe victim.

Of course, as in all ecosystems, there is escalation of tactics on the side of the prey-animal too, and this is where the second thing in my ‘juxtaposition’ comes in:

I also, just recently ran into a small network of my male school chums that I had fallen out of touch with. These people are today pillars of their communities – businessmen, teachers, peace officers… And not one of them has ever been married. One considered it briefly. I raised the issue with them – but they couldn’t really say why they never married when they were young – they saw the girls going out with the bad-boys, and not them. And today, well, today they are looking at their nest-eggs, and looking forward to their retirement, and planning to travel the world, and do some of the other things that they always wanted to do.

They are NOT looking for long-term relationships. They see that as a quick way to find themselves chained to a treadmill until they die – even in ‘successful’ marriages. So here they are, a small group of very happy, attractive, successful men, all looking forward to their retirement, and not willing to get entangled with someone who can at a whim strip them of everything that they have worked for, and their prospects for an enjoyable retirement.

The prey animals have discovered where the predators are lying in wait – in the traditional breeding grounds of the species - marriage. So, naturally, they are avoiding those areas. Instead they go for brief, anonymous relationships, and the institution of marriage dies a slow and horrible death.

And there is your juxtaposition – on the one hand, women insisting on men who have never been married, and on the other, men, wisely insisting that they will never marry.

My best to you in your struggles!
-M

M is for 'Marriage Strike'

Met a nice, attractive middle-aged man the other day, and noticed he was single, and started chatting with him about his life.

I was foolishly thinking that he might be a good match for one of my single female friends, but here is what I discovered as I spoke to him:

He woke up one day and discovered his wife missing along with his son.

Later he discovered she had pulled up stakes and zapped off to a very distant southern state to marry someone she had met via email and had been corresponding with.

He wanted his son back, and consulted several lawyers, who told him he didn't have a chance of recovering his son.

Eventually, a divorce was finalized with him paying child support, and seeing his son each summer for a short while. Of course, his ex got half of his asset base. (No-Fault Divorce, remember?)

This was a good number of years ago. The man was so self-effacing, he wouldn't even say anything against his ex to this day. But what he did say spoke volumes.

He said he wanted his son back.

And he said he could not imagine ever marrying another woman.

He hadn't heard of the marriage strike. Wasn't a Men's Rights Activist.

He was a 'nice guy', who is no longer in the market for a wife, because of what the system did to him, and allowed to be done to him. No doubt his son will think three times before marrying too, as will his best friend who was with him, and anyone who talks to him and hears his story. And this is another way that the marriage strike expands. - Not through websites like mine spreading the bad news, but through the actual bad news happening to people, and that news percolating through society. And another man, and his son, and his friends drop out of the marriage market, just like that. Without a big fuss, or a lot of noise - they are just gone - no longer part of the marital economy of men-as-slaves.

But don't worry, girls. You probably can still get married, it will probably just have to be someone who earns significanty less than you, and has no assets to risk. That should be a 'love'ly solution to your problems, unless it wasn't really LOVE that you were looking for in the first place.

Oh, and how about we start treating women who disappear with men's children like the kidnappers that they are?


My Best To You In Your Struggles:

-M

H is for Dr Helen

Wow, I posted a comment on Dr Helen's Pajamas Media post titled Single Men in Never-Neverland and suddenly a small torrent of visitors are giving the hamsters in Blogger's serverland a workout.

But this is exactly what I had hoped for, I hoped that people would come, and read, and learn what can and does happen to men in this country, and learn how our rights have been eroded - almost to nothing.

Welcome, Welcome to Dr Helen visitors.

Please read, check my sources, and think about what you find. It is my prayer that if enough people become informed about the situation that men face in this country today, we may start seeing some real equality between the sexes, and might just reduce the incidence of male suicide, of which 14,850 deaths per year in the US are attributable to the loss of children, financial stability, civil rights and freedoms that come with divorce - for men. With total male suicides running about 22,500/year, the odds are that if you know a man who committed suicide, they are a divorcee. Putting it simply two-thirds of male suicides are divorcees.

...Think of all those children without fathers - oh, but they probably didn't get visitation anyway...

Quoting from my prior post on this subject:

One can only wonder what value the approximately 148,000 men killed by divorce over the last decade would have added to our country if they had not been driven to suicide by our country's misandry.

Imagine the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children growing up over the last decade without fathers; [and the] brothers, sisters and parents bereft of their [brother, or son].

- Men who died for the crime of getting married to the wrong person.

The total loss is mind-numbing.

With that said, the text of my comment on Dr Helen's post follows:

M :
It isn't news to most men that Marriage isn't a cost-effective proposition. But what probably is news, even to men, is how likely it is to end up stripping them of anything resembling rights and disenfranchising them. The financial ruin that follows divorce is credited for the huge rate of male suicide compared to women.
But this is just one element of our society's war on men - even more horrific is how men are punished in an entirely different way by the courts than women are. As a culture we seem to be saying that we don't want men anymore. Don't be suprised if they respond by finding some way to go elsewhere.
-M

MBTYIYS:
-M

S is for "Should Men Get Married?"

Dr Helen opined some time ago on 'should men get married?', and the outlook isn't cheerful, as I have noted in this blog before (see here and here.

I think some of the commenters on Dr Helen's blog have it right. On the odds, marriage in general is not a winning proposition.

But looking at this again, I wanted to review it in terms of real money, and see how it stacked up.

In general people get married for the following real benefits;

Love
Sex
Children
Cheaper to live together

I think that covers it. So let's put a value on these things. Yeah, I know, you can't. But we are talking about stuff that is getting settled in a court of law, so let's think of it like a lawyer would:

Love: hardest to quantify, but let's value it like having a personal executive assistant who is paid enough to actually care about your stuff. Say $80,000/year.

Sex: note we aren't talking porn-star stuff here, we're talking real world, in a busy life. A decent prostitute would cost you $200/night, but I'll knock that to $100/night because you have her on retainer, and it happens to be the same person as your executive assistant.
So that's maybe $10,000 per year, if you are lucky.

Children: they say you can't put a value on a human life, but the courts do it all the time. They seem to think that a life is worth something like $100,000 per year. Sometimes they treat kids like more, sometimes much less. Let's go with $100,000 per year, for however many you have.

Cheaper to live together; well, this just isn't true. You might get a cheaper year at first, but year 2 you'll find yourself redecorating so that everything matches, and once you have kids you need a new house, clothes for kids, your wife not respecting budgets, finance charges... Come to think of it, it has to cost you at least $50,000/ year.

Ok, so if your average marriage lasts 7 years, let's assume that the first 4 are pretty good, and the last 3 living hell. So we'll go with 4 years of the personal assistant and sex for $90,000/year.
Total value for the average marriage: $370,000

But the kids and living expenses are yours until the marriage ends, and so we can net the two ($50,000) and multiply by seven: $350,000.

So the total value received from the average marriage is about $720,000.

Not so bad, right?

But the problem is that the average marriage DOES end in divorce. And men lose their kids, and pay alimony and support.

So if having your kids is worth $100,000/year, having that kid stolen away and kept from you with only brief weekly or monthly furloughs is losing that benefit. Think of it as them being unjustly imprisoned, which they will be until they are 18. So assume 10 years of unjust imprisonment fot your kids: $1,000,000.

Next let's look at support/alimony.
Your average wage-earner makes somewhere in the $40-50,000 range,
But I suspect this is NOT what your 7-year marriage, 2.5 kids father makes. I think this father earns more likle $80,000, on average.
And, alimony and child support are going to, on average, eat around 2/3 of that - costing you a real $53,000 per year, for the next 10 years or so: $530,000

Now let's talk about what you lose in the divorce. Most people have net debt, which is divided, but your average 2.5-kids-7-year-marriage-father doesn't. You can't live in debt with kids and a family to worry about. You have to make things work every day, and have a plan for when it doesn't. You have to have half a year in assets to float you when your company goes under, or you get fired. So you have 50,000 in liquid assets plus retirement, and a house that is probably worth, on average, $175,000. Half of these go to your wife in divorce. This is a real expense to you, because, on average, the man earned the money that paid for them. I am sure people will argue about this, but we are in the small numbers here compared to the above: of $225,000 you lose $112,000 to your ex.

Now let's talk legal expenses. Let's just say that you aren't very acrimonious, and you only have a few legal problems after the divorce and put your total legal costs at $60,000 including what you have to file to really end support at the end of the whole period. I think that the average is higher, but let's use this.

Now let's talk about your personal situation. You may think that the above covers everything, but you have lost one other thing that is not accounted for in the above, which is your freedom. You are REQUIRED by law to not only keep earning what you were earning at the time of the marriage, but to get reasonable raises. You are an indentured servant for ten years. What is reasonable compensation for being required to consistently earn a particular number for the next ten years without fail? Nowadays people change jobs every 2-3 years, and are often out of work for months (see the half a year in assets above). So a very real cost of having to be a wage slave for ten years is the coverage of the job transitions. Let's say there are three job transitions during the 10 years, and they last 4 months. four twelfths of $80,000 , multiplied by three job losses is $80,0000 you will need just to cover the financial implications of the job transitions.

But again, what about what the real value of you committing to being a wage slave for 10 years, minus the financial implications, just the 'I have to slog off to work for people who I don't see and who mostly hate me' factor. How much would you demand in additional compensation for working for a firm that hates you, while withholding 2/3rds of your income, and committing to this situationfor 10 years? Well, it would have to pay me back the 2/3rds, or I wouldn't do it, but I am already counting that as a negative above, so I won't double count it, so it becomes how much to work for people who hate me for 10 years, plus the stress of jumping through hoops to get the next job and the next job where they also hate me. I think, that I would need to see double my salary before I committed to this kind of situation. So for your average working divorced father, we are talking about a real value of $80,000 per year (he already earns the 80k, this is the doubling part). Over 10 years that is $800,000

So total cost of the divorce, including your suffering: $2,694,500
Compared to your anticipated benefits (including your joys in children, sex, help) of: $720,000.

The net benefit (cost) of the average marriage is way negative: ($1,974,500).

If someone proposed to you a venture that would on average eat up the next twenty years of your life, which represents a total cost of about two million dollars including pain and suffering, and which leaves the average person very unhappy, would you do it?

Or more simply: On Average, Should Men Marry?


The simple answer, based on the numbers, is:


No,
Nixt,
No Way,
Not,
Not in Twenty Years,
Not in Two Million Dollars,
Not on Your Life.


But I want to end on a positive note, and that is the following, which many of you may not find positive:

The analysis above is correct for the average person,

- but the average person should not marry,

- and the person that they should marry should not be average.

For marriage to work, it must be entered into by loving, giving, dedicated people who will both try hard to put their partner's interests first, day in and day out, on the easy days and the hard days, in the good years and in the bad years, and enter into this venture knowing that many of the years may be very tough years.

For marriage to work well, it must contain two souls who are ethical, moral, upstanding, honest, and brave.

If you can be the kind of person described above -if you can always put your lover first -even when you are fighting, and if you can find someone who is always putting you first, and loves doing that, and whom you can trust with your life and the things you care most about, even when you are fighting...

- then marry that person. It will be the best thing that you ever did.

My best to you in your struggles!

-M