Why Do Men Get Married?

In My Humble Opinion
41

The serious answer is that it’s a sexual boast. Like the huge antlers a male deer carries around. Look at me, I am so big and strong and virile that I can carry around a fine rack o’ useless ivory without breaking a sweat. All the disadvantages of marriage, including the possibility of a lifelong parasite in the event of divorce, are advantages from the point of view of someone who wants to prove how courageous, daring, and powerful he is in the arena of sexual competition: ``Ha! I am not afraid, I laugh at alimony!’’ etc.

To whom is he boasting? Both male and female primates have reason to be influenced by chest-beating. His mate for obvious reasons. Also, the advertisement can go to other females, because a good way to ensure fidelity and tractability in your mate is to be highly visible and attractive to her potential competitors. Males of his political party will feel their group social attractiveness (hence power) is enhanced, and males not of his political party will feel appropriately threatened.

42

Cynical much? I used to be a member of the anti-matrimony crowd, viewing marriage as the subjugator of the masses. It was my opinion that women lose their identity and joie de vive at the end of the aisle. Then, the fevered heresy of youth subsided and I realized that marriage is not a one size fits all iron maiden. There are as many different ways to approach marriage as there are humans on this planet. No two marriages are exact replicas. Some are excited by the prospect of carrying out daily tasks in the other’s presence. Some couples do nothing together but eat and the obvious marital perk. If you view accepting the nuptuals as the stereotypical Cleaver prison, there is no advantage for anyone. If, however, you make it your own personal manner of giving someone special a more permanent spot in your life, (tailored to your collective lifestyles) it can do nothing but enrich both lives with the mere experience of it.
(I think I’ll toddle off to align my chakras and hum a mantra in the key of life. Hmmmmmmmm…;))

43

Actually, in support of that, I read somewhere (sorry, no cite, but I could look around if you’re really interested) that the largest wage gap is not between women and men anymore…

…it’s between women with kids, and women without kids.

Now, I realize that marriage does not necessarily equal kids, and there are certainly a lot of single moms out there…

…but it sort of puts that “American Dream” (the house/spouse/two kids and a dog routine) in a different light…

44

Lizard, I hear you loud and clear! And as one of those women who does NOT tend to “mother” the men I date (in some of the ways we’ve both mentioned), I tend to expect a grown man to be… well… a grown man.

And perhaps I was generalizing a bit, but I can’t help but wonder if shrew was right with her (tongue-in-cheek?) assessment of why men get married.

I mean, I’ve always considered myself a damn good girlfriend, by my own standards (in other words, I try to “Do Unto Others…”). I don’t yell, boss, cling, snoop, or “henpeck” (whatever the hell that means). Yet I find myself getting dumped by men who seem to wish I’d been different…

One of my exes told me that, since I was a grad student when we dated, he’d expected me to force him to attend scholarly lectures and such.

Honey.

He HATED school, and barely made it through college (flunked out of one, in fact, and finished at another). In addition, he was constantly picking up the books and articles I had strewn around my apartment (various school-related stuff) and making fun of how pretentious and pedantic it all was. In addition, I DID take him to a poetry reading, and he was so bored he spent the whole time playing with my hand and my ear (which made me want to slap him).

So WHY would I drag him along to lectures on Postmodern Literature (or some other such thing) when, hell, even I get bored with that shit after awhile?

“Well,” he said, “I might not have WANTED to go, but if you’d forced me to go, I would have, and it would have been good for me.”

“I mean,” he continued, “your partner is supposed to make you GROW.”

:rolleyes: Hmph! Last time I checked, he was–ahem–“growing” plenty because of me…

ANOTHER one of my exes actually lied to all of his friends and had them all convinced that I was branding him on the ass with a hot iron every time he stayed out too late. This I found out because his friends frequently apologized to ME for “keeping him out so late”… finally I asked one of them WHY he kept apologizing… he told me that once it got past 1 am, my boyfriend’s backseat mantra became, “Auntie Em’s going to kill me…” and he’d repeat it until they finally took his ass home. Then the next time he saw them, he’d make up a story about how pissed I’d been.

Wha…? Sure, perhaps if he’d stayed out ALL night (and I was expecting him home), I would have been worried, but if he was next to me (alive and uninjured) by the time I woke up in the morning (which he always was), Honey, I was a happy little clam.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder if he (and others) somehow got the impression that I didn’t care about them because I failed to be “bossier”.

Now, this may be something akin to brainychick’s thread about being “too smart” (some posters there have posited that the problem lies elsewhere, and this could be the case with me as well). But sometimes I look at the way my (female) friends treat their SOs and I think “Holy Cow… is THAT what makes them stick around, treating them like 8-year-olds???”

If so, I’m not sure I can swing it.

45

Goo- “Cite, please.”

Take a look at the link Coil was nice enough to provide. It says-

“In the year following a divorce, women’s living standards fall by 27 percent while men’s living standards rise by 10 percent”

This is PROOF that marriage COSTS the average man $$$$, and that the average marriage PAYS the woman $$$$.

Now, the amount that it pays the woman depends mostly on her looks. Men who are very wealthy, since they are so sought after, get their pick of the women, so they pick the most attractive women. Since rich guys find the same things attractive as almost all other men, this means that poor guys get stuck with unattractive women.

46

Surreal: did you manage to read the rest of the article? That doesn’t mean what you think it means.

47

I’m starting to like you auntie em :stuck_out_tongue: You sound like a person too smart for the world around you (I don’t say that to be cheeky, either). I think the answer to your question above is YES! Unfortunately, men form their impressions of what a woman should be by looking at dear old Mom, who babies them for most of their lives. Women do this too; a lot of women want a man to be their “Daddy,” so to speak. Change their car’s oil, pay for all meals, drive them everywhere, move anything large or heavy, get things off high shelves, etc.
I think some aspects of these gender re-affirmations are a necessary part of a healthy relationship. Some of it is just a man being a man and a woman being a woman. Someone who is TOO independant can make the other person feel unneeded. If both parties are well and truly secure in themselves, then this problem doesn’t arise. But the vast majority of the human populace is insecure.
And I have identified this as one of my barriers. I have been caught on the teeth of an odd paradox: on the one hand the woman I ultimately want for myself would be my emotional and intellectual equal. Someone who I could not outsmart, and who would not put me through manipulative little games like my mother did.
But I recognize that a certain amount of looseness and self-sacrifice is required in a relationship. Right now, I am so paranoid and insecure myself that any woman who would meet my standards would be too smart to get into a relationship with me.
I really knew what the guy you quoted meant when he said “your partner is supposed to make you GROW.” I realized recently (it was a painful awakening, to be sure) that nobody can make me grow but me. To think otherwise is to refuse to take responsibility for your own life. If I am to get the relationship I want, I have to make myself into the type of person who can sustain such a relationship. (This isn’t the same as saying I need to be “worthy” of it. Everyone deserves to be happy.)

I think the men you’ve dealt with ultimately want someone else to take some of the responsibility for their lives off their shoulders. Too bad they will probably find someone to oblige them. I guess by being smothering and overbearing my mom ultimately did me a favor: I won’t let anyone take away my feeling of self-determination ever again. It may take awhile to learn how to do it right, but one way or another I will always take care of MYSELF on my own terms, and never ask someone else to do it for me.

48

I’m starting to like you auntie em :stuck_out_tongue: You sound like a person too smart for the world around you (I don’t say that to be cheeky, either). I think the answer to your question above is YES! Unfortunately, men form their impressions of what a woman should be by looking at dear old Mom, who babies them for most of their lives. Women do this too; a lot of women want a man to be their “Daddy,” so to speak. Change their car’s oil, pay for all meals, drive them everywhere, move anything large or heavy, get things off high shelves, etc.
I think some aspects of these gender re-affirmations are a necessary part of a healthy relationship. Some of it is just a man being a man and a woman being a woman. Someone who is TOO independant can make the other person feel unneeded. If both parties are well and truly secure in themselves, then this problem doesn’t arise. But the vast majority of the human populace is insecure.
And I have identified this as one of my barriers. I have been caught on the teeth of an odd paradox: on the one hand the woman I ultimately want for myself would be my emotional and intellectual equal. Someone who I could not outsmart, and who would not put me through manipulative little games like my mother did.
But I recognize that a certain amount of looseness and self-sacrifice is required in a relationship. Right now, I am so paranoid and insecure myself that any woman who would meet my standards would be too smart to get into a relationship with me.
I really knew what the guy you quoted meant when he said “your partner is supposed to make you GROW.” I realized recently (it was a painful awakening, to be sure) that nobody can make me grow but me. To think otherwise is to refuse to take responsibility for your own life. If I am to get the relationship I want, I have to make myself into the type of person who can sustain such a relationship. (This isn’t the same as saying I need to be “worthy” of it. Everyone deserves to be happy.)

I think the men you’ve dealt with ultimately want someone else to take some of the responsibility for their lives off their shoulders. Too bad they will probably find someone to oblige them. I guess by being smothering and overbearing my mom ultimately did me a favor: I won’t let anyone take away my feeling of self-determination ever again. It may take awhile to learn how to do it right, but one way or another I will always take care of MYSELF on my own terms, and never ask someone else to do it for me.

49

Why do mean get married?

The reasons are numerous and diverse. Sometimes they involve the business end of a shotgun.

50

Ahem. Are you saying that this is a problem??? :stuck_out_tongue:

I do TRY to avoid this kind of behavior myself, but I’m afraid that when it comes to dealing with bugs/animal carcasses/heavy objects and/or intruders, I am more than happy to play the “helpless girl”. (I was indeed my daddy’s Princess.) I do like to pay my own way, do the driving, and take my own car for oil changes, however (the latter because I have a little crush on my mechanic :wink: ). And I can parallel park like a pro.

And as to the “mothering” thing, I do like to pamper people, but that goes for friends and lovers alike, and that mainly extends to cooking and the giving of little impromptu (i.e. “So and So would love this… I think I’ll get it for him/her”) gifts. One disturbing trend I’ve noticed in myself, however, is that as I get older, I’m losing the patience to let people try things for themselves. If I don’t think they’re going to do it “right”, I’ll shove them aside and take over. (As a result, it’s easy to get over on me by pretending not to know how to do something.)

And that’s my mama coming out in me. :eek:

At any rate, it sounds to me like you are a very smart and introspective person as well, and would make quite a catch. And if it helps, my theory is that nobody is ever “ready” for a relationship. I mean, who feels 100% complete, emotionally secure, mentally/financially stable, stunningly gorgeous and pleasantly fragrant, 100% of the time?

I mean, hell, if Julia Roberts keeps landing dates… :rolleyes:

So I think you just gotta get out there and do your thing. Figure it out as you go along.

And just so as not to completely hijack this thread, I have to say that I think marriage is a good idea for some people and a bad idea for some people, regardless of gender.

Y’know?

51

I would love to let my young and niave mind believe that men get married because they fall in love. But I know that not only men, but a lot of women as well, never do honestly fall in love. They marry out of convinience and so when are all old and falling apart they have someone who will take care of them. I have been discussed in ideas of marraige many times based on the single fact that I hold many qualities of a show wife.

Take care. Be well. And God Bless**

52

I found a very good article on this subject-

http://www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh/miscellaneous/sober/2001/horn2.html

“*Moreover, a woman’s criteria for choosing a mate are often determined by her own advantages. In the United States, for example, the best predictor of a man’s wealth is his wife’s looks. And women with higher education and well-paying jobs typically place even more value on income and education in a potential mate than do less accomplished women. That is why professional women find it harder to find mates, as demonstrated in Joannah Bharose’s series on single women in the Independent. *”

53

Sorry to hijack this-but you do realize that this is an op ed article from another country right? One with very different cultural norms? Men cheating is

common in Trinidad and there are calypsoes on this topic every year (asserting it as a natural thing for a man to do)-a calypso about the reverse is unusual.

Mr. Baldeosingh is not known for his positive views of working women and

personal experience (from living in Trinidad) suggests that he is incorrect in the assertion that women don’t want leadership roles in Trinidad.

To get back on topic, the quote you used in the article makes a statement without any supporting evidence…much like the rest of his article. I don’t see how this advances your position; all it does is point out that there are other men who agree with your viewpoint.

54

Apologies for bad coding above-forgot to preview :o
The words “very” and “my” should have been in italics not quotes .

55

American Cognitive Psychologist and Director at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT Steven Pinker says so too-

http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1997/oct/10-24-97/arts/arts2.html

“In our society, the best predictor of a man’s wealth is his wife’s looks, and the best predictor of a woman’s looks is her husband’s wealth.”

They don’t just pick people off of the street to be the Director at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT.

56

Because everyone else out there is FUCKING NUTS (pardon my “foul” language), and you’ve happened upon a relatively sane individual who makes you very happy.

That’s all there is to it, IMO.